Icarus

by Deon Meyer

  ‘I did see a shrink, Vaughn.’

  ‘Go back, Benna.’

  ‘She can’t help me.’

  ‘But do you want to be helped, Benna?’

  ‘Fuck you, Vaughn.’

  ‘That’s okay. Let the anger come out. I can handle it. But let me say a few things you really don’t want to hear, ek sê dit in friendship, Benna, een dag sal jy versta. Do you really want to be helped? Really? ’Cause why, I scheme it’s a handy excuse. Shrink can’t help, so I drink. Fact is—’

  ‘An excuse, Vaughn? An excuse? You have no fokken idea . . .’

  ‘Fact is, the shrink can help . . .’

  ‘How, Vaughn? How? How the fok can the shrink help? Is she just going to whip out a magic wand . . . ? Did you . . . Why did Vollie Fish shoot his wife and children? Do you know why? Because I know, Vaughn. I know exactly. I know what he knew. And he knew he couldn’t hold it back any more. It was coming closer, growing bigger. More and more. When Frank asked tonight what are the big motives for murder, didn’t it make you think, Vaughn? Take the money motive, just the money motive. The house robberies and street robberies and farm robberies and cash-in-transit robberies and shopping centre robberies and autobank robberies – more and more and more of them, and all of them more violent. It’s a cycle, Vaughn, the children seeing violence and experiencing violence since they were only this high, it’s what they know, it’s what they become. It’s not their fault; it’s their world.

  ‘How are we going to save them? How are we going to turn this around? There are people streaming in over our borders, Vaughn, to come and rob us, because there’s money here, there’s progress here. We can’t stop the tide, it’s not ever going to draw back. You know how the world looks. And everything is on the rise, not just robbery. Domestic violence, revenge, everything just gets worse. The disease, the serial killers, more, every day there are more of them, and they are getting sicker, Vaughn. It’s like a . . . I don’t know, this moerse train that’s just picking up speed. The brakes are fucked, Vaughn – we are the brakes, and we are fucked . . .’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Cupido forgot about his carefully prepared speech; he was angry now. ‘You’re taking on my pride now. How many ouens have you and I put in tjoekie, this past year? How many? The SAPS, every day? Why are the courts so full, Benna, if we’re fucked? And the jails? That’s bullshit, Benna, we are a long way from being fucked . . .’

  ‘How many dockets . . .’

  ‘No, now you have to give me a chance, ’cause that argument of yours won’t fly. ’Cause crime is increasing we all have to sit and drink? That’s your solution? You think it’s an—’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying . . .’

  ‘Now what are you saying, Benna? That just you can sit and suip, and the rest of us must struggle against crime? You think this is a unique situation here with us? Look at all the mighty First World countries, Benna. Take America. War on drugs, for decades, and they are losing it, in their moer in. Must they just sit back and suip, hey? D’you know how many boatloads of poor immigrants arrive there with them, in all those European countries? You think their crime is dropping? It’s the state of the world. If this job was easy, then anyone could do it. But no, anyone can’t do it. We can. We are the Hawks, pappie, the cream of the crop, best of the best. And you, Benny Griessel, you’re the best cop I know. By a long shot. When you’re sober. But now your head is full of all sorts of shit, and you like it, ’cause it’s a lekker excuse for a dop. So, as your pal, as the ou who likes and respects you, I’m telling you tonight, man up, Benna. Grow a pair. Go back to that shrink and tell her you’re not giving up therapy until your head is clean.’

  Griessel said nothing.

  Cupido tried to get his feelings back under control. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, calmer: ‘Where’s the booze going to take you, Benna?’

  Still Griessel was silent.

  ‘Just think about it. Where’s the booze going to take you?’

  At half past eleven Griessel found a place in Long Street that was still open. He quickly drank one double Jack at the counter, then he drove home. His body told him he should have had another one, but he controlled the thirst – he kept to the agreement he had made with himself, there beside Cupido.

  He parked in the street in front of Alexa’s house. The lights were still on. He had expected that. He remained sitting. How was he going to handle it? After being so totally pissed last night, after he had ignored her calls and SMSes the whole day?

  It depended on which Alexa he was going to find inside.

  He got out, locked the car and went in.

  Alexa sat waiting for him in the sitting room.

  ‘Hello, Benny,’ she said. There was relief in her voice. He could see the tension in her body and mouth, but also the control, and he was grateful for it. He was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of his love for her. He stood in no-man’s-land between the door and where she sat. He knew she would smell the alcohol if he kissed her, but he badly wanted to. They both needed it.

  Her eyes were on him. He went to her, bent, kissed her. Her hands were behind his head, she pressed his lips hard against hers and kissed him for a long time.

  ‘Your mouth tastes like paradise,’ she said. She gave him a crooked smile, her eyes moist. ‘Thank God you’re not drunk.’

  It was not at all what he had expected. Suddenly he was emotional again, because he didn’t deserve this mercy. Until he realised it might be a strategy, agreed between her and Doc Barkhuizen. Let him say what he wanted to say. He straightened up again. ‘I’m going back to the psychiatrist, when this case is over.’

  ‘Okay.’ She said it so quietly that he could barely hear her. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Until then I will drink, but I won’t get so drunk again.’

  She didn’t react. He knew it was because she was also an alcoholic. Any prediction about how you were going to handle alcohol was ridicu­lous. That was the first of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps, the recognition that you were powerless against drink; that your life was out of control. But tonight he had only drunk one double. He could do it again.

  ‘Then rather come and drink at home. Just don’t leave the booze here. Keep it in your car.’

  He thought about it. For a moment it seemed like a wonderful possibility, a solution. But then he realised that it would be incredibly selfish of him. To sit and drink in front of her, knowing she also longed for the same release.

  He just nodded. He wanted to change the subject; he wanted the normality of their before-booze-life back. He wanted to ask ‘How was your day?’ but he couldn’t, because he knew her day had been hell.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked and got up out of her chair slowly.

  49

  Francois du Toit’s narrative sped up. The words flowed from his mouth, the emotions passing across his face like the shadows of clouds, his hands and body expressive too. Sometimes he got up and moved around, or he sat still, his gaze distant, remembering.

  His brother Paul’s first big scandal at school, age sixteen, in Grade Ten in Paul Roos Gymnasium. Ma Helena received the phone call from the principal; he would like to see both parents. Yes, it was urgent; he preferred not to discuss it over the phone.

  Guillaume and Helena went straight away. On the way they speculated. Paul wasn’t strong academically, but he was passing. What could it be?

  The principal invited them into his office, his manner awkward, voice muted, eyes evasive. There had been an incident. The young teacher who taught geography, an attractive woman . . . Paul waited until his friends left the classroom, then he walked up to her and made an improper suggestion. Nou ja, sometimes at this age . . . the boys . . . they didn’t always have a sense of the acceptable: their hormones, the talk among them during breaks. And it was a boys’ school, Paul had no sisters, it happened . . . But the teacher w
as terribly upset, especially about the way he’d spoken, what she called the ‘brute vulgarity and arrogance’ . . .

  ‘What suggestion did Paul make?’ asked Helena.

  ‘An improper suggestion.’

  ‘That we have already determined. I want to know exactly what he said,’ said Helena as Guillaume put a soothing hand on her shoulder, which she ignored.

  The principal seemed to shrink back in his seat, reluctant to utter the reported words.

  ‘Helena . . .’ pleaded Guillaume.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk to him unless I know precisely what he said.’

  The principal marshalled his courage and dignity, and said: ‘Paul apparently said that he’d heard that she was sexually active at university, and he would like to have sex with her.’

  ‘Are those the words that he used?’ Helena asked in disbelief. ‘The ‘‘brute vulgarity and arrogance’’?’

  ‘No, not entirely.’

  ‘Helena,’ said Guillaume, this time louder and more urgently.

  Helena stood up. ‘If you can’t tell me precisely what my child said, I will go and ask the teacher herself.’

  ‘He said he heard she had fucked around at varsity, and he wanted to fuck her,’ said the principal with barely-suppressed revulsion. ‘Up the . . .’

  ‘Up the what?’

  Guillaume just sighed.

  ‘I’m not going to say it in front of you.’

  ‘Then say it to my husband,’ she said and stormed out.

  When Guillaume came out later alone, she was waiting for him in the car.

  ‘Up the what?’ she asked.

  ‘Up the arse,’ said her husband.

  A strange, complex sound escaped from her lips.

  They talked to Paul, that afternoon. Paul said the teacher was lying. It was she who told him that’s how she wanted to be fucked. He used the word bluntly in front of his parents, like a status symbol.

  That was the first time that both parents realised their son had a serious problem. They remained calm and threatened to call the teacher. He scoffed, remorseless: ‘Everyone knows she’s a slut.’

  Helena insisted that he was going to apologise to her. Paul refused. She said they would ban him from all sports. He said they couldn’t stop him playing rugby.

  Guillaume said they could. It would only take one call to the school principal.

  Paul shouted at them, called them ‘fokken stupid’. They sat in the Klein Zegen sitting room, shocked and overwhelmed by the day’s revelations and this crazy tirade from their son. It was as if he was a stranger standing there, observing their stunned silence with absolute arrogance.

  Guillaume recovered first. He stood up and walked to the telephone. ‘I’ll phone the principal then.’

  ‘OK, I’ll apologise to the bitch,’ Paul spat and stormed out.

  Helena drove over to see the teacher that very night. The young woman was traumatised. She told Helena about other disturbing behaviours – the manipulations, lies, cheating on a test paper. She said it was so difficult because it was her first teaching post, she didn’t want to ‘make waves’ so soon. And then there was Paul’s status as sports icon, in this sports mad boys’ school . . . But there was something wrong with that boy, something wasn’t right.

  Helena rang a friend and colleague at the university Psychology Department. She and Guillaume went to talk to him the following afternoon. He agreed to see Paul. They had to use the sports ban as blackmail again to get their son there.

  The psychology professor spent five hours, in four separate sessions, with Paul. Then gave his report to the parents. That was the conversation where the word ‘psychopath’ was mentioned for the first time.

  50

  Cupido only got away from the office after midnight.

  He drove home, to his house in Caledon Street, Bellville-South. At this time of night it was only a ten-minute drive.

  He got out, opened the gate. He looked at his house, lit up in the car headlights. It was as if he saw it with new eyes, this little place he had bought eighteen months ago. The first property in his name. Here, because he wanted to be close to work, and amongst his people. He could have afforded a townhouse in Bellville, he could have gone to live with the whiteys like so many upwardly mobile coloureds did, but he didn’t want to.

  He unlocked the single garage door, pulled it up.

  This was his pride and joy: three bedrooms, about twice as big as the house that he and his brothers grew up in with Daddy and Mommy in Mitchells Plain.

  Progress. For him. But what would a woman like Desiree Coetzee make of it? A girl with an MBA degree, those were kwaai qualifications; she lives in another world. How would she look at it? Because if you put this house down anywhere in the white suburbs of Stellenbosch, it suddenly looked heavy common. The low concrete wall with ornate little pillars – he still wanted to break that down, build something nice. The yellow walls were just a shade too shrill, he wanted to repaint them, something classy, off-white, cream. But when? All his time and money so far had gone into the bathroom renovation.

  Don’t think like that. If she was a woman of substance, she would look at the man, not the house.

  Was he ready to have a laaitie in his life? Another man’s child. A whitey’s child.

  He turned around, walked back to his car, grinning at himself. Slow down, Cyril, you haven’t even had a proper date with the dolly, never mind what Uncle Frank insinuated.

  He pulled in, closed the door, went into the house, put on the lights, and the TV. Opened the fridge, wanting a beer, but if he drank one now, he would want to pee at four tomorrow morning. He weighed up the implications, took out the beer, pulled the tab, sat down in front of the TV.

  Some talk show. He turned down the sound, put his feet up on the coffee table.

  Crazy day. Full of surprises, of which Desiree Coetzee was the biggest. He just couldn’t get her out of his head. But you need to focus, pappie, ’cause why, surprise number two is JOC leader, Major Mbali had appointed him, nogal, and he was kwaai suspicious. Tonight, when he went to report, it was like the Giraffe reincarnated. She was still there waiting for him, at this time of night. She was supportive, empathetic. She talked the whole thing through with him and said: ‘Good job, Captain. Thank you.’

  No sarcasm.

  Mbali. She said that to him. Good job. Go figure.

  She told him about the pressure from above. She said the dude doing the database reveal had already exposed one ANC politician, one TV newsreader and a whitey former soapie star. Cloete said the media were having a field day. Or night. Twitter was all abuzz.

  She asked if it could be the suspect, Rick Grobler, and he said Mooiwillem had gone to investigate, Grobler denied, denied, denied, but it was impossible to say for sure. Personally he, Cupido, didn’t think Grobler would want to publish the database, there was just no upside for the guy.

  She said she was pushing Forensics very hard for the analysis of Grobler’s car.

  He said they needed Lithpel Davids and Bones Boshigo, ’cause this thing is all about money and technology. Could she help with a search warrant for the bank, so they could investigate Richter’s financial affairs?

  And she said, first thing tomorrow morning. Go get some sleep, Captain, I’ll get you everything you want tomorrow. Just like The Giraffe – the late Colonel Zola Nyathi – always did. Nyathi, who had been shot dead in front of Benna. Which made Cupido think of Griessel and his speech that got so out of hand, he was very sorry afterwards. He said things he shouldn’t have, Benna got him going with that ‘We are the brakes and we are fucked’. The Hawks were Cupido’s greatest pride and joy. He would die for that unit, and if Benna or anyone else dissed the Hawks, then he really lost it.

  Maybe it was because he didn’t have a wife and children, maybe that’s why he couldn’t understand
what was going on with Benna.

  But maybe that could change.

  NoMoreAlibis @NoMoreAlibis

  Twelve hours to go. Lots to reveal. Big men will fall. A few women too.

  #ErnstRichter #WhoKilledErnst #NoAlibi

  Three men, in three different cities, woke their wives between midnight and one a.m. to confess their Alibi sins. Two of the three began their speeches with ‘I did a very stupid thing’. The third, the Dutch Reformed minister of a well-off congregation in Pretoria tried a different tack: ‘Come pray with me.’

  51

  Transcript of interview: Advocate Susan Peires with Mr Francois du Toit

  Wednesday, 24 December; 1604 Huguenot Chambers, 40 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town