The Serpentine Road

by Mendelson, Paul

  ‘Have you heard of this place?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lived here all my adult life and I still don’t know half of it.’

  ‘It is probably new. Places open and close. Things change. Where is it?’

  ‘St George’s Cathedral,’ De Vries says. ‘In the crypt.’

  He pushes around the near-stationary traffic, mounts the pavement. He stops in the dense shade of the pollution-stained trees right by the walls of the cathedral, flashes his ID at a perplexed traffic cop, leads Don towards the entrance.

  The entrance to the crypt has not changed since De Vries had been here previously. The low Gothic vaulted ceiling encloses a small space displaying blown-up photographs of the famous peace demonstration which started out at the cathedral in 1989 and quickly swelled to many tens of thousands. It made headline news in many countries, and some were to come to see it as the true beginning of the end for the old regime. Both men slow their pace, glance at the images; they have meaning to both of them, though different for each man.

  The Crypt music venue has twin glass doors leading on to a short staircase. Even down these steps, the space is only a lower ground floor rather than a true crypt and, through small leaded windows, the street outside can still be glimpsed.

  There is no one at the bar, but two musicians on the little stage to their left hold guitars and talk in low voices. One is a tall, rake-thin black African, the other, a handsome white guy with thick curly black hair and a Mediterranean complexion. When they see the policemen, they stop, scrutinize them.

  The white guy says: ‘We’re closed. Can we help you?’

  De Vries holds up his ID.

  ‘Lee Martin?’

  ‘He’ll be back just now.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Davide Batisse,’ and, nodding in the direction of the other man, ‘Freddie Kokula.’

  ‘You know why we’re here?’

  He watches them stiffen momentarily, consciously affect disinterest.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Better that way . . .’ De Vries smiles to himself, wonders what they fear. He glances away from them at the sound of a door opening behind him, and sees a very slim, pale man approach from behind the bar area. He takes a step towards him.

  ‘Mr Martin?’

  The man nods, and De Vries gestures him away from the stage, towards an alcove table in the furthest corner of the venue. Lee Martin nods, somberly follows De Vries, who invites him to take a corner seat on the banquette. They face each other across the table; Don February stands a few paces away. The venue is small; De Vries speaks in a hushed voice and, even then, imagines his words bounce and echo around the room beneath its low stone arches and alcoves.

  ‘You haven’t told your musician friends?’

  Martin pouts, shakes his head.

  ‘How long had you and Taryn Holt been together?’

  Martin hesitates.

  ‘Maybe five years, but it’s not how you think.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘This is why I don’t talk about it . . .’ He looks past De Vries to the stage. ‘Who cares now? It doesn’t matter.’ He shrugs. ‘Taryn didn’t do relationships. We went out when it suited us. We behaved like a couple when that’s what we wanted. Other times, we didn’t see each other for weeks . . .’

  ‘When did you last see Miss Holt?’

  ‘Tuesday night. Night before her exhibition opening.’

  ‘You didn’t go?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She ever come here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Miss Holt discuss with you about being afraid, being threatened?’

  ‘I don’t think Taryn ever felt threatened.’

  De Vries ponders what Martin means, wonders whether this is a broader description of her character than merely the answer to his question.

  ‘Where were you last night? Between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.?’

  Lee Martin looks down.

  ‘At home. I practised until one of my housemates came in, maybe midnight, then I went to bed.’

  ‘He, or she, see you?’

  ‘We spoke, yeah.’

  ‘And you didn’t leave your house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have a car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Taryn Holt have any other male friends?’

  Martin smiles thinly.

  ‘You mean lovers? Of course. That was the point. She didn’t see any need to limit herself. When you are someone like her, with such potential and the energy to make it happen, why confine yourself? Why, even, get serious? Anyway, how was she ever to know who wanted her and who just wanted her money?’

  ‘Did you want her money?’

  Martin looks disgusted.

  ‘That’s a fucking nasty question.’

  De Vries says nothing, does not break his stare.

  ‘No, I didn’t want her money. I loved Taryn for who she was, how she made me feel. I live in a crummy house in Woodstock with three other mates, drive a scooter ten years old. I’ve been with Taryn five years: you think if I wanted money, I wouldn’t be doing a bit better than I am now?’

  ‘She leave you anything in her will?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Did you know the identity of these other boyfriends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It bother you?’

  ‘If it did, I didn’t have to stay . . .’ Martin subsides, nodding gently. ‘You took Taryn on her terms. She didn’t want a full-time relationship; she didn’t believe in monogamy. We were both free to do what we wanted, and we both knew that we had each other when the time came.’

  ‘Every few weeks . . . ?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes every day for a week. That’s what it was like.’

  ‘No one you can think of who might wish her harm?’

  ‘No.’

  De Vries waits, but Martin says nothing.

  ‘Speak to my Warrant Officer for a few moments, Mr Martin. He’ll want the name of your house-mate who you spoke with, some other details. I hope we won’t bother you again.’

  Lee Martin stands shakily, holds out his hand. De Vries shakes it.

  De Vries walks away towards the stage while Don asks his official questions. The two musicians have left and the venue seems deserted. He finds bars and clubs depressing in the daytime: none of the magic of lighting and music to transform the atmosphere from a gloomy lower ground floor room, hung with blue velvet curtains and painted a purple-ish black. He turns, leans against the back of a chair, observes Lee Martin from afar. He is not whom he expected Taryn Holt might go out with, even though he scarcely knows either of them. Martin is sickly pale, thin tattooed arms protruding from the short sleeves of a Fred Perry polo shirt, his jeans like drainpipes. But it is his face which intrigues De Vries; it is slender, with angular cheekbones, a narrow beak of a nose and thin lips. He strikes De Vries as an unattractive man; he makes him wonder what he gave to Taryn Holt.

  Taryn Holt leaves him her property, millions of rand in her will. He is her prime beneficiary yet, by his own admission, he seems little more than a regular lover. De Vries ponders whether their relationship was more intense than Martin lets on, or whether her gifts illustrate that there is no one closer in her life than this unassuming man.

  He observes their conversation, unable to hear more than an occasional word, and wonders whether Martin is capable of murder and then able to perform innocence so completely. He studies him again, follows the tattoos down his arms, which are stretched out over the table, to clenched hands. At each wrist, he sees a band of barbed wire in blue-green ink and, yet, there is something more. He stands, strolls around the venue and positions himself more closely, leans against a stone pillar. He squints at Martin, studies the marks, sees that around the tattoos, over them somehow, are bruises. He wonders whether to ask him about them, whether they could possibly be relevant, and decides not to.

  When Don concludes his procedure, he and Lee Martin s
tand. Martin proffers his hand again. De Vries watches Don hesitate, and then shake. For a policeman, shaking a hand is to show respect to a suspect, and De Vries does not know whether this is Lee Martin’s character or whether it is a ploy. Yet, both he and Don have shaken his hand. He wonders what this reveals about Martin, reveals about them.

  * * *

  When they are back in the car, attempting to join the gridlocked traffic at the Church Street junction, De Vries says: ‘You’ll make sure that’s checked? The housemate?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What did you make of him?’

  Don February lays down his notebook in his lap.

  ‘I think that he was telling us the truth. You, sir?’

  ‘Pretty much . . . When he said “we”, he really meant “she”.’

  Don glances at him.

  ‘“We” did what “we” wanted; “we” were a couple when “we” liked. I don’t think that’s how it was.’

  ‘She was in control?’

  ‘It seems that way. If she had other boyfriends, we need to know who they were. Call Sergeant Frazer and get her to check her e-mail, her cell-phone.’

  ‘He said that he had not seen her much in the past few months. Does that suggest that she was in a relationship with someone else?’

  ‘Possibly. Or she was just tired of him. He didn’t go to her gallery; she didn’t go to his concerts. What did they have in common?’

  ‘Enough for her to leave him a lot of money in her will.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ They move off, negotiate two more sets of traffic lights before they are stopped again. Why, De Vries wonders, does an illicit affair within a marriage seem commonplace, almost normal, whereas a mutually agreed open relationship strikes him as peculiar?

  Don February says: ‘We can eliminate Lee Martin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘You see his wrists?’

  ‘The tattoos?’

  ‘No. Not the tattoos. Bruises. Like his wrists had been tied.’

  Don turns to him.

  ‘I did not see that. The wounds were fresh?’

  ‘Not wounds. Not recent. Almost like shadows. On both wrists. It made me curious.’

  ‘You did not ask him?’

  ‘No . . . What matters now is we tie down what time the housemate saw him and whether that leaves enough time for him to travel to Oranjezicht and back to be relevant.’

  ‘You think he knew he would be in her will?’

  ‘Fifty million is a motive right there. He’s living in a shared house, has no money. But, if he did kill her, then he’s very good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘I was watching him when you were talking to him. He seemed genuinely dazed.’

  De Vries jams on the brakes behind a taxi-van which stops without warning. He then sits, indicator on, arm outstretched from the window until another driver lets him into the right-hand lane.

  ‘There was one thing,’ he says. ‘Some of his behaviour was interesting. How he wanted us on his side. You notice?’

  ‘His body language was open?’

  ‘It was.’

  Don tilts his head.

  ‘The handshakes?’

  De Vries smiles to himself. Don February, so unassuming he often seems not even to be present, and yet he spots things De Vries has never known another black officer to notice, or to appreciate.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I do not understand a man,’ Don says vehemently, ‘who would take a woman for five years and let her sleep with other men.’

  ‘I don’t think he was the one doing the letting.’

  ‘But that is what I mean: it is not masculine behaviour.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I asked him, at the end, when I had finished with the official questions: did he have other girlfriends . . .’

  ‘He said “no”?’ De Vries says.

  Don looks at him. ‘He said “no”.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  At Katy’s Bowl in Kloof Street, they pick up sandwiches and cold drinks, slide across town from the café to St Jerome Street, park fifty metres down from St Jerome’s Chapel and Hall. They eat in a silence De Vries appreciates; it is his Warrant Officer’s ability to say nothing that he cherishes. He considers the interviews with Dominic van der Merwe and Lee Martin, realizes that they have defined Taryn Holt more vividly than any number of reports. This is why he personally interviews everyone close to the victim; answers always lie in these interactions.

  The hall adjoining the chapel is dark, the wooden doors locked. De Vries leads Don to the entrance porch of the chapel itself. As he pulls open the Gothic arch door, blue frankincense smoke floats past them and into the street.

  The small interior is unlit, but for the pale coloured light from the dusty stained-glass panels set into the small, deep window holes, and the Virgin Mary surrounded by candles. The statue seems to hover in the smoke, the haloed candle flames burning points of light in the damp, heavy air. De Vries, who has not been in a church for many years, now finds himself in a second one within the hour. He innately mistrusts peddled stories, prides himself on knowing a liar; he has never heard one word from a pulpit in which he has faith. At least it is cool here.

  To the right of the altar, a door opens and a priest appears, straight white hair cut crudely above the collar, and bustles down the aisle toward them. Halfway down, he slows, narrows his eyes.

  ‘What do you want?’

  De Vries holds up his ID. The man stops and announces from afar:

  ‘I’ve spoken to you people already. Our action was legal and just. I have nothing further to say.’

  The tone is flat. It annoys De Vries.

  ‘Taryn Holt is dead.’

  De Vries senses his words travel through thick air, sees the priest recoil.

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘That is why we must speak with you.’

  The priest walks slowly towards them, gestures to what looks like a school table and chairs in the corner at the back of the church. He sits first and waits for De Vries and Don to follow him.

  De Vries says: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Father Jacobus.’

  He hears the priest’s voice echo around the small chapel, made cold by the damp, thick air. He lowers his voice.

  ‘You work here alone?’

  ‘Apart from the lay volunteers, yes.’

  ‘Did you know Taryn Holt personally? Before you were involved in the demonstration outside her gallery?’

  The priest folds his fingers together and stares upwards.

  ‘I did not.’

  De Vries pauses, eager to hear what the priest might ask, but the man says nothing, his expression locked.

  ‘Had you met her?’

  ‘Last Monday. I visited her with representatives of the women’s group who are based in the hall.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At her gallery. On Tuesday, at her home.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘To demand that she cancel her revolting exhibition. To remove the offensive canvas from her shop window.’

  ‘You found it offensive?’

  Father Jacobus breathes in deeply.

  ‘It is offensive.’

  De Vries stares at him, scrutinizes the certainty in his expression. De Vries lives in a world of evidence and fact; he finds dogma inexplicable.

  ‘What was Miss Holt’s response?’

  ‘Freedom of expression, human rights, artistic license. Pornography comes in many guises, and boasts myriad defenders.’

  ‘This is artwork, sir. Paint on canvas. You can turn away if you do not like the subject.’

  Jacobus leans forward.

  ‘It is not always easy to turn away from evil. You should know that.’

  De Vries stares at him a moment, smiles in the right-hand corner of his mouth.

  ‘We have been told that the pictures were painted by a female artist, protesting against the mistreatmen
t of women in Africa. Is that pornography?’

  ‘The treatment of women is exaggerated. If you see what these African women who claim to be raped are wearing. Most are prostitutes or, if not, they are seeking sexual pleasure.’ He flicks his wrist, dismissing the matter. ‘In any case, the process behind the pictures is irrelevant; the images are an affront to God, disturbing to children and to all impressionable minds.’

  De Vries finds Jacobus hubristic and pompous but represses the urge to challenge him, knows that he must not become distracted.

  ‘Why did you speak with her twice?’

  ‘I wanted to lodge a final plea. I went to her home, hoping that, alone, she might see reason . . .’ He stares past De Vries, into the dark, small cavern of his church.

  ‘Did you threaten Miss Holt?’

  ‘Threaten? We do not threaten.’

  De Vries raises his eyebrows. Jacobus continues:

  ‘We explained that we would picket the gallery, attend the opening from the street, that our vigil would not be broken. That is what we did. Ours was a peaceful protest.’

  ‘Apart from you and members of this women’s group, who else demonstrated?’

  ‘A few I did not recognize . . .’

  ‘And did you hear threats or intimidation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see who threw the brick which broke one of the gallery’s windows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see or speak to Miss Holt after talking with her at her home?’

  ‘No.’

  De Vries follows Jacobus’s skewed focus, sees Don scrutinizing him.

  ‘Did she invite you into her house?’

  ‘She did. I did not sit. My reasoned request was quickly denied. I left.’

  ‘You didn’t return at a later stage?’

  ‘That would have served no purpose.’

  ‘How did you travel to visit her?’

  Jacobus looks up.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How did you get to her house? Did you drive?’