Mathebe held up his hand in reply. “I cannot stay long. The captain asked me to come in for overtime.”
“How did it go with Ngwenya?”
“He knows he can be reached in jail if he talks. Captain Groenewald is trying to make a deal with his lawyer. Protection and a more lenient sentence if he testifies against the men who killed Mr. Braverman.”
Alet hated the thought that Ngwenya might get off easy. “Will it work?”
“I do not know. He fears for his life.”
“We need to find Skosana. I’ll go talk to Magda Kok again. See if she knows anything.”
“I will go with,” Mathebe said resolutely. “Have you found out anything more about Mrs. Pienaar’s movements the day she was killed? How she ended up on the farm?”
“Not much. She was in the garden that morning around seven. Tilly said she phoned Trudie around eleven when she started prepping for lunch at the guesthouse. Trudie had found out what Tilly had done for Wexler.” Alet opened her notepad to a sheet of paper with her initial timeline. “We don’t know anything about what she did after that, but the neighbor down the street saw her going for her daily walk around six. Sometime after that she must have driven to the Terblanche farm and was murdered between midnight and two a.m.”
“Could she perhaps have gone to confront Mrs. Terblanche?”
“If that was the case, why didn’t she go to the house? Her car was discovered kilometers away. I’ve taken that route up the back side of the mountain, Johannes. It’s a difficult climb in broad daylight, never mind at night when it’s pitch black.”
“It was her farm.”
“Tilly said she hadn’t set foot there in years.”
“Miss Pienaar might not be aware of everything her mother did.”
Alet nodded. There was a lot that Trudie had kept hidden from Tilly. “There’s something else that’s bothering me, Johannes. That guy who attacked me in Koch’s office?”
“Yes?”
“Well, it always looks so easy to strangle someone on TV, but have you ever tried it? This guy put everything he had into it and I still managed to stop him. I mean, we know this Ben could hold down Wexler, a big guy, without effort. It should have been easy for him to take care of me.”
“It was not him?”
Alet shook her head. “Hand me that pile?”
Mathebe picked up a stack of folders next to him on the couch. Alet plopped down on the ground and spread the autopsy reports from each file in front of her.
“Ja. See?” Alet handed Mathebe the first report. “Says here there were finger marks on the victim’s neck. This one too. And this one.”
“These are the earlier victims. The later victims were completely incinerated.”
“But all of them had cracked hyoid bones, so we know they were strangled first. Wait.” Alet rifled through to the bottom of the pile. “Here. This is one of the later victims, part of the Angel Killer investigation.” She scanned the report, then pulled out a copy of the file she’d found in Koch’s safe. “Ja. Liezl Brits. Koch made a case study for his book. Hyoid bone cracked. He found subcutaneous bruising in the shape of fingers.” Alet put the files down. “I’ll go through all of these, but I bet you that’s how our bloke gets off. Skin on skin. He burns the bodies purely to get rid of evidence. A practicality. Or maybe it’s some kind of ritual, I don’t know. But the real high is the strangulation. That’s his reason for killing. In his mind he was probably strangling Trudie like that, over and over, until he found her. They were practice runs for his sick fantasy.”
Mathebe’s features distorted in concentration. “Then I believe we have a problem, Constable.”
“What’s that?”
Mathebe removed Trudie Pienaar’s autopsy report from the pile, his eyes narrowing to droopy slits as he studied it. He looked up at Alet. “Dr. Koch’s autopsy report states that the hyoid bone was broken, not cracked.”
“Ja, Koch said …” Alet suddenly realized what Mathebe was referring to. It was a clean break. It would have been almost impossible to do that with bare hands. Trudie’s killer had used a garrote.
Alet sorted through case evidence long after Mathebe left, a newly opened cold beer within reach. Why did Ben change his MO? Why use a garrote on Trudie if he had killed all the other girls with his bare hands? Perhaps he had been injured somehow, a broken arm or something that made business as usual difficult? Would a super-strong killer who lived three times as long experience the same muscle deterioration as a normal aging human? She reached for her phone.
“You’ve reached Professor Engelman. Please leave a number and a brief message.”
Alet disconnected the call before the beep. She had left a message already. Messages. Mike Engelman hadn’t shown up in Unie, which worried her. In light of what had happened to Koch, nobody connected to this investigation was safe.
Alet pored through Trudie’s stack of documents. There were report cards, a high school certificate, all in Theresa Morgan’s name. There was a marriage certificate in Lilly Maartens’s née Kritzinger’s name, and ID books and birth certificates in all three of the aliases. There were love letters between Lilly and her husband, most of them written when he was away, helping people when their family members were arrested by the police. He sometimes hinted at giving up, his despair clear, but Tessa always urged him on, begged him to do what she couldn’t. Alet’s discomfort grew as she read on, feeling as if she was violating Trudie’s life, but she had to make sure that there wasn’t anything here that could lead her to the killer. The names on all of the documents matched up to the aliases she already knew Trudie had used, except one, the deed to a plot in Bloemfontein. It was registered to Theresa De Beer. Alet stared at the name. It hadn’t shown up anywhere else.
The gas needle hovered on the right side of half after Alet turned the key in the ignition of her Toyota. Enough to get her where she needed to go. She dialed Theo’s number as she pulled into the street. “I think I might have a last name, Theo. De Beer. Can you run Ben De Beer through Tempe records and see what you get?”
“Hold on,” Theo said. “Let me check the list I have.” The sound of typing filled the silence. Alet remembered Theo’s fingers gliding over the keyboard, barely touching it, his broad shoulders hunched ever so slightly forward as he squinted at the screen. “Got a Benjamin De Beer here, discharged from Tempe military base in 1948 because of medical reasons. Only did basic service.”
“That matches the timeline. See if you can find anything more on him.” Alet hesitated. “Also, check police personnel records.”
Theo sighed. Alet imagined the tightness around his lips, the slight flaring of his nostrils as he tried to suppress his agitation. She of all people knew that loyalties died hard. A part of Theo always got riled when there was a crime connected to the police, as if he took it personally.
“Look, Theo, his MO change has been bothering me. He went from only partially burning the bodies, you know, only a limb or something, to incinerating them totally. Like with Trudie. The change happened before my dad began investigating the Angel Killer in the eighties. It might be the reason that nobody found a connection with the older murders until now.”
“What’s this got to do with the police, Alet?”
“The bush wars. South African forces were in Namibia from 1966 till 1989 fighting SWAPO. Also in Zimbabwe fighting ZANLA. They disposed of enemy combatants by burning the bodies in mass graves. Ben was discharged from the army. The only other way he could have been involved in those wars was if he was police. I know it’s a long shot, but we should check anyway.”
“I don’t know if the database is digitized that far back.” The sound of Theo massaging the keys filled the silence again. “Fourteen De Beers in the service during that time, eight posted in Zimbabwe. Two named Benjamin, one a constable promoted to sergeant, David Benjamin De Beer. The other, a captain. Benjamin De Beer, no middle name, commanded a squad in the early days of the bush war … O fok.”
&nbs
p; “Theo?” Alet was brought back from the hypnosis of the black road ahead of her by the alarm in Theo’s voice.
“Alet, Constable Adriaan Berg is listed here as being under his command.”
“My dad? Are you sure?”
“Ja. Date of birth matches. He was eighteen at the time.”
Alet clenched the steering wheel. Her father was covering for someone after all, but it didn’t seem likely that De Beer would have been one of his men. Instead, he must have been protecting De Beer because he was one of the higher-ups, one of the puppet masters of the death squads. Either way, Adriaan Berg had allowed a serial killer to go on killing innocent women. Theo confirmed that De Beer had transferred into Security Branch after his deployment. That was where the trail blacked out. Her father would go on to make a name for himself as a top detective at Brixton Murder and Robbery, until he too would disappear into the vortex. He would come out the other side without a blemish to his name, a respected and valued member of the South African Police Service. Alet wondered if it was his reward. You scratch my back … but Ben didn’t reappear. What happened to him? Killing blondes didn’t exactly pay the bills.
“Thank you, Theo,” Alet said as she turned off onto the dirt road that led to the Terblanche farm. “Can you see if there are any other connections between them? I’ll call you later.”
The wind had picked up since she left Unie, the gentle rolling clouds of the afternoon replaced by a dark canopy. Twirling sand and debris were illuminated in her headlights. Alet stopped the car and called Mathebe. There was a cell blackout for about twenty kilometers once you turned off the road, the signal blocked by the mountains. She’d only get to use her phone again once she was near one of the farmhouses with a signal booster or on higher ground. Mathebe answered, his voice fighting for a place in the crackling static.
“Listen, Johannes, I think we found the guy. His name is Benjamin De Beer. Theo is going to send you everything he can find on him. I’m on my way to talk to Magda Kok.” The sky lit up briefly, a bright bolt of light illuminating the landscape, followed a few seconds later by a low rumbling.
“It can wait until the morning, Constable.”
“She knows where Skosana is. He can link Mynhardt to this whole mess. And he was on the mountain the night Trudie was murdered. I know he saw something.”
“He will not talk. And you are risking—” Static swallowed the rest of Mathebe’s words.
“Listen, I’ll come to your place as soon as I … Hallo?” Alet checked her cell. A single bar flickered, then disappeared. She dialed Mathebe’s number again. The call failed. Alet tried sending a text, and an error message appeared almost immediately in reply. Dammit. In the distance another streak of light cracked the sky. Great, Alet thought. Drought for six months, and now the heavens were ready to piss on her. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let a little water stop her. That little kak, Skosana, had been slipping through their fingers for long enough.
Eight slow kilometers farther, the first raindrop cracked through the dust, colliding violently with the Toyota’s windshield. Lightning bounded on the mountaintops and the sky exploded in a sudden downpour. The road was difficult enough to navigate under normal conditions, but with visibility nonexistent beyond the hood of her car, it was impossible. There was no way around it, she had to stop. Standing in the middle of the narrow road was dangerous, she knew that, but she was scared that pulling to the side might send her over the edge—not quite the ending she had in mind.
Alet stared out through the windshield. On nights like these she always opened all the curtains and switched off the lights, marveling at nature’s display. It comforted her for some reason, made her feel safe. Perhaps it had something to do with her father snuggling next to her on the stoep when she was little, reading her stories, the smell of pipe tobacco on his clothes, his rough hands turning the pages. The same hands that touched death. The time she had with him had been short, a blip in the story of her, of who she became, yet he had always been a force against which she measured her worth. What, then, would all this mean?
Two dull beams of light penetrated the sheets of water in her rearview mirror. Alet immediately honked the horn, unsure if the approaching car could see or even hear her. Who would be stupid enough to drive blind in this? The headlights grew sharper. She pressed down on the horn again, keeping it compressed, the sound a jarring wail. The car stopped behind her. A shadow briefly flickered across the headlights. Someone tried the door handle on the passenger side. When it didn’t open, a hand slapped the window. Alet felt for her 9mm in her backpack, found it and unclasped the holster. She leaned across, holding the backpack on her lap, and cautiously rolled down the window a few centimeters. Rain splashed in her face.
Boet Terblanche’s eyes appeared in the opening. “Open the door.”
Alet closed her hand around the butt of the gun in her backpack.
“Come on, Alet, I’m drowning out here.” Boet jumped in as soon as she complied. He was drenched, his hair pasted against his scalp. “What are you doing out here? I almost rear-ended you.”
“I should ask you the same bloody thing,” Alet said. “How the hell can you drive in this?”
“I have to get home. You’re blocking the road.”
“So sorry to inconvenience you, Mr. Terblanche, but I think your dinner can wait until this eases up and we can actually see the road.”
“Open the door and shift over. I’ll drive.”
Alet paused at the urgency in Boet’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“Just do it, for God’s sake, Alet.” His voice came through clenched teeth. “There was an alarm call from the house. Jana is alone. Move!” The fear in Boet’s eyes was clear. The emergency signal would have been received at the police station in Unie, but nobody could get out to the farm in this weather.
Alet climbed over the gearshift while Boet ran around the front and sidled into the driver’s seat. “Slow down. You’re going to get us killed,” she said as Boet stepped on the petrol. The car skidded across the road.
A bolt of lightning hit the top of the mountain, followed rapidly by another. “The storm is moving,” Boet said. He leaned across the steering wheel, wiping condensation on the glass in front of him.
“When did the alarm go off?”
“Right as this started. I was at the remote encampment. They stole twelve head of cattle last night. Cut right through the fence and took them across Thuys De Hart’s property. He thinks his foreman might be in on it. Saw him talking to some strangers yesterday. Today the foreman says he’s sick, then disappears.”
Alet tried to discern the landscape. Nothing looked familiar. “How far away are we?”
Boet squinted. “Another two kilos.”
They were moving faster now, the Toyota hugging curves, mud splattering up against the windows as they drove through puddles. Boet slowed for the turnoff. Alet jumped out to get the gate, shielding her eyes from the rain. By the time she got back into the truck, she too was drenched. Instead of following the path up the mountain, Boet turned the other way to get to the house. Water ran from the mountainside in deep grooves, past the property. The river had come up, water rising fast in the normally dry bed. The sedan stalled.
“We have to go by foot.” Boet was already out of the car.
Alet grabbed her backpack. The water was almost even with her car’s door when she opened it. She held the backpack over her head, fording to the bank, her trainers heavy as she followed Boet up the slippery drive. The house was cloaked in darkness. Boet flipped the switch of the exterior light, but nothing happened. Alet stayed close to him, struggling not to fall on the uneven terrain. Boet pushed against the house’s back door. It gave way without effort.
“Jana?”
Alet pulled her gun out of her backpack, flipping the safety off. The hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. Boet felt around in the scullery for the light. It too was out. Either the storm had knocked the power out, or someone had cut
the lines.
“Jana!” Boet’s voice betrayed his fear. “Answer me, dammit.”
Alet heard him open a drawer in the kitchen, rummaging through it, small objects hitting the floor. A flashlight beam blinded her momentarily.
“Sorry. Here.” Boet shone his flashlight on the counter. He turned, the beam briefly illuminating the barrel of a shotgun.
Someone shoved Alet. She fell, her gun sliding across the floor. The attacker climbed over her, his heel making contact between her shoulder blades. The force knocked her flat on her stomach. Two men were yelling at each other in Xhosa right outside the door. “Boet! Are you okay?” She frantically ran her hands along the floor, feeling for her gun.
“Ja, I … They got into the gun safe.”
“Fok.” Alet’s hands made panicked contact with the legs of a chair. “Get the flashlight. I can’t see anything.”
Boet crawled to the flashlight. He shone the sputtering beam along the floor. “Alet!”
Alet’s hands closed on her gun just as a shot exploded from the doorway. She fired in the direction of the sound, emptying the magazine. More yelling, more voices. She scrambled for her backpack. Boet was somewhere in the dark, one of the phantoms moving around in the room, the flashlight abandoned on the floor. She turned her backpack over, contents spilling on the floor, her fingers closing around the spare magazine. With trained efficiency, she expelled the spent magazine and reloaded.
Alet heard floorboards creak as Boet made his way down the passage to the bedroom. She got to her feet, reached for the abandoned flashlight and shone it at the doorway. A man lay crumpled in the scullery, his dark skin wet, an even darker liquid pooling around him. A shotgun lay trapped under his body. Alet switched the flashlight off and moved past him to the back door. She listened for voices, footsteps, anything. When she was sure the coast was clear, she pushed the body on its side, recognizing the man’s face from the mug shots of Skosana’s associates. She retrieved the shotgun. It was warm, wet, slippery.
Alet found Boet kneeling next to the open closet. Jana sat bound inside, brown tape, the kind used for packages, wound around her head to keep a gag in place. Boet tore at Jana’s restraints. Her eyes were wild, blood from a gash on her forehead running down her cheeks. She spat the gag out as soon as Boet got the tape off her head. Clumps of hair stuck to its surface.
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