Dead Before Dying: A Novel

by Deon Meyer

  We all know what fat looks like on the human body, it said on page eleven of the cookbook. “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” said Joubert and shifted uncomfortably on the chair in his kitchen. The book lay on the table in front of him, next to the ingredients for the recipe the dietitian had recommended.

  “What do you feel like?” she’d asked after she had given him the book.

  “Steak.”

  “You’re stubborn.”

  “I’m hungry,” he’d said with finality.

  “Try the beef fillet with mushrooms. Page 113. But read the whole introduction first so that you understand your calories and unsaturated fats. And eat a small portion. There’s no point in cooking it in a healthy way and then eating the whole dish on your own.”

  He had stopped at Pick ’n Pay and with the book open at page 113 he’d walked the aisles until he had all the ingredients he needed.

  What you might not know, he read on, is that over and above the fat you can see around your waist, or on your thighs and breast, people who are overweight also build up interior fat. Fat usually forms around the interior organs, especially in the lower body and around the intestines, kidneys, and heart.

  In his mind’s eye he saw his organs, each one wrapped in its own yellowish-white fat, and he shuddered.

  THE FOLDED SKIN TEST, one of the headings read. An easy and quick way to measure your fat is to pinch a fairly large piece of stomach skin between your thumb and forefinger. If it’s thicker than 2.5 cm then you’re fat—and you can be sure that the fat is spread right through your body.

  He put the book down on the table, leaned back, pulled his shirt out of his trousers and grabbed a pinch of stomach skin. He gave it a measuring eye.

  Shit. Could it be true?

  He got up and went to look for his new measuring tape. He found it in the study, where the books were packed on the skew shelves. He walked back to the kitchen, sat down, pinched the skin of his stomach with his left hand, and measured with the right.

  More than four centimeters. And he was giving it a bit of leeway.

  Crossly he closed the cookbook with a slam.

  Crook cleverly.

  He couldn’t afford to crook cleverly. Not with four centimeters of stomach skin. Not with organs encrusted with thick layers of fat.

  He sighed, put the cookbook aside, and picked up his diet sheet: 120 grams grilled fish; 250 ml mashed potato; tomato and onion salad. 1 unit fat.

  One unit of fat. He looked for the key at the end of the program. He could choose between small amounts of margarine, salad dressing, mayonnaise, peanut butter, avocado, small olives, thin cream, or a strip of bacon. He chose the salad dressing and started his preparations.

  “The report on Eleanor Davids’s Escort is here, Captain,” said Snyman and handed the sheet of paper to Joubert.

  “It’s negative,” he said without glancing at it.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  He sighed. “Thanks, Gerrit.”

  He turned. It was time to go and watch The Return of Benny Griessel.

  Joubert stood unobtrusively in the door of Murder and Robbery’s parade room. Griessel mustn’t think he had come to check on him.

  Griessel stood on a chair next to the TV set, addressing the twenty-two uniformed people.

  “In the file you’ll find photographs taken by the security cameras in the branches of the bank and an Identikit of what our artist thinks the robber might actually look like. But these are only pointers. And it could be dangerous, as we learned from this morning’s incident. For heaven’s sake don’t confront every possible suspect who vaguely resembles the Identikit with a firearm. Use your common sense. Think. And think again,” Griessel said, and he smiled at the faces in front of him.

  Joubert saw that the traces of the past week lay heavily on Griessel’s face, on his bulky body, which had shrunk visibly. But his voice was clear and enthusiastic.

  “The media still don’t know that we have people in every branch. We told them Khumalo was there by chance to draw money. That means that the robber doesn’t have to suspect anything. But he’s nobody’s fool. He’ll check out the scene very well before he robs. He’ll be careful. I know thinking isn’t covered by a police salary but do it for your country. Think before you hang around looking like a cop who’s a plant. Move around. Fill in bank forms. Pretend to be drawing money. Go to the inquiries desk. Lieutenant Brand of internal stability will speak to you shortly about crisis management, which you must share with the personnel in your bank branch. Tell them they must be in on the act. They must treat you like a client. Nothing more and nothing less . . .”

  Joubert turned away and walked down the passage on his way home.

  Griessel didn’t need his help. He walked out, into the night, toward his car.

  Oliver Nienaber grinned behind the wheel of his dark red BMW.

  The police must think him a fool. He had already noticed it the day before, quite by chance, when the white Opel Kadett followed him all the way home. The idiot had to jump a red light to keep up. And later he had noticed him again on the quieter roads of Plattekloof. Early this morning he had seen the red Sierra in the street, just below his house.

  Now, at a quarter to six in the morning, the N1 wasn’t busy enough for an unobtrusive tail. He could see the Ford far back in the rearview mirror.

  They were wasting their time, he thought. He was innocent. He wasn’t the hunter, he was the prey. And now they were unwittingly giving him protection.

  If it hadn’t been for the little brown lieutenant he would’ve gotten away with his lie. Lord, but he’d done some fast thinking. On Monday in that interrogation room. But that was why he was where he was today. Quick thinking. From hair stylist to millionaire in six, seven years.

  That tale about MacDonald phoning him about the building had simply risen unbidden in his mind. Needs must when the devil drives.

  Need. The whole Monday had been filled with need. From the moment he’d seen Mac lying in the door of that pitiful wooden house with blood against the wall and blood on the floor and his neck which had been blown away and the shot between the balls, he had needed to feel safe.

  He had wanted to speak to him. He hadn’t known at what time Mac went to sea and had hoped that he was early enough. He’d stopped in front of the door, opened the gate, and then he saw the man lying there, big Mac. Big Mac with the biggest penis he’d ever seen in his life. He could remember that.

  “Mac, you’ve got a prick like a pole,” Ferdy Ferreira had said. The late Ferdy. The late, lame fool.

  “A penis,” said Oliver Sigmund Nienaber loudly and snorted with laughter. That was the word that had caught the attention of that little lieutenant.

  Fuckin’ hotnot. He rubbed his cheek. It still hurt. But it had been worth it. A small price to pay.

  “I fell,” he had told his beautiful wife.

  “With what did you have to help the police?” she’d asked.

  Think fast. “Oh, it was about a black cleaner who used to work for us. They’ve charged him with child abuse. They wanted to know whether we’d noticed anything.”

  “Couldn’t they have asked about it here, darling?”

  He had merely shrugged. “But they should clean those steps of theirs. All the dirt makes them slippery. I slipped and fell against the door frame.”

  This morning Antoinette had fetched some of her makeup base to disguise the purplish mark on his face.

  “There, darling, that looks better.”

  He turned off again, to Wynberg, drove to the Main Road. Just before driving into the parking garage of his building, he looked to check whether he could still see the Sierra. But there was nothing. Never mind, he thought, they’ll probably park somewhere around here where they have a clear view. He stopped in his parking bay RESERVED FOR MD HAIR TODAY.

  He set the numbers of the combination lock on his attaché case and opened it. The Star pistol lay on top. He closed it again, gave the lock numbers a routine sp
in with his thumb. He wouldn’t need the pistol now that the police were giving him free protection. He got out, pressed the button on his key holder for the central locking system of the BMW, and walked to the elevator. The door was open. He walked in and looked at his watch. Six o’clock. Dead on time. As usual. With the exception of Monday morning. He pressed the button for the sixth floor. The doors closed soundlessly.

  Snyman parked opposite the Servier Building in the Main Road in such a way that he could watch the building’s entrance and that of the parking garage. He opened the lunch box next to him and took out a flask of coffee and a packet of sandwiches. He wasn’t hungry but the coffee would taste good now. He unscrewed the flask’s cup, poured the steaming liquid into it, and sipped slowly and carefully.

  The coffee burned his lips. He swore and blew on the brown surface of the drink.

  He leaned back in the comfortable seat of the Sierra.

  It might just be a long day.

  Nienaber stared at the floor of the elevator as he habitually did and only looked up when the doors opened.

  He saw the executioner immediately.

  Feet slightly apart, arms extended, the firearm held in both hands, aimed at him.

  He knew the executioner had waited for him, had watched the lights above the elevator. B for basement, M for mezzanine, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. He knew all this in a microsecond.

  Quick thinking, Oliver Nienaber. That’s why you are where you are.

  He also knew that the Star in his attaché case was too far away, useless. But he could talk. He could negotiate. He could think.

  He lifted his hand in a “stop” gesture.

  “You —” he said, but by then the cartridge had penetrated the palm of his hand and was unstoppably on its way to his brain.

  At a quarter to seven on the Wednesday morning, Joubert sat on the wooden bench of the swimming pool’s changing room. His elbows rested on his knees, his head hung down, water dripped onto the cement floor, and he knew he would have to give up the cigarettes.

  His lungs were burning. He knew it was the layer of tar, the black, sticky, dirty, gummy layer that smoldered in his lungs after the swim, which caused his inability to cross the fitness threshold permanently. He could feel it with every breath he tried to draw after five, six lengths this morning. With every new swing of his arm, every rhythmic kick of his legs, the clearer the image became of the muddy encrustation in his lungs which stood between him and the energy-supplying oxygen.

  Mat Joubert, human garbage carrier. Full of fat and soot.

  No matter that it was Special Mild, sooner or later he would have to stop. They had no taste, in any case.

  He made a decision.

  He got up suddenly, purposefully, and walked to where his clothes were hanging on a peg. He took the white-and-gray packet and the lighter out of his coat pocket, walked to the big, black trash bin in the corner, lifted the lid, and forcefully threw the smokes into it.

  The bin had been empty. He stared at the packet and the lighter lying there.

  I’ve done with it, he thought. Forever.

  Solemnly he closed the trash bin, turned, and walked to the showers.

  On the way to Kasselsvlei Road he saw the Cape Times poster: MAUSER: UK PSYCHIC FLIES IN TO HELP.

  The paper seller held the newspaper in such a way that Joubert could read the headline on the front page, one huge word stretching across the entire page: HYSTERIA. The subheading read: FARMER CRITICAL AFTER BANK SHOOTING.

  For a moment he considered buying the paper, but the lights changed and he drove on. De Wit’s psychic had arrived, he thought. Hysteria, indeed.

  “I heard nothing, Captain,” Snyman said. “The first I heard about it was when they gave the address of the place over the radio. I couldn’t believe it. The bastard shoots a cannon and I heard nothing.”

  They stood in a circle around the mortal remains of Oliver Sigmund Nienaber—Joubert, Snyman, Petersen, O’Grady, Basie Louw, and two uniform men from the Wynberg police station. Nienaber lay in the doorway of the elevator, almost covering his attaché case, on his stomach, one bloody hand extended. The doors of the elevator slowly, mechanically opened and closed, bumped against Nienaber’s body, opened and closed . . .

  “Someone must switch off the elevator,” Joubert told one of the uniforms.

  “Right away, Captain.”

  “The security guard at the front entrance didn’t hear anything, either,” Snyman said.

  “Where is the woman now?” Joubert asked.

  “She works for a computer firm here on the seventh, Captain. They called a doctor. She’s suffering from shock. She says she took the stairs when the elevator didn’t arrive. When she got there”—Snyman pointed to the entrance to the stairwell that ran alongside the elevator shaft—“she saw him. She says she knew him. He always greeted her in such a friendly fashion.”

  “No one saw anything?”

  “I think the Mauser came in at the service entrance at the back, Captain. Security man says there are too many people in the building who have keys for it, and tenants are constantly leaving it open.”

  “How do you know it was the Mauser?”

  Snyman took a small plastic bag out of his shirt pocket. There were two cartridge cases in it.

  “Is someone watching the door for fingerprints?”

  “Station’s people, Cappy,” O’Grady said.

  A man and a woman from the video unit came walking up the stairs. “Why isn’t the bloody elevator working?” the man asked as he breathlessly climbed the last few steps.

  No one said anything. The man saw Nienaber lying in the elevator. The doors opened and closed, opened and closed.

  “Oh,” the man said.

  “I can’t believe that I heard nothing,” Snyman said.

  Joubert looked at Petersen. “You were right, Leon. Nienaber was lying.”

  “But now we’ll never know what the truth was, Captain.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Where are the photographers? I want to turn him over and see if he got one in the cock as well,” said O’Grady.

  “You also think it was the Mauser?” Louw asked.

  “Another Mauser?” Pagel, the pathologist, asked breathlessly from the staircase.

  “We think so.”

  Snyman’s hip radio crackled. “Captain Mat Joubert, Captain Mat Joubert, please phone Dr. Boshoff at the University of Stellenbosch. Captain Mat Joubert . . .”

  “Is there a phone anywhere here?” he asked.

  “In Nienaber’s office, there, around the corner, Captain.”

  He walked down the passage. Anne Boshoff—what did she want? He dug in his inside pocket, looking for his notebook with her telephone number.

  Nienaber’s office was luxurious—a big reception area with expensive furniture in pastel colors, a carpet with a thick pile, paintings against the one wall. Nienaber’s newspaper advertisement had been enlarged and framed and hung under the big logo of his firm’s name.

  The end of an era, Joubert thought. The Great Predator wasn’t scared off by success, didn’t allow himself to be sidetracked by egotism and vanity.

  He found a telephone on the reception desk, paged in his notebook until he located Anne Boshoff’s number, and dialed.

  She replied by stating her name.

  “This is Mat Joubert.”

  “Matthew! How lovely to hear your voice. But you still sound old. Are you living yet, Matthew? When are you coming to see me?”

  “I got a message . . .”

  “And called back so quickly. Efficiency in the civil service always makes me feel so secure. It’s about the psychic, Matthew. Madame Jocelyn Lowe. I do hope you’re not the ‘old friend’?”

  “The ‘old friend’?”

  “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m busy with a murder investigation, Dr. Boshoff.”

  “Anne.”

  “Your adopted, middle-class homosexual struck again this morning, An
ne.” He stressed her name, somewhat irritated, but she didn’t react.

  She whistled. “He’s speeding up.”

  “Speeding up?”

  “Do you know that most of the time you repeat what I’ve just said? Yes, he’s speeding up. It’s only three days since MacDonald, Matthew. The time span between murders is getting shorter and shorter. Let me see . . .” Joubert heard the rustle of paper. “A week between the first and the second—if you count the day of the first murder as day one. Then three days until the third. Another three days, then MacDonald on Monday. And only two days up to today. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”

  “That’s true.”

  “He’s sick, Matthew. Very sick. He’s getting out of control. He needs help. This changes my analysis. I’ll have to go back to the books. Tell me, was the victim gay again?”

  “It’s Oliver Nienaber.”

  “The hairdresser king?”

  “The very same.”

  She whistled again. “He wasn’t gay, Matthew.”

  “He wasn’t gay. But how do you know?”

  “I know men, Matthew. And that one wasn’t gay. You could see it.”

  “I have to go.”

  “I want to know about the psychic first. She says in the Times . . .” The sound of paper again. “‘Let’s just say I came to help an old friend. Someone involved in the investigation.’ Is that you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m so pleased. Be careful of those creatures, Matthew. They lie like troopers. Martin Reiser, of California, did scientific research on them. And you must know what he says: ‘The bottom line is that they all did very, very poorly . . .’”

  Gerrit Snyman appeared in the door, in an obvious hurry.

  “I really have to go,” Joubert said. “But I appreciate . . .”

  “Don’t let it be words only, Matthew,” Anne Boshoff said and put the phone down.

  They rolled Nienaber over. There was a splash of blood on his chest, a neat hole through the designer tie.

  “No, the family jewels were spared,” said O’Grady, sounding disappointed and biting off another piece of nougat.