Dead Before Dying: A Novel

by Deon Meyer

  “No . . . I don’t think so. Jim . . . James told me that all his money was invested in unit trusts because he didn’t want to worry about it. As far as I know he only had Quickmail, his cricket, and his family.”

  “Has your firm done any business for Chinese firms?”

  Schutte frowned. “No. What has that —”

  Griessel interrupted him. “Have you seen this morning’s Burger?”

  “No.” Schutte was off balance.

  “The way in which Wallace was murdered, Mr. Schutte—it’s similar to the modus operandi of the Chinese drug dealers. Did he have any contact with people from Taiwan?”

  “No.”

  “The local Chinese community?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Pharmaceutical companies?”

  “There is one for whom we send marketing brochures to the medical profession, but Jimmy never worked with them.”

  “Did he use drugs?”

  “Never. It’s an absurd idea. Jimmy wasn’t the sort.”

  “Mr. Wallace’s politics. Did he have strong political opinions?”

  “Jimmy? No . . .”

  “Did you do business with any political group?”

  “Not at any time.”

  “Do you know how he and his wife got along?”

  Schutte sat even straighter in his tall chair. “You’ll find nothing there, either, Captain.” His voice was reproachful. “James and Margaret were the perfect couple. In love, successful, beautiful children . . . young Jeremy plays a fantastic game of cricket. No, Captain, you won’t find anything there.”

  Joubert realized that the time had come to free Schutte of his excessive respect for and protection of the dead.

  The secretary brought in a tea tray with three cups and put it on the desk. She poured and they thanked her. When everyone had stopped stirring, Joubert asked: “Do you know why the deceased went to the Holiday Inn in Newlands yesterday?”

  Schutte moved his shoulders as if the question was obvious. “James often had a beer there with his cricketing friends.”

  “Mr. Schutte, how did the deceased get along with the women working here?”

  “Very well. He got along with everyone.”

  In the good old days, when Mat Joubert still performed his day’s work with the zeal of the newly converted, he developed a technique for reluctant witnesses like Walter Schutte—the Bull, as his colleagues called it. He would lean his big body forward, square and broaden his shoulders, drop his head like a battering ram, lower his voice an octave, and fix his eagle’s eyes on the specific person. Then he would speak, pulling no punches, in a somewhat superior, threatening tone. It was melodramatic, overdone, and feigned. But it worked.

  But as Tony O’Grady said one day, a year or two ago, Joubert had lost “the beat in his baton.” And with it the motivation to use the Bull.

  Whether it was the flickering flame of sexual hunger ignited by Yvonne Stoffberg, or Colonel Bart de Wit’s challenge to the remnants of his ego, Joubert would never know. When he switched to the Bull it was probably not a reasoned act but more than likely pure reflex.

  The physical side of shoulders, head, and eyes he managed, but initially he had problems with the voice and the choice of words. “Yesterday afternoon Jimmy Wallace spent the last hours of his life . . . on top of a blonde. I’m sure it wasn’t his first . . . escapade. And . . . I know someone in the office must know about his escapades because someone had to protect him when Mrs. Wallace looked for him. You now have a choice, Mr. Schutte. You can go on telling fairy tales about Jimmy Wallace and how exemplary and wonderful he was. Then I’ll have to bring in a team of detectives, which will keep each of the employees busy for hours. Or you can help us and we’ll leave as soon as possible.”

  Joubert maintained his aggressive pose. Schutte opened his mouth and closed it again, struggling to find the right words.

  “Jimmy . . . Jimmy had his little diversions.” The hands were quiet now.

  Joubert leaned back in his chair—the Bull was no longer necessary.

  “Mr. Schutte, you saw what James Wallace looks like now. We’re trying to find the person who had a reason for doing that to him. Help us.”

  “He . . . liked women.” Schutte glanced swiftly at the door as if he expected James Wallace there, eavesdropping.

  “But he had two rules. No nonsense at work. And no long relationships. Just once with each one. Into bed and that was it.”

  Schutte’s hands started to move again. He was gaining momentum.

  “You should’ve known Jimmy . . .” He gestured with his hands indicating a search for words. “He attracted people like a magnet. Anyone. He was mad about people. We were in a restaurant in Johannesburg and he bet us that within twenty minutes he could convince the brunette in the corner to go to the ladies with him. We accepted the bet. We weren’t allowed to look at them and he had to bring back a piece of evidence. Eighteen minutes later the brunette kissed him good-bye outside the restaurant. And when he sat down he took her panties out of his pocket. Red ones with a black . . .” Then Schutte blushed.

  “We want you to think carefully, Mr. Schutte. Do you know of any of his relationships that might have resulted in conflict or unhappiness?”

  “No, I told you he had no relationships. In his way he was very fond of Margaret. Okay, occasionally he broke one of his own rules. There was a little secretary here, a young pretty number with big . . . But it only lasted a week. In all honesty I can’t think of anything that would’ve made anyone want to murder him.”

  Joubert looked at Griessel. Griessel shook his head slightly. They got up. “We’re sure there’s a jealous husband somewhere who didn’t like Wallace’s rules, Mr. Schutte. Please phone us if you can think of something that would be helpful.”

  “Of course, absolutely,” Schutte said in his deep voice and also stood. Solemnly they shook hands.

  “I haven’t seen the Bull for a long time, Captain,” said Griessel when they were in the elevator on the way down to street level.

  Joubert looked questioningly at him.

  “The one where you lean forward like that.”

  Joubert gave a lopsided, self-conscious grin.

  “We all tried to imitate it,” Benny Griessel said, openly nostalgic. “Those were the good old days.”

  Then he realized that Mat Joubert might not want to be reminded of them and he shut up.

  7.

  The doctor’s reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose. Over them he stared at Joubert, grave and portentous.

  “If I were a mechanic this would be the moment to whistle and shake my head, Captain.”

  Joubert said nothing.

  “Things don’t look too good. You smoke. Your lungs don’t sound good. You admitted that you drink too much. You’re fifteen kilos overweight. You have a family history of cardiovascular disease. You work under stress.” The doctor linked his fingers on the desk in front of him.

  The man should’ve become a public prosecutor, Joubert thought and stared at a plastic model of a heart and lungs that stood on the desk. It advertised some remedy.

  “I’m sending the blood sample for tests. We must check your cholesterol level. But in the meanwhile we must consider your smoking.”

  Joubert sighed.

  “Have you thought of giving it up?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how harmful it is?”

  “Doctor . . .”

  “It’s not only that you’re exposing yourself to diseases. It’s the manner in which you’ll die, Captain. Have you ever seen someone with emphysema? You should come to the hospital with me, Captain. They lie there in oxygen tents, slowly smothering in their own mucus, like fish on dry ground, unable to breathe.”

  On the desk there was a penholder in the shape of a pill. It advertised another kind of medicine. Joubert folded his arms and stared at it.

  “And those with lung cancer?” the doctor continued. “Have you seen w
hat chemotherapy does to one, Captain? The cancer makes you thin and tired, the treatment makes your hair fall out. The living dead. They don’t want to look into a mirror. They’re emotional. Adult men weep when their children sit next to the hospital bed.”

  “I don’t have children,” Joubert said softly.

  The doctor took off his reading glasses. He sounded defeated. “No, Captain, you don’t have any children. But living a healthy life one does primarily for oneself. For your own mental and physical health. And for your employer. You owe it to your employer to be fit. Then you’re alert and productive . . .”

  The reading glasses were replaced on his nose.

  “I’m not going to prescribe something before we have the results of the blood test. But I must urge you to think about the smoking. And you must exercise. And your eating and drinking habits . . .”

  Joubert sighed.

  “I know it’s difficult, Captain. But weight is a dodgy issue. The longer you leave it, the harder it becomes to get rid of it.”

  Joubert nodded but he didn’t meet the doctor’s eyes.

  “I’m obliged to send a report of this examination to your employer.” Unaccountably the doctor added: “I’m sorry.”

  The Police College in Pretoria took every group of student constables to the service’s museum in Pretorius Street in the old Compol building. In general the visits were never a great success. The students spoiled it, in a manner typical of their age, by vying with one another in friskiness and unsophisticated humor.

  That was why Mat Joubert only started loving the museum when, years after his college days, he had to give evidence in a murder case in Pretoria. During the five days he had to wait before being called as a witness, boredom drove him there.

  He moved from exhibition to exhibition, his imagination gripped. Because by then he had the experience and insight to know that every rusty murder weapon, every yellowed piece of documentary evidence, had cost some long-forgotten detective hours of sweat and labor. With eventual success.

  He’d been there again the following day. And Adjutant Blackie Swart had noticed him. Blackie Swart, face deeply lined, a chain smoker with a voice that sounded like boots on gravel, was the factotum of the museum—a post he had evidently acquired because he had worn the General down with his constant pleading.

  He was fifteen when he joined the force, he told Joubert in his broom closet office in the cellar. “Did horse patrol between Parys and Potchefstroom.” Joubert was entertained for hours on end with anecdotes and police coffee, the brew that was made tolerable by a small shot of brandy.

  Blackie Swart’s life was on exhibit in the museum, especially in the glass cases below the sign THE HISTORY OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION.

  “I was part of it all, Matty, saw it happen. I first saw the museum when I came to fetch my twenty-five years from the General, here at headquarters. And I knew I wanted to come back one day. Then I took my pension at sixty with forty-five years of service and I went to Margate and for three months I watched my car rusting. Then I phoned the General. And now I’m here every day.”

  Joubert and the old man chatted and smoked the day away. It wasn’t a paternal relationship, a friendship rather, possibly because Blackie Swart was so wholly different from Joubert’s father.

  After the week in Pretoria they met sporadically. Both were bad telephone communicators but Joubert phoned occasionally, especially when he wanted advice about a case. Like now.

  “The doctor says I must stop smoking, Uncle Blackie,” he said into the receiver, using the respectful Afrikaans way of addressing elders.

  He heard the hoarse cackle of laughter at the other end. “They’ve been telling me that for the past fifty years, Matty. And I’m still hanging in there. I’ll be sixty-eight in December.”

  “I’ve got a funny murder here, Uncle Blackie. My OC says it’s the Chinese Mafia.”

  “Is that your case? Beeld quoted de Wit this morning. I didn’t understand it, but then . . .” His voice became conspiratorial. “I hear his black colleagues in the ANC called him Mpumlombini. De Wit, I mean. In the old days, in London.”

  “What does it mean, Uncle?”

  “Xhosa for Two Nose. The man evidently has a mole . . .” Blackie Swart chuckled.

  Joubert heard a cigarette being lit at the other end of the line. Then Blackie had a prolonged coughing attack.

  “Maybe I should also give up, Matty.”

  Joubert told him about James Wallace.

  “De Wit is right about the modus operandi, Matty. Chinese did it that way in London last year. But they have other ways as well. Fond of the crossbow. Dramatic stuff. Much more finesse than the American Mafia. But the Chinese aren’t only involved in drugs. Look at credit card fraud. They’re heavily involved in that. Trading in forged documents. Passports, driving licenses. Wallace had a mailing service. Did they send out banks’ credit cards? He could easily have supplied the Chinese with the numbers.”

  “His employees say he did no business with any Eastern companies.”

  “Ask his wife. Perhaps they saw him at home.”

  “He slept around, Uncle Blackie.”

  “Could be, Matty. You know what I always say. There are two kinds of murder. The one where someone suddenly loses his temper and uses the first weapon at hand to hit or throw or shoot. And the other kind is the one which is planned. Head shot in a parking area sounds planned to me. And a man who sleeps around . . .”

  Joubert sighed.

  “Legwork, Matty. That’s the only way. Legwork.”

  He drove to Margaret Wallace’s. He wondered how far she had traveled on her road of grief. Then, on the N1 between Bellville and the southern suburbs, he remembered his dream of the previous night for the first time.

  He suddenly knew that for the past two years he had been someone in the process of drowning. He had struggled on the surface of his consciousness, too frightened to dive into the dark water. He could remember dreams that had come back to him during the safety of daylight. But he’d kept them deeply submerged while he drifted on the surface. But now he could plunge his head below the waterline, keeping his eyes open, and look at his dream because Lara had been no part of it. Yvonne Stoffberg was there. How clearly he’d seen her body.

  Would he be able to?

  If dreams became a reality and she stood in front of him, an open invitation. Could he do it? Would the tool of love, so dulled, be able to function? Or was its blade too blunt to prune the past, allowing new growth?

  The uncertainty lay like a weight, low in his abdomen, gripped like fear. His neighbor’s eighteen-year-old daughter. Or was it seventeen? He forced his thoughts to the other characters in his dreams. What was Bart de Wit doing there? With the hole in his head. And Margaret Wallace? He was amazed by the mystery of his subconscious. Wondered why he hadn’t dreamed of Lara. Wondered whether she would come back that night. The old monsters found their way into the pool of his thoughts. He sighed. And shot back to the safe surface.

  The woman who opened the door had to be Margaret Wallace’s sister. Her hair was short and redder, her skin lightly sprinkled with freckles, her eyes pale blue, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

  Joubert asked to see her sister.

  “This isn’t a good time.”

  “I know,” he said and waited, uncomfortable, an intruder. The woman gave an annoyed sigh and invited him in.

  There were people in the living room speaking in hushed voices that stopped when he stood in the entrance hall. They looked at him, recognized the Law by his clothes, his size, and his style. Margaret Wallace sat with her back toward him but followed the others’ eyes. She got up. He saw that she had traveled a long way on her road. Her eyes were sunken and dark. There were lines around her mouth.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, made uncomfortable by the silence in the large room and the reproachful looks of all those present.

  “Let’s go out into the garden,” she said softly and opened the f
ront door.

  The southeaster was ruffling the tops of the big trees but down below it was almost still. Margaret Wallace walked with her arms folded tightly across her breasts, her shoulders bowed. He knew the body language so well, the label of the widow, universally recognizable.

  “Don’t feel bad. I know you have a job to do,” she said and tried to smile.

  “Did you see the newspaper?”

  She shook her head. “They hide it from me.”

  “My superior . . . There’s a theory . . .” His mind sought desperately for euphemisms, looked for gentle synonyms for death. He wished Benny Griessel were there.

  “In Taiwan organized crime uses the same methods . . . in their . . . work. I have to pursue the possibility.”

  She looked at him and the wind blew her hair over her face. She wiped it away with a hand, folded her arms again. She waited.

  “Your husband might have done business with them, perhaps indirectly . . . With the Chinese. Would you know?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Wallace, I know this is difficult. But if there could be some explanation . . .”

  “Haven’t you found anything?” she asked, no reproach in her voice, as if she already knew the answer. Her hair blew over her face again but she let it be.

  “Nothing,” he said and wondered whether she would ever find out about Lizzie van der Merwe and the other women with whom James J. had shared a night or two.

  “It was a mistake,” she said. “An accident.” Her arms unfolded, a hand comforted his upper arm. “You’ll see. It has to be.” Then she folded the hand away again.

  He walked back to the house with her, took his leave. He drove home and wondered why the number of trees in a suburb equaled the per capita income of the breadwinners living there.

  It was past seven but the sun was still high above the horizon. Joggers were sweating in the traffic fumes at the side of the road. He lit a cigarette and wondered what he was going to do about his health. Perhaps he should exercise. Jogging was out. He hated jogging. He was too big to jog. Swimming maybe. It would be nice to swim again. Not competitively. Just for fun. Forgotten memories surfaced. The smell of the swimming pool’s changing rooms, the footbath with Dettol in it, the fatigue after hours of practice, the taste of chlorine in his mouth, the adrenaline when the starter’s pistol went off.