Zulu

by Caryl Ferey

  “The law’s the same for everyone,” Neuman said, with an emphasis that Wiese took for arrogance. “I’ll find your daughter’s killer.”

  “I hope so, for your sake,” Wiese said, between clenched teeth. His bare neck was streaming with sweat. He threw a last glance at the sheet covering his daughter.

  Neuman was starting to realize what had been bothering him in this interview. “An officer will be over to see you tomorrow morning,” he said before letting him leave.

  A white officer.

  *

  The hills and secluded inlets of Clifton, with their dense vegetation, had given way to luxury residences, villas with rooftop parking, security guards, and direct access to the beach. The area was now firmly part of the urban spread, and they were building ever higher up the side of the hill—it was already too late to save the landscape.

  25 West Point. With its gilt and lacquer and profusion of mirrors, the Botha family apartment was as heavily made up as a Sydney drag queen, a monument to eighties glitz. In a living room with a panoramic view, Flora, her face drawn by the sun and foundation cream, was sitting on the couch waiting for Judith to return. Her husband, pacing restlessly around the coffee table, was talking for the two of them. In lying to everyone, the stupid girl had created a deep rift between the two families. Stewart Wiese had called a little earlier, and they’d had a heated argument that had solved nothing. The Springbok had finished his career in Nils Botha’s Stormers, and the two men had remained friends. Their daughters had been at school together, had the same circle of friends, went out to the same places, they had never wanted for anything or ever caused the slightest concern. They were supposed to be revising for their exams, not spending the night on the streets, or going for weekends to the coast. Botha was boiling with anger, incomprehension, and a sense of betrayal. Dan Fletcher let him stew, while his wife sat on the flowered couch, twisting her fingers.

  Dan was thinking about his wife, Claire—he’d be picking her up from the hospital in a while—when there was a ring from the entry phone. Flora jumped up like a spring, and trotted across the marble floor in her high heels, but Nils got there first. It was the doorman, announcing that their daughter had arrived.

  After a few moments, the door of the private elevator opened and Judith appeared, together with her friend Peter, a local boy who had swapped his Ray-Bans for blond streaks.

  “What’s going on?” Judith asked when she saw her mother’s distraught face. “Has something happened?”

  Botha pushed his wife aside, swooped on his daughter, and slapped her across the face. Flora let out a stunned cry. With a whine, Judith collapsed on the floor.

  “Nils!” Flora said. “You—”

  “Shut up! And you, listen to me,” he roared at his daughter. “Yes, something’s happened. Nicole has been murdered! Do you hear! Someone killed Nicole!”

  The maid, who had been hiding at the end of the corridor, ran to the kitchen. Judith burst into tears. Peter retreated toward the elevator. Botha glared at him, then bent over Judith and grabbed her by the arm as if pulling a weed from the ground.

  “Do you think this is quite appropriate?” Dan Fletcher said.

  “I’ll treat my daughter as I see fit!”

  “Can’t you see, she can hardly stand.”

  Botha didn’t give a damn. He had beaten men to the ground before. If you could do it in rugby, why not in life? All he could see was the lying, the deception, the rift with Stewart Wiese, the loss of business contacts, and all the other trouble that would ensue. All because of this young fool, his daughter.

  Judith was still on the floor, her hands over her face. Flora went to her, ill at ease, not knowing how to deal with her.

  “I’d like to speak to Judith alone,” Dan said.

  “I have a right to know why my daughter lied to us!”

  “Please, Mr. Botha, let me do my job.”

  Botha made a sour face. The little cop was talking in a low voice and looking at Judith with a compassion that set his nerves on edge. She huddled pitifully against the elevator door, while her mother tried awkwardly, and inaudibly, to console her.

  Now Dan kneeled and looked at her, noticing the freckles behind her disheveled hair. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Her mascara had run, staining her fingers. Peter Deblink stood with his back to the elevator and his eyes on the floor, as if counting the marble tiles.

  “You too,” Dan said.

  Swerving past Nils Botha, the young couple followed Dan out onto the terrace.

  A cool wind was blowing, birds soared, turquoise waves crashed on the immaculate beach below, a little corner of paradise that had ended up in the wrong place. Judith, still in shock, collapsed onto a folding chair, where she could cry more freely.

  There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the sound of the rollers. Dan was as delicate-looking as Montgomery Clift, with a gleam in his eye that was only for his wife. He peered down at Judith. She was pretty, he thought, no more than that.

  “You have to help me,” he said. “O.K.?”

  Judith did not reply. She was gathering her tears. “What happened?” she sniffed.

  “We don’t know yet,” Dan replied. “Nicole’s body was found in Kirstenbosch Gardens this morning.”

  Judith looked up, incredulous. Her father’s fingers had left Paleolithic marks on her cheeks.

  “You were Nicole’s best friend, from what I’ve been told.”

  “We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Judith said, her throat tight with emotion. “Nicole lives in Camps Bay, on the other side of the hill.”

  She made a movement with her head, which went no farther than the green plants on the terrace.

  “Did you often cover for her?”

  “No . . . No.”

  Dan looked into her moist eyes, saw only shame and sadness. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I . . . I have a studio apartment in Observatory, near the university. Nicole used to tell her parents that she was going to sleep over at my place so we could go through our course together.”

  “And that wasn’t true?”

  “It was just an excuse to get out of the house. I don’t like lying, but I did it for her, as a friend. I tried to tell her our parents would find out in the end, but Nicole begged me and . . . Anyway, I didn’t have the heart to refuse. I feel terrible about it. It’s awful.” She hid her face in her hands.

  Dan turned to Deblink. “Were the two of you with her last night?” he asked.

  “No,” the blond boy said. “We were at Strand diving in a cage with the white sharks. The excursion was due to start at seven this morning, so we spent the night in the guest house that organized it.”

  That would be easy to check.

  “And Nicole?”

  “She had a duplicate key,” Judith said. “That way we were freer.”

  “Did she tell you where was going, and who with?”

  “No.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  Her expression changed. “To be honest, we haven’t seen much of each other lately.”

  “You’re in the same faculty.”

  “Nicole hardly ever attended anymore.”

  “I see.”

  “She wasn’t that crazy about law.”

  “She preferred boys.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “But she slept with boys.”

  “Nicole wasn’t a tramp!” her friend protested.

  “I don’t see anything wrong in her liking boys,” Dan said. “Was Nicole seeing someone?”

  Disarmed, Judith shrugged. “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “She didn’t tell me in so many words, but . . . I don’t know. Nicole had changed. She’d become evasive.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “It’s just a feeling. We’ve known each other a long time but something had changed in her. I couldn’t say why, b
ut Nicole wasn’t the same anymore, especially lately. That’s why I think she was seeing someone.”

  “Strange she didn’t talk to you. You were her best friend.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  A wind of sadness swept the terrace.

  “Did Nicole often change boyfriends?”

  “Oh, no. She wasn’t a collector, I told you. She liked boys but like everyone, you know—in moderation.”

  Deblink didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “Ben Durandt,” Fletcher said. “Know him?”

  “A friend from Camps Bay,” she said, sullenly. “They were together for six months.”

  “How was he with Nicole?”

  “Good for driving a convertible.”

  “The jealous type?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Durandt is too fascinated by himself to be interested in anyone else. Anyway, it was just a casual thing. Nicole was pissed off with him.” She was starting to relax a little.

  “Do you know if they slept together?”

  “No. Why do you ask that?”

  “I’m trying to find out if Nicole slept with boys, if the sexual relations she had on the night of the murder were consensual or not.”

  Judith lowered her eyes.

  “What about you?” he asked Deblink. “What do you think?”

  “We hardly knew each other,” he replied, pulling a face.

  “I thought you were both regulars at Camps Bay?”

  The beaches at Camps Bay were popular at weekends with the city’s gilded youth.

  “I did meet her there, with Judith. But only once, and then only in passing.”

  “You mean Nicole didn’t hang out at Camps Bay anymore?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’d changed, like I said,” Judith cut in.

  A gull hovering near the terrace squawked. Dan turned back to Judith. “What was the agreement between the two of you last night?”

  “Nicole phoned to say she was going out. I’d already arranged to see the sharks with Peter, so she had the apartment to herself for the evening.”

  “Why did the two of you lie to your parents?”

  “My dad’s not too bad,” Judith replied, biting her lips. “He let me take a flat near the faculty. But Judith’s father is very . . . you know, conservative. He didn’t like her going out. Or only with boys he knew. He was afraid of assaults, rapes.”

  One every five minutes, according to the national statistics.

  “Is that why you covered for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Nicole go to the local bars?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Did she have new friends?”

  “I guess so.”

  Dan nodded in the evening breeze. “We found a video club card in her cardigan, with your name on it,” he said.

  “Yes, I lent it to her, in case she wanted to rent films.”

  “Is that what happened yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. Nicole had the keys and came back when she wanted. I didn’t ask her questions. We only saw a bit of each other in the mornings, when she came back to sleep.”

  “Did she sometimes not come back to sleep?”

  “Yes, once, this week. Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday,” she repeated. “I woke up in the morning, and there was no one on the couch.”

  “Didn’t Nicole tell you where she had slept?”

  “No. I just told her it couldn’t carry on like that. That her parents would catch us in the end. But I gave in again when she asked me about Saturday. Like an idiot.”

  Childhood memories caught her by the throat: changing their dolls’ clothes, giggling, secrets. Judith tried to hold back her sobs, but the wave overwhelmed her. She put her hands over her face.

  Evening was falling gently over the ocean. Fletcher looked at his watch. Claire was coming out in less than an hour.

  A few feet away, his hair being given a rough time by the wind, Peter Deblink stood like a block of wood. He hadn’t made any move to comfort his girlfriend. Dan squeezed her shoulder, and left for the hospital.

  From tomorrow (not long now), the journey into you. A slow journey, like a horse-drawn carriage. How does your sex taste? Do you know it changes depending on the season, the angle of the sun, the mood of the moon? Is your mouth still a virtuoso of the “agonic orgasm”? Will I still be the pilot fish that swims ahead? I think about it, so I’m already there—imagining, from a distance, the delights of immersion. Very soon to be yours, my darling!

  For the twelfth time, Claire read the note that Dan had slipped in with the flowers. She kept the note and gave the roses to the Xhosa nurse who had been pampering her for the last three nights.

  When you’re thirty, you worry about your choices, mostly crucial ones, you worry about your marriage, car accidents, but not cancer—cancer of the breast, which had been detected three months earlier, and had metastasized. The ground had given way beneath them, Dan had seen only an abyss, but Claire seemed to be bearing the chemotherapy and the loss of her hair. The latest series of tests had turned out well, by and large. They just had to wait and see how things developed. Of course the kids didn’t know anything about it. Tom, who was four and a half, was convinced that his mother had “caught the autumn” and her hair would soon grown back again, while Eve quite simply hadn’t noticed anything.

  Dan picked up his wife from the lobby of Somerset Hospital. Claire was wearing a black beret on her bald head and a short skirt that revealed her thin knees. She smiled as he walked toward her through the crowd, took him by the shoulders, and kissed him hard on the mouth by way of welcome. A long, languorous kiss, just like their first dates. You had to kiss your misfortune, that was what she said. She might be an angel knocked off her pedestal, but the disease wouldn’t have her skin—that was his exclusive preserve.

  People passed them, as their reunion showed no sign of ending.

  “Have you been waiting long?” he whispered in her ear.

  “Twenty-six years in two months,” Claire replied.

  Dan freed himself from her loving embrace. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  He took her delicate hand and her overnight bag, and led her to the exit. The air in the parking lot suddenly felt new, the sky almost as luminous as her swallow-blue eyes.

  “The children are waiting for you so we can have a little party,” Dan announced. “The house is in a bit of a mess, I didn’t have time to tidy up, but the nanny’s made some cakes.”

  “Cool!”

  “I told them we wouldn’t be back before eight,” he added, casually.

  It was only just six-fifteen.

  “Where are you taking me, Casanova?”

  “Llandudno.”

  Claire smiled. There was a little inlet they knew along the peninsula, a quiet spot where they could safely bathe naked. Snuggling up to him, she saw the unmarked police car in the parking lot.

  “Are you on duty?”

  “Yes. Bad timing, I know. They found a girl in Kirstenbosch this morning.”

  “The rugby player’s daughter?”

  “You know about it?”

  “They mentioned it on the radio. Are the guys coming to dinner?”

  She meant Ali and Brian, their dearest friends, and their little ritual of inviting each other to make up for the unpredictable hours, the stress, the rotten work.

  “We were thinking tomorrow night. If you feel up to it, of course,” he hastened to add.

  “We already talked about that,” Claire said, firmly. “Let’s not change anything, O.K.?”

  She didn’t want to be treated like a patient, but like someone in recovery. Ali and Brian both agreed. Dan kissed her again.

  “Did you find what I asked for?” she asked as she got in the car.

  “Yes, it’s on the back seat.”

  Claire twisted in the front seat, took hold of the hat box, and put it on her knees.

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  “
They’re closed.”

  Claire gave him a sideways glance, quickly removed her beret, took the wig out of the box and adjusted it in the rear-view mirror. A platinum-blonde bob, with two sixties streaks below the ears. Mmm, not too bad. She patted her husband’s arm.

  “How do I look in acrylic?”

  Dan shuddered, despite himself. There was a cruel, avid smile on her lips, the smile of a mistreated doll, and those blue eyes in which her own death gleamed.

  “Terrific,” he said, switching on the ignition.

  They had two hours in front of them—a whole lifetime.

  *

  The evening papers led with the murder of Nicole Wiese. Her father had been world champion just after the first democratic elections, when Mandela had put on a Springboks shirt and stood listening to the new South African anthem and shaking the hand of the captain, Pienaar, an Afrikaner. That day, Stewart Wiese had become one of the ambassadors of the new South Africa—and what did it matter if the invincible All Blacks had caught gastroenteritis on the eve of the final?

  As the eye of the storm, Stewart Wiese had announced that he would be giving a press conference, which was not a good omen in a country in the grip of violent crime. The figures would get a going over—more than fifty murders a day—the inadequacies of a police force that couldn’t protect the citizens, and then, probably, the importance of reintroducing the death penalty.

  Night was falling on the township. Ali Neuman switched off the radio and served the meal in the kitchen. He had made a dish of lentils with coriander and a cocktail of fruit juices. Woozy with medication, his mother had slept part of the afternoon, but seemed to be regaining strength. This morning’s attack? What attack? Josephina claimed she was as fit as a fiddle, better almost than she’d ever felt in her life. Whereas he, although as handsome, strong, etc., as ever, was looking tired. The usual palaver.

  Neuman did not tell her about his day, or what he had seen. He left her favorite chocolates on the kitchen table—they were her only pleasure—and kissed her on the forehead before leaving, promising that yes, yes, one day he’d introduce her to his “girlfriend.”

  All a sham.

  Without street lighting, and fragmented into a multitude of mini-territories, the townships were particularly dangerous in the evening. Manenberg was no exception. The Rastafarians had organized marches against crime and drugs, but the organized gangs continued to lay down the law. Even the schools in Bonteheuwel had been closed by decree of the gangs, and the authorities remained powerless to ensure the safety of the pupils. In Manenberg, three quarters of them took drugs and were involved with the tsotsis.