by Deon Meyer
She got up, put the mugs on the tray. She had to carry on. Join Valerie and Chris for a barbecue this evening. She needed an evening of laughter and relaxation. It had been a hard week. She walked to the kitchen, put the mugs in the sink. Was struck by a sudden idea.
Joan van Heerden was never going to be her mother-in-law. And she laughed, loudly, above the soft sounds of Céline Dion and shook her head, still laughing, opened the taps, took out the washing-up liquid from the cupboard below—what absurdities the mind could suddenly conjure up—then heard the sound of her front-door bell.
She wasn’t expecting anyone, she thought, turned off the tap, walked to the door, and peered through the spy hole. Zatopek van Heerden.
Had he forgotten something? She opened the door.
“There is something we can do,” he said, and his eyes were bright and his voice urgent, and she wondered whether he had heard her laughing.
“Come in,” she said, “please,” her voice under control, and he walked past her, stood at the counter as she closed the door behind him.
“I… ,” he said. “It…”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“We have… What we must do is to turn the clock back fifteen years. It’s our only chance.”
She stood between nothing and nowhere, decided to sit down. She had never seen him like this, excited, with such urgency in his voice.
“I’ve just realized I’ve been speaking to all the wrong people. I’ve been talking to everyone who didn’t know him fifteen years ago. It’s time for us to change that. There is a way.”
“How?”
“Publicity.”
She looked at him, not understanding.
“When he was murdered, O’Grady didn’t know that he had changed his name. Was there a picture of him in the newspapers?”
“No. Wilna van As wouldn’t… release the identity book’s photo to the press. There was no reason…”
“One thing has changed since then,” he said. “We now know he wasn’t Jan Smit. No one knew it then. If we can get the photo published now and ask if someone recognizes him, if we say he was someone else, we may be able to find out who he was. And if we know that, we may find out what was in the safe…”
“And who wanted it so badly.”
“We can place an advertisement,” he said. “Small ads, it wouldn’t cost much.”
“No,” she said. “We can do much better than that.”
“How?”
“Kara-An Rousseau,” she said.
He merely looked at her.
“She can get us publicity. Free for all. In every NasPers newspaper in the country.”
“She invited me to dinner this evening,” he said, suddenly sorry he had refused.
Jealousy raised its head. “Kara-An?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I refused. I didn’t know —”
“You must go,” she said. I didn’t know you knew each other so well, she thought.
“I don’t know her.”
“We have so little time. We have to speak to her immediately.”
“Will you go with me?”
She wanted to go, she… but…
“I haven’t been invited.”
“I’ll ask if I may bring a partner.”
“No,” she said. “We don’t have to go to the dinner. It’s early enough. We can try to see her before dinner.” She got up, found the cell phone, looked up the number in the memory, and dialed. It rang.
“Kara-An.”
“It’s Hope. Am I phoning at a bad time?”
“Hi. Of course not. How are you?”
“Crazy at the moment, thank you. Do you remember the case of the will I told you about?”
“Of course. The one Mr. Sexy is helping you with.”
“We urgently need your help, Kara-An.”
“My help?”
“Yes. I know it’s a bad time, but we can have a very quick conversation. It would be easy…”
“Of course, it sounds fascinating. And you must stay to dinner. I’ve invited a few people. Come a bit earlier…”
“I don’t want to disrupt your Saturday evening, Kara-An.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s enough space and more than enough to eat.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I can’t wait to become a part of the Great Search.”
They said good-bye. Hope Beneke turned to Van Heerden.
“You’ll have to take your money,” she said, “before I spend it on a new outfit for this evening.”
Eight hours later she would lie in her bed and wonder how an evening that had started so conventionally could end with so much violence and chaos. She would lie there weeping about the disillusionment and the humiliation and would again contemplate his words, “We’re all evil,” and wonder whether he was perhaps right—and where the badness in her lay.
But when he had come to fetch her and stood at her door in black trousers, white shirt, and a black jacket, she had felt a warmth toward him, for the effort he had made to conform with the clothes even if the cut wasn’t modern and the shoes were not really right. His eyes widened slightly when he saw her in the short black dress and he said with undisguised surprise and honesty, “You look great, Hope,” and for a moment she wanted to put out a hand and make physical contact, but mercifully he turned and walked to his car before she could act on the impulse.
They drove in comfortable silence in the rain toward the mountain until she guided him through the narrow streets high up on its slope and they stopped in front of a huge house in Oranjezicht, old and Victorian. He whistled through his teeth.
“Old money,” she said. “Her father was a member of Parliament.”
The sight of Kara-An in her scarlet dress and bare feet was like a clarion call from his past—the black hair, the blue eyes, the breathtaking, strong line of chin and cheekbone and neck—and he wanted to store it all in his memory bank for later meditation. He had to shake off the feeling almost physically.
There was a lot of activity in the house, young people in white aprons arranging flowers, carrying plates and glasses to the dining room. “The caterers are still busy. Let’s go through to the library.”
Caterers? Was that how the rich did it? he wondered, and followed the two women, aware of the dark, polished wood of the antique furniture, the expensive paintings, the Eastern carpets, the wealth that glowed in the light of a thousand candles. “I’ve invited a few people,” she’d said the previous evening.
Caterers.
Jesus. How could you ask strangers to cook for your friends?
Kara-An closed the door behind them and invited them to sit down. He wondered how many of the books on the dark paneled shelves she’d read, so many leather-bound copies, so many titles stamped in gold. He realized Hope was waiting for him to say something. “You explain,” he said.
He watched the two women as Hope spoke, careful because he knew there was old, well-known, dangerous terrain here: Kara-An, who looked at him every time Hope mentioned his name, Kara-An, who listened with great concentration, but there was something else in her look, an interest. Then he saw the distance he kept from everything in his life, not for the first time. It sometimes happened when he listened to music, when he looked through a recipe book for a new dish—sometimes it seemed as if life wanted to lure him back, when the pleasures, major and minor, of a normal, happy existence wanted to seduce him into forgetting that he didn’t deserve it, couldn’t afford it. This time the siren song was stronger—a woman’s wonderful beauty, two women in front of him, Hope’s eyes, which looked pretty tonight, her legs in the black dress, the touchable bottom. He wanted to compare and consider and philosophize and desire, blatantly and obviously desire, and play a lighthearted silly game of love, start a flirtation and talk to someone about it, laugh—Lord, he needed to laugh, he wanted to laugh with someone over a glass of chilled white wine, he missed it, he missed her so terribly… and then the fear was upon him, overpoweri
ng and strong, and he retreated from his own thoughts and Hope looked expectantly at him, wanting him to say something.
“What?” he said, and he thought his voice sounded scared.
“Was that an accurate version of where we stand?”
“Yes,” he said, withdrawing into his shell in a panic.
“It’ll make good copy,” said Kara-An.
“Copy?” said Hope, who didn’t know the terminology.
“Newspaper article. I won’t have much trouble in convincing the news editor…”
“There are two important points,” Van Heerden said. They looked at him. “The story must get the angle right. And it must appear in all your dailies. In Gauteng as well.”
“What do you mean by the right angle?”
He took the papers out of his jacket pocket, pages torn from his notebook. Control had returned. “I tried something, but it’s not quite right. You’ll have to work on it.” He handed it to Kara-An Rousseau. She leaned forward, the neckline of the red dress opening for a moment. He looked away. “It must sound as if we’re on the edge of a breakthrough, as if information about Smit is not essential, merely a…”
“A bonus,” said Hope.
“Yes. We must make it sound as if we know all about the events of fifteen years ago and just want to tie up loose ends…”
“Ah,” said Kara-An. “You want creative journalism.”
“Lots,” he said.
“I know someone who specializes in it.”
“What are the chances for the front page?” he asked.
“That will depend on other news stories.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” said Kara-An.
A young woman in a white apron put her head round the door. “Some of the other guests have arrived, madam.”
“Thank you,” said Kara-An. She smiled at Zatopek van Heerden, a spectacular sight focused entirely on him. “We’ll talk again when everyone else has left.”
He sat between the wife of the South African cultural attaché, a tall brown woman with very prominent front teeth and thick glasses who spoke very softly, and the businesswoman of the year, sharp-faced, thin, hyperactive, hands that were never still, mouth never shut.
“And what do you do?” asked the businesswoman of the year, before he could seat himself comfortably at the long table. And suddenly his memory threw up the world of senseless socializing of his University of South Africa era, out of nowhere, as if it had been lying in wait, ready to be recalled, the reply to “What do you do?” establishing your hierarchy in that status-conscious society. In those years he sometimes lied at cocktail parties and lunches and dinners for the sheer hell of it, saying he was an engine driver, or a security guard, then sitting back and watching the person who had asked the question struggle with a reaction. Sometimes he would come to the rescue with an “Only joking. I’m with the Department of Police Science. Lecturer,” his passport to the select company safe, his visa correctly stamped. Wendy had hated it when he did that, especially when he didn’t retract the lie: status was important to Wendy. That and the appearance of happiness and success. Seemingly for Kara-An as well. Earlier on she had introduced them to some of the people. “This is Hope Beneke, the attorney. And Van Heerden, her colleague.” The attorney. Not an attorney. The status of the article. And the deceit of the selective truth. “Her colleague.”
“I’m a policeman,” he said to the businesswoman and watched her eyes, but they gave away nothing. She immediately leaned over to Mrs. Cultural Attaché and introduced herself, then spoke to the man on her right, the doctor. He looked at the other faces around the table, Hope opposite him, Kara-An at the head, on his right twenty people who still had to conquer the stiffness of new acquaintance without the oil of alcohol. Some he had met during the predinner sherry period, the writer, the wine farmer, the dress designer, the dignified ex-actress, the millionaire businessman, the editor of a women’s magazine, the doctor ex–rugby player. And their partners. It was the partners who had looked him up and down. Stared at his clothes.
Fuck them.
And now he simply sat there, a halfhearted auditor of other people’s conversations, his mind trailing through memories of the period before Nagel, his Pretoria ascendancy, his relationship with Wendy. Mrs. Cultural Attaché didn’t say much. They formed an island of silence; she smiled sympathetically at him once or twice. He tasted the caterers’ orange butternut soup, perfect, the spiral of cream a nice decorative touch. Garnishing had been the last great challenge to his culinary skill, before his life fell apart and his mother became his only dinner guest.
“. . . Exchange rate is a blessing in disguise. I don’t want the rand to recover. But the government will have to do something about the trade agreement with the EU. The excise duties are killing us.”
Mrs. Millionaire Businessman sat opposite him. She was very pretty, without a wrinkle, her cheeks rosy. Her husband sat two chairs farther down, pale and tired and old. “. . . Move to the farm, I simply can’t cope with the crime any longer. One lives in constant fear, but Herman says he can’t run the group from Beaufort West,” she said to someone.
“And the police,” replied the doctor, his voice deep and self-satisfied, “steal as happily as everyone else.”
He felt the tension in his belly.
“It must be difficult to be a policeman today,” the colored woman next to him said, softly and honestly. He looked at her, the eyes large and scared behind the glasses, wondered whether she had heard the doctor’s remark.
“It is,” he said, and sipped the red wine slowly.
“Do you think it will change?”
Good question, he thought. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” she said.
He drew breath to explain and stopped. Remembered that it wouldn’t help.
That it had never helped. Even when he was still on the Force and had tried to give some perspective to the figures—too little money, too few hands, too big a gap between the haves and the have-nots, too much politics, too many liberal laws, too much bad publicity. Fuck, the publicity had frustrated him so much, the good work and successes on page seven, the mistakes and corruption on page one. Salaries that were a joke, that could never compensate for the working conditions, the long hours, the scorn. He had occasionally tried to explain, but people didn’t want to hear it. “It’s just the way it is,” he said.
The main dish was Malay mutton curry, steaming and flavorful and meltingly tender. He could taste the cook’s pleasure in the making, wished he could meet him or her, ask how you get the mutton so unbelievably tender. He had read somewhere that you left it to soak overnight in buttermilk, that it worked especially well with curries, made the taste even more subtle.
“It’s Van Heerden, not so?” The doctor leaned over the businesswoman’s plate toward him, mouth still filled with food.
He nodded.
“What’s your rank?”
“My what?”
“I heard you saying you were a policeman. What’s your rank?”
“I’m no longer in the Force.”
The doctor looked at him, nodded slowly, and turned to the cultural attaché. “Are you still a Western Province supporter, Achmat?”
“Yes, but it isn’t the same as in your day, Chris.”
The doctor forced hearty laughter. “You make me sound like ancient history, Achmat. Sometimes feel like taking the togs out again, old sport.”
Old sport. Even if he wasn’t a doctor, he would still be irritating.
Forget it, he thought. Leave it be. He concentrated on the food, placed rice and meat carefully on his fork, tasted the texture and the flavor, then a swallow of red wine, the waiters keeping the glasses filled, the decibels of the conversations around the table rising and rising, people laughing more heartily, more loudly, cheeks colored rosily by the wine. He watched Hope Beneke, her head at an angle as she listened to and nodded at the author, a middle-aged, bearded man wearing an earring. He wonde
red whether she was enjoying the party. It seemed like it. Was she another Wendy? An athlete on the social track? She was more serious than Wendy, but so earnest, so focused, so ready to do the right thing, so Norman Vincent Peale, so… idealistic. A practice for women. As if they were special victims.
Everyone was a fucking victim. Special or otherwise.
Between dessert and coffee, just before the bomb exploded, the businesswoman asked whether he had children. He said he wasn’t married. “I have two,” she said. “A son and a daughter. They live in Canada.” He said it must be very cold there, and the conversation died an uncomfortable death.
And then the doctor fucked with Mozart.
The waiters were removing the dessert plates; coffee had already been served to some. A curious moment because the rest of the table was quiet and only the doctor’s strong, rich voice could be heard: he was complaining about a boring holiday in Austria, the unfriendly people, the overcommercialization, the exploitation of tourists, the dull entertainment.
“And what’s it with them and Mozart?” he asked rhetorically, and Van Heerden couldn’t help it, he said, “He was an Austrian,” and he had suddenly had enough of this man and his views and his superiority.
“So was Waldheim and he was a Nazi,” said the doctor, irritated by the interruption. “But no matter where you go, it’s Mozart. If it isn’t the name of a restaurant, they play his music on street corners.”
“His music is very nice, Daddy,” said Mrs. Doctor, two chairs away, soothingly.
“So is Abba’s until you’ve heard it for the third time,” said the doctor.
Van Heerden heard the galloping of the red bull in his ears.
“At the end of the day it all sounds the same. And there is no intellectual depth to his music. Compare The Barber of Seville with any of Wagner’s works —”
“The Barber was Rossini,” said Van Heerden, his voice a finely honed blade. “Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro. A sequel to the Barber.”
“Nonsense,” said the doctor.
“It’s true,” said the actress from the other side.
“It still doesn’t give it more intellectual depth. It’s still musical candyfloss.”