Thirteen Hours

by Deon Meyer

  That was how the dream began. And Ouma Hettie's offical tuition.

  Her parents were not impressed. A career in singing was not what they had had in mind for their only child. They wanted her to train as a teacher, get a qualification, something practical 'to fall back on'. 'What kind of man wants to marry a singer?' Her mother's words echoed ironically.

  In her Matric year there was conflict, long and bitter arguments in the sitting room of the bank manager's house in Bellville. With the verbal ammunition provided by her grandma, Alexa fell back to her last line of defence: 'It's my life. Mine' A week before her finals she went for an audition with the Dave Burmeister Band.

  Stage fright nearly got the better of her that day. It was nothing new. She had already experienced it at eisteddfods and the occasional performance at a wedding or with obscure bands in small clubs. It became a sort of ritual, a demon that began systematically to attack her four days before an appearance, so that, with a wildly beating heart, perspiring palms and an overwhelming conviction that she was about to make a total fool of herself, she could only complete the trip from dressing room to microphone with a supreme effort of will.

  But as soon as she began to sing, with the first note uttered from her constricted throat, the demon melted away as though it had never existed.

  At her first performance with Burmeister in a Johannesburg club, her grandma had been there to hold her hand and give her courage. 'This is what you were born for, my dear. Go out there and knock them dead.'

  And she had. The reviews in The Star were still beside Ouma Hettie's bed when she passed away quietly in her sleep two months later. 'Alexandra Brink, in shimmering black, is so easy on the eye - young, blonde and beautiful. But once she starts to sing, her smoky, sensual voice, complete mastery of classical material, and innovative interpretations indicate a rare maturity and an acute musical intelligence. Her range encompasses Gershwin, Nat King Cole, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Bobby Darin, with Dave Burmeister's arrangements fitting her style and personality perfectly.'

  Oliver Sands of Phoenix, Arizona, told Inspector Vusi Ndabeni he had fallen in love with Rachel Anderson on Day Eight of the African Overland Adventure. In Zanzibar. Over a plate of seafood that he had been eating with great concentration.

  'You are obviously enjoying that,' said Rachel.

  He looked up. She stood on the opposite side of the restaurant table with the emerald-green sea as a backdrop, long, dark-brown hair in a plait over her shoulder, a baseball cap on her head and lovely long legs in shorts. Ollie was a bit self-conscious, embarrassed by the way he had been devouring his meal. But when she smiled and pulled out the chair opposite him with a 'May I join you? I'll have to try some too,' he could scarcely believe his luck.

  He told Vusi they had had to introduce themselves to each other on the first night of the tour - in a ring of camp stools beneath the African stars. He hadn't even tried to remember Erin and Rachel's names. Pretty, athletic, educated girls like that never noticed him. When she sat at his table in Zanzibar and ate her own plate of seafood with gusto, he struggled to remember her name, with a sense of panic. Because she had talked to him. She asked him where he was from and what his future plans were. She listened to his answers with interest, told him of her dream to become a medical doctor, and that one day she would like to make a difference, here, in Africa.

  And so he lost his heart to a nameless woman.

  Alexa Brink's stage fright grew worse. The loss of her grandma was a blow, as though a foundation had collapsed, so she learned to smoke to control the fear.

  Despite the glowing reviews and the enthusiastic response of the small but loyal audiences in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, the demon of self-doubt clung to her shoulders every night. With a mean voice it whispered that one day she would be unmasked, someone in the audience would see her for what she really was and cry out that she was an impostor, an outsider and a fake. Alone in the dressing room she could not cope. One night she burst in on Dave Burmeister in tears and confessed her fear. That was the beginning of a vicious circle. With fatherly patience, Burmeister explained that all the great names struggled with stage fright. At first his gentle, quiet voice calmed her and got her behind the microphone. But every night it took a little longer, a little more convincing and more praise before she could make the terrifying walk across the stage.

  One day, at his wits' end, Burmeister placed a glass of brandy and Coke in front of her and said: 'For God's sake, just drink it.'

  Oliver Sands controlled his attraction to Rachel Anderson with an iron hand. Instinctively he knew he must not reveal his burning desire, he must keep his distance. He didn't look for a seat close to her on the truck, he didn't pitch his tent in her vicinity in the evening. He waited for those magical moments when - usually with Erin - she talked to him spontaneously, or asked him to film them with her video camera at some tourist spot. She sometimes saw him with a book in his hand and asked him what he was reading. They began a conversation about literature. In the evening she would come and sit beside him at the campfire and with her dazzling zest for life would say: 'So, Ollie, did we have a good day today or what?'

  Day and night he was completely aware of her, he knew where she was every moment, what she was doing, whom she spoke to. He saw that she was friendly with everyone in the group, he kept count of the time she spent with others and realised he was especially privileged - he received more of her attention and conversation than anyone else. The two lean and self-assured chief guides were very popular with the other girls, but she treated them just the same as the men in the tour group, friendly and courteous, while choosing to take her meals with Ollie, talk to him and share many more personal secrets.

  It was like that until Lake Kariba. On their second day there, when they boarded the houseboats, she was different, sombre and quiet, the joy and spontaneity gone.

  Alexa Barnard learned to have three drinks before a performance. The dose required to keep the demon sufficiently quiet. It was her limit. Four made her slur, the lyrics swimming in her memory, Burmeister's proud paternal smile wiped from his face by a worried frown. But two was not enough.

  She understood the risks. That was why she never had a drink during the day or after the show. Just those three glasses - the first one tossed back an hour and a half before the curtain, the other two taken more slowly. The cellist suggested gin since it didn't leave the odour on the breath that brandy did. She tried gin and tonic, but didn't like it. Dry lemon was her ultimate choice of mixer.

  In this way, she kept the demon under control for four years, hundreds of appearances and two CD recordings with Burmeister and his band.

  Then she met Adam Barnard.

  She noticed him one evening in the little Cape theatre - the tall, virile, attractive man with a thick head of black hair who had listened to her spellbound. The following evening he was back again. After the show he came knocking on her dressing-room door with a bunch of flowers in his hand. He was fluent and charming, and his compliments were measured, and therefore seemed more genuine. He invited her out: a business lunch, he made it clear.

  She was ready for what he suggested, aware of the limits of her chosen genre. She was known and popular in a small circle, she had a few glowing interviews in the entertainment sections of a few dailies and modest CD sales. She was aware of the limited scope of her career, audience and income. She had reached the highest rung of a short ladder and her prospects were predictable and uninspiring.

  Three days later she signed a contract with Adam Barnard. It bound her to his record company and to him, as manager.

  He made good on his professional promises. He sought out Afrikaans compositions from Anton Goosen, Koos du Plessis, and Clarabelle van Niekerk, songs to suit her voice and what would become her new style. He hired the best musicians, developed a specific and unique sound for her and introduced her to the media. He courted her with the same quiet professionalism, and married her. He even weaned her off the three pr
e-appearance gins with his total support, belief in her talent and his silver, silver tongue. For two years her life and career were everything she had dreamed of. One day an open-air photo shoot for Sarie magazine was cancelled due to bad weather and she came home unexpectedly. There, in the same sitting room where she and Griessel had sat, she found Adam with his trousers around his ankles and Paula Phillips on her knees in front of him, performing skilful fellatio with her long fingers and her red-painted mouth. Yes, that Paula Phillips, the dark-haired singer with long legs and big boobs, who was still dishing up pointless commercial junk to middle-class ears. That was the day Alexa Barnard began to drink in earnest.

  Even though Rachel Anderson had changed in her behaviour towards everyone, Oliver Sands knew it must have been something he had said or done. He replayed every interaction, every word he had said to her, but he could not pinpoint the source of her aversion. Had he said something to someone else, or done something to someone else that had upset her so much? He lay awake at nights, on the trips to Victoria Falls, the Chobe Game Reserve, the Okavango, Etosha, and finally, to the Cape, he would stare out of the window in the faint hope of gaining some insight, some idea of how he could make things right.

  The previous night in Van Hunks in Cape Town he had cracked under the strain. What he ought to have said was: 'I can see something is bothering you, Rachel. Do you want to talk about it?' But he had already downed too many beers for Dutch courage. He sat down beside her and like a complete idiot said: 'I don't know why you suddenly hate me, but I love you, Rachel.' He had gazed at her with big hungry puppy eyes in the crazy hope that she would say, 'I love you too, Ollie. I've loved you since that magical day in Zanzibar.'

  But she hadn't.

  He thought she hadn't heard him over the loud music, because she just sat there staring into the middle distance. Then she stood up, turned to him and kissed him on the forehead.

  'Dear Ollie,' she said and walked away between the crush of people.

  'That's why I came back here,' Sands said to Vusi.

  'I'm not following you.'

  'Because I knew the dorm would be empty. Because I didn't want anybody to see me cry.' He did not remove his glasses. The tears trickled under the edge of the frame and down his round, red cheeks.

  Chapter 12

  Rachel Anderson lay on her stomach behind the stacked pine logs, powerless and gutted.

  Something pressed uncomfortably against her belly, but she did not move. She couldn't hold back the self-pity any longer; it overwhelmed and paralysed her. She did not cry; it was as though her tear ducts had dried up. Her breathing fast and shallow, mouth gasping, she stared at the grain of the sawn wood, but saw nothing.

  Her thoughts had stalled, trapped by a lack of alternatives, the door to all escape routes slammed shut, except this single option, to lie in this shade, a gasping, helpless fish on dry land.

  She couldn't hear the voices any more. They had walked uphill. Maybe they would see her footprints and follow them here. They would look at the unfinished garage and realise it offered a hiding place and then they would look behind the pine logs and one would grab her hair with an iron grip and slash open her throat. She didn't even think she would bleed, there was nothing left. Nothing. Not even the terror of that chunky blade; it did not release the flood of adrenaline in her guts any more.

  Oh, to be home.

  It was a vague longing that slowly overcame her - a ghostly vision emerging from the haze, the safe haven, her father's voice, far off and faint. 'Don't you worry, honey, just don't you worry.'

  Oh, to be held by him, to curl up on his lap with her head under his chin and close her eyes. The safest place in the world.

  Her breathing steadied and the image in her mind was clearer.

  The idea took shape, instinctive and irrational, to get up and phone her father.

  He would save her.

  If there was a murder or armed robbery in his area at night, the SAPS members of Caledon Square had instructions to call the station commander at home. But the more mundane affairs of the previous night had to wait until he was at his desk in the morning and could scan the notes in the register from the charge office. The SC was a black Superintendent with twenty-five years' service to his name. He knew there was only one way to tackle this job, slowly and objectively. Otherwise the nature and extent of that list could undo you. So he ran his pen down the list with professional distance, over the domestic violence, public drunkenness, the theft of cell phones and cars, drug sales, disturbance of the peace, burglaries, assault, indecent exposure and various false alarms.

  At first his pen slid over the Lion's Head incident on page seven of the register, but it hovered back. He read through it again more carefully. The reluctant woman who had seen a young girl on the mountain. Then he reached for the bulletin that lay to his left on the corner of the scarred wooden surface. A Constable had brought it in only minutes before. He had scanned it quickly. Now he gave it his full attention.

  He saw the connection. At the bottom was Inspector Vusumuzi Ndabeni's name and phone number.

  He picked up the phone.

  Vusi was walking down Long Street towards the harbour, on his way to the Van Hunks nightclub, when his phone rang. He answered without stopping.

  'Inspector Ndabeni.'

  'Vusi, it's Goodwill,' said the Caledon Square SC in Xhosa. 'I think I have something for you.'

  Benny Griessel stood with his colleagues in one of the examination rooms of the City Park Hospital Casualty Department. He had a strong sense of deja vu.

  Space was limited, so they were quite an intimate little group behind the closed door. While Fransman Dekker talked with his habitual frown, Griessel observed the people around him: John Afrika, District Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, in full impressive uniform, his epaulettes weighed down with symbols of rank. Afrika was shorter than Dekker, but he had presence, an energy that made him the dominant force in the room. Beside Afrika was the fragile Tinkie Kellerman, her delicate features overshadowed by her huge eyes revealing how intimidated she was by this gathering. Then there was the broad- shouldered Dekker with his crew cut and angular face; serious, focused, voice deep and intense as he talked. They said he made women weak at the knees but Griessel couldn't see how. They said Dekker had a beautiful coloured wife in a senior position at Sanlam, and that's how he could afford to live in an expensive house somewhere on the Tygerberg. They also said that he sometimes played away from home.

  And Cloete, beside him, the liaison officer with tobacco stains on his fingers and permanent shadows under his eyes. Cloete, with his endless patience and calm, the man in the middle, between the devil of the media and the deep blue of the police. How many times had he been through this, Griessel wondered, in this kind of emergency meeting, the one who had to make sure all the bases were covered, so that explanations higher up in the SAPS food chain would be consistent. The difference now was that he, too, like Cloete, was caught in a no-man's-land, his created by the mentorship that he didn't think was going to work.

  Dekker concluded his explanation and Griessel drew an unobtrusive breath, preparing for the predictable conclusion.

  'Are you sure?' Afrika asked and looked at Griessel.

  'Absolutely, Commissioner,' he said. Everyone but Cloete nodded.

  'So why is the doos carrying on like this?' The Commissioner glared guiltily at Tinkie Kellerman after the expletive and said: 'Sorry, but that is what he is.'

  Tinkie merely nodded. She had heard everything by now.

  'He was trouble from the start,' said Fransman Dekker. 'He gave the Constable trouble at the gate, insisted on coming in. It was a crime scene, sir, and I do things by the book.'

  'Fair enough,' said John Afrika and dipped his head thoughtfully with a hand over his mouth. Then he looked up. 'The press ...' he looked at Cloete enquiringly.

  'It's a major story,' said Cloete, on the defensive as usual, as if he was implicated in the blood
lust of the media. 'Barnard is a celebrity of sorts ...'

  'That's the problem,' said John Afrika, and thought some more.

  When he looked up and focused on Dekker with an apologetic slant to his mouth, Griessel knew what was coming.

  'Fransman, you're not going to like this ...'

  'Commissioner, maybe ...' Griessel said, because he had been the one who had control taken away from him before, and he knew how it felt.

  Afrika held up a hand. 'They will tear us apart, Benny, if Mouton puts the blame on us. You see, we were there, in her room . . .You know what the papers are like. Tomorrow they will say it's because we put inexperienced people on the case ...'

  Dekker got it now. 'No, Commissioner ...' he said.

  'Fransman, don't let us misunderstand each other; it happened on your watch,' Afrika said sternly. Then more gently: 'I'm not saying it's your fault; I want to protect you.'

  'Protect?'

  'You have to understand. These are difficult times ...'

  They knew he was referring to the recent investigational failures that the newspapers and politicians had pounced on like predators.

  Dekker tried one last time, 'But, sir, if I crack this, tomorrow they will write ...'

  'Djy wiet dissie soe maklikie!' You know it's not that simple.

  Griessel wondered why Cape Coloureds only spoke Cape Flats Afrikaans with each other. It always made him feel excluded.

  Dekker wanted to say more, his mouth opened, but John Afrika lifted a warning finger. Dekker's mouth closed, his jaw clenched, eyes fierce.

  'Benny, you take charge of this one,' the Commissioner said. 'As of now, Fransman, you work closely with Benny. Lat hy die pressure vat. Lat hy die Moutons van die lewe handle! Let him take the pressure, let him handle the Moutons of this world. And then, almost as an afterthought: 'You're a team, if you crack this .. .'