by Deon Meyer
“I didn’t say it was you, but the fuck knows . . .”
“Cloete, I’m sorry about yesterday. It was one of my team members that talked to the media. It won’t happen again.”
“What do you want, Benny?”
“What do you mean?”
“The day you apologize is the day you want something. What’s going on here?”
“This is a difficult one. Nineteen-year-old girl stabbed her father with an assegai because he molested her. But she didn’t commit the other murders.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“How do you want me to handle this?”
“Cloete, there are politics involved with the assegai thing. Between you and me, the girl in there was partly inspired by our murderer, if you know what I mean. But if you tell the media that, the commissioner will have a stroke, because he’s under pressure from above.”
“The minister?”
“Parliamentary Commission.”
“Fuck.”
“You must talk to Anwar, too, so we all have the same story. I feel we should only mention a domestic fight and a sharp instrument. Don’t let on about the weapon for now.”
“That’s not the thing you want from me, Benny, is it?”
“No, you’re right. I need another favor.”
Cloete shook his head in disbelief. “The fuck knows, I am nothing but a whore. A police prostitute, that’s what I am.”
32.
The town was too small.
He couldn’t reconnoiter. This afternoon when he drove down the long curve of the main street there were eyes on him. The eyes of colored people in front of a few cafés, the eyes of black petrol attendants at the filling station, which consisted of a couple of pumps and a dilapidated caravan. The eyes of Uniondale’s few white residents watering their dry gardens with hosepipes.
Thobela knew he had only one chance to find the house. He wouldn’t be able to look around; he wouldn’t be able to drive up and down. Because here everyone knew about the Scholtz scandal and they would remember a black man driving a pickup — a strange black man in a place where everyone knew everybody.
He had to be content with a signboard in the main street indicating the road. It was enough. He took the R339 out of the town, the one running east towards the mountain. As the road curved around the town, he saw there was a place to park with pepper trees and clefts in the ridges beside the road where he could leave the vehicle in the dark. He drove on, through the pass, along the Kamannasie River, and at twelve kilometers he filled up with petrol beside the cooperative at Avontuur.
Where was he going? asked the Xhosa petrol attendant.
Port Elizabeth.
So why are you taking this road?
Because it is quiet.
Safe journey, my brother.
The petrol attendant would remember him. And that forced him to drive back to the main road and turn right. Towards the Langkloof, because the man’s eyes could follow him. If he deviated from that route, the man would wonder why and remember him even better.
In any case he had to pass the time until dark. He made a long detour. Gravel roads, past game farms and eventually back via the pass. To this spot above Uniondale where he stood beside the pickup in the moonlight and watched the town lights below. He would have to walk through the veld and over the ridge. Sneak. Between the houses. He would have to avoid dogs. He must find the right house. He must go in and do what he had to do. And then come back and drive away.
It would be hard. He had too little information about the lay of the land and the position of the house. He didn’t even know if they would be home.
Leave. Now. The risk was too great. The town was too small.
He took the assegai from behind the seat. He stood on a rock and looked over the town. His fingertips stroked the smooth wooden shaft.
He had all night.
Between Bishop Lavis and Camps Bay his cell phone rang twice.
First it was Greyling from Forensics: “Benny, your man drives a pickup.”
“Oh, yes?”
“And if we are not mistaken, it’s a four-by-two with diff lock. Probably a double cab. Because the imprint is from a RTSA Wrangler. A Goodyear 215/14.”
“What make is the pickup?”
“Hell, no, it’s impossible to say, the whole lot come out of the factory with the Wrangler — Ford and Mazda, Izuzu, Toyota, you name it.”
“How do you know it’s not an ordinary pickup?”
“Your ordinary one comes out with the CV 2000 from Goodyear, which is a 195/14, the G 22, they call it. Trouble is, nearly every minibus-taxi comes out with the same tire, so it’s chaos. And your four-by-four is a 215/15. But this print is definitely a 215/14, which is put on the four-by-twos. And eighty per cent of your four-by-twos are double cabs or these other things with only two doors, the Club Cabs. Which also means our suspect is not a poor man, because a double cab costs the price of a farm these days.”
“Unless it’s stolen.”
“Unless it’s stolen, yes.”
“Thanks, Arrie.”
“Pleasure, Benny.”
Before he had time to ponder the new evidence, the phone rang again.
“Hi, Dad.” It was Fritz.
“Hi, Fritz.”
“What’re you doing, Dad?” His son wanted to chat?
“Working. It’s a circus today. Everything is happening at once.”
“With the vigilante? Has he nailed someone else?”
“No, not him. Someone else who thinks they are the assegai man.”
“Cool!”
Griessel laughed. “You think it’s cool?”
“Definitely. But I actually wanted to know if you listened to the CD, Dad.”
Damn. He had completely forgotten about the music. “I only realized last night that I didn’t have a CD player. And there wasn’t time today to get one. It was a madhouse . . .”
“It’s okay.” But he detected disappointment. “If you want it, I’ve got a portable CD player. The bass isn’t too great.”
“Thanks, Fritz, but I must get something for the flat. I’ll make a plan tomorrow, I promise.”
“Great. And then let me know.”
“The minute I have listened to it.”
“Dad, don’t work too hard. And Carla sends her love and says yesterday was cool.”
“Thanks, Fritz. Give her my love too.”
“Okay, Dad. Bye.”
“Sleep well.”
He sat behind the wheel and stared into the dark. Emotion welled up in him. Maybe Anna didn’t want him anymore, but the children did. Despite all the harm he had done.
The dramatic difference between the crime scenes at Bishop Lavis and Camps Bay was immediately apparent. In the wealthy neighborhood there were practically no onlookers, but at least twice as many police vehicles. The uniformed officers huddled on the sidewalk as if they expected a riot.
He had to drive down the street a bit to find parking and walk back up the slope. All the houses were three stories high to see the now invisible view of the Atlantic Ocean. They were all in the same style of concrete and glass — modern palaces that stood empty most of the year while their owners were in London or Zurich or Munich, busy raking in the euros.
At the steps a uniform stopped him. “Sorry, Inspector Ngubane only wants key personnel inside,” the constable said.
He took out his identity card from his wallet and showed it. “Why are there so many people here?”
“Because of the drugs, Inspector. We have to help move them when they are finished.”
He walked up to the front door and looked in. It was as big as a theater. Two or three sitting areas on different levels, a dining area and, to the right, on the balcony side, a sparkling blue indoor swimming pool. Two teams of Forensics were busy searching for bloodstains with ultraviolet lights. On the uppermost level, on a long leather couch, four men sat in a neat row, handcuffed and heads bowed as if they fe
lt remorse already. Beside them stood uniformed policemen, each with a gun on his arm. Griessel went up.
“Where is Inspector Ngubane?” he asked one of the uniforms.
“Top floor,” one indicated.
“Which one of these fuckers messed with the girl?”
“These are just the gofers,” said the uniform. “The inspector is busy with the big chief. And it’s not just about messing with the kid.”
“Oh?”
“The child has disappeared . . .”
“How do I get up there?”
“The stairs are there,” pointed the constable with the stock of his shotgun.
In the first-floor passage, Timothy Ngubane stood and argued with a large white detective. Griessel recognized him from the faded blue and white cloth hat sporting a red disa flower emblem and the word WP Rugby: Senior Superintendent Wilhelm “Boef” Beukes, a former member of the old Murder and Robbery and Narcotics branches and now a specialist in organized crime.
“Why not? The girl is not in there.”
“There might be evidence in there, Sup, and I can’t risk . . .” He spotted Griessel. “Benny,” he said with a degree of relief.
“Hi, Tim. Boef, how are you?”
“Crap, thanks. Drugs haul of the decade and I have to stand in line.”
“Finding the child has priority, Sup,” said Ngubane.
“But she’s not here. You already know that.”
“But there might be evidence down there. All I’m asking is that you wait.”
“Get your butts moving,” said Beukes and stalked off down the passage.
Ngubane sighed deeply and at length. “It’s been an amazing night,” he said to Griessel. “Absolutely amazing. I’ve got everybody down there —”
“Down where?”
“There’s this storeroom in the basement with more drugs than anyone’s ever seen, and the entire SAPS is here — the commercial branch and organized crime and the drugs guy from Forensics, and they all have their own video teams and photographers, and I can’t let them in, because there might be leads to where the girl is.”
“And the suspect?”
“He’s in here.” Ngubane pointed at the door behind him. “And he’s not talking.”
“Can I go in?”
Ngubane opened the door. Griessel looked in. It was not a big room. Untidy. A man sat on a cardboard box. Thick black hair, drooping black mustache, white shirt unbuttoned, the breast pocket seemed torn. A red bruise on the cheekbone.
“Sy naam is Carlos,” began Ngubane deliberately in Afrikaans so that Sangrenegra would not understand and took a small notebook from his trouser pocket. “Carlos San . . . gre . . . ne . . . gra,” he carefully enunciated the syllables.
“Fuck you,” said Sangrenegra with venom.
“Did someone beat him up?” Griessel spoke Afrikaans.
“The mother. Of the little girl. He’s a Colombian. His visa . . . expired long ago.”
“What happened, Tim?”
“Come in. I don’t want to leave the cunt alone.”
“You curse very prettily in Afrikaans.”
Ngubane moved into the room ahead of Griessel. “I’m well coached.” He closed the door behind him. It looked as if it was meant to be a study. Shelves against the wall, dark glowing wood, but empty. Boxes on the floor.
“What’s in the boxes?” Griessel asked.
“Look,” said Ngubane and sat down on the single chair, an expensive piece of office furniture with a high back and brown leather.
Griessel opened one of the boxes. There were books in it. He took one out. A Tale of Two Cities was printed in gold lettering on the spine of the book.
“Look inside.”
He opened it. There were no pages — just a plastic filler with sides that looked like paper.
“Not a great reader are you, Carlos?” said Griessel.
“Fuck you.”
“A woman phoned Caledon Square about eight o’clock.” Ngubane continued in Afrikaans. “She was crying. She said her child had been abducted and she knew who it was. They sent a team to the flat in Belle Ombre Street and found the lady. She was confused and bleeding from the head and she said a man had assaulted her and taken her child. She was . . .” he searched for the Afrikaans word.
“Unconscious.”
Ngubane nodded. “She gave the man’s name and this address and she said he had raped her too. She said she knew him and he liked children . . . you know? And then she told us he’s a drug lord.”
Griessel nodded and turned to look at Sangrenegra. The brown eyes smoldered. He was a lean man, veins prominent on his forearms, dressed in blue denim and trainers. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
“The uniforms phoned the station commander and the SC phoned us and I was on call and talked to Joubert and got the task force. Then we were all here and the task force arrived by helicopter and the works. We found five men here. Carlos and those four downstairs. They found the drugs in the basement and the girl’s clothes in this one’s room. Then they found blood in his BMW and a dog, one of those stuffed toys, but no child and this cunt won’t talk. He says he knows nothing.”
“The child. It’s a little girl?”
“Three years old. Three.”
Griessel felt a red flood of revulsion. “Where is she?” he asked Carlos.
“Fuck you.”
He jumped up and grabbed the man by the hair, jerked his head back and kept pulling the dark locks. He shoved his face close up to Sangrenegra. “Where is she, you piece of shit?”
“I don’t know!”
Griessel jerked his hair. Sangrenegra winced. “She lie. The whore, she lie. I know nothing.”
“How did the girl’s clothes get in your room, you cunt?” He jerked again as hard as he could as frustration gnawed at him.
“She put it there. She is a whore. She was my whore.”
“Jissis,” said Griessel with disgust and gave the hair one last pull before he left him. His hand felt greasy. He wiped it off on Sangrenegra’s shirt. “You lie. You cunt.”
“I’ve been through that process,” said Ngubane behind him in a calm voice, as if nothing had happened.
“Ask my men,” said Sangrenegra.
Griessel laughed without humor. “Who gave you this?” he asked and shoved a finger hard onto the bruise on Carlos’s cheek.
The Colombian spat at him. Griessel drew his hand back to slap him.
“He said he visited the complainant today,” Ngubane said. “He says she is a prostitute. She invited him to her flat. The child wasn’t there. Then she hit him for no reason. So he hit her back.”
“That’s his story?”
“That’s his story?”
“And the mother?”
“Social Services are with her. She’s . . . traumatized.”
“What do you think, Tim?” Griessel realized he was out of breath. He sat down on a box.
“The child was in his car, Benny. The blood. And the dog. She was there. He drove somewhere with her. We have two hours from the assault on the complainant until we got here. He took the child somewhere. He thought because the mother is a call girl, he could do what he wanted. But something happened in the car. The child got scared, or something. So he cut her. That’s what the blood looks like. It’s against the armrest of the back seat. Looks like an —” he searched for the Afrikaans word again — “. . . artery. Then he knew he was in trouble. He must have got rid of the kid.”
“Jissis.”
“Yes,” said Ngubane.
Griessel looked at Sangrenegra. Carlos stared back, with disdain.
“I don’t think we should be optimistic about the child. If she was alive, this cunt would want to bargain.”
“Can I try something?” Griessel asked.
“Please,” said Ngubane.
“Carlos,” said Griessel, “have you heard of Artemis?”
“Fuck you.”
“Let me tell you a story, Carlos. There is
this guy out there. He has a big assegai. Do you know what an assegai is, Carlos? It’s a spear. A Zulu weapon. With a long blade, very sharp. Now, this guy is a real problem for us, because he is killing people. And do you know who he kills, Carlos? He is killing people who fuck with children. Sure you haven’t heard about this, Carlos?”
“Fuck you.”
“We are trying to catch this guy. Because he is breaking the law. But with you we can make an exception. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell all the newspapers and the television that you have abducted this beautiful little girl, Carlos. I will give them your address. And we will publish a photograph of you. And I’m going to see to it that you make bail. And I’m going to keep all your friends in jail, and leave you here, in this big house, all alone. We will sit outside to make sure you don’t go back to Colombia. And we will wait for the guy with the spear to find you.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Carlos. You are the one who is fucked. Think about it. Because when he comes, we will look the other way.”
Sangrenegra said nothing, just stared at Griessel.
“This assegai guy, he has killed three people. One stab, right through the heart. With that long blade.”
No reaction.
“Tell me where the girl is. And it can be different.”
Carlos just stared at him.
“You want to die, Carlos? Just tell me where the girl is.”
For a moment Sangrenegra hesitated. Then he shouted, in a shrill voice: “Carlos don’t know! Carlos don’t fucking know!”
33.
When they shoved Sangrenegra into the back of a police van and clanged the door shut, Ngubane said: “I owe you an apology, Benny.”
“Oh?”
“About this morning.” Griessel realized he had already forgotten the incident; it had been a long day.
“We get a little paranoid, I suppose,” said Ngubane. “Some of the white cops . . . they think we’re shit.”
Griessel said nothing.
“I went to visit Cliffy Mketsu. In hospital. He says you’re not like that.”
Griessel wanted to add that no, he wasn’t like that. His problem was that he thought everyone was crap. “How’s Cliffy doing?”
“Good. He says you have more experience than the rest of us combined. So I want to ask you, Benny, what more can I do here? How do I find this kid?”