by Sally Andrew
I was pleased to hear the sound of Jessie’s scooter heading my way. I rinsed my mouth, washed my face and put on my khaki veldskoene.
Jessie came into the kitchen carrying two helmets and a small backpack. She was wearing jeans and black boots and her jacket, as well as the usual pouches and stuff around her belt.
‘Are you sure there’s no one at Dirk’s house?’ I said.
‘We’ll soon find out.’
‘But the police are finished with the crime scene?’
‘Yes, they’ve taken photographs, dusted for prints and all that. They’re just leaving the crime-scene tape up a while. In case, you know.’
‘Are you sure? We don’t want to mess up their investigation.’
‘We won’t mess up anything,’ said Jessie. ‘We’ll only try and help. The more brains on this the better.’
‘I wonder if I should change,’ I said, looking at her black clothes and at my dress.
‘Ja, better you wear trousers. And dark clothes. We should go on my scooter,’ she said, ‘then we can hide it in the bushes.’
‘Me on the scooter? I can’t even ride a bicycle.’
‘I’ll be driving. You just sit there.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’
‘You’ll be fine. You got a jacket for the wind?’
So there I was, sitting on the red scooter behind Jessie. I’d changed into my brown veldskoene, navy-blue pants and a dark green raincoat. And I was wearing a helmet and Jessie’s backpack. The clouds were hanging above our heads; they were now so dark and heavy that the sky was struggling to hold them up.
‘Hold tight,’ she said. ‘But relax. If the bike leans when we turn a corner, go with it.’
I took a deep breath as she started the bike and we zoomed off.
I could feel the road under us. Bump bump bump. Like my heart beating. When we turned a corner, I thought the bike was going to fall over. But we were fine. The wind was rushing across my cheeks. I could feel the hum of the bike in my whole body. It did feel dangerous, but not a bad kind of danger. With Fanie, I was always so careful, trying to keep out of danger, I ended up scared of my own shadow.
We went up a slope towards Towerkop, and I could see the lights of the little town of Ladismith, and up there on the Elandsberg, Oom Stan se Liggie. Oom Stanley de Wet set up that little light high on the mountain about fifty years ago. A bicycle light and dynamo, charged by a waterfall. If there’s no water falling, there’s no light, and we know that our water’s running low. Three hundred times and more he climbed that mountain in his veldskoene to check on his light. Oom Stan died a couple of years ago, but his liggie is still there, shining into the darkness.
I took some courage from that little light. Then there was a flash of lightning that showed us the Langeberge, the mountains in the distance to the south.
A rabbit darted into the road, and Jessie wiggled, but we didn’t fall. She slowed down but the rabbit kept running back and forth across the road.
She stopped the bike and turned off the engine. But the rabbit still jumped back into the road instead of heading off.
‘Ag, stupid thing,’ she said.
‘It’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘Just scared.’
‘Scared of its own shadow,’ she said.
Because of the lights of the bike, when the rabbit ran towards the side of the road, its own giant shadow leapt out at it, frightening it back into the road. It was scared to stay in the road, because we were there, but it was just as scared to leave.
‘Turn off your lights,’ I said.
In the darkness the rabbit shot off into the bushes.
A yellow moon with fat cheeks pushed through a gap in the clouds and lit up the road for us, so we kept the lights off as we travelled up the dirt road towards the mountain.
Jessie stopped at a gate with a sign: Van Schalkwyk. Soetwater.
‘Let’s walk from here. Was that okay, Tannie M?’ Jessie asked, as I climbed off the scooter.
I pulled off my helmet, and smiled.
‘Ooh, ja, that was fun!’
She took her backpack from me and then pushed the bike behind some spekboom trees that grew thick at the side of the road. We went through the gate and walked along the dirt driveway that led down to the farm.
Below us was a dark farmhouse with the stoep light on, and at the bottom of the farm was a small cottage, its windows yellow with candlelight.
‘A farm worker and his wife live down there,’ she said.
We walked towards the main house in the valley. The moon was behind the clouds again, but bits of light leaked through and lit up the stony road. Amongst the dark shapes of some aloes ahead of us, I saw a pair of glinting eyes.
‘Haai!’ I said.
‘It’s just a jackal,’ said Jessie.
As we got closer, the jackal trotted away, its bushy tail trailing behind. We stopped in the black shadow of a giant eucalyptus tree behind the house.
‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Jessie.
I held my breath. What was that sound? Footsteps. Heading this way.
My shoe got caught on a root, and I stumbled, cracking a twig.
The footsteps paused.
‘Hey!’ a man called.
His steps were getting closer. I hugged the trunk of the tree. It was big and wrinkled. Lightning flashed. There was a rustling in the bushes and the jackal darted across the veld.
‘Hah!’ said the man’s voice. He stood on the other side of the tree, and we heard the sound of a match striking and the inhalation of a cigarette. Jessie and I looked at each other, our eyes wide.
Thunder rumbled. The man strolled off. We heard him cough and spit as he walked around the house, then his footsteps getting further away.
When all was quiet, we peeked out. We could see the red glowing speck of a cigarette heading towards the distant cottage. By the soft light of his front doorway we saw the shape of his body, his stooped shoulders.
‘Sjoe,’ said Jessie, ‘let’s hope he stays there.’
She opened her backpack and took out a pair of surgical gloves for each of us.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘to get inside.’
We kept away from the stoep light, and tried the doors and windows at the back of the house.
‘Nope,’ said Jessie, testing the back door. A strip of that yellow-and-blue tape was stuck across it. She took out a card and tried to slide it down the side of the door, like they do in the movies. ‘No good. It’s bolted on the inside.’
‘Here,’ I said, ‘this sash window isn’t locked.’
Jessie helped me slide it open. Then she sat on the sill, took off her black boots and passed them to me before she climbed through.
‘Better not to leave prints,’ she said.
I took off my veldskoene and put both pairs of shoes next to a big flower pot. Jessie opened up the back door. She lifted up the crime-scene tape for me and I ducked under. We stood there in our socks, looking at each other. In the darkness I could see the white of Jessie’s teeth as she smiled.
‘We did it, Tannie M,’ she said. ‘We’re in.’
A jackal called. A crazy, wild sound. In the dark shadows, I smiled back at Jessie; I was not afraid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘Careful,’ Jessie said. ‘Looks like broken glass. Let’s close up, then we can turn on our torches.’
‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ I said.
Jessie closed the curtains while I did the shutters. Now it was really dark.
‘Here,’ she said, turning on a torch, and handing me another. ‘It’s a headtorch. Fit the strap over like this. And press this button, to make the light dimmer or brighter.’
She helped me fit it on and I looked around the big room. It was an old farmhouse, bigger than mine, but a similar style. Like in my house, the wall had been removed between the sitting room and kitchen. There was a wooden table and a small pantry in the kitchen part, and a fireplace against the wall in the sitting room.
‘Ouch,’ said
Jessie.
I thought she’d cut herself, but it was what she’d seen on the floor that hurt. It was a photograph of Martine, all young and glowing in her wedding dress, and Dirk, not quite as young as her, but looking like not such a bad guy after all. There were spears of glass around them, as they smiled up at us.
‘That’s the photograph Anna told me about,’ I said.
I shone onto another picture amongst the broken glass: two men in uniform.
‘It’s Dirk,’ I said. Young and without sideburns. ‘And his father, maybe.’
They were wearing the old South African army uniform. Dirk was grinning but the older guy had thin straight lips.
‘His pa looks like a mean bastard,’ said Jessie.
My husband did his two years in that army. They didn’t train them to be good men.
‘Look,’ said Jessie, shining onto a dark brown smudge on the couch. ‘Blood.’
I nodded, trying not to feel the sadness, trying to think like an investigator. The couch was not far from the fireplace.
‘Yes,’ I said. I shone on the floor next to the couch. In the pool of light was a tiny dark circle. ‘And a drop of blood there too.’
I stepped around the glass and went across to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Clean shelves. Lettuce. Ladismith cheese. Sauces. It was not very exciting, but it made me feel hungry. It was too soon for our sandwiches, though. We needed to do some work first.
‘You carry on here, I’ll check out the rest of the house,’ said Jessie.
I closed the fridge. Next to the stove was a spice rack, labelled in alphabetical order. The pantry had shelves of tins and jars and packets, also very tidy and labelled. Not alphabetically, but by group. Vegetables, Meat, Baking, Recipes. There was a small row of recipe books on a shelf, organised according to size. I saw she had a copy of Cook and Enjoy. I had the Afrikaans version, Kook en Geniet.
I looked around the pantry and kitchen. There was fine black dust on one side of the sink and on the edges of the wooden kitchen table. The kind of dust the police used for fingerprinting. I took the torch from my head and shone it from this angle and that, then leaned down closely to examine the dust.
‘Nothing much in the bedrooms and bathroom,’ said Jessie, coming into the lounge. ‘But Martine’s got a study full of papers. She’s totally organised. Bills, letters, documents, all neatly filed. I bet she was a good bookkeeper.’
‘Look at the table here, Jess. It’s been wiped. Just this part, where the two chairs have been pulled back from the table.’
‘Ja?’
‘Only half the table. Wouldn’t you wipe the whole table, if you were wiping it?’
‘No. I’d just wipe off the messy bit. You think it got messy in here?’
‘Uh uh,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘The murderer wiped their prints off the poker. Which means they weren’t wearing gloves and might have left prints in other places. Martine wasn’t the kind of woman who would wipe only half the table. Look, there are still some little crumbs and dust in the middle there. She wouldn’t have left it like that. Look at her spice rack.’
‘Whoa. Ja. Like her filing system. But maybe she was in a hurry. Or she’s got a maid who’s a bit slack.’ She shone across the black dust on the table. ‘The police were looking for prints here.’
‘But they wouldn’t find any because it was wiped. I think the murderer sat down at the table with her,’ I said, touching the back of a chair.
‘And they drank tea together?’
‘No, the teapot is up on the shelf. High and dry. But there are two glasses washed up at the sink.’
‘So it might be someone she knows.’ Jessie glanced at her watch. ‘Let me get back to those papers.’
While she was in the study, I opened all the kitchen drawers. I put the torch back on my head again because it freed up both my hands. Everything was very netjies in the drawers. Cutlery, dishcloths all neatly stored. Plastic shopping bags folded in little triangles like samosas.
I poked through the rubbish bin. There was a Spar packet crumpled up in there. Why wasn’t it folded? Her arm, I remembered, she had a broken arm. Could you fold a packet properly with one hand? I tried it. It wasn’t easy but I could do it. Even with a glove on.
I went back to the fridge and looked at the expiry date on the packet of lettuce. It was for today, Friday. Spar likes to keep their lettuce fresh, so this one was bought within the last few days.
‘How did you get here?’ I asked the lettuce. ‘And when?’ I turned the packet over in my hands. ‘Sunday and Monday, the Spar has no fresh lettuce. So you must have been bought on Tuesday or Wednesday. Did Martine buy you on Tuesday? The day she died. Her arm was broken, so I don’t think she could drive. Did Dirk drive her or did he maybe shop himself?’ I put the lettuce back on the shelf. ‘I don’t know what it is about men and salad, but I’ve never heard of a man buying lettuce for himself. Did someone else shop for Martine?’
I closed the door of the fridge. I was sorry for the lettuce; it was looking wilted, and it’s a sad thing to see good food going bad. But I had to move on.
At the sink was a dishcloth that I studied in the torchlight. It was white with blue checks. There was a faint reddish mark on one corner. I shone all around the sink. I spotted a small red drop of liquid, beside the tap. I dipped the tip of my gloved little finger into the liquid and then touched it to my tongue and closed my eyes.
I knew that sweet metallic taste.
‘Psssst! Jessie!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘You may be right, Tannie M,’ said Jessie. ‘I can taste the iron.’
‘I know I’m right,’ I said. ‘I grew up with a pomegranate tree in our garden.’
‘So they were eating pomegranates,’ she said.
‘Or drinking pomegranate juice,’ I said, pointing to the glasses.
We heard a light drumming on the tin roof of the stoep.
‘Rain!’ said Jessie.
We went to the back door and turned off our torches and watched the rain fall in the darkness. Soft, cool rain. Jessie and I grinned at each other. At last. The ground sighed with relief as it fell. I took in a deep breath.
‘Ooh, that smell,’ I said.
The first rain on the warm dry earth. Nothing like it. Then after the smell of the earth came the smell of the plants. It was like each plant gave something of itself to say thank you for the rain. All the smells mixed together to make a delicious air soup for us to breathe in.
‘Let’s have a sandwich to celebrate,’ I said.
She handed me the Tupperware from her pack and I gave us each a bacon-and-marmalade toast sandwich.
‘The lights are off in the cottage,’ said Jessie. ‘We should have a talk to that guy sometime. Wow. Lekker sandwich, Tannie.’
‘I could make him some vetkoek,’ I said.
‘With mince, maybe,’ said Jessie.
‘Did you see any grocery slips, in Martine’s papers?’
‘Ja,’ she said.
‘I am looking for one with Tuesday’s date on. I think someone shopped for her, and it could have been the murderer.’
I explained about the lettuce date, and the packet, and Martine’s broken arm.
‘Let’s go have a look,’ said Jessie.
We brushed the crumbs off our surgical gloves and went into the study.
‘Look how organised this all is,’ said Jessie. ‘Personal letters, bank statements, bills, papers about her son in that home. Grocery slips.’ She shone her headtorch onto the papers as she sorted through them. ‘Here it is . . . Her most recent shop at the Spar was on Friday the fifth. I’ve looked in her purse, but there are no slips there.’
‘Looks like she didn’t shop for herself on Tuesday then . . . ’
‘Maybe Dirk, Anna, or someone else . . . You might be right, Tannie, it could’ve been the murderer. I wonder if the police have taken samples of that pomegranate juice. Did you find the bottle the juice was in?’
‘No,’ I
said.
I touched a file marked Letters, personal.
‘Has she got any of our Gazette letters?’ I asked.
‘Nothing here,’ said Jessie. ‘But I wonder if she’d hide them somewhere. Away from her husband.’
‘So who are the letters from?’
‘A couple from a boring brother from Durbanville. But most of them from an interesting cousin. Old letters from her at a Texas address. Then the last few years she writes from New York.’
‘Ja?’
Jessie took out a smart cream envelope and a cheap brown one.
‘The cousin is Candy Webster, her apartment overlooks Central Park. Sounds like she’s in the fashion business, travels all over, sends postcards to Martine from cool places. They seem quite close. Lots of hugs and kisses. The brother, David Brown, has written a letter whining about “Father”, and his lack of appreciation for everything David does.’ Jessie lifted up a file marked Jamie. ‘These are the reports from the doctors and social workers in George about her son with cerebral palsy.’
The rain started hammering down, then there was a flash of lightning and a thunderclap. Really close and loud. I pulled the curtains back and peeped out the window.
‘Jessie, look!’
Through the branches of the gum tree we saw a big car on the top of the hill, creeping down the drive.
‘Oh, shit,’ Jessie said, jumping up. ‘Torches off!’
‘I think it’s turning around.’
We peered out the window, watching the car do a three-point turn. But instead of driving away, the car stopped and its lights went off. The rain went quiet for a moment, like it was holding its breath. Then there was a very big flash of lightning. In that moment we saw a white 4×4 bakkie, and in front of it, walking towards us, was a man.
He had a rain-hood over his head, a torch in one hand. And a gun in the other.
Rain hammered down on the roof, and the next crash of thunder sounded like the sky itself was shooting down at us.