De Vries stands taller. His shaking has abated, his nakedness forgotten.
‘What role did those people play, sir, the people who are now dead, in the incident at the Victoria?’
‘That is not your business. You report what you saw. Only what you saw, not what you think you saw.’
‘I saw,’ De Vries says.
There is a beat of silence before Nel comprehends, recoils. De Vries sees him re-evaluate the threat he poses. Nel lowers his voice, comes back towards him.
‘I am the commanding officer, De Vries. What you believe you saw makes no difference. There are four witnesses who will recount what occurred. We were threatened at gunpoint by men and women who harboured terrorists. We defended ourselves, confiscated weapons. No one will recall differently.’ He backs away and then struts towards De Vries anew.
‘One word from me and you’re gone. When the new regime comes to power they will exploit any weakness to gain control. So, you decide, De Vries. Stay with us, or be our enemy. See how many friends you have then. You won’t live to see the new fucking kaffir South Africa.’
‘I’ll see it rather than start a bloodbath.’
‘Ja, that is what you would do. You and fucking De Klerk and the Nats who’ve sold every one of us down the fucking river. And that fucking kaffir terrorist, fucking saboteur, Mandela. You think he will bring peace to this country? He’s a fucking bomb-maker. You think men like me will let him become the fucking messiah?’
Kobus Nel struts in a circle, still blocking De Vries’s exit. He is shrieking.
‘You know what will happen? The police force is over; they’ll disband it because there’ll be no fucking rule of law. They’re going to take our jobs, our houses, our land, destroy everything we have done to build this country into the great nation that we are. They’re going to fuck us all up, and with the whole world watching, cowards like you are going to let them.’
De Vries baulks, knows that over brandy and cokes with his friends he has drunkenly debated the future, acquiesced to the ugly fears of his colleagues, the hateful proselytization, but he has never fully accepted it. His new wife, Suzanne, younger and more enlightened, more informed, has tempered his insistent gnawing fears and argued to accept the inevitable, to gauge a reaction, not to allow knee-jerk ignorance to rule his heart, and to believe in hope for their daughter’s future in the new Republic of South Africa.
De Vries says quietly:
‘You know what’s frightening about people like you? I am angry, I feel betrayed, fear for my country, but you know what? You make me sound so fucking reasonable.’
Nel laughs bitterly, shakes his head.
‘We’re all fucked, whatever you pathetic liberals, you fucking apologists think, but I’m warning you, you threaten my future and I will bring you down. So, right now, you better do your duty, Captain. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it for your wife and child.’
He turns, and in the split second Nel’s back is to him, the thought comes to De Vries to jump the man, to bring him down, to beat the life out of him.
When the door to the locker room finally closes, leaving him alone, he bows his head, his weight still on the steel doors against which he had been trapped. He pretends that he hasn’t yet decided what he will do but, deep inside, he already knows. He wonders whether the shame will allow him even to stand upright to leave this place, to dress, to type up his lies and cajole the frightened Constable Mitchell Smith, to walk through the station to the exit, to travel home to his wife and baby.
PART ONE
3 April 2015
Colonel de Vries rides De Waal Drive as far as the Mill Street slip road, sees one plane of the tower blocks in the CBD bright with white sun, the Waterfront lit by watery rays of sunrise, turns left up towards the face of the dark Mountain, encounters only gradations of grey, from grey tarmac, through the thick layer of smoke, up the staggered, unending growth of mountain, to dark white cloud above it. He guns the puny engine up the steep incline, inhaling rich, choking smoke through the ventilators, presses on, almost in darkness, awaiting the moment when he crests the deep haze and finds daylight again. He locates the turnoff onto Serpentine Road, swings the car parallel to the coastline. The smoke follows him, lies on his rear window. For three months now, the fires have blazed. More of the famous posters have appeared on billboards, those which scold and beg simultaneously, the design decades old, a cartoon for adults: the vast, delicate Springbok head, wide eyes anguished, naïve, painted flames behind it, a tear falling from its eye. The fawn, engulfed by pathos, pleads: ‘Only YOU can stop bush and veldt fires.’
He finds Park Terrace, draws up short of the misty blue flashing lights ahead of him, swings open the car door, feeling the wind take it away from him, and struggles to slam it shut. Behind him, the eponymous little park at the road’s end with its Umbrella Pines seems unscathed, and he sees no flames from the foot of the Mountain where the fire must have blazed during the night. He turns back, walks with the wind, engulfed in smoke, towards the scene.
‘Fucking fires,’ he mutters, cupping his hands around the tip of a new cigarette, emerging choking into the square of marked police vehicles. The cylinder ignites and he draws deeply. He turns to a uniformed cop, flashes his ID.
‘Day doesn’t begin till the poison meets my lungs.’ He waves the cigarette at the officer between the ‘v’ of his fingers, strides on through the haze towards the house wrapped in police tape. He pauses, takes two further drags, flicks the butt into the gutter and spits on the road. He trots up the stairs, passes through a wide front door, sees a group of Cape Town Central officers in the palatial hallway.
‘Who thinks they are in charge here?’
The men shuffle to face him, fall silent. He hears footsteps on the wide staircase, suspended seemingly in midair, wide plains of white marble tapering down to the ground floor. Two sets of cheap shoes, crisply pressed grey trousers, white shirts and navy ties appear in fifteen centimetre degrees. The taller man, a broad black African, fit and muscular, snorts, tilts his chin at De Vries.
‘Of course it would be one of you.’
De Vries meets his eye.
‘Who are you?’
‘Nkosi. Lieutenant Sam Nkosi.’ He holds out his hand.
‘Step outside with me, Lieutenant.’ De Vries turns from the proffered hand, walks back to the front door, onto the street. As he passes the wide mirror in the hallway, he sees the eyes of the other officers turn towards to Nkosi.
De Vries waits, stares up at the mountain, his back to the property. When he hears footsteps behind him, he turns.
‘I am Colonel de Vries of the Special Crimes Unit . . .’ He observes Nkosi’s blank reaction. ‘If you know who I am, your attitude is misjudged. If you don’t, then I’m telling you now, Lieutenant: I’m taking this case from you.’
‘I know that,’ Nkosi says.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Central.’
‘Before that?’
‘Pretoria.’
‘Nobody likes this system. But it works. Chalk it up to experience. What do I need to know about the scene?’
‘I have walked it with my Sergeant to check it. We have touched nothing.’
‘I hope not.’
‘Been done right.’
‘Good. I’ll base my opinion of you on your word. Give me a card?’
Nkosi shakes his head.
‘I don’t have one. I have been here six months and they still have not been printed.’
‘Write down your cell-phone number, Lieutenant, in case we need you. Then take your men away. Tell them no one discusses the scene. I rely on you to enforce that order. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
De Vries looks past him, involuntarily taps his right foot.
‘Don’t make me say it, Lieutenant.’
Nkosi’s eyes remain blank.
‘Yes, sir.’
As the Cape Town Central officers leave, they stare at him. He knows his reputation and he judges t
hat they wear the anticipated expressions: curiosity, fear, some little distain. De Vries scrutinizes each of them, coloured and black officers, makes them lower their eyes. Finally, Nkosi appears, walks slowly down the stairs and pauses in front of him.
‘You might want to talk to me, sir.’
‘Might I? Why?’
‘I know who the victim is.’
De Vries snorts.
‘So do I.’
‘I met her a week ago.’
‘She say who wanted her dead?’
‘No.’
‘Then, Lieutenant, we will talk.’ He looks at a small sheet of folded paper in Nkosi’s hand. ‘Your contact details?’
Nkosi hands it to him, shakes his head, moves on to an unmarked car.
De Vries turns behind him and nods at the Scene of Crime team. When they are inside, De Vries walks over to his Warrant Officer, Don February, who stands by the gate which leads down the side of the property to the terraced garden.
‘Those Central guys all go upstairs?’
‘Not when I arrived, sir. Just the Lieutenant and one other officer. Before that, the same officer and his partner, who answered the original call. But, maybe before I got here . . . ?’
‘You tell the Lieutenant that I was coming?’
‘Just that a senior officer from Special Crimes was coming. Not your name.’
‘Why not?’
‘I do not like the reaction when I say your name.’
De Vries smiles. His Inspector’s wit is dryer than the Karoo.
‘So you bought yourself a moment of respite . . .’
‘A senior officer thinks he is leading a case and then it is snatched away by some elite unit. It is no wonder that it breeds resentment.’
‘He should be glad of the break. That’s what our unit is for: take the tough ones and leave more officers available.’
‘Even you said nobody likes the system.’
‘I lied,’ De Vries says. ‘I like it.’
In the hallway, they dress in blue disposable boiler suits, over-boots and latex gloves. Although the house is full of people, there is a chapel-like hush. Don February speaks in a whisper.
‘Down the stairs is the kitchen and a casual living space, which leads onto the pool deck and garden. There is no evidence that anyone went there. The doors are barred and locked. Everything happened up here.’
They begin to climb the white staircase.
‘Did she live alone?’
‘Miss Holt? I do not know. It is a big house for one woman only.’
Don studies his notes.
‘Miss Taryn Holt, aged thirty-eight. She has been identified as the victim by the live-in maid, her ID, photographs of her in the house. But, I think I have heard that name . . .?’
‘Taryn Holt inherited her father’s company a few years back. Holt Industries is a major heavy-industrial player in Southern Africa. She’s richer than your Uncle Bob Mugabe.’
Don rolls his eyes.
‘I have not heard of Holt Industries.’
‘Me neither, till an hour back. Plenty of big, successful companies operating under the radar. She isn’t involved, but she owns most of it.’
They reach the upstairs landing and, immediately, De Vries can see through the expansive dual-level living space to a huge wall of floor-to-ceiling sliding doors which open to a breathtaking panorama over the city, the Waterfront and Table Bay. The shards of silver sunlight paint lines of smoky perspective over the scene until sea and sky merge on some unseen horizon.
A crime scene technician is bent over the lock on an open door in the corner of the room, another is searching the cream carpet for debris. Everything, De Vries thinks, is very bare, very pale. He looks at the large bronze sculpture on a cream marble plinth: a lioness attacks a wildebeest. De Vries feels that he has seen this scene before, in the same style, but cannot place where. He looks at the large paintings on the walls. They are mainly bright abstracts, garish and vulgar amidst the pure white, but there is one darker portrait of a black African woman. She stares proudly out from the canvas, demands that her gaze be met.
‘What else?’
‘There are many staff members, but they all travel in each day. There is one live-in maid. She has a room at the bottom of the garden. She called us early this morning. I have not spoken with her yet, but she told dispatch that she thought she heard something in the garden, went outside and looked up at the main house to see the terrace door in the corner open. As the alarm had not sounded, she came into the house to check that everything was all right. Her call to the station was logged at 5.14 a.m.’
‘And the victim?’
Don February turns, retraces his steps to the hallway and then gestures towards the door at the end of the long broad corridor.
‘She is in the final door to the right – the master bedroom.’
De Vries begins to walk towards it.
‘It is not nice.’
De Vries pushes the door gently with the back of his gloved hand. It is heavy, but opens smoothly and silently. Ahead of him, he sees the same view of the sea through wide windows. To his right, a crime scene officer is on his knees taking samples from the legs of an antique bureau; to his left, a vulgar display of modern art: still life with blood. He catches his breath. The bedroom: white walls, white carpet, a big broad bed encased in a polished yellow-wood frame – spattered in pink and red, pockmarked in sticky almost-black tar. Like some horrendous Jackson Pollack canvas, everything emanates from the explosion on the bed. There is blood on two walls, on the ornate polished-wood headboard, on the ceiling. A parallelogram of sunshine hits the bed, illuminating her long matted hair, making the droplets of blood on the walls in the corner of the room sparkle.
He turns to Don.
‘Can we approach?’
Don turns back to the crime scene officer, who nods at him.
De Vries pads forward gingerly, aware that he is now amidst the mire of blood.
The woman’s body is sprawled across the end of the mattress, her torso atop it, her legs hanging over the end at a strange angle. Her left foot rests lightly on the carpet; her right a few centimetres above it, floating stiffly. She is naked.
He leans close to her head, starts to squat, peers through the sticky hair to the side of her face, half of a mask, a rictus of agony. He swallows hard. There is something in her mouth: a bulbous brown growth.
De Vries takes a pen from his jacket pocket, points at the object.
‘What is that?’
Don February says: ‘I do not know.’
‘I’m not going to take it out, Vaughn . . .’ De Vries looks up and turns towards the new voice. It is Steve Ulton, the Crime Scene Leader, a man De Vries respects. ‘But, I suspect that it is a dildo. A black dildo.’
‘Part of the attack?’
‘I doubt it. Not my job to opine on C. O. D. but clearly she has been shot several times.’
De Vries nods.
‘So this . . . Dildo. This is something else?’
‘I would say so.’
‘The scene is staged?’
Ulton smiles. ‘Unless she just happened to be sitting on the edge of her bed with a huge rubber dick in her mouth, then, ja, I’d say so.’
De Vries regrets his clumsy question; his head is already full of ideas, jostling with the new information every glance at the scene provides.
‘Okay.’
‘You want to work backwards?’
‘You ready already?’
‘Work in progress, thinking aloud . . .’
De Vries nods.
‘Look at the wooden headboard . . .’They turn to it; each tries to avoid running their eyes over the body on the bed, none succeed. It is ornately carved wood, almost like tangled branches, yet highly polished and a rich light brown colour. Using a ballpoint pen, he indicates an area about a quarter of the way across. ‘Look here. You can see that there are deep abrasions here . . .’ He leans over the bed without coming into contact with it
and points again, this time to scratch marks about a quarter of the way from the opposite side. ‘The same here.’
‘What are they?’
‘I will take samples and examine them further; if necessary the entire bed can be taken away. However, judging from their position mainly behind and to some extent to the side of each wooden strut, I would say they are marks from where rope or cuffs were tied to the bed-head. I’ve seen this before, both in completely innocent contexts and more sinister ones.’
Don February says quietly: ‘Completely innocent?’
De Vries glances sideways at him. Ulton stands straight, arches his back. ‘Innocent in terms of being consensual.’
Don nods imperceptibly, keeps his head low.
Ulton takes a pace backwards, faces Taryn Holt.
‘If you look at the wrists of the victim, you will see that there are no abrasions, no obvious evidence of being bound in the past.’
‘So, what does that mean?’
‘Possibly nothing. The pathologist will examine the victim for signs of sexual attack, but there isn’t anything immediate to suggest that there was anything of a penetrative sexual angle to the attack – apart from the dildo, and that is likely to have been inserted post-mortem.’
De Vries frowns. The information is detailed and revealing, but it seems irrelevant to the murder itself.
Ulton turns and walks slowly to the doorway.
‘The door closes automatically. The mechanism is balanced very finely. Very high quality workmanship. If the victim was unaware of the presence of an intruder, he – or she – could approach down the corridor without being noticed.’
He indicates the corridor.
‘We’ve examined the carpet along here. There are indistinct footprints all over the place. I doubt we’ll find anything but, since the bedroom windows are all sealed, we can assume that the attacker walked along this corridor, both to and from the scene.’
Ulton exits the bedroom and slowly retraces his footsteps back to the living area. It seems to De Vries even bigger than before, hollow and devoid of identity and personality, unconnected somehow with its owner.
‘The lock on this far window has been tampered with. He might have got in from the terrace through there.’
The Serpentine Road Page 2