Zulu

by Caryl Ferey

  Nicole Wiese had been trying to escape, and they could understand her—at eighteen, she had wanted to see life, not its wrapping, however gilded. Judith Botha had acted as her cover, and had occasionally let her use her apartment. The forensics team had gone over that apartment with a fine-toothed comb, but the only prints they had found belonged to the two girls and young Deblink. Inquiries in the area hadn’t turned up anything, nor had checking out the university in Observatory. Nicole only ever went there to fill in forms, confirming what her friend Judith had said.

  Brian had followed up the sex-toy lead. Having found no trace of an Internet purchase on her computer—in any case, Nicole wouldn’t have risked having such things delivered to her home—he had been all over the city’s sex shops, until he had found the shop that had sold them to her—several purchases in the last three weeks. The assistant he had questioned, dressed in skintight latex, had a good memory for faces: there was no boy with Nicole. Brian had then paid a visit to the video club. In Your Ass, Appointment with My Pussy, Fist Fucking in the Rain. Nicole hadn’t rented a film on Saturday night, but several in the last few weeks. The assistant remembered the girl (he had asked her for her identity card), but she had been alone.

  Fortunately, Fletcher had had better luck.

  “I went through Nicole’s phone bills and bank account,” he said, consulting his notebook. “I have a list of phone numbers, but they haven’t turned up anything yet. Her bank account shows she had regular expenses that more than covered her lifestyle, which was quite modest considering her family’s standing. The card purchases were for clothes from downtown stores, student stationery, drinks at various bars in Observatory, that kind of thing. The last time she used her card was on Wednesday evening, at the Sundance. Sixty rand.”

  “A club popular with students,” Brian said.

  “Wednesday,” Dan went on. “The night Nicole didn’t come back to Judith’s to sleep. I checked the hotel registers, no trace of her name. So we don’t know where she slept that night, or who with, but we do know she withdrew cash on the day of the murder, at eight in the evening. A thousand rand, from an ATM in Muizenberg, on the south coast of the peninsula. A thousand rand, that’s quite a bit of money for a girl her age, especially as she usually only took out small amounts.”

  “Is there much drug dealing at the Sundance?” Neuman asked.

  “Not even coke,” Dan replied.

  “Strange.”

  “Why?”

  “Nicole was completely high when she was killed,” Neuman said.

  He had just had the first postmortem report from Tembo. Nicole Wiese had died about one in the morning, in the botanical gardens, killed by blows from a hammer or similar object—a club, an iron bar. Thirty-two points of impact, mostly concentrated on the face and skull. Lesions, hematomas, and multiple fractures, including the right humerus and three fingers. A fractured cranium. No fragments of skin under the nails, no sperm in the vagina. Contrary to her father’s hasty statements, rape had not been established—nor had there been anal relations. The only thing certain was that the girl was not a virgin at the time of her death. They had also found sea salt on her skin, grains of sand in her hair, and some unusual scratches on her arms and thorax, caused by barbed wire. The marks were recent.

  “She may have scratched herself climbing over a fence,” Brian suggested.

  “Entrance to the gardens is free,” Neuman replied.

  But the most surprising item came from the toxicological analysis, which had revealed the presence of a mixture of plants absorbed several days earlier—the precise date had still to be established—as well as a cocktail composed of marijuana, a methamphetamine base, and another chemical substance, not yet identified.

  “Methamphetamine,” Brian repeated.

  “The basis of tik,” Neuman said.

  The new drug that was ravaging the youth of Cape Town.

  “According to Tembo,” Neuman went on, “the product was inhaled not long before the murder. Nicole was probably completely out of it when she was attacked. The killer may have used the drug to take advantage of her, or to get her to the gardens without her resisting.”

  The news left them puzzled for a moment. Manufactured from ephedrine, methamphetamine could be smoked, inhaled or injected intravenously. In the form of crystals (crystal meth), tik cost a sixth of the price of cocaine, for an effect that was ten times more powerful. Smoking or injecting methamphetamine produced a quick rush: physical stimulation, an illusion of invincibility, a feeling of power, self-control, energy, excessive volubility, sexual euphoria. In the medium term, the effects were reversed: intense tiredness, uncoordinated movements, uncontrollable nervousness, paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, irritation of the skin, delirium (a feeling like insects swarming on the skin), unavoidable bouts of sleep, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, dizzy spells, pains in the chest. Highly addictive, tik led to depression or to psychoses similar to schizophrenia, with irreversible damage of the brain cells. The paranoia could also induce thoughts of murder or suicide, and psychotic symptoms persisted for months after withdrawal.

  Either the girl had been completely reckless, or she had been deceived about the nature of the merchandise.

  “Nicole’s boyfriend still hasn’t showed up,” Neuman said. “So there’s a strong likelihood he’s connected to the drugs. Tik has spread through the townships, but much less on the coast or among whites. Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  “Do you think she was planning to buy drugs with the money she withdrew in Muizenberg?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anything from our informants?”

  “We’re sounding them out, but nothing yet. If anyone’s dealing on the coast, or there’s a new drug on the market, no one seems to know.”

  “Strange.”

  “It may have something to do with the unidentified substance,” Brian suggested.

  “Possibly.”

  Methamphetamine was the basis of tik, but you could find all kinds of things in it: ephedrine, ammoniac, industrial solvent, Drano, battery lithium, hydrochloric acid.

  Claire appeared on the lawn. It was cooler now that night had fallen, she had put the children to bed, and she was holding her bare arms as if they were about to crumble.

  The three men fell silent, waiting for her to speak.

  “Can I join you?”

  Her jeans hung slightly loosely on her, but she had lost nothing of her gracefulness. She was like a bird of paradise, brought down in mid-flight.

  *

  The Observatory district was home to part of the student population, but was mainly concentrated on Lower Main Street, where the alternative bars and restaurants were to be found. Neuman parked outside a Tex-Mex restaurant with a blinking sign, and made his way through the groups of young people strolling on the sidewalks.

  There was a mixed crowd trying to get into the Sundance. A Xhosa as fat as a walrus was lazily letting them through. Neuman spotted the surveillance camera above the barrier, and stuck his badge and Nicole’s photo under the big guy’s nose.

  “Have you ever seen this girl?”

  “Hmm.” He stepped back to take a better look. “I think so.”

  “Do you have a good memory for faces, or what?”

  “Well—”

  “Nicole Wiese, the girl the newspapers are talking about. She was here last week.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  The walrus searched in his memories, but apparently they were a mess.

  “Wednesday?”

  “Could be, yes.”

  “How about Saturday?”

  He chewed that over. “Hmm.”

  “Alone or with someone?” Neuman asked impatiently.

  “That I couldn’t tell you,” he said, admitting his helplessness. “There’s a festival on at the moment, and after midnight anyone can get in. Hard to say who’s with who.”

  He would have said the same thing about the Middle East co
nflict.

  Neuman pointed to the straw huts beyond the outside wall. “What barman was working here on Saturday night?”

  “Cissy,” the man replied. “A colored girl, with big tits.”

  So he had a memory for some things after all.

  Neuman walked across the sandy garden where young people were drinking beer and shouting as if they were on the beach. The pimply guy with long hair shaking cocktails behind the outside bar seemed as drunk as his customers.

  “Where can I find Cissy?”

  “Inside!” he cried.

  Following the direction of his bloodshot eyes, Neuman opened the wooden door that led into the club. The latest Red Hot Chili Peppers was bouncing off the walls, the room was packed, the light dim beneath the spotlights. There was a smell of grass in spite of the warnings on display, but also a strange smell of something burning. Neuman pushed his way through to the bar. Few of the customers were over thirty. They were knocking back oddly colored cocktails, which would probably end up in the toilets or the gutters, if they could reach them in time. Cissy, the barmaid, had brown skin, and her breasts were squeezed into an unusually flexible leotard. She was being ogled by a bunch of tipsy youngsters. Neuman leaned over the umbrellas sticking out of the greenish cocktails she was making.

  “Have you ever seen this girl before?”

  From the chewing-gum grimace she threw at the photograph, it was obvious Cissy was more preoccupied by her cleavage than the melting of ice cubes.

  “Dunno.”

  “Take a closer look.”

  She gave a pout that went down well with the school of pilot fish clinging to the bar. “Maybe. Yes, looks familiar.”

  “Nicole Wiese, a student,” Neuman said. “Maybe you saw her face in the newspapers?”

  “Er . . . no.”

  Cissy didn’t even know what she was saying, she was thinking of her cocktails and the piranhas waiting for her.

  “They won’t get cold,” said Neuman, moving aside the glasses on the bar. “A pretty blonde like this,” he insisted, “isn’t so easy to forget. Try to remember.” He had taken hold of her wrist—gently, but he wouldn’t let go. “Nicole was here on Wednesday night,” he said, “and possibly Saturday, too.”

  The lights began to dim.

  “Saturday, I don’t know,” the barmaid finally said, “but I saw her on Wednesday night. Yes, Wednesday. She talked for a while to the girl who’s performing.”

  The lights went out suddenly, plunging the room into darkness. Neuman let go of the barmaid’s wrist. Everyone had turned to look at the stage. He walked away from the bar. It was hot and the smell was sharper now. Coal. There were coals in the middle of the stage, a red-hot bed of coals he could see through the anonymous heads. Suddenly, the floor began to vibrate with the beating of drums. Boom boom boom. A thin line of smoke rose along the proscenium, every beat of the drums was accompanied by a flash of light directed at the audience, but Neuman was somewhere else. Those drums, that hypnotic rhythm from the depths of time, was the indlamu, the Zulu war dance. For a moment, he saw his father dancing, without weapons, in the dust of KwaZulu. The rhythm became more and more sustained. The four blacks beating the drums began to sing, and the stage rose. The intensity of the drums, those grave, sad voices coming from the earth before battle, his father’s hand on his head when he left to demonstrate with his students, his voice telling him he was still too young to go with him but one day, yes, one day they would go together, his hot, reassuring hand, his smile, a father already proud of his son—everything came back to him like a boomerang that had traced an arc reaching to the other end of the world.

  A woman appeared, dressed in a kaross14 descending to mid-thigh. A steaming vessel, perfumed with oils and spices, she began to dance to the muffled drumbeats. Her skin gleamed like the eyes of cats at night, boom boom boom, she was dancing in the very heart of the beast, she was the bush, the Zulu dust, and the high grass where the tokloshe, the spirits of the ancestors, roamed—Neuman could see them emerging from the shadows to which history had consigned them, the members of the tribe, those he had loved and had lost contact with, those he had not had a chance to know and had been killed in his place, all the tormented and injured members of a people dead inside him. The sound of the drums cracked through his skin, the air was saturated with it, and there he stood, in front of the stage, like a tree waiting for the lightning.

  The people in the front row held their breath when the dancer leaped onto the coals. Her bare feet hammered the glowing carpet of fire, jumping up and down, constantly seeking a new burn, to the rhythm of the drums and the chorus tearing through space and time. She danced with her eyes half-closed, raising her knees over her head, stamping the ground, sending coals spurting out toward the front rows, which moved back. Anger was being turned into art. Deep within the trance, there was only her, five foot nine of muscle firmly planted on the hot carpet, a hypnotized crowd in front of the stage, and her flaming beauty above the chaos.

  Neuman shuddered when the others applauded. Good God, where had this creature come from?

  *

  Zina was wearing a little crimson dress and, clearly, nothing else. She was showing more than enough. Neuman had found her in her dressing room, between a bag of cotton wool and her stage costumes lying on the imitation leather couch.

  There was a smell of burning in the room. Thin braids hung down the back of her neck, with two skillfully curled wisps against her cheeks. The lines in the corners of her eyes betrayed the fact that she was about forty, but her finely honed body was that of an athlete. Her features seemed carved out of clay, a hard, handsome face that gave an impression of diffuse anger and almost haughty nobility. Zina barely glanced at the photograph Neuman showed her, busy as she was rubbing the hard skin of her feet with intizi, a traditional ointment made from animal fat, which would soothe the burns.

  “You know what happened to this young woman, don’t you?”

  “Hard to avoid the news,” she replied.

  Masks, tubes of paint, pigments, musical instruments—the dressing room was a complete mess. He saw her leopard skins, the Zulu clubs against the wall, and the traditional shields Inkatha had used on their marches.

  “Did you know Nicole Wiese?”

  “The fact that you’re here,” she retorted, “tells me you already know the answer to that question.”

  “You were seen together on Wednesday night.”

  “Is that so?”

  Sitting on the stool by the dressing table, Zina continued massaging her feet—walking on fire wasn’t so difficult, but dancing on it was another matter.

  “Is that all you can say?” Neuman went on.

  “We’re playing here for the duration of the festival. Nicole came up to me at the bar after the show. We had a drink. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Was Nicole on her own when she approached you?”

  “I think so. I didn’t notice.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “That I was great.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  She looked up and gave a wicked smile. “You’re a cop. You can’t imagine the kind of aura a person can have onstage.”

  Whether this was irony or venom, she was in her element. He was still trying to figure her out.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  “Nicole didn’t go home that night.”

  “I’m not her mother.”

  “No one knows where Nicole slept that night. What did you and she talk about?”

  “The show, obviously.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “We had a drink, and then I went home and went to bed.”

  “Did Nicole tell you where she was going? Who she was meeting?”

  “No.”

  “She doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on you.”

  “We didn’t have all that much to say to each other. Nicole was a nice girl, but she looked at me as
if I was made of gold. I’m used to groupies like that, it comes with the job,” she added in a neutral tone.

  “But you took the time to have a drink with her.”

  “I wasn’t going to throw it back in her face. Are you cops always like this?”

  “There are some dead bodies it’s hard to get out of your mind. Nicole’s, for example. Did you see her on Saturday night?”

  “We met briefly, after the show.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About eleven-thirty.”

  That was what the stage manager who let him backstage had told him.

  “Was Nicole on her own?”

  “When I saw her, yes. But the club was packed.” Zina crossed her legs to get off the last fragments of incrusted coal.

  “Did she seem to be in her normal state?”

  “If you mean with stars in her eyes, yes.”

  She didn’t know the half of it.

  “We discovered a tik-based drug in her body,” Neuman said. “A hard drug mostly found in the townships.”

  “I’m too old for crap like that, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she replied immediately.

  “Nicole lied to everyone: she’d stopped hanging out with young people from her social set, she’d dropped out of her classes, she went out on the sly, her parents thought she was a virgin but she was collecting sex toys, and she had intercourse with one or more unknown men.”

  Zina wasn’t the kind of person to be taken aback by any of that. “She was of age, wasn’t she?”

  There was a knock at the door, and one of the musicians came in—Joey, a thickset Zulu with a Che Guevara T-shirt and a joint in his mouth.

  “I didn’t tell you to come in,” Zina said.

  “This show is making me deaf! Are you joining us? We’re eating in the restaurant down the street.”

  “I’m coming.”

  The musician glanced cautiously at the big black man leaning against the wall, and disappeared in a cloud of acrid smoke.

  “Any more pathetic questions to ask me?” Zina said bluntly. “I’m starving.”