The Soldier who Said No (16 page)

Emma drove. They took the long way home. The scenery was spectacular.

Travelling through rural New Zealand invigorated De Villiers. He immersed himself in the surroundings as Emma drove on good roads which separated unspoilt beaches from pristine tropical forests past many small agricultural units, farms small enough for a single family to work, but large enough to make a living. De Villiers marvelled at the orderliness of the countryside: every road was marked, every fence whole, every paddock grazed in clear patterns of rotation, all hedges clipped and the dams full of water. Even the animals looked content, sheep and cows and horses. Chickens, ducks and turkeys ranged about farmyards.

Despite the graffiti on the road signs and on the farmers’ water tanks and fences, everything was clean, green and working.

But the countryside was strangely devoid of wildlife. Even the windscreen was clear of insect roadkill. The birds they encountered could hardly be called indigenous. The sparrows were from Europe and the turtle doves from Africa.

They passed an honesty box on a table with honey in jars and tomatoes in small pallets, an empty ice cream container serving as the repository for the buyer’s money. Dead possums littered the road, stupid, nocturnal animals introduced into New Zealand in a misguided attempt to found another industry, immigrants of a sort that damaged the forests and froze in the headlights. The descent to Kaiaua brought the village into view, forests and mountains on the left, sea and boats on the right. The fishermen were out in force. Emma slowly drove up the coast, through more seaside villages, following the road inland from Matingarahi.

De Villiers’s mood was as variable as the hills and the valleys of the landscape, and went left and right with the sharp turns of the scenic route through several reserves. When the surgeon had phoned with the results of the biopsy, he had said, ‘There is cancer in three of the samples, but it is curable.’ From that moment De Villiers had lost his faith in his own body. Isn’t cancer an illness where a body tries to kill itself with maverick cells multiplying out of control and refusing to die? And is cancer ever curable? What about the cancer of the mind, the doubts indelibly implanted there about the manner and time of one’s death? Death, like the sun, is ever-present, and not to be faced directly, although one may be compelled to look when the time is right.

After the operation De Villiers had asked the surgeon whether he had removed any lymph glands and the surgeon had said no, but had added a rider. ‘We’re going to have to monitor your
PSA
very carefully from now on.’
What’s to monitor?
De Villiers had asked himself.
If the cancer has been removed, the PSA must be zero.

But the devil now whispered in his ear from its perch on his shoulder: unless the cancer has spread. De Villiers felt an almost irresistible urge to scream: It’s inside me! I can feel it inside me!

He found it hard to come to terms with the idea that his own body had tried to kill him. That’s how the surgeon had put it.

Cyclists made their way through the passes in ones and twos, some coming perilously close to the car. The car glided in and out of the shadows, tropical trees and ferns touching overhead in a tunnel of nature’s making across narrow bridges and winding sections, emerging into clear sunlight between small farms with sheep grazing on the hillsides, until the next scenic reserve.

I know what the cause of death is going to be on my death certificate, De Villiers thought. I, Pierre de Villiers, soldier by profession, can tell you in advance. I’m going to die of cancer. And here I sit, with bullet wounds, and there I was, in a war with both sides hunting me and trying to kill me, and I’m going to die of cancer in this strange but beautiful country.

Emma stopped the car at Kawakawa Bay and they bought fish and chips to eat on a grassy knoll near the water. The sea was calm as a pond. They watched as recreational fishermen launched their small boats.

At three o’clock in the morning De Villiers got up for the by now customary visit to the bathroom. Emma was snoring softly. He turned her gently onto her side and the snoring subsided in a contented sigh. De Villiers was about to ease back into bed when he heard a car with a modified exhaust stop in front of the house. He heard the engine cut out and doors opening and closing. De Villiers stood at the window and watched as two boys bent over their work against the electrical substation at the top of Macleans Reserve. Each had a spray canister and they were hard at work. De Villiers prodded Emma in the ribs and asked her to phone the police.

‘Tell them that I’m a police officer and that I need assistance.’

De Villiers slipped out of his front door. He was barefoot and still in his pyjamas, but carried a knobkierie, a heavy piece he kept behind the front door, tamboti, hard, smelly and heavy, tough as one of Shaka’s indunas.

The boys were unaware of his presence until he removed the key from the ignition of the Subaru and pounded on the roof of the car with his fist.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get away from my car!’ one of the boys shouted in a voice that had not yet broken.

De Villiers straightened and casually held the knobkierie as if it were a walking stick.

‘Put the paint on the ground and stand against the car with your hands on the roof,’ he ordered. He spoke firmly but softly, not to wake the neighbours.

‘Fuck you! Get back to your house before you get hurt.’

The boys advanced on De Villiers, holding their spray cans in front of them.

De Villiers raised the knobkierie and jabbed it into the solar plexus of the nearest one. ‘Don’t push your luck, boy.’ With his left hand he dangled the keys to the Subaru in front of their eyes. ‘How far do you think I can throw these keys? And do you really think you will get away with threatening a policeman?’

The boys backed off, but had nowhere to go without the keys. They retreated to the other side of the Subaru. A patrol car with two police officers, a man and a woman, stopped behind the Subaru. De Villiers went over to the police car and introduced himself.

‘I have the situation under control, thank you. Could you please wait a minute or two while I wrap things up?’

‘Sure,’ the woman said.

‘Okay, boys, get in the car,’ said De Villiers. He could see Emma watching from the veranda of his house. ‘No, in the front, not the back,’ he said as the boys made for the back doors.

De Villiers closed the doors and joined the two boys in the car, taking the seat behind the driver.

‘Okay, what’s this shit?’

The boys kept mum, their hoodies pulled low over their faces. De Villiers reached across and pulled their hoodies back. They were mere boys, no older than fourteen or fifteen, and they wore identical blue scarves tied around their right wrists.

‘Whose car is this?’

‘Mine,’ said the boy in the driver’s seat. His companion cast a glance at him and averted his eyes.

‘Don’t bullshit me,’ De Villiers said, ‘or you’ll sleep in the cells tonight.’

‘My brother’s,’ the driver said.

‘Where’s your brother?’

The boys exchanged another look.

‘Where’s your brother? I’m not going to ask again.’

After a pause, ‘Jail.’

There was a pair of rugby boots in the footwell of the car behind the passenger seat.

‘What school do you go to?’ De Villiers asked.

‘Edgewater.’

‘Edgewater, Sir,’ De Villiers said.

‘Edgewater, Sir,’ the boys echoed after him.

‘That’s a good school.’

The boys said nothing.

‘Have either of you been arrested before?’

‘No, Sir.’ They spoke as a unit.

‘Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. The officers behind me are going to take you home. You’re going to come back here at ten o’clock in the morning with someone who has a driver’s licence. Then you’re going to paint the box before I give you the keys, alright?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘If you don’t turn up, if you’re even one minute late, I’ll send the officers back to fetch you and you’ll be charged with car theft, understand?’

‘We didn’t steal the car, Sir.’ It was the passenger.

‘I don’t care. Now get out of the car and get into the patrol car.’

De Villiers waited until both boys were strapped in before he spoke to the driver of the patrol car. ‘Please take them home. Make sure they go into the house they point out. If either of them gives you any trouble, lock them both up. I’ll come in to the station and sort out the paperwork in the morning.’

The Subaru locked at the press of a button and De Villiers threw the keys into the fruit bowl on the dining-room table before he went upstairs and got back into bed. The bed was cold and he snuggled up to Emma. She was upset. He could feel it in the stiffness of her back.

He woke up and counted the days since the surgery. The surgeon had said that he might be impotent after the operation, but that they would talk about sex during the follow-up visit. And now this, De Villiers thought. He pushed his hand down the front of his pyjama pants. The operation wound was still covered with surgical tape. He turned slowly towards Emma. She was lying on her left side, facing away from him. He pulled her around gently until she was on her back, and lifted her right leg over his. She sighed. Her eyes were closed.

Henderson and Kupenga arrived exactly on time, at nine o’clock. It was New Year’s Day and they were working.

De Villiers played sick and opened the door in his pyjamas.

‘Come in, I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said.

The two detectives started taking their shoes off, but De Villiers stopped them. ‘There’s no need to remove your shoes.’ It was a kiwi habit De Villiers couldn’t get used to. When they arrive at your house, they take their shoes off. When he had asked why, years earlier, someone had mumbled, ‘Because it’s always so damned muddy outside!’

The detectives followed De Villiers to the breakfast nook and he indicated they could sit. They took seats on the stools and watched as he filled the kettle. De Villiers joined them at the breakfast nook. Henderson placed a Ziploc bag on the granite surface. There was an arrow inside.

De Villiers recognised the arrow immediately and felt the blood drain from his face. He sat down on a barstool. The two men watched him carefully. He wondered if Henderson had noticed his discomfort and hoped that what Henderson would see was a man who was pale from the blood loss caused by surgery.

De Villiers realised that he was leaking, unable to hold his water, and turned to hide his embarrassment. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said.

Upstairs he cleaned himself and dressed in denims and a T-shirt. Underneath he wore a pair of incontinence underpants Sister Appollus had issued from the hospital’s stock. ‘Don’t be embarrassed to wear this,’ she had said. ‘You’ll need it for a while, until you have control again.’

De Villiers made his way downstairs and sat on the barstool, forcing his eyes not to look at the arrow.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ Henderson asked.

De Villiers took a few deep breaths and turned to the sink. He poured a glass of water and took his time to swallow two tablets for the pain.

He made a show of carefully studying the arrow. It was immediately obvious to him that its point had been fashioned from bone. He was convinced, no, he knew that it was giraffe.

‘Has Forensics finished with it?’ De Villiers asked, hoping the demons would tire and allow him to think clearly, to make sense of the arrow’s presence on the granite top of his breakfast nook.

‘Yes, but we’re not to touch it. It must remain in the bag with the seals intact,’ Henderson said.

That meant they had a crime and they wanted to preserve the chain of evidence.

The water boiled. ‘Tea or coffee?’ De Villiers asked, still stalling. He tried not to look at the arrow, but it was difficult and he felt Henderson’s eyes on him. His own eyes were drawn to the arrowhead in the Ziploc bag. It certainly wasn’t made of the fencing wire or steel nails used by most modern Bushmen.

‘Coffee, please,’ Henderson said.

‘Nothing for me,’ Kupenga said. De Villiers hadn’t made eye contact with him once.

De Villiers placed the mug with milk and sugar in front of Henderson and picked up the Ziploc bag.

He took his time to inspect every aspect of the dainty missile. He held it to the light and checked the alignment of its three main sections: the arrowhead, the foreshaft and the shaft. He shifted his scrutiny to the back of the arrow. A wide groove in a shallow V had been carved into the nock end of the shaft with a blade that had been none too sharp. The edges of the V were rough and the fine grain of the wood had been bruised. There was no fletching and no sign that there ever had been.

De Villiers again became aware of Henderson’s eyes on him. Henderson pretended to be sipping his coffee, but was watching De Villiers intently with the ease of an experienced policeman who doesn’t miss anything, an eye that would detect the subtle shifts in tone or the changes in body language which would signal a lie or a concealment, or, worse still, a guilty conscience. But this man was sick and in pain, on medication that made him sluggish. De Villiers sabotaged Henderson’s efforts to read his mind by turning his back to his visitors and taking the arrow to the window. He studied the arrowhead close-up.

‘I’ll be back in a second,’ he said abruptly and disappeared down the passage. He emerged seconds later with a magnifying glass and continued his study of the arrowhead, pulling lightly on its foreshaft and watching as it slid out of the main shaft exactly as he had known it would. There were evenly spaced grooves in the bone, confirming his suspicion about its manufacture.

Behind Henderson and Kupenga, Zoë turned on the television, a handy distraction giving De Villiers more time to think. She made herself at home on the carpet and held the
TV
remote in both hands as she skipped from channel to channel.

‘Let’s go to my study,’ De Villiers suggested.

The study was behind the kitchen. There was a small desk, a chair and a couch.