by Deon Meyer
The waitress was waiting for them, a young Xhosa woman. ‘I thought he must be her grandpa,’ she said while they waited to view the right footage on the screen.
‘The man she had breakfast with?’
‘Ewe. He was old, and he was like this.’ She held her hand low and curved, to demonstrate the man was short and bent.
The head of security played the video footage of the front lobby back to them at twice the normal speed, until the waitress said, ‘That’s him.’ It took a while to freeze the best image on the screen.
‘You see,’ said the waitress. ‘Utatamkhulu. A little grandpa.’
Griessel nodded. The man in the image was on the wrong side of seventy, small of stature, back bowed, with a gait that told of old stiffened joints, but there was a lively undaunted, self-assured air about him. His hair was still thick, short and neat, greyed to white and combed back meticulously. His nose was prominent. In his right hand he carried a brown briefcase of soft leather, in his left a grey fedora. He was smartly dressed in jacket, white shirt and tie.
‘You’re absolutely sure he had breakfast with Mrs Lewis?’ asked Griessel.
‘Ewe. Very sure. She had a cheese and mushroom omelette, he had a health breakfast. Muesli and fruit and yoghurt. She was nice. He was . . . white.’
Griessel asked the head of security what time the old man had arrived at the hotel.
‘Seven fifteen.’
‘Can we check what time he left?’
‘Sure.’
He asked the waitress if she could recall what they’d talked about, Mrs Lewis and her guest.
‘No. But he gave her a book.’
‘What kind of book?’
‘I didn’t see. He took the book from his little briefcase, and he wrote in it, and he gave it to her.’
Cupido didn’t use the usual facilities for identification of the dead in the Salt River mortuary, as Vinnie Adonis was not a next of kin of Alicia Lewis. To save time he took the slightly anxious concierge straight to the refrigerators, apologising for the discomfort and strange smells, saying, ‘It can be an unpleasant experience, uncle,’ as he gave the official on duty the nod to open the drawer, and then to remove the white cloth.
Vinnie looked down with a blend of macabre curiosity and a sincere wish to make a correct identification. He had to step closer, lean over. He stood staring for a long time, till the urge to retch overcame him.
‘The bucket is over there,’ came the routine instruction from the bored mortuary assistant.
Adonis crouched over the bucket, but managed to control his nausea. With moist eyes he looked up at Cupido. ‘It’s her,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Uncle, are you sure?’
‘Dead certain.’
Vaughn made the call to Benny.
Just before five in the afternoon, in the hotel manager’s office, Griessel rang the London home number of Alicia Lewis.
He didn’t pause to reflect on being the bearer of bad tidings again. He had played that role times without number in his job – from his days as a young constable in the northern suburbs conveying news of motorbike deaths to wives and mothers, to being the Hawks detective most often asked to break the news after a murder. ‘You have the gravitas, Benna, the gravitas,’ Cupido would say, trying to manipulate him.
It wasn’t gravitas, it was experience. Far too much experience.
The phone rang in a house in London that he was unable to picture. It rang four, five, six times before someone answered: ‘Hello?’ The voice slightly out of breath.
‘Good afternoon,’ Griessel said, realising he had no idea what time it was in England. ‘Who am I speaking to?’
‘This is Tracy.’
‘Madam, are you related to Mrs Alicia Lewis?’
‘Miss Lewis. No. Why?’
‘Is this her residence?’
‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘What is your relationship to Miss Lewis?’
‘I’m sorry, who is this?’
‘My name is Benny Griessel. I am a captain in the South African Police, I’m calling from Cape Town.’
‘Oh, Jesus . . . Is Alicia okay?’
‘May I ask what your relationship is to Miss Lewis, please?’
‘I’m just her house-sitter. I . . . I’m a student, I . . . Is she okay?’
‘Madam, I am very, very sorry to tell you that Miss Lewis passed away on Monday.’ He kept his voice and tone gentle, because he knew these were words that changed people’s lives for ever.
Not gravitas. Just experience.
It took him five minutes to calm Tracy Williams down enough, alone there in that house in London, to ask her some questions.
She said for the past two years she had been looking after Lewis’s house when she went on holiday, or was out of town for a weekend. At forty-three, Alicia Lewis had never been married, never had children. For the last few years she had had no romantic attachments. Lewis had a sister and a mother somewhere in America, ‘I think Long Island or thereabouts . . .’
Could she find the contact details?
She would try . . .
Was there an employer who would have those details?
Yes, Restore ought to have them still. Lewis had resigned a month or so ago; she’d been with Restore for nearly twenty years. An art company.
Griessel asked whether Williams had contact numbers for the business.
No, but he could look up restore.art.co.uk, under ‘Contact Us’.
He asked her what time it was in London.
Griessel was still on the phone with Lewis’s former employer, taking down notes in his little book, when Cupido came in again. Vaughn carried both their murder cases, one in each hand. He put Griessel’s down and went out again. Benny gathered that he was going to inspect Lewis’s hotel room so long.
When he had completed the second phone call, Griessel picked up his case, and went to find the manager to thank him for allowing the SAPS to call overseas at the hotel’s expense. Then he walked to room 202.
Cupido had stretched the yellow crime scene tape across the doorway. Vaughn’s murder case – a big black attaché case like Griessel’s – was on the floor in the passage, lid open. Beside it lay his long black winter coat and jacket, neatly folded. Griessel peered in at the door. Inside Cupido was kneeling beside the double bed, trying to peer underneath. On the bed was the dead woman’s large suitcase, a bright turquoise blue. Vaughn was wearing blue hospital shoe covers and transparent latex gloves.
‘I’m here,’ said Griessel.
‘PCSI are on the way,’ said Cupido. He was referring to the elite Provincial Crime Scene Investigation Unit that frequently examined the Hawks’ crime scenes.
‘Okay.’ Griessel put his case down beside the wall, took off his jacket and put it beside it. He took out the shoe protectors and gloves, and put them on. Then he ducked under the yellow tape, and entered the large hotel room. ‘I called her house in London. There’s no close family there, she has never married. There is a mother and a sister in America. I will call them, I’m just waiting for the phone numbers. Lewis lived alone. A girl, a student who is minding her house, said Lewis came to Cape Town on holiday. Lewis used to work at a place called Restore. They said she resigned at the end of March, and she wanted to take a year or two of sabbatical.’
‘Now, a month ago?’ Cupido straightened up and opened the travel case.
‘Yes.’
‘Sabbatical?’
‘Yes, she—’
Cupido snorted. ‘Sabbatical. I don’t even know what that means. Imagine, a policeman saying, no, I’m a bit tired, I’m going to take a nice sabbatical. Or one of my coloured brothers: “Yes, my china, I’m taking a bit of sabbatical from my house painting job, maybe Mauritius . . .” Only rich white people throw that term around so other rich white people won’t think they’re lazy bums . . .’
Griessel knew it didn’t help to interrupt Cupido when he was blowing off steam with one of his rants. He did it frequently and
Benny suspected it was of great therapeutic value to his colleague. And for the most part it was amusing. Especially because he didn’t consider Griessel ‘white’. They had talked about that. Cupido said, ‘Colour only applies to whites who have never suffered. You don’t have colour, Benna.’
Griessel was never exactly sure what Vaughn meant by his ‘suffering’. Probably the alcoholism.
He waited until his colleague was finished. ‘She was in the arts. Big expert, they said, on old stuff. There’s a woman who worked with her who was her best friend. They will ask her to call; at the moment she’s in Europe somewhere. What have you done so far?’
‘Taken photos of the whole room, and the contents of the wardrobe.’ The detectives used their cellphones for that, if they were first on the scene. ‘It’s at the back there next to the bathroom, more like a walk-in closet. This is one grand hotel, Benna. Must cost a fortune. There are clothes and shoes, and a laptop in the top drawer, under her undies, like she was hiding it . . .’
‘Maybe she thought it might be stolen.’
Cupido nodded. ‘I called Lithpel, he’ll wait at work until we bring it.’ Sergeant Reginald ‘Lithpel’ Davids was the in-house tech genius for the Cape Hawks, attached to their Information Management Centre, or IMC. ‘So far, no passport,’ said Cupido. ‘No cellphone or charger . . .’
‘Must be in her handbag,’ said Griessel, because they could see on the CCTV material she had been carrying a fairly large bag over her shoulder when she left the hotel. ‘Do we have the hired car’s—’ And then his cellphone rang.
He took it out, saw that it was Cloete calling, their media liaison officer. That meant the media had already heard that the Directorate for Priority Crimes had taken over the case. He didn’t answer, he would call back later. He just said ‘Cloete’ when Cupido looked at him questioningly.
‘The vultures are circling,’ said Cupido.
9
Griessel inspected the hotel room for the first time. It was large and luxurious. The curtains of the French doors in the northern wall opened out onto a false balcony, with a view across the water, the yachts and the millionaires’ apartment blocks on the Waterfront across the dock. The room had two easy chairs at a coffee table, a desk in classic style with a chair to match, an enormous double bed, perfectly made, two bedside cabinets and a large flat-screen TV.
‘Tidy woman,’ said Cupido. ‘Only washing in the case.’ He closed the turquoise suitcase, and carried it back to the large built-in wardrobe where he had found it.
‘I’ll check the bathroom,’ said Griessel.
A bath, shower, two basins, all expensive, classy fittings. Snow-white towels, large and small, hung on hooks against the wall. Lewis’s toiletry bag was between the washbasins. Cosmetics, toothpaste and a toothbrush were neatly arranged beside the hotel soaps, shampoo and shower gel. He inspected the toilet bag. Nothing out of the ordinary. He came back out of the bathroom.
Cupido pushed shut the drawer of a bedside cupboard. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the laptop.’
‘Knock-knock.’ A voice from the door. They recognised Jimmy, the tall, skinny one from PCSI.
‘Who’s there?’ asked his forensic colleague Arnold – the short fat one – theatrically loud, for their benefit. The pair were nicknamed Thick and Thin, from the tired old joke that they themselves frequently told: PCSI will stand by you through Thick and Thin.
‘Canoe,’ said Jimmy.
‘Canoe who?’ asked Arnold.
‘Canoe please help the Hawks? They’re clueless.’
And then the pair roared with laughter as if it were the joke of the year.
Just before seven Griessel phoned Captain John Cloete, media liaison officer of the Hawks.
‘What can you give me on the Bleached Body?’ asked Cloete.
‘The Bleached Body?’
‘That’s what the press call her.’
‘She’s an American citizen, John.’
Cloete sighed. That meant more fuss, even hysteria. Trouble. ‘What else?’
‘She arrived here as a tourist on Sunday. We’ve put a search out for her hired car,’ and Griessel gave him the registration number. ‘Anyone with information, the usual story . . .’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all that I want to share now.’
At 19.27 Griessel and Cupido jogged through the downpour of the first winter storm of the year. When they were on the way back to Bellville, Benny phoned Alexa. ‘We’re going to be late,’ he said when she answered.
‘What happened?’ she asked with her usual concern.
‘The Bleached Body.’
‘I thought so. It was on the radio that the case had been sent to you. Have you found anything?’
‘Nothing so far.’
‘Shall I keep dinner for you?’
Alexa Barnard was an excellent businesswoman and still a brilliant singer. But cooking was not her strong point. She had no feel for it. Often she would be cooking while taking calls or answering emails, and not keep track of which ingredients she had added to the pot. Her sense of taste was also suspect. She would carefully taste a curry or pot of soup, declare it ‘perfect’, but when she dished up and began to eat she would frown and say, ‘Something is not right now. Can you taste it too?’
So now he said, ‘No thanks, we’ll get something on the way.’
When he rang off, Cupido asked, ‘She doesn’t know anything about the engagement yet?’
‘No.’
‘Have the bank come back to you yet?’
‘They’re still thinking about it.’
‘Maybe it’s a sign, Benna.’
He laughed. ‘You’re just worried Desiree will hear we’re engaged and then the pressure will be on you to make a plan.’
‘Damn straight,’ said Cupido. ‘And it scares the shit out of me.’
Lithpel Davids was waiting in the large room of the DPCI’s Information Management Centre, the IMC. He was small and fragile, with the face of a schoolboy, and a huge Afro hairstyle. He used to have a lisping speech impediment, until that was surgically corrected, but still, his nickname lived on.
Cupido handed him the Apple MacBook Pro, fingerprint dust still visible on the silver surface.
‘Come to papa,’ said Lithpel, and began to rummage through his box of cables and chargers for the matching power point.
Cupido and Griessel sat down at the long table, opposite each other. As usual, during the drive, they had each considered the case; now they were ready to test theories. Griessel knew Cupido would begin.
‘Okay, let me get this straight. My name is Alicia Lewis, I am forty-how-many years old?’
‘Forty-three,’ said Griessel.
‘Forty-three. I worked with art for twenty years, give or take, and I was very wise, because I never got married’ – casting a meaningful look at Griessel, who ignored his gaze – ‘so I could save all my money, and now I’m taking a sabbatical . . .’
‘Sabbat-what?’ asked Lithpel Davids.
‘Amen, brother, don’t interrupt, the grown-ups are talking,’ said Cupido.
‘Grown-ups, my arse,’ said Davids quietly.
‘Okay, so I take a sabbatical, and what do I do?’
‘I hang around for a month in London while I plan my first holiday,’ said Griessel.
‘Right. And of all the places in the universe that I can choose from, I come to the good old R of SA, specifically Cape Town. Which is fair enough, ’cause it’s the most spectacularly beautiful city in the most awesome country on the planet. So far, so good.’
Griessel nodded.
‘And the first thing I do after I get to the hotel, I ask the concierge how to get to Villiersdorp.’
‘Villiersdorp?’ said Lithpel Davids, his eyes on the screen of the MacBook, but clearly his ears not.
‘Shurrup, Sergeant,’ said Cupido. ‘But that is exactly the point. Villiersdorp. Why Villiersdorp? With the utmost respect to the good people of Villiersdorp, that�
��s not the first tourist destination that comes to mind if I’m a Yankee hanging out in Cape Town. Or am I completely missing the plot, Benna?’
‘No, that was my first big question too. And her employer and house-sitter think that it’s the very first time she’s visited South Africa.’
‘And your first order of business is breakfast with Grandpa? And your first special outing is to Villiersdorp? Curious.’
‘Yip.’
‘Who’s Grandpa?’ Davids asked. ‘By the way, here’s a bit of bad news. This aunty has a password on her user ID. It’s going to take a little longer.’
‘Grandpa is this ancient whitey uncle who shared Miss Alicia Lewis’s five-star breakfast feast with her, the very first morning she woke up in Cape Town.’
‘Aitsa. Did he sleep over?’ asked Davids.
‘No, you pervert, he arrived in the morning all prim and proper.’
‘But that means she had a date with him. So she knew him,’ said Griessel.
‘Obviously,’ said Lithpel Davids.
‘But that means maybe she didn’t choose the Cape for its natural beauty, Sergeant. It means she had a different agenda, or an additional agenda.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Griessel. ‘Maybe Grandpa was an old friend in the arts.’
‘True. But why have breakfast with him, first thing Monday morning, first morning of the holiday, when you still have two leisurely weeks ahead, just before you drive to Villiersdorp, never to be seen again.’
‘That is the question,’ said Griessel.
‘And that’s why Sergeant Slowly here has to open the laptop for us.’
‘Have I ever failed you?’
Griessel’s cellphone rang. It was Jimmy from Forensics. He answered. ‘Jimmy?’
‘I dare say, old boy, may I speak to Captain Ghreezel?’ asked Jimmy with a fake British accent.
‘She was an American, Jimmy. She worked in London.’ He spoke with long-suffering patience in his voice; with Thick and Thin that was the only approach that worked.
‘Oh,’ said Jimmy, deflated. ‘We wanted to let you know that there’s not much here of use. No blood, no semen. We’ll take the cleaner’s fingerprints tomorrow morning. Until then we can’t say there are any unidentified fingerprints.’