by Deon Meyer
Oh-ri-un.
Orion.
“No, no, no,” Gary had said. Not Operation Orion?
What, then?
Oh-ri-unSh…
Tiny Mpayipheli held the Rossi in both hands and stood next to the door while Van Heerden knocked, on the sixth floor of a block of flats in Observatory with a view over the mountain and Groote Schuur Hospital.
“Yes?” A male voice on the other side of the door.
“Parcel for W. A. Potgieter,” said Van Heerden, imitating the bored voice of a delivery man.
Silence.
“Get away from the door,” said Tiny.
Van Heerden stood aside, pushed his hand down inside his jacket, felt the butt of the Z88, knocking again with his other hand. “Halooo.”
The bullet holes splintered out in that nanosecond before they heard the automatic gunfire, the cheap door exploding in a rain of wooden chips. They dropped to their knees—he held the Z88 in his hand now, the other hand protectively over his eyes—then sudden silence.
“Shit,” said Tiny Mpayipheli.
They waited.
“You should have kept the Heckler and Koch.”
“Maybe.”
“And that?” Tiny nodded at the Z88.
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time,” said Tiny, and grinned.
“Is this the only door? The fire escape is in front, next to the lifts.”
“He can only get out through here.” Tiny pointed the Rossi’s barrel at the remains of the door.
“And they have the heavy artillery in there.”
“Yes, but you have your Z88.” Sarcasm.
“Anything in your Russian training for this situation?”
“Yes. I take my antitank missile out of my backpack and blow them to smithereens.”
“We need them alive.”
“Okay, scrap the missile. You’re ex-SAP. You ought to know what to do.”
“Gunfights were never my strong point.”
“I’ve heard.”
Voice from inside. “What do you want?”
“His ammunition is finished,” said Van Heerden.
“Is that a wish or a fact?”
“Do you want to bet?”
“One of your mother’s pictures that’s hanging on your wall.”
“What do I get if I’m right?”
“The Heckler and Koch.”
“Forget it.”
From inside: “What are you looking for?”
“I see you’re also hopeless with women. Your mother’s painting against a guaranteed formula for getting the attorney into bed.”
“That Russian training was thorough.”
“Come in with your hands up. Or we’ll blast you,” the voice yelled from inside the flat. From somewhere in the streets outside came the sound of the first sirens.
“He’s bluffing about the ‘us,’” said Tiny.
“You want to bet?”
“No.”
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” said Van Heerden.
Tiny sighed. “Fire away.”
“I was a policeman for a long time, but I never had the opportunity to do the kick-open-the-door-and-rush-in-shooting bit. And to do it for the first time scares me more than you can ever imagine.”
Voice inside: “We’re counting to ten.”
“All I need. A cowardly whitey.”
“We going in?”
“Yes,” said Tiny. “You first.”
“Fucking cowardly Xhosa,” said Zatopek van Heerden, and then he moved, rose from the crouch, shoulder first, and burst through the door.
52.
He first used a red ribbon because it was there, in the prostitute’s hair: he picked her up in his Volkswagen Kombi in Sea Point and drove up to Signal Hill, where he strangled her after oral sex. He dumped her body, spread-eagled her arms and legs, put her in the middle of the road, his “signature,” his statement that she meant nothing to him, that he despised her and her kind. And when the media focused on the red ribbon, he bought a roll of it at Hymie Sachs in Goodwood and either strangled or decorated the next sixteen of his victims with a meter of red ribbon. He broke the ribbon-strangulation habit with the thirteenth and used his hands, but the red strip was still tied around the necks of his spread-eagled victims. His mocking message to Nagel and me. His mark of superiority. His relishing of the media spotlight.
He sent a letter to the Cape Times after the third murder, when they had described him as the Red Ribbon Murderer. “I AM NOT A MURDERER. I AM AN EXECUTIONUR,” he had written, bad spelling and all, in block letters. And then he became the Executioner, the criminal whom I hated more than anyone else in my whole career because he kept Nagel in the Cape and me away from Nonnie.
The hunt placed enormous tension on my partnership with Nagel. The pressure, because of media interest, was unbearable toward the end, when he so unexpectedly uttered his warning about his wife.
In all the previous cases that we had investigated, the competition between us had been amiable, always on the safe side of the border drawn by mutual respect. But it seemed as if Nagel used Red Ribbon as a measure of who deserved Nonnie. Like those head-butting rams that have to prove their genetic superiority in order to mate with the ewe, he tackled me in my one area of speciality, the serial killer, and questioned and refuted my every profile, every possible statement, every conceivable judgment, forecast, and trapping method.
With the first victim I had already forecast that he would kill again: all the signs were there.
“Bullshit,” said Nagel.
But with the second it was he who shared his “theory” with the media: “We have a serial killer here. Ever since the first murder I have had no doubt about it.”
As the death toll grew, as the media hysteria increased, as the pressure from the commanding officer and top structure became stronger, the friendship and professional partnership between Nagel and me crumbled. His criticism of me and his passing remarks became personal, disparaging, cutting. The one big difference between us, the fact that I could never get used to the heartlessness and the violence of murder scenes, the fact that I was constantly shocked and upset, evoked no sympathy, merely scorn, during the months when I vomited again or, with a pale face and shaking hands, tried not to. He deliberately emphasized his own icy approach, the detachment he had built up over the years. But now the gloves were off. “You don’t have the heart of a policeman,” he said, with so much disapproval that it cut me like a knife. It was only my conscience, my guilty, guilty conscience, and the quiet knowledge that Nonnie was mine, not his, that prevented an all-or-nothing confrontation, that allowed me to give way, even when I knew with absolute certainty that he was wrong about the methods needed to stop Red Ribbon.
I’ll always believe that we could have caught the murderer sooner if it hadn’t been for the dispute between us. The opportunities slid past one by one while Nagel fought for dominance.
And eventually he solved the case with forensic evidence from tire tracks and the fiber of the camper’s carpets. “Not your psychological shit,” he’d said on that last evening when we were on our way to make the arrest.
Lord, and that last evening had started so well.
53.
Meet me at Café Paradiso on Kloof Street in ten minutes,” the man on the telephone said to Hope.
“How will I know you?”
“I’m wearing a brown leather jacket.” And then the line went dead. She replaced the receiver. “Thank you so much,” she said to the Taiwanese woman, and ran out the door.
Nougat O’Grady swore softly and ran after her.
“Have you heard of fat guys who are incredibly nimble on their feet?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, I’m not one of them.”
“Who sent you?” Bester Brits had asked Gary, and the answer was “Oh-ri-un,” and he didn’t want to hear it because his head was filled with the past and then he began to thin
k, think, think, and here he was, with the telephone book, his finger moving down the list: Orion Motors, Orion Printers, Orion Telecom Corporation, Orion Solutions, Orion Wool & Crafts, all printed in heavy black letters except for Orion Printers and Orion Solutions.
Oh-ri-unSh…
All obvious business enterprises except Orion Solutions.
Oh-ri-unSh…
Just the name of the firm and the number, 462-555, no address, no fax number, nothing. They had kept the name. Were they that arrogant, that challenging?
Bester Brits dialed the number of Orion Solutions.
“Leave your name and number. We’ll call back.”
Not exactly client-friendly.
He dialed another number.
“Sergeant Pienaar.”
“Pine, it’s Bester Brits.”
“Colonel!”
“I’m looking for an address for a telephone number. I don’t want to go through the channels.”
“Give me five minutes, Colonel.”
He leaned back. Rank had its advantages.
He was wrong about the ammunition: the R4 stuttered out as he rolled into the flat. He kept on rolling, the bullets stitching a row behind him, and he shot wildly, one, two, three shots with the Z88, hopelessly wide of the mark, fear injecting adrenaline, chunks of plaster and wood, dust and splinters, earsplitting noise. Tiny Mpayipheli’s Rossi .357 Magnum thundered once and then everything was quiet and he rolled to a halt behind the cheap sitting-room chair, his heart beating, blood hammering through his body, his hands shaking.
“He lied about the ‘us,’” said Tiny.
Van Heerden got up, shook the dust from his clothes, saw the man, the top of his head shot away by the heavy-caliber pistol. The sirens were close now, loud and clear. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We must be out of here before the police arrive.”
He shoved his hands into the dead man’s pockets—the fifth corpse today, he thought—revulsion against the bits of brain and bone and blood rising in his throat. He found nothing, looked round at the spartan flat, empty pizza boxes on the melamine kitchen counter, empty beer bottles on the coffee table, empty coffee mugs in the sink, two small boxes of ammunition on the floor, one open.
“I’ll choose my painting later, thank you.”
Mpayipheli walked to the bedroom while Van Heerden jerked open drawers and cupboards in the kitchen.
Nothing.
“Have a look at this,” Tiny called from a bedroom. He went through: R1 and R5 attack rifles leaning in a bunch in a corner, clothes strewn on the bed, two-way radios on the floor. Tiny stood in front of a cupboard, staring at an A4 sheet taped to the door, a printout from a dot-matrix printer.
Shift schedule:
00:00-06:00: Degenaar and Steenkamp
06:00-12:00: Schlebusch and Player
12:00-18:00: Weber and Potgieter
18:00-00:00: Goldman and Nixon
Sirens in front of the block. He knew the police procedure: they would come up the fire escape, two would cover the lift on the ground floor. He didn’t know how many uniforms there were by now, didn’t want to speak to the police now—this was no time to be caught up in the machine. He jerked the paper off the cupboard door. “Come on, got to go,” he said, and walked, Tiny following him, taking one last look at the body and the damage, out of the door. He pressed the call button for the lift, and the door opened immediately. They walked in, pressed P for the parking garage. As the door closed and the lift moved, he held his breath: it mustn’t stop on the ground floor.
“Your pistol,” Tiny said softly.
“What?”
“You can put it away now.”
He gave an embarrassed grin and looked at the lights above the door, GROUND FLOOR, which flashed once, the lift moving, PARKING GARAGE. His gaze fell on the handwritten note against a side panel of the lift.
Two-bedroom flat for rent in this building.
Call Maria at Southern Estate Agents,
283 Main Road.
When the door opened, he took the note down. They walked out. He looked at his watch: 14:17. Why didn’t Hope’s contact telephone? Why didn’t Hope phone?
Sergeant Pienaar’s call was two minutes longer than the promised five. “The number is registered in the name of Orion Solutions, sir. The address is 78 Solan Street, in Gardens.”
“Solan?”
“I don’t pick ’em, Colonel, I just dig ’em out.”
“Thanks, Pine, you’re a star.”
“Pleasure, Colonel.”
Bester Brits put the pen down and rubbed his hands over his face with slow, rhythmic movements, softly, soothingly, comfortingly. Tired, he thought, so tired, so many years of searching.
Another dead end?
He would have a look.
Alone.
He walked out of the office. It was suddenly cold outside, the northwester tugging at his clothes, the fine rain, preceding the cold front, sifting down. He was hardly aware of it.
They wouldn’t be so arrogant.
Orion Solutions.
The hatred was all-encompassing.
As usual there was no parking on Kloof Street, so she parked the BMW on a side street. She wanted to get Zatopek van Heerden on the cell phone but decided against it. First she must check to see whether the caller was here. She took her umbrella from behind the seat, handed it to O’Grady.
“Be a gentleman,” she said.
“No running?” He took the umbrella from her and got out.
“No running,” she said.
They walked from the corner to Café Paradiso, she and the fat detective under the umbrella, the rain gusting.
“He’s not expecting someone else with me,” she said.
“Tough shit,” said O’Grady. “It’s my case.”
“He might run when he sees you.”
“Then you’ll have to catch him. You’re the fast one in this little team.”
They walked up the stairs, the wooden tables outside empty, the light inside shining through the windows. He opened the door for her, shook out the umbrella. Her eyes searched the room, saw the man sitting alone at a table, cigarette in his hand, brown leather jacket, late thirties, gold-rimmed glasses, dark hair, black mustache. He looked up, saw her, his face tense, and he half rose, nervously stubbing out the cigarette as she walked up to the table.
“I’m Hope Beneke.” Extending her hand.
“Miller,” he said, and shook her hand. She felt the dampness of the sweat on his palm, saw the wedding ring on his finger. “Sit down.”
“This is Inspector O’Grady of Murder and Robbery,” she said.
He looked at Nougat, confused. “What’s he doing here?”
“It’s my case now. As a matter of fact, it’s always been my case.”
They sat down at the table. A waiter approached with menus.
“We don’t want anything,” said Miller. “We’re not staying long.”
“I’ll have one,” said O’Grady, and took a menu. “You can bring me a Diet Coke in the meanwhile. A big one.”
“Is Miller your real name?” Hope asked when the waiter had gone.
“No,” he said.
“Are you Venter? Or Vergottini?”
“I have a wife and children.”
“It says here they have a Mediterranean buffet,” said O’Grady from behind the menu.
“Are you going to publish my photo as well?”
“Not if you cooperate.”
He was visibly relieved. “I’ll tell you all I can, but then you’ll leave me alone?” A begging question, hopeful.
“That depends on your innocence, sir.”
“No one is innocent in this thing.”
“Why don’t you tell us about it?”
He looked at them, looked at the door, across the room, eyes never still. She saw the sweat glistening in the light of the restaurant, small, silver drops on his forehead.
“Hold your horses,” said Nougat O’Grady. “I want to h
ave a look at the buffet before you start spilling the beans.” He hauled himself upright.
The sniper’s bullet that was meant for Miller punched through the window of the restaurant and plowed through the fat policeman’s body between the fourth and fifth ribs, nicked a corner of the right lung, went through the right ventricle of the heart, exited through the breastbone, and buried itself in a wooden beam above the bar in the center of the restaurant. There was no sound of a shot, only the window shattering and O’Grady being thrown across the table by the impact of the bullet, his considerable weight smashing the table under him. He fell to the floor in a welter of broken wood and blood but he was unaware of it all.
Miller was the first to react. He was up and running when the first screams erupted, not toward the front door but in the opposite direction, the kitchen. Hope sat transfixed, paralyzed. The breaking table had injured her knee, and O’Grady had fallen half across her. She looked at the policeman’s face, the staring eyes.
“God,” she said softly, looking confusedly at him, at Miller’s retreating back, at the window, hearing screaming tires outside. She half rose, saw a white panel van driving down Kloof Street, and her legs shook. She reached for her handbag, she had to stop Miller, the restaurant staff were hypnotized, bug-eyed, and Miller had disappeared. She ran after him, shoved her hand into her handbag, looking for the SW99, stumbled, her legs shaking, ran on.
“We want to know who rents 612 Rhodes House,” Van Heerden said to Maria Nzululuwazi of Southern Estate Agents.
“You’re from the police,” she said knowledgeably.
“It’s a murder case,” said Tiny Mpayipheli.
“Hoo,” said Maria, looking Tiny up and down and shuddering. “Wouldn’t mind being chased by you.”
“I can always arrest you.”
“What for?”
“You’re way over the beauty limit.”
“Rhodes House,” said Van Heerden.
“612,” said Tiny.
“A sweet talker,” said Maria, and tapped on the keyboard of her computer. “612 isn’t to let.”