by Deon Meyer
‘Take your time.’
‘It’s just… it doesn’t make sense. You see, my brother…’ She stopped again, drew a breath. She looked at her hands, then, slowly, up at me. Emotion shone in her eyes, her hands made a small hopeless gesture. ‘Mr Lemmer, he died …’
It was the sum of her body language, her choice of words and sudden change of gear which triggered the alarm in my head. As if she had practised this phrase, this offer. There was the tiny flicker of manipulation, as if she wished to distract my attention from the facts on the table. It only made me wonder: why should that be necessary?
Emma le Roux would not be the first client to blatantly lie about a threat with that little frown of absolute sincerity. Not the first to embroider misty eyed, or exaggerate in order to justify the presence of The Bodyguard. People lie. For a million reasons. Merely because they can, sometimes. This was one of the confirming phenomena of Lemmer’s First Law: Don’t get involved. It was also one of the primary sources of Lemmer’s Second Law: Trust nobody.
3
She recovered quickly; I had to concede that. When she received no response, she shrugged off the emotion with a shake of her head and said, ‘My brother’s name was Jacobus Daniël le Roux …’
She said he disappeared in 1986. Her sentences were less fluent now, her narrative cursory, as if the details were a fountain from which she dared not drink. She had been fourteen at the time; Jacobus had been twenty. He was some kind of temporary game ranger, one of a few soldiers on compulsory military service who volunteered to help the Parks Board in the battle against elephant poaching in the Kruger Park. And then he just disappeared. Later they found signs of a skirmish with ivory poachers, cartridge casings and blood and the remains of the campsite the poachers had left behind in their haste. They searched and tracked for two weeks, until the only meaningful conclusion was reached: Jacobus and his black assistant had been killed in the confrontation, and the poachers had taken their bodies with them out of fear for the reaction they would cause.
‘It’s been more than twenty years, Mr Lemmer … It’s a long time, you see. That’s what makes all this so difficult… Anyway, last week, on the twenty-second, something happened that I haven’t mentioned to the police …’
That Saturday evening, just past seven, she had been in the second bedroom of her house. She had fitted it out as an office with a built-in desk, filing cabinets and bookshelves. There was a television set and a stationary exercise bicycle and a felt notice-board with a few happy social photos plus sober newspaper clippings from the business pages affirming her success as a brand consultant. Emma was busy on her laptop, examining spread-sheets of statistics that required concentration. She was vaguely aware of the TV news headlines, which brought on only a feeling of déjà vu. President Mbeki and the members of his alliance were at loggerheads, a suicide bomb in Baghdad, African leaders complaining about G8 conditions for debt relief.
Later she could not recall what it was that made her look up. Perhaps she had just finished a graph and needed to shift her focus for a moment, perhaps it was pure coincidence. Once her attention was fixed on the TV screen, it was only seconds before a photograph appeared. She heard the newsreader say, ‘… involved in a shooting incident at Khokovela near the Kruger National Park in which a traditional healer and three local men died. The remains of fourteen protected and endangered vultures were found at the scene.’
The photograph appeared in black and white. A white man in his early forties stared deadpan at the camera, as people do when ID photographs are taken.
He looks like Jacobus would have. It was her abrupt, instinctive thought, purely an observation, and a touch of … nostalgia, almost.
‘The Limpopo police are searching for a Mr Jacobus de Villiers, also known as Cobus, an employee of an animal hospital at Klaserie, to help them with their enquiries. Anyone with information can contact the police station at Hoedspruit …’
She shook her head. She grimaced. Coincidence.
The newsreader moved on to commodity prices and she returned her attention to the computer screen and the large amount of work awaiting her. She drew the pointer over a block of data. She selected the graph icon.
What would Jacobus have looked like at… forty, would he have been forty this year? Her memories of his features were based mostly on the photographs in her parents’ home; her own recollection was less reliable. But she did remember her brother’s incredible intensity, his spirit, and his overwhelming personality.
She turned the graph into multicoloured towers of data meant to bring insight about sales trends in relation to the competition.
Coincidence. Strange that the TV photo man should also be called Jacobus.
She selected more blocks of data.
Jacobus was not such a common name.
She needed to make a pie graph of this, with wedges of market share to demonstrate that her client’s salad dressing was the slow horse, last across the line. The problem was hers to solve.
The remains of fourteen protected and endangered vultures were found at the scene.
That would have upset Jacobus.
She made an error compiling the graph and clicked her tongue at herself. Coincidence, pure chance. If you absorbed a thousand pieces of information every day for twenty years, it would happen at least once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. The numbers would conspire to tease you with possibilities.
She suppressed this vein of thought for nearly two hours, until she had processed all the data. She checked for new emails and turned off her computer. She fetched a clean towel from the linen cupboard and climbed on the exercise bicycle, cell phone in hand. She read SMS’s, listened to her messages. She pedalled systematically harder, watched the television absent minded, channel-surfing with the remote.
She wondered how much like Jacobus the photo really was. She wondered about her ability to recognise him. Imagine if he hadn’t died and walked in here now? What would her father have said about that news item? What work would Jacobus be doing if he were alive? How would he have responded when faced with fourteen dead rare vultures?
More than once she forced her thoughts away to other things, plans for tomorrow, preparations for a few days at Hermanus for Christmas, but Jacobus came back to haunt her again and again. Just minutes after ten o’clock, she dug into one of her cupboards and brought out two albums. Swiftly flipping through one, not dwelling on the pictures of her parents, or the happy family groups. She was looking for a particular photograph of Jacobus wearing his bush hat.
She removed it, put it aside and studied it.
Memories. It took considerable willpower to suppress them. Did he look like the man on TV?
Suddenly she was sure. She took the photo to her study and dialled enquiries to get the number of the police station in Hoed-spruit. She looked at the photo again. Doubt crept back. She called the Lowveld number. She just wanted to ask whether they were sure it was Jacobus de Villiers and not Jacobus le Roux. That was all. Just so she could get this idea out of her head and enjoy Christmas without the frustration of longing for her deceased family, all of them, Pa and Ma and Jacobus.
Eventually, she spoke to an inspector. She apologised. She had no information, didn’t mean to waste his time. The man on TV looked like someone she knew, also called Jacobus. Jacobus le Roux. She stopped then, so he could react.
‘No,’ said the inspector with the exaggerated patience of someone who handles a lot of weird phone calls. ‘He is De Villiers.’
‘I know he is De Villiers now, but his name might have once been Le Roux.’
The patience diminished. ‘How can that be? He’s been here all his life. Everybody knows him.’
She apologised and thanked him and ended the call. At least now she knew.
She went to sleep with the longing unstilled, as though her losses had been renewed after all these years.
‘And then, yesterday afternoon, I was standing outside with the man who was replacing my front door.
The sergeant, the policeman, had found someone from Hanover Park, a carpenter. I heard the phone ring in the study. When I picked it up there was static on the line, I couldn’t hear very well, I thought he said “Miss Emma?” It sounded like a black man. When I said “yes”, he said something that sounded like “Jacobus”. I said I couldn’t hear him. Then he said “Jacobus says you must…” and I said I couldn’t hear, but he didn’t repeat it. I asked “Who is this?” but the line went dead …’
For a moment she drifted off in her thoughts, her focus far away, then she came back, turned her head to look at me and said, ‘I’m not even sure that’s what he said. The call was so short.’ She was speaking more rapidly, as if she were in a rush to finish. ‘I drove over here last night. When Carel heard the story …’
She left it at that. She wanted a response from me, an indication that I understood, an assurance that I would protect her from everything. This was her moment of buyer’s remorse, like someone who has bought a new car and reads the advertisement again. I am familiar with it, this moment when you commit yourself to the unwritten part of the contract that says ‘I accept unconditionally’.
I nodded my head sagely and said, ‘I understand. I’m sorry …’ and made a semicircle with my hands to show that I included everything – her loss, her pain, her dilemma.
There was a short silence between us, the agreement sealed. She expected action now, some sort of guidance.
‘The first thing I must do is inspect the house, inside and out.’
‘Ah, of course,’ she said, and we rose.
‘But we’re only staying here for one night, Mr Lemmer.’
‘Oh.’
‘I have to know what’s going on, Mr Lemmer. It… I find it all so disturbing. I can’t just sit here and wonder. Is it OK for us to travel? Can you travel with me? Because I’m going to the Lowveld tomorrow.’
4
It was dark outside, but the street lights were bright. I walked around the house. It was no fortress. There was burglar-proofing on the ground floor only, subtle enough not to offend the aesthetics. The weakest point was the sliding glass doors that opened on to the big veranda overlooking the sea. Tuscan pillars, corners and protuberances offered four or five alternatives to access the windows on the first and second storeys.
Inside, I knew, was the usual alarm system with motion sensors and a connection to a local private security firm. Their blue-and-white sign was prominently displayed beside the garage. It was holiday home security, designed as an optimistic deterrent and to keep insurance premiums down.
The house was about three years old. I wondered what had been here before, what did they knock down to build this excess and splendour, and what that had cost.
Lemmer’s Law of Rich Afrikaners: If a Rich Afrikaner can show off, he will.
The first thing a Rich Afrikaner buys is bigger boobs for his wife. The second thing a Rich Afrikaner buys is an expensive pair of dark glasses (with brand name prominently displayed), which he only removes when it is totally dark. It serves to create the first barrier between himself and the poor. ‘I can see you, but you can’t see me any more.’ The third thing the Rich Afrikaner buys is a double-storey house in the Tuscan style. (And the fourth is a vanity number plate for his car, with his name or the number of his rugby jersey.) How much longer will it be before we outgrow our inherent feeling of inferiority? Why can’t we be subtle when Mammon smiles on us? Like our rich English-speaking compatriots whose nose-in-the-air snootiness so offends me, but who at least bear their wealth in style. I stood in the dark and speculated about Carel-the-owner. Apparently he was already a client of Jeanette’s. The Rich Afrikaner does not use bodyguards, only home security – high fences, expansive alarms, panic buttons, and neighbourhood security companies with armed response. What requirements did Carel have for protection?
I had my answer at the dining table, later.
When I entered the room, most were seated at the big table. Emma did the introductions. She was apparently the only one who was not part of the family.
‘Carel van Zyl,’ said the patriarch at the head of the table, his handshake unnecessarily firm, as if he needed to prove something. He was a big man in his fifties, with fleshy lips and broad shoulders, but the good life had already left its mark on his cheeks and midriff. There were three younger couples – Carel’s children and their spouses. One of them was Henk, who had met me at the door. He was seated beside his wife, a pretty blonde with a baby on her lap. There were four other grandchildren, the oldest a boy of eight or nine. My seat was beside his.
Carel’s wife was tall and attractive and unbelievably well preserved. ‘Feel free to take off your jacket, Mr Lemmer,’ she said with exaggerated warmth as she placed a plate of steaming turkey on the table.
‘Mamma …’ said Carel reprovingly.
‘What?’ she asked.
He made a pistol of his hand and pushed the finger barrel down his shirt. He wanted to tell her I was wearing a firearm, and would be reluctant to show it.
‘Oh! Sorry,’ she said, as though she had committed a social blunder.
‘Come, let’s ask the blessing,’ said Carel sombrely. Everyone held hands and bowed their heads. The boy’s hand was small and sweaty in mine, his father’s cool and soft on the other side. Carel prayed with comfortable eloquence, and in bullet points, as though God were a fellow member of the board.
‘Amen’ echoed around the table. Dishes were offered, children encouraged to take vegetables. There were short silences: a secret consciousness of the stranger in their midst and a subtle insecurity about the correct form of interaction. I was a guest, but also an employee, an intruder with an interesting job. The boy watched me with unashamed curiosity. ‘Have you really got a gun?’ he asked. His mother hushed him and said, ‘Don’t mind him.’
I forked turkey on to my plate. The hostess said, ‘It’s just leftovers.’ Carel said, ‘It’s delicious, Ma.’
Someone introduced the weather forecast as a topic and conversation began to flow – plans for the next day, how the children could be kept occupied, whose turn it was to braai. Emma did not join in. Her attention was on her food, but she ate little.
I became aware of an unnatural geniality between them, despite my presence. There was no conflict here, no fraternal rivalry, and none of the usual banter between couples. It was rather like one of those ideal families portrayed on an American TV programme. It was emanating from the way Carel had the final say, the casting vote. Their submission was barely noticeable, interlaced with a cheerful, practised pattern of interaction, but it was there, bowing to the benign despot – the one with the wallet and the fortune.
How did Emma fit into all this?
Once the plates were emptied and a discussion of the next day’s golf had ended, Carel decided that it was time to engage me. He waited for a moment of quiet and gave me an intimate smile.
‘Now we know what the ghosts looks like, Mr Lemmer.’
For a fraction of a second I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I got it. He had had previous dealings with Body Armour but had the wrong end of the stick.
To all appearances Jeanette Louw is a lesbian in her fifties with big bottle-blonde hair, a dreadful smoking habit – Gauloise was her brand of choice – and an outspoken preference for seducing recently divorced, hurting, heterosexual women. But hidden behind that front was a razor-sharp intellect and a brain for business.
She had been the legendary regimental sergeant-major of the Women’s Army College in George, before taking her package seven years ago. After months of market research she had opened her own business on the sixteenth floor of a luxury office building in the Cape Beachfront area. On the glass double doors, through which you could see Jolene Freylinck, the manicured receptionist, BODY ARMOUR was printed in bold, masculine letters and the explanatory ‘Personal Executive Security’ below in slim sans serif.
Initially, her clients were foreign businessmen, the senior executives of
international corporations who came to find out how a quick buck could be squeezed from Africa. Their embassies had whispered in confidential reports that the country was stable enough for investment, but safety on the streets was not quite up to Western standards. Jeanette aimed her marketing at the diplomats, the economic attachés and consuls, the embassy clerks and switchboard operators. Would their important visitors prefer to avoid the long list of personal threats, the muggings, car hijackings, assaults, rapes, abductions and break-ins? Body Armour was the answer. The first few clients went home safely and her reputation grew. Gradually the whole spectrum from East to West had hired her specialists: Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Germans, French, Brits and Americans.
Then the foreigners began to make movies in the Cape, and the pop stars of the world came to sell their concert tickets to the boere and her client list took on a new dimension. Snapshots of Jeanette with Colin Farrell, Oprah, Robbie Williams, Nicole Kidman and Samuel L. Jackson preened on her walls. She would sit behind her desk and tell you about the big ones that got away. Will Smith and his huge entourage, including his own American bodyguards who travel around him like African praise singers. Sean Connery had earned her eternal admiration by turning down her service with a ‘Do you think I’m a fucking wimp?’
As with similar services the world over, Jeanette’s portfolio of hand-picked freelance bodyguards took on a two-part character. First, there were the deterrents – those highly visible, muscle-bound, thick-necked, steroid-bulked colossi that accompany the famous and keep hoi polloi at bay through visual intimidation. Their sole qualifications were the intimidating size of their torso and limbs and the ability to scowl in a menacing manner.