by Martin Steyn
“It’s a charge of assault.”
He did not reply.
“I was sure it must be a mistake—Gys maybe—because it can’t be the Jan Magson I know. So what happened, Mags?”
He just sat.
“All right, then.” The chair creaked as Hattingh got up. “Then you’re on leave.”
Leave. He looked up. He couldn’t sit around here every day. “What about the investigation?”
“Menck will take over.”
“But it’s my docket.”
“Not anymore.”
“Colonel. Don’t take my job away.”
Hattingh paused at the short corridor leading to the front door. He did not turn around.
“Please.”
Hattingh turned to look at him. “Then help yourself, Mags. How do you think this looks? Month and a half after Maryke Retief’s murder, not to mention the other two, and we have nothing. You magazine is already casting doubt around whether we’ll catch the killer, and now they have their next chapter: investigating officer assaults teenage boy in the street.”
Magson dropped his head in his left hand. “I’m sorry, Colonel.”
“I don’t want to hear ‘sorry’. I want to know what the fuck happened.”
He sighed. “It won’t happen again.”
“That’s not good enough, Mags.”
When he finally started talking, he spoke to the carpet. “He shot the robin.”
“He did what?”
“Emma.” Magson had to take a deep breath to get his voice back. “Emma loved birds. She always set out food for them. The robin wasn’t like the doves and sparrows. He was different. He came looking for her. She always made sure there was something for him. Pieces of fat or meat. Cheese ... I promised her I would look after him when she died.”
Hattingh sat back down on the chair. “And the boy killed the bird.”
“With a pellet gun. When I saw that, Emma’s little bird, and when I heard him in the street ...” He looked up. “I didn’t think, Colonel.”
Hattingh took a slow breath. “Okay. You wait here, let me see what I can do.”
Almost forty minutes had crawled by when Lieutenant Colonel Hattingh returned. Magson had passed the time cleaning the kitchen.
“Fortunately for you, the Bradleys are sensible people. And the boy wasn’t really damaged. So they will drop the charge. This is what you will be doing: You will apologize to them, under no circumstances get involved in anything like that again, and you will make an appointment to go and talk to someone.”
Magson had nodded all the way until this last part. “Talk to someone?”
“Yes. And the dominee is not good enough.”
“Colonel. That’s not—”
“We’re not negotiating, Mags. I’m giving you a chance to do it on your own, but I want this person’s name and number so I can find out whether you actually went. If you want to remain the investigating officer, this is what you’ll have to do for me.”
He rubbed his face. “All right.”
“This week, Mags.”
He nodded.
After Lieutenant Colonel Hattingh had left, he walked over to the Bradleys’ home. He pressed the button at the gate.
“Yes?”
“It’s ... Jan Magson. May I speak with you, please?”
The father opened the gate from inside and he walked up to the front door.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, would you call your children, too, please?”
The boy—Magson thought his name was James or Jason or something like that—took his position between his parents, his mother’s arm around him. The girl twined around her father’s leg.
“I am sorry,” he told the boy. “Are you hurt?”
The boy shook his head.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, I am sorry about what happened. I have no excuse. Thank you for understanding. It won’t happen again.”
The girl was staring at him with huge eyes.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he told her, and to the parents, “Please replace the shirt and send me the receipt.” He nodded and left.
He was almost at the gate when a voice spoke up behind him. “I’m sorry, too.”
It was the boy.
“I didn’t know. She always called me over to taste the cookies and koeksisters she baked to send to your son.” He smiled faintly and looked down. “I wouldn’t’ve shot the bird had I known. I liked her.”
Magson nodded. “Thank you.”
Emma had never sent cookies or koeksisters to Hannes after his years at university. Had she continued baking for her son in England, giving it to the boy next door?
At some stage Hannes had had a hamster. He’d been light brown and white and happiest while running on his wheel. Magson couldn’t remember his name. Emma had explained to their son that it was his pet and his responsibility to take care of the animal. Hannes had not taken this responsibility lightly. Every afternoon after school he would remove the seed husks from the food bowl and add fresh seed if necessary. On Saturdays he would clean the cage. And whenever he’d carry the hamster, it would always be with both hands against his chest.
One morning before school Hannes had come into the kitchen. He had stood in the doorway, his too-long pyjama pants bunched at his feet, his pillow-hair at an angle to the left. He hadn’t said anything, had just looked at Emma while tears had streaked down his wrinkled cheeks. His hands had formed a bowl in front of him, and inside had lain the hamster.
Hannes had spent the majority of that afternoon fixing the hamster’s coffin. It had been a shoebox. His son had painted it light blue. Emma had had to go and buy paint. Two layers, as his dad had done when he’d painted the cupboards in the bathroom—Hannes had watched him. The bottom had been covered with wood shavings. Sunflower seed and peanuts had been sprinkled on top of the shavings. All the things the hamster had loved.
When everything had been ready, he had waited for his dad to come home, because they all had to be present. The hole had been dug. Hannes had placed the shoebox inside, stood on the edge and looked down at it. His shoulders had dropped and his lower lip had quivered. More than once, Magson had wondered why a person’s heart ached when they were sad. It was merely an organ like a liver or a lung. But that was exactly where the slow, dull ache had been when he’d looked at his son.
Why couldn’t he remember the hamster’s name?
In a trembling voice, Hannes had said he’d been a good hamster and he would never forget him. He had said a prayer, taken the small black spade with the yellow handle, and shoveled dirt into the grave.
Emma had caressed Hannes’s head and said the hamster had been fortunate to have had someone who loved him so much.
Magson looked down at the hole he had dug beneath the white stinkwood. He had not painted the shoebox after he’d removed a pair of Emma’s shoes. But he had taken some of her cotton wool from the glass jar in the bathroom and padded its base. He’d wanted to put some flowers on top of the cotton wool, but nothing in the garden was in bloom this time of the year. The fern leaves looked nice, though.
For a moment he stared at the Cape robin on the fine green leaves. He closed the lid and placed the shoebox in the hole.
“Emma’s little bird.”
He took the same yellow-and-black Lasher spade his son had used so many years ago to bury his hamster, and began filling in the grave. The clatter on the cardboard sounded too loud.
What was really worse? Being the one who died? Or the one who kept on living?
Ten
May 2, 2014. Friday.
Magson raised the pages once more. He had taken down some strange statements in his time, but this one had been a first. The girl had asked for his pen, sat down and wrote it like a scene from a movie. In the third person. Her mother had told him she was alway
s writing stories, that was her way. Of course Magson had had to rework it with her, with additions and adjustments, for the docket. But he’d kept the original pages:
The girl with the long, brown hair was walking home. Today her hair was in a braid, hanging down the middle of her back. She had pulled the sleeves of her school jersey over her hands and crossed her arms against the cold. Autumn. The best time of the year. The smell of the air changed and the leaves fell and danced in the wind. She thought about the party tomorrow evening—
The man grabbed her and shoved a knife against her stomach. She had been aware, but only vaguely, of the car stopping next to the sidewalk, the man getting out.
“Scream and I’ll cut your throat.”
She went cold. She struggled to breathe. She wanted to run, but she was too scared. The man’s eyes were without emotion, without life. She had never been this afraid in her sixteen years.
“Get in the car, bitch.”
The man’s left hand was a clamp around her upper arm. The fingers were strong and hard. He began tugging her, the knife still against her stomach.
Why didn’t anybody see? she thought, panicky. Was there nobody who could help her?
“Please.” It felt as if her voice was gone, she couldn’t breathe. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”
The man laughed. It was a cold laugh. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Do you get together in the afternoons to practice these sentences. You’re so pathetic.”
What did he mean, “you,” as in plural? she wondered, now even more scared.
“I won’t. I promise.” She tried to pull away from him.
He yanked her towards him and held the knife to her throat. The blade burned her skin, but it had to be from coldness. His face almost touched hers. His breath was warm and bitter. “Shut up, bitch, and get in the fucking car. Or do you want to bleed to death here in the street?”
She cried. The tears were hot against her cold cheeks.
He almost had her at the car. The knife was back against her stomach. She looked around. Where was everyone? Why had they all turned away in this moment?
They were at the back of the car. His right hand, the one with the knife, went away from her stomach. He opened the boot. Once he had her in there, once he shut her inside ...
She remembered. Her uncle had shown her how to do it. She raised her right foot and thrust it down on top of his. The boys’ shoes she wore to school had thick heels, and it must’ve hurt, because he yelled. At first his fingers bore deeper into her flesh, but then the grip loosened.
She tore herself from him. Her school bag slipped and dropped to the ground. She just ran.
The man yelled something at her, but she just ran. She didn’t know where, because her house was several blocks in the opposite direction. It didn’t matter, she just had to get away, get away, away from HIM.
Her eyes flitted from side to side, searching for a person, someone, rescue. She looked back and saw him limping after her.
The ground was suddenly lower beneath her right foot and she stumbled. Her ankle gave way with a sharp pain and she tumbled down. The tar tore through her pantyhose into her knee. She stuck out her hands to break her fall, losing more skin from her palms. But she pushed herself back up and started running again, grimacing against the pain in her ankle.
The man had almost caught up. She could hear his footsteps, his heavy breathing. The fear drove her forward, faster, but he was close, close enough to—
“Hey!”
The girl looked in the direction of the voice and saw an elderly woman a couple of houses down on the opposite side of the street. She was standing at the low wall, staring.
“Help!” the girl screamed. “Help me! He’s got a knife!” She ran straight to the woman, across the street.
“Hey!” the woman yelled again. She was looking past the girl.
Was he still coming?
She only dared look back once she had made it to the wall, filled with fear that he would be right behind her. But he wasn’t. He picked up her school bag, got into his car and drove off.
“Good heavens, child.”
The girl was breathing hard, her heart thudding. Her ankle hurt and her knees and hands were burning. Tears streaked down her cheeks.
“Come in, child,” the woman said. “Let’s phone your people and tend to your knee.”
She looked down at the blood crawling down her shin, soaking into the torn pantyhose. She held her scraped palms for the woman to see. She struggled to keep her hands still.
“I’ll fetch you some sugar water for the shock.” The woman put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the front door. “Who was that man?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, looking down the street.
He’d taken her bag. Before he drove off, he’d picked up her bag. But she got away.
The girl with the long, brown hair got away.
Karlien Pretorius. Another teenage girl with long, brown hair. Magson still couldn’t get over the irony that that had been how she’d chosen to identify herself in the statement. If it had indeed been the killer, that made it four out of four. The likelihood of coincidence was diminishing.
Once again a schoolgirl walking home. Stellenberg High this time. Magson studied the large map on the wall.
“It’s almost exactly the midpoint between Durbanville, Bellville and Brackenfell.”
Menck nodded. “In other words, exactly our killer’s area.”
“Ja. And the MO fits, too. It would’ve worked with all three. Stop next to them, threaten them with a knife, force them into the boot.”
“Probably sticks some tape over their mouths to keep them quiet. Won’t do to have them screaming all the way home.”
“Hmm,” said Magson. “Probably ties them up, too. At least their hands.”
“It’s an MO carrying a lot of risk.”
“Ja. Anyone can drive by at any time and see what he’s doing. Or someone coming out of a house.”
“And yet we have not a single description from a witness except now with the Pretorius girl.”
Magson nodded. “But we have one now.”
Light brown hair, longish, straight. Gray-blue eyes. Cleanly shaven. More or less 1.8 meters tall. Neither scrawny nor overweight, but strong. Karlien Pretorius had looked at Neels Delport’s photo and without hesitation said it hadn’t been him.
“He does sound quite a bit like the man in Lola’s couple,” said Menck.
“Hmm, he does. We can have Lola look at the identikit when Karlien is done. If she recognizes him, we can probably get a warrant for her phone records ... Hope it doesn’t cost me more money.”
Regarding the vehicle, the girl hadn’t been able to remember much more than the color. Silver. Magson had asked about the licence plate, but she’d just shaken her head.
The woman had not been of much help with any kind of description. Since she had only been on her way to the postbox, she hadn’t been wearing her spectacles and consequently hadn’t been able to make out any details.
Menck came closer and looked at the photos of the victims on the wall. “She’s lucky,” he said quietly. “We could very well be sticking her photo up here next to the others right now.”
“It’s just a damn shame she didn’t break his bloody foot. Then we might’ve been able to track him down through a hospital.”
Magson arrived at home, dropped the keys on the small table at the front door, switched on some lights and lowered himself onto the sofa. For a moment he just stared at the dark TV screen, then closed his eyes and dropped his head back.
How close had they come today, how close to adding a fourth victim to the series. But the real question was, how would the killer deal with this failure? Would he keep a low profile for a while? Or would he simply go in search of another victim? And do worse things
to her ...
And if he was the man who had visited Lola, where did the woman fit into the picture? Was she aware of what he was doing? Was she involved? Were they a killer couple? Or were they merely a husband and wife with a twisted sex life?
Perhaps the identikit would provide the breakthrough. It should be in the newspapers on Monday, if things went according to plan. Someone had to know him, after all. If Karlien’s description was good enough ...
He rose and walked to the kitchen. He got the bowl of mince from the refrigerator, and grabbed a fork on his way to the dining-room table. The prescription was still there. What a waste of time and money that had been, he thought, taking a mouthful. The cold grease stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he couldn’t be bothered to heat it in the microwave. Antidepressants. As if pills could fill the void Emma had left behind.
The psychiatrist was a woman with a serene voice, who nodded often and never looked away. He had told her about Emma and the cancer, but not what his wife had asked of him. She had wanted to know about children and he had told her about Hannes, but not when he’d last spoken to his son, nor why. She had wanted to know about his work and pretended to understand how difficult it was. He’d been able to tell she tried, but it was just not who he was. Finally, the time had passed and she’d let him go with a prescription and a follow-up appointment for next week.
He shook his head and took another bite. A layer had formed along the roof of his mouth. There was no need to leave some meat anymore ...
His cellphone rang. He removed the thing from his pocket. “Magson.”
“Warrant Magson. It’s Karlien Pretorius.”
“Hello, Karlien. How are you?”
“Not so good. I’m stressing about my bag. He knows who I am, where I live, what school I go to. There’s such a lot of stuff in my homework book. My friends ... It freaks me out just thinking about it.”
“I understand. Are the uniforms there?”
“Excuse me?”
“The police officers.”
“Oh. Yes. Shame, I feel bad that they have to sit outside in the cold. I made them some hot chocolate.”