by Deon Meyer
‘Fuck, bru’ . . .’
‘You know it. Anyway, she goes to the doctor. Doctor says, you have to be honest with me, do you have contact with dead people. You know, corpses.’
‘Fuck!’
‘I’m telling you. Girl says, absolutely not, Doctor. He asks her, what contact have you had? She thought carefully, and she tells him about the handsome dude. He says, only way you get those sores, or can infect other people with them is when you have contact with corpses. As in kiss them . . .’
‘Fuckit, bru’.’
‘You know it, man. The doctor says to her, he will have to call the police. She says okay. Police come and they ask her, is she willing to go on a date with the dude again, so they can catch him. She says fine, and this time she lets the dude take her to his house, with the police following. When they walk in, it’s SWAT team everywhere, and they search the place and they find three corpses, bru’, with the tags still around the toes . . .’
‘Can you fucking believe it?’
‘Seems the dude works at the mortuary . . .’
‘Kak,’ said Benny Griessel. In his befuddled state it came out louder than he intended.
‘What?’ asked the storyteller.
‘It’s a kak story,’ said Griessel. His tongue dragged on the ‘s’.
‘How would you know?’
‘I’m a policeman,’ he said, struggling with the words.
‘You’re fucking drunk,’ said the other suit-and-tie.
‘Not drunk enough. But it’s a shit story anyway.’
Then his cellphone began ringing. Benny took it out, looked at the screen. Vaughn Cupido. He put the phone back in his pocket.
‘Why is it a shit story?’ asked the guy who told it.
‘Article 25 of the Criminal Prosh . . . Procedure . . .’ He battled to form the words, said them slowly and methodically: ‘Criminal. Procedure. Act. And we will never use a Haas . . . a civilish . . . civ.il.ian . . .’
‘Pal, you’re paralytic.’
‘Where’s your police badge?’
Griessel reached into his pocket, took out his wallet. It took a while. The two suits-and-ties watched him scornfully. He fumbled through the wallet, took out his SAPS identity card, smacked it down on the table.
They looked at it, then at him.
‘No wonder our crime rate is the highest in the fucking world,’ said the storyteller.
‘Fuck you,’ said Benny Griessel. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Fuck you, dronkgat. If you weren’t a policeman I would moer you.’
‘You couldn’t even put a dent in a drol,’ said Griessel and rose to his feet unsteadily. He staggered, precariously, right up to the suit-and-tie.
The man hit him against the cheek with his fist. Griessel fell.
The storyteller said to his friend, ‘You’re my witness, he shoved me first.’
7
Transcript of interview: Advocate Susan Peires with Mr Francois du Toit
Wednesday, 24 December; 1604 Huguenot Chambers, 40 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
FdT: I . . . Maybe I should . . . Hell, I didn’t see it coming. Two years ago I was still working overseas, I never dreamed . . . People do such stupid things and then you think, there’s no other choice. Stress is a devil . . . and panic. It was more panic, I think, but when you’re in it, and you don’t know what to do, and a guy approaches you . . .
This story . . . How can I . . . ? It didn’t start yesterday, not even last year. This story . . . I thought, now, the other day, when the papers were full of Richter’s disappearance, then I thought, this story has been a long time coming. From my granddad’s day already, my oupa. He was Jean du Toit, the Western Province scrum-half. I don’t know if you . . . In 1949 and 1950 he . . . Never mind. There’s so many . . . Klein Zegen – it’s old Afrikaans for ‘Small Blessing’ – Klein Zegen has been in our family for seven generations. Before us it was the Vissers. The farm is over three hundred and thirty years old; it was established in 1682. Three hundred and thirty years: so much history and hard times and hard labour . . . Disease, pestilence . . . The vine blight of the 1890s; my great grandfather’s father had to pull them all out – every vine, all ninety-six hectares . . . Last year I was thinking, the farm has a kind of curse on it, if you look at the history . . .
Sorry, just give me a chance. In the end it’s all relevant . . .
SP: Take your time . . .
FdT: I’m really sorry. It’s Christmas, I’m sure you would rather . . . you know, be with your family . . .
SP: I assure you, it’s not a problem. Take your time; tell me everything that you think may be useful.
FdT: I just want you to understand . . . I suppose I’m looking for mitigating circumstances. Is that the right term?
SP: It is.
FdT: I want . . . I mean, the story played out in a certain context . . . I . . . It’s all that I have. My story. And the court – I mean the legal process – it works on facts. This one did this, and that one did that, and that is the court’s final judgement. I don’t think the law listens to stories. But our stories are important. Our stories define us. We are the stories and the product of our stories.
Forgive me . . . I know I’m not making sense. I’m the reader in the family. Me and my grandma, Ouma Hettie. And my mother . . . I have a connection with stories, I think it has . . . if you read so much, from when you’re small, then you want your life to be like a storybook, with a certain structure of struggle and history, from chaos to order – an ending that makes sense of it all. That’s why I talk about the context of the story, because the context gives the final insight. Part of my context is . . . that thing about the sins of the fathers . . . and the firstborn son; it’s kind of Biblical, the whole . . .
There are two things you have to understand. The first is the tradition of the firstborn son who inherits the farm. That’s probably how most of the farms in this country operate. It’s been passed down for seven generations of the Du Toit’s, all the way back to 1776. It’s just the way it is. My great-great-great-grandfather had six daughters before there was a son, he was in his forties before he could stop making children. It’s a tradition with implications, but what can you do?
I was the second-born son . . .
My granddad, Oupa Jean had only one son – my father, Guillaume . . . Wait, maybe I should . . . Have you . . . Can I have that pen and a sheet of paper?
SP: Of course.
FdT: I want to draw a family tree . . . Not of all the ancestors. Just . . . six, but then you might be able to see . . . This is Oupa Jean and Ouma Hettie . . . Then my father Guillaume, and my mother Helena . . . and my brother Paul . . . and me . . . Here. Now you can see . . .
SP: Thank you . . .
FdT: My grandpa Jean, that’s where it began. Oupa Jean was an only son. He inherited the farm. And he had it for a long time . . . He had to drink himself to death before my father could farm it, and then . . . This is the second thing you must understand, the influence of Oupa Jean. Genetically and psychologically and . . . let’s say, financially. I . . . you can’t look at this whole . . . you can’t listen to my story without starting with my Oupa Jean. He casts a long shadow. As far as Ernst Richter.
So I’d better start with Oupa Jean.
8
Vaughn Cupido did not like the state mortuary in Durham Street, Salt River. It was an unprepossessing place from the outside: a collection of flat brown-brick, red-roofed buildings behind the weathered fence of concrete pillars. Inside it was even more spartan and depressing: the narrow corridors, the smells, the memories of macabre post-mortems he’d had to attend. But above all he had an aversion to the identification of the dead – a terrible moment of huge discomfort and distressing emotion for the next of kin.
The identification room was small and bare – only a rudimentary bench aga
inst the wall and a dusty blue curtain in front of the viewing mirror. And now he had to share this narrow space with Adjutant Jamie Keyter of Table View station, and Mrs Bernadette Richter, mother of the missing Ernst.
He disliked Keyter.
Mrs Richter was in her sixties. She dyed her hair dark brown and wore a small pair of silver-rimmed glasses. She was the same height as Cupido and very tense. Her face was made for cheerfulness, with cheekbones like little round mosbolletjie buns, and an unusually long nose. It didn’t carry the solemnity of this moment well.
The scent of her perfume was overpowering in the small room.
‘They will pull back the curtain and you will see the body,’ said Jamie Keyter to her.
She nodded. Cupido could see her trembling.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Keyter.
Jissis, thought Cupido, what kind of bedside manner was this? ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘Have you been informed that you don’t have to do this?’
‘No.’
He suppressed the urge to give Keyter a very dirty look. He said: ‘If there is someone else . . . a family member, someone who works with him . . .’
‘I am his mother.’
‘I understand, ma’am, but we know how difficult it is. If you—’
‘No. I am all he has. Let me do it.’
‘You can take as much time as you like.’
She nodded.
‘Is there someone who can support you . . . ?’
‘Yes. My friends are here outside.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘I’m ready.’
Keyter knocked impatiently on the window. The curtain moved aside slowly.
Mrs Richter stood dead still. All three of them stared at the body. Cupido saw the body had not been prepared yet. Grains of sand were still stuck to the face.
It was deathly quiet in the room. From outside, somewhere in the corridor, the sound of a trolley being pushed along, one crooked wheel making an annoying squeak.
She stood motionless for so long that Cupido thought the identification wasn’t going to be positive.
‘It’s Ernst.’ Nearly inaudible. And then her legs gave way and he helped to steady her, one hand on her arm, one behind her back.
She only began to weep as they walked out into the parking lot, flanked by both her friends. At a white Honda Jazz they had to stop and wait uneasily while the women comforted her in a joint embrace. When she had calmed down, Cupido said he would like to talk to her.
‘Just not today,’ and she began to weep again, uncontrollably now. The friends looked at Vaughn reproachfully, as if he had brought all this upon her.
He asked for her contact numbers and address. She sobbed them out. He made notes on his cellphone.
It was after half past seven in the evening when the Honda drove out of the gates of the mortuary. The sun had not yet set.
‘Are you sour because we are taking over the case, or are you always so unsympathetic with relatives of the victim?’ Cupido asked Jamie Keyter.
‘What did I do?’ the reply came, full of innocent surprise.
‘I’m genuinely not the most tactful cop in the Service, but fokkit, Jamie, it’s a painful situation when a mother comes to identify her child, even if he is an adult. Any fool can work that one out. It takes a little finesse. You can mos see the woman was stressed, but it’s just “Are you ready?” What kind of bedside manner is that?’
‘That’s why I asked her if she was okay.’
‘There’s ways and there’s ways, Jamie, fuck knows . . . Did you bring the docket?’
‘There isn’t a docket yet, I haven’t had time for anything, because nobody knows whose case it is and I first had to identify the victim . . .’ Cursing under his breath.
‘It’s our case now. So I expect you to kick-start the docket. I want your Part A tonight, and I want a comprehensive SAPS 5 by tomorrow morning . . .’
‘I just questioned the one guy, the one who found the body . . .’
‘Then go and put that in your Part A, Jamie, or do you want us to do it all over from the beginning . . .’
Cupido’s cellphone rang. He took it out, saw that it was Benny calling and the relief washed over him.
‘Benna!’
‘No, Vaughn, this is Arrie September from Cape Town Central.’ An old colleague, now commander of the SAPS station that used to be known as Caledon Square. ‘I’m phoning from Benny’s phone, that’s where I got your cellphone number.’
‘Where’s Benny?’
‘I’ve got him here in the cells, they brought him in on a drunk and disorderly, and I don’t want to phone his CO; you know what trouble that would create.’
‘Jissis, Arrie, thanks a lot. Just keep him there, but don’t book him, please. He’s had a very bad day. I’m on my way, give me ten.’
‘Apparently he assaulted a guy, Vaughn.’
‘Assault? Benny?’
‘I’ll find out the details, but you had better come.’ September rang off.
Cupido turned around to Keyter, and could see that the adjutant was listening intently.
On the way to Buitenkant Street Cupido phoned Major Mbali Kaleni. He heard the TV in the background when he answered. Probably at home already, with cauliflower boiling on the stove.
He told her he had a positive identification for Ernst Richter, he was waiting for the files from Table View and Stellenbosch, ‘And I’ve just spoken to Benny, he’s having cellphone issues. We’re meeting in town in fifteen minutes.’
‘Thank you, Captain. Have you called Cloete?’
‘It’s the next thing on my list.’ Which was true, because though the name Ernst Richter rang a bell, he wasn’t exactly sure who he was. He didn’t want Kaleni to know that.
Why had she made him JOC leader?
He knew Kaleni. That Zulu was clever. Slow and anal, by-the-book, painfully irritating and conservative, but clever. She was a schemer. Scheming all the time. What was her scheme now, with him?
Make Vaughn JOC leader, let him prove how useless he was? Show him why she had got the senior job and not him?
Fuck that, my china. He would show her.
He called Captain Cloete’s number as he drove.
‘Vaughn?’ answered the media liaison officer, in his calm, patient voice, even though he must know that a call at this time in the evening spelled trouble.
‘John, you know about Ernst Richter who went missing a few weeks ago?’
‘Yes,’ with a certain resignation.
‘He has just been ID-ed as the ou that Table View dug out of the sand this afternoon.’
Long silence.
‘John, are you there?’
‘I was just saying a quick prayer.’
‘That bad?’
‘I take it he didn’t die of natural causes?’
‘Definitely foul play, but we have to tread lightly, John. The docket is still in limbo. We only got the case a few hours ago, and I’m in transit.’
‘Just a second . . . Okay, give me what you have.’
‘Body of a man recovered from the dunes north of Blouberg this afternoon was positively identified as that of Ernst Richter, who went missing, and then you must put in the correct date. Directorate of Priority Crimes’ Serious and Violent Crimes Group are investigating, more info as soon as blah, blah, blah. That’s genuinely all that I have.’
The line went quiet while Cloete made notes. Then he asked: ‘Who is JOC leader?’
‘That would be me.’
‘Vaughn, that’s not enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This thing is going to explode, Vaughn. It’s the biggest story since Pistorius. And Dewani. The media are going to go crazy. I will have to feed them something.’
Cupido’s heart sank. ‘When R
ichter went missing, Uncle Frankie Fillander and I were on the Somerset West hijackings, so I missed all the hype. Can you get me the clippings?’
It took a second before Cloete realised: ‘You don’t know who Richter is.’
‘Like I said, I haven’t even seen the missing person report. I’ve been on this case for two hours. I know Richter was notorious for something on the Internet. Porn . . . ?’
‘If only it was pornography. He’s the guy from Alibi . . . Listen, the quickest and the easiest is if I send you a bunch of links. Before I issue the statement. Because once the cat is out of the bag, it’s going to be chaos. For me and for you.’
Brigadier Arrie September unlocked the cell for Cupido and they went in. Benny Griessel lay on his back, mouth agape, eyes shut. He was snoring, long and loud.
‘Ai, fok, Benna,’ said Cupido.
‘We’ll have to get him out of here, Vaughn,’ said September. ‘Before I tjaila. I promised the missus I wouldn’t be late home today.’
‘Who all knows?’ he asked as he sat down on the bare cement bench beside Griessel. He saw there was a blueish-purple bruise on his colleague’s cheekbone.
‘Just me and the two uniforms who brought him in. But they will keep quiet.’
‘He had a really bad day. I don’t know if you heard about Vollie Fish.’
‘I did. It’s tragic, my bru’. But Benny went and fought with two hase,’ September said, using police slang, calling members of the public rabbits. ‘And the Fireman’s Arms people are very upset about the moleste. They talk about laying charges.’
‘Benna should never have been sent out to Vollie Fish. His head hasn’t been right since The Giraffe died.’
‘Our lips are sealed, but if there’s a formal complaint . . .’
‘I’ll go and talk to them.’
‘Can I bring your car around to the courtyard?’
‘Please.’
September went out.
Cupido put his hand on Griessel’s arm, and shook lightly. ‘Benna . . .’