by Nicci French
‘When I took over Murder and Robbery,’ Zill had told her once, right back at the start, ‘I ended up with a few old white men harbouring secrets they would never give voice to, and a barrage of young black men, idealistic and passionate,but unworldly and untrained. This place is a mess. A mess of personalities, of cultures, of politics. It’s understaffed and under-resourced. I’ve attended twenty police funerals in the last year. I have a whiteboard in my office, where I construct a checklist of active cases. There are so many, I’ve had to stick pieces of paper to the wall beside the board, and start a separate, handwritten list.’
But, even though he shut himself away with his whiteboard and his wall of paper, Zill wasn’t immune to the rumours either. One evening, when they were returning along Baden-Powell, Khayelitsha rolling off into the darkness of another winter night, he said to her: ‘Do you believe what they’re saying?’
Lucinda had turned to him.
It was the first thing he’d said in days.
‘What who are saying?’
‘I overhear them in the station.’ His voice was cracked, and he smelled of cigarette smoke. He’d got into the car that morning stinking of booze too.
‘People will always talk, Ben.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened?’
‘What?’
‘That I got her killed.’
‘You didn’t get her killed.’
‘I got her killed if it was a gang that did it.’
She didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.
Yet, as the days went on, Lucinda became more and more involved in the case. Zill seemed not to trust anyone else, and refused to engage with officers he thought had been talking about him behind his back. When Moses went down with pneumonia, Zill began using Lucinda as his sounding board. He was worn and broken, but he was at least conscious of how it would look asking a photographer on secondment for her opinion on a double murder – so he kept their chats confined to the drive into, and back from, work. Inside a month, she knew the case inside out.
She knew that there were no CCTV cameras in the Zill’s housing complex, so Ben had to rely on eyewitnesses. She knew the front gates of the complex opened up on to a road with no shops on it and no other houses, so an appeal in the newspaper brought forward men and women who believed they were passing at the time the killer entered or left, or sometimes both. She knew it led nowhere. The witnesses were well-intentioned but inexact, they were confused, or they were fantasists. Zill told Lucinda that Susan had chosen the house for its location: unspoilt, surrounded by forests, with a glimpse of the sea. But its proximity to vast, uncontrolled bush, its location away from the city’s main arteries, made it porous and, worse, it made it lonely. The thing they’d loved about it, the reason they’d chosen the complex in the first place, was the weakness that exposed it.
Lucinda even went with Zill to interview the guards – two kids who had both failed police entrance exams – and realized it wouldn’t have taken much to outwit them. When one of them said he always took a cigarette break in the forest beyond the walls of the complex – because his employers banned him from smoking at the front gates – she could see 3 August playing out in front of them: the killer sat and watched the routine of the guards, and then, when one of them went out for a smoke, he made his approach, telling the remaining guard that he was Susan’s student, Cebo Bonghela. Zill asked – basically pleaded – with the guard for a better physical description, but he gave him little. Lucinda told Zill that she thought the Twitter lead would dry up too: the killer wasn’t going to draw anyone else in that way – at least not for a while. He was too careful; too calculating. Zill said they’d have to wait and see.
But she knew he thought the same.
Then, a month later, the weather began to change. The ridges of the city emerged from the mist, cloud gave way to sky, rain to sun – and, at 9 p.m., on the evening of 12 September, Lucinda received a phone call.
‘You’re the journalist, right?’ a male voice asked her.
He was English.
‘Photographer,’ Lucinda corrected him. ‘Who is this?’
‘People tell me you’ve got Zill’s ear.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Do you or don’t you?’
She looked across the office. Zill’s door was open and he was sitting in front of the whiteboard, looking at the crime scene photographs from the two murders. Next to his PC, he’d disconnected his phone, its wire snaking off the edge of the desk.
‘Yes,’ she said finally.
‘You have his ear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then tell him he needs to meet me tomorrow.’
‘Who is this?’
‘My name’s David Raker,’ the caller said. ‘I think I can help him.’
#Thursday_13_September_2007
They met in a café on Loop Street. Raker was an Englishman in his early thirties, tall and broad, dark haired and handsome, despite a week’s beard growth. He already had a pen and pad adjacent to one another on the table in front of him. The pen had the name of his newspaper written on it. As Zill approached, Raker got up and the two of them shook hands. There was a brief moment of discomfort – a silence as they both sized each other up – and then the waitress wandered over and took their order. Zill ordered a cheeseburger and a bottle of Castle; Raker a black coffee and a chicken salad.
‘I was sorry to hear about your wife,’ Raker said.
Zill eyed him and then nodded, shrugging off the jacket he’d been wearing. ‘You don’t sound like a local.’
‘I’m just passing through.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I was here for the elections in 1994. I came back in 2000 to write a story on the country, to see what had changed. They’ve asked me to do the same this year.’
‘And after that?’
‘I’m flying out to Los Angeles next week to cover the elections.’
Zill looked at the cars passing on Loop Street, sun glinting off their windows. A line of palm trees bisected the road, fronds gently snapping and twisting in the breeze.
‘Where’s your colleague?’ Raker asked.
Zill pointed further up the street, to where Lucinda was waiting in the passenger seat of his Audi. ‘You said you wanted to meet me alone.’
‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ Raker said, ‘then you can decide yourself whether you want to share it with her. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you have with her.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Raker held up a hand. ‘Nothing. Calm down.’
‘What do you want, Raker?’
‘It’s about your wife.’
Zill felt himself stiffen. ‘What about her?’
The waitress re-emerged with their drinks. Raker leaned back in his seat, pulling his pad towards him. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ she asked them.
Raker was the only one to reply: ‘That’s fine. Thank you.’
As soon as the waitress was out of earshot, Zill edged forward in his seat, arms out in front of him, hands flat to the table. ‘What about my wife?’
‘Do you know a Patricia du Toit?’
Zill frowned. ‘She lives in the same housing complex as me. So?’
‘So she works for one of my newspaper’s affiliates here in Cape Town, as a PA. They rent space in our office. Anyway, I’ve got to know her a little bit and – a month or so back – she told me her husband was currently out of work. Do you know him too?’
Zill thought of the last time he’d seen the husband. The morning Susan was killed. Du Toit had been carrying a video camera, watching Zill try to get the Polo started.
‘Zill?’ Raker said. ‘Do you know him too?’
‘Not really.’
Raker flipped open the front page of his pad. It was full of notes. When Zill tried to decipher some of it, he realized it was all in shorthand. ‘Her husband’s called Andre. Patricia told me that he’s spent the last s
ix months out of work since he was given the boot by SABC. She said he’s been unable to find anything else in TV, so – in order to help pay the bills – he’s started doing a few odd jobs in and around the complex: repairing things, fixing them, making sure the place is all up together.’ Raker paused. Zill watched him read on through his notes – before finally looking up. ‘It means he’s always around. And he was home the day your wife was killed.’
Zill tilted his head. ‘And?’
Raker shifted in his seat. He suddenly looked hesitant, as if something had disturbed him. ‘Look, for what it’s worth, I don’t call this journalism.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Raker took a deep breath. ‘When the story about your wife hit, the editor of our affiliate found out Patricia knew you. Well, knew you as a neighbour. So he started chatting to her. Before long, it became clear that she was prepared to talk about you, to talk about you both. So was her husband. They’re struggling to pay the mortgage. They saw an opportunity to make some money, the editor here saw a story. Especially as … the du Toit’s were prepared to embellish things.’
‘Embellish things?’
Raker eyed Zill. ‘Apparently there were some rumours about you and your wife having an argument, about … ’ He paused. ‘About you possibly hitting her.’
Zill grabbed Raker by the collar and pulled him across the table. Raker instantly hit back, ripping Zill’s hand away and shoving him back into his seat. Zill, teeth clenched, anger burning a hole in his chest, came forward again. ‘Are you kidding me? You’re actually trying to blackmail me, you fucking asshole?’
Raker shook his head. ‘Listen to me.’
‘I will have you arrest–’
‘Listen to me,’ Raker said, and the two of them realized the people at the tables nearest to them had all turned to watch. Raker waited for the attention to die down. ‘Try to listen to what I’m telling you. The paper wants to write a story about you being a wife-beater. One of their guys cornered your daughter in a shopping mall a few weeks back and tricked her into talking about you. They’ve got some quotes about you misremembering her childhood. You sound like you’re losing your grip, Ben.’
Zill felt a flutter of panic. ‘This can’t happen,’ he said.
Raker nodded again. Then he reached down to a bag at his feet and removed something. It was a DV tape for a video camera.
‘The du Toit’s are like everyone else,’ he said. ‘They think your wife died in some kind of gang hit. They’re scared about reprisals and, because they’re scared, they can be manipulated. The editor here knows it, I know it, you know it.’ He waved the DV tape at Zill. ‘The du Toit’s have been sitting on this footage for a month. They don’t trust the police to keep them safe, which is why they haven’t called it in. So, when my editor found out about this tape, he managed to persuade them to keep it back from the cops. He has some fanciful idea about the paper IDing the guy first.’
Zill shook his head.
‘Except the only thing that’s helping you at the moment is that they haven’t been able to find out who the killer is,’ Raker said. ‘They’re still searching. But the paper is determined to solve the case and put it on the front page of the local edition. They want to bring this guy in themselves. But what they really want to do is take a shot at the government and the police at the same time. SAPS is under-funded, it’s corrupt, it’s incapable of solving crimes. The same goes for the crooks sitting in parliament up in Pretoria. Can you imagine how much of an embarrassment it would be to them, and to you, if the media solved this crime?’
Zill frowned. ‘I don’t … ’
‘You’re the face of failure, Ben. You’re the poster child for SAPS. A violent washout who – in their eyes – is as culpable as the man who killed your wife. It’s just a matter of time before they ID him. And, when they do, you’re done.’ Raker placed the tape down between them. ‘However, without this, it’s your word against theirs.’
Zill looked from the tape to Raker.
‘Take this footage,’ Raker said. ‘Use it. Then burn it.’
He pushed the tape across the table just as their food arrived. Zill took it and set it down beside him. ‘Why are you doing this?’
Raker zipped up his bag and shuffled out, flipping open his wallet. He took out a two hundred rand note, placing it down between them.
‘I don’t know if you hit her or not,’ Raker said. ‘I hope not. I really do. But, before I came down here today, I called a couple of cops I know at the station – sources I got my claws into the last time I was out here – and asked around about you, and they told me this is the only case you care about. So, whatever it is that’s firing you – whether it’s love, or guilt, or self-loathing – we both know there’s a bigger win here: your wife, and Jo Vorster. Honestly, Ben? I don’t give a shit about you. But I sure as hell give a shit about two innocent women. And if I can do something about it, I will.’ Raker paused, looking around him and then back at Zill. ‘Whatever you decide to do for Susan, however far you decide to take it, know that I would do the same for my wife. Absolutely, without thinking. But don’t ever talk about me to anyone. Don’t ever call me. Not now, not ever.’
Raker slung his bag over his shoulder.
‘As far as you’re concerned, we never met.’
And then he headed out into the sun.
#Thursday_13_September_2007
The footage on the tape began in a different time at a different place. Andre du Toit was filming his wife and kids at Noordhoek beach, following the three of them as they chased each other, white sand kicking up behind them, the sun falling behind the ridges of Chapman’s Peak. They were dressed in winter coats and in the corner was a time stamp: 29/06/07.
After two and a half minutes, the footage snapped between scenes: from the wide open spaces of the beach at dusk to night inside the housing complex. Du Toit was at his kitchen window, across the road from Zill’s house. ‘Pat,’ du Toit said in Afrikaans, the camera struggling to focus in the lack of light. ‘Come here. They’re at it again. It’s a bad one tonight. Come.’ In the brief silence that followed, the camera picked up voices.
Zill and Susan.
It was the night of the argument.
‘What do you need that for?’ Patricia du Toit said, referring to the camera.
Her husband didn’t reply, and soon their attentions were diverted by what was going on at the house across the road, the argument getting louder, carrying out into the cool winter night, snatches of sentences instantly frozen for the camera to hear: Stop telling me you’re sorry! I’m trying to pay the bloody bond on our house! Do you even remember your daughter growing up? That’s bullshit! And then finally silence – until, four minutes later, the kitchen light came on and Susan appeared at the window.
Zill was following her.
He was apologizing.
Susan had blood on her face.
‘That bloody bastard,’ Patricia du Toit said, as her husband concentrated on zooming as close to the kitchen window as he could get. Suddenly the footage got unsteady and confusing to watch, but it didn’t stop the slow march of dread building in Zill’s stomach: by the time Andre du Toit zoomed out again, neither Zill nor Susan were in the kitchen. A couple of seconds after that, the film ended.
A crackle.
A snowfall of static.
Zill turned to look at Lucinda. She was sitting behind him in his office, the blinds closed, the door shut. ‘It’s not what it … ’
He stopped himself. It’s exactly what it looks like.
‘What the hell did you do, Ben?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘She had blood on her face.’
‘I know.’
‘She had blood on her face, Ben.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, but he wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to any more: Susan, Jo Vorster, Lucinda – in a way, he’d failed them all.
The footage started again.
&n
bsp; Du Toit was in the same position at the kitchen sink, lens fixed on the front of Zill’s house. In the corner of the screen was another date stamp: 03/08/07.
The day Susan was murdered.
Right at the edge of the shot, a man in his late twenties was coming down the road, dressed smartly in a suit. He came deeper into the complex, head facing away from the camera, looking around him. He was checking to see if he was being watched. He walked from right to left – and then, finally, disappeared from the shot.
Cut to black.
The footage kicked in again. Still 3 August. Du Toit still in the same place. Except now he was beginning a slow zoom towards the front door of Zill’s house.
It was open.
All Zill could see was the darkness inside; a huge mouth, black and ominous. He heard Lucinda’s chair whine gently behind him as she shifted position, and then she came forward, closer to the screen. As Zill sat there in the silence of his office, the darkness of that doorway felt like it was swallowing him up.
A crackle in the microphone as du Toit shifted slightly to his left. A brief burst of noise from his kids in another room. A car somewhere. On the counter, two minutes passed. Then three. Another crackle in the microphone, this time louder, disguising the noise from the children, from the car. Then a long, mournful stillness settled across the complex. Even the kids stopped making noise. As Zill watched, he could feel his hands digging into the seat; his toes curling inside his shoes; his heart pounding against his chest. Lucinda glanced at him, her face pale, a flash of fear in her eyes now too.
They knew what was coming next.
The man emerged from the house. He looked vaguely like the description they’d got from the guards – but not close enough.
Zill heard du Toit draw a long breath and on screen the image dropped slightly, as he tried to hide himself behind the ridge of the kitchen counter. In the doorway to Zill’s house, the man looked around him, checking to see if he was being watched. He wiped the back of his hand on the tail of his shirt; a tiny smear of blood just visible. Then he tucked it in, made sure his trousers were done up, and scanned his surroundings a second time. He paused for a moment on the window of du Toit’s house.