by Martin Steyn
Magson placed his hand over his eyes. What would the rest of that sentence have been?
April 25, 2014. Friday.
Adolf Bressler had cut off all communication with Roelof Kirstein. He had the right to remain silent and that was the extent of what he would be doing in the presence of the police. Magson was still embittered about yesterday’s interrogation, but while he had been brooding last night, he’d come up with a new strategy. Perhaps Roelof Kirstein was simply a pervert who photographed schoolgirls and who had developed an obsession with Maryke Retief following her murder, but perhaps he was the one who had tortured and hanged her. While he was hiding behind his attorney, getting to the truth was substantially more difficult.
Magson walked into Kirstein Pool Services, the cardboard box under his arm, and went straight to the counter, Menck behind him. It was the same woman as yesterday. “Is Mr. Kirstein in his office?”
“Yes, I—” She reached for the phone.
“That’s all right, we know the way.”
He walked past her to the office, knocked on the door and opened it.
Boy Kirstein looked up. “What—?”
“Sorry to barge in here like this, Mr. Kirstein.”
“Warrant Magson. The attorney said I shouldn’t talk to you.”
“That’s all right. You don’t have to say a word, just listen.”
Menck shut the door.
Magson put the box on the desk and removed the lid. The first item he took out was a photo of Maryke Retief, the one always appearing in the papers.
“This is Maryke Retief. She was fifteen years old. She loved animals.”
“What?” Boy Kirstein looked at the photo, then at Magson.
“This is a copy of the letter her mother wrote to the newspaper. Read it, Mr. Kirstein.”
“Warrant—”
“All right. I’ll read it for you.” While reading the words aloud, Magson didn’t look up from the photocopy, but from the corner of his eye he noticed Boy Kirstein shifting in his chair.
Magson made eye contact and retrieved an evidence bag from the box. He placed it on the table. “This letter was delivered to Maryke Retief’s home.”
Boy Kirstein looked at it and Magson waited until he’d read the words.
“And a while later, this one.” He placed the evidence bag containing the second letter on the desk.
“I don’t understand. Why are you showing these things to me?”
Magson took a third evidence bag from the box, this one containing the examination pad. “These are photocopies of the pages inside this exam pad.” He placed the two pages on top. “Do you recognize the handwriting?”
Boy Kirstein frowned. He looked at the copies of the exam pad, to the letters and back again. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“We also found these items in Roelof’s room yesterday.”
Magson unpacked more evidence bags: the green paper, the alphabet sheets, the gloves. Boy Kirstein’s face was pale, the skin tight. He had ceased shifting in his chair.
“This is how Maryke Retief looked when we found her.”
Magson put a crime-scene photo of Maryke’s body in the man’s hand. A close-up of her chest and face, the furrow around her throat clearly visible.
Boy Kirstein’s free hand covered his mouth. “What do you want, Warrant Magson?”
“I don’t want this to happen to another girl.”
About two hours after they had arrived back at the SVC office, Magson received a phone call that Adolf Bressler was waiting for him at reception. He sighed and took the elevator down to the ground floor.
The attorney was standing next to the reception desk in another fine suit, a black leather briefcase in his hand. He approached the moment Magson exited the elevator.
“Mr. Bressler,” said Magson, extending his hand.
The attorney didn’t take it. “There have been many occasions that I’ve dealt with police who believe that, because they suspect someone, that person does not have rights, but this is the first time I’ve met a policeman who manipulated someone into firing a legal representative.”
Magson only looked back at him.
“It was a reprehensible misuse of your position.”
“It’s a shame the victims of crime don’t have lawyers who are so concerned about their rights. But in any case, Mr. Bressler, I simply provided Mr. Kirstein with information. He does have the right to know, doesn’t he—after all, it is his money.”
“Very cute, Warrant. But we both know your only goal was to deprive Roelof Kirstein of proper legal representation. So that you can intimidate him.”
“You should be careful with your accusations, Mr. Bressler.”
“No, Warrant, you’re the one who should be careful. Roelof Kirstein does have problems, but he did not kill that girl. If you’d done your work properly, you would’ve known that.”
“What are you talking about?”
The attorney opened his briefcase and removed a sheet of paper and a book. “This is the service log of February 27. The names and addresses where Roelof Kirstein had and kept appointments.”
Magson took the sheet. “It’s almost two months ago. It’s not difficult to fill out a piece of paper and people’s memories are not that reliable after so much time has passed.”
“Here is the logbook of the vehicle Roelof Kirstein uses. Each time he stops at a petrol station, he has to note it here. Look at February 27.”
Magson took the notebook and turned to the relevant date. He read the entry.
“And here is the receipt.”
Both the date and time corresponded with the entry in the logbook. February 27. 16:32. The Stellenberg Engen. Quite a distance from Boston, the area in Bellville where Maryke Retief had disappeared. The distance and ...
“If you take note of the time, you’ll find that it is impossible that Roelof Kirstein could’ve had anything to do with Maryke Retief’s disappearance.”
“We’ll investigate it, Mr. Bressler. Thank you. But Roelof Kirstein is not out of trouble yet. Even if he wasn’t involved in Maryke Retief’s disappearance and murder, there is still the matter of the letters he sent her mother. And the photos of the schoolgirls.”
But the attorney had already landed the hard punch. They both knew it.
Magson locked the front door, dropped the keys onto the small table and walked to the TV room. Plopped down on the sofa with his elbows on his knees, head bowed.
On the plastic clock in the kitchen, time ticked by in relentless angry jerks, but in here it happened so gradually that he simply realized at some point that all the light had drained away.
He should probably get up and eat something. In the bedroom he pulled off his jacket and opened the closet. Emma’s clothes were still on her side—they had shared this one. He hung the jacket in the closet and shut the door.
He took off his holster, heading to the safe, but sat down on the edge of the bed instead. On the side where he had always slept.
How many years had they shared this bed? It was not their first bed, the one where they had made Hannes. But later Hannes would often crawl into this bed when he awoke in the night, afraid of the dark or something in his mind. And on birthday mornings he’d sat in the middle, opening his gifts with bright eyes.
This was also the bed where Emma had chosen to spend her final days. Where she had asked him to help her. Where he ...
Since that day he had not been able to sleep in this bed. His clothes were still here. He dressed here. He used the bathroom. But he slept in Hannes’s bed.
He looked down at the pistol and drew it from the holster.
Emma had never liked firearms. After they had been married, when he’d come home that first day back at work, she had accepted a peck on the lips and told him to go put the weapon in the closet and then come ba
ck and greet her properly. It had become their homecoming ritual.
He looked at the pistol in his right hand.
Was she waiting for him?
April 26, 2014. Saturday.
He woke up.
He stared at the ceiling.
It was gray and out of focus in the dusk.
The birds had not started singing yet.
He wondered what time it was.
But if he looked at the alarm clock, he might see it was still the middle of the night.
The dusk was not dark enough; morning must be approaching.
He sighed.
He was tired.
He closed his eyes.
From months of experience he knew he would not fall asleep again.
It was Saturday.
He opened his eyes.
He shook his head.
What was the point?
The motorcycle’s engine always reminded Magson of a highschool boy’s voice, one that had broken but hadn’t quite found itself yet. At least it meant he now had something to do.
The alarm clock’s digits glimmered in the dusk: 6:21.
He got out of bed. Spent a long moment pushing his spine back into place. Groaned and walked to the main bedroom. Stepped over yesterday’s vest, underpants and socks to get to the bathroom. While the toilet was whooshing and he was washing his hands, his reflection in the mirror caught his eyes. Cracks in his forehead. Shadows beneath his eyes. Hollow cheeks. He looked away. He put on his slippers and dressing gown, and went to switch on the percolator in the kitchen. He went out the front door to go and find where the boy had tossed the newspaper this morning.
Back in the kitchen he read a few of the reports, drinking his first cup of coffee. Emma’s little bird had not made its appearance yet. He shook some chocolate ProNutro into a bowl, added milk and stirred, and carried on reading while he ate. Every once in a while he looked up, but there was still no sign of the Cape robin. Strange. Meanwhile, the ProNutro had turned to cement. He got up to fetch more milk. The bottle was close to empty again.
It was almost half past seven when he swallowed the last of his second mug of coffee. A lone laughing dove roamed beneath the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow. But the feeding tray was deserted. The white stinkwood’s branch was empty. He dragged the saucer containing the last piece of the boerewors he had cooked two nights ago closer, peeled the skin off the sausage and crumbled the meat.
Just after nine he returned to the kitchen—shaved, showered, dressed. He was not in the mood to go and buy bread and milk, but he wanted to do it before the masses descended on the shops. The robin still hadn’t put in an appearance.
He frowned and went outside, scraped the meat crumbs onto the feeding tray. The chances were excellent that one of the olive thrushes would come and devour it—they were such greedy, self-serving birds—but this was not a restaurant.
One final look at the branches of the white stinkwood and around. And he went back inside.
Magson turned into his street, grateful to be done with the shops. The elderly lady two houses from the corner was on the sidewalk, hat on, weeding fork in hand, red bucket beside her. Three houses further on, Jeffries, in his usual oil-smeared T-shirt and backwards cap, was halfway into a Ford Focus’s engine. There had been a time when Magson had had some suspicions regarding the mechanic, more specifically the succession of cars he was always tinkering with in his driveway, had even had a look at his record and done some detective work, but hadn’t found anything. He drove to the end of the cul-de-sac. The boy next door was performing tricks on his skateboard.
As he stopped the Jetta in front of the gate, Magson reminisced that they had made most of their childhood toys themselves. Like the go-cart he and Robbie du Toit had built. Old Robbie, all red hair and freckles. They had spent most of a week’s worth of afternoons building that car, in between rugby practices and homework. The Saturday morning, the first full-blown test, he remembered well, because on that day he had brushed past death—or at the very least serious disfigurement—by less than a meter. He’d gone first, and Robbie had given him a running push down the long slope, shouting encouragement when his legs could no longer keep up with the accelerating cart. It had gone well until old Drunken Bart had come careering out of a side road in his rusted Ford bakkie. A panicky tug on the rope had made the cart swerve to the right, enough to send him over the angled curb—instead of underneath the Ford’s wheels—where he had tumbled down the embankment and broken his left arm. That sickening crack had stayed with him long after the pain had subsided and the bone had grown back together.
Times had changed irrevocably.
He pulled the Jetta into the garage and went to lock the gate. As he turned around, he noticed the soccer ball. Black and white in the lush grass. They simply could not play with that ball without kicking it over the wall.
He really should mow the lawn again. The grass had never been this long. Not even half this long.
He had to mow the lawn. He had to wash his clothes. He had to polish his shoes. He had to clean the house. He had to wash the dishes. He had to. Had to. Had to.
Each “had to” felt like another weight pushing down on him until everything was just too heavy to lift.
Hannes had had a rugby ball. It had been made of real leather, laced up, not like these plastic things they used nowadays. He’d taught Hannes to polish the ball with Dubbin, so the leather would remain healthy and waterproof. One Saturday afternoon, after he had mown the lawn, they’d kicked the rugby ball to and fro. The vibration of the lawnmower had still lingered in his hands and the fragrance of freshly cut grass had been everywhere. Hannes had to have been around Grade 5 or 6, those final years a boy still enjoyed playing with his dad. He had kicked the ball, too hard, too far from Hannes’s outstretched hands, and it had sliced to the side, bouncing once and into the yucca’s needle-like leaves. The ball was beginning to sough when they’d reached it. He had immediately started apologizing, but Hannes had only looked up at him and said that it didn’t matter, because they could just fix it like they did when his bicycle tire got a puncture. And then they could continue playing.
He tried to blink the memory away along with the wetness in his eyes. He stooped, the bag containing the bread and bottle of milk in his left hand, and picked up the soccer ball with his right.
As he straightened, he saw it. In the garden. The tiny bundle. Orange and gray and black.
He walked closer.
There was the white stripe above the eye. Except that there was no longer an eye, because the teeming ants had already eaten it away.
At first he could only stare.
He dropped the ball and the bag with the bread and milk. Sank to his knees in front of the dead bird and started to wipe away the ants. Somewhere he heard his voice, but he didn’t know what he was saying. He turned the Cape robin over. This side was even worse. The little head that had always tilted when the bright black eye had peered into the kitchen window looking for the bringer of food had been eaten away so that the bone was exposed. The ants were everywhere. He wiped and wiped, but they seemed to be multiplying ...
There was a hole in the skull. Round. About four millimeters in diameter. Fissures spreading outwards. An entry wound.
A loud smacking sound came from the direction of the street, followed by a grating noise. The boy next door on his skateboard. Empty beer bottles had no longer been enough. Live prey was always better. The robin had sat on the branch, probably in the Cape chestnut, here on his property ...
He was only a few strides from the gate. The boy kicked down hard on the tail of the skateboard and bounced into the air. Smack. He ripped off the chain and yanked the gate open. The boy pushed with his back foot and the skateboard grinded in an arc across the tar.
He strode to the boy. He did not think.
The boy stomped down with
his back foot and kicked out with his front as he jumped.
He only saw the boy, the rest of the world was out of focus.
The skateboard rotated around an invisible axis and the boy landed on top.
His fingers seized the boy’s shoulders, wrenched him from the skateboard and hurled him to the ground.
The boy stared at him. “What the hell, man?”
“What did you do!” he yelled. “What did you do!”
He moved closer to grab the boy again.
The boy pushed with his feet, scraping backwards on his buttocks and elbows. “What are you talking about, man?”
The boy kicked at him, but he grabbed the feet, tugging him closer, swatting away the hands, yanking him to his feet by his shirt. Fabric tore somewhere. The boy’s face was centimeters from him.
“Why! Why! Why!”
“Don’t hurt my brother!” The little voice cut shrilly through the air. She came running—knees, arms, pigtails, eyes. “Let my brother go!”
He heard more voices, but it was the little girl’s that stopped him.
“Let him go! Let him go!” yelled a man.
Hands grabbed him from behind, pulled him back. The boy slipped from his fingers and he was thrown backwards. He fell on the tar. A woman, his neighbor, folded her arms around her son, stroked his hair. The little girl was standing in front of her brother, her head barely higher than his hip.
The woman turned to him, keeping her son behind her, pulling the girl back, too. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she screamed. She glared at him before taking her children inside.
A man—he saw it was Jeffries, his hands black with grease or oil—stared at him, breathing hard. “What’s going on, oke? What did he do to work you up like that?”
The little girl paused at the gate and looked back. She frowned, her mouth tight. “You’re a bad man!” she yelled and ran after her mother.
Magson rested his head on the tar. The girl’s bicycle was lying in the street. The back wheel spun slowly.
“Mags. What happened?”
Lieutenant Colonel John Hattingh sat in the chair in the sitting room. He leaned forward and Magson knew that he was looking at him. Magson sat on the sofa. His hands hung between his knees, his head bowed.