Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

52

He first used a red ribbon because it was there, in the prostitute’s hair: he picked her up in his Volkswagen Kombi in Sea Point and drove up to Signal Hill, where he strangled her after oral sex. He dumped her body, spread-eagled her arms and legs, put her in the middle of the road, his “signature,” his statement that she meant nothing to him, that he despised her and her kind. And when the media focused on the red ribbon, he bought a roll of it at Hymie Sachs in Goodwood and either strangled or decorated the next sixteen of his victims with a meter of red ribbon. He broke the ribbon-strangulation habit with the thirteenth and used his hands, but the red strip was still tied around the necks of his spread-eagled victims. His mocking message to Nagel and me. His mark of superiority. His relishing of the media spotlight.

He sent a letter to the Cape Times after the third murder, when they had described him as the Red Ribbon Murderer. “I AM NOT A MURDERER. I AM AN EXECUTIONUR,” he had written, bad spelling and all, in block letters. And then he became the Executioner, the criminal whom I hated more than anyone else in my whole career because he kept Nagel in the Cape and me away from Nonnie.

The hunt placed enormous tension on my partnership with Nagel. The pressure, because of media interest, was unbearable toward the end, when he so unexpectedly uttered his warning about his wife.

In all the previous cases that we had investigated, the competition between us had been amiable, always on the safe side of the border drawn by mutual respect. But it seemed as if Nagel used Red Ribbon as a measure of who deserved Nonnie. Like those head-butting rams that have to prove their genetic superiority in order to mate with the ewe, he tackled me in my one area of speciality, the serial killer, and questioned and refuted my every profile, every possible statement, every conceivable judgment, forecast, and trapping method.

With the first victim I had already forecast that he would kill again: all the signs were there.

“Bullshit,” said Nagel.

But with the second it was he who shared his “theory” with the media: “We have a serial killer here. Ever since the first murder I have had no doubt about it.”

As the death toll grew, as the media hysteria increased, as the pressure from the commanding officer and top structure became stronger, the friendship and professional partnership between Nagel and me crumbled. His criticism of me and his passing remarks became personal, disparaging, cutting. The one big difference between us, the fact that I could never get used to the heartlessness and the violence of murder scenes, the fact that I was constantly shocked and upset, evoked no sympathy, merely scorn, during the months when I vomited again or, with a pale face and shaking hands, tried not to. He deliberately emphasized his own icy approach, the detachment he had built up over the years. But now the gloves were off. “You don’t have the heart of a policeman,” he said, with so much disapproval that it cut me like a knife. It was only my conscience, my guilty, guilty conscience, and the quiet knowledge that Nonnie was mine, not his, that prevented an all-or-nothing confrontation, that allowed me to give way, even when I knew with absolute certainty that he was wrong about the methods needed to stop Red Ribbon.

I’ll always believe that we could have caught the murderer sooner if it hadn’t been for the dispute between us. The opportunities slid past one by one while Nagel fought for dominance.

And eventually he solved the case with forensic evidence from tire tracks and the fiber of the camper’s carpets. “Not your psychological shit,” he’d said on that last evening when we were on our way to make the arrest.

Lord, and that last evening had started so well.