Just a Dead Man

by Margaret von Klemperer

  I felt a familiar pang of guilt. Had I ruined his life and that of his brother by divorcing their father? Oh no, you didn’t, I told myself. Living in a home where the two adults are in a perpetual state of armed neutrality at best and open warfare at worst was far more damaging than living with me, muddling along on my own, but at least happy doing it. And, compared with some of their peers, it seemed to me that Rory and Mike were pretty normal young people, at least by the standards of the adolescent male.

  Driving home, I listened to Mike’s report on his holiday, half aware of a subtext that was saying however much he had enjoyed seeing his brother and however glorious a city Cape Town was, he didn’t want to go to university there. Nor did he want a gap year to think about his options. I wondered if that was what Simon was pushing for now that he’s realised Michael didn’t want to be in Cape Town. But all the while, I was looking to see if anything behind me could be in any way suspicious.

  There was nothing. I tried to give my full attention to my son, who now wanted to know all about the murder and Daniel’s position. I was careful: whatever happened, Mike mustn’t be involved or put at any kind of risk. I said we were hopeful Dan would get bail: the evidence against him was all circumstantial and, maybe, the police were beginning to think that he had nothing to do with the murder after all – that it had been no more than a terrible coincidence that Phineas Ndzoyiya and Daniel had arranged to meet. Mike wanted to know everything; where the body had been found; what it had looked like. Not squeamish, my son.

  “Maybe you should get yourself hypnotised, Ma. Then you would be able to visualise that bakkie better.”

  I glared at him, but even as he spoke, something struck me. There had been words on the bakkie I had seen outside the court, and they had been alliterative. P P or F F, or something like that. But nothing more came back to me, even though Mike came up with all kinds of ridiculous suggestions.

  After lunch, when we were back at home and Michael was staving off the pangs of hunger with his favourite snack of bread and marmalade, telling me firmly that marmalade, just like peanut butter, constituted one of his five daily servings of fruit and vegetables, the wind picked up. Somewhere in the house, a door banged and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  Mike looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time since his return. “Ma – what’s up? You seem kind of on edge?”

  I gave myself a moment’s grace to think about my answer by telling him, for the millionth time in our long association, to take his crumb-covered knife out of the marmalade jar. Unsurprisingly he took no notice, just waited for a response to his question.

  I gave him an expurgated version of what Paul Ndzoyiya had told me, not mentioning his warning. But Michael soon realised what I was leaving out. Of course he was concerned, but also curiously excited. Adolescence is boring, a long vista of waiting for something to happen, and so, if there is the prospect of an event, it is to be welcomed. And, of course, the young are notoriously immortal. It is the only thing that makes me feel older than my children: I am vulnerable, and trebly so because of their very existence.

  17

  WEDNESDAY, THE DAY BEFORE Daniel’s bail hearing, was one of those days when it would have been better not to have got up at all. I woke at around four in the morning with a pounding migraine, something I have suffered from all my adult life, though less often now than in my married days. But it’s always a toss-up. When the pain starts, is it going to be bearable, or is it going to develop into the full-blown thing, leaving me unable to function? This felt bad, so I crawled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom to find my medication. It works, but leaves me in a zombie-like trance for hours, which is not an ideal state for a teacher committed to inspiring creativity in the unwilling.

  But the alternative was not an option. I took one of the prescription wafers, gagging on its fake minty taste. I then staggered back to bed to wait out the jagged shards of pain until they dulled to mere memory. I lay there, thinking over the last week or so. Detection, it came to me, was no Theseus-like following of a thread until you were out of the labyrinth and into clarity, the Minotaur slain behind you. It was more like thrashing about with no clear direction at all. Was Rhoda Josephs involved? And who was this Thabo Mchunu? How could I find out? Even if I knew how to get hold of him, I could hardly phone him up out of the blue and ask him where he was at the time of the murder. For a start, I had no idea when the murder had taken place. And, if he was the guy behind the threats to Paul, making my interest in the matter clear wasn’t going to be the wisest move. I might as well accept it: I was no Sherlock Holmes; not even Nancy Drew.

  Finally I fell asleep, only to dream of a shipwreck, people floundering in icy water, screaming for my help as I watched from some remote spot. But when I looked at them, helpless to do anything, they were people I knew: Paul Ndzoyiya, Daniel, Adam Pillay, and most horribly, Rory and Mike. It was one of those nightmares that would linger with me all day. Of course, the image came from the Mendi connection; the helplessness from what I was trying to do for Daniel. But was I putting other people at risk?

  It was a bad morning. Mike was recalcitrant – I had forgotten to buy cornflakes and he was forced to eat muesli. I wasn’t stupid enough to point out that it was better for him, but he moaned his way through a huge bowl anyway. Then I dropped a mug of coffee, and by the time I had cleaned up the mess, we were hardly speaking and almost late. I dropped Mike at the school gates, and just made it to work before the bell rang.

  Wednesday was the day I had the class I liked the least. It wasn’t only that it was short of girls who had a flair for art: that doesn’t matter. You can have fun with an untalented group as long as they join in and give things a go. But this lot were straight dull. I caught one of the dullest sending text messages on a forbidden cellphone. So, of course, I had to confiscate it, and send her off to see the headmistress. If looks could kill, I would have been deader than Phineas Ndzoyiya.

  After break, I bumped into the headmistress herself. “Ah, Laura. I was just coming to look for you. Could you come into my office for a moment?”

  An order, not a request. I trudged along in her wake: she is a large, powerful woman, good at her job, but not a personality one warms to easily. She always makes me feel messy and inadequate, easy on a day like today. Mrs Golightly is her name, known by the girls as Bigfoot. I had once suggested in the staffroom that maybe Holly would have been a more likely nickname and was met with a look of blank incomprehension. If the staff had never heard of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it was, I suppose, unsurprising if the girls hadn’t either.

  We discussed the cellphone offender. Shan was a regular culprit, and a source of trouble. But I got the feeling I was being told that if I had managed to capture her imagination, she wouldn’t have been using her phone. Yeah, right. But Shan and her misdeeds were not what Mrs Golightly really wanted to see me about.

  “Now, Laura. This murder in your road. I gather you were there when the body was found. I’m so sorry. That must have been most distressing. And you know the man who has been arrested. Is that correct?”

  Someone had been talking. Dan’s first court appearance had merited a couple of lines in the paper, and since school had gone back, I’d kept my mouth pretty firmly shut on the subject, even among my friends. But Mrs G’s spies were obviously out.

  “Yes. Daniel Moyo is a friend of mine. He was walking my dog when they found the body. But … I’m pretty sure he’ll get bail tomorrow. The only evidence against him is circumstantial. And I believe the police are following other leads.” That was stretching the facts a bit, but if not the truth, it was what I would have liked to be the truth. So maybe that made it better.

  “I see. And tomorrow, you have asked to come in late. You and Caroline have arranged to combine the art class for the Grade 10s tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes. We do that pretty regularly, working on special projects with a bigger group. I would like to attend Daniel’s bail hearing. It should be over in
time for me to be at the class, and then Caroline and I will teach together. And if I’m a few minutes late, she can start the class off.” My fingers, out of her line of sight, were crossed. I could well be late. Courts run on their own sweet timetable, and blow the general public. I wondered if Mrs Golightly knew that. I doubted if her well-regulated life had included many court appearances, but it didn’t do to underestimate her. However, she let it go.

  “That will not be a problem. But I must admit to a concern. Even if Mr Moyo is bailed, he is still a murder accused. And you say he is a friend of yours. Laura, I’m sure you understand that one of my main concerns is for the good name of this school. And I think you would agree that we have a very good name in our community. That is not something I would like to see tarnished … by even the faintest association with a crime.

  “I am sure you believe in Mr Moyo’s innocence. I have no knowledge of this particular matter, but I would say I have never had any reason to doubt your judgement. So I am sure that this word in your ear will ensure that no breath of scandal gets into the newspaper. We wouldn’t want any headlines about ‘Art teacher at top school mixed up in murder’, would we?”

  Oh God, no. Of course we wouldn’t. I tried to explain, in case there was an innuendo here that Dan and I were having some kind of rip-roaring affair, that I had met him when he was a student and that he was closer to my sons in age than to me. Though, when I thought about it, maybe that wasn’t the best approach. “Sex-starved art teacher preying on younger men” wouldn’t be the kind of headline we would like either, and Mrs G might well be thinking I was protesting too much. She gave no sign that she was looking at me as a depraved corrupter of youth, but I got the message that she was keeping a firm eye on the matter. And should things not go the way she would like them to, I would be just as much on the carpet as Shan. And probably easier to get rid of.

  I left her study feeling distinctly queasy. My headache had gone – my physical headache at any rate. But that wasn’t the only one I had right now.

  On my way home, I stopped at the supermarket. I had to stock up. Not only were we out of cornflakes, but little did Mike know that the marmalade was running low too. If we ran out of that, he might even hotfoot it back to Ms Tits. And I needed to get something for supper, though cooking was the last thing I felt like.

  I came out of the shop, pushing my trolley. The parking area was crowded, and it was only when I had the boot open and half my shopping in that I noticed something about my car. It seemed to be on a slope, which was odd as the ground around me was flat – and so was the left rear tyre. I said “Oh, fuck it!” loudly enough to make the suburban matron getting out of the next car give me a look of horror as she tottered off. This really was the last straw on a gruesome day. The camel’s back was broken: if I wasn’t careful, tears would be the next stage in my humiliation.

  In theory, I do know how to change a wheel. In practice, I have never managed to undo the wheel nuts, even when I’ve found the jack and all the other twiddly bits and made a start. But there didn’t seem to be much of an alternative. No Sir Galahad was waiting in the wings to come and help me: not even the elderly car guard who was usually hovering around. So I unloaded the shopping back into the trolley, and tried to wrestle the spare wheel out of its cave under the boot. Part of the problem was that the tears had come and I couldn’t actually see the spare. Tears of anger maybe, but there was a good dose of unmitigated self-pity in there as well. My life seemed to be unravelling, right there, in a supermarket car park. How sad was that?

  “Mrs Marsh. I’ll give you a hand with that.”

  I spun round, about to embrace my saviour. Only it was Sergeant Dhlomo. “Sergeant … That’s very kind of you. But don’t worry. I’ll manage.” I had the wheel spanner in my hand, and promptly dropped it at his feet. He bent down to pick it up, but didn’t hand it back. His face was as unsmiling as ever, but he moved purposefully towards the boot, ignoring me. After a couple of inarticulate mumblings, I stood back.

  “Is your spare blown up?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Thank heaven, it was. I had done it before going down to Durban to fetch Mike. The sergeant grunted, and got on with the job on hand. As I watched him, a cold little thought struck me. Why was my tyre flat? I couldn’t remember when I had last had a puncture. I’m not a great off-roader and, potholes or not, punctures don’t seem to happen very often. Paul Ndzoyiya’s talk of threats came to mind. Had someone followed me to the car park and slashed my tyre? I looked nervously around, but all I saw was ordinary people going about their ordinary supermarket business.

  “Er … can you see what happened to it? I mean, to the tyre. Why it’s gone flat? Has something cut it? Or …”

  The sergeant had got the wheel off, and turned it round in his large hands. “There. You’ve picked up a nail.” And sure enough, flat against the dusty black of the rubber was the shiny head of a large nail. “That’s what did it.” So there was no need for my imagination to fly into overdrive. It was merely a perfect example of Sod’s Law in action. You’re having a bad day, so whatever else can go wrong will.

  “Did you think it might be something else? Someone out to get you perhaps?” Was it my imagination, or was there a note of derision in the sergeant’s voice?

  “No – of course not.” I didn’t want to mention Paul Ndzoyiya. But the sergeant gave me a look that suggested he knew exactly what was on my mind. He laid the wheel down, and set about putting the spare on. The whole operation, which, if I had been able to do it at all, would have taken me most of the rest of the afternoon, was completed in around 10 minutes.

  He wiped the palms of his hands together with a dry sound, and dusted them off on the seat of his pants. He then lifted the bags out of my shopping trolley and arranged them neatly in the boot, carefully placed so they wouldn’t fall. He straightened his back, and looked at me.

  “Thank you so much. I’m very grateful for your help, Sergeant. I was having a really bad day, and this was the cherry on top. You’ve saved me!” That sounded moronic. No need to get carried away. I tried to pull myself together. “I suppose I’ll see you at the bail hearing tomorrow, Sergeant. Do you think Dan– Mr Moyo … will be given bail?”

  He shrugged, but didn’t appear quite as unfriendly as usual. He even flashed me a smile, showing the kind of teeth that could make him a fortune in a toothpaste ad if he ever got sick of being a cop. “We’ll have to see. I expect that lawyer you’ve found for him will be working on it. Goodbye, Mrs Marsh. Drive carefully. Watch out for nails!” And, with that, he walked over to a Peugeot diagonally across the car park from me, and was gone.

  18

  I PRESENTED MYSELF AT the Regional Court early next morning. Though hardly welcoming, it was less repulsive than the courtrooms we had been in the week before. Between Dan, Verne and myself, we had agreed we could probably scrape up R10 000, if necessary. But Robin was downbeat.

  “It’s a serious charge, Laura, but the worst thing is that Daniel’s a foreigner, and doesn’t own any property here. We’ve got our work cut out for us, persuading the magistrate that he’s not a flight risk. To be perfectly honest, I’m not hopeful.”

  “But what about the lack of evidence? And these stories about rows over how to commemorate the Mendi that Ndzoyiya had with this Thabo Mchunu guy?” I had told Robin what Paul Ndzoyiya had told me, and about the attempted break-in and the threat.

  “Look, Paul went to the police, and told them. I’m sure they’re investigating. I spoke to Hannah Bhengu yesterday afternoon, and she said that, although the cops are looking at other angles, she’s still going to oppose bail. Don’t worry. We’ll do our best, and even if it’s refused, we can appeal and try again. Maybe the investigation will have progressed by then.”

  I know from watching endless legal shows on television that lawyers are not supposed to ask their clients too much about whether they’re guilty or not, but I’m not a lawyer and it mattered to me. I asked Robin if he believed that Dan
was innocent.

  “Yes, I do – probably. But that’s not really the point at this stage. It’s about evidence and flight risks. Hang in there, Laura. I’ve told Dan I’m afraid we’re not going to win this time round, but I spoke to Paul Ndzoyiya yesterday, and we’ll work on it.” He gave me an avuncular pat on the shoulder.

  I looked round the court, and spotted Verne, but not Chantal. I went over, and reported what Robin had said. He nodded, and then touched me on the arm. “Don’t look round now, Laura.” I immediately began to look – I mean, who doesn’t when someone says that? “I said don’t! But over there, by the door, is Rhoda Josephs. The woman Dan said was with the guy who gave him Phineas Ndzoyiya’s name. I met her last year when we were both on a Heritage and Art committee.”

  I pretended to continue to talk to Verne for a moment until I thought it would be safe to turn round. Sure enough, near the door was a woman with a sallow complexion and the kind of straight hair that has been beaten into submission to hide its natural curl. She was wearing a smart black suit with an ochre-coloured shirt underneath, and looked formidable, though not entirely unfriendly. I had seen her around in the past, at exhibitions, but didn’t know her. She was taking a seat on the far end of our bench. “Introduce us,” I muttered to Verne.

  He shrugged, and slid along the greasy, mud-brown bench until he was next to her.

  “Rhoda, hi. I’m Verne Petersen. Remember? We met at a couple of committee meetings last year.”

  She turned to him, wearing a pleasant smile. “Of course. How nice to see you again. Pity it’s such a sad occasion, hey? I couldn’t believe it when I heard Dan had been arrested. And for killing Phineas Ndzoyiya! It doesn’t make sense. I should have been in Durban today, but Dan needs his friends.” She was talking to Verne, but eyeing me.