The door to the operations room was made of thin pressed wood. It was the kind of door that if given a good solid kick, it would splinter and the offending foot would go right through it. Nico opened the door, and Louis pushed past him. The room was deserted. Only the victims’ ghosts were here. Nico watched Louis’s facial expressions change from curiosity to shock, then to what should have been horror but looked more like discomfort as he moved closer to the pictures. He couldn't help but wonder what Louis thought as he examined each of the victims. There was something in the way his eyes seemed to devour the images. It wasn't the reaction he'd expected. But everybody reacted differently to the grisly images on display.
The pictures reminded Nico of his failure that morning. He would be adding another set of photos to the grotesque collage when another body was discovered. He turned around and walked out of the room leaving Louis to stare at the dead women. He, on the other hand, couldn’t face them. He leaned against the wall and waited for Louis to finish his morbid viewing.
A door, two doors down from the operations room, opened.
“Van Staaden, get in here.” Colonel Moses Molwedi, Nico’s boss, stood in the doorway and waited for Nico to enter his office. Some of the constables and administrative staff stopped what they were doing. They always enjoyed it when someone else was in the shit with the Colonel.
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir?” Nico asked, once inside his boss’s office and the door closed behind him. He had no intention of providing entertainment for the masses.
“You can tell me why we haven’t got a certain serial killer in custody yet?”
“I’m working on it, sir.”
“Work faster. Look Van Staaden, I know you like to pull the lone wolf crap, but if you don’t bring me a suspect soon, I’ll put someone else on the case who is a team player. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I want a briefing tomorrow morning, first thing, on what’s happening with the case and why we haven’t got a suspect in custody yet.”
“Yes, sir. Would first thing in the morning be my first thing or yours?”
“What, Captain?”
“Well ... Sir, my first thing is around six-thirty, and yours appears to be closer to nine.”
“Don’t get cute with me, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”
“Be here at nine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get out of my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nico turned and walked out of the room and bumped straight into Louis.
“Where’d you disappear to?” Louis asked.
“Sorry, but I ...” Nico’s sentence was interrupted by Molwedi.
“Who is this and what is he doing here?” he asked, as he poked his head out of his door.
“Sir, this is Louis Gouws. He’s a friend of mine and wanted to see where it all happens.”
“Captain, this isn’t Gold Reef City, and we don’t do tours. If you wanted to be a tour guide, you should have gone into tourism and not the police service. Now kindly get this civilian out of my station.”
“Yes, sir,” Nico waited for his boss to step back inside his office and slam the door. He turned to Louis. “I think that beer would go down very well right now.”
“Shall we go to that pub around the corner from here?”
“Ja, what’s it called?”
“I haven't got a clue. All I know is that they serve nice cold ones.”
“Then lead the way.”
THE PUB AROUND THE corner turned out to be called Mickey's. Louis and Nico crammed themselves in at the bar, next to a couple of bikers. Probably members of the Max Gang, Nico thought. A rougher crowd hung out here. He recognised a few faces: people who'd found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
“What'll it be?” the barman asked. Nico noticed that he had a tattoo of a spider on his neck.
“Two Black Labels,” Louis ordered for them.
He didn't know if it was the atmosphere in the bar, or Louis, or the fact that he'd just let a potential suspect slip through his fingers but Nico was on edge. Something wasn't sitting well with his gut. He watched Louis survey the room. There was something about Louis that he didn't like.
“How did you meet Natalie?” Nico asked, hoping to get to know this man, who'd been a part of Janet’s life since childhood. Maybe getting to know him better would silence his suspicion of him. Perhaps it was jealousy he felt. That had to be it, he thought, he was jealous of Louis. The realisation was not one of his proudest moments. He hated being jealous.
“We met at Clapham. It was the first day of High school. She was this little waif of a thing. She had orphan practically tattooed on her forehead, and some of the other kids picked up on it. Kids being kids, they picked on her, she looked so small and fragile. Janet stepped in, put her arm around her and led her away. Janet was always looking out for her. She was always classy like that.” The warmth in Louis’s voice when he mentioned Janet made Nico bristle. He wondered if anything had ever happened between the two of them.
“And where were you when this was going on?” Nico asked, instead of the question he was burning to ask.
“I wish I could say that I was as noble as Janet. I was one of the kids who sensed weakness and went for the jugular. Luckily she forgave me for being a dick. Nats had a really rough time at the orphanage. Janet convinced me to help mount a rescue operation one night, and after that, the three of us were pretty much inseparable.”
“And you and Janet never went out?” He regretted asking the moment the question left his mouth and dreaded the answer.
“Nah. She knew how Nats felt about me from the word go and would never do anything to hurt her.”
The answer stung. Was Natalie the only reason that they'd never been a couple? Fool! He admonished himself for worrying about something that had never happened. He and Janet were solid. He had no reason to feel jealous but, he still couldn't shake that gut feeling that something was not right. He'd have to keep an eye on Louis Gouws.
9
Sunday, 14 July
The rain pelted against the window. It was strange weather for this time of year. Winters in Pretoria were usually brown and dry but then again, nothing about the last five weeks had been normal. Nico watched the lightning split the sky from the safety of the lounge window in his seventh-floor flat in Weavind Park. Another Sunday night was upon him. He turned his back on the deluge outside and tried to get the storm raging inside under control.
He watched Janet’s rhythmic breathing as she slept curled up on his old couch. His gaze turned to the framed photo hanging on the wall opposite him. It had Police College class of 1989 written in white letters on a blackboard at the feet of the two young men sitting in the front row. Actually, they weren’t men, they were still boys. Boys sent out to do a man’s job. He had been eighteen and had believed he could change things. He had believed he would be able to catch the man who had brutally murdered his mother. Instead, he'd ended up in Unit 19, the riot squad, towards the end of the Apartheid era. The things he'd seen and done still haunted him. No teenager should be given an R1 rifle and told to kill people because of the colour of their skin. He was one of the few in his unit to use the R1 rifle which had been copied from the FN FAL, the Belgian Assault Rifle, by the Apartheid regime after the arms embargo was enforced. The weight of it depended on how far he had to carry it: either fucking heavy or Oh Shit! I'm out of ammo.
The thought of his mother and his time in the townships brought the unpleasant memories from his childhood back like a tidal wave. He was sixteen and in standard eight or what was now referred to as the tenth grade. The new school system still confused him. He had been in detention for smoking behind the school hall and as a result got home later than usual. When he arrived home, he opened the garage to put his bicycle inside, next to his mother’s car. He switched on the garage light. Her bare feet dangled in front of his face. A dining roo
m chair stood next to her car in the corner of the garage. The man who'd raped and murdered her had hanged her from the rafter closest to the garage door. Her torn dress only just covered her abused body, thanks to a thin strap that clung to her shoulder and refused to drop.
He froze and couldn’t comprehend what was happening. He screamed. The next thing he knew a policeman stood over him and asked if he was all right. Of course, he wasn’t all right. His mother was dead. The police left her body hanging from the rafter while they took photographs of her and poked around inside their home. The policeman who asked him if he was okay dragged him to a police car and told him to wait there. He fell asleep in that hot, stinking police car and woke up, an hour later, thinking he’d had the worst nightmare of his life only to find out that it hadn’t been a dream at all. He woke up just in time to watch them take her body down.
They drove him to the Silverton Police station where they asked him questions about his mother and her friends. They asked him if she had a boyfriend or if she ever had any men over. He couldn’t remember any men. There hadn’t been a man in his mother’s life since his father died. Her neck had broken when the rapist removed the chair she had been standing on. Having that as the final image of his mother in his mind had scarred him far worse than anything he'd seen and done during his time in Unit 19.
Janet let out a little grunt in her sleep and kindly brought him back to the present. His mother’s death was something he tried not to dwell on. He never talked about it and had not told Janet about it. The police had never found her rapist and executioner. He decided, that day in the police car, that he would put murderers and rapists behind bars for as long as possible. But, since then, he’d learnt that things didn’t always work out that way. It was a losing battle. The criminals were winning the war on crime.
He found himself in the picture and didn’t recognise himself in the boy sitting in the third row. He didn’t look like that eighteen-year-old, and he didn’t remember who that young boy was anymore. So much had happened in the last twenty or so years. The boy in the picture was innocent. He, on the other hand, had seen too much death and had blood on his hands.
Janet let out another grunt, rolled over on to her back and almost fell off the couch in the process. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, stretched and smothered a yawn. A smile crept across his face as he watched her.
“How long was I out?” she asked through another yawn.
“A while.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I enjoyed watching you sleep. I especially enjoyed the orchestra.”
“Huh? What orchestra?”
“Who knew that such a loud noise could come out of such a small body?”
“You lie! I don’t snore.” She picked up one of the brown cushions her head had been snuggled into just moments before and flung it at him. It missed its target, bounced off the window and landed at his feet. He picked it up and threw it at her. She managed to catch it millimetres from the tip of her nose.
“Good reflexes. Too bad about that throwing arm,” Nico said, with mock surprise in his voice.
“What can I say? When you’re good, you’re good, and as for the arm ... well ... who needs that when you look like me?” A smile beamed across her face and crinkled the lines left by the rough fabric of the cushions. She stifled another yawn. The joy Janet gave him was only a temporary escape from his pain and guilt. He turned around and started watching the storm again. He felt helpless. The knowledge that another woman would die tonight made him want to smash the window in front of him. But the next time he wouldn’t fail. He made a solemn promise to himself the bastard would pay for each and every one of the lives he had taken.
He felt Janet come up behind him and wrap her arms around his ample stomach.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, propping her chin on his shoulder.
“Ja! I’m fine,” he said staring out of the window.
“No, you’re not.” She turned him around so that he faced her. “Talk to me.”
“Honestly. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to enjoy being with you,” he said and kissed her first on her lips, then the tip of her nose which the cushion had so narrowly missed. He kissed her eyelids and worked his way back to her mouth. He wanted to forget the job and all the shit that went with it. He wanted to be inside her. He needed her to distract him from the ghosts of the dead women he'd failed to protect. But even as his lips were working their way along her face, his mind kept turning to a faceless woman floating in a bathtub.
TONIGHT WAS THE NIGHT. He had to do it. He had to end it tonight.
His feet were heavy and felt as though they were dragging on the floor as he walked to her door. Her mongrel dog nuzzled his crotch in greeting. The dog was the only thing that was happy to see him whenever he came here. He took the keys to the front door out of his pocket with shaky hands. Her laughter bounced around inside his head.
“You’re pathetic!” Her laughter punctuated every word. “Look at you, shaking in your boots like the chicken shit you are.”
He cupped his hands over his ears, trying to shut her out. He had tried to get her out of his head so many times and in so many ways, but it never worked. The only way he could get her voice out of his head was to shut her up permanently.
He remembered finding Natalie lying on the bathroom floor. Her blood spread around her on the white tiles like red silk. He could still see her looking at him with her strange hazel and gold eyes. There had been so much pain in them. That fucking Bitch had known what it would do to Natalie, and she had done it just to hurt him. The front door opened.
“What are you doing standing outside looking like a lost fart?” his mother asked him.
“I just got here, Ma,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse, the house keys rattling in his shaking hands. He could smell the same old reek of whisky on her breath. But why wouldn’t he? It had been the same ever since he was a small boy.
Every Sunday she would drink herself into a stupor, beat him and lock him in the bathroom. While he lay on the cold floor, she thumped on the piano until she was bored. She would finish the bottle of whisky or whatever alcohol she could get her claws on and would open the bathroom door. It was at this point that the real horror would start.
It only became a horror when he was old enough to know that it was wrong. When he had been a boy, it had been the only way that his mother had shown him that she loved him. It had been a welcome change to being beaten, and he'd always thought that it was her way of saying she was sorry for what she'd done.
“How’s that pathetic little whore of yours?” His mother’s voice jolted him out of his memory.
“She’s not a whore, Ma.”
“Yes, she is. You’re not married. You are living in sin. No decent woman would live with a man who isn’t her husband.”
“Ma, stop it. I’m the only man she has ever been with and just because a pastor hasn’t married us, doesn’t mean she isn’t my wife in every other sense of the word. She’s the only woman I want.”
“But she isn’t the only woman you’ve had now, is she?”
“Stop it, Ma.”
“Why? Does the memory turn you on? You pathetic excuse for a man. You probably don’t satisfy that whore of yours, either.”
Her laughter floated all around him. The room started to turn, slowly. He tried to block out her voice, but it just kept coming at him.
“You should have been there when I told that pathetic little slut of yours that she wasn’t the only woman you’d had ... that when you were still in high school, and she wouldn’t put out, you would come home after being with her, all hot under the collar, and I would be here ... waiting. And let’s not forget about little Janet. You two have been going at it behind her scrawny little back for years.”
He lost it. All he could see was Natalie lying in her own blood, accusing him.
His fist flew out and hit her. Her head hit the coffee table with a thunk. He kick
ed her the way she had kicked him for so many years. She tried to get up, but he struck a blow to the back of her head sending her sprawling to the floor at his feet once again.
Taking the piano wire out of his pocket, he pulled it tight between his hands. A groan escaped from her split and bloodied lips. He looked down at his mother curled up in pain at his feet and kicked her again. His foot connected with her stomach. She gasped for breath. In her struggle to breathe she started throwing up. The bottle of whisky she had finished moments before he arrived rebelled against the beating. With every breath she tried to take, fresh bile and blood appeared in her mouth.
“You're the Bathroom Strangler, aren't you?” Droplets of blood sprayed out of her mouth as she asked the inevitable question. Fear rising in the sound of her voice. The fear she felt was intoxicating for him. It pushed him onwards.
“Please,” she begged. “Don't. I'm your mother. I love you.” The words came between blood-spattered gasps for air.
“No Ma, you don't love me. You never have. The only thing you know how to do is hate. You've taught me to hate you, and now you're going to die the way you deserve.”
He smiled as he watched her struggle to get on to her hands and knees. Being on her hands and knees made his task easier: it meant he didn’t have to move her overweight body into position. She did all the work for him. That’s what mothers are for he reflected. He straddled her as though he were riding a horse. The garrotte was already pulled tightly between his fists. He crossed his wrists, looped it over her head and under her chin and pulled her up into a kneeling position between his legs.
She tried to pull the wire away from her throat, but her fingers couldn’t get a grip on it. Pleading and incoherent words escaped from her lips while she struggled against him.
“What’s the matter, Ma? I thought you liked being on your knees in front of me,” he said as he jerked the wire through her throat. Blood gurgled out of the slit in her neck as the wire severed her artery. He was almost disappointed when she stopped struggling, and her body went limp. It took about fourteen seconds for her to die.
Requiem in E Sharp Page 9