Dead at Daybreak

by Deon Meyer

  For a week I brooded and gazed and reread every one of the nine documents. And the one thing I couldn’t find was the murderer of Baby Marnewick. I would have to cast my net wider.

  33.

  In the late afternoon the calls lessened significantly and at 17:00 he connected an answering machine to the telephone. “This service is closed for the night. Please leave your name and number and we’ll return your call in the morning.” He knew that in the small hours of the night, the craziest would emerge from their holes, those who heard voices, those in contact with other planets. Let them talk to the machine.

  He walked to Hope’s office. The door was closed. He knocked.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door.

  She smiled at him. “You knocked!”

  He gave her a wry smile in return, sat down in the same chair that he had used when he first saw her.

  “We did well today.”

  “You did well today.”

  “You were a great help.”

  “No. I was pathetic.”

  “Merely a lack of experience.”

  “It was your idea, Van Heerden. Your plan. And it worked.”

  He was quiet for a moment, enjoying the praise.

  “Do you really think Powell is American Secret Service?”

  “Something like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Regular consular people don’t do things like that. They don’t walk in and offer to assist with a crime investigation. They are reactive, polite, careful not to interfere in household affairs. And if there was a real need to help, they work through official channels.”

  “He looks like someone’s uncle.”

  “They all do.”

  “Except for the two from Military Intelligence.”

  He smiled at her. “That’s true.”

  “Everything for tomorrow is organized. I’m meeting Mrs. de Jager in Bloemfontein and she is flying back with me.”

  “You asked her about the things she has to bring?”

  “I did. She will.”

  “Thank you. There’ll be publicity again. I spoke to the Cape Times and the Argus. Die Burger will also place a follow-up. Just that we’ve received information that we’re processing. And eTV…”

  “I’ll bring Wilna van As up to date. On my way home.”

  “Good.”

  She nodded. “Zatopek,” she said softly, almost experimentally.

  He grinned. “Yes?”

  “There is something serious I have to discuss with you.”

  He put on the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, for violin, viola, and orchestra, turned up the sound, the sweet, triumphant notes filling his dark house and blotting out the howling northwester. He ate leftovers, spaghetti and then the tangy chicken livers, sitting in his battered armchair, notes on the table in front of him.

  Hope wanted him to hand over the case to the police.

  He had refused. And dished up excuses. They worked on hundreds of cases at once. He had focus. They had procedures and restraints; he was free. If they were so good, they would have made the breakthrough.

  “Please,” she had said again. She was scared, he could see that, scared of the sudden twists, the strange groups involved, scared of the possibility that a psychopath called Bushy was going to get them.

  He had refused.

  Because he had to.

  She couldn’t concentrate on the book.

  She put it back on the bedside table and leaned back against the cushions.

  Wilna van As had cried again. Out of gratitude. In anticipation of the meeting with Carolina de Jager the following day. From fear of the skeletons of the past. From longing for her Johannes Jacobus Smit, who had become Rupert de Jager, someone whom she didn’t know.

  “Would you like to spend the night with me?” Hope had asked, looking at the large, cold house.

  “No,” Wilna van As said.

  Hope had stayed as long as she could, until the other woman had realized and said she should go, tomorrow was going to be a long day.

  And underlying it all was the knowledge that couldn’t be ignored.

  Something had changed today. Between her and Zatopek van Heerden. Between them.

  They had laughed together, heartily and honestly, even exuberantly, when she had sworn—goodness gracious, where had that word come from? She hadn’t known she had it in her, but he had laughed and looked at her and in that moment he was someone else, all the anger, the unapproachability, suddenly gone.

  And he had knocked. And spoken to her calmly. When she had shared her fear, when she had said that the police should take over.

  Something had changed today…

  There was a knock at her door and she thought it was him. She smiled—it was becoming a habit, these late-night visits—put on her dressing gown, her teddy-bear slippers, shuffled to the front door, peered responsibly through the spy hole and saw Black and White, two peas in a pod, and said, “What do you want?”

  “We have to talk, Miss Beneke.”

  “Go and talk to Van Heerden—he’s in charge of the case.”

  “He works for you, Miss Beneke.” Suddenly “Miss Beneke”; this morning it had been nothing, simply arrogance. She sighed, unlocked the door.

  They smiled politely at her, walked into the living room. She followed.

  “Sit down,” she said. They sat down next to each other on the couch. She sat in the chair.

  “Pretty place,” said Black with forced appreciation. White nodded his agreement. Hope said nothing.

  “Miss Beneke, we were a trifle impetuous this morning,” White said feelingly.

  “Thoughtless,” said Black.

  “We don’t often work with civilians,” said White.

  “Out of practice,” said Black.

  “We appreciate the work you’ve done,” said White.

  “Unbelievable,” said Black.

  “But we would be neglecting our duty if we didn’t warn you that there are a number of very dangerous people involved.”

  “Psychopathic murderers,” said Black. “People who kill without compunction. People who could do the South African government a great deal of harm. And still wish to do so. And we’re a young democracy.”

  “We can’t afford it,” said White.

  “We don’t want to expose you to the danger,” said Black. “It’s our task to keep you safe.”

  “To contain the war to the front.”

  “As we understand it, you’re looking for a will.”

  “A noble crusade.”

  “If we promise, on behalf of the state, to find the document when all those involved are under control…”

  “We want to ask if you at least won’t defer the investigation.”

  “Until all danger has been removed.”

  “Purely for your own safety.”

  “And the security of our young democracy.”

  “Please.”

  She looked at them. They looked at her expectantly, on the edge of the couch, two large, powerful men with impressive jaws and shoulders, fighting hard against natures that usually barked orders, and she suddenly wanted to laugh, with the same exuberance she had shared with Van Heerden, and in that moment she knew why he hadn’t wanted to hand the case to either the police or Military Intelligence, understood the change in him, and she said: “No, thank you, thank you very much, we appreciate it and I’m sure our young democracy appreciates it, but there is one problem attached to handing you the case, which makes it impossible.”

  “What?” they said in unison.

  “If you’re so serious about protecting us all, why wasn’t Bushy Schlebusch put behind bars a long time ago?”

  Rupert de Jager and Bushy Schlebusch and another. Members of Military Intelligence? The Three Executioners? The Wet Work Trio? The fingers that had pulled the trigger on behalf of an obscure section deep in the Department of Defence? Richly rewarded for Mission Impossible? Paid in American dollars? Go and shoot so-and-so of
the ANC or the PAC in Lusaka or London or Paris, boys, and we’ll drown you in dollars.

  Go and plant a bomb?

  Hell, every Truth and Reconciliation Commission dossier was a clue in this affair.

  “Another,” who spoke to Hope and said they had been together in ’76. Together where? To do what?

  And now that the graves had opened and the ghosts were walking, Military Intelligence and the Yanks were scurrying round like trapped rats.

  Where in hell did the Americans fit into this puzzle? The M16? The dollars? Was the target of the Deadly Trio an American one? Lend us a small team from your abundant secret army to eliminate dictator A in South American country B, and we’ll help you to bust a few sanctions. The Yanks as guarantors? The great joint struggle against Communism sometimes made for strange bedfellows.

  Or were the Americans on the receiving end of elimination?

  He stared at the words, the squares, the timetable, in front of him.

  De Jager, Schlebusch, another. Together in ’76. And in the eighties De Jager came back with a new name. Had Military Intelligence provided him with the new identity? Start a new life, take your dollars, and keep your mouth shut.

  And then Bushy Schlebusch’s dollars were finished and he brought his M16 and his blowtorch to fetch more?

  Still too many questions.

  But actually none of it really mattered.

  Schlebusch mattered: Schlebusch had the will. And the dollars and the M16.

  What mattered was how they were going to find Schlebusch.

  And he had a plan.

  His telephone rang.

  “Van Heerden.”

  “Military Intelligence was here,” Hope Beneke said.

  “At your home?”

  “They want us to defer the investigation so that we can protect our young democracy,” she said. “And ourselves.”

  “That’s a new approach.”

  “They were very polite.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy for them.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said no.”

  He did the dishes and thought about Hope Beneke. Full of surprises. Idealistic, naive, loyal, temperamental, straight, honest, not beautiful but sexy, despite everything, sexy. What would it be like to hold those neat buttocks, to cup his hands around them and to enter her? What would she be like in bed, naive? Or would the same driving force that had brought her to speak to him about beating up the doctor, the same depths that could make the red mark of anger glow…

  An erection grew against the edge of the sink.

  Light falling through his windows made him look up.

  At this time of night? A car door slammed, he frowned, dried his hands, walked to the door, it opened, and the wind blew in Kara-An, tight black sweater, nipples erect from the cold, black trousers, high heels. She slammed the door behind her, mouth scarlet and wide. “I came to fetch a progress report,” holding out a bottle of champagne.

  “That’s not what you came for.”

  She looked at him with a small half smile. “You know me.”

  “Yes.”

  They were a step away from each other.

  “Take me,” she said, her eyes darkening.

  He looked at the nipples, didn’t move.

  “Take me. If you can.”

  34.

  I found his name among hundreds of others.

  I dug, prospected for weeks in the register of every sexual offender between 1976 and 1978 who had served a jail sentence. And found his name in the lists of comparisons that decorated my wall.

  Victor Reinhardt Simmel.

  It was a fleck of gold in the gray ore of information, but it didn’t show up immediately and brightly; it was almost invisible. I listed every one questioned in each of the murders. In the investigation into the death of the twenty-one-year-old waitress in Carletonville, there had been a Victor Reinhardt Simmel. Short notes, a group of regular guests in the restaurant where she worked were questioned. He was there on a few occasions and she served him, among others. He denied any knowledge, expressed his sympathy. There was nothing to lift him out of the mass of other suspects.

  And eventually in the sentence register: On July 14, 1976, a Victor Reinhardt Simmel was jailed for three years in the Randfontein Magistrates Court on charges of indecent assault on a twenty-six-year-old librarian and possession of pornographic material. I traced the investigation and court files. Crime of opportunity: She walked home in the dusk of early evening, put her key into the lock, unlocked the door. Simmel was driving past, stopped at her garden gate, got out of the car, asked for directions in a friendly manner, suddenly grabbed her arm, and forced her into the house. She had yelled. He punched her in the face, threatened to kill her.

  The neighbor opposite was defying water restrictions during the great drought of ’76 by watering her lawn. And she saw what was happening, called her two miner boarders. They burst into the librarian’s home. Victor Reinhardt Simmel was tearing off her blouse, his forearm against her throat, her nose broken and bleeding from the punch. They dragged him away, subdued and tied him. In the meantime the neighbor had called the police.

  In his car they found pornography—Dutch magazines with explicit photographs of bondage.

  Perhaps they also found a roll of masking tape in the car. Maybe they didn’t know it was connected to any case.

  Victor Reinhardt Simmel.

  Not a miner. A technician for Deutsche Maschine, a firm that made and maintained huge industrial water pumps for the mining industry.

  There was a picture of him in the dossier of the case. Short and stocky with the innumerable scars of a war lost to acne.

  The thread between Simmel and the Masking Tape murders was slender, so terribly slender—a single cameo role in one of the murders, but it was all I had, all I needed.

  I took his photo and drove to Virginia, looking for Maria Masibuko, who would be a thirty-eight-year-old woman by now with scarred breasts and the face of a murderer stored in her memory. I didn’t find her there. They told me she had gone to Welkom. Another rumor had it that she was living in Bloemfontein. After another two weeks I traced her to a maternity clinic in Botshabelo, a nursing sister with delicate hands and the memory of pain and hate still showing in the movement of her shoulders.

  She looked at the photo, briefly, before her mouth twisted…

  “It’s him,” she said. And walked away to choke back the vomit rising in her throat.

  DAY 2

  TUESDAY, JULY 11

  35.

  He stood in the doorway, the bathroom light falling across the bed through the steam of the shower, and stared at Kara-An’s sleeping shape: the dark hair spread over the pillow, the pale skin of her shoulder and upper arm, the curve of her breast, the beautiful mouth half-open and without lipstick, the narrow white edge of her teeth visible, small, rhythmic sounds of a deep sleep in her throat. So much beauty, even now, so much beauty, the body of an angel, the face of a goddess, but the damaged gray matter lay in the skull. God, it had been wild last night. She was like an animal, a leopard trapped in her head, scratching and hissing and biting and crazy, swearing and panting—how much did she hate herself?

  He stood naked in the doorway, feeling more pain than the scratch marks and bruises on his body warranted. He had to get dressed, go to work, but the contrast between the quiet figure on the bed and the demon of last night held him captive.

  He had learned about himself last night.

  He had reached the edge and halted.

  “Hurt me,” she had said, begging, reproaching, hitting out at his face. Again and again through grinding teeth, “Hurt me,” and he could not. In the frenetic moments he had searched for the ability to do so and it wasn’t there.

  He didn’t want to hurt her; he wanted to comfort her. Despite all the aggression in him, despite all the hate and reproaches and pain.

  He had tried to draw it from his own
rage, but there was… something else. He wanted to comfort her, give her sympathy. He felt sorry for her, so infinitely sorry. What he felt was not lust but heartbreak.

  Eventually he had thrust into her and brought the act to a climax, holding and sweating while she swore at him about his impotence, his cowardice, his betrayal, until he lay on top of her, empty and tired, and the silence between them became as cold and dark as the night outside. And then he had rolled off and lain next to her, staring at the ceiling until he felt her hands soft on his chest and she had shifted her warm body close to his and fallen asleep. He thought about nothing, closing the doors of his mind.

  Hope Beneke walked to the airport building in the icy, dry cold of an early Bloemfontein morning and was amazed by the bleached grass and the bright light of the pale sun. When her eyes searched the people in the arrivals hall, she knew the tall, slender, gray-haired woman with the deeply lined face was Rupert de Jager’s mother. She walked up to her, extended her hand, and was embraced by the bony arms that hugged her against Carolina de Jager’s body.

  “I’m so pleased that you’ve come.”

  “We’re pleased that we could trace you.”

  The woman dropped her arms. “I won’t cry. You don’t have to worry.”

  “You can cry as much as you like, Mrs. de Jager.”

  “Call me Carolina. I’ve finished crying.”

  “Is there somewhere here that we can wait? Perhaps have a cup of coffee?”

  “Let’s go to town. We have lots of time. I’ll show you the waterfront.”

  “Bloemfontein has a waterfront?”

  “What do you mean? A beautiful place.”

  They walked out of the airport building, back into the cold. Carolina de Jager looked at her again. “You’re so small. For an attorney. I thought you would be a big woman.”

  He played back the answering machine’s tape, listened to the messages of the lonely, the disturbed, with the old, familiar astonishment at the damage that people carry with them. Where did Kara-An’s damage originate? Perhaps she could point a finger at others, but his was due to the dagger of his own actions, a blade that cut widely, made others bleed.