by Deon Meyer
She looked up from the photos. Pale. “And you’re going to burst my bubble…”
“Have you ever met a murderer, Hope?”
“You’ve made your point.”
“Or a child rapist. We…” And then he hesitated for a single heartbeat before he continued, spoke through it, somewhat surprised at himself. “I… I caught a rapist whose victims were children. A gentle, cuddly old man of fifty-nine who looked as if he was a stand-in for Santa Claus. Who lured seventeen little girls between the ages of four and nine into his car with Wilson’s toffees and up on Constantiaberg —”
“You’ve made your point,” she said softly.
He sank back in his chair.
“Then let me do my fucking work.”
The northwest wind blew the dark outside against the windows of the house, and inside Wilna van As was talking, looking for Jan Smit with words, her hands with the fingers entwined in her lap never wholly still. “I don’t know. I don’t know whether I knew him. I don’t know whether it was possible to know him. But I didn’t mind. I loved him. He was… It was as if he had a wound, as if he had a… Sometimes I would lie next to him at night and think he was like a dog who had been beaten, too often, too brutally. I thought many things. I thought perhaps there was a wife and children somewhere. Because when I was pregnant, he looked so scared. I thought he had a wife and child who had left him. Or perhaps he was an orphan. Perhaps it was something else, but somewhere someone had hurt him so badly that he could never reveal it to anyone else. That much I knew and I never asked him about it. I know nothing about him. I don’t know where he grew up and I don’t know what happened to his father and his mother and I don’t know how he started the business. But I know he loved me in his way. He was kind and good to me and sometimes we laughed together, not often, but now and then, about people. I knew he couldn’t bear pretentious people. And those who flaunted their money. I think he probably went through hard times. He looked after his money so neatly, so carefully. I think he was scared of people. Or shy, perhaps… There were no friends. It was just us. It was all we needed.”
Only the wind and the rain against the window. She looked up, looked at Hope Beneke. “There were so many times that I wanted to ask. That I wanted to say he could tell me, that I would always love him, it didn’t matter how deep the pain was. There were times that I wanted to ask because I was so dreadfully curious, because I wanted to know him. I think it was because I wanted to place him, because we do that with everybody, place them in a space in our heads so that we know what we can say to them the next time we meet, or what to give them. It makes life a little easier.
“But I didn’t ask. Because if I had asked, I might have lost him.”
She looked at Van Heerden. “I had nothing. I sometimes wondered whether his father also drank and his mother was also divorced and perhaps he also came from the wrong side of the tracks. Like me. But we had each other and we needed nothing else. That’s why I didn’t ask. Not even when I fell pregnant and he said that we would have to do something because children didn’t deserve the wickedness of this life and that we couldn’t protect them. I didn’t ask then because I knew he had been beaten. Like a dog. Too often. I simply went and had an abortion. And I went so that they could fix me so I could never get pregnant again.
“Because I knew we only needed each other.”
And then she wiped the drop from the point of her nose and looked down at her hands and he didn’t know what to say and knew he couldn’t ask his other questions.
The house was a tomb now.
“I think we must go,” the attorney said eventually, and stood up. She walked to Van As and laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
They ran across the street together through the rain to their cars. When she pushed the key into her BMW’s door, Van Heerden stood next to her. “If we don’t find the will, she gets nothing?”
“Nothing,” said Hope Beneke.
He merely nodded. And then walked to the Toyota as the water sifted over him.
While the onions, peppercorns, and cloves were boiling, he telephoned.
“I’m cooking,” he said when she replied.
“What time?” she asked, and he didn’t want to hear the surprise in her voice. He looked at his watch.
“Ten.”
“Fine,” she replied.
He put the phone down. She would be pleased, he knew. She would make assumptions, but she wouldn’t ask any questions.
He walked back to the gas stove in the kitchen—the only room in the small house that showed no signs of dilapidation and want. He saw that the water had boiled away. He poured a few sticks of cinnamon into the palm of his hand, added them to the ingredients in the silver saucepan. He added olive oil, measuring with his eye, turned the flame down. The onions had to brown slowly. He pulled the chopping board toward him, cut the lamb shanks into smaller pieces, eventually transferred them to the saucepan. He grated the fresh ginger, added it to the stew, along with two cardamom pods. Stirred the mixture, turned the flame even lower. Looked at his watch, put the lid on the pot.
He laid the table with the white tablecloth, the cutlery, salt, black-pepper grinder, the candleholder with white candles. He couldn’t remember when last he had lit them.
Back to the work space. He opened two tins of Italian tomatoes. He always preferred them to freshly cooked ones. He chopped the tomatoes, took a small green chili out of the fridge, rinsed it under the tap, sliced it fine, added it to the tomatoes. He peeled the potatoes, put them in a bowl, opened the hot-water tap, filled the sink, poured in washing liquid, rinsed the knife and the cutting board. Uncorked the bottle of red wine.
There was something in that safe. That someone knew about.
In a separate pot, small carrots in a tablespoon of orange juice, small spoonful of brown sugar. A little grated orange peel. Bit of butter later on.
That was all that made sense. Because nothing else was missing from the house: no cupboards ransacked, no beds overturned, no television set taken.
Jan Smit. The lone wolf with the mistress. The man without a history, without friends.
He looked at his watch. The meat had been in for thirty minutes. He lifted the lid, scraped the tomato and chili pulp into the saucepan, replaced the lid. He switched on the kettle, put basmati rice in another saucepan, waited until the water boiled, added it to the rice, lit the flame, put the saucepan on the stove, checked the time.
He made sure that the front door was unlocked, lit the candles. She would be here soon.
Jan Smit.
Where the fuck did you start?
Orange juice had boiled away. Added a tablespoon of butter.
He walked to the bedroom, took his notebook out of his jacket pocket, sat on the threadbare armchair in the too-small living room, looked at the notes he had made when he had borrowed the dossier from O’Grady that afternoon.
Fuck-all.
Nothing. He stared at the identity number. 561123 5127 001. On November 23, 1956, Jan Smit’s life had begun. Where?
The door opened. She came in on a gust of wind and with a dripping umbrella. She saw him and smiled, collapsed the umbrella, and put it down at the door. She had tied a scarf around her hair. She took off her raincoat. He got up, took it from her, threw it over the arm of a chair.
“Nice smell,” she said. “The chair will be wet.” She moved the raincoat to the small coffee table.
He nodded.
“Tomato stew,” he said, walked to the kitchen and fetched the red wine, poured two glasses, handed her one. She pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.
“You’re working again,” she said.
He nodded.
She sipped at the wine, put the glass down, untied the scarf, took it off, shook her hair.
He walked to the kitchen, opened the pot of stew, added the potatoes, some freshly ground black pepper, a teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of salt, tasted, added more sugar. Killed the flame under the carrots. He wal
ked back to the table, sat opposite her.
“It’s an impossible task,” he said. “I’m looking for a will.”
“Sam Spade,” she said, and her eyes laughed.
He snorted without anger.
“I’m so pleased,” she said. “It’s been so long…”
“Don’t,” he said softly.
She looked at him with overwhelming compassion. “Tell me,” she said, and leaned back in the chair. “About the will.” The light of the candles glimmered dark red in the glass of wine when she picked it up.
Hope Beneke lit thirteen candles in her bathroom without counting them. The candles were multicolored—green and blue and white and yellow. One was scented, and they were all short and stubby. She liked candlelight and it made the small white-tiled bathroom in the townhouse in Milnerton Ridge more bearable.
Her temporary house with its two bedrooms and its open-plan kitchen and white melamine cupboards. Her temporary investment. Until the firm started making good money. Until she could buy something that looked out over the sea, a white house with a green roof and a wooden deck and a view over the Atlantic Ocean and its sunsets, a house with a big kitchen—for entertaining friends—and oak cupboards and a bookcase that filled an entire wall of the living room.
She poured in bath oil, swished the water around with her hands as she bent over the bath, her small breasts moving with her shoulder muscles.
Her house by the sea would have a huge bath for soaking in.
She closed the taps and slowly climbed into the warm water, listened for a moment, wondering if she could hear the rain outside so that the steam and the warmth and the comfort of bathing could be emphasized. She dried her hands on the white towel, picked up the book lying on the lavatory lid. London. Edward Rutherford. Thick and wonderful. She opened it at her Library Week bookmark.
Women’s groups. The Health and Racquet Club. He couldn’t be much of a detective if he had categorized her so glibly and so incorrectly.
In any case, she wasn’t a workout person.
She was a jogger.
If we don’t find the will, she gets nothing? As if he hadn’t heard it in her office, that first time. As if Wilna van As had eventually penetrated his mind that evening.
We’re all bad…
Strange man.
She focused on the book.
“That was wonderful,” she said, and neatly placed her knife and fork on the plate. He merely nodded. The meat hadn’t been tender enough for his taste. He was out of practice.
“Were you in a fight again?” It was the first time she had mentioned his eye.
“Yes.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Why?”
He shrugged, divided the last of the red wine between the two glasses.
“How much was the advance she gave you?”
“Two thousand.”
“You must buy some clothes.”
He nodded, took a gulp of wine.
“New shoes as well.”
He saw the gentleness in her eyes, the caring, the worry. “Yes,” he said.
“And you must get out more.”
“Where to?”
“With someone. Take someone out. There are so many attractive young —”
“No,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“Whose?”
“The attorney.”
“Hope Beneke.”
“Is she pretty?”
“What does that matter?”
“I just wondered.” She put her empty glass down and slowly stood up. “I must get home.”
He pushed his chair back, stretched out an arm for her raincoat, held it for her, picked up her umbrella.
“Thank you, Zet.”
“It was a pleasure.”
“Good night.”
He opened the door for her.
“Night, Ma.”
DAY 6
FRIDAY, JULY 7
8.
When I was nine, or eight or ten, somewhere during those forgettable, neither-fish-nor-fowl years, I took part in a rugby game, playing on the rock-hard field of the Stilfontein Primary School. During the typical ruck ’n tumble of little boys, I received a blow that made my nose bleed. The referee, a teacher I think, came up to me.
“Now, now, my boy, men don’t cry,” he said comfortingly.
“No.” My mother’s voice was clearly audible next to me. She was angry. “Cry, my child. Cry as much as you like. Men are allowed to cry. Real men may cry.”
When I think back, it was typical of who she was and how she tried to raise me.
Different. From Stilfontein and its people and their views and way of doing things.
Describing the psyche of a mining town is difficult because one has to generalize. Young Afrikaners with a minimal education and a maximum income made for a heady, combustible mixture. They lived their lives in the fast track—they earned fast and spent fast on fast cars, bikes, and women. Their alcohol intake, their tempers—everything matched the speed of potential sudden death in the dark depths of the earth.
And amid all this was the cultural oasis of Joan van Heerden’s home.
The mine gave her, us, a smaller house in Stilfontein. I don’t know why she didn’t move to Pretoria: her parents and her friends were there. I suspected that it was because she wanted to be near my father, near his grave in the gray cemetery in the windblown wasteland on the back road to Klerksdorp.
There was no shortage of money. Life insurance was fashionable among Afrikaners in those days. And my father was provident unto death. But income also came from my mother, whose paintings began selling slowly but steadily, the prices rising a little each year, each year an exhibition at a larger, more important gallery.
Perhaps her decision to remain in Stilfontein was partly a desire to stay away from the mainstream of art—she disliked the pretentiousness of so-called art lovers and critics. And then there were the arty types, peculiar people who believed that exotic clothing and strange hairstyles would guarantee their admission into the inner circle of taste—all they needed to do was to act bohemian and cultured. She couldn’t stand them.
So it was just the two of us and Stilfontein. There were a few friends in the town—Dr. de Korte, our GP, and his wife, the Van der Walts of the framing shop—and people from Johannesburg and Potchefstroom who came on visits over weekends.
Placid and uneventful years of growing up. Until my sixteenth year.
My mother had no other men in her life except for the husbands of her friends—and the gay men in the art world, like Tony Masarakis, the Greek sculptor in Krugersdorp who sometimes dropped in. When I was nine or ten he mentioned in passing that she had a good-looking son. “Forget it, Tony,” she had said with finality. He must have taken it to heart because they remained friends for many years.
She was a young widow, in her late twenties. And beautiful. A passionate woman. Would she be celibate for the rest of her life? I never thought about it until I reached my own twenties, and then, when I did think about it, it was with a qualm. Because after all, she was my mother and I was Afrikaans.
I don’t know if she occasionally sought relief, let alone found it. If so, it was done with the utmost discretion and possibly with the strict injunction to her partner (or partners) of no long relationships, thank you. Perhaps during those weekends when she went to exhibitions in the Cape, or in Durban or Johannesburg, and I didn’t go with her.
But there was no evidence.
The question, of course, was whether growing up without a father, without a male role model, scarred a boy whose mother had called him Zet from an early age. I would so much have liked to embrace it as an exoneration, make it part of the greater exoneration, for the compelling wave that eventually spilled me over the edge, dish it up as an easy psychological escape hatch for the fuckup of my life. But I don’t think I can. My mother raised me with ease and patience. Treated me with respect and compassion and discipline, loved me, punished me, and ca
red for me—even if our staple food, when no friends were visiting, was fruit and bread. She played Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, and Bach (J. S. and, to a lesser extent, C. P. E.) without forcing the music down my throat and later, when I wanted to listen to Bachman Turner Overdrive and Black Sabbath, even kept her music in the background. I suspected that she knew which music would stay with me in the long run.
Those were safe years. Until I was sixteen. When I discovered Mozart and books and food and sex and the long arm of the law.
9.
He was awake long before the alarm went off at five o’clock. He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and waited for the instrument’s electronic beep. He killed it, swung his legs off the bed, checked the pain in his body. The ribs hurt a little less, but the eye still throbbed. He knew it would turn purple during the morning. It wasn’t his first.
He walked to the kitchen. The crockery was neatly stacked in the drying rack. He put the kettle on. The cold penetrated the worn old police tracksuit. He put instant coffee into a mug, waited for the water to boil, poured it onto the grains, added milk, walked to the combined dining and living area, put the coffee on the small table. Looked for the CD he wanted. Clarinet Concerto. Pressed the buttons on the portable stereo, put on earphones, sat down, drank a mouthful of coffee. Adjusted the volume.
He had known since the previous day that he would have to think about Nagel. Since that moment in the attorney’s office. We… Nagel and I caught a rapist who preyed on kids, he had wanted to say.
It was because this reminded him so much of what he used to do. The first time… the first time since he had left. The first time since then that he was looking for a murderer again. That was why he would think about Nagel. It was normal. He simply had to be careful. He could think about Nagel, about everything Nagel had taught him. He just had to stay within those bounds. Then he would be safe. Set the parameters now. Then he could carry on.