by Deon Meyer
12:00-12:56
Chapter 26
Fransman Dekker stopped for a second in the passage of AfriSound, deep in thought, one arm folded and the other on his cheek, staring at the simple patterns of the long woven dhurrie on the floor. All the doors around him were closed: the Geysers behind him in the conference room, Mouton and his lawyer in the office on the left, the accountant Wouter Steenkamp on the right.
He should phone Bloemfontein and find out what they had, he must go to Jack Fischer and Associates, he must search Barnard's office, he must talk to Natasha about Barnard's schedule yesterday. He didn't know which of these to do next and he was not keen on Jack Fischer or Natasha Abader. The detective agency was full of whites, all ex-policemen who loved to sing to the press if they could show the SAPS in a bad light. Natasha was a temptation he did not need. The story of Adam Barnard, womaniser, was a mirror held up to him. He didn't want to be like that; he had a good, pretty and clever wife who trusted him with her life.
The cannon roared the noonday shot from Signal Hill, breaking his train of thought. He glanced up and saw fat Inspector Mbali Kaleni's stormy face approaching through the reception area, or lounge, or whatever these music people called it.
'Fuck,' he said softly to himself.
Benny Griessel heard the cannon as he crossed the threshold of the Caledon Square police station and thought how it startled him every time; he would never get used to it. Was it really only twelve o'clock? He saw the long-haired photographer trotting across to him from inside, eyes searching, with a pack of photos in his hand.
'Are you looking for Vusi?'
'Yes,' said the photographer. 'He's just missing.'
'He's gone to Table View. You're fucking late.'
'We had a power cut, how am I supposed to make copies without electricity?' the photographer asked and angrily held out the prints to Benny.
He took them. 'Thanks.'
The photographer walked off without a word. Indignant.
Griessel looked at the print on top. Rachel Anderson and Erin Russel, laughing and alive. Light and dark, blonde and brunette. Russel had the face of a nymph, with blonde hair cut short, a small pretty nose, big green eyes. Rachel Anderson was sultry, her beauty more complex, dark plait over her shoulder, long, straight nose, wide mouth, the line of her jaw enchanting and determined. But both still children, with carefree exuberance, eyes bright with excitement.
Behind them, brooding, was the only other African iconic mountain landmark, Kilimanjaro.
Drug mules?
He knew anything was possible, he had seen it all before. Greed, recklessness, stupidity. Crime had no face; it was a question of tendency, background and opportunity. But his heart said no, not these two.
She was torn between her fear of trusting anyone, and the decency in the man's voice. She couldn't stay here, because someone knew where she was; she couldn't go back to the streets, it would start all over again. The knowledge that the door was open just a few steps away, offering a safe haven, food and drink, overcame her and won every argument.
She got up slowly, heart racing, aware of the risk. She picked up the rucksack and crawled on her knees, avoiding the thick, scratchy branches higher up, to the edge of the leaf curtain.
There was a small stretch of paved garden path, a single step, a low veranda, a brown doormat saying WELCOME and the wooden door, its varnish faded with age.
She hesitated there, considering the consequences one last time. Then she crept the last few centimetres, blinking in the bright sunlight. She stood erect, straightening legs stiff from lying so long. She walked fast with long strides over the path, the step, the shaded part of the veranda. She put her hand on the door handle of oxidised copper, cool under her palm, breathed in and opened the door.
Barry wasn't looking through the binoculars. They were too heavy to hold up permanently without a prop.
His head was turned a few degrees away, looking up the street towards Carlucci's. He saw movement in the periphery, more than a hundred metres away at the house. His head turned and he screwed up his eyes. He saw the figure for an instant, small at this distance; the blue of a garment was the shade he was looking for. He lifted up the binoculars, looked through them and adjusted the focus.
Nothing. 'Shit,' he said out loud.
He kept the lenses trained on the front door. He could only see part of it behind the baroque detail of the veranda, but there was no one there.
Was he imagining things? No, he had seen it. He blinked, concentrating. Small figure, blue ...
'Shit,' he said again, because it might have been imagination. Up on the mountain he had thought he had seen her a few times; it had pumped adrenaline in his veins, but when he adjusted the focus it was usually a false alarm, optical illusions caused by hope and expectation.
He lowered the binoculars and looked at the house with his naked eyes. He wanted to reconstruct the dimensions of that moment.
She had been moving there. Just there, right hand on the doorknob? Left hand stretched back, holding something. The rucksack?
Binoculars up again. Where had she come from? For the first time he recognised the potential of the bougainvilleas, the old overgrown arbour. He studied the depth of it. 'Fuck me,' he said, the possibility slowly dawning in his mind, the way she could have run, the fat policewoman inspecting the flower bed on the left.. .
He reached for his cell phone in the pocket of his denims, took it out without taking his eyes off the house.
It had to be her. It explained how she disappeared without trace. He was almost certain.
Almost. Ninety per cent. Eighty.
If he made a mistake ... 'Shit!'
The house was quiet and cool.
She stood in the hallway and listened to her own breathing. A classic piece of wooden furniture stood against the wall, with a large oval mirror above it. Alongside were dark wood-framed portraits of bearded faces in black and white.
One step forward. The floorboard creaked and she stopped. To the left a large room opened up between two plain pillars; she leaned forward to look inside. A lovely large table with a laptop almost lost between piles of books and papers. Shelves against the walls crammed with books, three big windows, one looking out on the street and the fence she had jumped over. An old, worn Persian carpet on the floor in red, blue and beige.
'I'm in the kitchen.' The man's voice directly ahead was soothing, but she felt frightened anyway.
Books. So like her parents' house. She must be safe with a book person.
She walked in the direction of the voice. One of the rucksack's straps dragged whispering across the wooden floor.
Through a white-painted door frame was the kitchen. He stood with his back to her. White shirt, brown trousers, white sports shoes; he looked like an aged monk with his thinning grey hair around the bald spot that shone in the fluorescent light. He turned slowly from his work at the table, wooden spoon in hand.
'I'm making an omelette. Would you like some?'
He was older than she had thought at first, with a slight stoop, a kind face between deep wrinkles, loose skin above the red cravat around his neck, liver spots on his head and hands. His eyes were watery, faded blue, mischievous behind the over-large gold- rimmed spectacles. He put the spoon down beside a mixing bowl, wiped his hands on a white dishcloth and held one out towards her. 'My name is Piet van der Lingen,' he said, his smile revealing white false teeth.
'Pleased to meet you,' she said automatically, a reflex, and shook his hand.
'Omelette? Perhaps some toast?' He picked up the spoon again.
'That would be wonderful.'
'You are most welcome to hang the rucksack on the pegs at the door,' and he pointed with the spoon to the hall. Then he turned back to his mixing bowl.
She stood there, unwilling to accept the relief, the anticlimax, the relaxation.
'And the bathroom is down the passage, second door on the left.'
'I saw her,' said Barry over
the phone, sounding more certain than he felt.
'Where?'
'She went into a house just a block from the restaurant.'
'Jesus. When?'
'A few minutes ago.'
'You saw her?'
'I was lucky, I just caught a glimpse, but it was her. No doubt.'
'A glimpse? What the fuck does that mean?'
They sat in the recording studio. Fransman Dekker wanted to tell her about the Barnard case. Inspector Mbali Kaleni said: 'Just a minute,' and shut her eyes. She wanted the American girl's case out of her thoughts; she had been so sure she would track her down. Now she cleared her head and opened her eyes. 'Go ahead,' she said. Dekker talked, gave her the details in a businesslike way, cursorily, the scowling execution of forced labour.
Mbali was not surprised by his attitude.
She knew her male colleagues did not like her. The one who liked her least of all was Fransman Dekker. But that didn't disturb her because she knew why. Generally the men felt threatened by her talent and they were intimidated by her ethics and her integrity. She didn't drink, smoke, or curse. She didn't hold her tongue either. The SAPS was not a place for sweet talking; the task was too big and the circumstances too difficult for that. She said what she thought. About their egos, too often the axis around which everything turned. About their incessant sexism and racism. About their lack of focus. Too much 'Let's throw a chop on the grill', or 'Let's get a quick beer', like boys that hadn't yet grown up. Too much talk in the office about sport, politics and sex. She told them straight out it was inappropriate. They hated her for that. But Dekker had an extra reason to hate her. She'd caught him out a few weeks ago. He was in the corridor where he thought nobody could hear him. Cell phone to his ear, whispering words of lust to a Tamaryn, when his wife's name was Crystal. When he slunk back into the office she had gone and stood at his desk and said: 'A man should be faithful to his wife.' He just stared at her. So she said: 'Fraud comes in many different guises,' and left. Since then she had seen the hatred in his eyes. Because she knew, and despised him for it.
But there was work to be done here. So she listened attentively. She answered him only in English, although he spoke Afrikaans. Because she knew he hated that too.
Rachel Anderson closed the bathroom door behind her, feeling an urgent need to pee. She unzipped her denim shorts, pulled the garments down to her knees and sat down. The relief was so great and the sound so loud that she wondered if he could hear her from the kitchen. Rachel looked around the bathroom. The walls were a light pastel blue, the porcelain fittings snow white. The old restored claw-foot bath was suddenly tempting, hot foamy water to draw out the dreadful fatigue and dull aching of her body. But she suppressed the thought, a surrender she wasn't yet ready for. And the old man was cooking in the kitchen.
When she was finished she bent over the basin, opened the taps, picked up the soap and washed the dried blood and mud off her hands, all the dirt from touching rocks and plants, walls and earth. She watched it rinse away. She mixed hot and cold water in cupped hands and splashed her face. Then she took the cake of soap, lathered it over her cheeks and forehead, mouth and chin, and rinsed again.
The dark-blue towel was fresh and rough. She rubbed it slowly over her face and hung it up neatly again. Only then did she look in the mirror. In a habitual motion her hands reached for her hair and brushed it back from her face.
She looked haggard. Dreadful. Her hair was a mess, strands had escaped from the plait and framed her face, her eyes were bloodshot and there were lines of fatigue around her mouth. There was a cut on her chin, surrounded by a light purple bruise and another small graze across her forehead; she didn't know where she had got that. Her neck was grimy, like her powder-blue Tshirt.
But you are alive.
She was filled with enormous gratitude. Then came the guilt, because Erin was dead, dear Erin. The emotion washed over her like a tidal wave, sudden and overwhelming, the awful shame that she could be glad at being alive while Erin was dead. It broke down her defences and let her relive it fully for the first time: the two of them fleeing in terror, Erin putting a hand on the church wall and jumping over the sharp cast-iron railings. A fatal error.
'No!' she had screamed, yet followed blindly, jumping over so effortlessly. Erin had stopped on a narrow path in the churchyard, in the deep, dark shadows between huge trees. Rachel realised they were trapped; she had run on desperately looking for a way out. She intended to take the lead, show the way around the church and thought Erin was following. She was already behind the building, out of sight and away from the streetlights, when she realised she couldn't hear Erin's footsteps. She turned around, feeling deadly fear like a weight she was dragging along with her. Where was Erin? Reluctant and afraid, she had run back to the corner of the church building.
Erin was on the ground and all five were around her, bending over, kneeling, yowling like animals. The knife had flashed. Erin's desperate scream, abruptly cut off. Black blood in the dark.
That moment was petrified in the synapses of her brain, surreal, overwhelming. As heavy as lead.
She had run for her life. Around the back of the church. Over the fence again. She had a bigger lead this time.
Relief. Gratitude. She was alive.
In front of the bathroom mirror it was all too much for her. She could not look at herself. She let her head hang in shame, grasping the sides of the basin in despair. The emotion was physical, a nausea rising from her stomach that made her guts spasm and made her want to vomit, a wave of dry retching. She bellowed once, and shuddered. Then she began to cry.
Vusi Ndabeni sat in the front seat of one of the patrol vehicles between a Constable and an Inspector, both in uniform. Behind them on the West Coast Road was another police van.
They had wanted to put the sirens and lights on but he had said: 'No, please don't.' He wanted to arrive at J. M. de Klerk's house without fanfare, surround it quietly and then knock on the door. The Inspector said he knew where the address was, one of the crescents in Parklands, a new residential area where the white and up-and-coming black middle classes lived shoulder to shoulder in apparent harmony; the new South Africa successfully practised.
At a set of traffic lights they turned right into Park Road. Shopping centres, townhouse complexes, then left again down Ravenscourt, right in Humewood. These were not the linear street blocks of Mandela Park and Harare in Khayelitsha, but a maze of crescents and dead ends. Vusi looked at the Inspector.
'It's just up front here, first left, second right.'
Houses, townhouses, flats, all neat and new, gardens in development, with small trees or none at all.
'We mustn't park in front of the house,' said Vusi. 'I don't want to scare him.'
'OK,' said the Inspector, and showed the Constable which way to drive. Eventually a road sign said 'Atlantic Breeze'.
Townhouses. The numbers on this side were in the forties, big complexes behind high walls. 'Are they all townhouses?' asked Vusi.
'I don't think so.'
But Number 24 was. They stopped some way off. 'Let me get out,' said Vusi. The Inspector opened the door and slid out.
There was a high white wall with spiky metal deterrent on top and large painted numbers, a two and a four. In the centre was a large motorised iron gate and townhouses behind in a countrified style, blue and green shutters alongside plain- coloured window frames, and an A-frame roof. Yet another quick property speculation that would become stale and uninspiring in five years' time.
'Ai,' said Vusi. This was not the way he had visualised it. He beckoned to the vehicle with the two other uniforms. They got out and everyone came over to stand with him. 'The jackets,' he said. The Inspector opened the back of the police van. The bulletproof vests were no longer in the tidy pile they had been earlier. Vusi took one, pulled it over his head and began to buckle it up. 'You too. Wait here while I have a look, and have the gate opened.' They nodded enthusiastically. He crossed the street and walked a
longside the wall. There was a panel at the closed gate with a grid for a speaker, call buttons, some with names alongside. He scanned them and saw no de Klerk. On the top left was one labelled Administrator. He pressed it. An electronic beep sounded. Then nothing.
He pressed again. No answer.
He looked through the railings of the gate. The drive ran straight in - then turned ninety degrees to the left and disappeared behind a block of townhouses. He could see no sign of life. He pressed the button, without hope.
The speaker crackled and whistled briefly. A monotone woman's voice said: 'What do you want?'
Sixteen storeys above the bustling crowds of Adderley Street, the man stood at the window with his back to the luxury of the apartment behind him. He looked out over the city. In front of him was the Golden Acre, to the left the Cape Sun Hotel, behind that the tower blocks of the Foreshore area, a miscellany of architectural styles against the horizon. The blue sea was visible, though spoiled by the harbour cranes, two drilling rigs and the masts of ships.
The man's hair and full beard were trimmed short, sandy and prematurely greying - he didn't look fifty yet. He was fit and lean in denim shirt and khaki chino trousers with blue boat shoes. In the reflection of the high wide window the tanned face was expressionless.
He had one hand in his pocket; the other was holding a slim cell phone. He shifted his gaze from the view to the keyboard of his phone. From memory he typed in a number and held the instrument millimetres from his ear. He heard it ring once before Barry answered. 'Mr B.'
The man nodded slightly in satisfaction at the quick reaction time and the calm in Barry's voice.
'I'm taking control,' he said, his tone measured.
'Right.' Relief.
'Describe the house to me.'
Barry did his best, describing the single storey, the corner site and the position of the front door.