The First Rule of Survival

by Paul Mendelson

  ‘Part in it?’ de Vries blurts out.

  ‘We are cast as suspects?’ du Toit says.

  ‘You are eliminated before any suspicion even arises.’

  ‘Is there a suggestion of lack of confidence here?’

  ‘No, Henrik,’Thulani replies quickly. ‘You, of all people, should be aware of the need for answers to questions before they are asked. Don’t make this a personal matter.’ He waits for du Toit, who looks away from him.

  He continues: ‘This will take place immediately. Following your . . . debriefing . . . none of you will have any involvement whatsoever. Is that clear?’

  Everyone nods; even those with no reason to do so.

  ‘Colonel de Vries and Warrant Officer February are booked out on leave. On conclusion here, you will take it. Leave the city and speak to no one. You understand me?’

  February nods. De Vries smiles.

  ‘Major Mhlawuli will arrange official interviews with you now. There is to be no word to the media. All such activities will be coordinated through me.’ He points at the group in front of him. ‘You five will go now. When you are finished, go home, ignore the press, and refrain from any comment whatsoever. That is a direct order. “No comment” is the only acceptable response.’

  Thulani gets up and Mhlawuli, the shorter of the two black officers, moves to the door, opens it, and gestures du Toit, de Vries and Don February out of the office. Qhwalela protects their rear flank.

  When they have reached the elevators, Mhlawuli pronounces: ‘Director du Toit, you will come with us now. Warrant Officer February, you will wait in Interview Room Two. Colonel, wait in your office and we will send for you after we have finished with Director du Toit.’

  The elevator doors open and they enter the lift. Mhlawuli stands facing de Vries, who is still on the landing.

  ‘You, Colonel,’ he says, ‘can take the stairs.’

  * * *

  ‘The Police Minister has asked for an interim report immediately,’ Thulani tells Classon. ‘I was under the impression that he was greatly displeased by this turn of events.’

  ‘Why should that be?’

  ‘A prominent man murdered; further complication to this long-running affair. It casts only more darkness on what is already a grey cloud hanging over every one of us.’

  ‘Does the Police Ministry have a special interest in Nicholas Steinhauer?’ Classon asks. ‘This is the second time they have intervened.’

  Thulani sits back down behind his desk.

  ‘Steinhauer acted as a consultant to them seven years ago. They may have been in touch with him now, since he returned to the country. I assume that this is a matter of loyalty.’

  ‘Blind loyalty can be dangerous,’ Classon says.

  Thulani smiles. ‘I know what you think, Mr Classon, but it has always been so. Influence in this country is cherished, closely guarded, and used without shame or apprehension.’

  ‘Weren’t we promised better?’ Classon mutters.

  Thulani looks down at him, closes his eyes slowly, nods.

  ‘Africa is a continent of broken promises. None of us should expect that to change any time soon.’

  The interviews last no more than twenty minutes. In the elevator, Don February reflects that the case has not ended as he hoped; would not reflect as well on him as if Steinhauer had been proven guilty. He travels back up to the eighth floor to see if de Vries is still there, to check that he can go.

  He is almost at the door of de Vries’ office when he realizes that Director du Toit is sitting in the visitor’s chair; de Vries with his head in his hands at his desk. He knocks on the door and is waved in by du Toit.

  ‘All all right, Warrant February?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No awkward questions?’

  ‘No, sir. I was treated respectfully. They wished to know my whereabouts on Sunday evening. I was able to tell them that I was at a friend’s house until late and with my wife at all times.’

  Du Toit nods. ‘Good.’

  Don looks at de Vries, who raises his head, tortoise-like, morose.

  ‘Go home, Don. They’re covering their backs in case one of us has gone rogue. It’s shit and they know it, but it has to be seen to be done . . .’ He tails off, glances at du Toit, sits up. ‘I’ll say it, if no one else will. Fucking good riddance to Nicholas Steinhauer.’

  Du Toit nods his head in agreement, but Vaughn sees Don February out of the corner of his eye; there is no reaction from his Warrant Officer.

  ‘We all drink to that – but I think,’ du Toit says, ‘that should be the last time you say that.’

  De Vries laughs, holds up his hands in surrender.

  Du Toit turns to face Don. ‘You’re taking some leave, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. As you proposed. Seven days, starting today.’

  ‘Seems you are already owed another morning then. Enjoy it. Try to forget about the job for a few days – and don’t worry about this. Answers will be found.’

  Don nods, looks at de Vries. De Vries looks back at him seriously, unmoving.

  Don turns smartly and leaves the office, walks through the squad room to the corridor beyond, does not look back.

  Du Toit turns round to de Vries. Says: ‘Solid officer.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Trustworthy.’

  ‘Probably the best black officer I’ve worked with.’

  Du Toit frowns, considers challenging him. Instead, he says: ‘Good. I hope you communicate your satisfaction with him?’

  ‘In my own way. He works well, but I think he keeps secrets.’

  Du Toit sniffs. ‘Can’t you just accept that some people are on your side,Vaughn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s your problem. You don’t know who to trust. It’s a big part of the job.’

  ‘Big part of life. Best not to trust anyone. Then you don’t get disappointed.’

  ‘You inhabit a dark and lonely place. No wonder you find the going so tough.’

  ‘You think that, do you?’

  Du Toit raises an eyebrow; de Vries is not looking.

  ‘Why do you think Thulani said it was “a problem”?’ de Vries asks.

  ‘Steinhauer is dead.’

  ‘Dozens of people die in the Cape every day. Besides, according to him, Steinhauer was no longer part of this inquiry. So why should it be a problem?’

  ‘He’s covering his back, I guess.’

  ‘You don’t find Thulani’s choice of words interesting?’ de Vries persists.

  ‘It’s clear that he has little trust in us.’

  ‘It’s not us he’s worried about though, is it?’

  ‘Not Warrant Officer February.’

  De Vries is about to reply, realizes that du Toit is on an alternate plane of thinking, suddenly feels it is not worth explaining that what lurks above him is more dangerous than the threat at street-level. Instead he says: ‘They tell you what they were thinking?’

  ‘They don’t have anything yet,’ du Toit says. ‘Crimes like this: often no evidence.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So Vaughn, where were you late last night?’

  De Vries looks up, chuckles. ‘Watching British football, drinking beer, eating nachos, inadequately flirting with women. Mexican restaurant in Westlake – forty witnesses, there from eight p.m. until about one a.m. – and yes, I took a cab.’

  ‘Much better than sitting at home with just a selection of bottles for company.’

  ‘That has its charms.’

  ‘I’m sure it does. Aren’t you going to ask me what I was doing?’

  De Vries smirks, replies very quietly, ‘I know where you were.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  De Vries looks at him askance. ‘For God’s sake, Henrik. I don’t really know what you were doing. I just know where you were: a long way from this case. Because that’s your talent, that’s what you can do.’

  ‘Very cryptic, Vaughn. You’re so erudite the
se days. Perhaps you’ve been spending too much time with that friend of yours?’

  ‘I don’t have any friends.’

  Du Toit gets up from his chair. ‘Be careful that cynical little aphorism doesn’t come true.’

  De Vries gets up, too, and not out of deference. ‘Did you doubt me just a little, Henrik?’

  ‘Doubt you?’

  ‘Last night, around midnight?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Director du Toit turns towards the door, opens it. ‘You may not trust anyone, but I trust you. We go way too far back for that. I may not know who you are after all these years – but I know what you’re not.’

  De Vries drives out of the city on the N2, past the airport, over Sir Lowry’s Pass and across the Overberg. On the other side, he pushes on at a steady 140kph for 250 kilometres. Just short of Heidelberg, he pulls left into the Blue Crane farm shop, drives past the farm-stall itself and parks under cover at the back of the gravel car park. He eases out of the car, stretches his shoulders and arms, hobbles back towards the shop. Even in the mid-afternoon, the air here is hot and thick; he misses his air conditioning after only a few steps. He scans the car park, sees only five cars and none seem familiar. You start at one farm-stall, he thinks, and end in another.

  He trudges up the gravel path, passing a mother and two children eating cream cakes on the scrubby lawn, through the cool shop and into the dining area, under a giant naive mural of the mountain ranges which shadow the freeway all the way to Plettenberg Bay. In the far corner, behind a magazine, he sees him.

  Marantz lowers the magazine and smiles at him. Says, ‘It’s a small world for a vast country.’

  ‘How do you know this place?’

  ‘It’s one hundred metres from the turn-off to Vermaaklikheid; the most efficient turning to Vermaaklikheid. Why take you out of your way?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s a poker event at the casino in Port Elizabeth. Good to get out of the house sometimes.’

  De Vries orders coffee and cake from the waitress; waits for her to back away towards the kitchen.

  ‘What happened?’

  Marantz looks past him, down the length of the dining room. Only one other couple are eating at the far end. They are silent, chewing, watching each other eat.

  ‘Happened?’

  De Vries stares at him.

  Marantz shrugs. ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  De Vries whispers, ‘Steinhauer is burnt to a frazzle, his place razed to the ground. Not subtle, is it?’

  ‘We don’t live in a subtle country.’

  De Vries feels the frustration gather inside him. He knows now: it is when he is not in control.

  ‘What was learnt?’

  ‘The doctor was resistant, but he was overcome. The audio files from the bunker exist, in a safe, in his Constantia house. There’s a combination in an email you received from a junk mail company. You’ll find it if you look. But . . . I doubt it can be used. You could never explain how it was obtained. But I don’t know. Maybe you’ll find a way.’

  ‘He confessed?’

  ‘There are names too – three names. Others involved. Perhaps they will match the prints you found?’

  Marantz sits back, and de Vries does the same. It is subconscious – you want something from somebody, you echo their physical movements; flatter them that they are leading and you are following, subservient. He sees Marantz’s eyes focused on the doorway from the kitchen. He hears light footsteps on the terracotta tiles. The waitress reappears, presents him with his coffee and cake, retreats again.

  ‘He was guilty, Vaughn. Just as you said. You don’t need the detail.’

  ‘How?’

  Marantz drains his glass of what might be orange juice.

  ‘As a policeman, you do everything you can to find justice for the victim. That’s your modus operandi, your reputation. Consider yourself righteous, because you were right, what you said about what you will do and what you won’t. It is the only thing that stops society imploding. But society operates to the lowest common denominator, and sometimes, there’s a perpetrator who plays on that, and then he has the advantage only because you will not fall to his level . . . But I will. I only stepped in because everything you could do wasn’t enough. My boundary is closer to the darkness than yours.’

  ‘Just make sure you step back from that boundary now.’

  ‘Special circumstances. He would have walked away.’

  De Vries nods. He is staring at the table, food and cup and Marantz out of focus. He snaps to, looks slowly up at him.

  ‘I hope I can trust you?’

  Marantz laughs, loudly enough that it echoes down the dining room and causes the couple at the far end to look up at them.

  ‘That is quite a stupid question.’

  ‘It is an important one. To me.’

  ‘What have you ever seen that makes you think people change, Vaughn? We’re born and we’re formed. We can fight it but, at some point, you accept what you are, and you know what it takes to get you up in the morning, get you through the day. The first rule of survival – stay alive.’

  He gets up, swings his car keys on their fob.

  ‘Long way to go,Vaughn. No time to lose.’

  Vaughn catches his eye for a moment; sees nothing but assurance.

  Marantz strides away across the restaurant. De Vries does not watch him leave; picks up the cream cake, bites roughly into it.

  He crosses over the freeway and heads south towards the sea, leaves the black-top and motors over dirt track, cross-country, cruising at only 50kph, steering around the potholes and avoiding the ruts which pepper the gravel tracks in the countryside. He sees ostriches on the horizon; ewes and their lambs recoil from fences as he accelerates past them, leaving a wake of drifting deep-red dust. He passes through kilometres of burnt-out arable land, marks the distance by the telegraph poles and the birds of prey that occupy them, each a sentinel, each readying itself for the dusk hunt. There are cows too, and the occasional buck. He stutters and chokes as he passes through a eucalyptus-bounded farmyard on a hairpin bend, the heavy odour of manure filling the cabin of his car; the remembrance that smell may be invisible, but it is all particulate.

  Away from the farm, he opens all four electric windows, feels the constant heat of heavy afternoon air blowing across him, warmed for kilometres over the bleached, scalding soil. He slows down momentarily to frame a windmill pump before a stand of gum trees, in front of a range of purple mountains. He leans out of his window, stares through the passenger side, behind him in the mirror: everywhere, the land stretches out, wide and high, up to the mountain ranges behind him and distant horizons on the other three sides. There is a sky as big as he has ever seen, curving at its edges, the horizon no more than a pixel point.

  He descends a narrow pass on a sandy track, crosses a dry ford in the valley and scrambles his vehicle back up the other side, freewheeling down towards the quiet village, consisting only of farmers’ and fishermen’s houses, simple shacks, their stoeps draped with washing. From sand track to loose gravel, suddenly there is tarmac. A blessed smoothness and silence may be enjoyed past the village bus stop, for a whole 100 metres, until the gravel track begins again. De Vries smiles, as he always does, when he passes over that 100 metres of civilization and modernity.

  Ahead, the road forks, and he takes the sharp left turn uphill again, and then begins to fall gently down towards the Duiwenhoks River. He turns off the road, onto a rutted grass track. Opening a gate, he drives between rocky outcrops of aloes and cacti until he reaches a small thatched cottage.

  He parks his car under a diagonally leaning car-port, unloads a single small suitcase from the boot, drops it on the stone doorstep of the cottage. He limps back to his car, takes a case of red wine from the back seat, and places that also on the doorstep. He nudges open the unlocked door, releases the group of flies at the kitchen window into the cooling evening air. He pulls a pair of navy shorts from his case
, levers off his shoes and pulls away sticky socks from his tired feet, drops his trousers and switches into the shorts. Then, between three-metre-high reeds, he hobbles down the slatted wooden jetty to the boarded dock where a kayak and an old traditional rowing boat are moored. He sits down on the end of the dock, lowers his feet into the tea-coloured water. He takes a deep breath, listens to the silence.

  Occasionally, there is a bird-call, a whirring of a passing insect, even the occasional muted splash as a fish breaches the mirrored surface. The tide is on the turn and there is not a breath of wind. In his brain, apart from the distant echoes of road noise from his journey, there is silence. No beating, no pulsing ache. He ducks his head and stares down at the water, but he cannot see the bottom.

  On Sunday nights, the Casa Mexicana is busy with locals and regulars, soccer fans and students, who drink South American beer, eat sticky nachos and watch the English Premier League. In summer, the outside terrace is full of revelry but, this evening, the windows are steamed up, and the open fire is lit. De Vries sits at the bar with two drinking buddies whose names he does not know, watches the game, watches the girls, watches the waitress, watches the guy in the kitchen wipe his nose with the back of the hand with which he wraps enchiladas. De Vries watches women avert their eyes from him as they come through the door. He whoops when one team scores; he cheers when the other team scores. Later, he asks the greeter to book a taxi for him, specifically naming one company. Vaughn de Vries spends the whole evening there until everyone but himself is convinced that he is drunk.

  It is strange, John Marantz reflects, that a process banned should be learnt in such detail. As if not knowing of it would make it more, not less, likely that you might unknowingly practise it. The speaker in the featureless room is a pale, bland man, an expert on torture and the effects of torture on its victims. The class of nine men and one woman sit silently, their pens hovering over notebooks, yet unmoving. That which should not be known should not be recorded lest it be known. Yet it must be remembered.

  Dr Vincent Dayton speaks in a monotone, a transatlantic drawl, which both bores and mesmerizes at once. Terrible fact rendered banal.

  ‘Your colleagues may have faced death. By that, I mean known that death was inevitable. Even if they survived, they will not be able to describe it to you, because it is indescribably terrible, the ultimate personal tragedy, individual remembrance, peppered with fear so intense that it may kill you first: it is the most terrifying feeling you can imagine. To simulate imminent death, therefore, is torture, pure and simple.’