by Deon Meyer
Griessel’s snore stopped abruptly. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you all.’
9
Transcript of interview: Advocate Susan Peires with Mr Francois du Toit
Wednesday, 24 December; 1604 Huguenot Chambers, 40 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
FdT: There is a framed cutting from Huisgenoot magazine of 1950 about my granddad, Oupa Jean. All down the years it hung in the front room . . . San took it down recently. It’s kind of, I don’t know, there’s a tragic feel about it. The way the article and reality . . . the title reads Groot oesjaar wag vir jong Jean du Toit, ‘a good harvest year awaits young Jean du Toit’. There’s a photo of him. He’s standing in the vineyard, in his WP rugby jersey, with a rugby ball in his hands. When San saw it for the first time she asked, ‘What happened to those genes?’ She said that if he had been alive today he would have been a paparazzi’s dream. He was blond, and very good looking, with deep blue eyes. He was a fantastic rugby player, but in the photo you can see the other thing too. It’s . . . a kind of self-confidence that borders on mischief, it’s an attitude that says he will do whatever he likes, the world belongs to him. San says there is a kind of danger to this look, an irresistibility; there are women who go for it, even though they know it just spells trouble.
The photo was taken two years after my great grandpa’s death. Oupa Jean inherited the farm at twenty-two. In those days it wasn’t unusual, there were guys who took over the family farm at eighteen; it’s different today . . . The trouble was, Klein Zegen was a wine farm, with all that entails. The mystique of wine, the history, the culture . . . My Ouma Hettie said in those days, the early fifties, a wine farmer was really somebody. There was a perception that they were all filthy rich. And they weren’t . . . but just imagine, twenty-two, handsome, a sports star, and a wine farmer with an estate where the homestead was two hundred and twenty years old. It’s like being a rock star today. And sooner or later it will go to your head . . .
Oupa Jean was not just the only son; he was the only child. Ever since he was a little boy he’d been aware that it all would come to him. And he was very spoiled, I think, the golden boy, the talented, handsome child who had a future without even having to try.
Now you must understand, back when Oupa Jean took over the farm, that was the golden age of the KWV — the Cooperative Wine-growers Union. Which was really the State controlling the whole wine industry. Up to 1956 the KWV would in any case buy up his whole harvest. In 1957 the KWV brought in the quota system, and with Oupa Jean’s rugby contacts he made sure Klein Zegen got a big quota. His only goal was to fill that quota every year because Big Brother KWV would buy it all. Very few of the farmers those days worried about quality. There weren’t many of them who made their own wine on the farm, it wasn’t really financially rewarding . . . So you could farm part time, it was only at pruning and harvest time that you had to focus a bit. Which gave Oupa Jean time for rugby and women and drink. Not necessarily in that order.
And that’s what he did, and everybody thought he would be chosen for the South African national team, and become a Springbok. But then two things happened. Oupa Jean got Ouma Hettie pregnant the next year, and he broke his leg, just before the Springbok tour to England and France . . .
10
In the car Cupido said, ‘Benna, I need you on this one, please, partner.’
Griessel sat with his head down and swayed with the movement of the vehicle. He made a sound that sounded like a humourless laugh.
Cupido felt the tension in his gut. He had to get the Richter case going very fast, tomorrow morning Cloete would have to feed the media monster again, and he would have to report to Kaleni about what he and Benny had achieved. But first he had to go and talk to the Fireman’s. The big problem was that, though the Hawks would tolerate a drunk member now and then, if you went around hitting a civilian in your drunken state, suspension was inevitable.
And Griessel would not be able to cope with that on top of everything.
He stopped in front of Alexa Barnard’s big Victorian house in Brownlow Street, Tamboerskloof, walked around to the passenger side, and helped Benny get out. They struggled through the garden gate, to the front door. Cupido knocked urgently.
Alexa came to open up. She saw Benny hanging onto Vaughn Cupido and caught her breath.
‘He’s fine, he’s just drunk,’ said Cupido.
‘A drunken altruist,’ said Griessel, with difficulty, slurring the ‘s’.
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Alexa and began to cry.
‘I think we had better go in, if you don’t mind,’ said Cupido.
Alexa nodded and stood aside. Cupido steered Griessel into the house. She closed the door behind them.
‘A drunken altruist is better,’ said Griessel. ‘Much better.’
Cupido helped Benny to the couch, and let him sit down. Griessel lay back and closed his eyes.
‘Can we talk somewhere?’ Cupido asked her quietly.
She stared at Benny, tears running down her face.
‘Vaughn, I heard a funny story,’ said Griessel. ‘Fokken funny . . .’
‘Okay, Benna.’
Griessel closed his eyes again.
‘Come,’ said Alexa, and led him to the kitchen.
‘He’s had a very bad day,’ said Cupido, and told her about Vollie Fish and the family murder. ‘They said Benny tapped a guy in the bar . . .’
‘Hit someone? Benny?’
‘I don’t really know what happened, but the problem is if a complaint is laid, they will suspend Benny. And you and I know, that’s not going to be good for him. I will try to fix things at the bar, but please, you must try to get him sober. And keep him sober. Major Mbali thinks he’s out with me on a case. I can cover for him until tomorrow morning, but make sure he is at the office on time.’
Alexa stood, helpless and defeated, in the centre of the room. ‘I don’t know if I can . . .’
Cupido could see she was very confused. Then he remembered, she was also an alcoholic.
‘Give him coffee . . .’
‘Coffee doesn’t help, Vaughn.’
‘You’ll have to try something. Call his AA sponsor. I really can’t stay, we’ve got this huge case; I have to work. Don’t let him answer his phone, no matter who calls. If there’s big trouble, call me.’
She just stood there, utterly lost.
‘Are you going to be okay?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He drove to the Fireman’s Arms and asked to speak to the manager. He told the man, ‘He’s a great detective and a good man. He hasn’t had a drink in almost two years, but one of his colleagues shot himself today, so please, man, give the guy a break.’
‘He assaulted one of my customers.’
‘I get that, and on behalf of the police, I apologise. But please. You could ruin the man’s career . . .’
‘Okay. But I don’t want him back.’
‘I promise, thank you very much,’ and he jogged out into the darkness, relieved, and he took the car, put on the siren and the blue lights and raced to Bellville, to go and read what John Cloete had sent him.
It took Alexa Barnard half an hour to gather the courage to call Doc Barkhuizen.
First she took off Benny’s shoes, and helped him to lie comfortably on the couch. He gazed at her, a surreal moment when he looked at her without recognising her at all. And then he let his head fall back again and closed his eyes.
She said, ‘Oh Jesus, Benny,’ and she sat down in the easy chair beside the couch so that she could keep a watchful eye over him, and she thought, she was the weak one, she was the alcohol-risk, Benny was so strong. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? He might have been quiet lately, but not that much quieter than usual, he had never been much of a talker. And after everything he had been through, and the work he did . . . there had been no sign.
All she could think of now was how much she wanted to have a drink too.
At last she stood up, looked carefully for Griessel’s phone, took it out and looked up Doc’s number. She saw it was the last one in his iPhone’s ‘Favourites’. She was first, then Carla, and Fritz and a few colleagues.
She was Benny’s number one favourite. She had never known that, it made her want to cry again, but she fought against it, and made the call.
‘Benny?’ Doc Barkhuizen answered. ‘This time of night it’s never good news.’
‘It’s Alexa,’ she said, with a catch in her voice, despite her best efforts.
‘Oh, magtig,’ he said.
‘Doctor, Benny . . .’ She wept.
‘How many,’ asked Barkhuizen, calmly.
‘A lot.’
‘There’s not a lot I can do for him tonight, but it sounds as though you need help.’
‘Yes.’
And then, to her infinite relief, he said, ‘Where are you? I’ll come right away.’
Vaughn Cupido clicked on the first link in Captain John Cloete’s email. It was a news report on the Netwerk24 news website:
App helps you to get a bit on the side.
STELLENBOSCH – ‘All Pleasure. No stress’ is the motto and promise of a new smartphone app and website that will help South Africans to have a bit on the side – and get away with it.
Lovers who need a rock solid alibi for a dirty weekend, or who just need a verifiable excuse for a quick red-hot hour, can depend on Alibi.co.za in future to help them lie. But at a price, of course.
With membership at R62.50 per month, prospective cheaters will have access to a whole menu of dishonest options: a SMS calling you to a ‘meeting’, for example, can cost you R25, a telephone call from your ‘office’ is R125, while faux registration documents and a fictitious hotel account for the weekend’s ‘work conference’ can cost up to R1,800.
‘Clients can decide for themselves how comprehensive their alibi must be,’ the founder and managing director of Alibi.co.za, Mr Ernst Richter, said during a press conference in Stellenbosch. ‘Our task is to deliver it credibly and on time.’
‘Slap me with a snotsnoek,’ muttered Vaughn Cupido, and he thought, no wonder Cloete said this thing was going to explode. He read on.
In answer to a question whether this would encourage marital infidelity, Richter said websites like AshleyMadison.com and Maritalaffair.co.za already created the opportunity for South Africans to have extramarital affairs. ‘Statistics show that hundreds of thousands have already registered with these websites. Alibi.co.za just wants to keep them out of trouble and the divorce courts.’
It was precisely the local success of AshleyMadison.com that gave Richter the idea for his new company. Similar alibi services have existed for many years overseas, but South Africa had been behind the times until now. ‘You need local knowledge to build a successful alibi for clients. On top of that the exchange rate makes it very expensive for South Africans to use the overseas alibi services. Our prices make it possible for Joe Bloggs to express his love life in a way that is stress free and affordable.’
‘We invite people to supply as much information as possible when they register on the website or through the smartphone app, so that an alibi can have the maximum credibility. For instance, if you indicate that you work in banking, our sophisticated systems ensure that you never receive a fake call from the office outside of working hours.’
Richter said Alibi.co.za’s security systems were highly sophisticated, and there was no chance that the users’ information could end up in the wrong hands. ‘Discretion is our driving force. Not even the employees have access to a client’s full profile. We also offer the option of a pseudonym, so in most cases we don’t even know who our clients really are.’
Over and above the extensive series of possible options from which clients can choose, users can also create their own alibi. ‘We immediately send a quote for the execution of the alibi,’ said Richter.
The company expects its user profile to be similar to that of the cheater websites – about 48% women, and 52% men. ‘We accept that for socioeconomic reasons, our clients will mostly be over 35. The average age for women to begin thinking of an extramarital affair is 39. For men it is 42.’
Cupido typed in the web address in his Google Chrome search field.
The Hawks internet was faster than usual at this time of night and the page loaded quickly.
There was a large photograph of a good-looking couple in turquoise tropical waters. Their faces were turned towards each other, loving and satisfied. Behind them was a sandy beach with palm trees. Across the blue sky were the words:
Alibi.co.za
All pleasure. No stress.
The company logo was a white dove in flight, with a romantic heart icon in its beak. Below the photo, Register now, and take the ‘dangerous’ out of dangerous liaisons, the ‘ex’ out of sex. Put the ‘fair’ back into affair. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back! – with fields where you could type in your name and email address.
11
Framed photos of Advocate Susan Peires hung on her office wall. Francois du Toit had seen them when he came in. One was of her graduation, a couple of decades ago. She was one of those women who age well, he thought. The years had softened her appearance, so that now, in middle age, she was attractive: strong and dignified.
As he told her his story, he had a vague sense that something about her gave him peace of mind. She looked like an instrument of justice. Perhaps it was her calmness, the inner strength that she radiated. Perhaps it was the fact that she didn’t dye her hair, the salt-and-pepper mix of dark and grey gave her sophistication, wisdom. Or perhaps it was her face, the strength of its spare lines, the angle of her nose, the mouth neither too thin nor too full, in perfect neutral balance, so that it neither judged nor approved.
He talked more and more easily. He was swept along by the history, his enthusiasm growing as if somehow it really would serve as mitigation for his sins. He felt free enough to stand up from the chair – first behind it, with his hands on the leather backrest, and then, gradually, to begin moving around the large office.
He told her about the woman that his Oupa Jean had made pregnant.
His grandma, Ouma Hettie was a Malherbe from Calitzdorp. Her parents were humble people. ‘Her father had a small shop; he struggled, he had to scrimp and save to send her to university. She had spoken of what a terrible thing the pregnancy was to her parents – a huge scandal. She was their passport to respectability; she was the symbol of their progress from backwardness and poverty. It must have been difficult in those days, 1951 . . . But she always said the one “klein zegen”, the small blessing, was that she fell pregnant in September of her final year. She could still graduate, she had studied for a degree in Education. And of course the fact that it was a wine farmer who made her pregnant, a Western Province fly-half, that helped.
‘Ouma was an incredible woman. I think it was her sense of humour that saved her – and the farm, and my father. Humour, and being down to earth . . .
‘Oupa Jean . . . Ouma used to say that he was a magnet. Those eyes, that smile, that look that said the world was his oyster. She always said she was very proper, conservative, she’d barely kissed a man
before Oupa Jean, but that evening when he asked her to dance, and he could dance, he made her look so good on the floor, and she smelled him and his face was against her hair and he said you are the most beautiful girl in the whole of Stellenbosch, then all of her careful upbringing flew out of the window.
‘She was beautiful – very beautiful. Oupa Jean made a lot of mistakes, but his taste in women was not one of them . . .
‘My father was conceived that very night, in the homestead. It was just about the last good thing that Oupa Jean did, except of course to marry Ouma, but he didn’t really have a choice, back in those days.’
12
Cupido struggled to sit still. He wanted to get going, to be on the move, but the faded yellow file that Stellenbosch had delivered while he’d been out was a fair bit thicker than the average missing persons file.
So he stayed in his chair, pulled the file towards him and opened it. Inside he found a photo stapled to the first page, three statements in Section A and two forensic reports in Section B. Section C was so comprehensive he was impressed, but he knew that the media attention that Stellenbosch had received must have placed enormous pressure on the SC and his detectives to do a thorough job.
Right at the back was a signed SAPS 55(A) – the form that indemnified the police from fraudulent reports and gave them the right to circulate and publish the photo and description of the missing person.
He studied the photograph. It matched the face that he had seen at the mortuary. It showed Ernst Richter in jeans and a blue T-shirt with H.T.M.L. on it, and below that (expert in) How To Meet Ladies. He looked young: early thirties maybe. He was laughing, his hands gesturing to illustrate some point when the camera caught him; clean shaven; thick, dark hair almost touching his shoulders; lean body. He had his mother Bernadette’s long nose, but his cheekbones were sharper and his mouth more prominent.
That was not how he imagined a guy who ran an alibi website would look, Cupido thought. Richter looked decent, normal; sort of the guy next door, if you lived in a middle-class white suburb, that is. But with whiteys, he had learned over the years, you couldn’t go on looks. Very deceiving.