Dead Before Dying: A Novel

by Deon Meyer

  This was because the life of Drew Wilson as illustrated by the photographs changed in a way that upset the young policeman. Then he recognized someone in a photo and an involuntary whistle escaped him. He got up in one smooth movement and hurried to where Captain Mat Joubert was going through a chest of drawers in another room.

  “Captain, I think I might have something here,” Snyman said modestly. But his face betrayed his shock and excitement.

  Joubert looked at the pictures. “Isn’t that . . .” and he tapped a finger on a photo.

  “It is, Captain, it is,” Snyman said enthusiastically.

  “Shit,” Joubert said. Snyman nodded as if he agreed.

  “Well done,” said Joubert. He tapped Snyman on the shoulder with a clenched fist.

  Snyman saw the shine in Joubert’s eyes and smiled because he saw it as his reward.

  “We must cover all the bases,” Joubert said thoughtfully. “But first of all you must fetch him.”

  Mat Joubert knew it was impossible to be sure from the start whether a suspect was lying. Some wore the signs of guilt like beacons on their faces, others could hide it with the greatest of ease.

  He looked at the man opposite him clad in a multicolored V-necked tracksuit and expensive running shoes. The man was big and broad-shouldered. He was attractive, with a square jaw and black hair that curled at the nape of his neck. At the neckline of the tracksuit curly hair was clearly visible. A gold cross on a thin chain nestled in the hair. There was a serious expression on his face, a controlled frown between the heavy black eyebrows, an expression of grave cooperation. Joubert had seen it before. It could mean anything, because all this suspect had been asked to do was to accompany Snyman to Murder and Robbery because he “might be able to help us with an investigation.” Who knew what thoughts were churning behind that attractive frown?

  Snyman sat next to the suspect, his place there earned by his good work. Bart de Wit sat somewhat behind the suspect, against the wall, an observer by personal request.

  Joubert pressed the button of the tape recorder. “Mr. Zeelie, you’re aware of the fact that we’re recording this conversation?”

  “Yes.” A small muscle next to the mouth twitched the upper lip.

  “Have you any objection?”

  “No.” His voice was deep and masculine.

  “Please give us your full name for the record.”

  “Charles Theodore Zeelie.”

  “Your profession?”

  “Professional cricketer.”

  “You regularly play for the Western Province senior team?”

  “Yes.”

  “As a Province cricketer you must’ve known the late Mr. James Wallace well?”

  “I did.”

  Joubert watched him closely. Sometimes precisely the exaggerated ease was a sign, the forced lack of concern a mask for guilt. But Zeelie kept to the exact opposite—the tense frown, the serious helpfulness.

  “Tell us about your relationship with Mr. Wallace.”

  “Well . . . er . . . acquaintances, I’d say. We saw one another from time to time, generally at the get-togethers after the match. We chatted. I liked him. He was a . . . flamboyant man. Acquaintances. We were no more than acquaintances.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never discussed your personal life with Mr. Wallace?”

  “Er . . . no . . .”

  “You had no reason to dislike Mr. Wallace?”

  “No. I liked him.” The seriousness of the issue deepened the frown on Zeelie’s forehead.

  “Never got annoyed with him?”

  “No . . . not that I can remember.”

  Joubert leaned forward slightly and stared straight at the man in front of him. “Are or were you ever acquainted with a Mr. Drew Joseph Wilson of 64 Clarence Street, Boston?”

  Shock spread like a veld fire over Zeelie’s face—his jaw clenched, the eyes narrowed. The left hand on the arm of the chair trembled.

  “Yes.” Barely audible.

  “Would you please speak more clearly for the sake of the tape recorder.” Mat Joubert’s voice carried the civility of the victor. “Would you like to tell us about your relationship with him?”

  Now Zeelie’s voice was trembling as well as his hand. “You must forgive me but I don’t see what that has to do with this.” It became an appeal.

  “With what, Mr. Zeelie?”

  “Jimmy Wallace’s death.”

  “Oh, so you reckon you can help us with the investigation into the murder of Wallace?”

  He didn’t get it. “I’ll do everything in my power, but . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Zeelie?”

  “Leave Drew Wilson out of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he has nothing to do with it.” Zeelie was recovering from the shock.

  Joubert leaned forward again. “Oh but he has, Mr. Zeelie. Drew Joseph Wilson was killed at approximately ten o’clock last night. Two pistol shots, one in the head, one in the heart.”

  Zeelie’s hands gripped the arms of the chair, his knuckles white.

  “James J. Wallace died in the same way. And we suspect that the same weapon was used.”

  Zeelie stared at Joubert as if he were invisible. His face had blanched. The silence lengthened.

  “Mr. Zeelie?”

  “I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I want an attorney.”

  Joubert and Snyman waited outside the interrogation room for an hour and a half while Charles Theodore Zeelie consulted with his attorney. De Wit had asked to be called again and went back to his office.

  The longer the conversation inside lasted, the more certain Joubert became that Zeelie was his man.

  Eventually the gray-haired attorney appeared.

  “If my client is completely open with you, I want the assurance that his evidence will be kept totally confidential.”

  “In court nothing is confidential,” Joubert said.

  “It won’t come to that,” said the attorney and Joubert’s confidence ebbed. He asked for de Wit to be called. The OC agreed to the attorney’s request. They went into the room. Zeelie was pale, his eyes on the floor. They sat down at the table.

  “Put your questions,” the attorney said.

  Joubert activated the tape recorder, cleared his throat, not certain of the correct words. “Did you have . . . a relationship with Drew Joseph Wilson?”

  Zeelie’s voice was low. “It was a long time ago. Six, seven years. We were . . . friends.”

  “Friends, Mr. Zeelie?”

  “Yes.” Louder, as if he wanted to convince himself of that.

  “We have photographs in an album which . . .”

  “It was a long time ago . . .”

  Only the faint whirr of the tape recorder was audible. Joubert waited. Snyman sat on the edge of his chair. The attorney stared at the wall. Bart de Wit rubbed his mole.

  Then Zeelie started speaking in his deep, attractive voice, softly, almost tonelessly.

  “He didn’t even know who I was.” He thought for a moment, spoke as if he were alone in the room.

  “I was thumbing a lift from campus to town. Drew picked me up. The previous year, during matric, I’d played for Border, and the newspapers made a big thing of it when I came to Cape Town. He asked me who I was and I said he ought to know. He smiled and said that all he knew was that I was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.”

  Zeelie became aware of the people around him again. He looked at Joubert. “No . . . I didn’t know that I was gay. I didn’t really know what it meant. I simply liked Drew very much . . . the attention he paid me . . . his company, his cheerfulness, his zest for life. I told him I was a student and a cricketer and that I was going to play cricket for South Africa. He laughed at my self-confidence and said he knew nothing about cricket. He said he was a goldsmith and his dream was to have his own establishment where he could make his own designs, not simply things meant for fat,
rich tourists. We talked. We couldn’t stop talking. In town he invited me for coffee at a street café. And said he would wait for me and take me back to campus. He came to visit, a week later. He was older than I was. So clever. Wise. He was so different from the other guys at cricket. He invited me to his home for dinner. I thought it was only friendship . . .”

  He looked at de Wit and Snyman, seeking a sympathetic face. “At first it was just . . . right. With Drew it was neither dirty nor wrong. But it began to bother me. We discussed it. He told me it was never going to be easy. But it was different for him. I started playing for Western Province. Every time a schoolboy asked me for a signature, I wondered how long it would be before someone found out. I think I did . . . I was scared. My parents . . .”

  He gave a deep sigh, his head on his chest, eyes fixed on the writhing hands on his lap. Then he looked up.

  “One evening, after a match, I met a girl. Older. And sophisticated, like Drew. And . . . decisive. She took me to her flat. I was . . . relieved, thrilled. I didn’t think I would be able . . . But I could. And enjoyed it. That was the beginning of the end because it offered a way out . . . Drew immediately noticed that something was wrong. I told him. He was furious. Then I . . . ended the relationship. He cried. We talked all night. But it was over.”

  The hands in Zeelie’s lap relaxed. “I admit that I loved him. Those photographs don’t show the love. But the tension became too much. And the woman . . . I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be a hero in my own eyes . . .”

  He rubbed a hand through his black hair.

  “Carry on.”

  “During the first two weeks he often phoned my campus residence. But I never returned the calls. A few times he waited for me in his car, wrote letters. I also saw him at matches a few times. Then I think he accepted it. It was over.”

  “When last did you see him?”

  “Lordy . . . Two years ago? At the airport. We were coming back from Durban after a match against Natal. His mother was on the same flight. We said hello, had a brief conversation. It was very . . . normal.”

  “And you never saw him again?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Zeelie, where were you last night between eight and eleven?”

  “At Newlands, Captain.” Calmly, no bravado.

  “Anyone able to confirm that?”

  “It was a day-night match against Gauteng, Captain. I took two for twenty-four.”

  15.

  He was tired enough not to care what the other neighbors might say. He knocked loudly at the Stoffbergs’ front door. He heard her footsteps, then she opened the door. When she saw him her face changed. He knew he’d come to no purpose.

  “Could we talk about last night?”

  She stared at him with dislike, almost pity. Then the humiliation became too much for him. He turned and walked back to his house.

  Behind him he heard her closing the door.

  He walked home in the dusk of early evening but already felt shrouded in darkness.

  He sat in his armchair in the living room but without a book. He lit a Winston and stared at the blue-gray smoke pluming to the ceiling.

  Perhaps de Wit was right. Perhaps he was a loser. The Great Loser. The counterweight to success. Maybe he was the refuse tip of the gods, where all the dark thoughts and experiences, adversity and unhappiness, could be dumped like nuclear waste. Programmed to absorb the shadows like a sponge so that there could be light. Death, the Great Predator, was following the bloody tracks of Mat Joubert, saliva dripping from its fangs to fall onto the black soil. So that humanity could be free.

  Like Charles Theodore Zeelie. He had walked out a free man. “You’ll keep your promise?” He’d made quite certain one last time.

  “Yes.” Because even without promises Murder and Robbery didn’t like to expose their dead ends, their failures, in the media. Charles Theodore Zeelie had been relieved. The strong face had regained its color, the hands had relaxed, the frown smoothed from the forehead by the invisible fingers of innocence.

  He quite understood why they had asked him to come. He wasn’t annoyed with them. If he could help . . .

  Relieved. Friendly, almost lighthearted. Untouched by the death of a man who had made him experience self-hatred. And love.

  Charles Theodore Zeelie had walked out free. But not Mat Joubert.

  De Wit had made no comment, only directed that smile at Joubert. Had a smile of pity replaced the victorious one?

  On the sixth floor of a block of flats in Sea Point that looked out over the vast, cold expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, he had visited Mrs. Joyce Wilson, the mother of Drew Joseph Wilson.

  She replied calmly to Joubert’s questions, the grief firmly under control. A woman who cared for her appearance, tall and strong and impressive, her attractiveness arrived at by her own hand, not due to genetic factors. Gallant and straight-backed in her painfully neat flat. Yes, Drew, her beloved and only son, had been gay. But he had changed. It was more than six or seven years that he had let it go.

  Tell her it’s wishful thinking, Mat Joubert. Tell her. Let her feel the darkness, too. Share it. Spread it around a little. But he’d said nothing. He left her alone to cry in her bedroom where no one could see her.

  He’d been to see Margaret Wallace again as well. With the pain in her eyes that hadn’t yet disappeared. You’re almost there, lady. Open your heart. Leave the back door of your mind permanently open so that death can come in, the black wind can blow through your skull. You’re on the right road, lady. Life has disappeared from your eyes. Your skin, your mouth, look tired. Your shoulders are carrying a heavy load.

  No, she had never heard of Drew Wilson. She didn’t know whether James had known him.

  And her body language implied that she didn’t care.

  And here sat Mat Joubert. The Great Loser. The man with the physician and the psychologist and the dietitian. He made a sound in the back of his throat, jeering at himself, at the thought, the concept, that a thirty-four-year-old captain and detective couldn’t seduce the eighteen-year-old daughter of an undertaker.

  How pathetic.

  Benny Griessel’s face rose in his mind again. At the moment when Yvonne Stoffberg appeared in the doorway, a fanfare of flesh, his late-night dessert.

  Benny Griessel’s face.

  Joubert smiled. And suddenly saw his self-pity from another perspective—at first only a glimpse, then with disillusion. And he smiled at himself. And at Benny Griessel’s face. Joubert looked at his burning cigarette and saw himself as he was at that moment—in his reading chair, staring at a cigarette, and with a smile meant only for himself—and he knew he had another chance.

  He stubbed the cigarette and got up. He fetched his diet sheet and the recipe book the dietitian had given him. He walked to the kitchen: 60 grams of chicken (no skin), 60 milliliters fat-free meat sauce, 100 grams baked potato, 150 grams carrots, broccoli. Two units of fat.

  Jesus.

  He took out pots and pans, started the preparations, his head rethinking the two murders. Eventually he sat down at the table, ate the food slowly. Chew food slowly. This allows the stomach to signal the brain when it is full, said the diet sheet. But the telephone rang twice before his plate was empty.

  The first time he answered, it was with his mouth full of broccoli. “Wawert.”

  “Captain Joubert, please.” A man’s voice.

  Joubert swallowed. “Speaking.”

  “Good evening, Captain. Sorry to bother you at home. But that colonel of yours is a terror.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, Captain. Michaels here, at the laboratory. It’s about SAP3 four slash two slash one slash ninety-five. The Wallace murder.”

  “Yes?”

  “The weapon, Captain. It’s not —”

  “Are you calling from Pretoria?” Still trying to get a grip on what was going on.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Which colonel are you talking about?”

  “De Wit
, Captain.”

  “What has he got to do with this?”

  “He phoned us, Captain, this afternoon. And crapped on our heads from a dizzy height. Said his people were working their fingers to the bone while we sat on our hands.”

  “Bart de Wit?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Joubert chewed on the information.

  “In any case, Captain, that Tokarev of yours —”

  “Yes?” But he was still amazed by de Wit’s call and the fact that the commanding officer had told him nothing about it.

  “It’s not a Tokarev, Captain. I don’t know who thought that one up. It’s a Mauser.”

  Suddenly Joubert was part of the conversation again. “A what?”

  “A Mauser, Captain. But not just any old Mauser. It’s a Broomhandle.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a pistol, Captain.” Michaels’s voice had taken on the patient tone of a teacher. “The Mauser military model, M96 or M98, I’d guess. Seven point sixty-three caliber. The cartridge cases are typical. Rimless with a bottleneck. I can’t imagine why you thought it was a Tokarev. The —”

  “The caliber.” Joubert defended Griessel’s guess.

  “No, Captain. Sorry, but hell, there’s a huge fucking difference. In both cases it should make your job much easier.”

  “Oh?”

  Michaels became impatient. “The Mauser, Captain. It’s old and it’s rare. There can hardly be that many people in the Cape who own one. Firearm records.”

  “How old?”

  “Almost a hundred years, Captain. Eighteen ninety-six or ’ninety-eight. Most beautiful thing the Germans ever made. But you’ll know it, Captain. Broomhandle. Slender wooden stock. Boer officers carried it. Long barrel, magazine in front of the trigger.”

  Joubert tried to visualize the weapon, and somewhere an image stirred, a vague memory. “Looks almost like a Luger?”

  “Luger’s grandfather, Captain. That’s the one.”