Authors: Deon Meyer
Griessel went back to the liquor cabinet and put the bottle
away. When he sat down he said, 'I won't be able to let you have more than
that.'
She nodded.
He knew how she felt at this precise moment. He knew the
alcohol would flow through her body like a gentle, soothing tide, healing the
wounds and quietening the voices, leaving behind a smooth, silver beach of
peace. He gave her time; it took four gulps, sometimes more; you had to give
your body time to let the heavenly warmth through. He realised he was staring
intently at the glass at her lips, smelling the alcohol, feeling his own body
straining for it. He leaned back in the chair, took a deep breath, looked at
the magazines on the coffee table,
Visi
and
House & Garden,
two years out of date, but
unread and just for show, until she said: 'Thank you,' and he heard the voice
had lost its edge.
She put the glass down slowly, the tremor almost gone, and
offered him the pack of cigarettes.
'No, thank you,' he said.
'An alcoholic who doesn't smoke?'
'I'm trying to cut down.'
She lit one for herself. The ashtray beside her was full.
'My AA sponsor is a doctor,' he said by way of explanation.
'Get another sponsor,' she said in an attempt at humour, but
it didn't work; her mouth pulled in the wrong direction and then Alexandra
Barnard began to weep silently, just a painful grimace, tears rolling from her
eyes. She put the cigarette down and held the palms of her hands over her face.
Griessel reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief. He held it out
but she didn't see it. Her shoulders shook, her head drooped and the long hair
fell over her face again like a curtain. Griessel saw it was blonde and silver,
a rare combination; most women dyed their hair. He wondered why she no longer
cared. She had been a star, a major one. What had dragged her down to this?
He waited until her sobs subsided. 'My sponsor's name is
Doctor Barkhuizen. He's seventy years old and he's an alcoholic with long hair
in a plait. He said his children asked him why he smoked and he had all sorts
of reasons - to help him with stress, because he enjoyed it. . .' He kept his
tone of voice easy, he knew the story was unimportant, but that didn't matter,
he just wanted to get a dialogue going. 'Then his daughter said in that case he
wouldn't mind if she started smoking too. Then he knew he was lying to himself
about the cigarettes. He stopped. So he's trying to get me to quit. I'm down to
about three or four a day ...'
Eventually she looked up and saw the handkerchief. She took
it from him. 'Was it hard?' Her voice was deeper than ever. She wiped her face
and blew her nose.
'The drink was. Is. Still. The smoking too.'
'I couldn't.' She crumpled the hanky and picked up the glass
again and drank from it. He didn't answer. He had to give her room to talk. He
knew she would.
'Your hanky's ...'
'Keep it.'
'I'll have it washed.' She put the glass down. 'It wasn't
me.'
Griessel nodded.
'We didn't talk any more,' she said and looked elsewhere in
the room.
Griessel sat still.
'He comes home from the office at half past six. Then he
comes to the library and stands and looks at me. To see how drunk I am. If I
don't say anything then he goes and eats alone in the kitchen or he goes to his
study. Or out again. Every night he puts me in bed. Every night. I have
wondered, in the afternoon when I can still think, if that is why I drink. So
that he would still do that one thing for me. Isn't that tragic? Doesn't it
break your heart?' The tears began to fall again. They interfered with the
rhythm of her speech, but she kept on. 'Sometimes, when he comes in, I try to
provoke him. I was good at it ... Last night
I ...
I asked him whose turn it was
now. You must understand ...We had ... it's a long story ...' and for the first
time her sobs were audible, as if the full weight of her history had come to
bear on her. Pity welled up in Benny Griessel, because he saw again the ghost
of the singer she had once been.
Eventually she stubbed out the cigarette. 'He just said
"Fuck you" - that's all he ever said - and he left again. I screamed
after him, "Yes, leave me here", I don't think he heard me, I was
drunk ...'
She blew her nose into the hanky again. 'That's all. That's
all I know. He didn't put me to bed, he left me there and this morning, he was
lying there ...' She picked up the glass.
'The last words he said to me. "Fuck you".' More
tears.
She drained the last bit of alcohol from the glass and looked
at Griessel with intense focus. 'Do you think it could have been me that shot
him?'
The plump girl behind the reception desk of the Cat &
Moose Youth Hostel and Backpackers Inn looked at the photograph the constable
was holding out and asked:
'Why does she look so funny?'
'Because she's dead.'
'Oh, my God.' She put two and two together and asked: 'Was
she the one this morning at the church here?'
'Yes. Do you recognise her?'
'Oh, my God, yes. They came in yesterday, two American girls.
Wait ...' The plump girl opened the register and ran her finger down the
column. 'Here they are, Rachel Anderson and Erin Russel, they are from ...' she
bent down to read the small writing of the addresses. 'West Lafayette, Indiana.
Oh, my God. Who killed her?'
'We don't know yet. Is this one Anderson?'
'I don't know.'
'And the other one, do you know where she is?'
'No, I work days,
I ...
Let's see, they are in room
sixteen.' She shut the register and went ahead down the passage saying: 'Oh, my
God.'
Through careful questioning he got information about the
firearm from her. It was her husband's.
Adam Barnard kept it locked up in a safe in the room. He kept
the key with him, probably afraid she would do something foolish with it in her
drunken state. She said she had no idea how it landed up on the floor beside
her. Maybe she did shoot him, she said; she had reason enough, enough anger and
self-pity and hate. There were times she had wished him dead, but her true
fantasy was to kill herself and then watch him. Watch him coming home at half
past six, climbing the stairs and finding her dead. Watch him kneeling beside
her body and begging forgiveness, weeping and broken. But, she said with irony,
the two parts would never gel. You can't watch anything when you're dead.
Then she just sat there. Eventually he whispered '
Soetwater
' but she didn't respond; she hid behind
her hair for an eternity until she slowly held out the glass to him and he knew
he would have to pour another if he wanted to hear the whole story.
Benny Griessel listened to Alexandra Barnard's story.
'Alexa. Nobody calls me Alexandra or Xandra.'
Now, just as he was about to open the front door of Number 47
Brownlow Street to go and find Dekker, he felt a peculiar emotion pressing on
his heart, a weightlessness in his head, a sort of separation from reality, as
though he stood back a few millimetres from everything, a second or two out of
step with the world.
So it took him a while to register that outside was chaos.
The street, so peaceful when he arrived, was a mass of journalists and the
inquisitive: a flock of photographers, a herd of reporters, a camera team from
e.tv and the growing crowd of spectators their presence had attracted. The
noise washed over Griessel, loud waves of sound that he could feel in his body,
along with the knowledge that he had listened so acutely to Alexa's story that
he had been oblivious to all this.
On the veranda a tense Dekker was exchanging fiery words with
a bald man, both their voices raised in argument.
'Not before I've seen her,' said the man with a superior attitude
and aggressive body language. His head was completely shaven, he was tall and
sinewy, with large fleshy ears and one round silver earring. Black shirt, black
trousers and the black basketball shoes that teenagers wear, although he seemed
to be in his late forties. A middle-aged Zorro. His prominent Adam's apple
bobbed up and down in time with his words. Dekker spotted Griessel. 'He insists
on seeing her,' said Dekker, still tense. The man ignored Griessel. He snapped
open a black leather holder at his belt and brought out a small black cell
phone. 'I'm calling my lawyer; this behaviour is totally unacceptable.' He
began to press keys on the phone. 'She's not a well woman.'
'He's the partner of the deceased. Willie Mouton,' said
Dekker.
'Mr Mouton,' said Griessel reasonably. His voice sounded
unfamiliar to his own ear.
'Fuck off,' said Mouton, 'I'm on the phone.' His voice had
the penetration and tone of an industrial meat saw.
'Mr Mouton, I won't allow you to talk to a police officer
like that,' Dekker said on a rising note. 'And if you wish to make personal
calls, you will do it in the street...'
'It's a free country as far as I know.'
'...and not on my crime scene.'
'Your crime scene? Who the fuck do you think you are?' Then,
into the phone:
'Sorry. Can I speak to Regardt, please ...?'
Dekker advanced in a threatening way, his temper beginning to
get the better of him.
'Regardt, this is Willie, I'm standing on Adam's veranda with
the Gestapo ...'
Griessel put a hand on Dekker's arm. 'There are cameras,
Fransman.'
'I won't hit him,' said Dekker and jerked Mouton roughly off
the veranda and pushed him towards the garden gate. Cameras flashed and
clicked.
'They're assaulting me, Regardt,' said Mouton with somewhat
less confidence.
'Morning, Nikita,' said Prof Phil Pagel, the state
pathologist, from beyond the gate. He was amused.
'Morning, Prof,' said Benny, watching Dekker push Mouton
through the gate onto the pavement. He told the uniform: 'Don't let him through
here.'
'I'll sue your arse,' said Mouton. 'Regardt, I want you to
sue their fucking arses. I want you here with a fucking interdict. Alexa's in
there and God knows what these storm troopers are doing with her ...' His voice
was deliberately loud enough for Dekker and the media to hear.
Pagel squeezed past Zorro and went up the stairs with his
black case in hand. 'What a piece of work is man,' he said.
'Prof?' queried Griessel, and suddenly the sense of
disconnectedness was gone; he was back in the present, head clear.
Pagel shook his hand. 'Hamlet. To Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. Just before he calls man "a quintessence of dust". I
was at the show last night. I highly recommend it. Busy morning, Nikita?'
Pagel had been calling him 'Nikita' for the past twelve
years. The first time he had met Griessel he had said: 'I am sure that's how
the young Khrushchev looked'. Griessel had to think hard who Khrushchev was.
Pagel was flamboyantly dressed, as usual - tall, fit and exceptionally handsome
for his fifty-something years. There were some who said he looked like the star
of one of the television soapies that Griessel had never watched.
'Things are hectic, as usual, Prof.'
'I understand you are mentoring the new generation of law
enforcers, Nikita.'
'As you can see, Prof, I'm brilliant at my job,' Griessel
grinned. Dekker came back up the veranda steps. 'Have you met Fransman yet?'
'Indeed, I have had the privilege. Inspector Dekker, I admire
your forcefulness.'
Dekker had lost none of his tension. 'Morning, Prof.'
'Rumour has it that Adam Barnard is the victim?'
They both nodded, in synch.
'Take arms against a sea of troubles,' said Pagel.
The detectives looked at him without comprehension.
'I am abusing
Hamlet
to say
that this means big trouble, gentlemen.'
'Aah,' said the detectives. They understood.
In the library they stood talking while Pagel knelt beside
the body and opened his doctor's bag.
'It wasn't her, Fransman,' said Griessel.
'Are you one hundred per cent certain?'
Griessel shrugged. Nobody could be a hundred per cent
certain. 'It's not just what she says, Fransman. It's how it fits in with the
scene ...'
'She could have hired someone.'
Griessel had to concede that that argument had merit. Women
hiring others to get rid of their husbands was the latest national sport. But
he shook his head. 'I doubt it. You don't hire people to make it look like you
did it.'
'Anything is possible in this country,' said Dekker.
'Amen,' said Pagel.
'Prof, the "sea of troubles"... Did you know
Barnard?' Griessel asked.