by Deon Meyer
‘Okay. Let’s say Menzi Dikela is busy somewhere in the house, and they knock on the door.’
‘What time are you thinking of? Thandi phoned her daddy eleven minutes before four, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So, we know it must have happened before that time.’ Cupido bent down and carefully pushed the arm of the deceased that was hanging down beside the chair. ‘We’ll hear what the Prof has to say, but this feels like full rigor mortis.’
‘And it was a cold day.’
‘More or less in the region of eight hours, hey?’
Griessel nodded, examining the blood beneath the table at close range. For decades they had been standing by and listening to pathologists and spatter experts at murder scenes. You learned a lot. Such as how long it took blood to dry, a rough indicator of the time of death – provided you touched it, and inspected it, within the first ten hours after the fatal event. The guidelines were the five stages of blood clotting: coagulation took place first; gelation followed, about ninety minutes after the blood had left the body; next, the clearly visible change in colour from rim desiccation, pool centre desiccation and final desiccation, after four hours, nine hours and nine and a half hours respectively.
Benny noted the pool beside Menzi Dikela’s head was still reddish-brown in the centre, but the rim was practically black, and relatively broad. ‘The blood also indicates about eight hours.’
‘Give or take an hour or two, for our non-expert opinions.’ Cupido checked his watch. ‘That means it was around one o’clock, two o’clock.’
‘More or less.’
‘During or just after lunch.’
‘Yip.’
‘Okay. They knock on the door . . .’
‘Yes. And Menzi Dikela knows them, lets them in. Now there are two possibilities. One is, they inject him with the drug, or they say, “Come, let’s have a drink,” and they slip the drug into the glass when he’s not looking. Those are the most likely scenarios.’
‘Where do you bet your money?’
‘I don’t know, Vaughn, it’s difficult. A needle is going to leave a mark on his skin, which a pathologist will find if he knows what to look for.’
‘Fair enough. But maybe they think these dumb cops from Mowbray will buy the suicide idea, so they’re not worried about the mark.’
‘Possible. But if they were State Security spooks, they went to a lot of trouble to make it look like suicide. They arrived with a plan. They would have thought about needle marks. Look at this place, Vaughn. It’s way too tidy. You said yourself it must have been around lunchtime or just after. There’s not a dirty plate, cup or glass. My bet is on “Come, let’s have a dop,’ and then they cleaned up thoroughly afterwards.’
‘Makes sense . . . What about a cleaner? Did he have a char?’
‘We should have asked.’ Griessel took his phone out again to call Kaleni. It saved him having to take off his booties and put them on again. ‘The professor and Forensics are on the way,’ when she answered. He asked her if Menzi Dikela employed a domestic worker. She said she’d call Thandi and find out.
Cupido was busy opening cupboards, searching optimistically for glasses or cups that showed signs of recent use. Griessel went through the drawers, inspecting the cutlery. Without much hope.
Kaleni called back. ‘Yes, he had a char, two mornings a week. Wednesdays and Saturdays. She’ll get the phone number for us.’
Benny shared the information with Cupido.
‘Okay,’ said Cupido. ‘The char hasn’t been here since Saturday. And everything’s still spick and span on Tuesday. Pretty amazing . . . So, here’s my next question: why suicide, Benna? Why not stage a break-in gone wrong. Jimmy a door or window, shoot the old guy, empty a few cupboards, steal a laptop and a cell phone. Happens all the time. Same result, the old guy is dead and SSA spooks are not under suspicion. But, no, they go to all this trouble to stage a suicide. Why? Doesn’t make sense.’
Griessel was thinking. ‘Maybe something to do with the note? A message? To the other fifteen?’
‘I’m not buying.’
‘The big question is still the motive.’
‘Then we’d better start looking for one, partner. Come on,’ said Cupido, and beckoned Griessel in the direction of the bedrooms. ‘Let the games begin.’
They each searched a bedroom, carefully, taking their time. All indications were that Menzi Dikela had been a very organised man. The wardrobes, linen chests and bedside cabinets were all painfully neat, the beds made up with perfect squared-off hospital corners.
In the built-in cupboard of the master bedroom, beneath a pile of pyjamas, they found a canvas bank bag with cash in fifty- and hundred-rand notes, totalling just over five thousand.
Cupido packed it in an evidence bag. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
Dikela had also been an apparently healthy man. There was no medication in the bathroom cabinet to indicate a chronic disease, just the usual collection of flu, headache and heartburn pills, and vitamin capsules, along with deodorant, toothpaste, shaving cream and razor blades. Everything was precisely arranged and stacked. Like the few items of clothing in the washing basket.
‘Looks like he was really tidy,’ said Benny.
‘Kwaai,’ said Vaughn. ‘Maybe his kitchen looked like that every day. Very anal retentive.’ He leaned against the bathroom door. ‘Benna, can I ask you a personal question?’
‘Go for it.’
‘Okay. You and Alexa, are you sort of equally . . . I mean, you’re quite organised, your office, your dockets, even your car, everything reasonably squared away. Is she also?’
Griessel laughed. ‘No. I tease her that she’s like an amoeba. If she’s busy somewhere, it grows around her. In the bathroom, at her basin . . . There’s a circle of make-up and creams and stuff, and it keeps getting bigger.’
‘How do you deal with that?’
‘I don’t. I just look the other way. What can I do? It’s her house. It’s the way she is.’
‘And that doesn’t worry you?’
‘Here’s my philosophy, Vaughn. I work strange, long hours. I have to see a shrink because I’m fucked up. I snore. I leave the toilet seat up. And all that doesn’t worry her. It’s give and take. Why do you ask?’
‘Donovan,’ said Cupido. ‘Desiree’s laaitie. Jissis, he’s a little slob. PlayStation in the lounge, all the games lying around. There’s only one bathroom, and his clothes are always on the floor. I don’t even want to talk about his room. It’s a war zone. And Desiree doesn’t worry. She’s the one who picks up after him and cleans. I think it’s guilt about the divorce or something. And if we get hitched, I’ll have to deal with it, and I’m telling you, it will drive me mad. And then he still goes on at me about the Hawks being captured. I don’t know how to handle it. I’m gritting my teeth. It’s a time bomb, and sometime or other I’m going to lose it.’
‘Talk to her. My shrink says conflict is growth waiting to happen. And talking is the only thing that helps.’
‘Right. Shrinks . . . Like that’s going to help me. Shall we tackle the study? Last-chance motel . . .’
They went into the study. There was a desk with a PC, a laser printer and a big brown cigar box on top. The computer was on, a screensaver weaving hypnotic patterns. An iPhone 7 was plugged into a USB port.
‘You know you’re going to shoot yourself,’ said Griessel, ‘but you charge your phone anyway?’
‘And leave the PC on . . .’ Cupido moved the mouse. The screen activated. Only the Windows home screen, without visible files or active applications. He pressed the iPhone button with a gloved finger. It asked for the password. ‘Why do they always have passwords?’ He sighed. ‘We’ll have to send for Lithpel.’
The left-hand drawer of the desk yielded bank statements and municipal accounts, a divorce decree, a few yellow ballpoint pens similar to the one on the kitchen table. And a black hardcover notebook bearing the logo of Spar Supermarket and the words A4 Counter Bo
ok. Griessel took it out and opened it. In what was possibly Menzi Dikela’s handwriting, Maintenance, loans and donations was written on the first page. Below that were long columns of amounts and dates and an extra column that indicated what sort of payment it was.
‘It looks like the handwriting on the letter,’ said Griessel.
‘Ja . . . maybe,’ said Cupido. ‘But I’ve always been too stupid to spot forged handwriting. It’s a dark art.’
They put the book into an evidence bag.
In the right-hand desk drawer they found an ID book, a passport and a notepad similar to the paper the suicide note was written on. Cupido took it out, held it up to the light to see whether the writing would show through. ‘Too faint,’ he said, and put it into a clear plastic bag as well.
They looked at the bookshelf against the other wall, filled with Struggle biographies, technology manuals for databases and systems, poetry collections and novels by African writers. Some Reader’s Digest condensed books.
The curtains of the window to the right of the desk were drawn. Below the window was a two-door cabinet. Griessel opened it. They found paper for the printer, rolled-up computer cables, files of typical administration documents – including car registration, proofs of payment for car licences, the title deed of the house, and old home mortgage bond and short- and long-term insurance contracts. Right at the bottom in the corner on the left of the cupboard was an internet modem, connected to network cables.
Griessel’s cell phone rang. It was Kaleni. He answered.
‘Professor Pagel has arrived,’ she said. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘Not much, Colonel,’ he said. He checked his watch, saw it was after eleven. He knew Lithpel Davids was going to be very unhappy with what he was going to say next: ‘We’ll need technology support too. There’s a computer and a cell phone.’
‘I’ll call Sergeant Davids.’
‘The prof is here,’ Griessel told Cupido.
‘Cool.’ Cupido walked towards the door, then looked at the cigar box. ‘Was the old umadala a smoker? Did you see any ashtrays?’
Before Griessel could reply, Cupido lifted the lid of the box and looked inside. A moment of stunned silence, then he said: ‘Hit me with a snot snoek.’
Inside the box, just as orderly as everything else in the house, there was a small cutting block, with two pieces of biltong on top. Sprinkled with coriander seeds.
And an Okapi knife.
The knife was folded shut: the handle of dark cherrywood looked new, the folding lock and handle inlay of stainless steel still bright.
‘What are the odds, Benna? What are the odds?’ Cupido asked.
‘It’s coincidence,’ said Griessel. ‘Thousands of people own Okapis and eat biltong.’
‘Maybe, baby,’ Cupido said, ‘and maybe the universe schemed that the Big V and his intrepid partner, Benna the Bass, deserve a big fat break.’
He pulled the right-hand drawer open again, took out the passport they had seen there. He opened it. It was in Menzi Dikela’s name. ‘Okay, so the universe is still pissing on our parade. But a man can dream . . .’
He shut the cigar box again. Then they walked to the front door to open up for Professor Phil Pagel.
Chapter 56
To Griessel’s relief the pathologist brightened the heavy atmosphere in the house with his genial personality. ‘I understand this is highly secret and confidential, Nikita,’ he said, in his mellifluous voice, while he deftly extracted blood from the corpse.
‘That’s right, Prof,’ said Griessel.
‘And a Leporello from our notorious State Security Agency is our chief suspect here?’
‘A Leporello, Prof?’
‘Opera, Nikita. Mozart. A character from Don Giovanni. Leporello was the poor fellow who had to do his wicked master’s dirty work, urged on by promises of much money, threatened with the sword. It seems to me that there are many Leporellos at the helm of affairs in this country nowadays. Wouldn’t you say so, gentlemen?’
‘But not at the Hawks’ Violent Crimes Unit, Prof,’ said Cupido. ‘Let’s just get that straight.’
‘Ah, the lady doth protest too much, methinks . . .’ said Pagel with a smile.
‘Prof, does it seem odd to you that he’s sitting pretty at the table?’ Griessel asked. ‘Wouldn’t he have toppled over?’
‘I’ve seen them in every position under the sun, Nikita. I wouldn’t say that was terribly unusual.’
‘Oh.’ A bit deflated.
‘You suspect an anaesthetic was administered?’ Pagel asked.
‘How else do you get a man’s pistol against his head without him fighting back, Prof?’
‘Valid point. Indeed there are no provisional signs of defensive wounds.’
‘We scheme it must have been in a drink,’ said Cupido, ‘’cause why, they wouldn’t want you to find a post-mortem puncture.’
‘It’s not that simple, Vaughn. If the injection was rectal or sublingual . . . It’s practically impossible to spot a wound there.’
‘What’s that last one again in Cape Flats lingo, Prof?’
‘Forgive me, Vaughn. Sublingual is in the mouth. Under the tongue, even in the tongue, or in the palate.’
‘But, Prof, how would you inject a guy in his . . .’ Griessel didn’t want to use crude language in front of Pagel: he had too much respect for the man ‘ . . . in his whatsis . . . or in the mouth without a struggle anyway?’
‘Touché, Nikita. I will test the blood and urine for as broad a range of anaesthetics as I can. We will see . . .’
‘What could they have put in his drink, Prof? Let’s say you had this scheme, and you wanted to nail a guy, but you wanted to make it look like suicide. And you didn’t want to leave any evidence behind.’
Pagel put away the needle and blood-sample tube in his case and began examining the body of Menzi Dikela. ‘Naturally it would depend on the drugs I had available, Vaughn. But we can assume that our SSA Leporello has access to anything?’
‘Yes, Prof.’
‘Very well. Interesting question . . . Look, the easiest is an overdose of insulin, injected. Rapid coma, eventual death, and difficult to trace in post-mortem analysis if you don’t specifically look for signs. You bring three, four men, you grab him quickly before he can resist and you inject him, let us say, rectally. Hypoglycaemic coma, then you can do with him what you want. If you just leave him, in six hours he’ll be as dead as a dodo.’
‘Shit,’ said Cupido. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘Prof, if you don’t know it’s an insulin overdose, let’s say a guy lands up on your table, what will you think was the cause of death?’ Griessel asked.
‘Usually pulmonary or cerebral oedema, depending on the specific pathology that you see. Simply stated that’s water on the lungs or on the brain, which can be the result of natural causes. Especially with the aged, like the deceased here. If I didn’t suspect foul play, I wouldn’t test for insulin overdose.’
‘But that’s my point, Prof,’ said Griessel. ‘These guys wanted it to look like suicide. Not house-breaking, not natural causes, but suicide.
‘Strange modus operandi,’ said Pagel, ‘but then we must remember it’s the SSA we’re dealing with here.’
‘Exactly,’ said Cupido. ‘So, if suicide is on the menu, Prof, what would you have given him in his brandy and Coke?’
Pagel peered at them from behind the body. ‘Midazolam maybe? Rohypnol? GHB? There’s a whole range of possibilities. But you would have to disguise the taste of all these substances. Something like very sweet liqueur, Nachtmusik, Amarula, something like that. Mix a strong dose in a half-jack . . . In any case I’ll get it tested for everything, blood and urine. If they used something, we will find it.’
Griessel’s phone rang again. It was Mbali Kaleni. ‘Forensics have arrived. Would you please come and brief them?’
Forensics and Gerber, the blood-spatter man, arrived. And the videographer. And the Violent Crimes r
einforcements, Vusumuzi Ndabeni, Mooiwillem Liebenberg and Frank Fillander. They also changed the atmosphere in the suicide house in Nuttall Street considerably. It was beginning to feel like a normal crime scene to Griessel and at last he shook off the feeling of doom.
He put up with a barrage of Thick and Thin’s latest weak wedding-speech jokes. (‘Benny, heard the one about the guy who was so happy after he got married because he had sex almost every day with his wife? Almost on a Monday, almost on a Tuesday, almost on a Wednesday . . .’ They went round the house laughing uproariously.) He showed them what he would like investigated. He asked Gerber to examine Dikela’s hand in particular, and then he went out to give Ndabeni, Liebenberg and Fillander a full briefing. He asked them to do the necessary footwork in the street. Had anyone seen or heard anything?
An ambulance, red lights revolving, stopped while he was still outside. The narrow street was suddenly packed with vehicles. Now, he knew, the inquisitive would start to gather. He went over to Mbali Kaleni. ‘We’re going to need traffic and crowd control, Colonel.’
‘I’ll get on it,’ she said.
‘I’ll bring you some crime-scene tape. It should keep them away.’
‘Thank you, Benny. Any news from inside?’
He’d been afraid she would ask, because all their theories had been shot down. ‘Nothing so far, Colonel. Prof Pagel will have to test the blood and the urine. That’s our only hope.’
She nodded anxiously. ‘Find something, Benny. Please.’
‘I’m going to do my very best.’
Inside more bad news awaited them.
Griessel was back in the kitchen. He watched Uli Gerber examine Menzi Dikela’s hand through a magnifying-glass. Sometimes his colleagues referred to the blood-spatter expert as ‘Owl’, though never to his face, partly because the thick lenses in a pair of black-rimmed glasses made his eyes look much bigger, but also because it was so close to his Christian name. He was a serious, wiry man, a canoe-marathon enthusiast.
He straightened up, unfolding his skinny body, and said, almost apologetically: ‘Captain, the pattern is consistent with a suicide shot.’