by Deon Meyer
“Take the gun out of her mouth.” His heart jumping, Lord, he’d got her into this.
A shuffling of feet in the room behind him, the two big men circling each other.
“Now you’re going to close that door, Doctor. And if the Xhosa opens it, you must take your chances in there. And if it’s me we can negotiate again.”
“No,” he said.
“But first, to show you how serious I am, Simon is going to shoot Bester Brits. And it’s ironic, Doctor, because twenty-three years ago I shoved a Star pistol into Bester’s mouth and he survived, can you believe it? I should’ve blown his brains out and I simply shot out his teeth. But now we have more time.”
“No.”
“Simon is going to shoot Bester, and if you don’t close the door Sarge will shoot Vergottini. And then the attorney, but I don’t know how you’ll feel about that because it seems to me you can’t choose between her and Kara-An.”
The Rossi shook in his hands, with powerlessness, rage, fear.
“Shoot Brits,” Speckle barked from the warehouse behind them.
He shouted and at the same time the shot rang out. Bester Brits was thrown back, fell. He aimed the Rossi at Brits’s murderer, fired, the big weapon jerking in his hands, and missed. Simon pointed the M16 at Van Heerden.
“I’ve heard about your problem with firearms,” said Venter. “Put that thing down now and shut the door. Otherwise Beneke is next.”
He stood, paralyzed.
“Sarge, I’m counting to three. If he doesn’t do as he’s told, shoot the woman.”
Van Heerden bent slowly, put the Rossi on the floor, turned, and started to close the door.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” said Tiny Mpayipheli.
Venter laughed and then the door was closed, and he stood looking at Bester’s body lying on the floor and Simon and the M16 aimed at him and Hope’s whole body shaking and Vergottini with his eyes closed as if he was praying, and he wondered how he would get his Z88 out from above his tailbone, how he could keep down the overpowering nausea that was rising in his throat, how he was going to control his fear. And then he heard the sounds on the other side of the door, brutish cries, flesh smacking against flesh, someone hitting the wall between the two spaces with a dull thud and the building shaking, then silence. He looked down at Bester Brits’s still form, lying on his back, one arm thrust out, the blood oozing from the wound at the back of his head, the red pool slowly growing. He looked at Simon, the M16 that hadn’t moved, the black eye of Death staring at him, then more sounds from the other side, the battle starting all over again, Hope Beneke crying jerkily, her tears dripping onto the document against her neck.
“She’s a woman,” he begged the man standing in front of her. Neither the man nor his gun moved. “Don’t you have a conscience?”
He put his hand under his jacket, felt the stock of the Z88, curled his fingers around it. He didn’t stand a chance—he wouldn’t even have it out before they shot him down like a dog. Someone bellowed in the other room, someone screamed, hate and pain combined, dull blows, wood breaking, the table. How could Mpayipheli win against that brute mass?
“Please, let her go,” he said. “I’ll kneel, I’ll put my mouth around your fucking gun.” And he moved closer, the Z88 out of his belt, still behind his back, still under the jacket.
“Stand still,” said the one in front of Hope, the one Venter had called Sarge.
He stopped. “Are you in charge?” he asked Sarge.
“Just stand still. Then she’ll be safe. You, too.” The man didn’t even look at him, simply stared at Hope’s face down the barrel of his firearm.
“She’s a woman,” he said.
Heaving, grunting, the sick sound of heavy blows to a body, an unidentifiable voice that went “Hu, hu, hu, hu.” He didn’t know how much longer he could stand like this, the adrenaline crying out for action, reaction, movement, the total aversion to the scene in front of him, Brits, Hope, his hand clamped on the Z88, sweating. Lord, he couldn’t shoot, Lord, he mustn’t miss, the one in front of Hope first, then they must shoot him.
The awareness sank over the whole group—the three soldiers, Hope, Vergottini, Van Heerden—that it was quiet in the warehouse, the scraping of feet on the floor, the blows, the cries, suddenly silenced.
He stared at them. Simon stared at him; Sarge and the other one only had eyes for their targets.
Rain on the roof.
Silence.
Safety catch of the Z88 off, slowly, slowly, slowly, mustn’t make a sound, his fingers wet with sweat. He was going to die here today, die today, but he’d been here before, he wasn’t scared anymore, he’d already been here at the gates of death. He would dive to the right first, pistol extended, shoot, shoot Sarge away from Hope, that was all he would be able to do, and he must not miss. The silence stretched and stretched and stretched.
“What are we going to do if no one comes in?” His words hoarse, his throat dry, no saliva left.
Sarge’s eyes darted toward him, the eyes off the target for the first time, then they flashed back. He saw a drop of sweat on the man’s forehead, and something happened in his head, the panic receded: they were only human after all, they hadn’t bargained on this, they were waiting for Venter, Basson, whatever they called him.
“What do we do?” Louder, more urgently.
“Shut your fucking mouth.” Sarge’s voice echoed in the large space, uncertainly, and when he realized it, he repeated it, quietly, more in control. “Shut your mouth. Basson will come.”
“The police as well,” he lied. “You shot a detective this afternoon.”
“It was an accident. We wanted Vergottini.”
“Tell that to the judge, Sarge.”
He knew he had to keep on talking, he knew he had inserted the thin edge of the wedge, caused uncertainty.
“If we could find you, so can the police, Sarge…”
“Shut up. If you speak again, if you say one fucking word, I’ll blow away the bitch’s face.”
Sweat on everyone’s faces now despite the cold outside, the chill in the room.
What now? he wondered. What did he do now?
Rain on the roof.
Seconds ticking away. Minutes.
“Simon,” said Sarge. “You must have a look.”
Silence.
“Simon!”
“It could be a trap.”
“For fuck’s sake, Simon, after that fight?”
“Basson told us to stay here.”
“Come and take my gun.”
Indecision. Van Heerden’s eyes moved from one to the other, looking for a moment of distraction, just a moment, and then he heard something.
Not in the warehouse. Outside. In the street.
Sarge looked up—he had heard it as well—and then all hell broke loose.
The Mercedes burst through the wall, steel on steel and concrete and bricks, and then he had the Z88 out and he stood with his feet wide apart and he saw that their eyes were on the wall, all the eyes, and he shot Sarge, the one in front of Hope Beneke, saw him fall, turned the weapon, missed Simon, Jesus, not now, fired again, the barrel of the M16 angling toward him, fired again, hit him in the neck, swung the Z88, and then the lead tore through him, hot as hell, lifted him off his feet, threw him against the wall, another bullet. Where was his pistol? Fuck, it hurt, he was so tired, he looked at his chest, such small holes, why were the holes so small? So many shots in the room, so much noise, someone screamed, high and scared, Hope, it was Hope, why was it so terribly dark?
56.
I’ll tell you how one catches a fucking serial killer, Van Heerden, I’ll tell you, not with fucking theories and forecasts and personality profiles and psychological analyses, Van Heerden.” Nagel was driving, a brooding, tense spring at first, a thin man behind the steering wheel, and when we turned up on the N1 beyond the Pick ’n Pay Hypermarket in Brackenfell, he let it all out in that deep voice of his, but there was a new, sharper ed
ge to him, a deep rage, and he talked, spit flecking the windshield, Adam’s apple bobbing wildly. “I’ll tell you, you do it with fucking hard police work, that’s how—elimination, Van Heerden.” He reached his arm out and half turned and the car swerved on the freeway, I didn’t know whether I should duck, and he picked up the dossier from the back seat and threw it in my lap.
“There it is, there’s your fucking textbook—study it. I don’t have a fucking degree, Van Heerden. I grew up too poor even to imagine something like that. I had to work for everything, I didn’t have time to fuck around on a campus and leaf through little books, I had to work, shitface. I couldn’t sit and meditate and philosophize and dream up theories, and that’s how one catches a fucking serial murderer—look in there, Van Heerden, open the fucking file and look at the forensics, look at the lists of carpet fibers and car models, look at the photos of the tire treads, look at the list of retreads, look at the list of motor registrations for fucking Volkswagen Kombi campers, look how I drew a line through them, one by one, Van Heerden, while you…”
And then he was quiet for a moment, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. We drove at 160 kilometers per hour on the N1, weaving through the traffic while he carried on his tirade and I thought he wanted to write us both off, but when he was suddenly silent, when he hesitated on the dreadful brink of direct accusation, I had a momentary insight into the pain I was responsible for.
Willem Nagel knew it was his own fault that he had lost Nonnie. He knew that it was what he had done that had driven her away, made her vulnerable. That was what stopped him from shooting me or hitting me or confronting me. His own culpability.
But he didn’t want to give her to me.
Perhaps he had hated me from the start. Perhaps what I had accepted as friendly teasing had been a far more serious game for him. Perhaps the yoke of inferiority about his background, his growing years in Parow, his infertility—all of it was too heavy a burden for him to realize that I was no threat. Perhaps.
He had hidden the evidence of the carpet fibers and tire treads and registration details from me like a jealous, selfish child who didn’t want to share his toys. This was the first I had heard of it and it made me realize how much all of it must have meant to him. To prove his superiority.
If he couldn’t keep Nonnie…
I said nothing. I didn’t open the dossier. I simply stared ahead.
It was only when we had passed the Green Point Stadium that he spoke again, in the same tone of voice, as though there had been no interruption. “Tonight we’ll see what kind of a policeman you are. Tonight it’s only you and me and George Charles Hamlyn, the owner of a Volkswagen Kombi camper and a fucking long piece of red ribbon. We’ll see, we’ll see…”
In Sea Point he parked near the ocean, took out his Z88, and let the magazine drop into his hand, then shoved it back and took off the safety catch and walked in the direction of Main Road with me following, sheepishly checking my weapon as well. Suddenly he walked into the foyer of a block of flats, pressed the button for the lift, not looking at me. The door opened and we walked in and we rose in silence and the only thought I had was that this wasn’t the way policemen went to fetch a suspect. He got out on a floor somewhere, high up—you could see the mountain, Signal Hill, and the lights against Table Mountain—and he went ahead and stopped at a door and said, “Knock, Van Heerden, then you fetch him. Show me you’re a fucking policeman,” and I knocked loudly and urgently, my pistol in my right hand, my left hand against the door.
I knocked again.
No reaction.
We didn’t hear the lift doors opening or closing. We merely sensed the movement and looked back and saw him in the long passage and his eyes widened and he spun round and ran, with Nagel after him and me behind Nagel, down the fire escape, five, six steps at a time.
I fell, somewhere on the way down, lost my footing and fell, banging my head. My pistol went off, a single shot, and Nagel laughed without looking round, a scornful laugh as he descended the stairs faster and faster. I got up, there was no time to think about the pain, down, down, down, ground level at last. He was up the street, we followed him, three men in a life-or-death race, and he ran up an alleyway and Nagel rushed round the corner and came to a sudden halt and then I stopped, too, almost bumping into Nagel, and when I looked up, George Charles Hamlyn stood there with a gun in his hand, aiming at us, and Nagel squeezed the trigger of his Z88 and there was nothing, only silence. He squeezed again, swore, a nanosecond that stretched into eternity. I aimed my pistol at Hamlyn and saw him aiming at Nagel and my head said, Let him shoot, let him shoot Nagel, wait, just wait one small second, just wait. My head, dear God, it came out of my head, and then he fired and Nagel fell, two shots as fast as light, and then the barrel of Hamlyn’s gun swung toward me and I shot and I couldn’t stop shooting, but it was too late, it was so fucking completely too late.
57.
He was aware that he was alive long before he regained consciousness, floating between dream and hallucination. His father, lunch box in his hand, walking with him through Stilfontein, long conversations, his father’s voice low and sympathetic, his father’s smile indescribably happy. Hand in hand with his father until he drifted away again to a blackness without awareness, and out on the other side only to experience the blood and the death of Nagel and Brits and Steven Mzimkhulu and Tiny Mpayipheli and Hope Beneke, the shock and the horror, every time he hurled himself into the hail of bullets, every time it passed through him, every time he screamed uselessly, his cries disappearing into the mists. And then Wendy was there, Wendy and her two children and her husband—“Oh, Zet, you’re missing so much”—and his mother, he knew his mother was there, around him, with him. He heard her voice, heard her singing, it was like being in the womb again, and then he was awake and the sun shone and it was late afternoon and his mother was with him. She held his hand and the tears ran down his cheeks.
“Ma,” he said, but he could barely hear his own voice.
“I knew you were there somewhere,” she said.
And then he was gone again, to dark, peaceful depths. His mother was there, his mother was there, and then he came back slowly, up, up, up, a nurse bending over him, shifting the hanging drip. He smelled her faint perfume, saw the roundness of her breasts under the white uniform, and then he was there, awake, his chest hurting, his body heavy.
“Hallo,” said the nurse.
He made a noise that didn’t quite work.
“Welcome back. Your mother went to have breakfast. She’ll be back in a moment.”
He just looked at her, at the pretty lines of her hands, the fine blond hairs on her supple arms. He was alive, looking at the sunlight through the window.
“We were worried about you,” the nurse said. “But now you’re going to be okay.”
Be okay.
“Do you have any pain?”
He nodded slightly, his head heavy.
“I’ll get you something for it,” she said, and he closed his eyes and opened them and his mother was there again.
“My child,” she said, and he saw tears in her eyes. “Rest, everything is fine. All you have to do is rest.” And then he slept again.
Wilna van As stood next to his mother. “I just want to say thank you. The doctor said I’m only allowed a few minutes—I only want to say thank you very much.” He could see she was uncomfortable, self-conscious. He tried to smile at her, hoped his face was cooperating, and then she repeated, “Thank you,” turned, took a step, turned back, came to the bed, and kissed him on the cheek and walked out quickly and there were uncontrollable tears in his eyes.
“I bought this for you,” his mother said softly. She had a portable CD player in her hands. “I know you’ll need it.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
He had to stop crying. Hell, what was it with all the crying?
“Never mind,” his mother said, “never mind.”
He wanted to raise his hand to wipe away th
e tears, but it was anchored somewhere under drip needles and blankets.
“And the CDs.” She had a handful. “I just grabbed some from your cupboard. I didn’t know what you’d want to listen to.”
“Agnus Dei,” he said.
She looked through the CDs, found the right one, slid it in, put the small earphones in his ears, and pressed the PLAY button. The music filled his ears, his head, his soul. He looked at his mother. “Thank you,” he mouthed, saw her reply, “It’s a pleasure,” and then she kissed his forehead and sat down and stared out of the window and he closed his eyes and drank in the music, every note, every single blessed note.
In the late afternoon he woke again.
“There’s someone to see you,” his mother said.
He nodded. She walked to the door, spoke to someone there, then came in followed by Tiny Mpayipheli. A bandage round his head covered one entire ear and he walked somewhat stiffly in his dressing gown and hospital pajamas. Relief flowed through him when he saw that the big man was alive, but the bandage around his head, which looked like a turban set awry, as if he was doing an Arab parody, made him want to laugh. There was something about Tiny—an awareness that he looked absurd, a self-consciousness that deepened the humor—and the laughter welled up. He shook, the pain of his wounds sharp and urgent, but he couldn’t stop himself or the sounds emerging from his mouth. Mpayipheli stood there grinning in a sheepish way and then he laughed as well, holding his ribs where they hurt. They looked at each other, wounded and pathetic, and Joan van Heerden, standing at the door, was laughing, too.
“You don’t look so great yourself,” Tiny said.
The laughter stopped. “I dreamed you were dead.”
The black man sat down on a chair next to the bed, slowly, like an old man. “It was pretty close.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”