by Deon Meyer
“Merwe de Villiers and Partners.”
He didn’t know the firm. “Could you fax the documents to Hope?”
“Yes,” said Wilna van As.
“Thank you.”
“The identity book. Did you discover anything?”
“I’m not sure.” Because it was Hope Beneke’s job to bring the bad news. He was merely the hired help.
“Oh.” Thoughtful, worried.
“Good-bye,” he said, because he didn’t want to hear it.
He paged through his notebook, found Hope Beneke’s number, put in another coin, and dialed.
“She’s in consultation,” said the receptionist.
Like a fucking doctor, he thought.
“Please give her a message. Wilna van As is going to fax her the deeds of conveyance for Jan Smit’s two houses. I want to know if there were mortgages on the houses. She can phone me at home.”
When he got out of the car and looked up, he saw the sun going down behind the next cold front coming in from the sea, the mass of clouds heavy and black and overwhelming.
He sautéed the garlic and parsley lightly and slowly in the big frying pan, the aroma escaping and rising with the steam, filling the room, and he inhaled it with pleasure and a vague, passing surprise that he could still do it. Verdi on the small speakers. La Traviata. Music to cook by.
Jan Smit wasn’t Jan Smit.
Well, well, well.
Sometime during or before the year of our Lord 1983 the man formerly known as X acquired American dollars. Illegally. So illegally that he needed a new identity. For a new life. As Johannes Jacobus Smit. A life of classic furniture, life within the law, a private, hidden existence.
Conjecture.
He opened the tin of tuna, poured the brine carefully down the drain of the sink.
You sold a fistful of your dollars on the black market to acquire the house and the business premises, to buy the first pieces of furniture. The business does well. You don’t need the rest of your dollars. You build, or have built, a walk-in safe for the rest. How much was left? A great deal. If you needed a walk-in safe. Or did you need to put something else in the safe? America—the well-spring of drug sales, the source of all dollars. Had you wanted to build a safe to hold your little white packets of heroin or cocaine, neatly stacked on the shelves, next to the dollars? Retailer, wholesaler, middleman?
Arms trade. Another reliable source of large amounts of dollars. In ’82 or ’83—the flourishing years of South Africa’s Armscor and its thousand obscure affiliations and the rest of Africa with its terrorist acronyms and insatiable hunger for weapons.
The walk-in safe wasn’t quite big enough. Maybe not arms.
Why? If the business in classic furniture was thriving, why didn’t you simply burn the incriminating evidence?
He added the tuna to the garlic and parsley. He chopped the walnuts, added them as well, switched on the kettle.
Fifteen years later Jan Smit, formerly known as X, died. Finis. American assault rifle, one shot, execution style, back of the head.
The return of the original owner of the dollars? A renewed effort to sell the little white parcels—what went wrong?
Put all the little pieces together, Van Heerden. Form a picture in your head, create a story, concoct a theory. Adapt it with every new fragment. Speculate.
Nagel.
Boiling water in the pasta pot. Light the gas. Wait until it boiled again. Spaghetti ready. Cut the butter in pieces. Slice a lemon in half. Grate the parmesan. Ready.
Jan Smit alone at home. Knock at the door? Open. Hallo, X, long time no see. I’ve come to have a little chat about my dollars.
He heard something above the music.
A knock at the door.
His mother didn’t knock. She simply came in.
He walked to the door, opened it.
Hope Beneke. “I thought I’d pop in. I live in Milnerton.” The first, nervous flurry of the cold front blew her short hair in all directions. She had a briefcase in her hand.
“Come in,” he said.
He didn’t want her in his home.
“It’s going to rain,” she said as he closed the door behind her.
“Yes,” he said uncomfortably. Nobody came here, except his mother. Quickly he turned down the volume of the music.
“My goodness, something smells delicious,” she said. She put the briefcase down on a chair and opened it.
He didn’t say anything.
She took out the documents. She looked at the gas burners. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
“It’s only pasta.”
“It doesn’t smell like ‘only pasta.’” There was something in her voice…
“How did you know where I live?”
“I phoned Kemp. I phoned here first but there was no reply.”
Sympathy in her voice, a patience that hadn’t been there before. He recognized it. The reaction of people who knew, who knew the public part of Van Heerden’s history. Kemp. Kemp had told her. Fuck Kemp, who couldn’t keep anything to himself. He didn’t need her sympathy.
Even if Kemp, and now she, had it all wrong.
She handed him the sheets of paper. “Marie said you wanted to know if the houses were mortgaged.”
“Yes.” He felt the discomfort of standing while talking, with furniture around them. He didn’t want her to sit down. He wanted her to leave.
“It doesn’t look like it. That’s the usual letter and account that attorneys send out after a property has been transferred to the new owner. To confirm that the registration has been completed at the Deeds Office. If there were mortgages, the accounts would have mentioned them. Generally complete figures about outstanding amounts, or the surplus, if the mortgages were larger than the purchase price.”
He stared at the documents. He didn’t quite grasp it all.
“There’s nothing about that here.”
“That’s why I think there was no mortgage.”
“Oh.”
He looked at the accounts. It established the price of the two houses. R43,000 for the business one; R52,000 for the home.
The water in the pot boiled with an explosive hiss. He turned it down.
“My timing was bad,” she said. “You’re probably expecting guests.”
“No,” he said.
Yes. He should have said yes.
“Did you discover anything about the identity document?”
He stood in the no-man’s-land of his kitchen, Hope uncomfortable among his chairs.
Fuck.
“You’ll have to sit down,” he said.
She nodded, gave a small smile, tucked her skirt neatly underneath her, sat down in the gray chair with the frayed arms, and looked at him expectantly and with empathy.
“Smit isn’t Smit,” he said.
She waited.
“The ID is forged.”
He saw her eyes widen slightly.
“Professional forgery. Possibly the work of one Charles Nieuwoudt, possibly done in the late seventies or early eighties.”
He would have to tell her the whole thing now. She sat there, waiting, her attention wholly fixed on him.
“There’s more,” he said. “I have a theory.”
The nod was barely visible. She was waiting, impressed.
Slowly he took a deep breath. He told her about his day, chronologically: Home Affairs. Ngwema’s phone call, his visit to Van As, the bookkeeping, the dates and amounts, Orlando, gave her an overview. Explained the mental jump based on a piece of paper that, more than fifteen years ago, held dollars together in a neat parcel, linked it to the walk-in safe. The time, all of it in 1983, the cash acquisition of two houses, the R15,000 with which the business was started. Aware that she was looking at him, he was looking past her, staring at the door, putting his theory to her.
“Sheesh,” she said when he was done. He saw her dragging her fingers through her short hair.
“Someone knew,” he said. “Everyth
ing points to the fact that someone knew. Someone with an M16 and a blowtorch arrived with premeditated intent. It’s hardly standard issue when you’re robbing a house. At the very least they had had to know that Jan Smit had a fortune in some form or other and that it would take a certain amount of persuasion to get it from him. Someone who knew him in his previous life.”
She nodded.
A wind-driven gust of rain thudded against the window.
“That means Jan Smit knew where to get a forged ID. It means he knew how to get rid of hot dollars. That means he built the safe to hide something, not for security. That means Van As never really knew him. Or she’s lying, but I don’t think so.”
He leaned back against a kitchen cupboard, folded his arms in front of him.
“You’re very good,” she said.
He tightened his arms. “It’s a theory.”
“It’s a good theory,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got.”
“And tomorrow?”
He hadn’t really thought about tomorrow. “I don’t know. The dollars are the key. I want to find out who controlled the black market in currency in 1983. And who were the major drug dealers. But maybe it’s something completely different. He may have stolen the money in America. Or it could’ve been an arms transaction. Who knows, in this fucking country of ours.”
He wondered whether she would react to his language again. She must leave now, he thought. He wasn’t going to offer her coffee.
“I’ll dig. There are a few places. A few people…”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“You’ll have to decide what you’re going to tell Van As.”
She got up slowly, as if she was tired. “I don’t think we’ll tell her anything.”
“It’s your choice.”
“There are too many uncertainties. We can speak to her when we have more.”
She picked up her attaché case. “I have to go.”
He unfolded his arms. “I’ll phone you if I find something.” Just please don’t come to my house again. But he didn’t say it.
“You have my cell phone number?”
“No,” he said.
She opened her case again, took out a card, handed it to him. Then she turned and walked to the door. He noticed that she had a pretty, rounded bottom beneath the skirt.
“I don’t have an umbrella.” A statement, almost aggressive.
She stood at the door and smiled at him. “Is that Domingo?”
“What?”
“The music.”
“No.”
“I thought it was the sound track from the movie. You know, Zeffirelli’s —”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
She had to leave. He didn’t want to discuss music with her.
“Pavarotti and Sutherland.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It’s the best.” Biting his tongue. It’s none of her business.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she looked at him, frowning. “You’re an odd man, Van Heerden.”
“I’m trash,” he said quickly. “Ask Kemp.” And opened the door for her. “You have to go now.”
“You did good work,” she said, and turned her head sideways against the rain and ran down the stairs. He heard her laugh, one quick sound, and then the BMW’s roof light came on when she opened the door and got in, waved to him. The door slammed and the light went off. He closed the front door.
He walked to the CD player and switched off the music. She knew fuck-all about music. Domingo. Indeed.
He would have to phone her in the morning. Tell her he would come to her office every day, just before she went home, for a complete report.
She mustn’t come here again.
Or he would write a report every evening and take it to her.
The telephone rang.
“Van Heerden.”
“Good evening,” a woman’s voice said. “My name is Kara-An Rousseau. I don’t know whether you remember me.”
Hope Beneke drove home slowly on the N7, the windshield wipers at full speed. This afternoon she had wanted to murder him; this evening she had wanted to hug him. She bit her lip and hunched over the steering wheel, trying to see through the rain. Now she understood. His baggage wasn’t anger. It was pain. And guilt.
Now she could distance herself. By understanding.
That’s all.
That’s it.
DAY 5
SATURDAY, JULY 8
14.
The house was full of books. And often filled with writers and poets and readers, arguments and animated conversations—late one Saturday night two women almost came to blows over Etienne Leroux’s Seven Days at the Silbersteins. A reading and a discussion of the work of Van Wyk Louw lasted through the night until after lunch on the Sunday.
And into this circle of literary luminaries I brought Louis L’Amour.
I hadn’t been an early reader. There were, I thought, far more interesting things to do. As my mother allowed me more freedom, there were the usual school activities and the more informal boys’ play (how many gangs we formed!), fishing in the Vaal River (with Uncle Shorty de Jager, live crickets, without a weight), the investigation of the east shaft’s collapsed mine dumps, the eternal building and rebuilding of Schalk Wagenaar’s tree house.
Then, the discovery of photo-stories. Gunther Krause read Mark Condor. Takuza. Captain Devil. With his parents’ permission. (His mother read Barbara Cartland and others of her sort, and his father wasn’t home very often.) On Saturday mornings we went to Don’s Book Exchange for a new supply for Gunther and his mother and then we went to his house to read them avidly. Until tenth grade, when I almost uninterestedly picked up a L’Amour in Don’s, looked at the fiery green eyes of the hero on the cover, and lazily, unsuspectingly, read the first two paragraphs and met Logan Sackett.
My mother gave me a few rand for pocket money every month. The book cost forty cents. I bought it. And for the following three years I couldn’t get enough.
My mother made no objection. Perhaps she hoped it would lead to the reading of other, more substantial stuff. She didn’t know it would lead to my first confrontation with the law.
It wasn’t L’Amour’s fault.
One holiday morning my mother dropped me and Gunther and another school friend in Klerksdorp early for the movies. The CNA on the main road was on two levels, toys and stationery downstairs, and upstairs, the books. I had been in the CNA before but that day I discovered a new world of Louis L’Amours, new, unread books with white paper—not the faded, faintly yellowed secondhand copies of the book exchange. Books that smelled fresh.
I can’t remember how much money I had in my pocket. But it wasn’t enough. Too little for a movie and a milk shake and a L’Amour. Certainly enough for a book but then I wouldn’t be able to accompany Gunther to the movies. Enough for a movie and a milk shake but then I wouldn’t be able to make use of this newfound abundance. And in a moment of feverish desire I made my decision: taking a book wasn’t stealing.
That was the ease with which I crossed the borderline between innocence and guilt, as quickly as that, without thinking. One moment a reader filled with joy at the variety of new choices, the next a prospective thief with an awareness of the potential, casting furtive glances at others around him, looking for an opportunity.
I took two books and pushed them down my shirt. And then walked down the stairs slowly, nonchalantly, stomach sucked in to hide the bulge, bent forward slightly for further camouflage, a beating heart and sweaty hands, closer and closer to the front door, closer, closer, out, sigh of relief—until she grabbed my arm and used the words with which so many South Africans start a conversation with strangers, that cornerstone of our sense of inferiority: “Ag, sorry…”
She was fat and ugly and the CNA name tag on her mighty breasts merely read MONICA. She pulled me back, into the shop. “Take out those books,” she said
.
Afterward I thought of a thousand things I might have done, what I could have said: jerked loose and run away, said, I was only joking or Which books? or Fuck you. Often, afterward, when I remembered her face and her attitude, I yearned to be able to say, Fuck you.
I took out the books. My knees were weak.
“Get Mr. Minnaar,” she told the girl at the cash register. And to me: “Today you’ll be taught a lesson.”
Ah, the fear and the humiliation, so slow to mature. The implications of my action didn’t present themselves as a group but as a long row of individual, unwelcome, purposeful messengers. I knew every one of them long before Mr. Minnaar, the bald man with the glasses, had appeared on the scene.
I stood there and heard Monica telling Minnaar how she had seen me on the upper floor, how she had waited until I had gone out of the door.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, and looked at me with great disapproval. And when she had finished: “Phone the police.”
While she was busy, he looked nastily at me again and said, “You’ll steal us blind.”
You. With one word I was part of a group. As though I had done it before. As though I was constantly in the company of other criminals.
I think I was too frightened to cry. When the young constable in the blue uniform came in and we went to Minnaar’s small office and he took down their statement. When he took me by the arm to the yellow police wagon. When he took me out again at the police station downtown, next to the Indian shopping center, and took me to the charge office. Too blood-chillingly frightened.
He made me sit down and told the sergeant behind the desk to keep an eye on me. And came back minutes later with a detective.
He was a big man. Big hands, thick eyebrows, and a nose that had known adversity.
“What’s your name?” the big man asked.
“Zatopek, sir.”
“Come with me, Zatopek.”
I followed him to his office, a gray room filled with civil service furniture and piles of files and memorandums arranged in chaotic stacks.
“Sit down,” he said.
He sat on the edge of the desk with the constable’s statements in his hand.
“How old are you?”