The Woman in the Blue Cloak

by Deon Meyer

  Also by Deon Meyer

  Dead Before Dying

  Dead at Daybreak

  Heart of the Hunter

  Devil’s Peak

  Blood Safari

  Thirteen Hours

  Trackers

  7 Days

  Cobra

  Icarus

  Fever

  The Woman in the Blue Cloak

  Deon Meyer

  Translated from Afrikaans By K.L. Seegers

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Afrikaans in 2017 as Die vrou in die blou mantel by Human & Rousseau

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Deon Meyer 2018

  English translation copyright © K. L. Seegers 2018

  The right of Deon Meyer to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 529 30925 6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  1

  12 October

  He was hungry and thirsty, frightened, and weary to the very marrow. Adrenalin alone kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Through the dark of night he pressed on, until the horizon changed colour and the world took shape and reignited hope. Shortly before eight, just before the sun breached the horizon towards Rotterdam, the soft golden morning glow opened up the Schiedam market ahead of him, the crowds, the jostling hubbub, and his heart fluttered faintly, hopefully. Perhaps he could escape here. Just disappear.

  He didn’t look back. He knew they were at his heels. He kept on walking in the same direction, allowing the clamour to swallow him up. Hawkers trumpeted out their wares, folk chatted, laughed, argued, shouted, and a baby cried inconsolably. Hens cackled in indignation, horses neighed, and from somewhere came the deep lowing of a cow. A gallimaufry of competing scents, the smell of fish and shellfish, crabs and prawns and crayfish, singed duck feathers and animal manure, wet earth and pork on the spit and sausage being smoked and – making his knees buckle momentarily, so strong was his desire – a rich yeasty fragrance as a boy with a big basket of fresh round loaves squeezed past him.

  He spotted the dark blue coat hanging from the back of the wagon, instinctively knowing that no one was paying it any heed. With one swift motion he snatched it up, a practised thief. Skill born of experience. He doubled the coat over and held it close to his chest. At the back of a cheese stall he dropped to his knees behind the wooden crates, plucked off his hat and left it on the ground behind him, pulled off the smelly, worn brown coat, and left it there too.

  The sun broke over the eastern horizon. He put on the stolen coat, stood up, his knees unsteady at first, making him stumble. He set off, hunched over, only straightening up a while later.

  He dodged in a new direction, towards Delft.

  Still he resisted looking back, he was too afraid they would see him, the four of them. The four who were chasing him, and hunting him.

  2

  Ironically, whoever had draped her body over the stone wall would have had a view of Murderer’s Peak – one of the rugged heights of the Hottentots Holland Mountains that tower over Somerset West.

  She was stretched out on the lookout point right at the top of Sir Lowry’s Pass, her head to the north, feet pointing south. She was entirely naked, her body waxen pale. The light of the full moon gave her white skin an unnatural sheen, as if she were some saintly creature.

  Her eyes were shut. Her right hand rested on her belly, as if at ease. Her legs were crossed at the ankles. The flickering city lights far below, Gordon’s Bay, the Strand and Somerset West and even Khayelitsha made for an enchanting backdrop. At a first, quick look she seemed to be resting, or even posing for a photo or a painting. But if you were to look closely, here in the early morning hours, the scene quickly becomes disturbing: the woman naked in the cold May night, her left arm dangling down the wall, oddly angled, knuckles just grazing the strip of green grass. Peculiar stains in her light short-cropped hair, on her head and between her legs. The constant hum of traffic on the busy N2, the yellow glow of headlights coming and going, reflected off the cliff nearby. She couldn’t possibly choose to lie, resting like that, here. Something must be badly wrong.

  Only fifteen kilometres to the east the leopard trotted down the path, the light of the full moon superfluous to her. She was heading north, back to her familiar hunting ground, the high cliffs and ravines of the rugged mountains, her territory, her place of safety.

  She had been here two days already, too close to mankind and vehicles, the sounds and smells that made her nervous and denied her sleep, searching for water and prey after the long, scorching summer drought.

  This was the route she had come, two tracks twisting down the slope; she wanted to retrace it, then cross the tar road, past the big dam, where she could already scent the water. And then, into the mountains.

  A hum made her halt, faint, but getting louder: she recognised it, the sound of vehicles. She saw the glow of the lights, saw and heard two of them right below her, just there in front of her, come to a stop. Voices. The creak of a gate.

  She turned back and melted into the shadows of the fynbos.

  She could not go home tonight.

  Two hours before sunrise, at 5.35, a minibus taxi en route from Mthatha to Cape Town turned into the lookout point. The driver needed to relieve himself. He parked and hastily got out. He didn’t notice the body on the wall.

  His passengers were a group of thirteen women – seamstresses and dishwashers, domestic workers and cleaners – all of them Xhosa. From the second row of seats, one woman spotted the unnatural shape on the wall. She called out, a cry to heaven. The others woke from slumber, followed her pointing finger. They opened the windows and shouted to the driver. He turned and saw it. In his alarm, he dribbled on his shoe, and cursed. He hurriedly zipped up his fly, leaped back into the minibus and closed the door. He switched on the ignition.

  No, said one of the women, call the police.

  The driver was reluctant. He knew it would cause hours of delay. His employer would not be happy. And this apparently lifeless white woman had nothing to do with him.

  He shook his head, and put the taxi in gear.

  The chorus from the back was loud, indignant and unanimous: We’re not leaving until you phone the police.

  He sighed, turned off the engine, picked up his cellphone and called the police emergency number. It rang and rang. While it rang, he got out again and cautiously approached the body. He
stared until he had convinced himself that she really was dead. The policewoman who answered the phone asked him to slow down, speak slowly, in English. He reported what he saw, and answered long, detailed questions about the location.

  Eventually he could ring off. He hurried back to his minibus, intending to drive away. But the thirteen Xhosa women scolded him again: ‘We can’t leave her like this, all on her own!’

  The lookout point in Sir Lowry’s Pass was almost equidistant from Grabouw and Gordon’s Bay, so initially there was some confusion about jurisdiction.

  The first police vehicle found a remarkable scene, unique to this southern tip of Africa: thirteen women in the last stretch of dark before daybreak, standing in a semicircle around the body and quietly singing hymns, while the taxi driver stood to one side looking on.

  More patrol vehicles carrying inquisitive sergeants and constables from the SAPS offices in Grabouw and Gordon’s Bay arrived, and one more from Somerset West. By dawn there was a general trampling of the crime scene and a traffic jam on the N2 – with drivers behaving in their usual sheep-like way on seeing a mass of police cars beside the road.

  As a consequence, the Somerset West detectives only got there after eight, and the pathologist, videographers and forensic team only an hour later.

  Just before ten in the morning the pathologist announced that the cause of death was most likely blunt trauma to the back of the skull. But she had been killed somewhere else. And it seemed as though the body had been washed with an excessive amount of bleach. Normal household bleach. He could smell it clearly, and the white patches on the head and pubic hair confirmed it.

  There was no sign of her clothes or any possessions.

  The ambulance transported her, unidentified and anonymous, to the State Mortuary in Salt River.

  It was Tuesday, 16 May.

  3

  On Wednesday morning, 17 May, just after the morning parade of the Unit for Serious and Violent Crimes of the Hawks – officially known as the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations – Captain Benny Griessel walked down the long corridor of the second floor. He was headed for the office of his colleague, Vaughn Cupido.

  He had news to share. And a favour to beg. But it was going to be a mission. He knew Vaughn. They had been working together for nearly a decade, every day.

  He knocked on the doorframe of the open door, and walked in. Cupido watched him enter, and said, ‘One of these days you’re going to fall right through your own arse.’ Griessel was eight kilograms lighter since he had stopped drinking and taken up cycling seriously.

  Griessel didn’t react, just pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘Everybody’s getting thinner, it’s just me getting fat,’ said Cupido. It wasn’t entirely true. Only Griessel and Major Mbali Kaleni, head of the unit, had lost weight. But Cupido felt guilty, because Desiree Coetzee, the new woman in his life, cooked delicious food. And Vaughn often ate at hers, partly to protect his interests, partly because he really loved her cooking.

  Griessel dropped the bombshell: ‘I’m going to ask Alexa to marry me.’

  ‘Jissis.’

  It was the response Griessel had expected. He ignored it. ‘I have to find a ring, Vaughn. I need advice . . .’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said Cupido. ‘You’ve already burned your fingers with a first marriage.’

  Griessel nodded.

  ‘And you’re an alcoholic.’

  ‘A hundred and forty-seven days clean.’

  ‘And Alexa is also an alky.’

  ‘Seven hundred and sixty-three days clean.’

  ‘She’s a rich woman, and you are a police captain who is, financially speaking, in jou moer, with all the fees and whatnot for your boy at film school.’

  Griessel nodded again.

  ‘She’s this famous singing star, and you’re a nobody, who plays bass guitar in a geriatric covers band at the weekend.’

  ‘Not geriatric. Middle-aged . . .’

  ‘And in spite of all this, you’re going to ask her hand in marriage, and you’re going to tell me it’s because you love each other.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve thought this thing over properly?’

  ‘I have.’

  Cupido looked at him. A shiver rippled through his body, a tiny shake of the head. He stood up. ‘Cool. Let’s go. Where do we buy this ring? Sterns? American Swiss?’

  ‘Muhammed Faizal.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You want to start this marriage proposal the healthy way, by buying stolen goods.’ And then: ‘Love Lips? Is he still around?’ as they left.

  ‘Pawnshop in Goodwood.’

  ‘Didn’t he used to be in Maitland?’

  Cupido was silent during the drive, following Voortrekker Road through Bellville, then Parow, where Griessel had grown up. Benny looked at the endless string of second-hand car dealerships vying for business like invasive weeds, and he thought, nothing has changed in twenty years. And yet, Parow looked better than a decade ago. It was cleaner, neater, more economically active and alive.

  Strange how you imagine a place will go backwards when you aren’t there to keep an eye on things.

  ‘What’s it like, Benna?’ Cupido asked out of the blue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Married life.’

  With that philosophical tone showing he was being serious now, Griessel mustn’t make fun of him. ‘It’s not as if I’m an expert witness, Vaughn. I’ve been married but once, and I was only sober for the first seven years of that . . .’

  ‘But how was that? The sober years?’

  Griessel thought about it, and said, ‘It was good. It was . . . Hell, Vaughn, I was married at twenty-four, at that age everything is great, and you see no evil.’

  ‘Scares the shit out of me,’ said Cupido. ‘Every time Desiree says something that could be construed as a reference to a long-term relationship, or marriage, my guts pull into a knot. Jissis, Benna, I’ve been a bachelor so long now, what will I do? And that laaitie of hers . . . How can you be a dad for another man’s kid? Because he’s looking for it, I can see, he’s looking for a dad, or at least a father figure.’

  A thoughtful silence. Until Cupido said, ‘I know it’s none of my business, but why now? If it ain’t broken, why would you try to fix your relationship with marriage?’

  ‘Because it will make Alexa happy.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘If she’s happy, I’m happy.’

  ‘So that’s love?’

  Griessel shrugged.

  Muhammed ‘Love Lips’ Faizal’s new pawnshop was on the corner of Alice and Voortrekker in Goodwood. ‘Cashcade’ was written in big black lettering on a bright yellow background.

  They parked opposite, and got out.

  ‘Too clever for his own good,’ said Cupido as they jogged across Voortrekker. ‘Your pawnshop regular won’t have a clue that it’s a pun.’

  Second-hand chairs were displayed on the pavement, a cluster of bicycles stood just inside the door. The shop itself was dimly lit, because items of furniture were stacked on top of each other up to the ceiling, every available space crammed with furnishings, household goods, appliances, equipment.

  Faizal and an assistant were deep in the shop trying to get a table out from the bottom of a stack. He recognised Griessel. ‘Hoezit, Benny,’ he said, his fat lips forming a smile. ‘I’ll be with you now,’ and he motioned towards the counter at the western wall.

  ‘Okay,’ said Griessel. He and Cupido went towards the counter.

  Vaughn paused at an arrangement of old 8mm film projectors and cameras. ‘Unbelievable how things change,’ he said. ‘My dada used to have one of these. Your average cellphone takes better video now. From state of the art to antique in half a lifetime . . .’

  They both looked up as the front entrance darkened. A young man stood there holding a big, flat square object. He stopped in his tracks, looking in surprise at the pair of detectives; his eyes searched out Faizal, then loo
ked back at the detectives. There was a nervousness about him, followed by recognition: these men were cops.

  Since their days as constables on patrol Griessel and Cupido knew this jittery reaction well – the body language of in flagrante delicto. The moment stretched into eternity while no one moved, hunter and prey facing each other, sizing each other up, before the hunt began.

  Cupido reacted first. ‘Hey!’ he shouted and started towards the man.

  The man dropped the big, flat square object and it fell at an angle against the door. He spun round and ran out.

  ‘Hey!’ Cupido yelled louder and set off after him. Cupido in his charcoal-grey suit (‘with just a hint of white pinstripe, retro-classic, pappy. Helluva bargain, I’ve got this buddy who works at Rex Truform . . .’), Cupido in his post-rebellion phase; his clothes a few months back had been an extremely vivid and informal protest against Major Mbali Kaleni’s dress code, but now he was back to his dandy old self.

  Griessel ran to the door, saw the young man sprinting against the traffic down Voortrekker Street towards the city. Vaughn Cupido was making a brave effort, considering his few extra kilograms and his fancy funeral suit and sharp-pointed shoes, but the suspect was young and fleet of foot. Benny knew he was even less of a sprinter than his colleague. He watched as Cupido had to leap onto the traffic island to avoid being hit by a car.

  Griessel didn’t think a moment longer, he grabbed a Silverback mountain bike from the bunch at the door, leaped onto it and pedalled furiously.

  Across the Alice Street intersection, a Volkswagen Golf with fat tyres blasted sharply on the hooter. Griessel rode to the left lane. He worked the bicycle gears, which were smooth as silk, while the ends of his jacket (brown, long out of fashion, ten years old) flapped in the wind. At the Gouldburn crossroad he passed Vaughn puffing hard. Griessel yelled, ‘I’ll get him,’ and pedalled harder, pleasantly aware of the bike’s fluid action, aware of his newfound fitness. Thank God this hadn’t happened six months ago. He could see the fugitive disappearing to the left down at Fitzroy Street. He saw Lion’s Head in the distance, framed by the buildings on either side of Voortrekker; he’d spent eighteen years growing up in Parow and he couldn’t remember seeing Lion’s Head so beautifully from this angle before. Strange thoughts flashed through his mind. He hadn’t raced a bicycle down Voortrekker since he was a boy. The gap between then and now shocked him; how quickly time had flown. And, he thought, that big flat square object that this young man had brought to the pawnshop, at least it was still there, they would be able to see what he had stolen.