The Woman in the Blue Cloak

by Deon Meyer

  ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’

  ‘Y’all have a good night, now,’ he said in an exaggerated American accent.

  Lithpel Davids sat back in his chair, entwined his fingers and said, ‘There you go, password cracked. So what do you need from this baby?’

  10

  ‘We want to know why she came to Cape Town. Why she wanted to go to Villiersdorp,’ said Griessel. ‘Anything . . .’

  ‘The usual stuff. Check her email, her Facebook and her calendar,’ said Cupido.

  ‘I read you, Captain, I read you . . .’

  ‘She didn’t . . . The thing about the holiday . . . What bothers me most, is the bleach,’ said Griessel.

  ‘I know,’ said Cupido. ‘It’s sort of contradictory.’

  ‘That’s a big word for a policeman,’ said Davids while doing things on the MacBook screen. ‘Why is the bleach contradictory?’

  ‘How much bleach do you carry around in your car, Lithpel?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘So here comes this dolly from England, the first chance she gets she takes a rental to an obscure, unimportant little town a hundred kilos outside Cape Town . . .’

  ‘We suspect . . .’ said Griessel.

  ‘Or in that general direction. And she happens to run into a guy with a truckload of bleach who wants to kill her? Pure coincidence?’

  ‘But he could have capped her first, and then gone to buy the bleach,’ said Lithpel.

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Griessel. ‘It doesn’t fit.’

  ‘’Causewhy,’ said Cupido, ‘this looks like a very organised killer. With this sort of thing . . . Okay, it’s more the serial killer thing, but consider for a moment, if you will, the facts of this specific case; the way the body was presented, like a window dressing, very structured. It has the whiff of a serial killer type of murder. We don’t say it is, we just say there is—’

  ‘Food for thought,’ said Griessel.

  ‘What he said,’ Cupido agreed. ‘Now, in this sort of thing you get your organised killers, your disorganised killers, and you get some that are a mix between the two. But this guy: one blow, just one blow to kill her, clean, efficient. Businesslike. Very organised. Careful washing of the body in bleach. Very clever, very organised. He takes her clothes, her handbag, her car, her phone, everything, he dumps it all somewhere. Smart. Organised. Carefully displays the body on this little wall in a pretty public place. A place where he knows someone will find her. That’s what he wants. Again, very organised.’

  ‘Not the sort of ou who would murder her on the spur of the moment, and then start running around buying bleach,’ said Griessel.

  ‘Contradictory,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Clutching at straws,’ said Lithpel Davids. ‘Sounds like you guys don’t have much to go on.’

  Griessel nodded. ‘That’s true. But that’s why we have to know what her plans were on Monday. And who knew about them.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Sergeant Lithpel Davids. ‘But it is going to take a while. She didn’t configure an email client. Which means she did email in her browser. Now the question is, what web mail, and do we need a password?’

  They let Davids get on with his work, while they went to Griessel’s office to broaden the search for the missing hired car to a province-wide alert, and to update the case file.

  At 22.48 Griessel’s cellphone rang. He saw that it was an overseas number, and said, ‘I think it’s her friend.’

  He answered the call: ‘This is Captain Griessel.’

  ‘Hello. My name is Carol Coutts.’ She spoke with a broad Scottish accent, resonating with emotion. ‘Alicia Lewis was my best friend.’

  Carol Coutts sounded like a strong woman. First he asked, ‘Can I call you back?’ and she said, no, thank you, and then, with a tremor in her voice: ‘I want to know how she died.’ He told her, as tactfully as possible, the outlines of what they knew. She wasn’t crying yet, but asked, ‘Do you have suspects?’ and ‘Do you have leads?’

  She also did not cry when Griessel began to answer her. She told him that Lewis was a very intelligent woman, earning an MA in Classical and Antique Art from Arizona State University, and later a post-graduate diploma in the UK.

  ‘She worked at the Art Loss Register in London for seven years, as Recoveries Case Manager.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is, the Art Loss Register.’

  ‘It’s an international . . . As a matter of fact, it’s the biggest private database of lost and stolen art in the world. They . . . If your art is stolen, they’ll search for it, and try to recover it. She worked on the recovery side, she was very good. That’s why Restore head-hunted her.’

  ‘That’s where you worked together? At this company, Restore?’

  ‘Yes, for more than ten years.’

  ‘What does Restore do?’

  ‘It’s quite similar to . . . Well, to be honest, we’re in direct competition to the Art Loss Register, like several other companies. We have our own database, and we offer a very comprehensive service on all aspects of recovering works of art and collectables that are lost or stolen.’

  ‘Madam, this must be a stupid question, but I need to understand: how do you “lose” a valuable piece of art?’

  ‘No, it’s a valid question. There . . . For instance, thousands of families lost art worth billions of dollars during the Second World War, because of displacement, or the Nazis. And then there are natural disasters, art theft, art ransom, there are so many ways art can get lost.’

  ‘And Restore, they find the art again?’

  ‘Well, we try, but it’s more than that. We assist our clients with research, for instance on the legal title of a piece of art, we provide dispute resolution, or advice on potential claims. And of course the recovery services, where Alicia and I worked.’

  ‘What exactly did she do?’

  Griessel knew how unpredictable the effects of loss and grief could be, how they were triggered by different memories. He was not at all taken aback when she began to sob. He waited patiently, saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He let her cry, surprised at the sudden impulse he felt to put out a hand to comfort her.

  Eventually she was able to tell him how she and Alicia Lewis managed the process of recovering lost or stolen art – and other collectibles of high value. It involved her having an initial interview with the client, and then setting in motion all the necessary actions – liaising with insurers and law enforcement, sometimes private investigators, the people or institutions that had the artwork in their possession, museums and experts that could verify the genuine article – to trace the item, to make sure the client’s claims to ownership were valid, and to enforce those claims and rights. ‘It really is all in the title. We are Recoveries Case Managers, with the emphasis on “managers”.’

  ‘Did she have contact with people in South Africa?’

  ‘I . . . Perhaps. I don’t . . .’

  He could hear she was struggling again. ‘Should I call you tomorrow, ma’am?’

  ‘No . . . I’m sorry . . . There wasn’t any case file that I’m aware . . . Do you mean professionally, did she know someone professionally in South Africa?’

  ‘Or personally. Did she ever talk about people in South Africa, in Cape Town, that she knew, or wanted to visit?’

  ‘No . . . Not that . . . I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Did she talk about coming to South Africa on holiday?’

  The line was silent, he could hear only her breathing, so many thousands of kilometres away. He heard her sniff, and blow her nose, take a deep breath and say, ‘You know, Captain, she never did. We were . . . I’m almost fifty years old, I’m not naive or overly sentimental, and I think I’m pretty realistic when it comes to friendship . . . any relationship, for that matter. So when I tell you we were the best of friends, I’m not exaggerating. It was such a . . . a comfortable friendship. Like an old gown, we used
to joke, cosy and warm and soft and familiar when you needed it, but all was well even if it was hung up in the wardrobe for a while. No demands, no expectations, just . . . easy. She had always been single, I’ve been divorced for thirteen years now, we had other friends, we had different interests, but for the past decade, we saw each other just about every working day, we had lunch together two, three times a week, and most of all, I believed we had no secrets from each other. We would talk about absolutely everything. And I mean everything. I always thought the most valuable thing about our friendship was the trust.

  ‘And then, at the end of February . . . Actually, to be honest, it was a little before that. In . . . In January, something changed. I don’t know what it was, it was just . . . She was . . . I know this sounds silly, but it was as if she was looking away, as if her gaze had lifted to a . . . horizon of sorts, another horizon. I didn’t really react at the time, you know, I thought she might have met someone, or maybe . . . we all go through phases, and I . . . But then, at the end of February, she came into my office and she sat down and she said, Carol, I’ve had enough. I’m going to resign. Completely out of the blue, I never saw it coming, I had no idea she was . . . that she had had enough, as she put it. Never, ever, did she say a word to me that she was unhappy, I always thought she enjoyed the work. Anyway, I felt a bit betrayed, the trust thing . . . Just like I feel now. You know we had brunch together, the Saturday before last, and all she said to me was that she was thinking of going away for a while, and I asked where, and she said, maybe Spain, she hadn’t made up her mind yet. But she never breathed a word about South Africa.’

  It was half past eleven when Griessel drove home in the rain to Brownlow Street, Oranjezicht, and tiptoed up the stairs as quietly as possible. He showered in the spare bathroom so as not to disturb Alexa. All the while the Alicia Lewis case occupied his thoughts.

  In the chill of the bathroom he stood naked and ready to step into the shower when his cellphone sounded a text notification. It was Lithpel Davids: Gmail, no auto-login. Will take time. Going to zzzz.

  He put down the phone, got into the shower and opened the taps. His thoughts flowed with the water. He saw the way she died. One awful blow to the back of her head. One moment alive, the next just gone. All her secrets, her new horizons, gone with her into eternity.

  One terrible blow to the back of her head.

  You needed room to swing a pipe like that. She would have to be standing still, her attention somewhere else; it wasn’t a frontal assault, so she wasn’t expecting it.

  Why?

  He got out, towelled dry. He turned off the lights, walked quietly to bed, climbed in, hearing the rain beating down on the roof. Alexa’s body was warm, her arms welcoming and she snuggled up to him and sighed in contentment. ‘Love you,’ she said from somewhere in her sleep. That’s why he wanted to marry her, he thought. Coming home to this. She was his home.

  But how could you explain that to Vaughn Cupido?

  11

  Saturday morning, still dark at 6.24, the N1 almost free of traffic. Griessel was driving to work when his cellphone rang, not a number he recognised. He answered it.

  ‘Captain, this is Sergeant Duba, Somerset West.’

  ‘Good morning, Sergeant.’

  ‘Morning, Captain. I’ve just had a call from a Professor Wilke, who was listening to the radio, and he heard that you have identified the Bleached Body. He says he had breakfast with her on Monday morning. He got hold of Wednesday’s newspaper article online, the one with my contact details, so he called me. Can I text you the professor’s telephone number?’

  Griessel phoned the professor from his car, heard the man answer with ‘Hello, this is Professor Marius Wilke,’ and he wondered why it was so important for some people to have a title, and to use it. He seldom used his own with the public, only if it was an official discussion – and absolutely necessary.

  He made use of it now, a little self-consciously: ‘This is Captain Benny Griessel.’ He asked where the professor was, because they wanted to come and talk to him about his meeting with Alicia Lewis.

  ‘I’m in Schonenberg, here in Somerset West, but listen, the trouble is, I don’t know how much I can say. I mean, if I can tell you everything Ms Lewis and I talked about. I’ll have to make sure.’

  In his imagination Griessel connected the high, somewhat hoarse voice on the phone to the dapper figure on the hotel CCTV cameras and it made him smile. Comical little man. The sort that would give Vaughn Cupido more grist for his mill.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I signed a contract, Benny.’ Like they were old friends. ‘And my word is my honour.’

  He said nothing to his colleague about the professor’s mannerisms. They drove to Somerset West just after seven, the sun not yet risen, the mountains behind Gordon’s Bay etched black against the slowly lightening horizon. At the Schonenberg Retirement Village they had to stop at a boom and sign the register. The security guard said he would phone ‘the Prof’ to check that they had an appointment.

  ‘We are the Hawks, my bru’, we don’t need an appointment,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Just humour me, brother, I’m only doing my job.’ That was a language Cupido understood. He nodded, and the guard phoned, opened the gate, and gave them directions. They drove past the rows of neat little houses, black roofs, pale yellow walls and manicured gardens. Two women came down the road, power-walking with exaggerated, purposeful swinging of arms in the morning half-light.

  Griessel parked in front of Wilke’s house and got out. The door opened, and the little man came out, dressed formally in a brown tweed jacket, white shirt and bluish-grey tie, his snowy hair still damp, but perfectly combed. ‘Morning, morning, morning, gentlemen.’ He thrust out his hand to Cupido who was nearest. ‘Professor Marius Wilke, pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you.’ He was even smaller, busier and more dapper that the video suggested, a caricature with a big nose and high-pitched voice, radiating cheeriness, with twinkling eyes and joie de vivre.

  He pumped each detective’s hand vigorously, repeating their names and ranks multiple times, perhaps to commit them to memory, and invited them inside. ‘Coffee? I have a pot on the go, filter coffee, good coffee, how does that sound?’

  The kitchen, dining and sitting areas formed a single open-plan unit, crammed bookshelves lined every wall and the many windows conspired to make it attractive, yet at the same time homely and dignified.

  They said what they wanted, he nodded his approval and rattled on while he organised the cups. He described his shock that morning when he’d heard on the radio news that the Bleached Body’s name was Alicia Lewis. He listened to the early news every morning on the radio; the trouble with getting old, one didn’t sleep as much, so he would be awake before dawn waiting for the six o’clock bulletin. The other morning, the news about the body in Sir Lowry’s Pass, later the talk about bleach, and you didn’t expect it, you simply didn’t expect to know the murdered one, the victim. That poor, poor woman. And he had breakfast with her Monday morning, such a pleasant breakfast, she is . . . he meant she was, in person, so much nicer than in the emails and telephone conversations . . .

  The professor came around the corner of the kitchen carrying a tray of steaming mugs and a plate of rusks. ‘Help yourselves, help yourselves, Benny, may I call you Benny? I did get hold of my lawyer, after I talked to you, just to make sure about the confidentiality clause, and he said I can talk to you, as it is a murder investigation. So I phoned you back straight away, because I know, all the crime programmes on TV, the first seventy-two hours are crucial, hmm . . .?’

  ‘What confidentiality clause?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘Old Vaughn, jong, it’s quite an interesting story. Very interesting . . .’ And Marius Wilke sudden sprang to his feet and crossed the floor to a bookshelf. ‘You see, all my life I’ve been a historian here at the university’ – with a vague wave in the direction of Stellenbosch – ‘History Department, of course.’ And he took
four thick tomes off the shelf and brought them back, offering them to Cupido. ‘This is my life’s work, apart from the academic papers, naturally, this is my life’s work, the history of the Cape, from 1600 to 1900, broadly, broadly speaking; it was my life’s work, my passion, four books, translated into seven languages, published in sixteen countries.’

  Cupido took the books from him, inspected the titles, and passed them on to Griessel.

  ‘But when I retired, seven years ago, can you believe it, it was seven years ago, I’m turning seventy-three’ – and the professor sat down again opposite them – ‘then for fun I began researching the family history of the Wilkes, but thorough research, jong. I have the knowledge, and you know how it works, you talk about it, and people say they also want to research their genealogies like that, but they don’t know how and they don’t have the time. So you say, let me help because I like scratching around in the archives, and before you realise it you have a business, because people pay for your research services, and you gain a reputation and it just grows. And naturally, because you are a professor, because you publish, you have an oeuvre, you’re known, people trust you, people know they’re getting the real McCoy. They know, if you say this is their genealogy, then it is. And my grandson made me a website, and the business grew big, old Vaughn, you won’t believe how busy I was in my retirement, but I made some good money, and could pick and choose, such a privilege, to be able to pick and choose what projects you take on . . .’

  The professor stopped to take a breath and a sip of coffee. Griessel and Cupido were silent. Instinctively they didn’t want to break the man’s momentum; there was something captivating about the way the hoarse voice and nose and the lively eyes together with the childlike body generated energy, like a small dynamo.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Marius Wilke. ‘So in July last year I received an email via the website, did I tell you, it’s at www.yourheritage.co.za? That’s the name of my website, you can take a look, my grandson set it up. So I received the email from Alicia Lewis, and she asked if I was the author of Good Hope, 1488 to 1806, that’s the English translation of my third book. And I replied and said, indeed, indeed, and she asked me, do I do freelance research, and I said indeed, indeed. So she sent me the contract, and right near the beginning . . . Wait, let me get it, just a second, it’s on my desk, the contract, the confidentiality clause,’ and he jumped up again, an aged jack-in-the-box in a brown tweed jacket, and he disappeared down the passage.