Dead at Daybreak

by Deon Meyer

  The phone rang at seven minutes past six.

  Hope listened to the first twelve calls, got up, went out. He drew three-dimensional squares on the paper in front of him.

  “Hallo.”

  “Jesus, Van Heerden, what the fuck is this?”

  O’Grady.

  “I didn’t write that piece, Nougat.”

  “You stabbed me in the back, you bastard. Do you know how this makes me look?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “That doesn’t cut it, asshole. The super wants to fire me. He’s fucking furious. I trusted you, you —”

  “Did you read the whole thing, Nougat? Did you see what I said?”

  “That doesn’t make much difference. You should have come to me with the fucking evidence, Van Heerden. You have no loyalty.”

  “Come on, Nougat. We’ve got three days in which to find the will. If I had taken it back to you —”

  “Bullshit, Van Heerden. You made me look like a cunt.”

  “I’m sorry, Nougat. That wasn’t the intention. I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Hope brought more coffee, listened to more conversations. Three jokers. Two useless calls accusing family members. She left again.

  He waited patiently. He doodled. He had known there would be primarily useless callers. The sickness out there was widespread.

  But perhaps…

  At 9:27 she opened the door. There was something different in her eyes. Worry?

  Two men followed her into the room—dark suits, short hair, broad shoulders. One black, one white. The white one was older, in his late forties, early fifties. The black man was younger, bigger.

  “This is Van Heerden,” said Hope.

  “Can I help you?”

  “We’ve come to terminate the investigation,” said White.

  “Who are you?”

  “A messenger.”

  “From whom?”

  “Won’t you sit down?” asked Hope. Her frown deepened.

  “No.”

  Van Heerden got up. The black man was taller. “This investigation is not terminable,” Van Heerden said, his temper flaming.

  “It is,” said Black. “National security.”

  “Bullshit,” said Van Heerden.

  “Easy does it,” said White. “We come in peace.” There was a calm in him, authority.

  The telephone rang. They all stared at the instrument.

  “Do you have identification?” Hope asked.

  “You mean one of those little plastic cards?” Black asked with a small smile.

  The telephone rang.

  “Yes,” Hope said.

  “That’s only for people in the movies, miss,” said White.

  “You have five minutes to leave this room… ,” said Van Heerden.

  “Before you do what, boy?”

  “Before I ask the police to arrest you for trespassing.”

  The telephone rang.

  “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Bring a court order.”

  “We came to ask nicely first.”

  “You’ve asked. Now get out.”

  “He’s right,” Hope said uncertainly.

  “If you cooperate now you can avoid a great deal of trouble,” said Black.

  The telephone was still ringing. Van Heerden looked at his watch. “Four minutes and thirty seconds. And don’t threaten me.”

  White sighed. “You don’t know what you’re into.”

  Black sighed. “You’re out of your depth.”

  “You must leave now,” Hope said more decisively.

  Van Heerden picked up the phone. “Hallo.”

  Silence.

  “Hallo.”

  Something at the other end. A sound.

  He looked up. Black and White were still standing there. He tapped his watch with a forefinger, pointed at the door.

  “Hallo,” he said again.

  “It… ,” said a woman’s voice at the other end, and he identified the sounds. Sobs. A woman crying.

  “It…”

  Van Heerden sat down slowly. “I’m listening,” he said quietly, his heart hammering.

  “It was…” Sobs. “It was… my son.”

  The door opened. It was Marie, the receptionist. “There are policemen here, Hope. At reception.”

  “So fast,” White said to Black. “Our five minutes aren’t even up.”

  “I’m listening,” Van Heerden said softly into the receiver.

  “The man in the photo… ,” said the woman’s voice, faint and faraway.

  “Such SAPS efficiency. Makes me feel so safe,” said Black.

  “You have to leave now,” Hope said firmly.

  Marie: “The police, Hope…”

  The red tide rose, overwhelming Van Heerden. He got up, put his hand violently over the mouthpiece. “Fuck off, all of you. Now!”

  Marie’s eyes huge, her mouth round in a shocked Oh, Black and White with small smiles, unintimidated.

  “Please,” Hope said, and tugged at Black’s jacket. Unwillingly, they walked out, Hope ahead, a locomotive pulling reluctant railcars, and eventually the door closed.

  “Forgive me,” he said into the receiver, striving to calm his voice. “I wanted to get silence in the room.”

  Sobs at the other end.

  “I just… want to know what’s going on.”

  “I understand, madam.”

  “Is that the detective?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Van Heerden?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “They told me he was dead.”

  “He is…” He struggled with the words; he would have to play this neatly. “Deceased, madam.”

  “No,” she said. “In ’seventy-six. They told me he was dead in ’seventy-six.”

  “Who are ‘they,’ madam?”

  “The government, the Defence Force. They said he died in Angola. They brought me a medal.”

  “Forgive me for asking, madam, but are you sure that photo is of your son?”

  He listened to the electronic sounds on the line, the crackle and hum, wondered where she was, where she was phoning from. Another sound, high, heartbreakingly sad. The woman weeping. “It’s him. I still see Rupert’s face every day. In my heart. Against my wall. I see it every day. Every day.”

  He walked to the reception area of the firm of attorneys. Hope was there, with Black and White, Senior Superintendent Bart de Wit, Superintendent Mat Joubert, and Inspector Tony O’Grady, all three from Murder and Robbery.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Bart de Wit said to White, “but you’ll simply have to work through the official channels. This is our case.”

  “We don’t have channels, boy,” said White. Black nodded in agreement.

  “Hope, will you please answer the telephone in the meanwhile?” asked Van Heerden. She looked at him, looked at the men scrumming in her reception area, nodded, relieved, and walked down the passage.

  “Morning, Van Heerden,” said Bart de Wit.

  “Morning, Van Heerden,” said Mat Joubert.

  Nougat O’Grady said nothing.

  “Reunion,” said Black. “Charming.”

  “Sweet,” said White.

  “You possess information that can help us in the investigation of an active case, Van Heerden,” said Bart de Wit, and he rubbed the large mole on the side of his prominent nose.

  “We came to get it,” said O’Grady.

  Mat Joubert smiled. “How are you, Van Heerden?”

  “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” said White.

  “And not a DiCaprio in sight,” said Black.

  “Our friends from Military Intelligence were on the point of leaving,” said Van Heerden.

  “A shot in the dark,” said Black.

  “A little knowledge can be dangerous,” said White.

  “’Seventy-six,” said Van Heerden.

  White’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.


  “Seventy-six reasons why you have to leave now.”

  There they stood, two large men with short hair and broad shoulders, looking at each other, suddenly silent and without witticisms.

  Van Heerden walked to the glass front door, held it open. “Go and give someone a medal,” he said.

  White’s mouth opened and shut.

  “Good-bye,” said Van Heerden.

  “We’ll be back,” said Black.

  “Sooner than you think,” said White. Then they walked out.

  “You abused the inspector’s trust, Van Heerden,” said Senior Superintendent Bart de Wit, officer in command of the Cape Town Murder and Robbery Unit.

  “You owe me big-time, Van Heerden,” said O’Grady.

  “Not forgetting the irreparable damage you have done to the good name of the SAPS,” said Bart de Wit.

  Mat Joubert smiled.

  “Come,” said Van Heerden. “I’ll find a place where we can talk.”

  The telephone rang and its shrill noise in the quiet room startled Hope.

  “Hallo,” she said.

  A moment’s silence. “Who’s speaking?” A man’s voice.

  “Hope Beneke.”

  “The attorney?”

  “Yes, may I help you?”

  “The deceased’s name was Rupert de Jager.”

  Another silence, as if he expected a reaction.

  “Yes?” she said uncertainly.

  “Before he changed his name. Did you already know that?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and sent up a silent prayer that she was telling the right lie, wrote on the paper in front of her: “Rupert de Jager (???).”

  “Do you know who the murderer is?”

  How did she reply to that question? “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t give you that information over the phone.”

  Hesitation on the other end, as though possibilities were being weighed. “Bushy. It was Bushy.”

  “Bushy,” she said mechanically.

  “Schlebusch. Everyone called him Bushy.”

  Her right hand trembled: “Bushy Schlebusch.” “Yes?” Her voice was trembling, too.

  “I was there. I was with them.”

  She looked at the door. Where was Van Heerden? She was going to paint herself into a corner.

  “At the murder?”

  “No, no, that was Schlebusch. Just him, I think. I was with them in ’seventy-six.”

  “Oh.” ’Seventy-six? Should she ask… “How do you know it was him who… murdered De Jager?”

  “The M16. It’s his.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t know Bushy. He’s going to… he’s fucking crazy. You’ll have to be careful.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “He’s unstoppable.”

  “Why do you say that?” Where was Van Heerden?

  “Because they like killing. That’s what you have to understand.”

  She was speechless for a moment.

  “We’re… ahhh… are you prepared to come and talk? Here…”

  “No.”

  “We’ll be very discreet, sir.”

  “No,” said the male voice. “Bushy… I don’t want him to find me.”

  “Where do we find Schlebusch, sir?”

  “It seems you don’t understand. He’ll find you. And I don’t want to be in the way.”

  30.

  Life, people, events, are complex, multilayered, multifaceted, with innumerable nuances.

  In contrast with the poverty of my words. Even more: the propaganda value of every sentence I offer, the misdirection of everything I omit.

  My only experience as a writer is in academia, and I am struggling to keep that out of these chronicles. The words seem heavy, the style forced, unyielding. But you will have to bear with me. It is the best I can do.

  I must try to explain who I was in the year 1991, in the weeks when I waited for replies to my letters to the officers commanding Murder and Robbery Units across the country.

  Because eventually the purpose of this story is to measure, to compare, to weigh: who I was, what the potential was of the man who, at thirty-one, obsessively started an academic murder investigation. To guess and to speculate about what might have been.

  Because it was a time of possibilities. If I think back on all the aspects of my existence, it is astonishing to know that there were so many tiny details that could have influenced the course of events, that could have made the road fork.

  I was on the edge of a conventional future, a hairbreadth away from it. If I hadn’t read those two articles, the Marnewick dossier would have held no interest and I might have followed another, more predictable road. Wendy and I might have been married today, Professor and Mrs. Z. van Heerden of Waterkloof Ridge, middle-aged and unhappy, the parents of two or three children being systematically poisoned by the frustration of an unfulfilled marriage.

  Because, despite all I’ve said about Wendy Brice up to now, I wasn’t wholly unwilling to follow the conventional route.

  You see, we were, for all practical purposes, a couple in Pretoria. Our circle of friends was defined—and they defined us. We were Zet and Wendy, we entertained and were entertained, we had our routine, our moments of flickering happiness, our togetherness. We were each other’s frame of reference, and we fitted into the neat structure of our social milieu.

  I’m not about to deviate and philosophize about the ties that bind, but there is substantial pressure in a circle of friends who group you together. Individuality, personal goals, are lost in the collective name: Zet-and-Wendy. The circumstances conspire to force you to conform, to take your place in the larger destiny of humankind: to procreate, to let the genes live on, to play a conservative role. Even if I knew she wasn’t the One.

  We were popular. We were in, an item, and we could sparkle. I would like to think we could make heads turn, the athletic dark-haired man and the pretty little blond. It all helped to establish our path, to define our route.

  I didn’t protest too much. I didn’t visualize a clear alternative future without her. I was prepared to give in eventually, like a sacrificial lamb, to marry, have children, to follow my academic career to its logical conclusion, to play golf, cut grass, take my son to watch rugby, and possibly own a Mercedes and a swimming pool.

  I didn’t yearn for it, but I didn’t fight it.

  I was on the border of the conventional. Close.

  Who was I then?

  Above all, I believed in myself—and because of that, in others. I don’t think I ever sat down to philosophize about the conflict between good and evil in me and in others. Because I didn’t see myself as evil, the belief colored the lenses through which I saw everything. Evil was the deviation of a minority that I could study through the safety glass of academe. A phenomenon like a genetic aberration, scattered percentage-wise through the population, according to the natural statistics of evolution. And my task, as criminal psychologist, as criminologist and police scientist, was to read the figures and make deductions, to develop procedures, and to institute them, assisting those who had to execute them.

  I was on the side of the good. Therefore I was good.

  That’s who I was.

  Despite the obsession with the Marnewick case. Perhaps because of my obsession.

  31.

  They sat in Hope Beneke’s office and he felt the adrenaline, the blood of the chase coursing through him, and for a moment he remembered…

  “Jeez, Van Heerden, I still can’t believe you’ve turned out to be such a complete asshole. How could you stab an ex-colleague in the back and manage to disgrace the Force at the same time? All you had to do was to give me a call. Just a single call.”

  He held up his hands. He was calm, his head jumping from the telephone call to Military Intelligence, to O’Grady and De Wit and Joubert, his body primed for action, but he had to focus here first. “Okay, Nougat, I know where you’re coming from and you have my sympathy…”

  O’Grady’s face twis
ted in disgust and he began to say something, but Van Heerden went on.

  “But just think of the facts for a moment. I had one more clue than you: the false ID. That’s all. The rest is pure conjecture and it’s pretty flimsy. The thing about the dollars was a huge leap of faith and it’s only because I looked at the way the guy set himself up in business with cash, in the early eighties. I have no corroborating evidence. So tell me, do you think your superior officers”—he pointed at De Wit and Joubert—“would have allowed you to go to the newspapers on the strength of that?”

  “It’s the fucking principle, Van Heerden.”

  “And the damage you did to the reputation of the SAPS, Van Heerden.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Col—er… Superintendent, but it was the price I had to pay for the publicity.”

  “Sold us down the river for a lousy newspaper story.”

  “Bullshit, Nougat. You guys get worse publicity every day of the week because the media see you as a political tool to get at the ANC. Are you going to blame me for that as well?”

  “You deliberately withheld information that we could use in the investigation of a murder, Van Heerden.”

  “I’m more than prepared to share, Superintendent. But the time isn’t ripe, for obvious reasons.”

  “You’re full of shit, Van Heerden.”

  “Seventy-six,” said Mat Joubert.

  They all stared at him.

  “You stopped the Military Intelligence jokers dead in their tracks with ‘seventy-six,’ Van Heerden. What did it mean?”

  He should have known Joubert wouldn’t miss a trick.

  “First,” he said slowly and in a measured tone, “we’re going to reach an agreement about the sharing of information.”

  O’Grady gave a scornful laugh. “Jesus, just listen to him.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate,” said Bart de Wit, his voice slightly higher, slightly more nasal.

  “Let’s listen to what he suggests,” said Mat Joubert.

  “But we can’t trust the motherfucker.”

  “Inspector, we’ve spoken about your language before,” said De Wit.

  O’Grady blew out his breath loudly. It obviously wasn’t a new topic.

  “Superintendent, this is the way I see the situation,” said Van Heerden. “You have the law on your side and you can force me to reveal everything.”