What Werner put on the counter

I have been telling myself for three years that the house in Greyton means nothing. A GPS coordinate I delete from memory. A stoep with cracked cement and a kettle that whistled wrong. My father's stoep. And this man — silver watch, no urgency, the kind who photographs a capture the way another man might pour wine — he puts a Polaroid of it on the counter beside my hooks like it belongs there.

He knew. He had to have known. That photograph did not travel into Goodwood by accident. Someone gave it to him or he found it and kept it and brought it tonight, in his pocket, while I bled across a boomslang and the homeowner locked the gate behind me. He waited in the kitchen doorway and watched the whole mess and then he set it down. R4,000 cash. Unlicensed collection. As if the money was the offer and the Polaroid was the actual transaction.

I left the bag on the counter. I know what that cost me in holding-room terms. I know what the lab would have paid and I walked out and I did not look at the photograph and I am not going back for it either. That is the part I need to be honest about: I will not go back for it. Even if Werner waits. Even if there is another callout with his name on it. I will drive out into the Karoo and run UV across limestone and I will not open that bag because if I open it I have to look at it and if I look at it I have to admit I know exactly what it means that he chose to bring it tonight.