by Deon Meyer
‘Hanneke was … My first boss at Silberstein was Barry Brink. I had to do everything for him. Open his post and email, answer his cellphone, make his hair appointments, call his wife when he was going to be late. And I helped his daughter with her school projects, on the Internet. They invited me along to their beach house at Jongensfontein, or Sunday dinners in Blouberg. Barry was an open book. You get two kinds of bosses, Captain. Barry was an includer. Hanneke was the other kind. An excluder. I prefer them, because they are much easier to work for. The boundaries are clear: handle the diary, liaise, find the references and court cases and articles, answer the office phone, and my cell only if I’m in a meeting. Personal stuff is completely excluded. Only after her death did I realise how little I knew about her. Because you wonder, after the worst shock is over. You can’t help it.’
‘How long did you work for her?’
‘Nearly two years.’
‘And how was she? As your boss?’
‘I liked her,’ she said, this time more quickly, without the nod and the thoughtful pause.
He didn’t react, waited for her to say more.
The silence stretched, she folded her hands together. He knew this reaction, piety for the dead. He waited.
‘I admired her,’ the voice was a bit quieter, eyes on the floor. ‘She was pretty and clever. And hard working. So focused. She put in a lot of hours. She was precise, in everything. Organised. Always on time. Always well groomed. And fair.’ Gabby Villette looked up at him, as if she were grateful that it occurred to her, ‘She treated me very fairly.’
Not much more than was in the file. He asked what Hanneke Sloet’s typical day looked like. Before Villette answered, the hesitation was back, the thorough consideration, the slow nod. Then she said you must differentiate between last year, and January. Sloet probably moved to the city because she knew her pace was going to burn her out. While she lived in Stellenbosch, she must have got up at half past four to get to the gym by a quarter to six, the Virgin Active in Jetty Street. She exercised until a quarter to seven, and she was at the office every weekday at a quarter past.
‘How do you know she was at the gym?’
‘That was where she did her dictation. On the exercise bike. I could hear it, on the recorder.’
He asked about the rest of the day. She said Sloet would prepare until half past eight, planned the day with Villette until nine, when the meetings began. There were a lot of meetings in the team environment at Silbersteins. In the afternoon, between one and three, she answered calls and emails, then worked on contracts and reports, mostly until eight o’clock at night. Villette knew because she never went home before her boss. Sometimes there were business lunches and evening cocktail parties, there were short business trips especially to Gauteng, there were two days in winter that Villette could remember when Hanneke Sloet phoned in with a hoarse, nasal voice to say she was as sick as a dog, in bed with flu and a lot of medicine. And the operation, last year, she was off for a week …
The subtle intonation of ‘the operation’ made him ask, ‘What operation?’
‘The boob job,’ she said, glancing quickly at her own small bosom, the tone of her voice slightly too neutral.
‘When last year?’
‘April.’
He knew it was the right time for the question. ‘Did everyone like her?’
Villette’s gaze flitted down to the coffee table. She shook her head slowly before quietly saying: ‘No.’
13
Mbali had to push through the bystanders to walk out of the gate of Green Point Station. They stood just outside the circle of yellow crime-scene tape that was stretched around the front door, complainants who wanted to enter, the curious, everyone was watching Thick and Thin of Forensics as they sifted through the glass shards.
She went and stood in the gateway, drew an imaginary bead for the shot, and walked along it. Every now and then she would stop, look back, see how the opening narrowed as the distance increased.
She walked across the grey, open space beside the tennis courts, up to the Western Boulevard. To stop here, to aim, shoot. Two shots? Unlikely.
She waited for an opening in the traffic, trotted across the tar to the island, then over to the other side. Her handbag swung from the shoulder strap so that she had to steady it with her hand.
A little out of breath she looked back at the gate, now seeming impossibly small.
Then she looked at the possibilities on this side of the double highway – the open space to the left, the bowls club behind it. Then to the right, the brick and rail fence of the Town Hall. On top of it was an electrified wire. Nobody could climb over that.
She stood there for a long time, looking and thinking. And eventually made her deductions.
Griessel sat and waited until Gabby Villette filled the silence. ‘You have to understand the context,’ she said. ‘Silbersteins is … All the directors are men, ninety per cent of the associates too. And all the PAs are women. Hanneke was somewhere in the middle …’ She looked up, the eye teeth suddenly displayed in an apologetic grin. ‘I’m not used to talking about my work with outsiders. That’s the problem with Silbersteins, it becomes your world, your whole life …’
He could see she wanted to talk about it.
She folded her arms. ‘It’s such an … intense place, the hours, the pace, the pressure, money drives everyone, chargeable hours …’
The arms opened slowly. ‘So, in this atmosphere, it’s hard to explain. We … the PAs, it’s like a subculture, a network, we have to know everything for the place to function. Know everyone’s quirks. Hanneke distanced herself from us so deliberately, I think it was so that everyone would know she was a woman, but not one of us, she was one of them. Am I making sense? I believe she had to, to make her mark. Not everyone liked that. Sometimes they were nasty. Not from jealousy, but a feeling of “she needn’t make it so obvious”, like she was insulting them. So there was always gossip. Stories …’
She looked up at Griessel for encouragement.
He supplied it, ‘What stories?’
The slow nod. ‘Most of them weren’t true.’
He showed he understood.
‘They said she would do anything for promotion.’
She folded her arms again and looked at the window.
‘She was ambitious. That was where the gossip began. But then … If she went to lunch with a director, then they would talk. You know … And after the boob job last year, then it was “yes, now she’s aiming higher” …’
‘Did she have an affair with anyone at work?’
The ‘no’ came too quickly, and Villette knew it. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Definitely not since I started working for her.’
He knew she was leading him, wanting him to ask more. ‘And before that?’
‘Maybe.’
He nodded encouragingly.
‘That was when she was still an articled clerk. A long time ago. 2002? She worked in Corporate and Commercial Litigation. The director was Werner Gelderbloem. He was her sort of mentor, he was over fifty by then. A good-looking man. And he’s married … in any case, there was talk of … You know …’
‘Talk?’
‘Apparently they would still be talking in his office when his PA went home in the evening. And he took her along for a case in Pretoria, and when his PA phoned the hotel one morning, she heard Hanneke’s voice in the room … Or she thought it was Hanneke’s voice.’
Griessel had hoped for more. Something recent.
Villette said, ‘Gossip …’
He nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘Did you know her former friend …’ he referred to his notes, ‘Egan Roch?’
‘I met him. Twice. He came to the office one day, just after I started with Hanneke. And then at the Christmas party, year before last.’ As an afterthought, ‘They suited each other.’
‘In what way?’
> ‘Two good-looking people. And the way he had with her … I think he understood her. He is … very comfortable with himself.’
‘Do you know why they broke up?’
She shook her head.
In his car he called Hannes Pruis, Silberstein Director. The cellphone switched over to voicemail. He left a message, then typed in Egan Roch’s number. The man answered, the signal was poor, he could hear the hum of a moving vehicle. Griessel explained the situation. Roch said he was on the other side of Citrusdal, he would only be home after seven, could they meet tomorrow?
Benny agreed, made an appointment for ten o’clock, time for him to get to where Roch worked, on a wine farm outside Stellenbosch. Then he rang off and drove to the SAPS station in Green Point, which was nearby. He had to park in front of the small supermarket, because the gate was cordoned off. He got out and went in search of Mbali.
Thick and Thin of Forensics were packing up.
‘Hey, Benny,’ Arnold, the short, fat one, greeted him.
‘Now we can relax,’ said Jimmy, tall and skinny.
‘The Hawks have landed,’ said Arnold.
‘Hi,’ said Griessel.
‘Hi?’ said Arnold. ‘So it’s “hi” now?’
‘What happened to fokkof? Is it a Hawks’ thing? No swearing?’
‘No sense of tradition. That’s the trouble with these elite units.’
Griessel sighed. ‘Have you seen Mbali?’
‘The Hefty Hawk,’ Arnold giggled.
‘Falcus Giganticus,’ smirked Jimmy.
‘Benny is the Chanting Goshawk,’ said Arnold. ‘I hear you’ve got a band …’
‘Fokkof,’ said Griessel against his will.
‘That’s better,’ said Arnold.
‘Sorry, another band already has that name. Fokkofpoliesiekar. But Hawk Off could work …’
‘Mbali,’ said Griessel, because it was no use getting angry with them.
‘Flew off,’ said Jimmy. ‘Back to the Claremont crime scene.’
‘Has she told you yet, Benny?’
‘What?’
‘What happened in Amsterdam?’
‘I’m telling you, someone tried to pick her up in Walletjie Street, so she moered him …’ said Jimmy.
‘Did she, Benny?’
‘I’m a hawk, not a rat,’ said Griessel, and walked towards the gate.
At seven minutes to four the sniper sent the email, but the pressure and uncertainty deprived him of any sense of pleasure. His nerves drove him up from the computer. He tugged open the drawer, took out the Chana’s keys, walked anxiously to the kitchen and opened the access door to the garage. Then he stopped, conscious of his feverish haste.
Exactly what he couldn’t afford.
One mistake. That’s all it would take. He would have to calm down. He would have to think hard about what he wanted to do next. Every minute on the road in the Chana was a risk.
He paused, reaching for calm, for reason.
He had no choice. He would have to drive. Go run the test.
He closed the door slowly behind him, climbed into the vehicle. Looked in the back. Everything in its place.
He turned on the engine. Pressed the button of the remote to open the door of the garage.
He drove, out on the R7, towards Melkbosstrand, then along the M19 east, to where the old Atlantis road turned off. He looked for a place, found one five kilometres further – a gravel road to the left, across a railway line. He turned off, saw a possible target, more or less a hundred metres away. A blue gum tree, thick trunk, the bark peeling off in strips.
He parked, switched off the engine. He felt the prickle of nerves in his neck, the tension in his guts, the bottled-up worry. Why couldn’t he get rid of it?
Because he had missed twice already. That was what was ratcheting up the pressure, and what took away the pleasure. All his perfect planning, but this he could not have foreseen.
Calm down. Solve the problem.
He waited. Looked. Listened. Eventually he got in the back, unhooked the fabric curtain, got the gun, and slid open the side panel.
He aimed for the tree.
So much easier if the target was not alive.
He shot.
Looked through the telescope.
Perfect.
So much easier if the target did not move.
It wasn’t the rifle. The problem lay with him.
14
The urge to do something, to build up momentum, to utilise the time, took Griessel back to Sloet’s apartment. He had no other immediate options, he would have to search the place anyway, thoroughly and meticulously, sooner or later. And there was the undefined question about the place, which since his visit to Gabby Villette, was lurking in the back of his mind.
In the lift, the security woman asked, ‘When will you be finished?’
‘Soon,’ he said.
She didn’t respond.
In the apartment he shut the front door behind him, then pulled at it. It had locked automatically. He leaned back against the door.
There was one problem with his theory that Sloet knew the murderer: the missing spare key for this door. The bunch he held in his hand now only had four; one for the front door, one for her Mini, two for the cupboards in the bedroom. And Nxesi said there were extra cupboard keys in a drawer upstairs, but that was all.
Before he left Villette, he had asked her who Sloet would trust with her spare key. She nodded and thought it over and shook her head. ‘I don’t know … I’ll think about it,’ she promised.
He turned around, studied the security chain. There was absolutely no damage to it.
Had someone stolen the spare keys? Someone she didn’t know? Maybe she sometimes forgot to hook the chain or close the bolt, because she could use the peephole?
Why then a murder without robbery or sexual assault?
The big question: who had motive?
He began his search upstairs, in the second bedroom, already used to the way it felt, the odd mix of vague voyeurism and excitement. Using a knife he fetched from the kitchen, he carefully slit open every cardboard box, unpacked the contents one by one, and then back again.
Textbooks, probably from her student days. African Customary Law, Private Law, Roman Law, Criminal Law, Public Law, Interpretation of Law, Law of Criminal Procedure, Competition Law, Insurance Law, Intellectual Property Law, Internet Law.
So much Law. No wonder the courts and the jails were chock-full. No wonder the police couldn’t keep up.
A stack of coffee-table books about wine and art and interior decorating, a couple of Afrikaans novels by Marita van der Vyver, Etienne van Heerden and André P. Brink, a diverse collection of English paperbacks by, among others, Jodi Picoult, Anne Tyler and John Grisham.
Nineteen DVDs. Most looked like European art films, the sort with subtitles. Two were pornographic, but the covers were tasteful. Five Hot Stories for Her and Urban Friction.
A whole box full of music CDs. Vanilla Ice, Mariah Carey, Nirvana, Paula Abdul, Whitney Houston, Duran Duran, Pearl Jam, Alanis Morissette, Laurika Rauch, Boyz II Men, Nine Inch Nails, Al Jarreau, Koos Kombuis, Madonna, Riku Latti, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead. Six classical music collections with titles such as The Best Classical Album Ever and Chill with Mozart.
Memorabilia. Old programmes and tickets to concerts and plays, postcards, greetings cards of congratulations for birthdays, graduation, promotion. Used plane tickets and brochures for trips to Europe and the USA, cheap jewellery, a chunky old cellphone. Decorative hair combs and grips, two scratched pairs of sunglasses, iPod cables, loose photos of groups of people.
Six photograph albums and a smaller box of letters. He put them to one side. The other boxes were filled with clothes and shoes. Lots of shoes.
He carried the letters and photo albums down to the sitting room, sat down on the couch, lifted the lid of the box of letters. Foreknowledge made him hesitate: he knew he would be crossing a boundary now. Sloet would become
flesh and blood, a person with a life, with emotions and regrets and few secrets. It would rob him of his distance, his objectivity, it would all become that bit more personal. That was where the trouble lay, the root of the evil. Because he knew what came next. This case had been easier from the start. He hadn’t been at the scene of the murder. He hadn’t stood beside her, and seen the terrible fragility of the female body, her expression caught at the moment of death. He hadn’t smelled the blood and perfume and decomposition. He hadn’t lived her last moments with her in his mind, felt her acute fear of the darkness of death, or heard the silent scream they all uttered when they lost that final grip on life.
Doc Barkhuizen said over and over again: ‘Don’t internalise it, Benny.’ Doc knew that was his reason for drinking. Until, at last, about a month ago, Griessel had confessed: ‘I don’t know how, Doc.’
‘Go and talk to a shrink, Benny.’
And he asked, ‘What for, Doc?’ because he already knew where it had begun, he could remember the first time, crystal-clear, although it was fourteen years ago. The sunny Saturday morning, the five-year-old child in the middle of the park at Rylands, her white socks and white sandals, the blue ribbons in her ponytails, the heart-rending beauty of her delicate features. The red and purple bruises of the rape and strangulation, the dried semen, the tender little hand gripping a Wilson’s toffee wrapping like a last treasure.
It was his fourth murder that week, an impossible time. Too few people, too little sleep, too much work. They all suffered from post-traumatic stress, but nobody knew. That morning, he saw her expression at her moment of death and he heard the primitive scream, and he knew, everyone screams when they die, everyone holds on to life terribly tightly, and when someone loosens their fingers, they fall and cry out in terror. Of the end.
Of course he drank before that – controllably, four, five times a week, in the afternoon with the guys. But after that it got out of control. Alcohol was the only thing that could keep all the noises and images out of his head, the all-consuming fear that it could happen to his family too, to Anna and Carla and Fritz.