by Martin Steyn
“No, man.”
“Well, what does it matter then?” At least the traffic was in motion again.
“It bothers me.”
Magson shook his head. “If that is your reason for not eating something, you’re more stupid than the ostrich.”
“Well, that was uncalled for. Anyway, Kathy doesn’t like cabbage herself. She went out and bought food she does not really like, and cooked it.”
He should instead be glad to have a wife who cooked for him, thought Magson.
Within a few meters they left Parow and entered Bellville. Voortrekker Road was bustling as usual. And as soon as they started moving, they had to stop at one of the pedestrian crossings. Everyone wanted to be on the other side of the road today.
He glanced at Menck beside him. The gray was catching up to him at the temples. Magson looked away, grimacing. “Maybe it was on special,” he said in a gentler tone.
“Just because it’s cheap is no reason to buy something you don’t really want.”
“Millions of people do it every day.”
“Kathy’s not an impulse buyer.”
Magson began looking for the street where he had to turn right.
“No, it means something,” insisted Menck. “I did something ... Or I didn’t do something. Ten to one, that’s what it is—I failed to do something. Again.”
“Why don’t you just ask her?” Magson noticed the movement on his left and could feel Menck studying him.
“Are you just pissed off in general today, or is there something in particular?”
Magson sighed and turned right.
“It’s a test,” said Menck. “Like Purgatory. If I can figure it out on my own, I can still redeem myself. If I have to ask her, my sin gets multiplied by a secret number, and who knows what she’s going to cook up then. The cabbage didn’t even have a sauce or anything. It was just boiled. Or microwaved. Or whatever she did to it.”
“You can always kill the taste with one of your chili powders.”
“It’s useless talking to you when you’re in this kind of mood. Where are we going?”
“To Delport’s house,” said Magson.
“Aah ... Are we going for a visit? Because he is probably at school at the moment.”
“I just want to see what the place looks like.”
“Hmm. So the hockey thing is interesting?”
“Ja. It is.”
“So we know he likes teenage girls. He has no problem getting involved in physical altercations. The car. And now hockey. The coincidences are coming together rather nicely.”
Magson parked next to the sidewalk. “Number sixteen. There it is.”
The wall on the sidewalk was probably about hip height to Magson, who had stopped growing just short of 1.8 meters. Someone had made an attempt to paint the gate the same orange brown as the bricks’ natural color, but hadn’t been particularly successful. It didn’t seem to have a lock. The garden consisted of some trees and shrubs, and a lawn struggling after a difficult summer that was refusing to end. The house didn’t create much of an impression, either—white walls, tiled roof, big enough for two bedrooms, burglar bars in front of the windows. Like Delport, his property melted away into its surroundings.
Beside him Menck sighed. “Sure wouldn’t mind having a look inside.”
“I would be satisfied to let LCRC take his car apart. If it is him, everything we need could be in the boot.”
“And the car didn’t look particularly clean.”
“No, but for how long?” Magson noticed dog feces on Delport’s sidewalk. Near the mailbox. Someone had stepped in it. “Do you think she was truthful about the sex? Denise Pont?”
“Difficult to say. Her reaction seemed genuine enough. Or the question might have caught her off guard.”
“It’s a pity. A taste for sodomy would’ve helped. With the warrant. At the moment things are a bit thin.”
Menck was toying with his goatee. “Yip. But I did get the sense that he might have been a bit rough. Maybe not as much as with Dominique and Maryke ...”
“Well, he didn’t need to hold back with them.”
“No. That is the benefit of a victim who won’t be surviving. No rules.”
She held the black-and-brown dachshund against her chest, her arms a protective circle around the small body, her legs tucked underneath her. The sadness that had been close to the surface earlier in the week had now settled in her eyes. The skin beneath was the color of day-old bruises. Magson recalled her photos on Maryke Retief’s bedroom wall, laughing and bright. Now she looked tired and gray, someone who could not find rest. The little dog nibbled on the hair hanging onto her shoulder. Blonde hair.
“I couldn’t think of anything else. I want to help, but ...”
“It’s all right,” said Magson. “You and Maryke had the same subjects, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Was there a teacher who was interested in Maryke, who maybe paid more attention to her?”
“What?” She tilted her head and stared at him with intense eyes. “A teacher? Do you think it was a teacher?”
“At this stage we are still investigating every possibility,” said Magson. “We are looking at everyone who had contact with Maryke. Was there a teacher?”
“I don’t know.”
Magson scanned the page containing a list of Maryke Retief’s teachers. “Mr. Rutherson? Mr. Duvenhage?”
She blinked. “Doempie? He’s as gay as Christmas.”
“What about Mr. Delport?”
“I don’t know.” She looked past him, her forehead scrunched up.
“Think. It could be important.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes he is a bit flirty with some of the girls.”
“With Maryke?”
She pushed the dog’s muzzle away from her hair. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did she say anything?”
“I don’t think so.” She stared back at him. The intensity didn’t suit the soft features of her face. “Do you really think it was a teacher?”
Magson’s cellphone rang. “Excuse me.”
“We’re just investigating all the possibilities,” he heard Menck assuring her as he got up.
“I always took her for a walk in the afternoon,” the girl said, stroking the dog’s head. “Rykie, too, if she was here. She loved animals. But now I’m too scared. Rykie was just walking down this street. We’ve walked to one another’s houses a thousand times.”
He left the sitting room before he pressed the phone’s answer button. “Magson.”
“Er ... Warrant Officer Magson?” A boy’s voice. Soft. “It’s Wynand Retief. Rykie’s brother?”
“Hello, Wynand. How is it going?”
“Okay ... I found something.”
“What?”
“In Rykie’s room. I was thinking. About teachers and so on. One of Rykie’s teachers gave her a book. One of those little gift books. I don’t know if it means anything, but ...”
“Do you know which teacher it was?”
“Mr. Delport. There is a message.”
“Mr. Delport?” Well, well.
“Yes. I have the book, but I don’t want my parents to know. They’re not really coping.”
“All right. But I would like to see the book.”
“Give me a time, and I’ll wait for you on the corner.”
It was a small hardcover book. Dark blue with a yellow stick figure surrounded by speech bubbles. Above it, Hearing Voices was scrawled in an arc. Magson opened the book. Read the message.
Rykie,
Listen to the voices—
some of them make sense
remember—you are special
Neels Delport
He paged through the book. It was a collecti
on of quotes and sayings—some familiar, some clever, some humorous.
Magson rubbed his face. “It’s not really incriminating.” He stared at the three words, read them aloud, “You are special.”
“It’s a bit too overfamiliar, as well,” said Menck. “It sounds innocent, but with his history ... It’s open to interpretation.”
“And it is evidence of personal contact with Maryke in particular. Maybe together with Denise Pont’s statement, the other things ...”
“It could be enough. With a bit of luck we catch the right magistrate on call.”
Magson reflected on the phone call from Maryke’s brother. A detective could never hand out too many contact cards. He had once had a breakthrough that solved an entire case because a woman had repurposed one of his cards as a bookmark.
Menck groaned and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. “I know why I’m eating ostrich and cabbage. It’s because I’m an idiot.” He shook his head. “It’s the garage door.”
Magson didn’t care to listen to any more of Menck’s domestic problems. But he glanced at Menck just long enough to serve as an invitation to continue.
“The wooden frame on Kathy’s side, the section where the latch is, has come loose. So now the door can’t close properly, because it pushes it away. She has to wrestle the thing closed every time. I promised I would fix it on the weekend. And I didn’t. She’s been asking me for weeks.”
A garage door. And ostrich meat. These things were Problems.
Until cancer’s hand came to rest on your shoulder.
Magson was sitting at the dinner table, the docket open in front of him. On a Friday evening. Everything they knew about the case so far was here—the autopsy reports and everything they had learned about the victims, the sketches of the scenes, statements, information about potential suspects. His focal point was Neels Delport—the search warrant for his house and the Civic was ready and waiting for tomorrow morning.
But maintaining concentration was a struggle. And it wasn’t because of the pounding music next door—a party or something had steadily been picking up speed, and volume, for hours over there. He was thinking about ostrich and cabbage. About how he would devour an entire plate of Brussels sprouts boiled to mush, with a beaming smile, if only Emma could prepare it for him.
Thumping drums outside, but the house was so silent. He longed for her sounds. Her voice. Her presence.
How many late nights had he spent sitting here, the contents of dockets spread across the table, and then she would bring him a mug of Milo. A stroke of the hair. Or a kiss on the cheek. Before returning to watch something on TV or to read a book.
All the time he had wasted on dead people while the most important one had been alive and right here. All the hours he’d sat at this table, staring at photos of corpses while she had been only a few steps away. And for what? For what? There were always more. And more. And more. It never stopped. He could have sat next to her. Talked to her. Listened to her. Touched her. Just been with her.
He shot to his feet and wiped the docket from the table. The chair toppled backwards. Reports and statements and photographs whipped through the air and scattered all over the floor.
He turned away, to the buffet against the wall. The turquoise glass bowl of glazed clay fruit Emma had bought at a craft market, apples and pears and purple plums. The two watercolor paintings on the wall, aloes with bright orange flowers in rocky landscapes. He had never asked her where she had bought them.
His shoulders drooped, he hung his head.
He turned back and started collecting the papers. The photo of Maryke Retief. It was the school photo. Her thick dark hair tied back. Her smile, the dimples in her dusky cheeks. And, of course, the bright green eyes.
He placed the photo on the table, returned the chair to its feet, and went to the kitchen. Switched on the kettle. Washed the bowl containing the remnants of his microwave-Knorr-pasta-and-sauce while he waited for the kettle to boil.
Emma had fought with so much courage. Until the wheelchair had become her sole method of mobility.
He added two spoonfuls of Milo to a coffee mug. Mixed it with a bit of boiling water. That was the secret, she would always say. Mix it well before adding the milk. Put it in the microwave oven.
The walker hadn’t bothered her so much. It had helped with the tiredness. But the wheelchair ...
The microwave emitted its shrill beep.
He removed the steaming mug. It was important to heat it for the correct amount of time. It had to be hot, but the milk should not reach boiling point. Because then it left a vel, and Emma had despised it when hot milk formed a skin on top, which was why she had never taken warm milk with her coffee or tea. He stirred the mixture, looking at the froth swirling round and round. It looked almost exactly like Emma’s.
The wheelchair had been the sign that she had lost. That she would not recover. She had no longer fought like before.
But his wife had been brave to the end.
Especially at the end.
He looked at the Milo and poured it out into the sink. Dropped his face in his hands. And cried.
Four
March 15, 2014. Saturday.
“The date is March 15, 2014. The time is twenty-one minutes past eight a.m., at the Serious Violent Crimes Unit in Bishop Lavis. Present are Warrant Officer Jan Magson, Warrant Officer Colin Menck and Mr. Cornelius Delport.”
Magson studied the man sitting across him in the interrogation room. Uncombed. Unshaven. Uncomfortable. He had been properly shaken when they had came knocking on his door in the early hours, shoving a search warrant in his face.
The table was situated diagonally opposite the door, with Magson seated in the corner. Menck sat on his left. Two cameras recorded the session, one behind Delport’s back, in the corner above the door, and the other above Magson.
“Mr. Delport,” Magson began, “you are not under arrest at this time, but you do have the following rights. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have an attorney present. If you cannot afford a private attorney, you can apply to the court for a legal aid attorney. Do you understand these rights?”
“Yes, but I didn’t do anything! I had nothing to do with Rykie’s death!”
“Maryke Retief didn’t just die, Mr. Delport. She was murdered.”
“I know. I know she was murdered.” Delport’s hands pressed on the glass top of the table as he leaned forward. “But I had nothing to do with it.”
“You were Maryke Retief’s teacher, is that true?”
“You know I was.”
“Everyone we’ve talked to said she was a good person.” Magson turned to Menck. “Didn’t they?”
Menck nodded. “Yes, everyone said she was a good girl.”
“Do you agree, Mr. Delport?”
“Yes,” said Delport.
“Did you enjoy having her in your classroom?”
“She never caused any problems. She was a good learner.”
“‘Learner,’” said Magson, looking at Menck. “It’s such an ugly word.”
“Yes,” said Menck, “I don’t know why they had to go and change it.”
“What was wrong with ‘pupil’?”
“Nothing. I don’t even think there was a word like ‘learner’ while I was at school.”
“How do you feel about it, Mr. Delport?”
Delport shrugged. “It’s the terminology. We are educators.”
“Educators?”
Delport nodded. He wiped his left eyebrow with the back of his hand.
“I’m glad I was never a ‘learner,’” said Menck.
“Educators and learners,” said Magson. “Do you take your role of educator seriously, Mr. Delport?”
“Yes.”
“But my children are ‘learners,’” said Menck.
“There are so many areas where children need to be educated,” said Magson. “Would you say it’s more difficult to educate children nowadays, Mr. Delport?”
“I only know the children of nowadays.” Both hands were in his lap now. He was slumped, shoulders drooping.
“What is wrong with ‘teacher’?” asked Menck.
Delport looked at him. “I don’t know.”
“But is it difficult?” asked Magson. “To educate them?”
“There are challenges. It’s not always easy to maintain discipline.”
“If someone speaks of ‘teacher’ and ‘pupil,’ everyone knows what is going on,” said Menck. “A ‘learner’ and an ‘educator’ can mean anything.”
“It’s been this way for many years now,” said Delport.
“Is discipline important to you, Mr. Delport?” asked Magson.
“Well, it’s difficult to explain the work when there is chaos in the classroom.”
“When I was at school, discipline was very good. Otherwise the rottang sang.”
“Yes,” said Menck. “I was chronically bliksemed.”
“We were just talking about this the other day,” said Magson. “Warrant Menck who was always in trouble at school and now he’s a policeman. Maybe all those beatings brought him onto the right path.”
“I don’t know, I was often hit without proper justification.” Menck placed his left elbow on the table, leaned forward with his chin on his fist, and glared at Delport. “I don’t really like teachers.” Delport shrank back in his chair. “They never wanted to listen to my side of the story. Just skipped directly to the hitting part.”
There was a twitch at the left side of Delport’s mouth. “We can’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
“But you’d like to. Wouldn’t you? You’d like to.”
“No. I ...”
“Some children need discipline,” said Magson. “A good smack at the right time can perform miracles.”
Menck shoved his index finger in Delport’s face. “You would like that. I can see it in your eyes.”
“No—”
“You would’ve been one of those teachers with a special cane or a strap with a name and everything.”