Requiem in E Sharp

by Joan De La Haye

  “You always were a tough old bird,” he said between breaths. He slipped the wire out of the gash in her throat. Blood ran down the front of her dress turning the pink floral pattern on her dress red.

  AT HOME, AFTER HIS Sunday night visit to his mother, he went straight to the kitchen. He took his uniform out of his backpack and shoved it into the washing machine. He watched the round window in front of the machine fill with water. He heard Natalie’s feet padding down the passage towards him and walked out of the kitchen, turned off the light and intercepted her at the door. She was wearing a white nightshirt. Her hair hung loosely over her shoulders and was slightly tousled from lying in bed waiting for him.

  “Why do you do that?” she asked him.

  “Do what?”

  “Change out of your uniform after you’ve been to your mother’s. Why do you have clean clothes on before you get home?” she said, counting the questions off on her hand. “Why don’t you let me wash your uniform with the rest of your clothes and finally, why do you shove it into the machine the moment you get home?”

  “Slow down. Too many questions and it’s too late in the evening to be worrying about that kind of shit. I need a shower.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to wash all that filth off me after being at my mother’s. Now, go to bed. I’ll see you just now.”

  “But ...” Louis put up his hand to silence her and walked past her into the bathroom. Closing the door behind him, he turned on the shower taps. The hot water pounded against his body. He couldn’t believe it. He was finally free of the woman he'd called mother. He could start afresh with Natalie. He could make her happy. He knew he could, especially now that the evil bitch was out of the way. Nothing stood in his way. Except for one little thing; that bloody woman had seen to that.

  The cat was scratching and mewing outside the shower. She was disturbing his moment of reflection. He stepped out of the shower, tripped over the cat and bashed his shin on the toilet bowl.

  “Fucking cat,” he growled and kicked it, sending her reeling across the tiles. She smacked headfirst into the closed bathroom door. He gripped the cat by the scruff of her neck opened the bathroom door, threw her out and slammed the door behind her. He hated cats. Dogs he could handle, but cats were disgusting creatures. The memory of drowning the next door neighbour’s kitty in the pool put a smile on his face.

  The fucking thing had scratched him. After that it had all happened quickly and as though he was watching from a distance. Before he knew what he was doing the cat was under water, struggling for its pathetic life, but he'd had the power over it. He was stronger. After a while, he didn't feel its claws scratching at him. He just held it down and kept holding it down. He didn't know when it stopped fighting for its life, but it did. He buried it at the bottom of the garden as a reminder of his own strength.

  He was still smiling as he pulled a clean, green towel off the rack and dried himself. It was a pleasure rubbing himself, hard, with the towel. It made his skin tingle. Afterwards, he felt as though he had scrubbed all the blood and dirt away.

  He opened the bathroom door and walked out wearing the towel wrapped around his waist. Natalie stirred in the bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe and watched her lying in bed reading.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, looking up from her book.

  “You’re full of questions tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Well, call me curious if you like.”

  “Okay, curious. So ... would you like to get married?”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said ... would you like to marry me?”

  “Marry you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you kidding? Is this some sick joke?”

  “You know what? Fuck you, then. That’ll teach me to ask the woman I love to marry me. What was I thinking?” He grabbed a pillow off the bed. His movement towards the bed was fast and made her flinch.

  “I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. The thought of being in the same bed as you makes me want to throw up,” he said and skulked out of the room

  “Louis, wait,” she said, struggling to get out of the bed.

  He slammed the door behind him. Natalie managed to untangle her feet from the duvet and stumbled off the bed towards the door. She opened it and followed him into the lounge where Louis was throwing the pillow on one end of the couch and pounding it with his fist.

  “What’s really going on?” she asked him, staring at his clenched fists.

  “It’s something my mother said tonight.”

  “What did that evil witch say that would prompt a marriage proposal?”

  “She called you a whore.”

  “I see.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “So you want to marry a whore, is that it?”

  “No! That’s not it, you stupid bloody woman.” He watched the tears running down her face and enjoyed the same sense of power he'd felt a short while ago, slitting his mother’s throat. “I wanted to prove her wrong and make an honest woman out of you.”

  “I am an honest woman. I don’t need some wedding ring on my finger to prove it.” She sniffed between her words. The sniffs became sobs. “And who is that bitch to say what makes an honest woman. She sure as hell isn’t one.”

  “Well, she isn’t the problem. The fact is that you don’t love me enough to marry me.”

  “I do love you, and I’ve proved that. Remember? I wanted to die when I found out what she did to you. But as long as she’s in our lives, it’ll be impossible for us to get married. Living together has been hard enough with all her interfering. I don’t want our kids to be exposed to that woman.”

  “She’s not a problem anymore.”

  “The only way she won’t be a problem is if she’s six feet under and pushing up daisies.”

  He crooked his left-hand forefinger over his mouth to cover his smile.

  “Just trust me when I say she’s out of our lives for good,” he said as he walked across the room towards her. “Okay?”

  “What did you do to get her out of our lives? We’ve tried before, and it’s never worked. Why now?”

  “Just trust me. She’s out of our lives. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”

  She nodded her head, tears running down her cheeks. He cupped her face in his hands and used his thumbs to wipe away her tears.

  “So, can we please just get married now?” he asked.

  “There’s another problem,” she said pushing him away.

  “What other problem could there possibly be?”

  “How can I ever trust you after ... you and Janet ...” she turned away from him. “Oh god, I can’t even say it.”

  “What did that fucking-interfering-bitch-of-a-friend say happened between us?” Grabbing her by the shoulders, he flung her around to face him. This revelation threw him, and he knew he had to make sure that Janet couldn’t fuck up any of his plans.

  “Janet didn’t say anything. Your mother took great pleasure in telling me everything.”

  “She lied, baby. I promise nothing happened between Janet and me.” He tipped up her chin using his index finger, forcing her to look at him. “Do you believe me?”

  She nodded her head but didn’t meet his eyes.

  “So marry me. Don’t let my mother screw this up for us with her lies.”

  “Okay, I’ll marry you,” she croaked while nodding her head and sobbing.

  10

  Tuesday, 16 July

  Nico was sitting at his desk in his fishbowl on Tuesday morning when his phone rang. He hated his phone. Whenever it rang, it meant there was bad news. The two Lieutenant Colonels, one sitting underneath the window facing the outside world and the other opposite Nico, watched him eyeball his phone. He decided to answer it after eight rings. Irritating the other two officers was an added bonus.

  Another body had been found in Weavind Park just a few streets down from the block of flats where he lived. He took down the address from the con
stable on the other end of the phone. Laurel and Hardy were still watching him when he put down the handset.

  “Don’t you guys have your own murder cases?” Nico asked as he tore the address off the pad.

  “Hey, watch your step Van Staaden. One of these days that attitude of yours is going to get you suspended,” Laurel said. His policeman’s moustache bristled below a beak of a nose.

  “Well, if I do get suspended I won't have to see your ugly face every day,” Nico retorted. Hardy, who sat opposite Nico, gave him a once-over scan with his beady hazel eyes which were hidden behind chubby cheeks, grunted, and then turned his gaze back to the paperwork on his desk.

  Nico walked out of the charge office and took the same Nissan Almera he had used for the last crime scene. Luckily he had remembered to empty out the Valpré bottle; otherwise, the car would have reeked of urine. He turned on the siren and flashing blue light which looked like an orphan disco light sitting on his dashboard. The siren blared all the way through the centre of Pretoria to the eastern suburbs. He loved that siren. Cars always moved out of his way, and peak-hour traffic ceased to be a problem whenever he let the siren sing. The victim’s house was the second house from the corner of Hartley and De Bruyn Street, on the way to the National Prosecuting Authority offices.

  The front garden looked unkempt and was dominated by an old oak tree. Weeds had strangled what was left of the lawn and where there weren’t weeds, there was mud and sand. The walls of the house, once white, were now grey and splattered with dry mud. Deep cracks webbed the plaster, and the front door hadn’t been varnished in years.

  “Well, this looks about right for our boy,” Nico mumbled to himself, as he got out of the car and walked across the road. A mangy dog, which could only be called a Pavement Special, was barking and jumping against the fence trying to defend its territory against the police. Nico watched the dog’s antics with mild amusement. The diversion developed into a question itching in the back of his mind. How did the killer get past the dog?

  It took a few minutes for the police to get the dog under control and on its way to the SPCA. He hoped they found it a new home. The usual crowd of inquisitive neighbours started gathering around the property. Nico made his way through the crowd, and a sergeant with short, curly red hair opened the gate for him. Pete was talking to a young woman in a pink maid’s uniform. Nico made his way towards them. Dr Papenfuss introduced the woman as Maria. She’d found the body when she went into the bathroom to clean it. She cleaned once a week, and the only thing Maria had to say about her employer was that she was a vicious old drunk who lived like a pig and wouldn't let her put anything away. The maid had ranted on for what seemed like an age.

  Nico and Pete waited for Thabiso to finish taking pictures of the house, its surrounding area and photos of the crowd. At the front door, before going in, they put on the usual rubber gloves and protective shoe covers. As they walked in through the front door, they saw something that they hadn’t seen at any of the other crime scenes.

  A Görse & Kalmann piano dominated the dark, narrow passage leading into the rest of the house. The piano set off little alarm bells in Nico’s head. Past experience had taught Nico to listen to those bells. He followed his instinct and opened the piano lid exposing the black and white keys. The white keys were starting to turn yellow from age. He ran his fingers along the notes. One of them didn’t work. He pressed the black key down a few more times, but no sound escaped from the piano. Pete came close to the piano.

  “That’s E sharp,” he said. “Or F natural if you want to get technical.”

  “Are you sure?” Nico asked, with a raised eyebrow and a racing heart.

  “Yes,” Pete said. “I’ve played a bit of piano in my time, and that's the right note.”

  “I wonder,” Nico mumbled. He picked up the black-and-white framed picture on top of the piano. The man in the picture looked familiar. He handed Pete the picture and opened the top panel to expose the inner mechanics. There were what looked like baby’s bootie-shaped pieces of wood attached to thin wires. The wires glinted in the darkness. He picked up his torch, switched it on and shone the light into the dark cavern, illuminating the wires. Nico pushed down a few other keys and watched the bootie-shapes tapping against the wires, causing notes to emanate from the piano. He tapped the E sharp key. Nothing happened: the wood didn’t move. He shone the beam of the torch in the place where he guessed the E sharp wire would be. He saw the reason why no sound escaped. The wire was missing.

  “So, who was this woman?” Nico asked Pete, while repeatedly pushing the E sharp key down.

  “Marietta Gouws, fifty-five-years-old, divorced with one child ... a son called Louis.” He read from his well-used notebook.

  “Did you say Louis Gouws?”

  “Ja, why?”

  “Does he work for Rent-a-cop?”

  “Yes. How’d you know that?”

  “I know him. He's an old friend of Janet's.”

  “Well, that’s interesting. He was seen leaving here on Sunday night.”

  “So Louis was seen leaving here last night?” Nico kept tapping the dead note.

  “Yes, that’s what they tell me.”

  “That’s quite interesting, wouldn’t you say? Mother and son ... son has a career in security. The rent-a-cop uniform looks remarkably like a standard police uniform, and I wonder how much he knows about forensics and police procedure.”

  “That’s a fascinating train of thought – are you sure it’s one you want to pursue?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, for one thing, this guy’s your buddy.”

  “He's not my buddy. I haven’t known him for very long: I've only had a couple of beers with the guy.”

  “Okay, but your girlfriend has known him for a while. How will she feel if you go after her friend in a murder investigation?”

  “Firstly, I go where the evidence leads me, she knows that and secondly, Janet doesn’t like the guy. She thinks he’s an arsehole.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  “I'm not wrong. There's something about this guy. You don't normally tell me to ignore the bells going off in my head or second guess my gut instinct.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. If we’ve found our guy, we need more than your gut instinct and circumstantial evidence to put him away. ”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “All I’m saying is that we should be careful. Keep an eye on him, but don’t let him know that we’re watching him. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good and now that that’s settled, I believe we still have the rest of the crime scene to walk. Captain, if you’re finished playing the piano?”

  “Hmm ...” Nico grunted, pulled himself away from the piano and tried to push all thoughts out of his mind so that he could concentrate on the job at hand. He took another glance at the picture on the piano. The man was obviously Louis’s father. The resemblance between father and son was uncanny. He focused on what he had to do. He would deal with telling Louis about his mother’s death first and the questions tugging at his gut, later.

  In the lounge, there was a puddle of blood on the carpet and on the coffee table. Thabiso took photos from all corners of the room and from 90-degree angles. He also took pictures from directly above each piece of potential evidence as well as all the blood splatter. Nico took a sweeping glance at the rooms in the house. The thing that struck Nico the most was that there were no pictures of her son. He filed this fact along with everything else that was bugging him about this case.

  As with all the other scenes, the blood trail led from the room where she was killed to the bathroom. Marietta Gouws was lying in the bathtub, much the same as the other victims before her. Deep cuts on her fingertips, from when she had tried to grip the wire to pull it away from her throat, had practically sliced off her fingerprints. The flashes from Thabiso’s camera were fraying his nerve endings. Every time he tried to seize hold of an
elusive thought, the camera flash would go off, and he would lose his train of thought.

  He'd seen enough. He wanted to be able to go to the other victims’ family members, tell them that the man who had killed their mothers was behind bars and would never be able to hurt anybody else ever again. He also wanted to see how Louis would react to the news of his mother’s death. Perhaps he was the murdering bastard he would end up putting away.

  But first, he had something else to take care of and hopefully, by the end of the night, he would have the answers he needed.

  NICO SAT IN HIS CAR, parked a few houses down from Marietta Gouws’ home. He'd parked under the shade of a big stinkwood tree after everybody left the scene, which took several hours to process. It was now late in the day, and he hoped that his suspect was desperate enough to show up to collect his trophy.

  Something else that bugged Nico about this was why did the killer come back for the trophy. Why didn’t he take it when he killed her? Did he get an extra thrill going there after the police had been on the scene? There were too many things that didn’t make sense. The piano in Marietta Gouws’s house with a missing wire was just another part of the puzzle he didn’t like, and he wasn't sure how he felt about the direction in which it was pointing. If Louis was the killer, it could put a strain on his relationship with Janet. What if Janet didn't believe him? What if she decided to believe in Louis’s innocence, even in the face of irrefutable evidence? But he was jumping the gun. He didn't even know for sure that Louis was guilty. He would have to cross that bridge with Janet when they got there.

  Nico had been sitting in the car for almost two hours. His arse was starting to go numb, he needed to relieve himself and, worst of all, he was bored. He was also beginning to think he’d made a right royal fuck-up and the killer wasn’t going to show. Another Radio Jacaranda DJ was being obnoxious and irritating him. The radio was, unfortunately, his only company. This time around he had come prepared for a long wait. He had an empty one-and-a-half litre Valpré bottle, snacks and coffee in a thermos flask. The coffee had been an inspired idea. He took a swig: it was black and sweet. When he had been a toddler, and at nursery school, the woman who ran the nursery school had left their chocolate milk out in the sun. It had gone sour, and she forced him to drink it anyway. The memory of having to drink it resurrected a horrible taste in his mouth. His mother had tried to get him to drink milk after that, but he’d clamped his mouth shut and refused to drink it. She eventually gave up. He had always been stubborn. It was this quality that made him a good detective.