Authors: Deon Meyer
But he was married.
If you could call it a marriage. Separate beds, separate
tables and separate homes. Damn it all, Anna couldn't have everything. She
couldn't throw him out of his own house and expect him to support two households,
expect him to be sober for six fucking months, and celibate on top of that.
At least he was sober. One hundred and fifty-six days now.
More than five months of struggling against the bottle, day after day, hour
after hour, till now.
God, Anna must never hear about last night. Not now. Less
than a month before his term of exile was served, the punishment for his
drinking. If Anna found out, he was fucked, all the struggle and suffering for
nothing.
He sighed and stood in front of the mirrored cabinet to brush
his teeth. Had a good look at himself. Greying at the temples, wrinkles at the
corner of his eyes, the Slavic features. He had never been much of an oil
painting.
He opened the cabinet and took out toothbrush and toothpaste.
Whatever had she seen in him, that Bella? There had been a
moment last night when he wondered if she was sleeping with him because she
felt sorry for him, but he had been too aroused, too bloody grateful for her
soft voice and big breasts and her mouth,
jissis,
that mouth, he had a thing about mouths, that's where the trouble had started.
No. It had begun with Lize Beekman, but like Anna would believe that?
Jissis.
Benny Griessel brushed his teeth hurriedly and urgently. Then
he jumped under the shower and opened the taps on full, so he could wash all
the accusing scents from his body.
It wasn't a
bergie.
Griessel's heart skipped a beat as he climbed over the spiked railings of the
church wall and saw the girl lying there. The running shoes, khaki shorts,
orange camisole and the shape of her arms and legs told him she was young. She
reminded him of his daughter.
He walked down the narrow tarmac path, past tall palms and
pine trees and a yellow notice board: STRICTLY AUTHORISED. CARS ONLY. AT
OWNER'S OWN RISK, to the spot just left of the pretty grey church where, on the
same tar, she lay stretched out.
He looked up at the perfect morning. Bright, with hardly any
wind, just a faint breeze bearing fresh sea scents up the mountain. It was not
a time to die.
Vusi stood beside her with Thick and Thin from Forensics, a
police photographer and three men in SAPS uniform. Behind Griessel's back on
the Long Street pavement there were more uniforms, at least four in the white
shirts and black epaulettes of the Metro Police, all very self-important.
Together with a group of bystanders they leaned their arms on the railings and
stared at the motionless figure.
'Morning, Benny,' said Vusi Ndabeni in his quiet manner. He
was of the same average height as Griessel, but seemed smaller. Lean and neat,
the seams of his trousers sharply pressed, snow- white shirt with tie, shoes
shined. His peppercorn hair was cut short and shaved in sharp angles, goatee
impeccably clipped. He wore surgical rubber gloves. Griessel had been introduced
to him for the first time last Thursday, along with the other five detectives
he had been asked to 'mentor' throughout the coming year. That was the word
that John Africa, Regional Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal
Intelligence, had used. But when Griessel was alone in Africa's office it was
'We're in the shit, Benny. We fucked up the Van der Vyver case, and now the
brass say it's because we've just been having too much of a good time in the
Cape and it's time to pull finger, but what can I do? I'm losing my best people
and the new ones are clueless, totally green. Benny, can I count on you?'
An hour later he was in the Commissioner's large conference
room, along with six of the best 'new' people looking singularly unimpressed,
all seated in a row on grey government-issue chairs. This time John Africa
toned down his message: 'Benny will be your mentor. He's been on the Force for
twenty-five years; he was part of the old Murder and Robbery when most of you
were still in primary school. What he's forgotten, you still have to learn. But
understand this: he's not here to do your work for you. He's your advisor, your
sounding board. And your mentor. According to the dictionary that is,' the
Commissioner glanced at his notes,'... a wise and trusted counsellor or
teacher. That's why I transferred him to the Provincial Task Force. Because
Benny is wise and you can trust him, because I trust him. Too much knowledge is
being lost, there are too many new people and we don't have to reinvent the
wheel every time. Learn from him. You have been hand picked - not many will get
this opportunity.' Griessel watched their faces. Four lean black men, one fat
black woman, and one broad- shouldered coloured detective, all in their early
thirties. There was not much ungrudging gratitude, with the exception of
Vusumuzi ('but everyone calls me Vusi') Ndabeni. The coloured detective,
Fransman Dekker, was openly antagonistic. But Griessel was already accustomed
to the undercurrents in the new SAPS. He stood beside John Africa and told
himself he ought to be grateful he still had a job after the dissolution of the
Serious and Violent Crimes Unit. Grateful that he and his former commanding
officer, Mat Joubert, hadn't been posted to a station like most of their
colleagues. The new structures that were not new, it was like it was thirty
years back, detectives at stations, because that was the way it was now done
overseas, and the SAPS must copy them. At least he still had work and Joubert
had put him up for promotion. If his luck held, if they could look past his
history of drinking, and affirmative action and all the politics and shit, he
would hear today whether he had made Captain.
Captain Benny Griessel. It sounded right to him. He needed
the raise too.
Badly.
'Morning, Vusi,' he said.
'Hey, Benny,' Jimmy, the tall, skinny white coat from
Forensics, greeted him. 'I hear they call you "The Oracle" now.'
'Like that aunty in
Lord of the Rings
,' said Arnold, the short, fat
one. Collectively they were known in Cape police circles as Thick
and Thin,
usually in the tired crack 'Forensics will stand by you through Thick and
Thin.'
' The Matrix,
you ape,' said Jimmy.
'Whatever,' said Arnold.
'Morning,' said Griessel. He turned to the uniforms under the
tree and took a deep breath, ready to tell them, 'This is a crime scene, get
your butts to the other side of the wall,' and then he remembered that this was
Vusi's case, he should shut up and mentor. He gave the uniforms a dirty look,
with zero effect, and hunkered down to look at the body.
The girl lay on her belly with her head turned away from the
, street. Her blonde hair was very short. Across her back were two short
horizontal cuts, matching left and right on her shoulder blades. But these were
not the cause of death. That was the huge gash across her throat, deep enough
to expose the oesophagus. Her face, chest and shoulders lay in the wide pool of
blood. The smell of death was already there, as bitter as copper.
'Jissis
,' said Griessel, all his fear and revulsion welling up in
him and he had to breathe, slow and easy, as Doc Barkhuizen had taught him. He
had to distance himself,
he must not internalise
this.
He shut his eyes for a second. Then he looked up at the
trees. He was searching for objectivity, but this was a dreadful way to die.
And his mind wanted to spool through the event as it had happened, the knife
flashing and slicing, sliding deep through her tissues.
He got up quickly, pretending to look around. Thick and Thin
were bickering over something, as usual. He tried to listen.
Lord, she looked so young. Eighteen, nineteen?
What kind of madness did it take to cut the throat of a child
like this? What kind of perversion?
He forced the images out of his mind, thought of the facts, the
implications. She was white. That spelled trouble. That meant media attention
and the whole cycle of crime-getting-out-of- control criticism starting all
over again. It meant huge pressure and long hours, too many people with a
finger in the pie and everyone trying to cover their ass and he didn't have the
heart for all that any more.
'Trouble,' he said quietly to Vusi.
'I know.'
'It would be better if the uniforms stayed behind the wall.'
Ndabeni nodded and went over to the uniformed policemen. He
asked them to go out another way, around the back of the church. They were
reluctant, wanting to be part of the action. But they went.
Vusi came to stand beside him, notebook and pen in hand. 'All
the gates are locked. There's a gate for cars over there near the church
office, and the main gate in front of the building here. She must have jumped
over the railings - it's the only way in here.' Vusi spoke too fast. He pointed
at a coloured man standing on the pavement on the other side of the wall. 'That
ou
there ... James Dylan Fredericks, he found her.
He's the day manager of Kauai Health Foods in Kloof Street. He says he comes in
on the Golden Arrow bus from Mitchell's Plain and then he walks from the
terminal. He went past here and something caught his eye. So he climbed over
the wall, but when he saw the blood he went back and phoned the Caledon Square
station because that's the number he has on speed dial for the shop.'
Griessel nodded. He suspected Ndabeni was nervous about his
presence, as though he were here to evaluate the black man. He would have to
put that right.
'I'm going to tell Fredericks he can go, we know where to
find him.'
'That's fine, Vusi. You don't have to ... I appreciate you
giving me the details, but I don't want you to . .. you know ...'
Ndabeni touched Griessel's arm as though to reassure him.
'It's OK, Benny. I want to learn ...'
Vusi was silent for a while. Then he added: 'I don't want to
blow this, Benny. I was in Khayelitsha for four years and I don't want to go
back. But this is my first... white,' he said that carefully as if it might be
a racist statement. 'This is another world ...'
'It is.' Griessel was no good at this sort of thing, never
knowing what the proper, politically correct words were.
Vusi came to his rescue. 'I tried to check if there was
anything in her shorts pockets. For ID. There isn't anything. We're just
waiting for the pathologist now.'
A bird twittered shrilly in the trees. Two pigeons landed
near them and began peck-pecking. Griessel looked around him. There was one
vehicle in the church grounds, a white Toyota Microbus standing on the south
side against a two-metre brick wall. 'Adventure' was spelled in big red letters
along the side of the vehicle.
Ndabeni followed his gaze. 'They probably park here for security,'
and he indicated the high wall and locked gates. 'I think they have an office
down in Long Street.'
'Could be.' Long Street was the hub of backpacker tourism in
the Cape - young people, students from Europe, Australia and America looking
for cheap lodgings and adventure.
Griessel squatted down beside the body again, but this time
so that her face was turned away from him. He did not want to look at the
dreadful wound, or her delicate features.
Please, don't let her be a foreign kid, he thought.
Things would really get out of hand then.
She ran over Kloofnek Road and stopped for a second,
indecisive. She wanted to rest, she wanted to catch her breath and try to
control her terror. She had to decide: right, away from the city, where the
road sign said 'Camps Bay' and whatever lay that side of the mountain, or left,
more or less back the way she had come. Her instinct was to go right, away,
further from her pursuers, from the terrible events of the night.
But that was what they would expect, and it would take her
deeper into the unknown, further away from Erin. She turned left without
further thought, her running shoes loud on the tarred downhill gradient. She
kept to the left of the double lane road for 400 metres and then swung right,
scrambled down a stony slope, over a bit of veld to the normality of Higgo
Road, a residential area high against the mountain, with large, expensive homes
in dense gardens behind high walls. Hope flared that here she would find
someone to help her, someone to offer shelter and protection.
All the gates were locked. Every house was a fort, the
streets deserted this early in the morning. The road wound steeply up the
mountain and her legs just wouldn't, couldn't work any more. She saw the open
gate of the house to her right and her whole being ached for rest. She glanced
over her shoulder and saw nobody. She ducked through the gateway. There was a
short steep driveway, a garage and car port. To the right there were dense
shrubs against the high wall, to the left was the house behind high metal
railings and a locked gate. She crept deep into the shrubbery, right up to the
plastered wall, to where she couldn't be seen from the street.