by Deon Meyer
‘Not here with me.’
‘No, I mean tomorrow morning – can we take a look tomorrow morning?’ And then he hurried to add – knowing how Nxesi would feel about it, he had been in the same position himself, ‘You’re the expert on this one. I want to hear what you think.’
‘Sure, Captain. What time?’
‘Nine o’clock?’
‘See you there, thanks, Captain.’
Griessel put the phone back in his pocket.
He would have to keep his wits about him.
He was shocked when he saw her in the manager’s office. Her makeup was smudged, her hair hung over her face, a mess, the neckline of her dress had slipped down too far, a sandal lay to one side, the other on her foot. She sat on a chair with her legs apart, elbows on her knees, swaying from side to side.
‘Alexa …’
She looked up slowly. He could see she was very drunk. She battled to focus. Then slowly her face crumpled. She tried to straighten up, but it was hard. She began to cry.
He went to her, helped her up, tried to pull her dress higher, but she wrapped her arms around him. She smelled of liquor and perfume.
‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He put his arms around her, held her tightly.
Her face was in his neck and he felt the hot, wet tears trickling down him. ‘I’m such …’ she said, the sibilants coming out with difficulty. ‘I’m such a loser, Benny.’
‘You’re not,’ he said.
The manager stepped around them, bent and picked up her sandal and her little evening bag that was hanging over the arm of the chair. He held them out to Griessel, the shoe by one finger, as though it was contaminated, disgust on his face.
Benny took the shoe and the bag. Alexa sagged against him.
‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s go home.’
In the car she talked disjointedly, her head against the window.
‘Intruder, Benny. That’s all I am … they know …’ She struggled to open her bag, took out her cigarettes, dropped the lighter.
He didn’t want to see her like this, because it was his doing. He searched for words to repay, to console her, but all he could manage was: ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’
It was as though she didn’t hear him. She grabbed for the lighter on the floor, surrendered the battle, fell back in her seat and began a chorus: ‘They saw through me.’ Repeating it over and over, that maudlin tone of drunken self-pity.
His cellphone rang, Jissis, what now? He answered it.
‘Benny, this is John Afrika. Cloete says a small article will appear on page fourteen of the Weekend Argus, and on the Internet, we were too late for anything else. It’s a mess, Benny, I’m telling you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, you’ll have to produce results. Pull out all the stops.’
‘Yes, General.’
‘OK, Benny.’ Afrika concluded the call.
‘They saw through me,’ said Alexa.
He parked in front of her house, found her key in the evening bag. He got out.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded, the voice of a child.
He got back in. ‘I won’t leave you. I just want to unlock the door.’
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m an alcoholic, you know.’
He nodded, got out again, walked quickly to the front door, unlocked it. Jogged back to the car, opened the passenger door. ‘Let’s get you in the house.’
She didn’t respond, just sat there, swaying again.
‘Please, Alexa.’
She lifted her left arm slowly. He bent, pulled her arm over his back, pulled her up and out. She was unsteady. He shuffled through the gate with her, up onto the veranda. Inside he struggled to find the light switch, then he helped her slowly up the stairs. Her other sandal came off, rolled down two steps. They shuffled down the passage, into her room. He sat her down on the bed. She toppled sideways, her head on the bedspread. He switched on the bedside light, stood a moment undecided.
He had to fetch her bag, in the car. Had to lock the vehicle.
Her lips moved, she murmured something.
‘Alexa …’
He brought his head close, so he could hear what she said. But she didn’t speak. She sang. The song that had made her famous. ‘Soetwater’, Sweet Water. Softly, nearly inaudible, but perfect, in tune, in her unique, rich voice.
A small glass of sunlight,
A goblet of rain
Pour sweet water
A small sip of worship,
A mouthful of pain
Drink sweet water.
‘I’m just going to lock the car,’ he said.
No response.
He walked fast. On the way down the stairs he remembered she had tried to commit suicide, the last time she had been drunk. When her husband had died.
He would have to stay here tonight.
He fetched the handbag, her cigarettes and lighter, then the stack of files, locked the car, and jogged back.
With her clumsy assistance he got both big earrings off and put them on the bedside cupboard. ‘Try to sleep a little,’ he said.
She looked at him with new focus and control. Her lips opened slightly. She put her hands behind his head and pulled him closer and kissed him, her mouth open and wet, he tasted alcohol on her. She pulled him down, to the bed.
He put his hands carefully on her shoulders, pushed her away gently.
She wept. ‘You don’t want me either.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘But not like this.’
Eventually she lay back against the cushions. He picked up her legs, put them on the bed. She turned her back to him. He walked around the bed, found the edge of the bedspread and folded it over her.
Then he stood there, for ten minutes, and listened as her breathing slowed. Until she slept.
He looked at his watch. It was ten past twelve. Sunday morning.
DAY 2
Sunday
6
He worked on the case file until nearly half past three.
In the bedroom beside Alexa’s he hung his jacket on a hook behind the door, unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He sat down on a stool at the dressing table, picked up the fat folder and began to work through it. For a long time he struggled to concentrate because his mind was on Alexa. They saw through me. How could she think that? He had seen her, tonight, at the cocktail party, her grace, her presence, how easy and at home she had been there.
The damage, he thought. Of self doubt, of a lifetime of insecurity and desire for success with music, the damage of a man who cheated on her, the damage of his death. But above all the damage of drink. If you gave in, if you threw four months of sobriety in the water, if you had to look your own weakness in the eye, realise once more you were not strong enough. To get up again …
She lay on the bed and sang ‘Soetwater’ and it burned through him, because there was a searching in her voice, a longing for a moment in her past when everything had been good and right. And he knew – you never get that back, no matter how hard you try. That was why he had felt like weeping with her at that moment.
You can never repair the damage.
And the taste of alcohol in her mouth. Lord, he could taste it still. When she had kissed him, he hadn’t thought of lovemaking, he had had a sudden and violent longing for the bottle. And for the place where she was, that soft nebulous world of drunkenness where everything was round and harmless, no edges and corners to hurt you.
An alarm went off in the back of his mind: this was the road to trouble.
Careful, Benny, you haven’t been dry a year yet. Two alcoholics … that’s double the risk.
Doc Barkhuizen was a clever man. But he would be able to tell Doc that tonight he had had another revelation, gained an insight. When he had pulled the bedspread over Alexa. A strong feeling of déjà vu, because he had been there before – on the bed, dead drunk, his ex, Anna, pulling the blanket over him with compassion and patience and love. How many tim
es? How many evenings and nights? How had she put up with it for so long?
He felt the loathing for himself come and sit in his throat, and forced himself back to the case file.
Hanneke Sloet was born on 18 June 1977 in Ladybrand in the Free State. She graduated with an LLB from Stellenbosch University in 1999, and in 2001 she began work at the law firm Silberstein Lamarque, first as articled clerk, and then in 2002 as attorney in the corporate law department. In 2009 she was promoted to partner.
Up till December the previous year she lived alone in a town house in Stellenbosch, and commuted by car every day to Silberstein Lamarque House in Riebeek Street in Cape Town, where she had an office on the eighth floor. She bought the apartment in 36 on Rose for 3,850,000 rand ten months ago with a mortgage from Nedbank, but the development was only completed the previous December. On Monday 3 January she moved in on the fifth floor.
She wasn’t in a serious or long-term relationship when she died.
On Tuesday 18 January she left the offices of Silberstein Lamarque at 19.46, according to the electronic time stamp on her access card. When she didn’t arrive for a 09.00 meeting with her employer on 19 January, her personal assistant began to worry. Because Hanneke was never late. Every workday she was in the gym at a quarter to six, and in the office at a quarter past seven, according to the assistant’s sworn statement.
I called her cellphone, because she didn’t have a land line yet. She didn’t answer. That is absolutely exceptional, it had never happened before. I went to talk to Mr Pruis, and at 09.40 left the office and drove to her apartment. The door was locked. I went down to the basement and saw her car was there. Only around 10.20 could I track down the caretaker. He refused to unlock the apartment. I phoned the office, and Mr Pruis called his contacts in the police. Two policemen arrived at the apartment around 11.00 and ordered the caretaker to open the door. We found her dead.
The two uniformed policemen simply established that Sloet was dead, left and alerted Green Point Station that they had a homicide. Warrant Officer Tommy Nxesi from Green Point and a colleague, Sergeant Vernon April, took over the crime scene officially at 11.35, and summoned Forensics and the pathologist.
The forensic report yielded only two small pieces of useful information: the handle of the front door seemed to have been wiped inside and outside; and apart from Sloet’s own hair, a single, male, probably Caucasian, pubic hair was found in the shower of the en-suite bathroom. There was not enough of the hair follicle to get a DNA result.
Ten different sets of fingerprints were found in the apartment … probably due to the removal company’s workmen who handled practically all the furniture and cardboard cartons on 3 January, the report read. Six sets were identified as those of Hanneke Sloet, the caretaker who had come to fix a leaking tap a week earlier, and four of the removal company’s workers who could be traced. Only the victim’s fingerprints were on the computer and the glass in her bedroom.
Blood spatter analysis showed that the victim was dealt the fatal wound probably 3.8 metres from the front door and 0.6 metres from where her body was found.
And that was all. No dust, soil samples or tracks. No lip prints, residue, strange chemicals or usable DNA.
Neither did Sloet’s Facebook page, computer, or cellphone records produce much. Most of the emails, calls and SMSes on 18 January were work related. The exceptions were communications between two girlfriends, and a conversation with a telemarketer that was cut short. In the previous ten months there had been no contact with the last serious man in her life, one Egan Roch. Roch’s statement confirmed that. It’s been nearly a year since we broke up. We had virtually no contact since.
Griessel began to understand why the investigation had come up empty-handed. Everyone questioned sang the same tune: We can’t think of anyone who would want to harm her.
He had to patch her working life together from the various statements of her colleagues. Hanneke Sloet at the time of her death was involved in the conclusion of a business transaction whereby Ingcebo Resources Limited would acquire a shareholding in Gariep Minerals Limited, a process that had been on the go for thirteen months. Six other employees of Silberstein Lamarque were part of the legal team, while a transaction consultant, four banks, a management consultation company, and two other law firms were also involved.
We are the law firm representing the interests of SA Merchant Bank, Griessel read in the statement of Mr Hannes Pruis, a director of Silberstein Lamarque. They are one of the structuring advisors and underwriters. It is basically contract law, a lot of drudgery. Administrative. Hanneke was one of six partners on the team.
Apparently it was work without risk, without secrets or sensation.
Her bank statements showed only a woman who made good money and spent it well, but her financial affairs were not out of control, there was nothing that drew his attention.
By twenty past two he could no longer concentrate. He gathered all the documents together and put them back carefully in the file. He went and listened at Alexa’s bedroom door. She was sleeping.
He urinated in the second bathroom, washed his hands and face. Walked back to the room, closed the door, undressed. He set the alarm on his cellphone for seven o’clock and climbed into the bed, his weariness a heavy weight. Long day.
But Griessel’s brain kept working.
There was something about the case that bothered him. Not an obvious flaw, just a vague impression. Of an investigator who had looked in all the right places, asked all the right questions. Thorough, complete, by the book. And nothing more. No flair. No intuition. He knew how investigations worked, you went through your routine, starting with the people closest to the victim, and, if that yielded nothing, you spread your net wider and wider. Until somewhere you came across something that stuck in the back of your mind, a suspicion, a false note, and then you dug there, you focused, you applied pressure. And nine times out of ten you were right.
Instinct.
He hadn’t found that in the Sloet file. The trouble with station detectives was partly the training, the strong emphasis on forensic aids and technology. Intuition didn’t count any more. And the lack of experience, because they were frequently young, often working in unfamiliar surroundings, other cultural and language groups, under a lot of pressure from all sides. They did their best, but …
It wasn’t robbery. The laptop and the cellphone there on the work table … Even if no one could say whether anything was missing from the apartment, theft was most likely not the motive.
And she didn’t die at the door. Her body lay nearly four metres inside the apartment, and the blood pattern said she was stabbed at least three metres from the door. From the front. She hadn’t tried to turn around or run away – she had confronted her attacker, but not defended herself. Not fought for her life. From habit Griessel recreated the scene in his mind automatically, somewhat reluctantly. She opens the door. She sees who it is. She retreats …
But she doesn’t defend herself?
The handle of the front door is wiped clean.
Hanneke Sloet was working upstairs in her bedroom. The glass of wine was there, the computer, the files.
It just wouldn’t fit.
And the photographs. Sloet having them taken deliberately in a studio. Seductive. Naked.
Nonetheless she had not been in a serious relationship during the past year. It bothered him, that combination.
Maybe she didn’t have time for relationships. In the gym at six in the morning, only home at eight at night. Last year she was still driving in from Stellenbosch, back in the evening.
Maybe. But why the photos then, the effort?
He must remember to ask Tommy Nxesi where they had found the photos. Where had she kept them?
He kept his thoughts deliberately on the case, because he didn’t want to relive his great embarrassment. But somewhere on the edge of sleep he remembered with a degree of satisfaction that someone had mistaken him for Paul Eilers tonight.
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br /> So he couldn’t be that ugly.
7
He dreamed of Lize Beekman. They were walking down a busy street and he was endlessly trying to explain why he had said such a ridiculous thing in front of her. But she wasn’t paying attention to him. She disappeared, melted away in the crowd and people looked at him with great disdain on their faces.
The cellphone’s alarm jerked him awake and he half sat up, not sure where he was.
He saw the file on the dressing table. The events of yesterday slowly penetrated through to him. He rubbed his palms over his face. He got up slowly, dressed and went to the bathroom to empty his bladder and wash his face. Then he took a cautious look in Alexa’s bedroom.
She was still asleep.
He considered his options. He had to go home, shower, shave, brush his teeth and eat breakfast – he hadn’t eaten a thing last night. And then meet Tommy Nxesi at Sloet’s apartment. But he didn’t want just to leave Alexa like this …
He made a decision, carried the files down to his car, found the notebook and pen in the glove compartment. The morning was bright and clear without a breath of wind, the mountain and cliffs glowing. He stood in the street for a moment taking it in, then he jogged back, sat down again at the dressing table in the second bedroom to write her a note.
Alexa
I am really sorry about last night. It was all my fault. Call me when you wake up. I want to talk to you urgently.
Benny
He tore the page out, tiptoed into her room and put it on the bedside cabinet where she would see it.
The sparkling new five-storey building at 36 on Rose was designed to represent the Bo-Kaap architecture with a modern twist. The lower levels were colourfully painted, just like the little labourers’ houses further down Rose Street.
Nxesi was waiting at the front door. He was the same height as Griessel, but broader, slightly bow-legged. His black-framed glasses and brown tweed jacket gave him a professorial look. His greeting was friendly. ‘I’ve got the keys, but security will have to take us up to the floor.’ He had a township accent. He held the door open for Griessel.