Dead Before Dying

“Do you possess a Mauser Broomhandle, Mr. Nienaber?”

“No. You can’t possibly imagine . . . What’s going on here?”

“Can you explain why your car, a dark red five series BMW with the registration CY 77 was seen this morning in front of the house of Alexander MacDonald, the latest victim of the Mauser murderer?”

Nienaber sat up straight, almost rose. “How would I . . . No. You’re cops. You’ve heard of false number plates. I told you I was in the office just after six this morning.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“That I was there? No, that’s why I go in so early. So that I can be alone and get work done.”

“So you were at work at six o’clock?”

“Yes.” Relief. These people were going to believe him.

“And it’s not near Hout Bay?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then you have nothing to be concerned about, Mr. Nienaber,” Joubert said and saw the man opposite him relax in his chair.

“That’s right,” said Nienaber.

“But we would like to ask you a favor.”

“Yes?” Suspicious.

Joubert gave the truth a slight twist. “It would help us a great deal if we could clear up the matter beyond any doubt. We believe you weren’t near Hout Bay today. But we have an eyewitness who says that he saw your BMW and a man who looked very familiar. Won’t you please accompany us to Murder and Robbery? We have what we call an identification room. We get a group of people together who have the same build and coloring as you have. And the eyewitness must identify the person whom he thinks he saw. As you’re innocent . . .”

Oliver Nienaber had turned pale.

He sat staring at them for a long time.

“I think I must phone my attorney.”

28.

Oliver Nienaber lied to his wife before he accompanied the detectives to the Murder and Robbery building on Kasselsvlei Road. He told her the police needed his help with a case. “Nothing to be worried about.”

They waited in silence for Nienaber’s attorney to arrive, the three of them at a table on which cigarette burns were the only evidence of previous conversations.

The attorney came rushing in, a very short man in his forties, with a very large head, thick lips, and virtually no jaw. He protested in the habitual manner of practitioners of his profession about the treatment his client was receiving, but Nienaber shut him up. “I’m here of my own free will, Phil.”

The attorney sat down, unclipped the clasps of his expensive attaché case, took out a writing pad, removed a pen from his coat, and looked up at Joubert.

“You may carry on,” the attorney said, as if it now carried his official approval.

Joubert said nothing, merely raised his eyebrows.

“I was at Alexander MacDonald’s house this morning, Phil. The guy who was shot by the Mauser murderer.”

“Sheesh,” the attorney said and pursed his fleshy lips.

Nienaber looked at Joubert. “He phoned me. Last week. On Tuesday or Wednesday. I can’t remember. He wanted to know whether I didn't want to open a salon in Hout Bay. He had money to invest. He wanted to buy a building on the main road, something like that. But he was looking for tenants first . . .”

“MacDonald?” Petersen asked.

“Yes,” said Nienaber. “I didn't really . . .”

“Alexander MacDonald? The fisherman? Big redhead?” There was an edge to Petersen’s voice.

“Well . . . I didn't know what he looked like . . .”

“The man was in debt to the tune of a hundred thousand rand and he phones you out of the blue to ask whether you want to open a salon in a building he doesn’t even possess?”

“If you’ll give me a chance to finish my story, Lieutenant,” said Nienaber, the “Lieutenant” heavily loaded with sarcasm.

“We’re listening,” said Joubert.

“I told the man I didn't do business like that. I mean, I’d never even heard of him. And in any case I didn't want to establish a salon in Hout Bay. So I said no. But he phoned again the following day. Same voice. English, with an accent. You know, like that guy from Wales who does the Four Nations rugby commentary . . .”

“Five,” the attorney said.

“Huh?” said Nienaber.

“Five Nations.”

“No,” said Nienaber. He held up his fingers, counted. “England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.”

“Sheesh, Oliver, you work too hard. Add France to that lot.”

“But France . . .”

“Alexander MacDonald,” said Joubert and leaned forward, his shoulders broad across the table, his head lowered as if he was going to rush them, his voice a growl like a large dog’s.

“I’m sorry. Then he phoned again. The next day. Same story. Didn't I want to open a salon if he bought the building.”

“Which building?” Joubert asked.

“I don’t know which building.”

“He must’ve mentioned the name of the building.”

“He did. Marine Plaza, something like that. I can’t remember. I didn't even write it down. I don’t do business like that.”

“And then?”

“Then I said no again. Then I heard nothing more from him. Until last night. Then he phoned me at home. Same old story, the building and the salon. Then I said to him: ‘Listen, mister, I’m not interested in your building, not tonight nor any other time.’ Then he said: ‘I’m going to crush your balls. Dutchman.’ Just like that. And other stuff. ‘I’m going to cut off your . . . your . . . penis and stuff it in your ear.’ Just like that . . .”

“Wait a minute, just wait a minute,” Petersen said, angrily. “Here we’ve got a sailor, a man who had been locked up for assault and malicious damage to property, who speaks about ‘penis?’ ”

“Listen, Lieutenant, I can’t remember precisely which words . . .”

“Gentlemen,” the attorney said placatingly. “Gentlemen, you can’t expect my client to remember the

ipsissima verba

of a telephone conversation that happened twenty-four hours ago while you interrogate him like a criminal here. He’s under pressure. He’s a human being. Please.”

“He’s a liar,” said Petersen, got up and turned his back on Nienaber.

“Very well. He used filthy language. Is it necessary for me to repeat the filth?”

Nienaber’s voice formed a halo.

“Do your best,” said Joubert and leaned back, suspecting that Petersen wanted to play the tough-cop role.

“In any case, he made a great many filthy remarks and I put down the phone. Then, half an hour later, he phoned again. Said he was sorry he’d carried on in that way. Wouldn't I just have a look. It was a fantastic building. And he would charge me an extremely cheap rental. He was very convincing. Then I thought it would be easier to get rid of him in the cheapest possible way. Have a look at the building. I mean, it was cheaper than changing my telephone number. But then I told him I didn't have the time. And he said what about early in the morning. Before work. Then I said it was okay, what about tomorrow morning, because I wanted to be shot of the whole thing. I simply wanted to get rid of the man. Then we decided on six in the morning. At his home. And we could use my car. He said his car stank too much. Of fish. So I drove there this morning. But I was late because I couldn't find the address at first. And when I got there he was lying in the doorway and he’d been shot right in the . . . the . . .”

“Penis,” said Petersen and turned back to Nienaber.

“That’s right. In the penis.”

“Sheesh,” said the attorney.

“You’re lying,” Petersen said.

“You can’t say that,” said Nienaber.

“I can say exactly what I like.”

“He can’t say that.” Nienaber turned to the short attorney.

“I insist that you treat my client with respect.”

“With respect, Oliver, you’re lying.”

“He can’t say that,” Oliver complained and looked at Joubert, who was leaning back in his chair, a sneer on his face. The scene in front of him was faintly unreal.

But Petersen was angry now. Angry, because Nienaber had ignored him in the first place and then sarcastically called him “Lieutenant.” Angry, because the man was rich and superior and blatantly lying.

“I can, Ollie. You’re lying. And I’m going to catch you out. I’m going to lock you up. And throw away the key. And what’s going to happen to your pretty little wife then, Ollie? Huh? While you’re behind bars, Ollie? Who’s going to scratch her when she itches, Ollie?”

“Leon,” Joubert said warningly, because he suddenly recognized the tone of voice. He remembered the Sunday afternoon in Mitchells Plain when Petersen had a go at the young gang member who was also lying, smashed his face. Petersen had a temper, a bad one . . .

“Fuckin’ rich asshole whitey is lying, Captain,” Petersen said, the whites of his eyes huge. His hands were shaking.

“No, no,” said the attorney and waved an admonishing finger.

Nienaber was halfway out of his chair, his face contorted. “Hotnot,” he said, the charm of the newspaper advertisements unimaginable. “You hotnot.”

Petersen jumped over the attorney and hit Nienaber on the cheek in one, smooth, quick movement. Nienaber fell backward in his chair. His head hit the bare tiled floor with a dull thud and then he rolled out of the chair.

Joubert had jumped up even before the blow fell but he was too late. Now he grabbed Petersen’s shirt and jerked him back while the attorney dived down to his client and spread protective arms over him. “No, no, no,” he shouted, his big head tucked into his shoulders as if he expected more blows.

Petersen let out his breath and relaxed in Joubert’s grip. “Never mind, Captain. I won’t hit him again.”

“Get an ambulance,” said the attorney from the floor, his arms still extended to ward off another attack. “I think he’s dead.”

Joubert kneeled next to them. “Let me see.” The attorney was reluctant but moved away. Joubert saw that Nienaber’s cheekbone was already swollen and discolored. But his chest moved up and down in a perfectly healthy manner. “There’s nothing wrong with him,” said Joubert. “Just a bit faint.”

“Get an ambulance,” said the attorney. “And get your commanding officer.”

Joubert knew what that meant. And he knew what the upshot would be. De Wit would give the case to Gerry. SALON BARON SUES STATE FOR MILLIONS. De Wit would have to give the case to Gerry. He would have no choice. Joubert sighed and his shoulders sagged. Petersen saw it and he grasped something of the attitude.

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

“Will someone get an ambulance! Now!” the attorney pleaded and ordered at the same time.

“It’s not necessary,” said a voice from the floor.

All three stared at Nienaber, who slowly sat up.

“We’re going to sue them, Oliver,” said the attorney. “We’ll strip them of everything. He . . .” A finger pointed at Leon Petersen. “He’ll never find another job in this country.”

“No,” Nienaber said.

Silence.

“Drop it,” Nienaber said. “Let’s just drop the whole thing.” He got up with difficulty, his right hand touching the bruised cheek. The attorney immediately rushed to his assistance, pulled Nienaber upright, helped him to straighten the chair, carefully helped him to sit down.

“They don’t stand a chance, Oliver. It was brutality in its worst form. Under the new government . . . They’ll both be looking for work.”

“I’m prepared to drop it, Phil.”

“Sheesh, Oliver.”

Nienaber looked up at Joubert. “Are you prepared to leave it?”

Joubert said nothing. His mind was at a standstill, he was holding his breath. He merely stared at Nienaber. Petersen stared at the wall.

“Let’s go, Phil,” said Nienaber and he walked to the door. The attorney grabbed his attaché case, his notepad, and his pen and hurried after him on his short legs. Nienaber opened the door and walked out. The attorney followed him, slamming the door behind him.

Petersen lifted his head slightly and massaged the hand that had hit Nienaber. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

“It’s okay, Leon.” Joubert sat down at the table and took out his cigarettes. He lit one and blew a thin plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

“It’s okay. I also think the fuckin’ rich asshole whitey is lying.”

29.

They drank coffee in the tearoom at half past eight on the Monday night. They sat next to each other, elbows resting on their knees, both hands curved around the coffee mugs. Rows of cheap steel-and-plastic chairs were stacked against the wall waiting for the seating rush in the morning.

“I'’ve fucked up everything, Captain.”

Joubert sighed. “That’s true, Leon.” He swallowed a mouthful of the coffee, which had been brewing in the big urn for too long. “You’ll have to do something about that temper of yours.”

“I know.”

Petersen stared at the contents of his mug, the muddy color, the steam that formed a transparent wisp. “God, Captain, there’s so much trouble. My wife . . .”

His head dropped. He sighed deeply.

“What is it, Leon?”

He looked up at the ceiling as if searching for help. He blew out his breath slowly.

“My wife wants to leave me.”

Joubert did not say anything.

“She says I’m never at home. She says my daughters need a father. She says a stepfather in the house is better than an own father who they never see. And she says in any case there’s never any money for anything. You work like an executive and get paid like a gardener, she says. Can I tell you something, Captain? Something private?” He looked at Joubert and carried on before Joubert could reply. “Do you know when my wife and I last . . . You know . . . Months. And now Bart de Wit tells me I must spark because blacks must get up the ladder, show it’s not just affirmative action. Now, suddenly, I’m a black. Not colored anymore, not Cape Malay or brown, but black. Instant reclassification. And I must spark. Now I ask you, Captain, what else do I do? I'’ve been sparking for fucking years but my pay slip is still waiting for affirmative action. And not just mine. All of ours. White, black, brown. All the troubles, all the murders and deaths and rapes, all the long hours with fuckers shooting at you and rich whiteys who act as if you’re not there and your boss who says you must spark and the union which says don’t worry, things will be fine, and a wife who says she wants to leave you . . .”

Petersen took a large swallow of his coffee.

He sighed again. Then there was silence.

“We’ll get him, Leon.”

“No, Captain, I'’ve fucked it all up.”

“Temporary setback.”

“What now, Captain?”

They heard hurried footsteps in the passage.

“I’m going to have him followed.”

They looked expectantly at the door. A sergeant peered round it. “Captain, Gerrit Snyman on the phone. He’s holding on. You can take it in my office, Captain.”

Joubert put down the mug on the big table in the center of the tearoom and hurried out with him. In the sergeant’s office he picked up the receiver. “Gerrit?”

“I'’ve found Eleanor Davids, Captain.” Excited.

“Who?”

“The woman who accused MacDonald of rape.”

Joubert struggled to remember. Snyman interpreted the silence correctly.

“Two years ago, Captain. She withdrew the charge.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“She’s a prostitute, Captain.”

“Oh?”

A little more interest.

“And she owns a Smith & Wesson Escort, Captain.”

His heart jumped.

“She says she has an alibi, Captain, but I think she’s lying.”

“We’re on our way, Gerrit.”

“Great, Captain.” Then Snyman spoke more softly, confidentially. “She’s a pretty strange lady, Captain. Colored, but the hair has been dyed pure white and the clothes are all black. High boots, pants, shirt. A cloak, even . . .”

This long, black cloak, like Batman. And black boots and black hair. The angel of death.

Hercules Jantjies. The vagrant. In the Newlands police station. Joubert remembered it.

Ipsissima verba,

as the thick-lipped attorney would say.

Black hair.

“Gerrit,” he said hurriedly.

“Captain?”

“You said her hair is white.”

“As snow, Captain.”

Perhaps Hercules Jantjies had grasped a part of the truth despite his meths haze.

“Where are you?”

“Charlie’s Little Devils Escort Agency, Captain. Galleon Parade, Hout Bay.”

“Stay right there. Leon and I are on our way.”

The little devils were painted on the window facing the street, two of them, large and red, with long lithe legs, slender waists and big, voluptuous breasts. Above the roguish buttocks a tail grew, ending in an arrow point. Under the long, blond hair there were two little horns. Above them, the name: CHARLIE’S LITTLE DEVILS..

Snyman perched self-consciously on a slightly worn armchair in the reception area, as if he wanted to leave in a hurry. Joubert and Petersen shared the couch. It matched the other chair in which Eleanor Davids sat. Her legs, encased in black leather trousers, hung over the arm of the chair. She wore black boots that reached to her knees. A long cigarette dangled from the black lips. At the back of the reception area the owner sat, a young Greek with long curly hair and an unbuttoned shirt. He was concentrating on a paperback in front of him but Joubert knew his ears were pricked.

Eleanor denied having known of any of the other Mauser victims.

“Only MacDonald. And I say good riddance.”

“The rape?” Petersen asked.

“He was a flippin’ animal, that one, brother,” she said and took the cigarette out of her mouth with fingers ending in long, black-painted nails. She spoke slowly, intimately, unworried.

“What happened?”

“He phoned for a girl. One night, over a weekend. Friday. Saturday. Said he wanted brown bread. Then Mike took me there in the van. Mike went in with me, to get the fee and to suss out the place. Then he left. And then MacDonald took me, brother, and all he wanted was love. I was still trying to hold him off but he grabbed me here and grabbed me there and tore my clothes, brother, and he forced himself on me. That’s not how I do business, brother. We must negotiate first. It’s not just grab and fuck. But he was an animal, bro’, he said he’d paid and he wanted it right away.”

“And then?”

“Then he took what he wanted, brother.”

They waited in silence. She took a deep drag on the cigarette, killed it half-smoked in an overflowing ashtray with calm, deliberate movements.

“I phoned Mike when he’d finished, told him he had to take me to the charge office first. Mike didn't want to but I insisted. Then I laid the charge.”

“You withdrew it later.”

“Mike gave me a bonus.”

“And then you shot him on Saturday, sister.”

She smiled slowly, her teeth uneven and yellow. “You’re cute, brother. You must come for a freebie.”

“You possess a firearm.”

“Of course, bro’. In my line of business . . .”

“May we see it?”

She stood up slowly, swung the black cloak theatrically over her shoulder.

“What’s with the cloak, sister?”

“One must give the product a unique package, brother.”

She walked with precise steps on her high heels to a door next to the reception desk. She opened it, left it open. The three detectives looked into another room, where four women were seated, one with a magazine, one doing her makeup, two chatting. Then Eleanor Davids closed the door, a handbag in her hand. She took out a pistol, small and black, and gave it to Petersen.

Petersen turned it in his hands. “It’s an Escort, sister.”

She sat down again, lit another cigarette, shrugged her shoulders.

“So am I, bro’, so am I.”

“This is the Mauser murderer’s other pistol.”

“It’s not me, brother. I’m bad but I don’t kill.”

“You’ll have to come with us, sister.”

“I know my rights. I have an alibi.”

“You think the magistrate will take your word?”

“No, but he’ll probably take the word of a policeman.”

“Sister?”

“Ask Hatting, the desk sergeant at the Bay’s station, which evening of the week he gets his brown bread, brother. On the house. Sunset to sunup.”

Hatting was a middle-aged man, balding, which he tried to disguise by combing the few remaining hairs over the bald patch. He was in civvies because the station commander had called him in.

“I’m going to lose my pension,” Hatting said and he looked old and frightened and defenseless.

“It won’t go any further, Sergeant,” said Joubert and looked at Petersen, Snyman, and the Hout Bay OC. They all gave affirmative nods.

“My wife is deceased, Captain. It’s been twelve years.” No one said anything. Hatting rubbed his hands and stared at the floor, his face contorted with regret. “The children go back to boarding school on Sunday afternoons, Captain . . . dear God, the Sunday evenings.”

They sat in an uncomfortable silence. But Joubert had to make sure.

“Sergeant, are you very sure that Eleanor Davids was with you until after seven on Monday morning?”

Hatting merely nodded. He couldn't look at Joubert.

“The whole night?”

Nod. Then silence again.

“Never again,” said Hatting, and he wept.

Griessel’s eyes were deeply sunken into their dark sockets, his skin the bluish yellow of the very ill, but he listened to Joubert’s every word, craving normality, the routine, the life outside. Joubert sat on one iron bed, on a bare mattress. Benny sat on the other, his legs drawn up. The sanatorium was quiet, a mausoleum.

“Snyman will follow Nienaber, from tomorrow morning. With Louw relieving him in the evening. That’s all we’ve got, Benny.”

“Can’t be him.” Griessel’s voice was vague, as if he were speaking from a distance.

“I don’t know, Benny. Hairdresser. I was . . .” He had to think when he had been at Anne Boshoff’s. Today? It felt like yesterday or the day before. He remembered her and his discomfort and he wanted to laugh at himself and tell Benny Griessel about her, but he merely gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “I saw a beautiful woman today, Benny. A doctor in criminology. She said that the murderer could be queer. Nienaber is married but he’s a hairdresser . . .”

“My nephew is a hairdresser in Danielskuil and he’s screwed every farmer’s wife in the area.”

“It’s all I'’ve got, Benny. Because Nienaber is lying. I don’t know why or about what, but he’s lying. He’s slippery, Benny. As an eel.”

Joubert looked at his watch. It was half past ten. The nurse had said only fifteen minutes.

“I want to come and help, Captain.”

“Come when you’re ready.” He got up. “’Night, Benny.”

Joubert walked down the ward. His footsteps echoed off the walls. He had almost reached the double doors when he heard Griessel calling him.

“Mat.”

Joubert stopped, looked back.

“Why don’t you ask her out? The doctor.”

He stood in the semidark and looked at the figure on the bed.

“Maybe, Benny. Sleep well.”

A block away from his house he stopped at a stop sign, his window open so that the smoke of the Special Mild could waft outside. He heard the big motorcycle before it stopped next to him. The driver, in a black safety helmet, looked straight ahead, a passenger clung to him.

Joubert looked up, curious, instinctively, and saw the eyes of Yvonne Stoffberg through the narrow opening of her helmet.

Then the motorcycle revved up and drew away from his car. Joubert’s mind put two and two together. Ginger Pretorius’s Kawasaki, just before midnight on a Monday night. Yvonne Stoffberg’s eyes.

There was something in the way she looked at him, something in the frown, the sudden manner in which she looked away. Perhaps it was only his imagination, he thought, when he drove away from the stop sign. But it seemed as if she was slightly self-conscious. “I can do better than Ginger Pretorius,” is what he thought she wanted to say.

And then he knew he wasn'’t going to follow Griessel’s advice. He wasn'’t going to ask Anne Boshoff out.

Because he wanted Dr. Hanna Nortier.

30.

Margaret Wallace woke just after three in the morning with the realization that Tuesday was garbage removal day— and that she would have to lug the garbage bags from the kitchen door to the front gate on her own. Early. They usually came before six. Last week her brother-in-law had still been there to lend a hand but she was alone now. Without Jimmy. Tomorrow it would be two weeks. And there were so many things to do. A thousand things. Too many.

She got up, put on her dressing gown, and went to the kitchen, knowing that sleep would elude her. She switched on the kettle, unlocked the back door, took the garbage bin by the handle, and manhandled it to the gate, a long and tiring job, by the light offered by the garden lights and the streetlamps. But it gave her satisfaction. In future she would have to be self-sufficient. Jimmy would’ve expected it of her. She owed it to the children.

At the front gate, she removed the garbage bags from the bin, placed them on the pavement, dusted her hands, and turned back to the kitchen, dragging the empty bin.

She remembered Ferdy Ferreira.

Without warning, without encouragement, her memory suddenly released the information, between the gate and the kitchen.

The man on the television. The third victim. Ferdy Ferreira. She remembered where she had seen the face before. He’d been here, in their house, one evening. She was busy in the kitchen when the doorbell had rung. Jimmy had answered it. They had gone to the study without her seeing the man. But when he left, she thought, I saw him hobbling through the living room, slightly lame. He had looked up and met her eyes, a man with a sad face, like a large, faithful dog’s. But he hadn't greeted her, simply kept on walking to the door.

A long time ago. Four years? Five?

She had asked Jimmy who the man was. “Just business, my sweet.” Some or other explanation, vague, lost in the mists of so many people who had come and gone, traipsing through her house, Jimmy’s business acquaintances, instant friends, cricket people . . .

But Ferdy Ferreira had been there. And later today she would phone the big policeman with the unseeing eyes and tell him.

Perhaps it would help.

He was already swimming just after six, knowing that it was going to be a long day, determined to make an early start. He counted the first two lengths and then became enmeshed in a search for solutions. What did he have to do today? Oliver Nienaber. Suspect number one. Gerrit Snyman was probably parked in front of the expensive house by now, ready for the first round of follow-the-hairdresser. The autopsy. Find out whether the pathologist had been able to establish the time of death. That might pin Nienaber down . . . despite Petersen’s blow. Talk to the previous victims’ relatives about MacDonald. Who had known him? Where? The bank robber. Ask Brigadier Brown whether people had been deployed in all Premier Bank’s branches by now.

Two more days before he would see Hanna Nortier again, he thought. Only two days.

He wanted to ask her out. Where to? “Drink in the canteen, Doc?”

Ha.

Dinner by candlelight in a good restaurant, one of those in Sea Point with the heavy curtains, perhaps one of the new ones in the Waterfront that everyone was talking about? No. Not for a first time— it would be too intimate, too much him and her.

Flick? Perhaps. What? “Seen

Rocky VII,

Doc?” Maybe one of those European numbers with the subtitles that showed in the southern suburbs? No. Too many bare breasts and blatant sex. She would get a wrong impression about him.

Joubert suddenly realized that he had subconsciously kept count and that he had completed eight lengths. And he wanted more.

He couldn't believe it. Eight lengths. How about that? Eight fucking lengths.

Who needed to give up smoking? He turned the way he’d been taught all those years ago, in one smooth movement, his feet kicking against the swimming pool wall. He slid through the water until his big body broke surface and his arms stretched and his head turned to inhale and he tilted his chest for the next stroke upward and the next. Left, right, left, breathe, right, left, right, breathe . . .

He swam another four lengths, rhythmically, easily, while his heart beat deep in his chest, a thrust. His satisfaction grew until he knew after the twelfth that it had been great and it was enough. He hauled himself effortlessly out of the pool and, dripping water, walked to the changing room. The long room was still empty at that time and the temptation was suddenly overwhelming. He bellowed:

“BAAA!”

One sound, explosive, an echo in the building. The shout that resounded in his ears was an embarrassment, but the feeling enfolded him like a cloak even when he got out of the car at the Hout Bay police station, passed the voices of the journalists, and walked up the stairs and through the big wooden door.

But it melted away when he saw the district commissioner, the chief of detectives, and de Wit.

They said good morning, the eyes of the three senior officers fixed hopefully on Joubert. His own revealed nothing. They walked to the ops rooms and closed the door.

Joubert told them everything— up to the point of Petersen’s blow. And he began to lie. “We had to let him go.”

“You had to let him go,” the district commissioner said without intonation, stunned.

“We thought about the reputation of the force, General, in these difficult times. Our image is at stake. Oliver Nienaber is a well-known personality. If we lock him up, we must have sufficient evidence. And we haven’t. One witness who saw him at the scene of the murder. The pathologist hasn’t even established whether MacDonald was murdered at more or less that time. We have no proof that Nienaber owns a Mauser. His story . . . It might well be true. But our image, General. If we charge the wrong man now . . .” Joubert stressed the image, knew that it was the one strong point in his argument.

“Ye-e-es,” the General said thoughtfully.

“But I have a team following Nienaber, General.”

“What do we tell the press?” the Brigadier asked. “After last night’s drama at the news conference they’re like hyenas who’ve smelled blood.

Die Burger

even says someone might well be charged today. Where do they get hold of such nonsense?”

Silence fell in the room.

“Don’t we have anything else, Captain?” the General asked but knew the answer.

“We have a great deal of follow-up work to do today, General. It might produce something.”

“We have to sound positive in front of the media. I’ll say we’ve had a breakthrough and are following up new leads now. That’s virtually the truth.”

“The medium,” said de Wit, making his first contribution. The others stared at him. “She’s arriving tonight. Madame Jocelyn Lowe.”

“We can’t be the ones to tell the press, Bart.” The Brigadier sounded irritated.

“I know, Brigadier. Nor will we. The Madame has a press agent. And the press agent said she was sending faxes to the local newspapers this morning. From London.” De Wit looked at his watch. “I promise you, our lack of success won’t be the main copy this afternoon.”

“I hope you’re right, Bart,” the General said. “Let’s go and speak to the vultures.”

While the General spoke to the media, Joubert stood to one side. He listened but his thoughts were still concentrated on the things that had to be done. Here and there he caught press questions: “When is an arrest going to be made?” “Is there a connection between the murders and the bank robberies?” The usual stuff. And then a new one. “General, have you heard that the so-called field marshal of the Army of the New Afrikaner Boer Republic said that the Mauser was a voice calling the Afrikaners to the service of their nation?”

“No,” said the General.

The reporter paged back in his notebook. “I quote: ‘The Mauser is the voice of our forefathers, the echo of their blood, spilt for freedom in two wars against overwhelming odds. It is a trumpet call for the uprising of the nation, a war cry from a forgotten era when Afrikaner pride was still pure and true.’ ”

The whole press group was silent. So was the General. Joubert looked at his shoes, which shone in the sharp sunlight.

“I’ll ask Captain Joubert to answer that,” said the General.

Joubert looked at the expectant faces, speechless for a moment. His panic grabbed at words, selected, discarded, chose others, until he started to speak, carefully. “We cannot summarily exclude any motive for the murders. To be frank, we investigated political motives from the start. But I have to tell you that there has been no reason up to now to believe that any political groups are directly or indirectly involved in this.”

“But you don’t discount it altogether?” asked a radio reporter, the microphone extended.

“We don’t discount

anything

at this stage.”

The group realized that the impromptu news conference was over and began dispersing. The television teams packed up their equipment, photographers unscrewed their flashlights. Joubert walked up the steps, back to the ops room. He had to get hold of the pathologist.

Professor Pagel, the pathologist, complained about O’Grady. “The man has no respect for death, Captain. I would prefer you to be present in future. I find his kind of gallows humor unprofessional.”

Joubert mumbled an apology, then asked about the time of MacDonald’s death.

“It’s difficult, Captain. You know I can’t give an exact time.” Always the academic carefulness, honed by a thousand cases as witness for the state. “But it looks like six o’clock, with a sixty-minute margin either way.” Then he began explaining what he ascribed it to. Joubert was saved by a voice from the charge office shouting his name. He excused himself and trotted off. The constable held out a receiver. He took it.

“Joubert.”

“Captain, this is Margaret Wallace.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Wallace.”

“Captain, I don’t know whether this is going to help you at all, but I think Jimmy knew one of the victims.”

He heard her using the past tense and knew she had passed through the Portal of Night and now knew the texture of the landscape on the other side.

“MacDonald?” he asked.

“No. The other one. From Melkbos. Ferreira, I think.”

And suddenly Joubert’s heart beat faster, because this was the first probable link. Along with Oliver Nienaber’s lie, the first sign of a breakthrough. “Where are you?”

“At home.”

“I’m on my way.”

Margaret Wallace invited him to a breakfast nook at the big swimming pool behind the house and made him sit down while she went to make tea. Then she came back with a pretty tray with porcelain cups and saucers and a banana loaf, which was freshly cut and spread. She put it down on the white PVC table. “Jimmy loved banana loaf, you know. But I stopped making it. I don’t know why. It’s just one of those things. Life moves on, past things like banana loaf. With the kids growing up, you start worrying about their favorite foods, their needs.”

She poured the tea. Joubert heard the birds in the trees, the fluid whispering from pot to cup, saw her slender hands with the delicate freckles, the wedding ring still on her left hand.

“And then yesterday I wanted to make banana loaf. Isn’t it strange?”

He looked at her, saw her looking at him with her mismatched eyes, but he didn't feel like replying.

“Would you like some?”

He nodded but immediately added guiltily: “I’m on a diet.”

She smiled. Her teeth were white and even and he saw that she had a pretty mouth. “You? Do you really need it?”

“Yes.”

“What does your wife say?” Still amused.

“I’m not married.” And then for no rhyme or reason: “My wife is dead.”

“I’m so sorry.” There was a silence that caused the sun to darken and drowned out the garden sounds, to lie on the table between them like a tangible divide. Suddenly they were partners, buddies who knew the road up to here but didn't want to meet each other’s eyes, too frightened that the other would cause the pain to return.

In silence they poured milk, added sugar, stirred the tea with tinkling sounds. She told him about Ferdy’s visit, but her eyes were on the cup and saucer, her voice flat. He wondered how good her memory was, after four or five years, until she mentioned the visitor’s limping walk.

“He had polio.”

“Oh.”

He asked her whether Ferdy Ferreira had ever been there again. If there was nothing else she could recall. If she had ever heard of Alexander MacDonald. All her replies were in the negative. He quickly swallowed his tea. Then he asked her for a photograph of the late James J. Wallace. “A recent one, if possible. Please.”

“Why?”

“To show the relatives of the other victims.”

“You think it means something? That Ferdy Ferreira was here?”

“I want to find out.”

She was away for a while, then came back with a photo, gave it to him without looking at it. He hurriedly stuffed it into his pocket and excused himself. She walked to the door with him and smiled when she said good-bye, but the gesture was meaningless.

Uncle Zatopek Scholtz didn't like the Tygerberg shopping center. He didn't like the American riverboat theme in the big atrium, he didn't like the crowds, the loud music, and the smell of instant food. He wanted to go back to his farm beyond Malmesbury, but his wife had insisted that he stop there on his way back from the auction because Woolworth’s was having a sale of underwear and their bras were the only ones she could wear.

That’s why Uncle Zato, as everyone called him, was sitting in the Nissan truck in the parking lot until he remembered that he didn't have more than two or three rand in cash on him. He had to put in gasoline and buy tobacco for one of the farmhands.

Uncle Zato took his Premier checkbook out of the glove compartment, got out, carefully locked the truck, straightened his jacket, and walked to the shopping center. He knew there was a branch there. He took his time, unhurried— a sixty-five-year-old man in a tweed jacket, a short-sleeved blue shirt, beige shorts, long beige socks, and brown Grasshoppers. He walked past the rows of cars, through the automatic doors to the center’s banking area, and went to the Premier branch. He opened his checkbook at a desk, wrote out a check, and joined a queue, moving forward until his turn came.

He slid the check under the glass and looked up at the very young teller with her long black hair and her sulky mouth.

“Give it in twenty-rand notes, sweetheart,” he said and put his hand in the pocket of the tweed jacket to take out his wallet.

The teller only heard the last word and saw the movement that unbuttoned the jacket and the man’s hand moving inside it.

She kicked the alarm button with a panicky foot and screamed.

Constable Vusi Khumalo was caught unawares. He was in civilian dress, standing at the window of the bank, staring outside, where a pretty black woman was mopping the floor of the shopping center. Then he heard the scream and his hand went to his belt and he yanked out the Z88, swung round, saw the teller and the man with his hand inside his jacket.

Khumalo was a good cop. He had had his baptism of fire in the townships of Cape Town in the stormy days of 1994 and in the past month had successfully passed his sergeant’s examination. And the book said spread your weight on two legs set wide apart, extend the pistol in front of you with both hands, eye behind the gunsight, and shout in a loud, commanding voice. Get respect, let them know who’s in control.

“Don’t move or I shoot.” His voice rose above the shrilling of the alarm and the terrified screams of the onlookers, his weapon aimed at Uncle Zato’s head.

The innocence of the Malmesbury farmer was conclusive. If Uncle Zato was a bank robber he would undoubtedly have stood still, immobile so that there could be no suspicion about his intentions.

But he’d had a fright, turned round quickly, saw the black man with the pistol, and instinctively wanted to hold his wallet in his hands, keeping it safe.

Uncle Zato pulled his wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

Khumalo moved the pistol a few centimeters and pulled the trigger, dead certain that the man with the jacket wanted to take out a firearm.

The 9 mm round ripped through Uncle Zato’s shoulder, broke the clavicle, and tore the subclavicle artery. He fell back against the counter, his blood spouting in a thick stream against the wood paneling. He had two minutes to live before too much of his life’s fluid pumped out onto the floor.

Between the screams and the exclamations of clients and banking personnel, only Vusi Khumalo, moving forward and bending over Uncle Zato, heard the flabbergasted words: “What are you doing?”

“You wanted to rob the bank,” Khumalo said.

“No,” said Uncle Zato, but darkness was overcoming him and he couldn't understand anything anymore.

“I think we must stop the bleeding,” a calm voice said next to Constable Khumalo. He looked up, saw a young black man in a short white coat.

“Are you a doctor?” asked Khumalo and moved away so that the man’s hand could reach Uncle Zato’s shoulder to block the red flow.

“No,” said the young man. “I’m still learning.” And he saved Zatopek Scholtz’s life.

31.

Joubert and de WIT sat in the luxurious office of Premier Bank’s district manager. The view to the north, over the harbor and Table Bay, was breathtaking. None of the three men saw it.

The district manager of Premier Bank stood right in front of Joubert and wagged his finger at him. “You promised me discretion. Discretion. Discretion is a much-loved and respected client who is fighting for his life in Tygerberg’s intensive care unit. Discretion is the chairman of my board of directors, who is waiting for me to return his call. Discretion is my managing director, who is having a coronary. Discretion is a phone call from the media every seven minutes. Discretion is a bank robber who’s still somewhere out there with a bloody great pistol while the discreet people of Murder and Robbery tell me they’re sorry.”

Sweat dripped off the district manager’s face and his high, bald head shone under the concealed lighting of the office.

“You must understand . . .” said Colonel Bart de Wit and lifted a finger of his own.

“No, I don’t have to understand anything. This fat fart”— the district manager’s finger shot in Joubert’s direction—“gave me the assurance that nothing would happen. But he’d forgotten to assure me that you would deploy a crowd of kaffer constables with cannons in my branches. He—”

Joubert got up, his body virtually touching the district manager’s, his face only inches from the man’s nose.

“Listen,” Mat Joubert said.

The district manager stepped back, kept his mouth shut.

“Listen carefully,” said Mat Joubert. “If you speak to me or speak to him,” and he indicated Bart de Wit, “you speak politely. And if you ever refer to my men again as kaffer constables, I’ll smash your face.”

The district manager looked pleadingly at de Wit. De Wit looked at Joubert. There was a small, confused smile on the Colonel’s face.

“Anyway,” said Joubert. “I can’t be that fat anymore. I’m on a diet.”

Then he sat down again.

No one said anything. The district manager stared at the carpet. He sighed deeply, walked slowly to his chair. He sat down.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The stress . . .” He took a corporately correct handkerchief from the top pocket of his coat and pressed it against his forehead. “The stress,” he said. Then he looked up. “What now?”

“Obviously we’ll relieve Constable Khumalo and do a complete investigation of the whole incident,” said Joubert. “And this evening we’ll assemble all the policemen who have to do duty in Premier Bank branches. We’ll drill them. Safety, caution, public interest. We’ll give them a short course that they must impart to every branch member tomorrow morning. Crisis management. Self-control. Emergency planning.”

De Wit nodded his head enthusiastically.

“And from tomorrow the whole operation will be under the command of one of the Peninsula’s top detectives.”

De Wit and the district manager looked at him expectantly.

“His name is Benny Griessel.”

“No, Captain. I mean I approve of your reaction to his racist and discriminatory remarks. But Benny Griessel?”

They walked to Joubert’s car.

“Colonel, I’m sorry. I should’ve discussed it with you first. But I only thought of it some minutes ago. In that man’s office.”

“Griessel is lying drunk in a hospital,” de Wit said.

“I was there last night, Colonel. He’s dry. He needs something, Colonel. He must be kept busy now. He must regain his self-respect. This is just the right thing.”

“The right thing? With all the stress?”

“Benny can handle stress, Captain. It’s death he can’t handle,” Joubert said quietly.

They walked in silence to the white Sierra. Joubert unlocked the passenger door for de Wit, walked round and got in. The car was unbearably hot inside. They turned down windows. Then Joubert switched on the engine and they drove off to the N1.

Bart de Wit stared at the road through the front window. His finger rubbed the mole nervously, over and over again. He didn't speak. Joubert sighed and concentrated on his driving.

They had already passed the N7 exit when de Wit looked at Joubert. “We’re no longer in control of this thing, Captain. Neither you nor I. The whole case has developed a life of its own. All that remains is to pray. Because, Captain, the truth of the matter is that my head is at stake. There are many eyes in the force who are watching me. Old Two Nose, they say. Old Two Nose won’t make it. He was given the post because of his buddies in the ANC. He didn't deserve it. All I really wanted, Captain, was to prove them wrong.”

Then de Wit was silent until they turned into Kasselsvlei Road.

“You can give Benny Griessel the opportunity, Captain.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“Who knows. Maybe someone will gain something from this mess.”

Joubert closed the special ops room in Hout Bay and shifted the investigation to the head office, back to Murder and Robbery. He sent people to Gail Ferreira and to Alexander MacDonald’s employers for photographs of the victims. He had the SAPS photographers make copies. Then he called in his team to the parade room. “Thank you very much for the trouble you took with the arms dealers and the gunsmiths,” he started his address. “Unfortunately we found nothing that we could follow up. But there’s still hope.” They looked at him expectantly.

“There is a possibility that the victims knew one another.” A few men drew in an audible breath.

“You’ll be divided into teams of two. Each team will get a set of photographs of all the victims. Leon Petersen and I will visit the relatives, you’ll take the neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. Start with the names on the notice board, but you’re responsible for extending the list. Anyone who lived near a victim. Contacts at work. Drinking pals. Anyone. We want to know if they knew one another.”

He ran his eyes over them. They were listening attentively, already caught up in the excitement. Tonight they’d tell their families, “I’m working on the Mauser case.”

“There’s something else, more difficult,” Joubert continued. “There might be a homosexual connection.”

A few muted whistles and the odd remark.

“This doesn’t mean that you immediately ask each and every one whether so-and-so was queer.”

They laughed. Joubert lifted his hand until silence fell again. He spoke urgently.

“If the press finds out there’ll be chaos. I urge the senior member of every team to act responsibly. Ask your questions carefully. Very carefully. There’s no direct evidence. But we have to investigate it. You’re aware of the way in which the newspapers are carrying on. The name of the force is at stake. But don’t forget the relatives of the victims. It’s hard for them. Don’t make it harder with tactlessness and loose talk. Are there any questions?”

“Is it true that Oliver Nienaber is a suspect?” someone called from the back. Joubert shook his head. The rumor was spreading.

“No longer,” he said with finality. That rumor had to be squashed. “Any more questions?”

“Case of beer for the team who cracks it?”

“Ten cases,” said Joubert and received a standing ovation.

He and Petersen found nothing from the relatives, no matter how long or how seriously the people stared at the photographs of the other victims. They had all shown the same reaction. A negative shake of the head and the inevitable: “I’m sorry but . . .”

He dropped Petersen at Murder and Robbery that afternoon and drove to the sanatorium. The nurse directed him to a recreation room on the third floor. When he walked into the room he saw Benny Griessel sitting at a table with five other people— three men and two women. They were playing cards.

“Raise you forty,” said Griessel and tossed two twenty-cent pieces into the kitty in the center of the table.

“Gawd,” said a woman with greasy hair and a long cigarette between her fingers. “You must have a flush.”

“Pay if you want to find out,” Benny said mysteriously.

Joubert went to stand behind him. No one took any notice of the new arrival.

“Raise you ten,” said a human skeleton with watery blue eyes and shot in fifty cents.

“I fold,” said an elderly woman next to him. She put her cards down. A pair of queens.

“So do I,” said a man with a network of thin red and blue ink stretching from his shoulder to his wrist— an elegant dragon, breathing fire.

“Raise you another forty,” said Griessel.

“Too rich for my blood,” said the human skeleton. “It’s your game.”

Griessel got up, leaned over the table, and raked in the money.

“Show us what you had,” the woman with the cigarette said.

“I needn't,” said Griessel.

“Be a sport,” said the dragon.

“I bluffed,” said Griessel while he pushed the money over the edge of the table with a cupped hand, to let it fall tinkling into his wallet. Then he put the wallet down and turned over the five cards.

“Not even a pair,” the elderly woman complained.

“You’re too clever to be an alky,” said the skeleton.

“He’s only a stupid cop,” said Joubert. “And he starts working tonight.”

Griessel thanked him from the recreation room to the deserted hallway but Joubert remained stern. For fifteen minutes he laid down the law until the sergeant held up his hands. “I'’ve heard it all before. From my wife, my brother, Willy Theal. And it didn't help, Mat. I'’ve got to be okay in here,” and he slapped a palm on his chest. “I'’ve done a lot of thinking over the past few days. And I know I’ll manage for a week or two. Then I’ll go the same road unless I do something. I need that head doctor of yours. If my head is in shape, I can leave the liquor. And I want to leave it. But she must help me.”

“That’s a great idea, Benny.” Then he brought Griessel up to date on both investigations— the Mauser murders and the Sweetheart robber— while Griessel packed his stuff into a large paper bag. They walked down the passages together. To reception.

“And now you must take over the bank robber, Benny. Tonight. You must talk to the people. It’s your team.”

Griessel said nothing until they came to the entrance hall. “Are you leaving, Griessel?” the nurse behind the desk asked.

“Yes, Sister.”

“Are you scared, Griessel?”

“Yes, Sister,” he said and signed the release form.

“That’s good, Griessel. It keeps one dry. Keep him out of here, big boy.”

“Yes, Sister,” he echoed Griessel meekly. Then they walked down the steps together, to the car.

The great hunger struck again just after four, in his office, where he was busy checking the lists and tabulations on the investigation, looking for more possibilities. His hunger was a sudden realization that broke his concentration like thunder— contracting, noisy guts, a trembling hand, a curious light-headedness, and the certain knowledge that he wanted to eat now, seated at a table armed with a knife and fork and attacking a plate of food boldly and committedly: a thick, juicy steak; a steaming potato baked in foil, with sour cream; cauliflower with a rich cheese sauce; green beans with tomato and onion; a gem squash in which butter gently melted while he shook salt and pepper over the lot.

He saw the food so clearly, the impulse to get into his car right away and drive to a restaurant was so strong, that he had reached the door when he had to stop himself physically by banging his hand against the frame.

Big boy,

the nurse had called him.

Fat fart,

the district manager of Premier Bank had said.

He sat down at his desk and lit a Special Mild. His stomach rumbled again, a long drawn-out sound with multiple crescendos.

He looked for the dietitian’s number, found it in his notebook, and dialed. She answered before the end of the first ring. He identified himself. “My diet isn’t working.”

She bombarded him with questions until she was satisfied. “No, Captain, your diet will work if you stick to it. You can’t keep to your program in the morning and evening only. The midday meals . . .”

“I work during my lunch hour.”

“Make your lunch in the evening, Captain. And take it to work.”

He said nothing, shaking his head at the unfairness of it all.

“Dieting is hard work, Captain. It’s not easy.”

“That’s true,” said Joubert and gave a deep sigh.

There was a long silence during which only the static on the telephone line was audible. Eventually the dietitian said: “You can crook once a week. But then you must crook cleverly.”

“Crook cleverly,” Joubert said hopefully.

“All I can suggest is that you stop by to pick up

A New Generation.

”

“A what?”

“

Cookbook for a New Generation.

From the Heart Foundation. With that you can crook cleverly. Once a week.”

“Cookbook for a New Generation,”

he said later and felt like a fool. Hunger made his guts rumble again.

32.

We all know what fat looks like on the human body, it said on page eleven of the cookbook. “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” said Joubert and shifted uncomfortably on the chair in his kitchen. The book lay on the table in front of him, next to the ingredients for the recipe the dietitian had recommended.

“What do you feel like?” she’d asked after she had given him the book.

“Steak.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“I’m hungry,” he’d said with finality.

“Try the beef fillet with mushrooms. Page 113. But read the whole introduction first so that you understand your calories and unsaturated fats. And eat a small portion. There’s no point in cooking it in a healthy way and then eating the whole dish on your own.”

He had stopped at Pick ’n Pay and with the book open at page 113 he’d walked the aisles until he had all the ingredients he needed.

What you might not know, he read on, is that over and above the fat you can see around your waist, or on your thighs and breast, people who are overweight also build up interior fat. Fat usually forms around the interior organs, especially in the lower body and around the intestines, kidneys, and heart.

In his mind’s eye he saw his organs, each one wrapped in its own yellowish-white fat, and he shuddered.

THE FOLDED SKIN TEST, one of the headings read.

An easy and quick way to measure your fat is to pinch a fairly large piece of stomach skin between your thumb and forefinger. If it’s thicker than 2.5 cm then you’re fat— and you can be sure that the fat is spread right through your body.

He put the book down on the table, leaned back, pulled his shirt out of his trousers and grabbed a pinch of stomach skin. He gave it a measuring eye.

Shit. Could it be true?

He got up and went to look for his new measuring tape. He found it in the study, where the books were packed on the skew shelves. He walked back to the kitchen, sat down, pinched the skin of his stomach with his left hand, and measured with the right.

More than four centimeters. And he was giving it a bit of leeway.

Crossly he closed the cookbook with a slam.

Crook cleverly.

He couldn't afford to crook cleverly. Not with four centimeters of stomach skin. Not with organs encrusted with thick layers of fat.

He sighed, put the cookbook aside, and picked up his diet sheet: 120 grams grilled fish; 250 ml mashed potato; tomato and onion salad. 1 unit fat.

One unit of fat. He looked for the key at the end of the program. He could choose between small amounts of margarine, salad dressing, mayonnaise, peanut butter, avocado, small olives, thin cream, or a strip of bacon. He chose the salad dressing and started his preparations.

“The report on Eleanor Davids’s Escort is here, Captain,” said Snyman and handed the sheet of paper to Joubert.

“It’s negative,” he said without glancing at it.

“Yes, Captain.”

He sighed. “Thanks, Gerrit.”

He turned. It was time to go and watch

The Return of Benny Griessel.

Joubert stood unobtrusively in the door of Murder and Robbery’s parade room. Griessel mustn’t think he had come to check on him.

Griessel stood on a chair next to the TV set, addressing the twenty-two uniformed people.

“In the file you’ll find photographs taken by the security cameras in the branches of the bank and an Identikit of what our artist thinks the robber might actually look like. But these are only pointers. And it could be dangerous, as we learned from this morning’s incident. For heaven’s sake don’t confront every possible suspect who vaguely resembles the Identikit with a firearm. Use your common sense. Think. And think again,” Griessel said, and he smiled at the faces in front of him.

Joubert saw that the traces of the past week lay heavily on Griessel’s face, on his bulky body, which had shrunk visibly. But his voice was clear and enthusiastic.

“The media still don’t know that we have people in every branch. We told them Khumalo was there by chance to draw money. That means that the robber doesn’t have to suspect anything. But he’s nobody’s fool. He’ll check out the scene very well before he robs. He’ll be careful. I know thinking isn’t covered by a police salary but do it for your country. Think before you hang around looking like a cop who’s a plant. Move around. Fill in bank forms. Pretend to be drawing money. Go to the inquiries desk. Lieutenant Brand of internal stability will speak to you shortly about crisis management, which you must share with the personnel in your bank branch. Tell them they must be in on the act. They must treat you like a client. Nothing more and nothing less . . .”

Joubert turned away and walked down the passage on his way home.

Griessel didn't need his help. He walked out, into the night, toward his car.

Oliver Nienaber grinned behind the wheel of his dark red BMW.

The police must think him a fool. He had already noticed it the day before, quite by chance, when the white Opel Kadett followed him all the way home. The idiot had to jump a red light to keep up. And later he had noticed him again on the quieter roads of Plattekloof. Early this morning he had seen the red Sierra in the street, just below his house.

Now, at a quarter to six in the morning, the N1 wasn'’t busy enough for an unobtrusive tail. He could see the Ford far back in the rearview mirror.

They were wasting their time, he thought. He was innocent. He wasn'’t the hunter, he was the prey. And now they were unwittingly giving him protection.

If it hadn't been for the little brown lieutenant he would’ve gotten away with his lie. Lord, but he’d done some fast thinking. On Monday in that interrogation room. But that was why he was where he was today. Quick thinking. From hair stylist to millionaire in six, seven years.

That tale about MacDonald phoning him about the building had simply risen unbidden in his mind. Needs must when the devil drives.

Need. The whole Monday had been filled with need. From the moment he’d seen Mac lying in the door of that pitiful wooden house with blood against the wall and blood on the floor and his neck which had been blown away and the shot between the balls, he had needed to feel safe.

He had wanted to speak to him. He hadn't known at what time Mac went to sea and had hoped that he was early enough. He’d stopped in front of the door, opened the gate, and then he saw the man lying there, big Mac. Big Mac with the biggest penis he’d ever seen in his life. He could remember that.

“Mac, you’ve got a prick like a pole,” Ferdy Ferreira had said. The late Ferdy. The late, lame fool.

“A penis,” said Oliver Sigmund Nienaber loudly and snorted with laughter. That was the word that had caught the attention of that little lieutenant.

Fuckin’ hotnot. He rubbed his cheek. It still hurt. But it had been worth it. A small price to pay.

“I fell,” he had told his beautiful wife.

“With what did you have to help the police?” she’d asked.

Think fast. “Oh, it was about a black cleaner who used to work for us. They’ve charged him with child abuse. They wanted to know whether we’d noticed anything.”

“Couldn't they have asked about it here, darling?”

He had merely shrugged. “But they should clean those steps of theirs. All the dirt makes them slippery. I slipped and fell against the door frame.”

This morning Antoinette had fetched some of her makeup base to disguise the purplish mark on his face.

“There, darling, that looks better.”

He turned off again, to Wynberg, drove to the Main Road. Just before driving into the parking garage of his building, he looked to check whether he could still see the Sierra. But there was nothing. Never mind, he thought, they’ll probably park somewhere around here where they have a clear view. He stopped in his parking bay RESERVED FOR MD HAIR TODAY.

He set the numbers of the combination lock on his attaché case and opened it. The Star pistol lay on top. He closed it again, gave the lock numbers a routine spin with his thumb. He wouldn't need the pistol now that the police were giving him free protection. He got out, pressed the button on his key holder for the central locking system of the BMW, and walked to the elevator. The door was open. He walked in and looked at his watch. Six o’clock. Dead on time. As usual. With the exception of Monday morning. He pressed the button for the sixth floor. The doors closed soundlessly.

Snyman parked opposite the Servier Building in the Main Road in such a way that he could watch the building’s entrance and that of the parking garage. He opened the lunch box next to him and took out a flask of coffee and a packet of sandwiches. He wasn'’t hungry but the coffee would taste good now. He unscrewed the flask’s cup, poured the steaming liquid into it, and sipped slowly and carefully.

The coffee burned his lips. He swore and blew on the brown surface of the drink.

He leaned back in the comfortable seat of the Sierra.

It might just be a long day.

Nienaber stared at the floor of the elevator as he habitually did and only looked up when the doors opened.

He saw the executioner immediately.

Feet slightly apart, arms extended, the firearm held in both hands, aimed at him.

He knew the executioner had waited for him, had watched the lights above the elevator. B for basement, M for mezzanine, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. He knew all this in a microsecond.

Quick thinking, Oliver Nienaber. That’s why you are where you are.

He also knew that the Star in his attaché case was too far away, useless. But he could talk. He could negotiate. He could think.

He lifted his hand in a “stop” gesture.

“You—” he said, but by then the cartridge had penetrated the palm of his hand and was unstoppably on its way to his brain.

At a quarter to seven on the Wednesday morning, Joubert sat on the wooden bench of the swimming pool’s changing room. His elbows rested on his knees, his head hung down, water dripped onto the cement floor, and he knew he would have to give up the cigarettes.

His lungs were burning. He knew it was the layer of tar, the black, sticky, dirty, gummy layer that smoldered in his lungs after the swim, which caused his inability to cross the fitness threshold permanently. He could feel it with every breath he tried to draw after five, six lengths this morning. With every new swing of his arm, every rhythmic kick of his legs, the clearer the image became of the muddy encrustation in his lungs which stood between him and the energy-supplying oxygen.

Mat Joubert, human garbage carrier. Full of fat and soot.

No matter that it was Special Mild, sooner or later he would have to stop. They had no taste, in any case.

He made a decision.

He got up suddenly, purposefully, and walked to where his clothes were hanging on a peg. He took the white-and-gray packet and the lighter out of his coat pocket, walked to the big, black trash bin in the corner, lifted the lid, and forcefully threw the smokes into it.

The bin had been empty. He stared at the packet and the lighter lying there.

I'’ve done with it, he thought. Forever.

Solemnly he closed the trash bin, turned, and walked to the showers.

On the way to Kasselsvlei Road he saw the

Cape Times

poster: MAUSER: UK PSYCHIC FLIES IN TO HELP.

The paper seller held the newspaper in such a way that Joubert could read the headline on the front page, one huge word stretching across the entire page: HYSTERIA. The subheading read: FARMER CRITICAL AFTER BANK SHOOTING.

For a moment he considered buying the paper, but the lights changed and he drove on. De Wit’s psychic had arrived, he thought. Hysteria, indeed.

“I heard nothing, Captain,” Snyman said. “The first I heard about it was when they gave the address of the place over the radio. I couldn't believe it. The bastard shoots a cannon and I heard nothing.”

They stood in a circle around the mortal remains of Oliver Sigmund Nienaber— Joubert, Snyman, Petersen, O’Grady, Basie Louw, and two uniform men from the Wynberg police station. Nienaber lay in the doorway of the elevator, almost covering his attaché case, on his stomach, one bloody hand extended. The doors of the elevator slowly, mechanically opened and closed, bumped against Nienaber’s body, opened and closed . . .

“Someone must switch off the elevator,” Joubert told one of the uniforms.

“Right away, Captain.”

“The security guard at the front entrance didn't hear anything, either,” Snyman said.

“Where is the woman now?” Joubert asked.

“She works for a computer firm here on the seventh, Captain. They called a doctor. She’s suffering from shock. She says she took the stairs when the elevator didn't arrive. When she got there”— Snyman pointed to the entrance to the stairwell that ran alongside the elevator shaft—“she saw him. She says she knew him. He always greeted her in such a friendly fashion.”

“No one saw anything?”

“I think the Mauser came in at the service entrance at the back, Captain. Security man says there are too many people in the building who have keys for it, and tenants are constantly leaving it open.”

“How do you know it was the Mauser?”

Snyman took a small plastic bag out of his shirt pocket. There were two cartridge cases in it.

“Is someone watching the door for fingerprints?”

“Station’s people, Cappy,” O’Grady said.

A man and a woman from the video unit came walking up the stairs. “Why isn’t the bloody elevator working?” the man asked as he breathlessly climbed the last few steps.

No one said anything. The man saw Nienaber lying in the elevator. The doors opened and closed, opened and closed.

“Oh,” the man said.

“I can’t believe that I heard nothing,” Snyman said.

Joubert looked at Petersen. “You were right, Leon. Nienaber was lying.”

“But now we’ll never know what the truth was, Captain.”

“We’ll find out.”

“Where are the photographers? I want to turn him over and see if he got one in the cock as well,” said O’Grady.

“You also think it was the Mauser?” Louw asked.

“Another Mauser?” Pagel, the pathologist, asked breathlessly from the staircase.

“We think so.”

Snyman’s hip radio crackled. “Captain Mat Joubert, Captain Mat Joubert, please phone Dr. Boshoff at the University of Stellenbosch. Captain Mat Joubert . . .”

“Is there a phone anywhere here?” he asked.

“In Nienaber’s office, there, around the corner, Captain.”

He walked down the passage. Anne Boshoff— what did she want? He dug in his inside pocket, looking for his notebook with her telephone number.

Nienaber’s office was luxurious— a big reception area with expensive furniture in pastel colors, a carpet with a thick pile, paintings against the one wall. Nienaber’s newspaper advertisement had been enlarged and framed and hung under the big logo of his firm’s name.

The end of an era, Joubert thought. The Great Predator wasn'’t scared off by success, didn't allow himself to be sidetracked by egotism and vanity.

He found a telephone on the reception desk, paged in his notebook until he located Anne Boshoff’s number, and dialed.

She replied by stating her name.

“This is Mat Joubert.”

“Matthew! How lovely to hear your voice. But you still sound old. Are you living yet, Matthew? When are you coming to see me?”

“I got a message . . .”

“And called back so quickly. Efficiency in the civil service always makes me feel so secure. It’s about the psychic, Matthew. Madame Jocelyn Lowe. I do hope you’re not the ‘old friend’?”

“The ‘old friend’?”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“I’m busy with a murder investigation, Dr. Boshoff.”

“Anne.”

“Your adopted, middle-class homosexual struck again this morning, Anne.” He stressed her name, somewhat irritated, but she didn't react.

She whistled. “He’s speeding up.”

“Speeding up?”

“Do you know that most of the time you repeat what I'’ve just said? Yes, he’s speeding up. It’s only three days since MacDonald, Matthew. The time span between murders is getting shorter and shorter. Let me see . . .” Joubert heard the rustle of paper. “A week between the first and the second— if you count the day of the first murder as day one. Then three days until the third. Another three days, then MacDonald on Monday. And only two days up to today. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”

“That’s true.”

“He’s sick, Matthew. Very sick. He’s getting out of control. He needs help. This changes my analysis. I’ll have to go back to the books. Tell me, was the victim gay again?”

“It’s Oliver Nienaber.”

“The hairdresser king?”

“The very same.”

She whistled again. “He wasn'’t gay, Matthew.”

“He wasn'’t gay. But how do you know?”

“I know men, Matthew. And that one wasn'’t gay. You could see it.”

“I have to go.”

“I want to know about the psychic first. She says in the

Times

. . .” The sound of paper again. “ ‘Let’s just say I came to help an old friend. Someone involved in the investigation.’ Is that you?”

“No.”

“I’m so pleased. Be careful of those creatures, Matthew. They lie like troopers. Martin Reiser, of California, did scientific research on them. And you must know what he says: ‘The bottom line is that they all did very, very poorly . . .’ ”

Gerrit Snyman appeared in the door, in an obvious hurry.

“I really have to go,” Joubert said. “But I appreciate . . .”

“Don’t let it be words only, Matthew,” Anne Boshoff said and put the phone down.

They rolled Nienaber over. There was a splash of blood on his chest, a neat hole through the designer tie.

“No, the family jewels were spared,” said O’Grady, sounding disappointed and biting off another piece of nougat.

“But it’s definitely the Mauser. It isn’t over yet.”

“Yup, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, as they say at the opera.”

And then Joubert suddenly knew where he would take Hanna Nortier when he asked her out.

“The attaché case is locked, Captain,” Snyman said from the floor.

“Let forensics check it for fingerprints and then take it to the office. Van Deventer can use his little screwdrivers on it.”

“He’ll love that,” said O’Grady.

“Gerrit, we’re going to Nienaber’s wife. Let me know if anything crops up.”

“Very well, Captain.”

Joubert took the stairs, followed by O’Grady, Petersen, and Louw. There was a lightness in his step. Because he knew where he could take Hanna Nortier.

33.

THE BANK ROBBER liked the names the media had given him. Don Chameleon in the English-language press, Sweetheart Robber in Die Burger. But now he was unhappy. They thought he was the Mauser murderer. And an innocent man lay in the Panorama Clinic, shot through the shoulder because a constable had thought it was the Sweetheart robber.

He hadn't wanted violence or anything approaching killing. He hadn't wanted all the publicity. All he wanted . . . but it didn't matter any longer. All he wanted now was to rectify the matter.

That was why he was going to rob a different bank that morning. Premier Bank’s branches were getting too hot. Why had that constable been at hand in the Tygerberg branch? Were they setting traps for him? That big captain who had been on television. He looked somewhat absentminded but he wasn'’t a captain for no reason.

Don Chameleon wouldn't allow himself to be caught. He would only rectify the matter. And then wait until the whole thing subsided.

He was a businessman this morning, a bearded, mustached businessman in a black wig, dressed in a charcoal gray, tailor-made suit with a white shirt and a blue-and-orange tie. He walked through the doors of BANKSA’s branch in Somerset West, the furthest he could get from his other working areas. He walked straight to the teller, a short, middle-aged woman, and took a white envelope out of his pocket.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said succinctly.

“Good morning, sir.” The woman smiled at him. “Words like that can get you into trouble,” she said calmly and unsuspectingly.

“How so?”

“The man who robs Premier Bank. Can I help you?”

“What do you think of the robber?”

“They say he’s the Mauser murderer. I hope they shoot him before someone else is hurt.”

“They’re lying,” the robber said angrily. “Do you hear me? They’re lying.”

“Sir?”

He opened the left side of his coat. “Do you think this looks like a Mauser?”

The woman stared at the black pistol under his arm, her eyes frightened now.

“I want fifty-rand notes. Quickly. And I don’t suppose I have to mention the alarm.”

The woman nodded. “Just remain calm, sir.”

“You remain calm.”

She took packets of fifty-rand notes out of her cash drawer and placed them on the counter.

“Put it in a bank bag, you moron.”

The sharpness of his voice startled her. He shifted the envelope toward her. “See that the police get that. Captain Mat Joubert.”

“Very well, sir.”

“What perfume do you use?”

“Chanel.”

“It disgusts me,” he said, took the bag, and walked to the door.

Joubert stared out over the Cape Flats and the Hottentots-Holland Mountains but he had no appreciation of the view from the window in Oliver Nienaber’s study. He was exhausted after the session with Antoinette Nienaber.

They had first gone back to Murder and Robbery to inform de Wit. The Colonel had smiled and phoned the Brigadier. Then they went to the big house in the wealthy suburb and knocked on the door.

The beautiful blond woman had collapsed— collapsed and screamed, “No, no, no,” an incessant shrill sound that penetrated the marrow.

Joubert had bent down and placed a hand on her shoulder but she had slapped it away, her face contorted with pain. She had jumped up and with both hands on his chest, had pushed him back across the threshold, outside, while she made wailing noises and slammed the door in his face. There he, Petersen, Louw, and O’Grady had stood, their heads bowed, listening to the sounds on the other side of the door.

“Get a doctor and a policewoman,” Joubert had said and opened the door again. “Tony, come with me.”

He’d walked in and walked in the direction of the sounds. A maid stood in the passage.

“I’m going to phone the police,” she said.

“We are the police.”

The black woman said something in Xhosa that he didn't understand.

“Mr. Nienaber is dead,” he’d said.

She called on her gods in her own language.

“Help us with her.” He gestured in the direction of the noises.

They had found her in the bedroom on the floor, a framed photo pressed to her breast. She hadn't heard them entering the room and remained unaware of their presence, only making the noises— not the tearing sobs of grief but the wails of insanity.

They had stayed with her until the doctor and a policewoman arrived. They had stood there in the bedroom of the Nienabers, next to the big double bed, and tried to see nothing and hear nothing until the tall, slender doctor had eased past them, opened his black bag, and taken out a needle and a small phial. He had tried talking to her first but Joubert had seen that she heard nothing. Then the doctor had given her an injection.

Now Joubert stood in the study, against the window and felt guilty— all he could think about was having a smoke, to take a deep draw of the rich, full flavor of a Winston and to forget about the message of death that he had brought and the abyss into which it had plunged Antoinette Nienaber.

“Shit happens, Captain,” O’Grady said at the door.

Joubert turned and wondered how long the man had been standing there.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s part of the job.”

“Some job.”

O’Grady, now wordless, rummaged in his pocket for nougat. He took out a new bar, nimbly tore off the wrapping.

“It’s all I can do, Captain.”

Joubert looked out the window again, chewed on the fat sergeant’s words.

How had he handled it in earlier days? How had he carried the black coat over his shoulders with such ease? How had he acted the angel of death then, without it gnawing at his vitals like a cancer? Had he been too young? Too stupid?

No.

It had been ignorance, pure and simple. Death had no capital letters, it was something that happened to other people’s nearest and dearest. A phenomenon, a normal aberration, a source of excitement, the start of the chase, the sound of trumpets as the cavalry was called in. Have no fear, Mat Joubert is here— the great leveler, the long arm of the law, the restorer of the legal scale’s balance.

And then came the death of Lara Joubert and he had tasted it on the palate of his soul for the first time.

It’s all I can do.

“I’ll have to go through the study, Tony.”

“I’ll cover the bedroom, Cappy. The lieutenant is talking to the maid. I’ll get Basie to come and help you.”

“Thanks.”

O’Grady disappeared. Joubert turned and walked to the desk. He sat down in the armchair. A blotter and pencil set lay in front of him. The blotter was a monthly calendar with space for appointments but nothing was written on it. There was a telephone to one side. Next to the telephone was a new Cape telephone directory with two smaller books on top of it. He looked at the books.

Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.

Maybe he should read it.

Bottom-up Marketing.

Oliver Nienaber’s books. Oliver Nienaber’s keys to fame and riches. He shifted the telephone directory toward him. Had Nienaber sat in this chair and read? Had he used the directory to look up Alexander MacDonald’s number, made an appointment? He opened the directory, paged to M, looked for MacDonald. MacDonald Fisheries was underlined. His heart beat faster. F? He found Ferdy Ferreira’s number but it wasn'’t underlined.

Disappointment.

W for Wallace. Not underlined, either. Wilson, D.? Unmarked.

Had Nienaber spoken the truth about MacDonald? Joubert closed the guide and started at A. He paged with his middle finger, licking it occasionally.

Basie Louw came in. “Need any help, Captain?”

Joubert looked up. “Yes.” He wanted to open a desk drawer but it was locked.

“We must go through the drawers, Basie. Ask the maid if she knows where the keys are.”

When Louw left, Joubert paged on, past MacDonald Fisheries again. The next name that was underlined was Oberholzer, C. A., 1314 Neptune’s View, Yates Road, Sea Point. And a number. He stared at it. Why? When? He pulled the telephone toward him, his insides clenching. He dialed the number.

A long, steady beep.

He looked up directory assistance, dialed, and asked them to check the number. They said they would phone back.

He paged on, as far as Z, but found nothing.

Louw came back. “The woman says Nienaber had the keys, Captain.”

“See if you can get hold of Snyman, Basie. He’ll have them.”

Louw walked to the telephone.

“No, use the car phone. I’m waiting for an urgent call.”

Louw nodded and left. Joubert got up, idled toward the window. He looked at Nienaber’s newspaper and against the wall again, the smile, the neat hairstyle, the honest face.

“What did you know, Oliver?”

He studied all the certificates against the wall: ACADEMY OF HAIR DESIGN GOLDEN SCISSORS AWARD; CAPE COMMERCIAL COLLEGE BUSINESS SCHOOL— THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT O. S. NIENABER COMPLETED THE COURSE IN SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT; JUNIOR BUSINESSMAN OF THE YEAR. And the company registration certificate for Hair Today.

The telephone rang. Joubert reached it in two long strides.

“That service was terminated, sir. This morning.”

He put down the receiver and put his hand into his pocket, looking for a cigarette. He remembered that he no longer smoked. Was his timing right for stopping? He didn't have the time to worry about it now. He hurried out to the bedroom, where he found O’Grady on his knees, in front of a nightstand.

“I’m going to Sea Point. I’ll radio them to send a car for you from the office.”

The elderly woman who opened the door for him spoke calmly about her daughter’s death. Next to her, in the sitting room of number 1314 Neptune’s View, sat her gray husband, thin and quiet, staring at the floor. They were both dressed in black, good clothes.

“The service was this morning, in the Sea Point church, but there weren’t many people. Five or six who left immediately after the service. At least her boss went to the crematorium with us. This is the way it is in the city. Our neighbors could come but they’ve already gone home. We farm at Keimoes, Captain. Our son is in America, studying. He is on his way, but too late for the service.”

“Unfortunately I’ll have to question you about her death, Mrs. Oberholzer.”

“I thought the police had finished the investigation,” her husband said. “They think it was an accident or something.”

“It must’ve been the local station, sir. I’m from Murder and Robbery.”

“She fell. Out of the window.” Rina Oberholzer pointed at a room leading out of the sitting room.

“Do you think they made a mistake? The other police?” her husband asked.

How could he even start to explain? An underlined name in a telephone directory . . .

“I don’t know, Mr. Oberholzer. I’m investigating another case. I . . . Her name . . . It might have nothing to do with it.”

“There’s so much evil in this world.”

“What kind of work did she do, Mrs. Oberholzer?”

“Secretarial, at Petrogas. For years now. There’s no work for young people in our town, Captain. They all go to the city to look for work. We were always worried. It’s such a big place. But we thought it was better than Johannesburg.”

“Did you know her friends here?”

“Carrie was a social person, Captain. She had so many. Her letters were always full of names. There were so many. But where were they this morning? But that’s the city. Full of fair-weather friends.”

“Oliver Nienaber?”

They shook their heads.

“Alexander MacDonald?”

No. They didn't know. So many names.

Drew Wilson? Ferdy Ferreira? James Wallace?

They didn't react.

“Who are these people, Captain?” Carina Oberholzer’s father asked.

“They’re involved in another case. Did she have . . . a friend?”

Husband and wife looked at each other.

“Yes, a Portuguese.” The man’s voice was disapproving. “A Catholic.”

“Do you know how to get hold of him?”

“At work, probably. He has a restaurant on the harbor.”

“A fish and chips shop.”

“Do you know his name?”

Rina Oberholzer took her husband’s hand. “Da Costa,” she said, as if the words were difficult to say. “Julio da Costa.”

34.

They had a conference in the parade room, Joubert’s whole team, Griessel and some of his men, de Wit and the Brigadier.

Joubert read the bank robber’s letter to his audience:

Dear Captain Joubert,

I wish to inform you that I am not the Mauser murderer. I also want to inform you that I won’t execute a robbery at Premier, or any other bank, until you’ve caught the Mauser murderer. I’m sorry about the farmer, Scholtz, who was shot but I actually had nothing to do with it.

Yours sincerely,

Don Chameleon (the Sweetheart Robber)

Joubert turned the paper round and showed it to the others. “Typed,” he said.

“Typewriter. Not a computer printout. No prints,” Griessel said.

“Fuckin’ asshole,” Vos said. “He fancies his name.”

“Do you believe him?” the Brigadier asked.

Griessel was firm. “Yes, Brigadier. He and the Mauser make no sense. Too many differences.”

“I agree,” the Brigadier nodded. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to catch him, Brigadier,” Griessel said.

“I like your optimism.”

“I'’ve got a feeling, Brigadier.” Griessel took a pile of photographs out of his file and got up. “If we look at these pictures there’s one similarity.” He pinned them to the notice board with thumbtacks.

“Look carefully,” he said. “Look carefully, because I missed it at first.” He stood back so that everyone could see. “One thing doesn’t change.”

They all screwed up their eyes for a clearer vision.

“They all look different to me,” de Wit said pessimistically.

“Brilliant, Colonel. That’s what I kept missing. They all look different. They don’t look like the same person. Except when one looks very carefully. The nose. Look at the nose. Look carefully. It has a little twist at the end. You should be able to see it better from fairly far away because the photos aren’t good. The same guy but he looks completely different every time. And that’s how I’m going to get him.”

“Oh?” de Wit said, prepared for the possibility of being embarrassed in front of the Brigadier should Griessel be spouting nonsense.

“He’s a pro, Colonel. Not of robbery, but of disguise. He knows what he’s doing with the wigs and the mustaches and the other stuff. Look at this one where he’s an old man. Hell, he looks like an old man. Look at the wrinkles. Look at the clothes. It’s as if he’s playing a role in a flick. Everything is just right. It’s too much to fool only the bank cameras. That guy is a pro. He enjoys it. He knows it.”

Griessel turned back to his audience.

“It’s his job, his profession.”

“Ahhh,” said the Brigadier.

De Wit rubbed his mole, pleased.

“You’re a star, Benny,” Joubert said.

“I know. Because that’s not all.”

They were all attention.

“He’s got a grudge against Premier. Why rob just them? I don’t mean the last one. That doesn’t count because he’s got cold feet now. I’m speaking about the previous ones. Clever guy like him wouldn't concentrate on the branches of only one bank. No, no, there must be a reason, because he must know there’ll be hell to pay if he focuses on only one. You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that the cops are going to lay traps for you, unless you screw around a little more. He hits Premier because he’s got a grudge.”

“You’re simply guessing,” the Brigadier said.

“I know, Brigadier. It’s a theory. But you must admit it has merit.”

“Whole fuckin’ country has a grudge against banks,” Vos said.

“Also true,” Griessel hit back. “But how many professional makeup artists can there be in the Cape?”

They considered the truth of this statement in silence.

“You’re going to look for makeup artists,” de Wit said and grimaced.

“One after another, Colonel. To be honest I'’ve already begun telephoning. And they tell me I must start with the Arts Council. And then the film studios. There are about twelve or thirteen of those. They said he might be freelance as well, but in this profession everyone knows everyone else.”

“Well done,” said the Brigadier.

“So I’ll ask to be excused, if I may. With my team.”

“With pleasure, Sergeant.”

Griessel walked out ahead of them and Joubert noticed the squared shoulders.

It’s all I can do.

“Captain?”

All eyes were fixed on Joubert.

Joubert straightened the brown files in front of him, picked up the notebook and started paging. He cleared his throat.

“I think we’re making headway,” he said, not sure whether he believed it himself.

“There is new information but we’re not quite sure how it all fits together.” He found his latest notes, hurriedly made just before the impromptu conference.

“But let me start at the beginning. Four of the victims have been connected in sets of two. James Wallace obviously knew Ferreira. Wallace’s wife says she’s certain Ferreira came to see her husband at home one evening, but Ferreira’s wife says she knows nothing about it. We don’t know why he went there. Then we’re sure that MacDonald knew Nienaber. Nienaber admitted that he was at the murder scene but . . .”

“Why do I only hear about this now?” the Brigadier demanded.

Petersen sank lower in his chair. De Wit’s mouth opened and closed. “I . . .”

“Nienaber had his attorney at the interrogation, Brigadier. We had to work according to the book. And there was simply too little evidence. He was well known, an influential man . . .” Hopelessly Joubert tried to shore up his position.

“You should’ve informed me.”

“We should’ve, Brigadier. It was my fault. But we wanted to keep a low profile because we put a tail on him. We thought he was a suspect in the case. We wanted to see whether we could find a connection between him and the others. But because the relatives of the others couldn't confirm anything . . .”

“You should’ve told me . . .”

“You said there was new information,” de Wit said hopefully.

Joubert threw him a grateful look. “That’s right, Colonel. By chance we saw in Nienaber’s telephone book that he had underlined a few names. MacDonald’s. And a Miss Carina Oberholzer’s . . . She fell out of her window on the thirteenth floor of an apartment building in Sea Point on Friday evening. Pathologist says there were no other injuries or bullet wounds. Sea Point’s detectives say that there were no signs of a struggle. But I can’t believe that it was coincidence. On Friday the Ferreira murder happened. On Monday it was MacDonald, where Nienaber also happened to be. The timing . . . Her boss— she was a secretary at Petrogas— says she was bright and cheerful on Friday as she always was. Her friend has a restaurant on the waterfront. He said he’d spoken to her on the telephone that afternoon and she had said she would come and lend a hand during the rush hour around nine o’clock. Later on he became worried and tried to telephone her, after ten sometime, and there was no reply. He could only go and look for her when he closed but by then she was dead.”

“So he has an alibi,” Vos said.

“Yes,” said Joubert. “And he needed one. Carina Oberholzer was his sly. The bastard is married. And he says Oberholzer knew it.”

Detective Sergeant Carl van Deventer owed his promotion to Murder and Robbery to having become the best burglary detective in Cape Town’s police station.

He could, just before he left the city’s station, say whether a burglar was a professional or an amateur simply by looking at the marks, or lack of them, on the locks of a house or flat’s front door.

Like a fortuneteller reading tea leaves, so van Deventer could look at the crime scene of a burglary and sometimes rattle off the name and the criminal history of the offender by the manner in which the drawers had been opened, the way the cigarette butts of the burglar had been placed in an ashtray.

He had achieved his expertise through a deep-seated interest, hard work, and study— not only for the official police exams but also at the University of the Street. By questioning those charged, by asking them kindly but urgently to tell him how they had disarmed the alarm, how they had manipulated the mechanism of a lock.

And through the years he had built up a set of burglar’s tools that had made him a legend.

If you worked at Murder and Robbery and the children flushed the house keys down the toilet in a friend’s house, you didn't phone a locksmith— you sent for Carl van Deventer. If you wanted to sidestep the law of criminal procedure in a small way by searching a suspect’s house or office without the necessary documents (or keys), you telephoned van Deventer.

If you had a locked attaché case and the combination had accompanied Oliver Nienaber to eternity, you asked van Deventer to bring his little screwdrivers.

Van Deventer was investigating a satanic murder in Durbanville when Detective Constable Snyman phoned him with the request.

“Leave it on my desk. I’ll be there this afternoon,” van Deventer had said.

True to his word he set to work immediately when he got back to the office. He took his little black leather bag out of his jacket’s inner pocket, chose the right implement, wiggled a bit here, pressed a little there, and the two locks of the attaché case snapped open, exactly forty-four seconds after he had taken the tool out of the bag.

Van Deventer’s reward for his work was that he was allowed to see the contents of the case. He lifted the lid, saw the Star 9 mm, and knew he mustn’t fiddle with the contents because it could be the murder weapon. You didn't screw around with a murder weapon unless you were looking for early retirement.

He phoned Snyman but there was no reply. He phoned Mat Joubert but he wasn'’t in his office, either. Van Deventer did what the book told him he had to do with a potential murder weapon. He walked to Mavis Petersen at Murder & Robbery’s reception desk, signed in the case at the door, walked to the safe, and locked it away. Then he asked Mavis to tell Snyman or Joubert that it was open and ready for their attention.

He didn't know that the Star wasn'’t a murder weapon. Neither did he know that under the pistol, between all the other documents, there was a list of names waiting to be discovered. He didn't know that the name of the murderer appeared on the list.

But Carl van Deventer didn't have second sight, even if he could read ashtrays like tea leaves.

“No, I don’t read tea leaves,” said Madame Jocelyn Lowe and smiled.

She stood in the parking area of the hotel in Newlands where James J. Wallace had breathed his last. She was at the center of a fairly large crowd of media people. The SABC was there and M-Net and a freelance team that hoped to sell something to Sky News or CNN. The BBC2 and Thames teams were also present. The newspapers were there as well, local— with their wide range of languages— and those from other countries. The British tabloids were strongly represented.

Mat Joubert, Nougat O’Grady, and Louw stood to one side. Louw’s jaw had dropped in sheer amazement at it all. Joubert stood with his head bent. He didn't want to be there. He wanted to get on with other things. Like phoning Hanna Nortier and saying: Hi, Doc, what about a little boogie at

The Barber

’s on Friday evening? But he had to be here because he had to get his evidence back. Madame Lowe had personally spoken to the Brigadier and the Brigadier had personally asked Joubert to assist her.

Joubert could see why de Wit had been so keen on having the Madame. And he could see why the Brigadier was so keen to help the Madame.

She was a good-looking woman, in her forties, but tall and attractive, with great dignity and a chest measurement to match.

“Gypsies read tea leaves and palms,” she said. “I’m a psychic. Psychics don’t read. They feel.” Her voice was light but strongly Oxbridge accented. “I have acquired some pieces of clothing worn by the murder victim and will proceed to see if I can sense some vibrations of the tragic incident that transpired here.”

“Transpired here,” O’Grady mimicked her accent under his breath. “Woman’s a fucking charlatan. But she’s playing them like a violin.”

Joubert said nothing because he wasn'’t sure of the meaning of “charlatan.”

“There is such a strong presence. We must have some very talented people here,” she said. “But I’ll have to ask you to move away. I need space and silence to do my work.”

The press quieted down.

“If you could wait over there, please.” She pointed an elegant, beringed finger to the edge of the parking area. “And please, Messrs. photographers, no flashes while I’m concentrating. There will be plenty of time for pictures later.”

The media scrum moved meekly in the direction the woman had indicated, the television cameras in the lead to get tripods and Sonys ready before she started.

She waited patiently, then turned her back to them and went to stand on the spot Joubert had self-consciously pointed out to her. The bloodstained marks where Jimmy Wallace had lain were dull and black by now, like the many oil marks on the tar.

She took Wallace’s bloody white shirt out of the plastic bag, closed her eyes theatrically, and pressed the piece of clothing to her breast. Her body stiffened and she stood stock still.

Joubert heard an unearthly noise— a low, monotonous sound. He realized that it emanated from the woman’s mouth. “Mmmmmmm . . .” A single, unmusical note. It kept on and on while she remained standing quite still, her back straight, her backside neat in the sober but fashionable dress.

“Mmmmmm . . .”

Joubert wondered whether de Wit had known her very well.

An old friend,

Anne Boshoff had quoted the

Cape Times.

They would be a very odd couple, he thought. The tall, sensual woman and the short, ugly little man.

No, Anne Boshoff had said de Wit hadn't even given anyone the glad eye at congresses.

“Mmmmmmmm . . .”

He had trouble in dismissing the image from his mind, the Madame naked on her back in her house in a spooky room with cobwebs in the candelabra and a black cat in front of the hearth. Bart de Wit grinning, while he played with that chest measurement and the Madame made an unearthly noise.

“Mmmmmmm . . .”

Why was he thinking about sex again? His stomach suddenly contracted. Was it in expectation of his potential evening out with his psychologist? Did he hope somewhere in the back of his head that he would get the opportunity to stroke the frail body with his big hands, to enfold her small, small breasts and slowly but surely ready her for love? To kiss her gently on that pretty lipstickless mouth, to let his hands slide to her shoulders, to touch her carefully . . .

Madame Jocelyn Lowe audibly blew out her breath. Her shoulders sagged wearily; her hands, holding the shirt, dropped from her chest; her head was bowed. She stood like that while the seconds passed and the press shuffled uncertainly.

“Not enough,” she said with tired resignation. “We’ll have to move on.”

35.

A convoy of cars moved from murder scene to murder scene, the Madame and her black chauffeur leading in a Mercedes-Benz, then the detectives in their Sierra, and following, a caravan of press vehicles— from minibuses for television teams to cars for the print media.

While Madame was trying to pick up the vibrations of Ferdy Ferreira’s last moments, Joubert went looking for a telephone booth at the Old Ship Caravan Park. He looked up Computicket’s number in the ragged directory and dialed. They said

The Barber of Seville

was indeed being performed on Friday night. Also on Saturday and the following Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

He asked whether there were seats available for the coming Friday evening.

It depended on whether he wanted expensive or cheap seats.

“Only the best,” he said.

“There are quite a few expensive seats available. If you give me your credit card number . . .”

He hesitated for a moment. If Hanna Nortier didn't want to go with him . . . He saw himself and Benny Griessel sitting among the operagoers, two fucking stupid cops listening to sopranos and librettos and stuff like that. But then he decided he had to think positively. Nothing ventured . . .

He booked two seats, put the phone down, and drove down to the sea, where the Madame was still going “Mmmmmmm . . .”

“I have some interesting observations but you will have to give me time to get my thoughts in order. I can do that while we’re traveling back to the hotel. Shall we call a news conference at six o’clock?”

The press complained but they were long acquainted with patience. They packed up and moved back to the vehicles, which were neatly lined up in the gravel parking area next to the beach.

“World’s biggest bullshitter,” said O’Grady as he moved.

Joubert said nothing. He held the pieces of clothing that the Madame had required for her work and thought about his craving for a cigarette. His head felt . . . There was a buzzing in his ears. Lord, he could

hear

his craving.

“I want to hear it,” Basie Louw said. “May I attend the press conference, Captain?”

“Yes.”

“I want to hear what she says. I want to hear whether she knows that Wilson was queer. And whether she knows that Wallace screwed around.”

Behind him walked the thin crime reporter of the

Argus.

She heard Louw. Her trained ears were flapping in the breeze but he said nothing more. She checked to see whether any of the other media had heard him but saw that they hadn't been near enough.

“Anyone want a lift back to the hotel?” she asked with an English accent, loud enough for Louw to hear.

“You going back to the office, Captain?” Louw asked.

“Nienaber’s house,” Joubert replied.

“May I come with you?” Louw asked the reporter.

“Of course,” she said.

“The boys are with the neighbors, Captain. I talked to the eldest. He said his father’s brother was on his way from Oudtshoorn. The neighbors phoned him. The hospital says Mrs. Nienaber is still under sedation,” Snyman said.

“And the desk?”

“These documents, Captain.” He pointed to a neat pile on the floor. “Nothing of importance. Family stuff. Marriage certificate, baptismal certificates, children’s school reports, photos . . .”

“Good work.”

“What now, Captain?”

“Did you ask the boy about the other names?”

“He’s never heard of them.”

“Oberholzer?”

“No.”

“Now we simply start all over again, Gerrit. I’ll phone Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Ferreira. You take Wilson’s mother and colleagues. Ask about Nienaber.”

Snyman nodded and turned but Joubert saw that the constable didn't agree with the connection theory. Then Joubert walked to Nienaber’s study, past the photographs and the certificates, sat down behind the desk again, and took out his notebook. Dr. Hanna Nortier. He would see her again tomorrow. But then it would be official. Now it was personal. He dialed the number.

“Hello. Unfortunately I’m not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep. Thank you and good-bye.” An electronic beep sound followed. He said nothing. She was probably busy with someone. He cut the connection, dialed again.

“Hello. Unfortunately, I’m not . . .” He thought she had such a pretty voice. She spoke as if she was truly sorry that she was unable to take the call. Her soft, melodious voice. He could see her mouth moving, the pretty mouth in the pretty, angular face, the long, pointed nose. Did she sound tired? That slender body, which had to carry the heavy weight of other people’s problems. He so much wanted to help her to relax. He wanted to make things easier for her . . .

Softly he replaced the receiver.

You’re in love, you fool.

He put his hand out to his coat pocket, to reach for a cigarette. It stopped halfway when he remembered.

Your timing is bad, he thought and watched his shaking hand.

Oh, dear God in Heaven but he was desperate for a cigarette right now.

Just smoke less. Four a day. Three would be fine. Three cigarettes a day, could, true as God, not do anyone any harm. One with his coffee . . . No, not before swimming. The first one in the office. At about nine o’clock, say. And one after he’d had his diet lunch. And one in the evening, with a book and a small drink. He would have to think about drink. He could no longer drink beer, it was fattening. Whisky. He would teach himself to drink whisky.

What will you drink, Mat, Hanna Nortier would ask him on Friday evening when she had invited him in to her house or her flat or whatever and they were sitting in easy chairs and she had put on some or other piece of opera music on her CD player, softly, with only the beautiful standard lamp in the corner lit, the room shadowy.

Whisky, he would say, whisky, please, Hanna.

Hanna.

He had never said her name out loud.

“Hanna.”

Then she would give a satisfied nod because whisky was a drink for cultivated operagoers and she would get up and disappear into the kitchen to get each of them something to drink and he would lean back, fold his hands behind his head and think of intelligent remarks to make about the opera and his blood brother Rossini when she came back to give him his whisky and sit down on the chair again, her legs folded under her, comfortable, her brown eyes under the heavy eyebrows fixed on him. They would discuss things and later, when the atmosphere and the feeling were right, he would lean over and kiss her mouth, lightly, to test the water. Then he would sit back in his chair again and wait until later . . .

He dialed the number again, filled with compassion for Hanna Nortier and her busy days and the dreams he dreamed about him and her.

“Hello. Unfortunately I’m not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep. Thank you and good-bye.”

“This is Mat Joubert,” he said softly, after the beep. “I would like . . . I . . .” Earlier he’d known what he wanted to say, now he was having difficulty. “

The Barber

. . . I have two tickets for Friday evening . . . you might like to come with me. You can phone my home, later, because I’m still working and I still have to go and . . .” He suddenly wondered how much time there was on the cassette and ended abruptly. “Thank you very much.” He put down the telephone and patted his pockets again and decided three cigarettes a day wasn'’t too much and dialed Margaret Wallace’s number.

Her son answered and went to call her. He asked her whether her husband had known Oliver Nienaber.

“The hair person?”

“Yes.”

“He did.”

Joubert leaned forward in a dead man’s chair.

“How did he know him?”

“They were both finalists in the Junior Businessman of the Year Award. Nienaber got it.”

Joubert looked at the certificates. He found the one he was looking for.

“We sat next to them at the awards ceremony. That was what . . . two, three years ago. His wife is such a beautiful person. We got on very well.”

“Did they have any other contact?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think James liked the man very much. There was . . . tension at the table. But I suppose it was because they were adversaries, in a sense.”

Margaret Wallace was quiet for a moment. “Don’t tell me he’s . . .”

“Yes,” Joubert said with sympathetic caution. “He was shot this morning.”

He heard her sigh. “Dear Lord,” she said resignedly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and didn't know why.

“What does it mean, Captain? That Jimmy knew the Ferreira man and now Nienaber. What does it mean?”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“It must mean something.”

“Yes. Well . . . So you don’t know if there was any other contact?”

“No. I don’t think so. Jimmy never spoke about him again afterward.”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Wallace.”

“Captain . . .” She was uncertain, hesitant.

“Yes?”

“How long did it take you . . . I mean, how much time, after your . . . your wife passed away . . .”

He thought. Because he couldn't tell her. He couldn't give her the bad news that it was more than two years and that he was still caught in the web of Lara’s death. He had to lie, give the woman with the mismatched eyes hope.

“About two years.”

“Dear Lord,” she said. “Dear Lord.”

Griessel knew that the makeup artist of the Arts Council’s drama department couldn't be the Sweetheart robber because she was a woman, an interesting woman without being good-looking. Her hair was very short and a deep auburn, her face open and intelligent. She smoked a long cigarette and gestured with her slender hands when she spoke.

“You’re looking for a film makeup artist,” she said and her voice was deep. She pointed to the row upon row of photographs of actors and actresses against the wall. “These were taken during productions or rehearsals. Look at the makeup. It’s heavy. Look at the eyes. Look at the mouths. Look at the clothes. For the stage you need to do makeup differently. Strong, because the guy right at the back must also be able to see. Very well, there are some things that are the same.” She put a forefinger on one of Griessel’s photos, which lay on the coffee table in front of her. “I would also be able to make him look old but my lines would be stronger. This was done with latex. I’d do mine with a pencil. Perhaps just a little latex for a double chin or something like that. This guy works for the movies. You can see it. Look here.” She pointed at the Elvis photo. “You can see his cheeks are fatter. It seems as if his cheekbones are stronger. They can do it with rubber, press rubber strips inside his cheeks. If you do that for the stage, the actor won’t be able to speak. And they must be able to speak on the stage, they have to project, because the guy up there must be able to see and hear. But with film they can rerecord the voices later. And this one. That’s not a theatrical beard. A threatrical beard or hair costs a fraction of what they use in films because the audience can’t see it close up. If you stand next to an actor wearing a theater wig, you can see it’s a wig. The same applies to a beard or a mustache.”

The cigarette had been stubbed out and she lit another one.

“Are there any who work for the theater and films?”

“No . . . Perhaps. But I don’t know of any. The theater world is pretty small. There are four or five of us here. And I don’t know one who has worked in films. It’s not something you can freelance because it’s an art of its own.”

“How many film makeup artists are there?”

“In the Cape? Can’t really say. Four or five years ago there wasn'’t one. Now it’s fashionable to come and starve in the Cape if you’re arty. But I don’t know how many there are now. Ten? Fifteen? No more than twenty.”

“Do they have a union or something?”

She laughed and he saw that her teeth were slightly yellow from the cigarettes, but it didn't make her less attractive. “No.”

“Where should I start looking?”

“I know a guy who has his own production house. I’ll give you his phone number.”

“Production house?”

“Filmmakers. They call themselves production houses. Actually it’s only one or two guys with a small company. They hire cameramen and makeup artists and directors and lighting and sound and so forth. He’ll probably have everyone’s telephone number.”

“What does a film makeup artist earn?”

“In Hollywood they’re probably rich. But here . . . Freelancing is a hard life . . .”

“That’s possibly why he robs banks,” said Griessel and gathered up his photos.

“Are you married?” asked the makeup artist.

“Divorced,” said Griessel.

“Attached?”

“No, but I’m going to get my wife back. And my children.”

“Pity,” said the makeup artist and lit another cigarette. “Let me get you that number.”

“Thank you for being here, ladies and gentlemen. We have all had a trying day and I will try not to waste your time. But please allow me a minute or two to explain something to you.”

Madame Jocelyn Lowe stood on a stage in one of the Cape Sun Hotel’s conference rooms. In front of her sat sixty-four representatives of the press and one member of Murder and Robbery.

“The talent I possess, I did not ask for. It was given to me by the grace of God. When it comes to helping the police in solving a murder case, I do not ask them for money. It is my way of saying thank you, of making a very small contribution. On the other hand, not all people believe that my powers are real. There will be skeptics among you. All I ask is to be given a fair chance. Do not make a judgment until the case is solved. Only then will we know if I was of any help.”

Louw sniffed. Then it wouldn't matter anymore, Clairvoyant, he thought. He and the English reporter had enjoyed talking to each other on the way from Melkbos. About the Madame. The reporter thought she was a rip-off. And he, Basie Louw, had agreed. Because the reporter might not be pretty but her ass looked good in the denim, and if he played his cards right he might strike it lucky tonight.

“Now let me get to the part I know you’re here for.”

A few media people clapped sarcastically but the Madame merely smiled in a dignified manner.

“I can assure you that it wasn'’t easy. In some instances the tragic incidents took place some fourteen days ago. Time, unfortunately, diminishes the aura. It is like sound, traveling through space. The further you are from it, the weaker it becomes. Also, when a murder takes place in public places, such as a parking lot, a beach, or an elevator, there are so many confusing vibrations. Again, to use the analogy of sound, it resembles a great many voices speaking all at once. It is hard to try and single out one of them.”

She’s already making excuses, Louw thought. The press people shifted in their seats as if they agreed with him.

“I can see some of you think I’m making excuses already . . .”

Jesus, Louw thought. She can read minds.

“. . . but again, save your reservations for later, because I have absorbed enough to draw a pretty clear picture.”

It was suddenly so quiet in the room that only the air-conditioning was audible— and the sound of the Sony Betacams turning.

“First of all, I sensed a lot of hate and fear. Even at the parking area in Newlands, the hate and fear were still palpable . . .” Press pens were scribbling frantically. “Hate that has accumulated over many years, I can tell you, to be that strong. Fear that goes back into the mists of time. I see”— and Madame Jocelyn Lowe closed her eyes, her hands in front of her, somewhat defenseless—“a figure consumed, driven, overcome. The patterns are not rational, sanity is but a shadow. A figure is moving in the twilight, large and imposing, a predator hungering for revenge. He moves into a faint pool of eerie light. A hat takes shape, broad-brimmed. Features emerge slowly, blunt, contorted, the eyes beacons of hate. A beard, I think. I sense a beard, light in color, sandy perhaps, luxuriant, flowing from chin and cheeks, into the coat. His hands . . . they are huge, shaped by generations of toil in a harsh land. He is holding the strange firearm at his side, waiting, searching, indiscriminately, for those . . . A predator, a warrior, a throwback to a forgotten era, a ghostlike apparition. But he is flesh and blood, he is real, his hate is real, his fears . . .”

She opened her eyes, stood quite still for a moment, then picked up the glass of water on the lectern next to her and took a small sip.

“You must understand. This is very tiring.” Another sip. Then calmly, without the theatrical intonation, but softly, only loud enough for her voice to reach every corner of the absolutely quiet room. “I have reason to believe that the killings are politically motivated. Not, ladies and gentlemen, the politics that you and I know, but the politics of a slightly demented mind. Yes, I did sense a man. But a strange man, a special, strange creature. A man who feels his heritage heavy on his shoulders, who carries the weight of a nation.”

“Are you saying he’s an Afrikaner?” a reporter of the

Weekly Mail

couldn't help asking.

She smiled slightly. “I did not hear him speak, sir.” There was subdued laughter, a release of the tension that had accumulated in the room.

“But you said his beard was sandy. That makes him a white man.”

“Caucasian? Yes. That much I can say.”

“And he wears a hat?”

“Yes.”

Questions suddenly became a chorus. The Madame held up her left hand. The gems in her rings reflected the light. “Please, I have almost finished. But I have something to add.”

Silence again.

“I sensed a hat. But that does not mean that he wears it every time he pulls the trigger. I also sensed a long, black coat. But again, that is just a vibration, that could merely imply that he favors these garments. But there was one other thing. He does not live in this city. He does not have a home here. If they want to find his home, they must look elsewhere. They must look for a place where the plains are wide and the sun is strong. They must look for a place where you can see no mountains, where the river runs dry.

There

this man is at home.

There

he nurtured his hate and fear.

There

he found the devilish energy that moved him to kill.

“Now I will gladly answer your questions. But please keep in mind, I have told you all I know.”

Hands shot up, questions were asked.

The reporter of the

Argus

turned to Louw and smiled. “What do you think? As a policeman?”

“I think she’s talking shit,” Louw said honestly and was immediately sorry that he had used the word. Some women didn't like swearing and he didn't want to spoil his chances.

“I think so, too,” said the reporter and smiled again. “Can I buy you a beer?”

“No,” Louw said. “I’ll buy you one.”

Joubert’s dinner was chicken stew: 60 grams of (skinless) chicken, 60 milliliters of (fat-free) gravy, 125 milliliters of mixed vegetables, and as much boiled (tasteless) cauliflower as he liked— and one bloody fat unit.

And after that, one full-flavored Winston, one tot of whisky.

His life, measured out in small grams.

But he looked forward to the cigarette and the drink. It suddenly made the bleak evening worthwhile. His reward.

After he had phoned Gail Ferreira and she had given him negative answers to his questions, he drove to a liquor store and bought himself a bottle of whisky. Glenfiddich, because it was the most expensive, and he wanted to drink a decent whisky, not the cheap muck with spurious Scottish names marked as special offers on the shelves. And then to the café for a packet of Winstons, which now lay on the table, unopened and full of promise. Oh, it was going to be good. Oh, that first drag that still tasted of matches (because he’d thrown his damn lighter away with the Special Milds that morning), which he was going to draw deep . . .

The phone rang. He jogged down the passage, swallowing a piece of cauliflower as he went.

“Joubert.”

“This is Hanna Nortier.” This time the weariness in her voice was unmistakable and he wanted to fetch her and tell her everything was going to be fine. “I don’t know whether it’s a good idea,” she said and he was suddenly sorry that he had asked her.

He didn't know what to say.

“You’re a patient.”

How could he have forgotten that? How could he have placed her in such a position? He wished for an honorable way out for her . . .

“But I need to get out,” she said, as if she was talking to herself. “May I give you an answer tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Mat,” she said and put the phone down.

He walked back to the kitchen.

The reporter was as clever as a cageful of monkeys. She waited until they had started on their fifth beer in the ladies’ bar of the Cape Sun. “I hear the Wallace guy slept around.” Not a question, a statement, her English accent now marked when she spoke Afrikaans because although she could take her drink, it wasn'’t easy to keep up with the policeman.

“You journalists always know everything,” Louw said with honest admiration.

That wasn'’t what she wanted to hear. “I only know a little.”

“It’s true, though. He was ever ready. Up to the very last. He was with a blonde in the hotel and when he walked out they blasted him.”

“But he was married.”

“That didn't stop him with the blonde.” Louw suddenly realized to whom he was speaking. “You won’t . . . you won’t quote me, will you?”

“My lips are sealed.” And she smiled at him.

Tonight my luck’s in, Louw thought. “She was from Johannesburg. Worked in computers. And then Wallace screwed her, over lunch, as it were. Van der Merwe. I'’ve her name here somewhere.” He took out his notebook and paged, swallowed some beer, paged on. “Elizabeth van der Merwe. But she wasn'’t a suspect. I could see that immediately.”

He emptied his glass. “Another one?”

“Why not?” She slipped into English again. “The night is but a pup.” And gave Basie Louw a meaningful look.

36.

Nienaber knew MacDonald and Wallace. Wallace knew Ferreira. And Oberholzer. And Wilson, who didn't want to fit in.

The previous evening, after his gloom about Hanna Nortier, he had considered the information from all angles. Now, in the swimming pool, the pieces of the puzzle still wouldn't come together.

He knew the feeling: the awareness that everything meant something but there just wasn'’t enough to unravel a premise, to put enough information together so that he could formulate a firm theory. It was frustrating because he didn't know where else to look. The answer might well be there already, right in front of him. It sometimes needed a fresh perspective, a new approach.

He had tried everything the previous night.

Mass mail distributor. Jeweler. Out-of-work carpenter. Fisherman. Hairdresser.

Forty years old, thirtysomething, fifty, forty, forty.

Success, so-so, failure, so-so, success.

Roving prick. Gay. Blue movie addict. Rapist. And he didn't know whether Nienaber had been faithful to his wife.

Oberholzer? Had she been involved? Really? She’d had a relationship with a married man. Had she earlier had a relationship with Nienaber? He made notes in his head while his arms pulled him through the water. Phone the hospital. Perhaps he could speak to Mrs. Nienaber this morning. Speak to Oberholzer’s boss. Where had she worked before? Phone that hairy Walter Schutte at Wallace Quickmail again. Had he heard the name Carina Oberholzer?

What would Dr. Hanna Nortier want to discuss this afternoon?

Dear Lord, he mustn’t bawl again.

He had to steer her away from Lara Joubert. He couldn't discuss it today and take her to the opera tomorrow.

She could open him up. He knew it. She could peel him like an orange and reach the juice. She was too clever for him.

Perhaps he shouldn't go. Perhaps he should phone and say the Mauser affair was getting too hot and he couldn't make it. He’d be there on the following Thursday as usual and were they still going to the opera?

He pulled himself effortlessly out of the water, unaware of his even breathing and the great distance he had swum while struggling with solutions. He dressed, drove to Kasselsvlei, avoiding newspaper posters that screamed IT’S BOER WAR III, SAYS UK PSYCHIC. And

Die Burger

’s SALON BARON’S LIFE CUT SHORT.

He saw them but his thoughts were too busy to take any notice.

Anne Boshoff said the murderer was out of control. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. When would he strike again?

Late afternoon. Late night. Early morning. Early morning. Early morning.

The after-hours murderer. What do you do during the day, you bastard? Or couldn't you forecast the movement of your victims during office hours?

He drove his usual route, as he did every morning, without thinking about it, unaware of the big breakthrough that was waiting in the attaché case.

“Sarge van Deventer says he put the Captain’s case in the safe,” said Mavis Petersen when he walked in.

He thanked her, asked her to fetch it, signed for it, and took it with him to his office. He put it down on the table, took out his Winstons, put them next to the case, went to the tearoom and fetched himself a large mug of (bitter) black coffee. Then he came back, sank down in his chair, lit a Winston, and drew in a deep lungful of smoke.

Lovely.

He swallowed the strong instant coffee, drew on the cigarette again . . .

GENUINE BUFFALO HIDE was written on the leather case.

He opened it. The pistol lay there, the safety catch on. He took out his notebook, wrote:

Antoinette Nienaber? Always carried the pistol? Knew Oberholzer? Ferreira? Wilson? Faithful?????

He put down the pen and the notebook, picked up the pistol and sniffed the barrel. Hadn't been fired in a long time, nor cleaned. Why carry the pistol, Oliver? He put the pistol aside, picked up the cigarette, drew on it again.

A black diary, reinforced with gold on the four corners of the covers. Diary and notebook. He paged to the date of the first murder. Nothing of importance. He paged on. January 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Appointments with people unknown to him.

Ollie’s birthday.

One of the sons. January 9, 10, 11.

Then Joubert saw the list.

Mac McDonald.

Incorrectly spelled.

Carina Oberholzer. Jacques Coetzee.

Space.

Hester Clarke.

Mat Joubert forgot about the Winston between his fingers. He read the list again. He got up and walked to the door.

“Nougat!” he yelled down the passage, an urgent bellow. “Snyman! Basie!” There was a new note in his voice. He shouted again, even more loudly.

He’s sick, Matthew. He’s out of control.

Anne Boshoff’s words were his driving force now. He was going to stop the bastard. He would see to it that Jacques Coetzee and Hester Clarke didn't become dossiers as well. He was a drowning man who had been tossed a lifebelt, a nomad in the desert who saw the oasis reflected in a mirage. He was a combat general— the war had begun in earnest.

The parade room was a hive of activity. Joubert sat against the wall. Next to him, O’Grady. They distributed the list of names. The reinforcements that arrived from other police stations joined the queue. Two to a team. The order was to find the right Coetzee and the right Clarke. The only lead was the set of names and photos of the Mauser victims. And Carina Oberholzer.

“There are fifty-four Coetzees in the fucking directory,” O’Grady had complained when they held a meeting in Joubert’s room and he had looked up from the directory.

“There are hundreds of Clarkes with an

e,

” Snyman had said.

“He made a spelling mistake with MacDonald,” Joubert had said. “We’ll have to tackle the Clarks without an

e

as well.”

“Another hundred,” Snyman had said despairingly.

“It doesn’t matter,” was Joubert’s reply. “This thing ends today.” With finality in his voice.

De Wit had come in. Joubert had informed him of the latest state of the investigation and asked for reinforcements. De Wit, unashamedly excited, had trotted off to his office to telephone the Brigadier and the General.

Louw was late, with the smell of old liquor on his breath and a satisfied expression in his eyes. Joubert had given him the task of questioning the deceased’s relatives about the new names. Then they went to the parade room to put the men available from Murder and Robbery on the trail of the J. Coetzees and H. Clarkes. But Joubert knew initials were meaningless. Jacques might well be a second name, the initial appearing after that of the first in the directory. But they had to start somewhere.

“Ask them to look at the photos. Read out the names to them. Watch them, because they may lie,” was the instruction given to each team. Nienaber had lied about MacDonald and Wallace, and now he was dead. Why had Nienaber lied? Why the pistol? Had he always carried the pistol?

Feverishly Snyman made copies of the list of names, goaded by the Captain’s tone of voice.

And now the detectives poured in— from Paarl and Fish Hoek, from Table View and Stellenbosch— some annoyed because they were busy with other important cases, some grateful for the change and the opportunity of working on the sensational Mauser murders.

“Phone the hospital. Ask them if we can speak to Nienaber’s wife yet,” Joubert told Gerrit Snyman, delivering the last pile of photostats.

Snyman scurried. Joubert and O’Grady dealt out more work.

“The doctor says she’s conscious but she can’t see anyone,” said Snyman when he came back.

“We’ll see,” said Joubert. “Take this. I’m going to the hospital.”

In Kraaifontein, on the open piece of ground between the Olckers High School and the railway line, there was a huge tent. At the entrance to the tent a banner had been erected.

TABERNACLE OF THE REDEEMER SERVICES:

THU. 19:00. SUN. 09:00, 11:00, 19:00.

Next to the big tent, there was a 1979 Sprite Alpine trailer with a small tent pitched in front of it. On the trailer’s couch, which could extend into a double bed, sat Pastor Paul Jacques Coetzee. He was busy preparing for the evening’s service.

Pastor Coetzee was unaware of the fact that more than eighty detectives in the Cape Peninsula were looking for him, because he didn't own a television set and didn't read the newspapers. “Instruments of the devil,” he had called the media in many of his rousing sermons.

He was engrossed in his work, heard all the phrases that he would fling from the pine pulpit, heard the refrain of the Message that would reecho from the loudspeakers.

From the heart come wicked thoughts, murder, adultery, corruption, theft, false witness, scandalmongering.

“Sergeant, I have the information you were looking for,” said the secretary of Premier Bank’s district manager.

Griessel sat in his office, pen at the ready.

“I’m all ears,” he said.

“Of the fourteen names you gave us, there are five who have accounts with Premier. Carstens, Geldenhuys, Milos, Rademann, and Stewart.”

“Yo?” he said when he’d finished writing.

“Carstens and Rademann are women. Of the three men remaining, two are problem clients.”

“Yes?”

“Milos and Stewart. Milos has overdraft facilities of forty-five thousand rand, with sixteen incidents of repayment arrears in the past twenty-four months.”

Griessel whistled.

“His checking account was frozen and he has no other account with us. Legal proceedings have already been instituted against him to try to recover the outstanding amount. Stewart’s car was repossessed two months ago after he had, for six consecutive months, failed to pay the monthly payment of nine hundred eighty rand. His checkbook and credit card have also been frozen. He still has a savings account with us. The balance is five hundred forty-three rand and eighty cents.”

Griessel wrote it all down.

“Sergeant,” said the woman with the sweet voice.

“Yes?”

“My chief asked me to remind you again that the information is absolutely confidential.”

“Absolutely,” said Griessel and grinned.

“I understand your position, doctor, but you must understand mine. Out there is a man with a Mauser who, according to the criminologists, is out of control. And in here lies a woman who can help to prevent more bloodshed.”

Joubert was proud of his choice of words.

“You don’t understand, Captain. Her condition is . . . She’s on a knife edge. My only responsibility is toward her.”

He played his trump card. “Doctor, I can go to court and apply for an interdict.”

“Captain, the court will hear me, too.”

Check. They stood facing each other in the passage of the private hospital. The doctor was short and slender, with dark circles under his eyes.

“I’ll have to ask her if she’s willing to see you.”

“I’d really appreciate that.”

Joubert waited while the doctor opened the door and disappeared. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, took them out again. He was unhappy. He didn't have time. He turned, walked on the thick carpet. He walked back and forth.

The doctor came back. “She says she owes you.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Five minutes, Captain. And be very gentle with her.”

He opened the door for Joubert. Antoinette Nienaber looked dreadful. The lines next to her mouth were deeply etched. Her eyes were sunken, her face the ghostly copy of a skull. She lay with her head deep in the pillows, the upper part of her body slightly raised. There was a drip attached to her arm, the tube snaking up to the plastic bag. She wore powder-blue nightclothes. Her blond hair lay lifelessly on the pillow.

He walked to the bed.

“I’m sorry . . .” he said uncomfortably.

“So am I.” Her voice was remote. He saw traces of a narcotic in the unfocused eyes that stared at him.

“I have only a few questions. You must tell me when you’re tired.”

She nodded her assent.

“Do you know if your husband knew Ferdy Ferreira or Drew Wilson?”

It took her a while before she shook her head. No.

“Carina Oberholzer?”

No.

“Jacques Coetzee?”

No.

“Hester Clarke?”

“No.” A thread of a voice.

“Did your husband usually carry his firearm in his attaché case?”

Her eyes closed. The moments ticked past. In the passage there were footsteps.

Had she heard him?

The eyes opened. “No,” she said and a drop formed under her eye, ran down the pale cheek, fell onto the blue collar of her nightgown, lay there for a second before being absorbed into the material.

He was caught up in conflicting emotions. The urgency in him made him want to ask her whether her husband had been faithful, but he knew he couldn't, not now. What about a euphemism? Had they been happily married? He saw her looking at him, the eyes waiting, a deer facing a shotgun.

“Thank you, Mrs. Nienaber,” he said. “I hope you . . . I wish you well.”

Thank you.

Her lips formed the words but there was no sound. She turned her head away, toward the window.

Joubert was back in the office, telephone against his ear.

Julio da Costa said that Carina Oberholzer may have mentioned names like Jacques Coetzee or Hester Clarke but he wouldn't have remembered. “She talked a great deal, Captain. All the time. And laughed. She was a very lively girl. She liked fun and parties and people. Her job was only something to make money and to pass the day. She was a night person. That’s how we met. She came in here one Friday night, after midnight, she and a crowd of friends.”

“And then?”

“Hell, Captain, you know the way it goes. One can’t work all the time. And you know what it’s like with a wife at home.”

Joubert said nothing. Because he no longer knew.

“It’s not illegal,” Da Costa said defensively. “And in any case, it wasn'’t her first time.”

“How do you know?”

“A man always knows, Captain. If you’d had her, you would also have known what I mean. Hot stuff.”

“Did she ever discuss it?”

“All she ever said was that she didn't want life to pass her by. She wanted to enjoy every minute.”

Joubert ended the conversation.

Carina Oberholzer from Keimoes. Who laughed and talked and lived her short life to the full. The willing girl from the farm, the sly of a Portuguese Catholic and who knew who else. Had no one known her well enough to know what she knew?

He got the number of her parents, dialed the long code and the number, waited. It rang for a long time. A woman’s voice answered, a servant.

“The people aren’t here now. They’ve gone to fetch their son in Johannesburg.”

He took the Tupperware container out of his drawer and opened it: 60 grams of fat-free cottage cheese; four rice cakes; tomato, avocado, and lettuce with a small portion of fat-free dressing. He was going to die of hunger. At least the Winston was waiting, the high point of his day, his greatest pleasure.

Someone came running down the passage.

They’ve traced someone, he realized.

It was Louw. “He shot Jacques Coetzee, Captain. Less than an hour ago. And someone saw him.”

The two schoolboys were in sixth grade and they were very keen to see the body, but the police wouldn't hear of it. The boys had to keep out of the way, stand between the guy ropes that kept the walls of the tent upright, watching one police vehicle after the other arrive. But it was much better than the double biology class they were missing.

One of the first detectives to arrive there came up to them with another man, a big one.

“These are the boys, Captain.”

“Thank you,” the big one said. He put out a huge hand. “Mat Joubert,” he said.

“I’m Jeremy, sir.”

“Neville,” said the other one.

He shook their hands.

“You’ll have to tell me everything.”

“Weren’t you on TV the other night, sir?”

He shrugged. “May have been.”

“Then this is the Mauser thing, sir?”

“We think so.”

“Sheesh, sir, but that guy is blowing them away, hey.” Great admiration.

“We’re going to catch him.”

“We only saw his car, sir,” Jeremy said. “We heard the shots. We were behind the tractor barn when we heard the shots, but a train passed and we weren’t sure. Then we walked over to have a look. Then we saw the car.”

“What make?”

“That’s a bit of a problem, sir.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t know one car from another,” Neville said.

“I know cars. You should have your eyes tested.”

“Hey,” Neville replied but without aggression, as if their arguments were a normal ritual.

“It was a Fiat Uno, sir, a white one. I think it was a Fire but I’m not sure. It wasn'’t a turbo because the turbos have fancy stripes and a louver.”

“It was a CitiGolf, sir. White. I know a Golf’s backside because my brother drives one. He’s also in the police, sir. In Natal. They shoot Zulus.”

“Hey,” said Jeremy. “They’ll lock you up.”

“You’re sure it was an Uno.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re sure it was a Golf.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Registration number?”

“We were too late. We only saw his tail as he drove away.”

Joubert measured the distance between the school grounds and the boundary fence and the road the vehicle had taken. “You didn't see what he looks like?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, men, thank you very much. And if either of you makes a different decision about the make, you’ll let me know. I’m with Murder and Robbery.”

“Of course, sir.”

He was about to walk to the trailer when Jeremy spoke again.

“Sir.”

“Yes?”

“May we really not see the body?”

He suppressed a smile and shook his head. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

“Lots of blood, sir?”

“Buckets.”

“And the bullet holes, sir?”

“As big as hubcaps,” he lied shamelessly.

“Sheesh,” Jeremy said.

“Jeez,” said Neville. “That Mauser is a cannon.” And they walked away deeply impressed, with information worth a fortune in their world.

37.

It was one of the additional teams who found the body. “We must’ve missed him by minutes, Captain. The blood hadn't even clotted.” The body lay in the trailer, driven back by the first shot, which had ripped into Coetzee’s skull just above the left ear. The other shot was through the heart, as in all the previous cases except MacDonald’s.

If only he had looked at the attaché case the previous day. But how could he have known? He walked to the Sierra, radioed O’Grady. They must try to recall the teams who were looking for Jacques Coetzee. The whole effort must focus on Hester Clarke now. He must try to save at least one life.

“There’s an address on the telephone account, Captain,” Louw called from the trailer. “Durbanville.”

At least, Joubert thought, the connection had been proven. They now knew that Nienaber’s list meant something. And there was only one name left.

He called Louw and they drove to Durbanville to a dilapidated house in the center of the town. The grass was long and untidy, the flowerbeds overgrown with weeds.

“I hope he was a better pastor than a gardener,” said Louw. He had brought a bunch of keys that had hung in the trailer door’s lock and tried until one fitted the front door’s.

They walked in. There was no furniture in the sitting room, only a telephone, which stood on the floor. In the kitchen there were dirty plates in the sink. An old refrigerator rattled in the corner. The empty hallway was uncarpeted. So was the first bedroom. The second held a single bed, a bedside table with no drawers. On the floor there was a pile of books. Joubert picked up one.

Praise His Name.

The second one was also religious. All the others as well.

On the bed table there was an opened envelope. He picked it up and took out the contents.

SMUTS, KEMP, AND SMALL, ATTORNEYS AND NOTARIES

Dear Mr. Coetzee:

According to our client, Mrs. Ingrid Johanna Coetzee, you are still in arrears with regard to the alimony set out in the divorce decree . . .

Griessel was hot on the trail of George Michael Stewart.

He found no one at the man’s flat in Oranjezicht, but the caretaker there said the suspect worked part-time as a waiter at Christie’s, the restaurant on Long Street.

He couldn't find a parking space, eventually parked in a loading zone on Wale Street and walked around the corner. The restaurant was virtually full for lunch, with yuppies very much in evidence. He was received at the door by a tall, refined man with a tense smile who quickly led him to a table at the back, near the kitchen door, and pushed a menu into his hand.

Griessel sat down and felt people looking at him. He didn't fit in here. He looked self-consciously at the dishes on the menu and saw that he wouldn't be able to afford much. He decided on the pumpkin soup and looked up again. There were only two men serving, both white— the refined one who had taken him to his table and another one, of average height and build. Both were dressed in the same outfit, a pair of black trousers, white shirt, and black bow tie. Both had short dark hair and were clean-shaven. Each had a nose that looked somewhat like the bank robber’s.

Mr. Average made a beeline for him, notepad and pen in his hand.

“May I tell you about our specials, sir?” he asked mechanically, without really seeing Griessel.

“What’s your name?”

“Michael Stewart,” said the man and looked with closer attention at his client.

“I would like to have the pumpkin soup, please.”

“Yes.” He wrote it down. “And then?”

“That’s all, thank you, Mr. Stewart.”

“You’re welcome.” The man hurried away, into the kitchen.

He speaks English, Griessel thought. The robber speaks Afrikaans. A smokescreen?

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands under his chin. He looked at the people around him. Men, mostly, a woman here and there. They were close to the Supreme Court and Parliament, he thought. Important people, these, with BMWs and Jettas and cell phones. At the table next to him a man swallowed a beer with great enjoyment, the glass tilted, the Adam’s apple moving up and down, up and down, until the last foam slid out of the glass and he put it down on the table and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

Griessel imagined the warm glow the liquor would cause in the man’s stomach, how it would spread through the body, to the head, warm and easy and pleasant— a tingling, a tide of pleasure, a smoother of sharp corners and edges.

He looked down, at the salt and pepper shakers on his table, put out his hand, picked up one. His hands were sweating.

George Michael Stewart hadn't reappeared from the kitchen, he realized.

Griessel fingered the Z88 fastened to his belt. He shouldn't have asked the man for his name. He looked at the kitchen door. How long had it been? Five minutes. It was only Mr. Refined who hurried between the tables, removing an empty wine bottle at one, asking whether the food was to their satisfaction at another.

Where was Stewart?

Minutes went by, during which his uneasiness grew. If the man had suspected something and escaped through the back door, he could be at the railway station by now, Griessel thought.

Soup couldn't take that long.

He made a sudden decision, got up, his hand on the grip of the firearm, and walked hurriedly to the kitchen door, a metal door that swung open easily. With his back against the door and his pistol in his hand, he banged open the door with some force and walked straight into George Michael Stewart and a plate of bright yellow soup. The hot liquid splashed on Griessel’s shirt and tie, Stewart staggered back, fell, and sat down on his backside. With his eyes huge, he looked at the square figure who loomed over him with a pistol.

“My service can’t be that bad!” he said nervously.

Attorney Kemp, nattily dressed in a dark gray suit and a fashionable tie, was as big as Mat Joubert. He sat on the edge of the untidy desk with Joubert and Louw in the chairs in front of him. The attorney was busy telephoning East London, in the Eastern Cape, because that was where his client, Mrs. Ingrid Johanna Coetzee, lived now.

He had immediately been willing to help the detectives. He was a hasty, efficient man with a deep voice and hair painfully neatly barbered and combed.

Joubert looked at the man’s clothes again— the double- breasted coat, the fine stripe in the texture of the material.

Joubert had no clothes for tomorrow night’s opera. He would have to buy a suit like that. He would have to have his hair cut. Everything had to be just right. If Hanna Nortier told him this afternoon that she was going with him. If he managed to get to Hanna Nortier this afternoon.

“I see,” said the attorney into the receiver. “I see. Fine. Thank you. Good-bye.” He put the phone down. “She’s on holiday. Gone diving. I didn't even know she was into diving. Small, colorless little woman.”

The attorney walked round to the big chair behind his desk. “I didn't want to mention the man’s death.” He wrote on a large notepad, tore off the page, and handed it to Joubert. “That’s where she works. The accounts department. They said she would only be back in the office on Monday.”

“You’ll have to fly,” Joubert said to Louw. Then he looked at the attorney. “Why were they divorced?”

“His religion,” said Kemp. “He used to be a television technician or something. Here in Bellville at a repair shop. And then suddenly he turned holy and lost his work because he spent the whole day in church, one of those charismatic ones where they spend every evening saying hallelujah and amen and clapping their hands. She couldn't bear it any longer. Luckily there were no children. He didn't want to divorce her at first. Against the Law and the faith. But we gave him merry hell. And the alimony . . . She had never worked. He wanted her to stay at home, be mama, and do housework. He was never quite all there . . .”

“Then he started his own church?”

“It was after the divorce. I only know a part of it, what she told me over the telephone. She couldn't believe he could preach. He had always been a silent, sulky man. But there you have it, cometh the hour . . . He fell out with all the other churches and founded his own. Lot of money in it, you know.”

“The place where he worked?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”

“Thank you very much.” Joubert got up. So did Louw.

“It’s a pleasure. I like to help the legal process when I can. Will you get the Mauser man?”

“It’s a matter of hours.”

Joubert turned back at the door. “If I may ask, where do you buy your clothes?”

“Queenspark.” The attorney smiled. “But I must confess. My wife does the buying. I’m too damn stupid at it.”

Christie’s was empty now. Griessel sat at his table, his shirt and tie reasonably clean but very damp from repeated applications of a wet cloth. Stewart sat opposite him. They were smoking Stewart’s Gunstons.

“I don’t rob banks,” said Stewart, and his Afrikaans was reasonable but not without an accent.

“Can you prove it?”

“Ask Steve.” And he pointed his cigarette at the other man in a bow tie. He was still clearing tables with a few black women. “I’m here every day from ten in the morning until midnight.”

“My brother Jack lies just like I do . . .”

“Hell, Steve owns the place. He makes the money. Why would he lie?”

“Why are you working here?”

“Because there’s not enough makeup work in the Cape. I should never have come.”

“Why did you?”

“Followed a woman. And for the mountain and the sea and the atmosphere. Now she’s dropped me because I don’t have any money. I owe the bank and the makeup jobs are few and far between. The last one was two months ago. French team, came to make a television ad. But my car . . . I’m still paying it off even if it’s in the scrapyard . . .”

Griessel took a photo out of his pocket. Elvis. “Do you know him?”

Stewart looked. “He’s . . .” He searched for the word. “Careless.”

“Oh?”

“Look at the sideburns. The gum is visible here. Perhaps because he does his own makeup. It’s quite tricky. I'’ve never tried it.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Heard of Janek Milos?”

“Mmm . . .”

“You don’t know him.” Griessel didn't ask— he stated. With disappointment because he had hoped Stewart was going to be his man. Because Janek Milos didn't sound like a decent Afrikaans boy who robbed banks politely and called tellers sweetheart. Because his nice theories were crumbling.

The detectives came back for more names and addresses and Joubert’s heart sank with every new pair who walked into the parade room after another fruitless effort. They had reached Clark without an

e,

were at R and S for initials, but had found nothing.

He looked at his watch. His appointment with Hanna Nortier was getting closer and closer. He still didn't have an excuse.

Louw had come to say good-bye. He had found a seat on the six-thirty flight to Port Elizabeth and East London. They again went through the possible questions that Joubert wanted answered. Louw had left, his eyes droopy from his hangover.

Another two detectives arrived, shaking their heads.

“Telephone, Captain,” Mavis called from the door.

He got up and walked hastily to reception. “Joubert.”

“Bertus Botha, Captain. We’ve traced a Hester Clarke. But she’s dead. Died of cancer. Early in December.”

“Where are you phoning from?”

“Her sister’s house, Captain. Fish Hoek. Deceased was fifty-three. Spinster. Artist. Designed Christmas cards and stuff for a publisher in Maitland but worked from home. Developed cancer of the spine. The sister says it was due to sitting all day long, no matter what the doctors say. She says all she knows about the Mauser murders is what she’s read in the newspapers and seen on TV.”

“She’s quite certain?”

“Yes, Captain. We showed her the photographs ’n’ everything.”

“Her sister never had any contact with Oliver Nienaber?” He hoped, hopelessly, because there couldn't be that many Hester Clarkes in the Cape and he was desperate, there had to be an end to it.

“She says they never went out. She says the streets aren’t safe. She knew everyone her sister knew.”

Joubert’s mind dug around for more possibilities.

“The doctor who treated her sister— get me his name. I’ll hold on.”

He heard Botha putting down the telephone and the sounds of talking in the background. Then Botha came back with the information. Joubert wrote it down. Groote Schuur. He thanked Botha and looked at his watch again. Just enough time to check at the hospital and then drive to his psychologist.

38.

The doctor remembered Hester Clarke’s illness very well. “She never complained. Strong woman. It must’ve been extremely painful, especially the last few months.”

When was the cancer diagnosed?

Three or four years ago. They had tried everything.

Her mental state?

Strong woman. I told you.

And so Joubert fished, in a useless effort to catch something that would cast some light. He knew it was a dead-end street.

He drove to the city, spoke to O’Grady on the radio.

No news about Hester Clarke, O’Grady said. Most of the teams had returned. But Pastor Jacques Coetzee’s trailer was proving to be interesting. They had found forty thousand rand under the seat. In hard cash. And bank documents that indicated that the church was financially very well placed. Lists of members, deacons, elders . . .

Bring it to the office, Joubert said. And sent Bertus Botha’s team back to the sister of Hester Clarke. Find out to which church they belonged. And telephone the relatives of the other victims again. Ask Nienaber’s children. Had they heard of the Tabernacle of the Redeemer.

While he drove, a feeling of optimism took hold of him. Each case, each dossier, was a mountain to climb. Sometimes the hand- and toeholds were easy and you had a fast ascent to the summit, where you handed over the warrant of arrest, a neat parcel of motive and evidence, cause and effect. But sometimes, like this one, the mountain was smooth and slippery, without crevices for hands and toes to grip. You climbed and slipped, climbed and slipped without progress, without a way to the top.

But now things were beginning to change. Finally, something for which someone was willing to commit murder. To blow six people’s brains and bodies to kingdom come.

Money.

The root of all evil. The driving force, the urge that made them steal and shoot and hit and chop and set alight.

The adrenaline was flowing freely when he walked into the waiting room and sank down on a chair. They were close now. They were very close. He was going to solve the case. Today.

Hanna Nortier opened the door and there was a smile on her face.

“Come in, Captain Mat Joubert.” Her voice held a gaiety and he rejoiced because he knew she was going to accompany him to the opera.

“I think we must discuss tomorrow night first,” she said as she opened his file. “So that we can put it behind us. I’m not allowed to go with you. It’s ethically wrong. It’s unfair to you because we still have hard work ahead of us. I can’t justify it in any way at all.”

He looked at her while he kept the disappointment out of his face with great difficulty.

“But there is the other side of the coin. I’m flattered that you’ve asked me out. I can’t remember when last I went anywhere with a big, strong man. I want to very much. I badly want to see

The Barber of Seville.

I want to go out. I’m in a rut. I believe I can separate my private and professional life. I must be able to do it. But not at your expense.”

She spoke quickly, urgently, a Hanna Nortier he hadn't seen before, her slender hands dancing to stress her words, her pupils large and black, her beauty so perfect that he was unable to look away.

“Can you separate the therapy and the personal . . . togetherness, Mat?”

Not too fast, he warned himself. Not too keen.

“I think so.” Nice and even, thoughtful.

“You must be quite sure.”

“I am sure.” Too quickly.

“If you change your mind you can still phone me tomorrow.”

Was she going with him?

“I’ll write down my home address. At what time does the opera start? Eight o’clock?”

He nodded.

“I’ll be ready by seven-thirty.”

“Thank you.” Why did he thank her? Because he was so grateful that his stomach muscles were clenching.

“How’s the investigation going?”

He didn't react immediately, first had to accommodate the change of gears.

“Well. Very well. We’re close.”

“Tell me.”

“There was another murder this morning. The pastor of a tent church in Kraaifontein. They . . . we found money in his trailer. I think it could be the motive. And then it’s just a question of time.”

“I’m so pleased for you,” she said sincerely and tidied the file. Her words moved into another tempo. She looked straight ahead. Gently she said: “I want you to tell me about the disciplinary inquiry.”

He did not want to think about it.

It was four months after the death of Lara Joubert.

But he didn't tell her that. Let her work it out on her own.

She had changed from personal to professional too quickly. He wasn'’t ready. He had expected a slower landing and now he had to think back, open the doors and hear the voices, the blackness of his feelings then, the dark, a flawless black night, pitch-black, the incredible weight, the feverish dreams as thick as molasses, while seconds ago his heart had been as light as a feather, a bird in flight.

He closed his eyes.

He did not want to think about it.

Reluctantly he searched for the images in his mind.

Blackness.

He had been in bed. Winter.

The images. Slowly. Tiredly it flowed back, uneven and confused. It was late at night, in his bed, he remembered, slowly recalled even the taste in his mouth, the weight of the blankets, the dream world, visiting his wife in the realm of the dead, her laugh, her sounds,

uhm, uhm, uhm, uhm,

a telephone ringing Captain Joubert to Parow cold and wet northwest wind.

A house with cement walls and a garden gate and a path between flowerbeds and a small fountain in the center of the lawn; the blue lights turning in the street; the neighbors in their dressing gowns against the cold, curious, staring; the uniform who told him the man was inside, he had shot his wife and he wouldn't come out; the neighbors had heard the sound of the shots and went and knocked and then he shot at them and shouted at them and said that tonight he was going to blast them all to hell and gone; a neighbor’s cheek was bleeding from the glass slivers of the front room’s window.

He went to stand in front of the door; the sergeant of Murder and Robbery had shouted, No Captain, not in front of the door; the book says stand against the wall; but Joubert’s book was covered in soot. I’m unarmed, I’m coming in, and I put my service pistol down on the slate stoop and I opened the door and walked in; no, Captain, jesus god, he’s fucking crazy.

He had closed the door behind him, the wind audible in the house.

“Are you mad?” The big .375 Magnum pointing at him, the man in the passage virtually insane, terror-stricken. “I’m going to kill the lot of you.”

He remained where he was and looked at the man; his eyes were unblinking, he waited for the lead to penetrate his brain and let the curtain fall. “You’re mad, go away.” The man’s mouth spat saliva, his eyes were those of an animal, the big revolver shook. He didn't move, simply stood there, gazed, uninvolved.

“Where is she?” His own voice emotionless.

“In the kitchen. The whore. She’s dead, the whore. I killed her. Tonight I’m going to kill you all.” The weapon was aimed straight at him again; the man’s breathing was ragged, his chest heaved, his body shook.

“Why?”

A sound— a sob and a cry and disgust, intermingled; the weapon dropped a few millimeters; the man’s eyes closed, opened.

“Kill . . .”

The wind and showers of rain against the windows, on the corrugated iron roof; light scurrying across the walls, the shadows of windblown shrubs. The man’s body tipped up to the wall, the revolver still held high, his shoulder against the wall; then the sound, another one, long drawn, a wailing; the man sank down to the floor; his legs were bent, his eyes unseeing; a bundle, crouching, sitting, arm on one knee; the grip on the firearm loose, a sound like the wind, as comfortless as his own soul.

Breathing slowed.

“What could I do?”

Weeping. “What could I do? She didn't want me anymore. What could I do?”

Shoulders shaking, spasms.

“She’s mine.” Like a child. A high whimpering voice.

A silence that stretched and stretched.

“She said to him: ‘You know I’m yours.’ I stood here— she didn't know— I stood here and I heard her saying, ‘All yours.’ ” The last words were a cry again; the voice jumped an octave, uncomprehending.

“ ‘You know. Like last night,’ she said. And I hit her and she ran. To the bathroom at first . . .”

He looked up, pleading. “I don’t even know who he was.” He got no reaction.

“What am I going to do?”

In the passage: he standing, the man half-lying, half-sitting against the wall; the revolver hung against his leg; someone outside called Captain, Captain, silence again, only the wind and the rain and the sobs, now soft and even, the man’s eyes on the firearm.

An awareness of a possibility, of a way out, a comfort; consider, count the cost, the future.

A slow decision.

“Will you go out?”

Yes, because he knew the yearning, the decision, he knew the darkness; turned round, toward the door; opened it, cries outside, Captain, jesus you’re okay, what’s the fucker doing; the sound of the shot inside; he didn't move, simply stood there, his head bowed until they realized and ran past him, through the door.

“The sentence was suspended.”

He looked squarely at Hanna Nortier. She had wanted to ask. She had wanted to know. She wanted to sail the soul of Mat Joubert like an unknown sea, map the contours of the Coast of the Dead, describe the landmarks, name them. Ask me, Doc, ask me. I’ll tell you how close to it I was that night, back at home, to blowing my brains all over the living room carpet with a service pistol. I could see and feel the release of my friend in Parow, touch it, with my service pistol in my hand, my thumb on the safety catch, on my way to Lara.

Willy Theal had hammered on the door. Mat, dear boy, dear boy. The thin arm around his shoulders. They stood on the front veranda, his head against Theal’s chest, the pistol pointing to the ground, the moment past, the intensity lost.

Ask me, Doc.

Hanna Nortier evaded his gaze, wrote in the fucking file, which he wanted to grab and read, aloud, let’s see what the clever Doc thinks . . .

“And the petition?” She spoke softly again, like the previous times, her gaiety gone, dissipated by the black cloud that was Mat Joubert, the world’s only intelligent black cloud, who cast shadows wherever it went, who blotted out the sun, quenched laughter.

“They thought the punishment wasn'’t severe enough. Van der Vyver, the sergeant at the house in Parow. He said I’d endanger lives again. He told the others. He was right. They went to Theal. My commanding officer. But Theal said I’d be okay, they were in too much of a hurry. Then they drew up a petition, took it as far as the assistant district commissioner, who had known my father and stopped the whole thing and said loyalty kept the force together. My father. Gave me from the grave what he couldn't give me in life. It’s ironic, isn’t it, Hanna?”

He used her name for the first time, without respect. She could’ve dropped it today. She could’ve discussed other things today, this and that, because he was getting his act together. I’m busy getting my act together, Hanna, and now you’re fucking with my head. Doc, I’ll be fine, I promise you, tomorrow evening my head will be just fine . . .

She blew her nose and only then did he see the wetness in her eyes and he half rose from his deep chair.

“Life is ironical,” she said, her voice under control. “That’s enough for today.”

Then he knew that he had touched her and wondered how, and he wondered what it meant.

Janek Milos opened the door and Benny Griessel knew he had his man.

“It’s your nose,” Griessel said.

Milos turned and ran into the house. Griessel swore and sprang after him, hoping that he would catch him quickly, because after a hundred meters, or less, he wouldn't have a hope.

Milos shut doors as far as he went, but the back door was locked and in his feverish haste he couldn't get the key to turn. Griessel struck the man’s back with his shoulder, forcing him against the door. The wood splintered, breath woofed out of the man’s mouth. Griessel was on him, his knee against the man’s back, forcing him to the ground. He jerked his arm back and twisted it toward his neck. Handcuffs on the right hand. Click. Found the other hand. Click.

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Griessel and kissed Janek Milos on the back of his bald head.

“If you don’t sue the

Argus,

I will,” said Margaret Wallace’s mother over the telephone, her voice shrill with agitation.

“Why, Mom?”

“I don’t want to tell you. It’s horrible the way they lie.”

“What is it, Mother?”

“It’ll upset you.”

“Mother, please.”

“They say . . . Heavens, my dear, it’s a pack of lies. It’s just that I’m so . . . so . . .”

“Mother!” A desperate order.

“They say Jimmy was with another woman. The day he died.”

“You must be fucking joking,” said the Brigadier, who was pacing to and fro in the parade room. “The minister is shitting his pants and you tell me the thing still doesn’t make sense. You tell me there’s forty thousand rand in the priest’s trailer and it’s just fine because he banks on a Saturday. You think the church is the answer and relatives have never heard of it.” He stopped and glared at de Wit and Joubert. “You must be fucking joking.”

They stared at the floor.

“Have you any idea of the pressure? The General is too scared to answer his telephone and I had to flee my office because the press are camped out in the street. And the bastards are everywhere. Here, at the gate, a uniform virtually had to save me from the vultures and you tell me the thing doesn’t make sense.” He started pacing again, his arms swinging. His face was scarlet, the veins in his neck swollen. “The minister says we’re the laughingstock overseas. We simple Boers are so stupid they have to send us a clairvoyant. Whose idea was that? You have a list of names the motherfucker wants to kill and they’re still dying like flies. And now you look so grateful that the names on the list are coming to an end.”

He took a kick at a chair. It fell over backwards, hit the wall, sprang back, clattered over the floor, and lay there.

“Doesn’t anyone have anything to say?”

“Brigadier,” said de Wit, his smile sickly and askew.

“Don’t you Brigadier me. Never in my forty years in the force have I come across such a sorry bunch of asshole dumb policemen. You couldn't catch a dead locust in a jam jar, if you ask me. What else do you want the motherfucker to do? Walk in here and mount his goddamn Mauser against the wall and say Catch me, please? By this time all the policemen in the province are here to help. What else must we do? Get Gauteng’s as well? What about the army? Let’s call them in as well, tanks and bombers and the fucking navy. Let’s not play games here. Let’s make real cunts of ourselves. Let’s phone the Chinese. They’ve got clairvoyants for Africa. And the Japanese. And we get Hollywood to come and film you because only their cameras are still missing.”

Another chair tumbled, clattered.

“Jesus Christ.”

They stared at the floor. De Wit, Joubert, Petersen, O’Grady, Snyman, and Vos.

The Brigadier’s hands made signs but he seemed incapable of further speech.

The door opened. Heads turned. Griessel came in.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said proudly, “meet Sweetheart,” and taking the man by his shirt, pulled him into the room.

39.

January 17, 19:17. Interrogation of suspect, SAP two slash one slash nine five slash fourteen, Murder and Robbery, Bellville South. Investigating officer: Detective Sergeant Benjamin Griessel. Observers: Colonel Bart de Wit, Captain Mat Joubert, Captain Gerry . . . uh . . .”

“Gerbrand.”

“Captain Gerbrand Vos. First question to suspect. Full name.”

“Janek Wachlaff Milos.”

“Nationality?”

“Eskimo. You can hear that. I speak fluent Eskimoose.”

“Nationality?”

“South African.”

“Identity number?”

“Five nine zero five five one two seven zero zero one.”

“Address.”

“Seventeen Iris Avenue, Pinelands.”

“You are aware of your right to have a legal representative present. If you don’t have a legal representative, or cannot afford one, the State will appoint such a legal representative. At any time during the proceedings you may ask the State to appoint an alternative legal representative, upon which the case before a magistrate of the district court or a higher court . . .”

“Spare me. I don’t need an attorney.”

“You’re going to need an advocate. We’re hitting you with armed robbery, Wachlaff.”

“It was a toy gun.”

“Pistol.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you admit that you’re undergoing this interrogation of your own free will, without any pressure or encouragement by the South African Police . . .”

“South African Police Service.”

“Sorry, Colonel. Without any pressure or encouragement from the South African Police Service?”

“Yes.”

“Where did your name originate?”

“Good old Eskimo name.”

“You’re a funny one, Wachlaff.”

“My father was Polish, okay?”

“Is your mother Afrikaans?”

Silence.

“Will you speak? For the sake of the tape recording.”

“Yes, she was. What has that to do with anything?”

“Profession?”

“Housewife.”

“No, yours.”

“Makeup artist. Freelance.”

“Not very successful?”

“Not my fault. Blame the SABC. The more they dub, the more we die of hunger.”

“So you decided to rob a few banks.”

“Only Premier. The other one was to send him the message.”

“For the record, the accused is referring to Captain Mat Joubert. Why Premier, Wachlaff?”

“They owe me.”

“They owe you?”

“I wouldn't have taken more than forty-five thousand rand. That’s what they owe me.”

“Why?”

“My house.”

“Your house?”

“They approved the loan. No problem, Mr. Milos. We’re happy to assist, Mr. Milos. Just sign here, Mr. Milos, we’ll let you have it at a quarter percent less.”

“And?”

“Then they withdrew the loan. Because their assessor hadn't seen the structural defect until I told them about it.”

“Structural defect?”

“The entire back of the house is fucking slowly sinking into the sand but the contract says the seller is not responsible and I had already signed. ‘We’re sorry, Mr. Milos, but there’s not enough security for the loan. No, it would be overcapitalizing to have the defect repaired, Mr. Milos. We’re transferring the loan to overdraft facilities. Do look at paragraph so-and-so, subparagraph this-and-that, the interest is just slightly higher.’ And then the SAB fucking C downsized and what could I do? Phone Murder and Robbery?”

“Then you began to rob banks?”

“I looked for work.”

“With no success.”

“No, sir, I was snowed under by offers. Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, Warner. They stood in line. But I really don’t want to be a millionaire at thirty-two.”

“You are funny and sarcastic, Wachlaff.”

“You try looking for work with your white skin, pal. ‘What experience do you have, sir? Makeup? We’ll phone you, sir. We’re actually busy with affirmative action right now.’ ”

“Then you started robbing banks.”

“Then I went and took back what they owed me.”

“It’s known as armed robbery, Wachlaff.”

“My name is Janek. It wasn'’t a weapon. It was a toy.”

“Do you admit that you robbed branches of Premier Bank of January 2 and 7 of seven thousand rand and fifteen thousand rand respectively? And that on January 11 you attempted to rob the bank’s branch in Milnerton? And that on January 16 you robbed a BANKSA branch in Somerset West of three thousand rand? Each time by threatening the employees with a firearm?”

“You saw the fucking gun. It’s a toy.”

“Can you prove that the toy pistol is the same one you used during the armed robberies?”

“No. But hell . . .”

“Yes?”

“I didn't want to hurt anyone. I was polite and civilized, up to the moment you started fucking around with the Mauser thing.”

“What Mauser thing, Wachlaff?”

“My fucking name is Janek. You know very well which Mauser thing I’m talking about. The guy who’s wiping out the whole Peninsula.”

“What do you know about the Mauser thing?”

“What I and the rest of South Africa read in the newspapers.”

“Where do you keep your Mauser?”

“Listen, I’m prepared to cooperate but I’m not prepared to listen to shit.”

“You started the Mauser thing when you mentioned it in Milnerton. I quote from the statement of Miss Rosa Wassermann. ‘And then he said: Seems like I should’ve brought my Mauser.’ ”

“The fat bitch wouldn't cooperate. I wanted to give her a fright.”

“There are twelve detectives busy searching your house at this moment. If they find the Mauser . . .”

“They won’t find anything.”

“Why, Wachlaff? Have you hidden it somewhere else?”

“I don’t have a fucking Mauser. How many times must I repeat it? I wouldn't even know how to get hold of one. I bought a toy gun that looks like the real thing and I never took it out of my pocket because I was afraid people would see that it was a toy. Okay, okay, I admit I stole the money. But it wasn'’t robbery. And it wasn'’t theft. It was my money that I took back. I would’ve returned BANKSA’s money but I had to get it from Premier first. Okay? You can’t force me to admit something I didn't do.”

“Where’s the money, Wachlaff?”

“Janek.”

“Where’s the money, Janek?”

“It’s my money.”

“Where is it?”

“Fuck you all. I’m going to jail in any case and when I get out Premier is still going to screw me for the money. Plus fucking interest. So what’s the use?”

“The judge will regard it in a very positive light if you return the money, Janek.”

“It’s my money.”

“Where is your money, Janek?”

(Silence)

“Janek?”

“In the ceiling. Under the hot water tank.”

They had a conference in de Wit’s office, the commanding officer now a member of the team, a frail camaraderie created by the Brigadier’s tirade.

Joubert’s mouth was dry and tasted of old cigarettes. In the interrogation room he had discarded his resolution of three a day— simply to get rid of the intense hunger and the headache that throbbed behind his temples. He had kept up with Griessel, one cigarette after the other, and he wanted another one now but de Wit’s sign stopped him. I PREFER NOT TO SMOKE.

They went through the dossiers line by line, bit by bit, studied the shapes of the puzzle, the holes bigger than the small pieces that fitted. They started from the beginning, built theories that others demolished with one question, shuffled again, built, broke down, until they realized the core simply wasn'’t there, the angles and corners still made no sense.