by Deon Meyer
Someone had seen him with the assegai. But had not reported him.
He had been too focused. No, he hadn’t been thorough enough, not entirely calculated. There had been a witness. He should have known there would be publicity. Media interest. Screaming headlines and speculation and accusations.
Could the killing of child rapist Enver Davids be the work of a female vigilante — and not the South African Police Services, as was previously suspected?
Strange consequences.
Would the police be able to trace the female caller? Would she be able to give them a description of him?
It didn’t really matter.
He turned the page. On page three there was an article on a radio station’s phone-in opinion poll. Should the death penalty be reinstated? Eighty-seven per cent of listeners had voted “yes’.
On page two were short reports of the day’s criminal activity. Three murders in Khayelitsha. A gang-related shooting took a woman’s life in Blue Downs. A man was wounded in Constantia during a car hijacking. A cash in-transit robbery in Montague Gardens: two security guards in intensive care. A seventy-two-year-old woman raped, assaulted and robbed in her home in Rosebank. A farmer in Limpopo Province gunned down in his shed.
No children today.
A waitress brought his bill. He folded the paper and leaned back in his chair. He watched the people walking down the mall, some purposefully, some strolling. There were stalls, clothes and artworks. The sky was blue above, a dove came down to land on the pavement with its tail and wings spread wide.
It was déjà vu, all this, this existence. A hotel room somewhere with his suitcase half unpacked, long days to struggle through, time to wait out before the next assignment. Paris was his place of waiting, another city, another architecture, other languages; but the feeling was the same. The only difference was that in those days his targets had been picked for him in a somber office in East Berlin, and the little stack of documents with photographs and pages of single-spaced typing was delivered to him by courier. His war. His Struggle.
A lifetime ago. The world was a different place, but how easy it was to slip into the old routines again — the state of alertness, the patience, the preparation, planning, the anticipation of the next intense burst of adrenaline.
Here he was again. Back in harness. The circle was complete. It felt as if the intervening period had never existed, as if Miriam and Pakamile were a fantasy, like an advertisement in the middle of a television drama, a disturbing view of aspirations of domestic bliss.
He paid for his cold drink and walked south to the pay phones and called the number again. “Is Professor Ackerman available now?”
“Just a moment.”
She put him through. He used the other name again and the cover of freelance journalism. He said he had read an article in the archives of Die Burger where the professor stated that a fixated pedophile always reoffended. He wanted to understand what that meant.
The professor sighed and paused a while before he answered. “Well, it sort of means what it says, Mr. Nulwazi.”
“Nzuluwazi.”
“I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names. It means the official line is that, statistically, rehabilitation fails to a substantial degree. In other words, even after an extended prison sentence, there is no guarantee that they won’t commit the same crime again.” There was weariness of life in the man’s voice.
“The official line.”
“Yes.”
“Does that differ from reality?”
“No.”
“I get the idea you don’t support the official line.”
“It is not a matter of support. It is a matter of semantics.”
“Oh?”
“Can we go off the record here, Mr. Nulwazi?”
This time he ignored the pronunciation. “Of course.”
“And you won’t quote me?”
“You have my word.”
The professor paused again before he answered, as if weighing the worth of it. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t believe they can be rehabilitated.”
“Not at all?”
“It’s a terrible disease. And we have yet to find the cure. The problem is that, no matter how much we would like to believe we are getting closer to a solution, there doesn’t seem to be one.” Still the desperate, despairing weariness. “They come out of prison and sooner or later they relapse, and we have more damaged children. And the damage is huge. It is immeasurable. It destroys lives, utterly and completely. It causes trauma you wouldn’t believe. And there seem to be more of them every year. God knows, it is either a matter of our society creating more, or that the lawlessness in this country is encouraging them to come out of the woodwork. I don’t know . . .”
“So what you are saying is that they shouldn’t be released?”
“Look, I know it is inhuman to keep them in prison forever. Pedophiles have a tough time in penitentiaries. They are considered the scum of the earth in that world. They are raped and beaten and humiliated. But they serve their sentences and go through the programs and then they come out and they relapse. Some right away, others a year or two or three down the line. I don’t know what the answer is, but we will have to find one.”
“Yes,” said Thobela, “we will have to find one.”
How tedious the clergyman’s day-to-day existence must be, because he was still sitting there with the same interest. He was still listening attentively to her story, his expression neutrally sympathetic, his arms relaxed on the desk. It was quiet in the house, outside as well, just the noise of insects. It was strange to her, accustomed as she was to the eternal sound of traffic, people on the move in a city. Always on the go.
Here there was nowhere to go to.
“I had no more money. If you don’t have money, you must have time, to stand in long queues with your child on your hip for vaccinations or cough medicine or something to stop diarrhea. If you have a child and you have to work, then you have to pay for daycare. If you are waitressing then you have to pay extra for someone to look after it at night. Then you have to walk back to your flat with your baby at one in the morning in winter, or you have to pay for a taxi. If you won’t work at night, you miss the best shifts with the biggest tips. So you buy nothing for yourself, and this week you try this and next week you try that until you know you just can’t win.”
“I couldn’t cope anymore — there were just too many things. Every Monday I read the Times Job Supplement and handed in my CV for every possible job: secretarial, medical rep, clerk. Then, if you were lucky they would invite you for an interview. But it is always the same. No experience? Oh, you have a child. Are you divorced? Oh. Sorry, we want experience. We want someone with a car. We need someone with book-keeping.
“Sorry, it’s an affirmative action position. I left the coffee shop because the tips were too small and it was still winter too and that’s off-season. I worked at Trawlers, a seafood place that opened up on Kloof Street, and one night a guy said, ‘Do you want to make real money?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ Then he asked me ‘How much?’ and I didn’t click and I said, ‘As much as I can.’ Then he said, ‘Three hundred rand,’ and I asked, ‘Three hundred rand what — per day?’ Then he got this smile on his face and said, ‘Per night, actually.’ He was just an average guy, about forty, with spectacles and a little paunch and I said, ‘What must I do?’ and he said, ‘You know,’ and I still didn’t click. Then he said, ‘Bring me a pen and I will write down my hotel room for you,’ and at last I clicked and I just stood staring at him. I wanted to scream at him, what did he think I was, and I stood there so angry, but what could I do, he was a customer. So I went to fetch his bill, and when I looked again he was gone. He had left a hundred-rand tip and a note with his hotel number and he had written ‘Five hundred? For an hour.’ And I put it in my pocket, because I was afraid someone might see it.
“Five hundred rand. When your rent is six hundred and eighty, then five hundred is a lot of
money. If you have to pay four-fifty for daycare and extra on weekends, because that’s where the tips are, five hundred fills a big gap. If you need three thousand to get through the month and you never know if you will make it and you have to save for a car, because when you have to pick up your child and it’s raining . . . then you take that bit of paper out of your pocket and you look at it again. But who understands that? What white person understands that?
“Then you think, what difference does it make? You see it every day. A couple come in and he wines and dines her and for what? To get her into bed. What is the difference? Three hundred rand for dinner or five hundred for sex.
“They hit on me in any case, the men. Even when I was pregnant, in the coffee shop, and afterwards, at Trawlers, even worse. The whole time. Some just give you these looks, some say things like ‘nice rack’ or ‘cute butt, sweetie’; some ask you straight out what you are doing on Friday night, or ‘are you attached, sweetness?’ The vain ones leave their cell phone numbers on the bill, as if they are God’s gift. Some chat you up with pretty little questions. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘How long have you been in Cape Town?’ ‘What are you studying?’ But you know what they really want, because soon they ask you, ‘Do you have your own place?’ or, ‘Jissie, we are chatting so lekker, when do you finish work, so we can chat some more?’ At first you think you are very special, because some of them are cute and witty, but you hear them doing it with everyone, even the ugly waitresses. All the time, all of them, like those rabbits with the long-life batteries, never stopping; never mind if they are sixteen or sixty, married or single, they are on the lookout and it never stops.
“Then you get back to your room and think about everything and you think of what you don’t have and you think there really is no difference, you think five hundred rand and you lie and wonder what it would be like, how bad could it be to be with the guy for an hour?”
17.
All day Griessel had been looking for a decoy, a middle-aged policewoman to push a trolley up and down Woolworths at the Waterfront on Friday night. Hopefully the bastard would choose her. Someone eventually suggested a Sergeant Marais at Claremont, late thirties, who might fit the bill. He phoned her and made an appointment to talk to her.
He took the M5, because it was faster, and turned off at Lansdowne in order to drive up to Main Road. At the off ramp, just left of the road, was an advertising board, very wide and high. Castle Lager. Beer. Fuck it, he hadn’t drunk beer in years, but the advert depicted a glass with drops of moisture running down the sides, a head of white foam and contents the color of piss. He had to stop at the traffic lights and stare at that damn glass of beer. He could taste it. That dry, bitter taste. He could feel it sliding down his throat, but above all he could feel the warmth spreading through his body from the medicine in his belly.
When he came to his senses, someone was hooting behind him, a single, impatient toot. He jumped and drove away, realizing only then what had happened and scared by the intensity of the enchantment.
He thought: what the fuck am I going to do? How do you fight something like this, pills or no pills? Jissis, he hadn’t drunk beer in years.
He realized he was squeezing the steering wheel and he tried to breathe, tried to get his breath back as he drove.
Before she even stood up from behind the desk, he knew the sergeant was perfect. She had that washed-out look, more lean miles on the clock than her year model indicated; her hair was dyed blonde. She said her name was André. Her smile showed a slightly skew front tooth. She looked as if she expected him to comment on her name.
He sat down opposite her and told her about the case and his suspicions. He said she would be ideal, but he could not force her to be part of the operation.
“I’m in,” she said.
“It could be dangerous. We would have to wait until he tried something.”
“I’m in.”
“Talk to your husband tonight. Sleep on it. You can phone me tomorrow.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll do it.”
He spoke to the station commander, to ask permission, although he did not have to. The big colored captain complained he didn’t have people to spare, they were undermanned as it was and Marais was a key person: who would do her work when she wasn’t there? Griessel said it was just Friday nights from five o’clock and her overtime would not appear on the station’s budget. The captain nodded. “Okay, then.”
He drove to Gardens late in the afternoon with the address to his flat on a slip of paper on the seat beside him.
Friend Street . . . what fucking kind of name was that? Mount Nelson’s Mansions. Number one two eight.
He had never lived in this area. All his life he had been in the northern suburbs, since school a Parow Arrow, apart from the year in Pretoria at the Police College and three years in Durban as a constable. Jissis, he never wanted to go back there, to the heat and humidity and the stink. Curry and dagga and everything in English. In those days he had an accent you could cut with a cudgel and the Souties and Indians teased or taunted him, depending on whether they were colleagues or people he had arrested. Fuckin’ rock spider. Fuckin’ hairyback pig. Fuckin’ dumb Dutchman policeman.
Mount Nelson’s Mansions. There was a steel fence around it and a large security gate. He would have to park in the street at first and press a button on a sign that said Caretaker to get in and collect his keys and the remote control for the gate. A red brick building that had never been a mansion, maybe thirty or forty years old. Not beautiful, not ugly, it just stood there between two white-plastered apartment blocks.
The caretaker was an old Xhosa. “You a policeman?” he asked.
“I am.”
“That is good. We need a policeman here.”
He fetched his suitcases from the car and dragged them up one flight of stairs. One two eight. The door needed varnish. It had a peephole in the center and two locks. He found the right keys and pushed the door open. Brown parquet floor, fuck-all furniture, except for the breakfast counter with no stools, a few bleached melamine kitchen cupboards and an old Defy stove with three plates and an oven. A wooden staircase. He left the cases and climbed the stairs. There was a bed up there, a single bed, the one that had been stored in the garage, his garage. His former garage. Just the wooden bedstead and foam mattress with the faded blue floral pattern. The bedding lay in a pile on the foot of the bed. Pillow and slip, sheets, blankets. There was a built-in wardrobe. A door led to the small bathroom.
He went down to fetch his suitcases.
Not even a bloody chair. If he wanted to sit down, it would have to be on the bed.
Nothing to eat off or drink from or to boil water. He had fuck-all. He had less than when he went to police college.
Jissis.
In his hotel room, Thobela searched under “P” in the telephone directory. There was the name, Colin Pretorius, written just like that, and the address, 122 Chantelle Street, Parow. He drove to the Sanlam Center in Voortrekker Road and bought a street guide to Cape Town in CNA.
As the sun disappeared behind Table Mountain, he drove down Hannes Louw Drive and left into Fairfield, right into Simone and, after a long curve, left into Chantelle. The even numbers were on the right. Number 122 was an inconspicuous house with burglar bars and a security gate. The neat garden had two ornamental cypress trees, a few shrubs and a green, mowed lawn, all enclosed by a concrete wall around the back and sides. No signs of life. On the garage wall above the door was a blue and silver sign: Cobra Security. Armed Rapid Response.
He had a problem. He was a black man in a white suburb. He knew the fact that he was driving a pickup would help, keep him color-free and anonymous in the dusk. But not forever. If he hung around too long or drove past one time too many, someone would notice his skin color and begin to wonder.
He drove once around the block and past 122 again, this time observing the neighboring houses and the long strip of park that curved around with Simone Street.
Then he had to leave, back to the shopping center. There were things he needed.
Griessel sat on the still unmade bed and stared at the wardrobe. His clothes could not fill a third of the space. It was the empty space that fascinated him.
At home his wardrobe was full of clothes he hadn’t worn in years — garments too small or so badly out of fashion that Anna forbade him to wear them.
But here he could count on one hand each type of garment she had packed for him, excepting the underpants — there were probably eight or nine, which he had piled in a heap in the middle rack.
Laundry. How would he manage? There were already two days’ worth of dirty clothes in a bundle at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the single pair of shoes. And ironing — hell, it was years since he had picked up an iron. Cooking, washing dishes. Vacuuming! The bedroom did have a dirty brown wall-to-wall carpet.
“Fuck,” he said, rising to his feet.
He thought of the beer advertisement again.
God, no, that was the sort of thing that had got him into this situation. He must not. He would have to find something to do. There were the files in his briefcase. But where would he work? On the bed? He needed a stool for the breakfast bar. It was too late to look for one now. He wanted coffee. Maybe the Pick and Pay in Gardens was still open. He took his wallet, cell phone and the keys to his new flat and descended the stairs to the bare living room below.
Thobela bought a small pocket torch, batteries, binoculars and a set of screwdrivers and sat down in a restaurant to study the map.
His first problem would be to get into the suburb. He could not park near the house as the pickup was registered in his name. Someone might write down the number. Or remember it. He would have to park somewhere else and walk in, but it was still risky. Every second house had a private security company’s sign on the wall. There would be patrol vehicles, there would be wary eyes ready to call an emergency number. “There’s a black man in our street.”
Chances were better by day — he might be a gardener on his way to work — but at night the risks multiplied.