Devil's Peak bg-1

by Deon Meyer

  “Not a fock.”

  “Cliffy is in hospital, Benny, and there is no one else available full-time . . .”

  “Keyter is an idiot, Matt. He is a little braggart station detective with an attitude and a big head. He knows fuck-all. What happened to the manpower you just promised me?”

  “For foot work, Benny. I can’t spare men from the unit. You know everyone is snowed under with work. And Keyter is new. He has to learn. You will have to mentor him.”

  “Mentor him?”

  “Make an investigator of him.”

  “It’s times like this,” said Griessel, “that I know why I’m an alcoholic.”

  24.

  Griessel, Keyter and the dogs sat in Elise Bothma’s sitting room. Keyter, in a loose white shirt, tight jeans and new bright blue Nike Crosstrainers, asked the questions as if he were the senior investigator. “What sort of dog is this, ma’am? Looks like a Pomeranian cross, but don’t they bark a lot at night? I hear they bark so much, the genuine Pomeranians . . . looks like there is a bit of Dachshund in this one. You say you heard the dogs and then Miss Laurens went out to look?”

  She was a fragile woman. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her voice gentle and she hadn’t been expecting the question at the tail end of the dog speech. “Yes,” she said. She sat hunched up and did not raise her head. Her fingers were entangled in a tissue. The room smelt strongly of dogs and rooibos tea.

  “Do you know what time that was?” asked Keyter.

  She said something, but they couldn’t hear it.

  “You need to speak louder. We can’t hear a word you say.”

  “It must have been just before two,” said Elise Bothma, and sank back, as if the effort was too great.

  “But you are not sure?”

  She just shook her head.

  “Do we know what time she phoned the station?” Keyter asked Griessel.

  He felt like getting up right there and taking the little shit outside to ask him who the fuck did he think he was, but this was not the time.

  “Two thirty-five,” said Griessel.

  “Okay,” said Keyter. “Let us say the dogs began barking just before two and she got up then to look. Did she take something with her? A weapon? Snooker stick or something?”

  Bothma shuddered and Griessel decided this was the last one he would stand before taking Keyter outside. “A revolver.”

  “A revolver?”

  “Yes.”

  “What revolver?”

  “I don’t know. It was hers.”

  “And where is the revolver now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did anyone find a revolver with the body?”

  Griessel just shook his head.

  “So the revolver is missing now?”

  Bothma nodded slightly.

  “And then, when did you get up to go and look?”

  “I don’t know what time it was.”

  “But why did you go out? What made you?”

  “She was too long. She was gone too long.”

  “And you found her lying there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just as she was when we came?”

  “Yes.”

  “And nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “And then you phoned the station?”

  “No.”

  “Oh?”

  “The emergency number. One zero triple one.”

  “Oh. Then you waited in the house until they came?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” said Keyter. “Okay. That’s the story.” He stood up. “Thank you very much and sorry for the loss and all that.”

  Bothma made the slight nod of her head again, but still no eye contact.

  Griessel stood and Keyter moved towards the door. He was taken aback when he saw Griessel sitting down on the sofa next to the woman. He didn’t turn back but stood there in the doorway looking impatient.

  “How long were you together?” Griessel asked her, gently and sympathetically.

  “Seven years,” said Bothma, and pressed the tissue against her cheeks.

  “What?” said Keyter from the door. Griessel looked at him meaningfully and held a finger to his lips. Keyter came back and sat down.

  “She had a temper.” A statement. Bothma nodded.

  “Did she sometimes hurt you?”

  Nod.

  “And sometimes hurt your child?”

  The head said “yes” and tears ran.

  “Why did you stay?”

  “Because I have nothing.”

  Griessel waited.

  “What could I do? Where could I go? I don’t have a job. I worked for her. Did the books. She looked after us. Food and clothing. She taught Cheryl to ride. She was good with her most of the time. What could I do?”

  “Were you angry with her over what she did to Cheryl?”

  The thin shoulders shook.

  “But you stayed with her?”

  She put her small hands over her face and wept. Griessel put a hand in his pocket and took out a handkerchief. He held it out to her. It was a while before she saw it.

  “Thank you.”

  “I know it’s hard,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “You were very angry with her.”

  “Yes.”

  “You thought of doing something to her.”

  Bothma paused before she said anything. On the carpet a sheepdog scratched itself. “Yes.”

  “Like stabbing her with a knife?”

  Bothma shook her head at that.

  “The revolver?”

  Nod.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “She hid it.”

  He waited.

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Elise Bothma and looked up at him. He saw she had green eyes. “I didn’t.”

  “I know,” said Griessel. “She was too strong for you.”

  * * *

  He waited until Keyter was in his car and then he stood at the window and he talked quietly, because there were still other policemen in the yard. “I want you to understand a few things fucking well,” he said, and Keyter looked up at him in surprise.

  “Number one. You will not open your mouth again during questioning, unless I give you permission. Do you understand?”

  “Jissis. What did I do?”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Number two. I did not ask for you. You were given to me. With the instruction that I must teach you to be a detective. Number three. To learn, you will have to listen. Do you understand?”

  “I

  am

  a fucking detective.”

  “You are a fucking detective? Tell me, mister fucking detective, where do you start a murder investigation? Where is the first place you look?”

  “Okay,” said Keyter reluctantly.

  “Okay what, Jaaa-mie?”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “What you said.”

  “Say it, Jaaa-mie.”

  “Why do you keep calling me, Jaaa-mie? I get it, okay? First you look near the victim.”

  “Did you look there?”

  Keyter said nothing, just held his steering wheel in the ten-to-two position.

  “You are not a wart on a detective’s backside. Two years at Table View Station says nothing. Burglaries and vehicle theft don’t count here, Jaaa-mie. You button your lip and listen and learn. Or you can go to Matt Joubert now and tell him you can’t work with me.”

  “Okay,” said Keyter.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, I won’t talk.”

  “And learn.”

  “And learn.”

  “Then you can get out again, because we are not finished here.” He took a step back to make room for the door. Keyter got out, shut the door and folded his arms on his chest. He leaned back against his car.

  “Are we sure that she didn’t do it?” asked Griessel.

  Keyter shrugged. When he saw that was not sufficient, he said “No,” cautiously.

  “Did you hear what I said inside there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she
could have done it?”

  “No.”

  “But she wanted to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now think, Jaaa-mie. Put yourself in her shoes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Think the way she would think,” said Griessel, and suppressed the impulse to cast his eyes heavenwards.

  Keyter unfolded his arms and pressed two fingers to his temples.

  Griessel waited.

  “Okay,” said Keyter.

  Griessel waited.

  “Okay, she is too small to stab Laurens.” He looked at Griessel for approval. Griessel nodded.

  “And she can’t get her hands on the revolver.”

  “That’s right.”

  The fingers worked against his temples.

  “No, fuck, I don’t know,” said Keyter with an angry gesture and straightened up.

  “How would

  you

  feel?” said Griessel, patience dragging at his voice like lead. “Your child is dead. And it’s your lover who did it. How would you feel? You hate, Jamie. You sit here in the house and you hate. She is sitting in the police cells and you know she will get out on bail, sometime or other. And you wish you could beat her to death for what she has done. You imagine it in your head, how you shoot her, or stab her. And then on the radio you hear about this man who has his knife in for people who mess with children. Or you read the papers. What do you do, Jamie? You weep and you hope. You wish. Because you are small and weak and you need a superhero. You think: what if he comes with his big assegai? And you like thinking about it. But the week is too long, Jamie. Later you start thinking: what if he doesn’t come? Bothma said the revolver was hidden. So ten to one she had looked for it. Why, Jamie? In case the assegai man didn’t come. And then, what is the next logical step? You look for the assegai man. And where do you begin to look? Where do you look for someone who has it in for Laurens just as much as you? Because she had a temper. A hard woman. Where do you look?”

  “Okay,” said Keyter and kicked at a clump of grass with a Nike Crosstrainer. “Okay, I get it. You look here, on the plot.”

  “There’s hope for you, Jamie.”

  “The laborers?”

  “That’s right. Who cleans the stables? Who cuts the feed? Who did Laurens shout and swear at when they came to work late? Who will do a little favor for five hundred rand?”

  “I get it.”

  “I want you to go and talk, Jamie. Watch the body language, look at the eyes. Don’t make accusations. Just talk. Ask if they saw anything. Ask if Laurens was a difficult employer. Be sympathetic. Ask if they have heard of the assegai man. Give them a chance to talk. Sometimes they talk easily and too much. Listen, Jamie. Listen with both your ears and your eyes and your head. The thing with a murder investigation is, first you look at it from a distance, look at everything. Then you come a step closer and look again. Another step. You don’t charge in—you stalk.”

  “I get it.”

  “I’m going in to the office. We need the other case files. I am going to ask the investigating officers to tell me everything about Davids and Pretorius. Phone me when you are finished, then you come in.”

  “Okay, Benny.” Grateful.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to go to his car and thinking: fuck, I’m starting to talk like him too.

  25.

  He was still in conference with the other two investigating officers when Cloete, the liaison officer, phoned and said the media had heard there was another Artemis murder.

  “A what?”

  “You know, the assegai thing.”

  “Artemis?”

  “The Argus started that crap, Benny. Some or other Greek god that went around stabbing with a spear or something. Is it true?”

  “That a Greek god went around . . .”

  “

  No, man,

  that the Laurens woman who beat the child to death is the latest victim?”

  The media. Fuck. “All I can say now is that Laurens was found dead outside her house this morning. The post mortem is not finished yet.”

  “They will want more than that.”

  “I don’t have more than that.”

  “Will you phone me when there is more?”

  “I will,” he lied. He was definitely not intending to feed information to the press.

  * * *

  Faizal phoned him just before he went to the mortuary, to ask if he could deliver the sitting-room suite. He drove to the flat to open up and then raced to Salt River where Pagel was waiting for him.

  He heard the music as he closed the door of the state mortuary behind him and it made him grin. That is how you could tell Professor Phil Pagel, chief pathologist, was at work. For Pagel played only Beethoven on his ten-thousand rand hi-fi system in his office, as loud as was necessary.

  “Ah, Nikita,” said Pagel with genuine pleasure when Griessel looked in his door. He was seated behind a computer and had to get up to turn the music down. “How are you, my friend?”

  Pagel had been calling him “Nikita” for twelve years. The first time he had met Griessel he had remarked: “I am sure that is how the young Khruschev would have looked.” Griessel had to think hard who Khrushchev was. He had always had immense respect for highly educated and cultured people, he who had only his matric and police examinations. Once he had said to Pagel: “Damn, Prof, I wish I were as clever as you.” But Pagel had looked back at him and said: “I suspect you are the clever one, Nikita, and you have street smarts, too.”

  He liked that. Also the fact that Pagel, who featured so often on the social pages, Friends of the Opera, Save the Symphony Orchestra, Aids Action Campaign, treated him as an equal. Always had. Pagel didn’t seem to age—tall and lean and impossibly handsome, some people said he looked like the star of some or other television soap that Griessel had never seen.

  “Well, thank you, Prof. And you?”

  “Splendid, my dear fellow. I have just finished with the unfortunate Miss Laurens.”

  “Prof, they have given me the whole show—Davids, Pretorius, the works. Bushy and them tell me you think this is also an assegai.”

  “Not think. I am reasonably sure. What is different about you, Nikita? Have you cut your hair? Come, let me show you.” He walked ahead down the passage and opened the swing doors of the post mortem laboratory with a deft thump of his palms. “It’s a long time since we saw an assegai—it’s no longer a weapon of choice. Twenty years ago it was more common.”

  There was the smell of death and formalin and cheap air freshener in the room and the air conditioning was set quite low. Pagel unzipped the black body bag. Laurens’s remains lay there naked, like a cocoon. There was a single wound in the middle of her torso between two small breasts.

  “What was not present with Davids,” said Pagel as he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, “is the exit wound. Entry wound was wide, about six centimeters, but there was nothing behind. My conclusion was a very broad blade, or two stabs with a single, thinner blade—most unlikely, however. But I didn’t think ‘assegai.’ With Pretorius we have the exit wound, two point seven centimeters wide, and the entry wound of six point two. That’s when the penny dropped.”

  He turned Laurens’s body on its side. “Look here, Nikita. Exit wound right behind, just beside the spinal column. I had to cut the entry wound for chemical analysis, so you can no longer see, but it was even wider—six point seven, six point seven five.”

  He lowered the body carefully on its back again, and covered it again.

  “It tells us a couple of things which you will find interesting, Nikita. The blade is long; I estimate about sixty centimeters. We see a great deal of stab wounds inflicted with butcher’s knives—you know, the kind you can buy at Pick and Pay, about a twenty-five centimeter blade. Those wounds display clearly only one cutting edge and sometimes an exit wound, but never wider than a centimeter. Entry wounds usually three, occasionally four centimeters. Here we have two cutting edges, much like a bayonet, but wider and thinner. Considerably wider. A bayonet also does more damage internally—designed for it, did you know? So we have a b
lade sixty centimeters long, with a narrow piercing point growing steadily wider towards the back where it is just under seven centimeters. Do you follow, Nikita?”