Dead Before Dying

He looked at the man opposite him clad in a multicolored V-necked tracksuit and expensive running shoes. The man was big and broad-shouldered. He was attractive, with a square jaw and black hair that curled at the nape of his neck. At the neckline of the tracksuit curly hair was clearly visible. A gold cross on a thin chain nestled in the hair. There was a serious expression on his face, a controlled frown between the heavy black eyebrows, an expression of grave cooperation. Joubert had seen it before. It could mean anything, because all this suspect had been asked to do was to accompany Snyman to Murder and Robbery because he “might be able to help us with an investigation.” Who knew what thoughts were churning behind that attractive frown?

Snyman sat next to the suspect, his place there earned by his good work. Bart de Wit sat somewhat behind the suspect, against the wall, an observer by personal request.

Joubert pressed the button of the tape recorder. “Mr. Zeelie, you’re aware of the fact that we’re recording this conversation?”

“Yes.” A small muscle next to the mouth twitched the upper lip.

“Have you any objection?”

“No.” His voice was deep and masculine.

“Please give us your full name for the record.”

“Charles Theodore Zeelie.”

“Your profession?”

“Professional cricketer.”

“You regularly play for the Western Province senior team?”

“Yes.”

“As a Province cricketer you must’ve known the late Mr. James Wallace well?”

“I did.”

Joubert watched him closely. Sometimes precisely the exaggerated ease was a sign, the forced lack of concern a mask for guilt. But Zeelie kept to the exact opposite— the tense frown, the serious helpfulness.

“Tell us about your relationship with Mr. Wallace.”

“Well . . . er . . . acquaintances, I’d say. We saw one another from time to time, generally at the get-togethers after the match. We chatted. I liked him. He was a . . . flamboyant man. Acquaintances. We were no more than acquaintances.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes.”

“You never discussed your personal life with Mr. Wallace?”

“Er . . . no . . .”

“You had no reason to dislike Mr. Wallace?”

“No. I liked him.” The seriousness of the issue deepened the frown on Zeelie’s forehead.

“Never got annoyed with him?”

“No . . . not that I can remember.”

Joubert leaned forward slightly and stared straight at the man in front of him. “Are or were you ever acquainted with a Mr. Drew Joseph Wilson of 64 Clarence Street, Boston?”

Shock spread like a veld fire over Zeelie’s face— his jaw clenched, the eyes narrowed. The left hand on the arm of the chair trembled.

“Yes.” Barely audible.

“Would you please speak more clearly for the sake of the tape recorder.” Mat Joubert’s voice carried the civility of the victor. “Would you like to tell us about your relationship with him?”

Now Zeelie’s voice was trembling as well as his hand. “You must forgive me but I don’t see what that has to do with this.” It became an appeal.

“With what, Mr. Zeelie?”

“Jimmy Wallace’s death.”

“Oh, so you reckon you can help us with the investigation into the murder of Wallace?”

He didn't get it. “I’ll do everything in my power, but . . .”

“Yes, Mr. Zeelie?”

“Leave Drew Wilson out of it.”

“Why?”

“Because he has nothing to do with it.” Zeelie was recovering from the shock.

Joubert leaned forward again. “Oh but he has, Mr. Zeelie. Drew Joseph Wilson was killed at approximately ten o’clock last night. Two pistol shots, one in the head, one in the heart.”

Zeelie’s hands gripped the arms of the chair, his knuckles white.

“James J. Wallace died in the same way. And we suspect that the same weapon was used.”

Zeelie stared at Joubert as if he were invisible. His face had blanched. The silence lengthened.

“Mr. Zeelie?”

“I . . .”

“Yes?”

“I want an attorney.”

Joubert and Snyman waited outside the interrogation room for an hour and a half while Charles Theodore Zeelie consulted with his attorney. De Wit had asked to be called again and went back to his office.

The longer the conversation inside lasted, the more certain Joubert became that Zeelie was his man.

Eventually the gray-haired attorney appeared.

“If my client is completely open with you, I want the assurance that his evidence will be kept totally confidential.”

“In court nothing is confidential,” Joubert said.

“It won’t come to that,” said the attorney and Joubert’s confidence ebbed. He asked for de Wit to be called. The OC agreed to the attorney’s request. They went into the room. Zeelie was pale, his eyes on the floor. They sat down at the table.

“Put your questions,” the attorney said.

Joubert activated the tape recorder, cleared his throat, not certain of the correct words. “Did you have . . . a relationship with Drew Joseph Wilson?”

Zeelie’s voice was low. “It was a long time ago. Six, seven years. We were . . . friends.”

“Friends, Mr. Zeelie?”

“Yes.” Louder, as if he wanted to convince himself of that.

“We have photographs in an album which . . .”

“It was a long time ago . . .”

Only the faint whirr of the tape recorder was audible. Joubert waited. Snyman sat on the edge of his chair. The attorney stared at the wall. Bart de Wit rubbed his mole.

Then Zeelie started speaking in his deep, attractive voice, softly, almost tonelessly.

“He didn't even know who I was.” He thought for a moment, spoke as if he were alone in the room.

“I was thumbing a lift from campus to town. Drew picked me up. The previous year, during matric, I’d played for Border, and the newspapers made a big thing of it when I came to Cape Town. He asked me who I was and I said he ought to know. He smiled and said that all he knew was that I was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.”

Zeelie became aware of the people around him again. He looked at Joubert. “No . . . I didn't know that I was gay. I didn't really know what it meant. I simply liked Drew very much . . . the attention he paid me . . . his company, his cheerfulness, his zest for life. I told him I was a student and a cricketer and that I was going to play cricket for South Africa. He laughed at my self-confidence and said he knew nothing about cricket. He said he was a goldsmith and his dream was to have his own establishment where he could make his own designs, not simply things meant for fat, rich tourists. We talked. We couldn't stop talking. In town he invited me for coffee at a street café. And said he would wait for me and take me back to campus. He came to visit, a week later. He was older than I was. So clever. Wise. He was so different from the other guys at cricket. He invited me to his home for dinner. I thought it was only friendship . . .”

He looked at de Wit and Snyman, seeking a sympathetic face. “At first it was just . . . right. With Drew it was neither dirty nor wrong. But it began to bother me. We discussed it. He told me it was never going to be easy. But it was different for him. I started playing for Western Province. Every time a schoolboy asked me for a signature, I wondered how long it would be before someone found out. I think I did . . . I was scared. My parents . . .”

He gave a deep sigh, his head on his chest, eyes fixed on the writhing hands on his lap. Then he looked up.

“One evening, after a match, I met a girl. Older. And sophisticated, like Drew. And . . . decisive. She took me to her flat. I was . . . relieved, thrilled. I didn't think I would be able . . . But I could. And enjoyed it. That was the beginning of the end because it offered a way out . . . Drew immediately noticed that something was wrong. I told him. He was furious. Then I . . . ended the relationship. He cried. We talked all night. But it was over.”

The hands in Zeelie’s lap relaxed. “I admit that I loved him. Those photographs don’t show the love. But the tension became too much. And the woman . . . I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be a hero in my own eyes . . .”

He rubbed a hand through his black hair.

“Carry on.”

“During the first two weeks he often phoned my campus residence. But I never returned the calls. A few times he waited for me in his car, wrote letters. I also saw him at matches a few times. Then I think he accepted it. It was over.”

“When last did you see him?”

“Lordy . . . Two years ago? At the airport. We were coming back from Durban after a match against Natal. His mother was on the same flight. We said hello, had a brief conversation. It was very . . . normal.”

“And you never saw him again?”

“No.”

“Mr. Zeelie, where were you last night between eight and eleven?”

“At Newlands, Captain.” Calmly, no bravado.

“Anyone able to confirm that?”

“It was a day-night match against Gauteng, Captain. I took two for twenty-four.”

15.

He was tired enough not to care what the other neighbors might say. He knocked loudly at the Stoffbergs’ front door. He heard her footsteps, then she opened the door. When she saw him her face changed. He knew he’d come to no purpose.

“Could we talk about last night?”

She stared at him with dislike, almost pity. Then the humiliation became too much for him. He turned and walked back to his house.

Behind him he heard her closing the door.

He walked home in the dusk of early evening but already felt shrouded in darkness.

He sat in his armchair in the living room but without a book. He lit a Winston and stared at the blue-gray smoke pluming to the ceiling.

Perhaps de Wit was right. Perhaps he was a loser. The Great Loser. The counterweight to success. Maybe he was the refuse tip of the gods, where all the dark thoughts and experiences, adversity and unhappiness, could be dumped like nuclear waste. Programmed to absorb the shadows like a sponge so that there could be light. Death, the Great Predator, was following the bloody tracks of Mat Joubert, saliva dripping from its fangs to fall onto the black soil. So that humanity could be free.

Like Charles Theodore Zeelie. He had walked out a free man. “You’ll keep your promise?” He’d made quite certain one last time.

“Yes.” Because even without promises Murder and Robbery didn't like to expose their dead ends, their failures, in the media. Charles Theodore Zeelie had been relieved. The strong face had regained its color, the hands had relaxed, the frown smoothed from the forehead by the invisible fingers of innocence.

He quite understood why they had asked him to come. He wasn'’t annoyed with them. If he could help . . .

Relieved. Friendly, almost lighthearted. Untouched by the death of a man who had made him experience self-hatred. And love.

Charles Theodore Zeelie had walked out free. But not Mat Joubert.

De Wit had made no comment, only directed that smile at Joubert. Had a smile of pity replaced the victorious one?

On the sixth floor of a block of flats in Sea Point that looked out over the vast, cold expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, he had visited Mrs. Joyce Wilson, the mother of Drew Joseph Wilson.

She replied calmly to Joubert’s questions, the grief firmly under control. A woman who cared for her appearance, tall and strong and impressive, her attractiveness arrived at by her own hand, not due to genetic factors. Gallant and straight-backed in her painfully neat flat. Yes, Drew, her beloved and only son, had been gay. But he had changed. It was more than six or seven years that he had let it go.

Tell her it’s wishful thinking, Mat Joubert. Tell her. Let her feel the darkness, too. Share it. Spread it around a little. But he’d said nothing. He left her alone to cry in her bedroom where no one could see her.

He’d been to see Margaret Wallace again as well. With the pain in her eyes that hadn't yet disappeared. You’re almost there, lady. Open your heart. Leave the back door of your mind permanently open so that death can come in, the black wind can blow through your skull. You’re on the right road, lady. Life has disappeared from your eyes. Your skin, your mouth, look tired. Your shoulders are carrying a heavy load.

No, she had never heard of Drew Wilson. She didn't know whether James had known him.

And her body language implied that she didn't care.

And here sat Mat Joubert. The Great Loser. The man with the physician and the psychologist and the dietitian. He made a sound in the back of his throat, jeering at himself, at the thought, the concept, that a thirty-four-year-old captain and detective couldn't seduce the eighteen-year-old daughter of an undertaker.

How pathetic.

Benny Griessel’s face rose in his mind again. At the moment when Yvonne Stoffberg appeared in the doorway, a fanfare of flesh, his late-night dessert.

Benny Griessel’s face.

Joubert smiled. And suddenly saw his self-pity from another perspective— at first only a glimpse, then with disillusion. And he smiled at himself. And at Benny Griessel’s face. Joubert looked at his burning cigarette and saw himself as he was at that moment— in his reading chair, staring at a cigarette, and with a smile meant only for himself— and he knew he had another chance.

He stubbed the cigarette and got up. He fetched his diet sheet and the recipe book the dietitian had given him. He walked to the kitchen: 60 grams of chicken (no skin), 60 milliliters fat-free meat sauce, 100 grams baked potato, 150 grams carrots, broccoli. Two units of fat.

Jesus.

He took out pots and pans, started the preparations, his head rethinking the two murders. Eventually he sat down at the table, ate the food slowly.

Chew food slowly. This allows the stomach to signal the brain when it is full,

said the diet sheet. But the telephone rang twice before his plate was empty.

The first time he answered, it was with his mouth full of broccoli. “Wawert.”

“Captain Joubert, please.” A man’s voice.

Joubert swallowed. “Speaking.”

“Good evening, Captain. Sorry to bother you at home. But that colonel of yours is a terror.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Captain. Michaels here, at the laboratory. It’s about SAP3 four slash two slash one slash ninety-five. The Wallace murder.”

“Yes?”

“The weapon, Captain. It’s not—”

“Are you calling from Pretoria?” Still trying to get a grip on what was going on.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Which colonel are you talking about?”

“De Wit, Captain.”

“What has he got to do with this?”

“He phoned us, Captain, this afternoon. And crapped on our heads from a dizzy height. Said his people were working their fingers to the bone while we sat on our hands.”

“Bart de Wit?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Joubert chewed on the information.

“In any case, Captain, that Tokarev of yours—”

“Yes?” But he was still amazed by de Wit’s call and the fact that the commanding officer had told him nothing about it.

“It’s not a Tokarev, Captain. I don’t know who thought that one up. It’s a Mauser.”

Suddenly Joubert was part of the conversation again. “A what?”

“A Mauser, Captain. But not just any old Mauser. It’s a Broomhandle.”

“A what?”

“It’s a pistol, Captain.” Michaels’s voice had taken on the patient tone of a teacher. “The Mauser military model, M96 or M98, I’d guess. Seven point sixty-three caliber. The cartridge cases are typical. Rimless with a bottleneck. I can’t imagine why you thought it was a Tokarev. The—”

“The caliber.” Joubert defended Griessel’s guess.

“No, Captain. Sorry, but hell, there’s a huge fucking difference. In both cases it should make your job much easier.”

“Oh?”

Michaels became impatient. “The Mauser, Captain. It’s old and it’s rare. There can hardly be that many people in the Cape who own one. Firearm records.”

“How old?”

“Almost a hundred years, Captain. Eighteen ninety-six or ’ninety-eight. Most beautiful thing the Germans ever made. But you’ll know it, Captain. Broomhandle. Slender wooden stock. Boer officers carried it. Long barrel, magazine in front of the trigger.”

Joubert tried to visualize the weapon, and somewhere an image stirred, a vague memory. “Looks almost like a Luger?”

“Luger’s grandfather, Captain. That’s the one.”

“Where would they find ammunition for it? After a hundred years?”

“It shoots Tokarev but it could hurt it. Pressure ratios differ. But the guy still has a supply, Captain. Your murderer. Even his cartridges are old. ’Ninety-nine. Maybe 1900. You must get him. He’s fucking shooting museum pieces to hell and gone.”

“The ammunition is also a hundred years old?”

“Unbelievable, isn’t it.”

“And it’s still effective?”

“In those days they built to last, Captain. Occasionally you’ll get a misfire. But most of them are still in working order. The guy can wipe out the whole of Cape Town.”

“You think it’s a man?”

“Definitely, Captain.”

“Oh?”

“Mauser kicks like a fucking mule, Captain. Takes a man on a horse.”

16.

He swam with enjoyment for the duration of one length. When he turned, kicking against the wall of the pool and swam back, fatigue sent its feelers through his muscles again.

He strove for the weightlessness, the efficiency. He swam more slowly, then faster, rested, tried again, but it evaded him.

When he climbed out of the water he was hopeful about the swimming for the first time.

On that Thursday, the tenth of January, the chief subeditor of

Die Burger

had a small stroke of luck. Subs, the people who, among other things, have to think up the headlines in a newspaper, occasionally like an alliteration or a play on words to jazz up their work and, as his luck would have it, the words

Mauser, murder,

and

maniac

all started with the same letter.

That apart, the newspaper had decided to devote the main story on the front page to the murders. There were two reasons for that decision. The first was that the usual sources of information had nothing of note to offer that morning. No more people than usual had died in the townships, the various colors of the political rainbow had made no new serious references to one another, and the government wasn'’t involved in a new scandal. On the international front it was quiet too, even in the Middle East, eastern Europe, and Ireland.

The second reason was the murder weapon. The Mauser Broomhandle.

After he had seen the photographs of James J. Wallace and Drew Joseph Wilson lying on his desk the previous evening, the crime reporter of

Die Burger

had started playing around with a theory.

Both had black hair and black mustaches. They vaguely resembled each other. Both were in their late thirties.

The reporter had also telephoned Lieutenant John Cloete of the SAPS Department of Public Relations and asked whether it might be possible that the service was dealing with a mass murderer who had his knife— his Tokarev— out for mustachioed, black-haired men this side of forty.

It was Cloete’s duty to keep the service in the media’s good books. And if a crime reporter had some stupid theory or other, Cloete listened to it and promised that he would come back to him.

And so Cloete had called Mat Joubert away from a slice of skinless chicken breast, carrots, potato, and broccoli to ask him whether the reporter was onto something.

Joubert was fully aware of journalists’ habit of grabbing at straws and he sympathized with Cloete.

“We’re exploring all avenues,” he’d said because he knew that that was what Cloete wanted to tell the reporter.

Cloete had thanked Joubert.

“There’s something else, John,” Joubert said before Cloete could put the phone down.

“Yes, Captain?”

“The murder weapon.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“It’s a Mauser Broomhandle.”

“A what?”

Joubert had told him. As much as he could remember.

“Keee-rist,” Cloete had said because he knew the press. And he knew—

“And then there’s another thing, John.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Don’t let the newspapers refer to me as ‘one of the Peninsula’s top detectives.’ ”

Cloete had laughed, promised, and returned the reporter’s call. “Captain Mat Joubert says they’re exploring all avenues.”

Then Cloete told him about the Mauser.

Sensation, the reporter knew, was often contained in the minor details of a story. The condition and color of a pair of underpants, for example. The color of a couple or the difference in color. Or, as in this case, the age of the murder weapon.

The Mauser was manna from heaven. Old, rich in history, with a touch of controversy about it— dating from the Anglo-Boer War, which might give it a right-wing color. It had a strange, exotic appearance. That was why

Die Burger

’s front page looked the way it did that Thursday morning. In the newspaper’s attractive modular makeup, the main story, photographs, and a graphic box in a large square had been etched against a salmon-colored background. And the headline? Two words, alliterative, in big sans serif letters: MAUSER MURDERER. And below it, in smaller serif, the subheading: MANIAC MAY STRIKE AGAIN.

Joubert read the newspaper in his office.

His week of standby duty was over. He now had a three-week breathing space before he had to lead a standby group again. That was why he had the luxury of a newspaper on his desk that morning. He read the copy and shook his head over the inventiveness of a journalist who could make front-page news out of the make of a weapon, a theory, and a vague statement from the police.

But he didn't mind. Publicity was one of the great allies in the solving of crimes. Some criminals had even given themselves up as a result of a newspaper report stating that the police net was tightening. And as for the impact of television . . .

He read the report and looked at the photographs of Jimmy Wallace and Drew Wilson. He knew he didn't have one single solid clue and he was certain that this wasn'’t the last Mauser murder. Maybe the reporter was right. Maybe it was a man who came home to catch a black-haired man with a black mustache with his wife. And was now shooting such men to boost his ego.

Mat Joubert, armchair psychologist.

Never mind, he said to himself. Another few hours and he would be back with the real thing, his own personal physician of the soul. The one and only Dr. Hanna Nortier, interrogator, surgeon of the psyche, healer of sick souls.

“We’ll see one another on Thursdays, Captain,” she had said. He suddenly realized that he was looking forward to it.

What could that mean? He lit a Benson & Hedges Special Mild. It still didn't taste like a Winston. He folded the newspaper and looked at his watch. Half past eight. Perhaps the people at records were at work by now. He picked up the receiver and dialed the number. The time had come for them to start looking for a Mauser.

Ferdy Ferreira didn't read

Die Burger

on Thursday, January 10. Or on any other day. Because reading a newspaper was too much trouble.

And he had enough trouble in his life. Like his wife. His wife was Trouble with a capital T.

“Ferdy, walk the dogs.”

“Ferdy, look for work.”

“Ferdy, you eat too much.”

“Ferdy, beer has given you that gut.”

“Ferdy, the least you could do is to help me clear the table.”

“Ferdy, I’m on my feet all day long. And what do you do? You sit.”

He especially liked sitting in front of the television. From the moment his wife caught the Golden Arrow at the bus stop in front of the Old Ship Caravan Park until programming ended with a religious broadcast in the evening.

Ferdy’s lack of knowledge of the murders was due to the fact that there was no way the SABC could give its attention to every murder in the country. After all, it was a national news service and covered only major events. That’s why there had been no mention at all of the death of James J. Wallace or that of Drew Wilson. So in a certain sense it could be said that the South African Broadcasting Corporation carried some culpability in the death of Ferdy Ferreira.

Not that they would ever know.

Joubert knocked at the door of the dilapidated house in Boston and considered the fact that it was only two blocks away from the late Drew Wilson’s. His heart rate increased and he slid the palm of his hand over the Z88 to reassure himself that it was still there.

The fax from records had stated that there were sixteen registered Mauser Broomhandles in the Cape Peninsula.

Joubert had divided the list of names between himself and Gerrit Snyman because there was no one else. The other detectives who were not on standby were in court as witnesses— conclusive evidence that they had done their work successfully in the past year. Snyman was new. And Mat Joubert . . .

The door opened. A woman stood there, large, middle-aged, and ugly. Her features— the eyes, the mouth, the nose— were uniformly small and unattractive in the center of her face so that she resembled a reptile.

“Mrs. Stander?”

“Yes.” Impatiently.

He introduced himself and explained why he was there. They had to check every Mauser in the Peninsula to see whether it had been fired.

“Come in.” She turned and walked down the passage. Joubert saw that her shoulders were broad and thought she looked like a murderer. He could see her in his mind’s eye, this hunk of a woman, in front of James J. Wallace and next to Drew Wilson’s car.

She hesitated at the sitting room door. “Wait here.” She gestured with her hand and walked on down the passage. He walked into the sitting room and sat down in a chair, ill at ease. And he was vaguely amused by his discomfort. His job was to seek out murderers without discrimination— beautiful and ugly, fat and thin, old and young. It was only in films and on television that the murderer was always an aesthetically unattractive stereotype.

But when he heard Mrs. Stander’s heavy footsteps in the passage again, he kept his hand close to his service pistol and balanced his body so that he could get up easily.

She had a wooden chest in her hands. She came to sit next to him and wordlessly offered the chest.

He took it. He saw the carving on it— a scene of Boer soldiers on their horses, the fine detail of the animals, of the men’s hats and waistcoats and firearms, precisely and lovingly etched into the wood. He touched the small work of art, amazed.

“My grandfather made it on St. Helena,” the woman said. “He was an officer. And a prisoner of war there, of course.”

He opened the chest.

He’d seen the drawing, the graphic representation of the Mauser in

Die Burger

that morning, remembered its shape and appearance. But the graphics hadn't prepared him for the metal and the wood, the curves and contrasts of the weapon.

It didn't look like a murder weapon.

The line of the barrel, the angle it formed with the slender stock, was feminine— a soft, sensual curve. The magazine, square, chunky, and blunt, was an abruptness in front of the trigger, like a male sexual organ, unattractive but effective. He lifted the Mauser out of the chest. It felt lighter than it looked. WAFFENFABRIK MAUSER OBERNDORF, he read on the frame. He turned the pistol over, looked down the barrel, sniffed in the odor of black metal and dark wood.

He knew that this wasn'’t the weapon.

“You must oil it,” he told Mrs. Stander, who sat forward in her chair, her eyes never leaving his face. “There’s rust in the barrel. You must oil it well.” Then he placed the weapon carefully and respectfully back into the chest.

When he drove to Paarl, to the next Mauser owner on his list, he speculated about the murderer. Why this weapon? Why choose a pistol that attracted attention like a beacon burning in the night? Why use ammunition that was a century old, and could leave you, at that heart-stopping moment, in the lurch? Was it a political statement after all?

The voice of the Boer is not stilled.

Two victims, one English-speaking, a ladies’ man, one Afrikaans-speaking, gay.

Our Boer voice is not stilled and we still shoot the English and queers.

No, it was too simple. Too one-dimensional. It might be a statement but on another level. A way of attracting attention. Of saying:

I’m different. I’m special.

The other seven names and addresses on his list took him to two retirement homes, three pensioners, and two amateur weapon collectors. He saw four different Mauser Broomhandle models, each subtly different from the other, each one with its own chilling charm.

He found no suspect on his list.

In the late afternoon he drove back to Cape Town. In the city, at a stoplight on the way to Dr. Hanna Nortier’s consulting rooms, the

Argus

paperboy stood next to the car. Joubert read the headline with ease:

BLAST FROM THE PAST.

17.

When he followed her through the door he noticed that she was wearing a dress in a plain design, dark blue material patterned with small red and orange flowers. It covered her to below her knees. He could see the muscle and bone of her shoulders and wondered who her dietitian was.

They sat down.

He saw that her frail beauty was pale today, the smile polite but not warm, slightly forced.

“And how is Captain Mat Joubert?” she asked and opened his file.

What should he say? “Fine.”

“Have you come to terms with the fact that you’re consulting a psychologist?”

“Yes.” Not the whole truth, because he’d looked forward to the visit. He’d chewed over this peculiarity between visits to Mauser Broomhandle owners in the Cape. He’d speculated, considered possibilities, because there wasn'’t one reason only. After the previous visit it seemed as if the abscess in his head . . . the pressure had decreased and the gray curtain between him and life had taken on a paler hue.

Then there was the other tale, Dr. Hanna. The heartrending story of the Fucking Stupid Policeman and the Undertaker’s Daughter. A thriller in one short act with a twist in the tail. Psychologist’s dream, Dr. Hanna. So many nuances to investigate. Self-image, sex . . .

He surprised himself when he realized that he wanted to speak to Hanna Nortier about it. About his relief that his sexual urge still existed. About the humiliation. He wanted to know whether he had been programmed for humiliation.

But there was another possibility that he’d discovered, another potential reason why Mat Joubert was looking forward to his second visit to his personal head doctor. And that was the doctor herself.

She paged in the file in front of her. It bothered him. Couldn't she remember what he had told her the previous time? Had the blood he’d spilled on her carpet washed out so easily? She looked up at him. He saw the tiredness around her eyes and had a sudden insight: he was the eighth or the tenth or the twelfth patient of the day who sat opposite the slender woman spewing out the bitterness of their lives.

“You said very little about your mother during the first session.” Her head was still bent over the file. He heard her voice and it sounded like a musical instrument. He put his hand into his coat pocket, took out the Benson & Hedges, lifted the packet’s lid, saw the cigarettes in their neat rows. His big fingers always found it difficult to extract the first cigarette from a new packet. He pinched the filter between thumb and forefinger and pulled. The cigarette slid out, Joubert changed his grip on it and put it into his mouth, then realized she was waiting for him to speak.

“My mother . . .”

Why had he looked forward to this visit? He put his hand into his pocket, brought out the lighter, let the flame shoot up, sucked in the smoke. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. He put the lighter back into his pocket. He looked at her.

“How do you remember her?”

“I . . .” He thought about it.

“As a child, I mean.”

As a child? How did one remember anything as a child? Episodes, fleeting incidents that made such an impression that you recognized their shape and content even when they lay under a thick layer of dust on the shelves of your memory.

“My mother was pretty.”

He was six or seven when he realized it for the first time. It was on Voortrekker Road, that main artery of his youth. The church’s building fund or missionary money was at low ebb again and the sisters of the community had organized a pancake stall on the sidewalk— every Saturday morning. He’d begged his mother to take him along, the promise of soft pancakes with unmelted cinnamon sugar crunching under his teeth a prospect that inspired him to make a complete pest of himself. She gave in in the end, simply to keep him quiet. There were four or five other women at the sidewalk stall early in the morning. The street was still quiet, with the sun rising at the eastern point of Voortrekker Road, as if the road determined its orbit. He sat away from them, his back against a shopfront, his arms resting on his drawn-up knees, his head on his arms. He was sleepy, already sorry that he had come, his expectations of pancakes disappearing in the face of the women’s businesslike attitude. He’d closed his eyes and heard his mother’s voice. It was different, not the way it usually sounded. This made him look up at her. There she stood behind the table, busy unpacking and arranging, her hands skillful and sure while her face reflected the gold of the early morning sunlight. She was speaking. The other women were listening. And laughing. His mother, the woman reduced to quiet self-effacement by the abusive shouting of her husband, was amusing the women. That morning he’d caught a glimpse of someone he would never really get to know.

“I think they’d forgotten about me,” he said to Hanna Nortier. “And my mother was imitating someone. I don’t know who it was— another woman probably. There on the sidewalk, just after seven in the morning. She walked a little way up the pavement, turned, and became someone else— her walk, her bearing, the way she turned her head and neck, her hands and arms. ‘Who am I?’ she asked. The other women laughed so much they couldn't speak. ‘I’m going to wet myself,’ one said. I remember that because I was shocked. Between the gales of laughter they shouted the name of the woman, the one my mother was imitating. And then they clapped. My mother bowed with a smile on her face and the sun shone and then I saw my mother was beautiful with her smooth skin and her red cheeks and her shining eyes.”

He was silent. The cigarette had burned down to almost nothing.

“I only remembered it when we buried her.”

She wrote in the file. Joubert stubbed the butt in the ashtray and wiped a hand across his upper lip. He smelled the tobacco and smoke on his fingers, an unpleasant smell.

“Maybe I was disappointed in her. Later. Because she never confronted my father. That she hadn't left him because of his tyranny and abusiveness and drinking. She was so . . . passive. No. It was more than passive. She . . . On Friday evenings when my father was in the bar she never spoke about it. She never said: ‘Go and fetch your father from the bar for supper.’ She used to say: ‘Go and look for your father.’ As if he might have been somewhere else. And when I came back and said that he didn't want to eat, it seemed as if she didn't hear me. As if she had an inexhaustible capacity to deny reality, to create her own.”

“How much of that did you inherit?” Her tone of voice was sharper, almost accusatory. He realized that it was the first psychological introspection she had expected of him.

Joubert tried to consider it. But she released him, her voice gentle again. “Was it easy for you to take out girls? Later?”

Somewhere in his head a soft alarm sounded. Where was this leading? His mother. His girls?

“No.”

He was reluctant to face that memory, the awkwardness, the gnawing uncertainties of puberty, the period he came to terms with with such difficulty. He saw Hanna Nortier’s frailness. How could she understand? “I was large, Doctor— even at school.” Not simply tall. Big. He knew he wasn'’t as at ease with his body as other boys— the fly halves, the wings, the sprinters. Others pranced like high-bred racehorses; he, with heavy, dull movements, fought his war against gravity. He was convinced that it disqualified him from associating with girls. Eight years after matriculation he met a school friend who asked him whether he’d known that she was in love with him at school. He couldn't believe it.

“I never had a girlfriend. The one who went with me to the matric farewell . . . my mother and her mother fixed it. Like an arranged marriage.”

“Did it bother you? That you didn't have a girlfriend?”

He thought about it.

“I read.”

She waited.

“Books create their own reality, Doctor. In books there are no clumsy heroes. And there are always happy endings. Even when the hero makes mistakes, in the end he always gets the heroine. I thought that all I had to do was to be patient. And until then the books were enough.”

“Your first girl?”

Alarm bells rang. The process had been exposed. His mother, his girls, the way to Lara Joubert. And dear God, he didn't want to talk about Lara.

“Lara,” he said softly and looked at the hands in his lap, the thick fingers that twitched and struggled with one another. There were others, before Lara. The secret loves of his teenage years that made his heart beat and his palms sweat. A phys ed teacher, a new girl from another school, the dark, somber Greek girl with the strong scent in the café on the corner of Rhodes and Voortrekker.

But they never knew about his passion, his dreams and fantasies. Lara did.

He felt Hanna Nortier’s eyes on him. Then he heard her voice, soft, almost inaudible, deeply comprehending. “You don’t want to discuss her.” It was a question and a statement, a form of sympathy offered— and a challenge.

He was touched by the emotion in her voice. He felt the weight of the memory of Lara that lay on his mind. His mind was shouting: Tell her, Mat Joubert. Throw off the black ballast that forces the prow of your soul to meet every gray breaker head-on. Open the hatches. Toss it overboard.

He can’t tell her everything.

He shook his head back and forth. No. He didn't want to talk about Lara.

“We can do it slowly.” Her voice still filled with comprehension.

He looked up at her. He wanted to hug the frail body of Hanna Nortier with great gentleness, cover the etched shoulders with his big hands so that she didn't look so vulnerable. He wanted to hold her against him with sympathy and care, like a bulwark, a lifebelt. He was filled with emotion.

“How did you meet her?” The words were barely loud enough to reach his ears.

He was quiet for a long time. At first to get his emotions under control. Then he cat-footed through his memory banks, as if too heavy a tread would trigger the wrong recollection. The emotion was like a magnifying glass, an acoustic booster, multiplying the clarity of his memory. He saw the image in his mind’s eye, heard the sounds as if he were there. At first he had to draw back, then inch forward. Lara’s face in front of him, that first time. She opening the door, her short straight black hair, her black eyes, which blazed like searchlights with her lust for life, her smiling mouth, one eyetooth slightly askew, her body so lithe, so lively under the bright red dress. She had looked him up and down and said, “I didn't order an extra large,” closed the door, then flung it open again with the laugh that flowed over him like music. Then she put out her hand and said: “I’m Lara du Toit.”

“It was a . . .” Joubert searched for a more dignified word, found none. “It was a blind date.”

He was looking at Hanna Nortier now, at her eyes, her nose, her mouth— his toehold in the precipice of memory.

“Hans van Rensburg arranged it. He was a sergeant at Murder and Robbery. They shot him at a roadblock on the N1 in 1992. She was still a uniform then, at the Sea Point station, but Hans was investigating a murder there and met her. He said he’d seen just the right girl for me. One who would do all the talking. Because I was too useless and too scared of women to get anywhere, ever, he said. He phoned her and talked her into it. And so I drove to her flat. She shared a one-bedroom flat on Kloofnek with a girlfriend because they were both so poor. Lara slept in the sitting room, the other one in the bedroom, and men were only allowed in the kitchen. Then she opened the door and she was beautiful. Then she said we must walk to the flicks because it was a lovely evening. Walk, the whole way down Kloofnek to the Foreshore. We hadn't even reached the street when she took my hand and said she liked being touched and people might think I was her brother if we didn't hold hands. She laughed at my shyness and at the way I blushed. Then she became serious, because a man who could blush was a marrying man, and then she laughed again.”

He heard the laughter of his dead wife, the laugh of that first day, and he remembered how they had walked back later that evening up the first rise of the mountain, the Cape night windless about them. Lara du Toit had spoken to him as if he mattered, as if it was worthwhile sharing her secrets with him. He feasted on her laughter, on the touch of her hand, which like some small animal was never still in his, on her eyes, her mouth, her deeply tanned skin, unblemished, shining like polished copper.

He remembered how he’d climbed into his ancient Datsun SSS and later hadn't been able to recall the trip home. How he, in the tree-lined street in Wynberg where he rented a room behind the main house, had lifted his head to the heavens and given one mighty shout because the joy in him was too much to contain.

And then Mat Joubert wept for the first time in seventeen years— a wordless, soundless emotion, only the wetness dripping out of his eyes betraying it. He turned away from Hanna Nortier and wondered when the humiliation would end.

18.

Benny Griessel was shaking. His hands, his arms, his shoulders, his legs. “I know, Mat. That’s the worst. I know. I know what’s coming. It scares me so badly.”

Joubert sat on the single chair in the small room, Griessel on the bed with its gray blanket. The walls were bare, plastered and painted white up to head height, then brown brick to the ceiling. Next to the bed stood a wooden table without a drawer. A red Gideon Bible lay on it. A cupboard stood against the wall next to the washbasin and lavatory.

He looked for the old Benny Griessel, the witty, cynical man with the slight liquor breath. This one’s face was drawn with fear, his skin gray, his lips blue.

“Tonight the demons will come, Mat, the voices and the faces. They tell me they’re hallucinations but I don’t know the difference when they come. I can hear them calling and I can feel their fingers and you can never get away because you’re too slow and there are too many of them.”

Benny Griessel doubled over and a spasm shook his body.

“I’ll find you another blanket, Benny.”

“Blankets won’t stop them, Mat. Blankets won’t stop them.”

He telephoned Gerrit Snyman when he got home.

“Nothing, Captain. There are some that are so rusted that they’ll never shoot again. And the guy who lives in Table View has a helluva collection of weapons, Captain. His Mauser looks as if it was made yesterday. Oiled and polished. Almost too much, as if it could’ve been the murder weapon. But the man has an alibi for both murders.”

Joubert said that he had found nothing either, thanked Snyman for his work, and said good-bye.

He walked to the living room with a few pieces of fruit, a knife, and a plate and sat down in his reading chair. He quartered an apple, carefully cut out the cores.

Two days, he thought. For two days the Benny-Griessel-coitus-interruptus had been his number-one humiliation. Now it had been supplanted. By his stupid blubbering in front of Hanna Nortier.

She’s a psychologist, he told himself. She’s used to it.

But he wasn'’t. He wasn'’t used to the humiliation.

She had handled it well. She hadn't said anything. She had stood up and walked around the desk, crossing the invisible divide between psychologist and patient, and come to stand next to him. She had put her hand on his shoulder. She stood like that until he, his head still turned away from her, had with one angry movement wiped the wetness off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. Then she had walked back, sat down, and waited until he was in control.

“We’ll talk some more next time,” she had said softly. He had got up and walked to the door, forcing himself not to run.

And now, with a quarter of an apple in his hand, he knew the humiliation in front of her was the greater of the two. Because if he placed Dr. Hanna Nortier and Yvonne Stoffberg next to each other on the scale of femininity, he was stunned. How could he have been so aroused? Now, compared with Hanna Nortier’s, Yvonne Stoffberg’s beauty had become shallow, her sensuality diminished.

For a moment he felt sorry for Yvonne. Then he remembered the firmness of her back muscles, the texture of her breast in his mouth.

Yes, set against the doctor she was common, ordinary. But she had made Mat Joubert’s blood race.

Ferdy Ferreira hated his wife’s two dogs.

Especially now at twenty to six in the morning, the sun barely up.

One reason was that in his view their mobile home, the Plettenberg, was too small for two adults and two corgis.

Another reason was the attention and love that Gail Ferreira gave the dogs. When she came home, late in the afternoon from the coal company’s offices where she was the bookkeeper, she greeted them first. Their names were Charles and Diana but she called them her angel faces.

The main reason, however, for Ferdy’s hatred, was that he had to take the dogs for a walk on the beach every morning. “Before six, Ferdy, so that I can say bye-bye to them before I get the bus.” This, then, was the pecking order in the Ferreiras’ Plettenberg in Melkbosstrand’s Old Ship Caravan Park: first Gail, then the dogs, then Ferdy.

“Ferdy, the dogs,” Gail said, busy dressing in front of her cupboard. She was a woman of average height and build, in her midforties, but her voice and her decisive attitude created the illusion of a big woman.

Ferdy sighed and got out of his single bed, divided from Gail’s by a bedside table. He knew it was useless to argue. It only made things worse.

And the corgis sat moodily at the bedroom door, as if they, too, weren’t looking forward to the walk.

Ferdy dragged his left foot every morning.

“Don’t drag your foot like that.”

“It’s sore, Flash,” Ferdy said in a whining voice. Gail’s nickname at school, derived from “Jack the Flash,” referred to her speed and adroitness on the hockey field. He still called her that occasionally.

“There’s not a thing wrong with it,” said Gail.

Ferdy Ferreira had contracted polio as a child. His left foot was affected but only insofar as it needed a slightly thicker sole to his shoe and gave a subtle list to his walk. But Ferdy had learned to use it as a weapon, with only qualified success.

Ferdy sighed, as he did every morning, and got dressed. He took the dogs’ leads out of the broom closet in the kitchen and walked back to the bedroom, the list heavily emphasized in a useless play for sympathy. The dogs were still sitting in the bedroom, their eyes fixed on Gail. Ferdy clipped the leads to their collars. Charles and Diana growled.

“I’ll be going now.” He sounded hurt, his voice martyred.

“Be careful with my angels,” was Gail’s reply.

He walked down the mobile home park’s tarred road to the main gate on the west side. He greeted old Mrs. Atkinson, who lived in the park permanently on site seventeen with eleven cats. The corgis strained toward the cat smell. Ferdy jerked them back with satisfaction, using more force than was necessary. The corgis growled.

He walked them through the gate. The black gatekeeper was probably still sleeping in the little wooden hut. They walked across the tarred road, over the empty piece of land that lay next to the Little Salt River, which flowed into the sea there.

He didn't see the orange of the eastern horizon or the blue-green of the Atlantic Ocean in front of him or the long stretch of white beach or the car parked on the empty piece of land. Because he was thinking of other things. George Walmer had acquired three new videos. Pure porn. He was bringing them later.

Between the brown soil of the informal parking area and the stretch of beach there was a low dune— an irregular sandbank a meter or two high with occasional clumps of Port Jackson bushes or vygie ground cover.

Ferdy aimed for his usual route to the beach, a pathway worn through the dune. The corgis wanted to smell a plant. He jerked them back. They growled.

Ferdy saw the figure coming toward him but didn't find it odd. There were people on the beach at that hour quite often. Some jogged, some walked, some stared at the sea.

Ferdy only really saw the figure when the Mauser appeared from under the blue windbreaker. He assumed that it was a joke and wanted to laugh, but then the big pistol was aimed at him and he saw the face and fear gripped his guts in a painful grasp.

“I’m a cripple,” he said, his eyes wild.

The corgis growled at the figure in front of them.

The Mauser, gripped in both hands, was aimed at his head. He saw the tension in the trigger finger, the set of the killer’s jaw, the purposeful eyes, and knew that he was going to die. Ferdy dropped the corgis’ leads and sprang forward in an effort to save his life.

The shot thundered across the beach, an echo of the waves. The lead bullet broke his bottom right incisor, tore through his palate, just above his upper teeth, punched through the lower bone of his eye socket, and broke through the skin just in front of his left ear. He staggered back, then dropped down into a sitting position. Pain shot through his head. The blood dripped warmly down his cheek. His left eye wouldn't focus.

But he was alive.

He looked up. His left eye. There was something seriously wrong with his left eye.

But with his right eye he saw the big pistol in front of him again.

“I’m a cripple.”

He didn't see the trigger finger tightening again. But he heard the mechanical metal sound.

Jammed, he thought. The thing won’t shoot. Its innards have seized up. And Ferdy Ferreira thought he was going to live.

The Mauser disappeared in front of him. He saw another pistol. Toy pistol, he thought, because it was so small.

He saw the strangest thing. The corgis stood with trembling upper lips and bared teeth, growling at the executioner. Then Charles rushed forward. Ferdy heard a shot. Another shot.

The dogs wanted to protect him, he thought, and he was overcome with emotion. The little pistol was in front of him, but he didn't hear the last shot.

Joubert drove to work from the swimming pool in his own car, a yellow Cortina XR6, one of the monuments to the days when he still competed with Gerbrand Vos. He worried about the fact that after exercising for a week, he still couldn't swim more than four lengths before he was forced to rest.

Perhaps I’m in too much of a hurry, he thought, and lit a Special Mild. His diet also had to get off the ground. On the seat next to him was a blue-and-white Pick ’n Pay plastic bag. In it was his lunch, which he had made himself that morning: whole wheat bread with low-fat spread, lettuce leaves, tomato, and cucumber slices. No salt.

He stopped at Murder and Robbery and Mavis came running out. He knew there was trouble before he even heard what she was saying.

The news editor at the SABC offices in Sea Point heard from the crime reporter of the radio team that the Mauser murderer had claimed a third victim.

The news editor read the newspapers. He knew this saga had the local newspapers on the hop. He could just imagine what they would do with number three. Now there was irrefutable evidence that the Cape could boast a serial killer. And that was good enough for national television. So the news editor telephoned the television reporter at home and the cameraman at his flat. He gave them their orders.

“If anyone had a motive for killing Ferdy it was me,” said Gail Ferreira.

She sat in an armchair in the Plettenberg’s sitting room. Gerbrand Vos sat opposite her on a two-seater couch. He was on backup duty that week. Joubert sat next to him, the two large detectives squashed together on a couch that was too small. But there was no other seating.

Each one held a cup of tea.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Ferreira?” Vos asked and lifted his cup to his mouth.

“Because Ferdy was bad news.” She said it forcibly and stressed the last two words. She sat up straight, with her knees together, her teacup held on her lap. Joubert noticed that she wasn'’t a pretty woman. Her black hair was liberally laced with gray. It was short and curly. Traces of a skin complaint in youth were still visible under the makeup. The corners of her mouth turned down naturally, which gave her a permanently surly expression.

“Why do you say that?” Vos asked.

“Because he could never keep a job. Because he was lazy. Because he felt too sorry for himself. You see, Captain, Ferdy had polio, and his left foot was slightly affected. But there was nothing wrong with him. Only in his head. He thought the world owed him a living.”

She brought the cup to her lips.

“What kind of work did he do?” Joubert asked.

“He was a carpenter when he worked at all. He was clever with his hands. But according to him, his bosses were never good enough. He always said he had to work for himself. But he was useless. He went on a course once to learn to start his own business but nothing came of it. Then they advertised for carpenters for the factories in Atlantis and we moved here, but it didn't last long. He complained that the black carpenters got the best jobs and preferential treatment and he couldn't work under bosses like that. Now he sits at home every day, in front of the television, and he and that worthless George Walmer of the club watch blue movies the moment my back is turned.”

Vos put his cup down on the little table in the middle of the room.

“But you didn't kill him, ma’am. Therefore there must be someone else who had reason to . . .”

“Captain, Ferdy was too useless to make enemies,” Gail Ferreira said with finality.

“Have you ever heard the name James Wallace, Mrs. Ferreira?”

“No.”

“Jimmy Wallace?”

“No.”

“Drew Wilson?”

“No. Should I have?”

“The same murder weapon was probably used in their murders, ma’am. We’re looking for a connection.”

“Were they also bad news?” she asked seriously.

The detectives didn't reply— Gerry Vos because he saw the question as rhetorical and Joubert because he was wondering whether the wife of Ferdy Ferreira didn't have something there. Both James J. Wallace and Drew Wilson had been bad news. Each in his own way.

But then Gail Ferreira showed that she wasn'’t wholly without feeling. “The house is going to be empty,” she sighed and put her cup on the table.

The detectives looked up, faintly surprised.

“Who’s going to bark at me when I get home?”

19.

The television news team was too late to shoot, in their somewhat tactless parlance, the gruesome remains of Ferdy Ferreira. They were too late at the murder scene to record the police ballistics team, laboratory team, video unit, photographer, and dog unit.

However, the cameraman found a blotch of blood in the sand where Ferdy’s head had rested after the pistol had punched a hole through it. He made a recording of it. He also held the camera low over the white sand and walked through the gap in the dune in an attempt to get dramatic material of Ferdy Ferreira’s last steps this side of the grave.

Then he and the reporter drove to the Old Ship Caravan Park and waited with the newspaper reporters in front of the Plettenberg. The television team didn't like that. They usually got preferential treatment at news events. The cameraman set up his tripod, screwed the Sony Betacam SP onto it, and focused on the front door of the Plettenberg.

Joubert and Vos came out. Gail Ferreira said good-bye to them at the front door. The policemen walked to their cars. The reporters hurried after them.

The camera lens followed the procession. The microphone on the camera didn't pick up Vos’s words, however. “Fuckit, now the TV’s here as well. You can keep the case, partner. The going’s getting rough.”

The reporters reached them and asked for information.

“You know you must work through PR,” Joubert said.

“Just the basics, Captain, please.”

“The Brigadier wants to know what we’re doing,” said Colonel Bart de Wit and nervously rubbed his mole. His smile was very vague. “He heard from PR that the television was there as well.”

Joubert and Vos were sitting opposite him.

“Whether it’s a new government or not, everything remains the same. Isn’t it amazing the way the entire force shits its pants every time the TV covers something,” said Vos and shook his head sadly.

De Wit’s smile disappeared and Joubert’s heart swelled with pride in his colleague.

“Captain, that was totally unnecessary. The service’s image is at stake here.”

“With respect, Colonel, it’s the minister and the commissioner and the Brigadier’s image. Because when the newspapers write something, it’s fuckall. But just let the TV guys show an interest . . .”

“Captain Vos, your language does not become an officer. And we aren’t here to do the work of PR. The Brigadier wants to know what we’re going to do.”

Joubert saw that de Wit had regained his self-possession and his voice was heavy with that sarcastic intonation. “We’re investigating the case, Colonel.”

“But not well enough, Captain. This is the third murder and you don’t even have a clue. Every theory bombs out. First the man who sleeps around. Then the homosexual. What’s it this time? Lesbians?”

He knew de Wit was trying to humiliate him in front of Vos. He wanted to say something, retain his dignity, but his mind refused to formulate the words.

“That’s unfair, Colonel. With a serial there never are any clues.” Vos defended his colleague.

“Do you know something about the murders we don’t know, Captain?”

“One doesn’t have to be psychic to know that it’s a serial, Colonel.”

“There was a gun of a different caliber involved in the Melkbos murder. Doesn’t sound like the same modus operandi to me.”

Joubert found words. “He knows his Mauser and his ammunition are not a hundred percent dependable. One jamming and you’re in trouble . . .”

“That’s for fucking sure,” Gerbrand Vos helped.

“And there was a jamming this morning. Only one 7.63 cartridge case.”

De Wit said nothing.

“We’ll know if it’s the same murderer tomorrow, Colonel.”

“Oh?”

“The ballistics guys in Pretoria are on the jump, Colonel. Because you evidently phoned them. I must thank you.”

“It’s my job, Captain, to support my staff.” Then his tone of voice changed. “But what do I tell the Brigadier?”

“I’m doing my best, Colonel,” Joubert said softly.

“But is that enough, Captain?” de Wit asked and smiled.

“He wants to nail you, Mat. And you’re taking it lying down?”

Vos’s hand was on Joubert’s shoulder. They were walking down the passage on their way to their offices.

Joubert said nothing because he thought it hadn't gone too badly. At least he’d made a contribution, had had something to say. Usually he simply sat there . . .

“He’s got no right to jerk you around like that.”

“Yes, Gerry.”

Vos stopped in front of his office door. “You’ll have to take him on, Mat. You know that?”

Joubert nodded.

“I’m with you, partner. All the way.”

He mumbled his thanks and walked to his office. The ocher-colored SAP3 case files were piled up on his desk. He sat down. On top of the pile the two files slotted into one— Wallace’s and Wilson’s. He pushed the pile to one side and opened the two dossiers. Each dossier had three sections. Section A was for applicable evidence that could be used in court. Both files were pretty thin. Pictures taken by the pathologist. The forensic report, the ballistic findings, pictures of the scene.

Section B held his notes about the questioning and other corresponding matters. There were his summaries of conversations with Margaret Wallace, Walter Schutte, Zeelie . . .

In section C he had made notes of everything he’d done in each investigation. His actions, those involved, the times when they occurred— everything written down in his untidy scrawl.

He took a new, clean SAP3, took out his notebook, unfolded the report of the uniformed constable who was first on the scene, and started giving substance to the Ferdy Ferreira file.

His thoughts drifted back to de Wit’s question.

But is it enough, Captain?

Was it? Would someone else be able to slot in the pieces of the bloody puzzle to form a picture? Would someone who didn't have a gray veil between himself and the world have asked better questions? Shown a sharper insight into human actions? Found a suspect in the narrow range?

He looked at the dossiers. The work wasn'’t bad. Without the former enthusiasm. But that was improving. Better than those dark, dark days of the disciplinary trial and the detectives who had refused to work with him. Better than . . .

He wanted to think about it. Examine the reasons.

The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. “Captain, it’s time for the fame game again,” said Cloete of public relations.

“Oh?”

“The TV guys want an interview. And you know how important they are to us.”

20.

The bank robber walked into Premier Bank’s Milnerton branch at 3:32 P.M. There was a bounce in his step. He looked like Elvis Presley today. His black hair was combed back with a curl in the floppy lock, he had sideburns, and heavy eyebrows above the dark glasses. He was dressed with a certain flamboyance in a pair of white trousers, white shoes, a white shirt, and a white jacket.

But his cravat and the weapon under his jacket were black.

“Hello,” he said to Rosa Wasserman, a fat nineteen-year-old brunette with nervous problems.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said Rosa, “Can I help you?”

Today the bank robber was doing his thing to the beat of rock and roll that only he could hear in the concert hall of his head. But there were observable signs, like the right foot tapping away, the voice that imitated the deceased King’s.

“Indeed, sweetheart. Fetch us one of those large bank bags and fill it with fifty-rand notes. I'’ve got a large old gun under my coat and I don’t want to use it.”

The edge of the white coat was lifted slightly. Rosa heard the word sweetheart, saw the black stock of the gun. She turned to stone, her mouth at half cock, accentuating her double chin.

“Keep the foot off the alarm as well. Come on, sweetheart, let’s boogie.”

Rosa’s pulse rate had increased dramatically. So had the tempo of her breathing. The bank robber saw it.

“What perfume do you use? It smells delicious.”

This didn't work with Rosa Wasserman. He saw panic striking her— the hands shook, the bosom heaved, the eyes grew wild, the nostrils distended, the double chin developed a life of its own.

“Seems like I should’ve brought my Mauser,” said Elvis, and with this one brief sentence changed his status permanently.

Rosa sometimes glanced at Die Burger in the morning before her father paged through it. She knew about the Mauser murders. Her fear of the man in front of her intensified. She put her hands over her ears as if she didn't want to hear the shot that would end her life.

She screamed with every ounce of power in her large body and pressed the alarm with determination.

When the lengthy scream stopped, the robber recovered. “Sweetheart, you’ll pay for this,” Elvis said and turned toward the door.

The alarm didn't ring in the bank itself, only on the computerized control panel of a security firm. Rosa’s yell had petrified everyone else in the bank. They stared at her, not at the man in white. The bank robber walked out the door. Rosa pointed to him and shrieked again. The other people in the bank followed her pointing finger, heads turning in surprise, but the robber had disappeared.

Joubert drove from Premier Bank in Milnerton to the sanatorium. He was annoyed. The newspaper reporters had asked endless questions. He knew they would go to town with this story. One look at the Argus poster was indication enough.

MAUSER

MURDERER

ON THE

RAMPAGE

Fortunately the attempted bank robbery was too late to hit today’s newspapers. Television hadn't even heard about it. But tomorrow all hell would be let loose. Joubert had told the small group of reporters that it didn't necessarily indicate a connection between the bank robbery and the Mauser murders. The robber might have said it for effect. That wasn'’t what they wanted to hear.

“But you can’t exclude the possibility of a connection, Captain?”

“No.”

They all scribbled in their notebooks.

Rosa Wasserman had changed from a pathetic bundle of fear into the woman of the hour. It was she who had blurted out the information to the reporters that the bank robber had spoken of “his Mauser.”

“And he threatened me with death.”

Benny Griessel would’ve loved it. This circus. Benny would’ve shared his usual ironic perspective on the media with him.

Joubert stopped in front of the redbrick building and walked in. At reception he told them he wanted to see Benny Griessel. The two nurses looked meaningfully at each other.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”

He was annoyed by the decided tone of her voice. “Why not?”

“He refused medication.” She saw that the man opposite her didn't grasp what it meant. “We don’t think Adjutant Griessel wants to see anyone at present.”

“I don’t think you have the right to make decisions for him, nurse,” Joubert said aggressively.

The nurse stared at him through her pebble-lensed glasses as if she was weighing him up. Then she said softly: “Come along, then.”

They walked in a direction opposite to where Benny’s room was, she leading, he on her heels, pleased at having overcome bureaucracy.

They walked along silent passages and then up steps.

He heard the sounds long before they reached the door.

Griessel’s voice, vaguely recognizable. Cries of pain. The bellowing of an animal filled with a deadly fear. A plea for help, for mercy.

Joubert’s walk slowed. He wanted to stop. The nurse turned, took him by the sleeve of his jacket, and pulled him closer— her method of punishment.

“Come,” she said. He didn't look at her. He walked toward the door, the sounds resonating in his head.

There were six hospital beds. Only on one, in the corner, a figure lay. Joubert stopped in his tracks. In the semidarkness Griessel’s black hair was visible above the white of the sheets. Heavy leather straps stretched across him from one side of the bed to the other. Benny Griessel’s body jerked under the buckles, spasmodically, like convulsions before death. The noises emanated from deep within his bowels, regular and jolting with each exhalation of breath.

The nurse stood next to him. She said nothing. She merely looked at Joubert.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I made a mistake.”

Then he turned on his heel and walked quickly down the gray passage. The sounds of Benny Griessel’s tortured soul still sounded in his ears long after he had reached his car.

Margaret Wallace sat in the television room with her family. Her mother, her son, and her daughter were there. They were having their meal in front of the set because the silence and unease at the dinner table upset them all.

“In the news tonight,” the newscaster said, his face serious, and gave the headlines. Margaret didn't listen. The newscaster reported a new political crisis, a drought disaster in Northern Transvaal and then . . . “A third victim of the Cape’s Mauser murderer but the police are still baffled.”

Margaret looked up and saw the photo of Ferdy Ferreira. Then the newsreader supplied the rest of the events.

Didn't she know that face?

“You want me to switch it off, Maggie?” her mother asked.

Margaret shook her head. She looked at the screen while shots were being shown about politics and agriculture but searched her mind for a file that would supply a connection between man and place.

“In what seems to be developing into a major serial killer scare, the Cape’s Mauser murderer struck for the third time this morning. The victim was fifty-four-year-old Mr. Ferdy Ferreira of Melkbosstrand. Police say the antique murder weapon, a hundred-year-old Mauser Broomhandle pistol, is the only connection between this murder and the deaths of businessman James Wallace and jewelry designer Drew Wilson, who both died from close-range gunshot wounds during the past ten days.”

While the newsreader uttered the words, the visuals that the cameraman had shot in the dunes appeared— the camera moving over the beach, ending in the patch of blood that had soaked into the sand.

Margaret looked away because it still reminded her . . .

Then she heard a voice she knew and looked up again. Captain Mat Joubert’s face filled the screen. His hair was still too long and somewhat untidy. His shoulders sagged as if bowed down by an invisible weight. His tie was too thin. His English accent was acceptable.

“The only connection seems to be the murder weapon. We have no reason to believe that the victims knew one another,” the big policeman said. At the bottom of the screen the captain read CAPT M.A.T. JOUBERT-MURDER AND ROBBERY SQUAD.

The reporter’s face appeared. “But Mr. Ferreira and his two dogs died of gunshot wounds made with a smaller caliber?”

“Yes,” Mat Joubert replied. “We believe the murderer carries a small-caliber firearm as backup, because the Mauser seems to have been fired first but it did not prove to be fatal.”

“Captain, do you think the Mauser murderer will strike again?”

“It’s impossible to say,” said Joubert and he looked uncomfortable.

Then the photo of Ferdy Ferreira appeared on the screen with two telephone numbers next to it. The newscaster said: “Anyone with information that could assist the police in their investigation, can call . . .”

Margaret stared at the picture of Ferdy Ferreira. She knew she had seen him. But where? How?

Should she phone the detective?

No, not until she remembered.

On the thirteenth floor of an apartment building in Sea Point a thirty-two-year-old woman sat in front of the television.

Her name was Carina Oberholzer. Since the visuals of the Mauser murderer she had seen nothing else that was showing on the screen. She rocked back and forth in the armchair, ceaselessly, a human metronome. Her lips murmured one word, over and over again: “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord . . .”

Carina Oberholzer was reliving a piece of her past. The images she recalled would take her life before the night was over.

The forty-six-year-old man was watching the news bulletin with his beautiful wife. His name was Oliver Nienaber. His four sons, the eldest finishing up secondary school, the youngest in fourth grade, were somewhere in the large house, busy with their own affairs. Oliver Nienaber had spent the past three weeks in Pretoria. He too had been very busy. He hadn't read the newspapers. The news visuals of the Mauser murder were like a hammer blow to his chest. But he stayed calm so that his wife wouldn't notice.

He looked for solutions, weighed the implications, recalled incidents. Oliver Nienaber was intelligent. He could think fast even when fear gripped him like an evil spirit. That was why the man had made such a success of his calling.

He got up after the weather report. “I still have some work to do,” he said.

His wife looked up from her needlework and smiled at him. He saw the flawlessness of her blond beauty and wondered if he was going to lose her. If he was going to lose everything. If he was going to lose his life.

“Don’t work too late, darling,” she said.

He walked to his study, a large room. Against the walls hung the photographs, the certificates. His rise. His triumph. He opened his slender attaché case of real gray buffalo hide and took out a thin black notebook and a fountain pen. He made a list of names.

Mac McDonald, Carina Oberholzer, Jacques Coetzee.

Then he skipped a few lines and wrote the name

Hester Clarke

. He put the notebook on his desk and reached for the new Cape telephone guide next to the telephone. He paged to M. His finger moved quickly down the columns. It stopped at MacDonald Fisheries. He underlined the number, then wrote it down. Then he paged to O, looked for Carina Oberholzer’s number, and wrote that down. He had trouble with Jacques Coetzee’s number because there were a great many J. Coetzees and he didn't know the precise address. At Hester Clarke’s name he left only a question mark. Then he took a bunch of keys out of the attaché case, walked to a corner in the study, unlocked the safe, and took out the big Star 9 mm pistol. He checked the safety catch and put the pistol, the notebook, and the pen into the case.

Oliver Nienaber stood quite still, with the attaché case in his hand, his head bent, his eyes closed. He seemed to be praying.

Joubert knew he wouldn't be able to read. The evening was hot and the southeaster made sad noises as it blew around the corners of the house. The front veranda faced north. There the wind was only audible in the trees. He sat down on the slate-tiled floor, his back against the wall, and lit a cigarette.

He wanted to laugh at himself.

Had he really thought he would be able to bury Lara?

Just because he had thought about the ripe body of an eighteen-year-old for a few days? Because he was “consulting” a psychologist?

It wasn'’t the first time that he had heard the sounds torn out of Benny Griessel.

He knew those sounds. He had made them himself. Not with his voice but in his head. In that hazy past when he still hated the pain and the humiliation. Before he had become addicted to it.

Tell your psychologist, he thought. Tell her you’re as addicted to the darkness of your soul as Griessel is to the bottle. But there is a difference, Doctor. You can take Mat Joubert out of the dark, but you can’t take the dark out of Mat Joubert. It had become part of his flesh, his body had grown around it as a tree will take a length of barbed wire into its trunk to have it forever scratching and tearing and causing the sap to bleed.

He heard Lara’s laugh again, the one he played over and over again on the tape recorder while he banged his head against the wall— over and over again until the blood ran into his eyes.

Griessel’s pain tonight had been a blessing in disguise. It had brought Joubert to his senses.

He should have realized it the day before, when Hanna Nortier asked her last question. When he’d realized that he would have to speak about Lara, when he’d realized that he would not be able to tell the doctor everything.

He was Lara Joubert’s captive. And the key to his cell was there, within reach, so invitingly within reach. Just tell the good doctor everything. The whole truth, nothing but the truth. Tell the doctor that part of Lara’s death which only he knew about— and he knew he would be freed. Share that hour with Dr. Hanna Nortier and he could shake off the burden, tear the dark curtain.

It was half past twelve when he had reached the tape recorder, down in the cellar, and pressed the button to turn the cassette. With the earphones illegally on his head, he’d looked round to check whether anyone could see him, certain of his right to break the law in this way. Press the button. Unsuspecting. In the execution of his duty.

PLAY.

He wouldn't be able to tell Hanna Nortier.

Joubert leaned his head against the wall and shot the cigarette into the dark.

He couldn't even tell it to himself, he thought. How many times hadn't he tried to look at it anew. To look for excuses, mitigation, a way out. To consider other interpretations.

But nothing would work.

He had burned the cassette. But the voices were still on tape. In his head. And he could no longer press the PLAY button. Not even for himself. It was too fucking painful.

He leaned sideways to get his hand into his trouser pocket, took out his cigarettes, lit another one.

Come on, Dr. Hanna, he thought. Could you really sweep up the debris of a human being and fit it together, apply the wonder glue, and say that he was whole again? The cracks would be visible forever, so that only the lightest touch would be enough to shatter the whole into fragments once more.

What was the use of that, Doctor?

Tell me, Doctor, why shouldn't I put the cool maw of my service pistol into my mouth and blow the last copy of the tape, together with all the ghosts collected up there, into eternity?

Carina Oberholzer sat at her dressing table, writing.

She wrote as the tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto the blue notepaper.

Carina Oberholzer didn't write why the Mauser murderer was busy sending people into eternity with one pull of the trigger. She didn't want to. She couldn't. All that her mind allowed her was to write

We deserve it.

And then she wrote that they musn’t stop the murderer. And that they mustn’t punish the murderer.

She wrote down a name and surname with a shaking hand, but it was quite legible.

She added the words

Mama, forgive me,

although her father was still living, and signed the letter:

Carrie.

Then she put the pen down next to the paper and walked to the window. She opened it wide, lifted her foot and put it on the sill. She hoisted herself up into the frame, balanced briefly, and then she fell.

She fell soundlessly, except for the fabric of her skirt, which fluttered softly in the wind, like a flag.

Later, when the wail of a siren sounded above the city’s roar, the wind shifted. It blew gently through the open window on the thirteenth floor and like an invisible hand picked up the single sheet of blue notepaper and let it slip down the thin dark space between dressing table and wall.

Joubert sat on his front stoop and looked up at the pale stars that glimmered above the suburban sky and didn't know how to react to his newly found insight.

Yet he knew something had changed.

A week or two, a month, a year ago the concept of a pistol in his mouth had been so logical. Not a yearning, only a logical way out that would have to be used like a tool for a specific task. Now, when he thought about the moment of truth, when the hand had to pick up the gun and the lips had to open and the finger had to contract, Mat Joubert still wanted to live for a while.

And he briefly considered the reasons why things had changed. The Triumph of the Great Erection? The many aspects of Hanna Nortier?

But then his thoughts wandered.

He was going to be a cripple, he thought. The poor man’s Ferdy Ferreira. He would have to take Lara Joubert with him— if he couldn't tell Hanna Nortier everything. He would have to drag the load of pain with him for the rest of his life.

Could he do it?

Perhaps.

He got up off the stoop’s cold floor, stretched his arms, and felt the muscles of his back and his shoulders, the vague, pleasurable lassitude of muscles that had been exercised in a swimming pool.

Perhaps, he thought.

He turned, walked into the house, locked the door behind him, and walked to the spare bedroom, looking for something to read. The paperbacks lay in an untidy heap.

He would have to put up bookcases, he thought, and stood in the doorway for a moment, staring, contemplating. He was aware of an urge to set the books in order, to arrange them according to authors, each one neatly in its allotted space.

He walked into the room, went down on his knees next to the pile and picked up the top one.

21.

Dr. Hanna Nortier lay on a sofa. He sat next to her on a chair. He stroked her colorless hair with soft, mechanical movements. His heart was filled with love and pity for her. He spoke to her. He emptied his heart. The tears poured down his cheeks. His hand shifted to her breast, small and soft as a bird, his fingers kneaded the tissue carefully under the material. He looked at her. He saw that she was pale. He realized that she was dead. But why was he hearing shrill sounds emanating from her? The alarm. He opened his eyes. The green figures of the instrument said 6:30.

He got up immediately and drove to the swimming pool. He swam seven purposeful lengths before he needed to rest. When he felt better he did two more lengths, slowly.

Joubert bought a newspaper when he stopped for a packet of Special Milds mainly because of the front-page headlines. TELLER LIVES IN FEAR OF MAUSER the biggest one read. And a smaller subheading: IS SWEETHEART ROBBER THE SERIAL KILLER?

He read the reports in the car in front of the café. The main news was the bank robber’s reference made to Rosa Wasserman, but there were also other, smaller reports about the crimes. In one the reporter, using dates, tried to trace a connection between the murders and the bank robberies. In another he quoted a Dr. A. L. Boshoff, “well-known Cape criminologist and lecturer in criminology at the University of Stellenbosch,” on the psyche of the serial killer.

Joubert finished reading and folded the newspaper. His mouth thinned. He had never worked on a case that had engendered so much ongoing publicity. There had been the kidnapping of a deputy minister’s child in ’89. The case was solved within hours but the press had had a two-day orgy. And the axe murderer of Mitchells Plain in ’86. The newspapers wrote for weeks. But chiefly on the inside pages because the victims were not white.

He switched on the engine and drove to Bellville, to the big hardware shop on Durban Road.

Why did he find the reporter’s copy about the dates and the similarities between the crimes so unacceptable? Was it simply a premonition, an opinion honed by experience?

No. It was the differences that the reporter had ignored. The bank robber was an exhibitionist. He played for the audience with his dramatic disguises and showy dialogue, the pet name and the questions about perfume. The bank robber was a coward who kept his gun hidden under his coat and relied on the fear of women.

The Mauser murderer was cool and clinical.

It couldn't be the same man.

Or could it?

He was annoyed by his own indecisiveness. “Fighting crime is like playing golf, Matty,” Blackie Swart had said once. “Just as soon as you think you’ve got it made, it sideswipes you again.”

He had made a casual drawing for his bookcase the previous evening. He explained briefly to the salesman what he was looking for. The salesman was enthusiastic. He showed Joubert the various kinds of do-it-yourself bookcase kits on the market. Some sets were packed in such a way that the buyer could assemble it in five minutes without drilling a single hole, sawing one plank, or hammering in one nail.

Joubert wanted to do more with his hands. He had developed a certain dedication to the task since the previous evening. He wanted to smell sawdust and use the electric drill that had been gathering dust in the garage for almost three years. He wanted to sweat and measure and fit and make pencil marks on the wall and on the wood.

He and the salesman decided on a more primitive design. Long metal strips had to be screwed to the wall vertically. Metal struts hooked horizontally onto the strips. The wooden shelves, which Joubert would have to measure and saw, rested on the supports.

He bought bits for the drill and screws and plastic anchors to help the screws hold in the plastered walls. Sandpaper, varnish, paintbrushes, a new tape measure, and a three-point plug completed his purchases because he couldn't remember whether the electric drill still had a plug.

He paid by check and did a quick sum in his head to see how much he’d saved by not buying one of the luxury do-it-yourself models. Two black men helped him carry the stuff to his car. He tipped them five rand each. Some of the planks and the metal strips were too long for the interior of the car or the trunk. He let them stick out the window.

He drove to the Bellville Market to replenish his stock of fruit and vegetables and ate an apple as he drove home.

When he arrived Emily was already doing the laundry. He went to say hello to her, and asked after her children in the Transkei and her husband in Soweto. He told her the spare bedroom would soon be a very tidy room. She shook her head in disbelief.

His enthusiasm for the task was great. He opened the garage door and chose the tools. Everything, except a few screwdrivers and the lawnmower, was covered in a thick layer of dust.

Some of the tools had belonged to his father. His father, who had used them hastily but with precision and impatience. “No, they must teach you at school how to use these things. Here you’ll just get hurt. And your mother will be cross with me.”

Joubert walked to the second bedroom again to use his new tape measure. He made a new sketch on paper. He fetched another apple in the kitchen and went to fetch the drill and the metal strips. The electric drill had no plug. He put on the new one with a feeling of deep satisfaction. He measured where the holes for the screws had to be made. Then it occurred to him that he needed a spirit level.

No, he wasn'’t going to drive out again. He would measure carefully, using the corner of the room as a guideline. He started working.

When he had drilled all the holes, he fetched the portable radio out of Lara’s nightstand. There were always new batteries in her drawer. He looked. They were still there. He slotted them into the radio and switched it on. He turned the tuner past a few music stations until he found RSG, the Afrikaans station. Two men were delivering a cricket commentary. He carried the radio to the garage because he had to do the sawing.

The radio played a cut of pumping concertina, the rhythms of

boeremusiek.

It recalled memories. His father never listened to cricket. But in the time before television he listened to rugby commentaries on a Saturday afternoon. And swore at the commentators and the players and the referee when Western Province lost. After the game, before they switched to other stadiums for summaries, there was always a snatch of boeremusiek or a band. That was the signal for his father to go and have his Saturday-evening drink in the bar of the Royal. And Joubert had to lay the fire because on Saturday evenings they had a barbecue. Sometimes he had to keep feeding the fire with rooikrans logs until late at night because his father allowed no one else to barbecue the meat. “It’s a man’s job.”

At the start he had enjoyed fetching his father in the bar. He had liked the warmth of the place, the camaraderie, the good-natured friendship, the respect the people there had for his father.

He started sawing. The sweat ran down his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and left a dirty mark on his face.

Over the sound of the saw he heard the commentator say: “Zeelie from the opposite side. He’s at the wicket now. And Loxton plays that one defensively back to the bowler . . .”

Zeelie, the great white hope as suspect. He had never asked Gail Ferreira whether her husband had known Zeelie. But he was reasonably certain what the answer would be.

Three inexplicable murders. With nothing in common. A family man, a gay, and a cripple. A promiscuous heterosexual, a conservative homosexual, and a blue movies addict. Married, unmarried, married. Businessman, goldsmith, unemployed.

There was no connection.

There was one connection— the bare fact that there was no connection.

A murderer who without any pattern, without rhyme or reason, in the late afternoon, early morning, or middle of the night, pulled the trigger and took a life. How did he choose his victims? Eeny, meeny, miny, mo . . . Or did he see someone in the street and follow him home because he didn't like his face or clothes?

It had happened before. Here. Overseas. It drove the media crazy because people wanted to read about it. It woke a primitive fear: death without reason, the most fearful of all fates. And the police were powerless because there was no pattern. The great crime prevention machine’s fuel was the observable pattern, like an established modus operandi or a comprehensible motive. Like sex. Or avarice. But if the observable pattern was missing, or its octane too low, the great machine came to a sighing halt. Its tank empty. It had trouble in restarting.

And if the driver was Captain Mat Joubert to boot . . .

All he needed was one small lead that didn't disappear like mist before the sun when you gave it a sharp look. Just one. A small one.

He picked up a plank to take to the spare room to fit it. Before he was out of the garage he heard Zeelie bowling Loxton for a duck.

22.

The news editor of the Weekend Argus paged through the Saturday edition. He was looking for follow-ups for the Sunday edition— news that hadn't had the last bit of blood squeezed out of it. So that he could assign reporters to do just that.

He paged from the back to the front, past the copy on page six under the small headline SEA POINT WOMAN DIES IN FALL.

He didn't read the details because he knew the contents. He had, after all, checked the new reporter’s work.

A 32-year-old Sea Point secretary, Ms. Carina Oberholzer, sustained fatal injuries when she fell from her thirteenth-story flat in Yates Road.

Ms. Oberholzer, an employee of Petrogas in Rondebosch, was alone in her flat at the time.

According to a police spokesman, foul play is not suspected. “We believe it was a tragic accident.”

The news editor turned to page two, where there were a few run-on stories about the Mauser murder. Tucked into the unattractive nonmodular page makeup, there was a half-column photo of Captain Mat Joubert.

And, as he told the crime reporter of the

Argus

sometime later, it rang a bell somewhere. He picked up the receiver next to him and dialed an internal number, waited until someone answered.

“Hi, Brenda. I need a file, pronto, please. M.A.T. Joubert. Captain, Murder and Robbery.” He thanked her and rang off. Eight minutes later the brown file landed on his desk. He shifted the telexes in front of him out of the way, opened the file, and quickly paged through the contents as if he was looking for something. Then he gave a sigh of relief and extracted a somewhat yellowing

Argus

report and read it.

He got up, the copy in his hand, and walked to the crime reporter’s desk in the general news office. “Did you know that this guy’s wife died in the line of duty?” he asked and handed over the evidence.

“No,” said Genevieve Cromwell, who despite her name was an unprepossessing, unattractive woman. She shifted her glasses.

“Could be a nice story. Human interest angle. Two years after, still pursuing justice, still wearing the tragedy, that sort of shit.”

Genevieve’s face brightened. “Yeah,” she said. “He might have a new girlfriend.”

“Don’t go starry-eyed on me,” the news editor said. “Let’s do something so comprehensive that there’s nothing left for the others. Talk to him, his boss, his friends, his neighbors. Hit the files, dig a little.”

“He’s a nice man, you know.”

“I'’ve never met him.”

“He’s a nice man. Sort of shy.”

“Get that fucking romantic look off your face, dear, and get going.”

“And handsome, too, in a big cuddly bear kind of way.”

“Jesus,” he said, shook his head in disgust, and walked back to his office. But Genevieve didn't hear her boss blaspheming. She stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing.

Joubert made his second little error when he was putting a screw through the metal strip into the wall.

When it still had a quarter way to go, the screw refused to budge. He decided to give the screw a little help with a few taps of the hammer. This was a wrong decision, because the hole he had drilled earlier simply wasn'’t deep enough.

When he tapped the screw with the hammer it broke, plastic anchor and all, together with a hefty piece of plaster.

Joubert, who wasn'’t in Gerbrand Vos’s league, said something that would’ve cheered his colleague’s heart. Emily, ironing in the kitchen, heard it. She smiled and put her hand in front of her mouth.

Cloete of public relations phoned just after a quarter past five on the Saturday afternoon.

Bart de Wit was playing chess with Bart Junior. But he didn't mind the invasion of his time because he was losing.

“Sorry to bother you at home, Colonel, but the

Argus

has just phoned me. They want to do a major story on Captain Joubert. Because he’s investigating the murders and the bank robberies. Interview with you, with members of his team, with him, his previous cases, the whole tutti.”

De Wit’s first thought was that the newspaper knew something.

It could happen. He thought. Reporters dug up information in impossible places. And now they were suspicious.

“No,” de Wit said.

“Colonel?”

“No. Under no circumstances. Over my dead body.”

Cloete’s heart sank. He waited for the colonel to offer some explanation. But Bart de Wit said nothing. Eventually Cloete said he would inform the

Argus

and said good-bye. Why had he ever accepted this post? It was impossible to keep every officer and every member of the press happy at the same time.

He sighed and phoned the reporter.

Joubert had all four screws secured to the wall.

He stood back and had a look. The hole where the plaster had fallen off the wall was unsightly. He saw that not all the strips were level. His eye, without the spirit level, had not been all that accurate.

You are not a handyman, he acknowledged resignedly. But once the books were on the shelves they would virtually cover the strips. But right now he needed a cigarette. And a Castle . . . No, not a Castle. A pear?

“What’s happening to you?” he said loudly.

“Mr. Mat?” Emily asked in the kitchen.

Bart de Wit Junior won the game easily because his father’s thoughts were not on chess.

His father’s mind was working at top speed. The big question was whether the newspapers knew about Joubert’s psychological treatment and the black marks on his record. And if they knew, how did they know?

But if he presumed that they might not know, what were the chances of their finding out?

They’re like hyenas, he thought. They would gnaw and bite at the bone until it snapped and they could get to the juicy marrow of the story, which they would then suck with a great noise.

Whether they knew or not, he was going to take Captain Mat Joubert off the investigations. On Monday morning.

Not a pleasant task but it was part of a leader’s work. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made so that the law could take its course.

Rather give the cases to Gerbrand Vos.

It was like a weight off his shoulders. He felt relieved. He applied his concentration to the board in front of him.

“Checkmate,” said Bart Junior and rubbed his finger alongside his nose. There was no mole there.

He took Mrs. Nofomela to the bus terminus at Bellville station by car and drove home. He was physically tired, he felt dirty and sweaty, and he was hungry. The more he thought about his hunger, the more it grew.

He decided that he needed a good meal. Not junk food. He would go to a decent restaurant. For a steak, thick and brown and juicy, a fillet that melted in the mouth, with . . .

No, he would have to stick to fish. For the diet. Kingklip. A large, fat slice of kingklip with lemon butter sauce. No, sole, the way they prepared it at the Lobster Pot— grilled, with a cheese and mushroom sauce.

His mouth filled with saliva. His stomach growled like far-off thunder. When last had he been this hungry? Really hungry, with that slight light-headedness, that sharp readiness for the taste of food, the pleasure of satiety? He couldn't remember.

He bathed and dressed and drove to the restaurant. When he sat down he knew it had been the wrong thing to do.

It wasn'’t the eyes staring at the big man sitting alone that upset him. It was the sudden realization, when he looked at the couples who sat at tables talking softly and intimately, that he was alone.

He gobbled his sole because he wanted to get away. Then he drove home. He heard the telephone at the door. He walked quickly, with a heavy tread, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Captain Joubert?”

He recognized the voice. “Hello, Dr. Nortier.”

“Do you remember that I spoke about social groups?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow morning we’re going to the Friends of the Opera’s preview of

The Barber

. It’s at eleven o’clock in the orchestra’s practice room at the Nico. You’re very welcome to join us.”

Her voice sang and danced over the electronic distance between them. He saw her features in his mind’s eye.

“I . . . er . . .”

“You don’t have to decide now. Think about it.”

“I’m busy building a bookcase.”

She sounded surprised and impressed. “I didn't know woodwork was your hobby.”

“Well . . . er . . .”

“Well, perhaps we’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” And he said good-bye.

He looked at his watch. It was half past seven. Which meant that she didn't have a very busy social life on this Saturday evening, either.

It made him feel better.

23.

Oliver Nienaber was reading the Sunday edition of the Weekend Argus. He was in bed, his wife next to him. She was reading the newspaper’s magazine. It was part of their Sunday-morning ritual. Except that since the day before yesterday Oliver Nienaber had been reading his newspapers with far closer attention than usual. That was why he saw the small report about Carina Oberholzer.

Now Oliver Nienaber urgently needed to get up. He needed to move, he wanted to run away, away from the things that were happening. The timing couldn't have been worse because he was about to achieve his ideals, make his dreams come true. Things were going so well, with him, his family, his business.

And now the Mauser murders and the death of Carina Oberholzer.

We believe it was a tragic accident, the police were quoted in the newspaper. He didn't agree. He had a strong suspicion that it was no accident. How it could’ve happened he couldn't imagine. Because it was difficult to imagine . . .

Again he felt the tightening in his chest, as if a giant hand were pressing down on it.

He would have to speak to MacDonald. And Coetzee.

Then it struck him. MacDonald or Coetzee might well be the “accident.” Mac was big enough to fling a woman like Carina Oberholzer out of her window with one hand. But why would he . . .

Coetzee? What about Coetzee? No. It made no sense.

It made no sense. He got up, purposefully.

“What now, darling?” his wife asked and creased the flawless, smooth, creamy skin of her forehead.

“I'’ve just remembered a call I have to make.”

“You never relax,” she said with more admiration than reproach and went back to the magazine she was holding.

He walked to his study and dialed the number of MacDonald Fisheries. There was no reply. It’s Sunday, idiot, he told himself. He would drive to Hout Bay tomorrow. He had to discuss this affair.

It made him uneasy. It was irritating. It could spoil everything.

Margaret Wallace didn't read the Sunday papers. Especially now, after her husband’s death.

But she caught a quick glimpse of the front page of the

Sunday Times

that her mother had bought. There was a report about the Mauser murders with a smallish photo of Ferdy Ferreira next to it.

She went to sit in the summer sun on the swing seat in the garden with a cup of coffee. The sun, its warmth, seemed to lighten her pain.

Where had she seen that face before?

Think carefully, she thought. Think systematically. Start with Jimmy’s work. Think, because it might help to catch the scum who had taken Jimmy away. And perhaps that would relieve her enormous grief. If only she knew why someone had wanted to do it to him, to her, to them.

He had finished sawing the planks. He placed them on the metal struts, arranged the shelves so that his paperbacks would fit.

His thoughts were even busier.

The Barber

?

Was that the name of an opera? He thought so. Somewhere there was a brain cell with the information, wrestling against the dark. How silly human beings were. He laughed at himself. He could’ve asked what

The Barber

was. “Dr. Hanna, please explain to this fucking stupid policeman what

The Barber

is.” And more than likely she would’ve enjoyed it and he would’ve known by now. But human beings were odd. They didn't want to be caught out. Live a lie and resist being caught out at any price.

If it was an opera he didn't want to go.

It was Sunday Afternoon music. Those hours that were sheer torture when he was at high school, when the silence in the house was palpable, a noiseless sound, when he had the radio in his room on very softly so that it wouldn't disturb his parents and some or other fat woman yelled as if she was being assaulted— morally or immorally.

He had cut the one plank too short.

How on earth had he managed that? He had measured each one so carefully. That meant he’d need another plank. He wouldn't be able to finish today.

If he went, he would be able to see Hanna Nortier.

Revel in her strange attractiveness.

But the others. The other crazies. He didn't want to follow her to the opera with a herd of rabid sheep. “Hey, there’s Doc Nortier with her patients. Hello, Doc. Shame, look at that big number with the dull eyes. Shell-shocked, probably.”

Suddenly he remembered Griessel. He would have to . . .

visit

was the wrong word. He would have to see him.

Then he might as well . . .

And he decided to go to the bloody opera preview and then go and see Benny afterward. If it was possible.

Hanna Nortier stood in the passage of the orchestra’s practice room, a frown on her face.

He saw that she was informally dressed and his stomach contracted. He was wearing gray trousers and his black blazer with the crest of the Police College’s swimming team on the pocket. And a white shirt with a maroon tie. She looked small and slender and defenseless in her long navy skirt, white blouse, and white sandals. She smiled when she saw him, an odd expression on her face because the frown was still there and competed with the smile.

“No one else has come,” she said and looked past him at the entrance.

“Oh,” he said. It was a possibility he hadn't considered. He stood next to her, uncomfortable. The blazer was slightly tight across the shoulders. He folded his hands in front of him. Hanna Nortier was dwarfed next to him. She still looked frowningly at the entrance, then at her watch, an overdone gesture that he didn't see.

“They’re going to begin now.” But she remained where she was, uncomfortable.

Joubert didn't know what to say. He looked at the other people who were walking through the door at the end of the passage. They were all informally clad. There wasn'’t a tie in sight. He felt everyone staring at him. At him and Hanna Nortier. Beauty and the Beast.

She made a decision. “Let’s go and sit down.”

She walked ahead of him, down the passage and through the door. It was a large room, almost as big as the Olympic swimming pool in which he suffered every morning. The floor was contoured into steps, like a flat amphitheater, which ran from a low center and divided to rise on both sides of the middle aisle. Chairs covered the contoured steps. Almost every seat had already been taken. Below, in the center, there was a piano, a few chairs, and some stainless steel music stands.

He followed her, looked at his black shoes. He saw that they weren’t shined. He wished he could hide them. It felt as if the audience’s eyes were fixed with his, on his drab shoes. And his tie.

Eventually she sat down. He sat next to her. He glanced around him. No one was looking at him. People were chatting to one another, wholly relaxed.

Should he tell her that he knew nothing about opera? Before she wanted to discuss it and he made a fool of himself. Perhaps he should.

“Well,” she said and smiled at him. Without the frown. He wished he could get rid of his frustrations so easily, immediately and totally. “You’re the one I didn't expect, Captain Mat Joubert.”

Tell her.

“I . . .”

A collection of people filed through the door. The audience applauded enthusiastically. The arrivals sat down on chairs against the wall at the back of the piano. One man remained standing. The applause died down and the man smiled. He began speaking.

It seemed as if he and Drew Wilson would’ve liked each other, Joubert thought.

The man spoke about Rossini. His voice wasn'’t loud but Joubert could hear him clearly. He gave Hanna Nortier a quick glance. She was fascinated.

Joubert took a deep breath. It wasn'’t as bad as he’d thought.

The speaker spoke with great enthusiasm. Joubert began to listen.

“And then, at thirty-seven, Rossini wrote his last opera.

William Tell,

” the man said.

Ha, Joubert thought. The Great Predator also feasts on the flesh of the famous.

“For the remaining forty years of his life, he wrote no other opera— unless one could describe the

Stabat Mater

as such. Was he lazy? Was he tired? Or had the creative urge simply dried up?” the man asked and was quiet for a brief moment.

“We will never know.”

Not the work of the Predator, Joubert thought, but Rossini remained his blood brother. Except that he had beaten the composer. He was only thirty-four and he was already tired, his creative juices exhausted. Would the brain behind great compositions like

The State Versus Thomas Maasen

and gripping works like

The Case of the Oranjezicht Rapist

never solve a classical crime again?

We will never know.

Or will we?

The speaker was talking about

The Barber of Seville

. Joubert burned the full name of the opera into his mind. He didn't want to forget it. If Hanna Nortier spoke about it, he didn't want to make a fool of himself at any price.

“It’s curious that the Italians almost hissed the first performance of

The Barber

off the stage,” the speaker said. “What a humiliation it must’ve been for Rossini.”

Joubert smiled inwardly. Indeed, friend, I can understand it. I know humiliation.

The man spoke about the libretto. Joubert didn't know what it meant. He absorbed each word, looked for clues. He decided it had to mean the story.

“We are privileged to have the well-known Italian tenor Andro Valenti as Figaro in this year’s production,” said the man with the soft voice and turned round. Behind him another man stood up. The people clapped and Valenti bowed. “Andro will sing the first aria, ‘Largo al factotum,’ for us. You all know it.”

The manner in which the audience applauded made it clear to Joubert that they all knew and liked it.

He watched the Italian. The man wasn'’t tall, but he was broad in the shoulder and chest. He stood easily, hands relaxed at his sides, feet planted wide. A young woman had sat down at the piano. They nodded at each other. The Italian smiled when the notes sounded from the piano. He took a deep breath.

Joubert was startled by the intensity of Valenti’s voice. It was like a radio suddenly switched on, its volume turned up too high.

The Italian’s voice filled the room. He sang in his own language and often repeated the name Figaro. The music was light and rhythmical, the melody surprisingly pleasant to his ears. And Valenti sang with abandon.

Joubert was fascinated by the man’s attitude, his enthusiasm, his self-confidence, his voice, which made the wooden floor under Joubert’s feet quiver, the ease with which he sang. But there was something else, something that made him feel guilty, something like an accusation. He tried to identify it, had difficulty in ridding himself of the positive hold the music had on him.

The Italian was enjoying it. This was his profession and he did it well and he enjoyed it without reservation.

How very different from Captain Mat Joubert.

He was suspicious. Was this why Hanna Nortier had brought him here? Was this a secret, sophisticated form of therapy?

The man’s voice and the sweet exuberance of the melody invaded him again. It filled Joubert with a curious longing. He concentrated on the music, allowed the longing to grow in his subconscious, nameless and formless.

It struck him just before Valenti completed the aria. He also wanted to get up and sing, stand next to the Italian and roar so that he, too, could feel the euphoria. He wanted life to glow in him like a great burning brand. He wanted to do his work with the disdainful commitment of total efficiency. He longed for enthusiasm, for passion, for those rare moments of intensity when one felt that life was laughing with you. He longed for life. He was tired, and sick of death. He had such a yearning for life. Then the audience applauded. Mat Joubert also clapped. Louder than anyone else.

They had coffee at a restaurant.

“Did you like it?” she asked.

“I know nothing about opera.”

“One doesn’t have to know anything about something to enjoy it.”

“I . . . er . . .” He was very aware of the fact that she was the Psychologist, the Weigher of Words. He dropped his head and shoulders. “It was lovely, at the beginning. But later . . .”

“You felt like a child who had eaten too many sweets?”

He didn't understand her immediately. She explained. The first one was delicious, sweet and tasty. But then it became too much.

“Yes,” he said, surprised that she understood it so well.

“It’s a sensory overload. You should be pleased that it wasn'’t Wagner.”

“The name sounds vaguely familiar,” he said. “Has he got a criminal record?”

He surprised himself with his attempt at humor, the manner in which he handled his own ignorance and her superior knowledge.

She smiled. He caught a glimpse of her personality because the small smile was a mere movement of her pretty, delicate mouth. Her eyes wore the traces of a frown. There was a withdrawn quality about her, as if she was aware of every emotion and the reaction of others to her personality. He wondered whether this was the price she had to pay for the knowledge in her head. Every thought was measured against a paragraph in a textbook.

“I’ll lend you a CD of

The Barber

. If you listen to it and get used to the music and get to know it you’ll be able to bear more.”

“I don’t have a CD player.” Lara had bought the music center that stood in his living room, on a police salary. It had an unknown name, was a special offer at Lewis Stores, but it was good enough for Lara’s ABBA records and later BZN. Sometimes she turned up the sound to an ear-splitting volume and danced in the dark room, alone, while he sat in a chair and watched her and knew that when she had finished . . .

And he had wondered if the neighbors weren’t going to complain about the loud music, but he couldn't wait for the energy in her body, absorbed through the music, to be unleashed on him. Later, after her death, he had wondered about those moments when she, filled with the rhythm of the music, had mounted him on their double bed. Was the man in her head and the one between her thighs the same person? Or was he the means with which she acted out a fantasy, her black hair with the auburn lights over her face, her eyes closed, her breasts shiny with the sweat of love, her hips heaving like the sea, ceaselessly, until deep sounds indicated the moment of orgasm, rhythmic, rhythmic, faster, faster, uhm, uhm, uhm, uhm, and she gasped and she came, unaware that his own climax had already been reached and that he was watching her with his consuming love, and gratitude for his luck, storing each millimeter of her unbelievably lithe body in his memory.

Hanna Nortier had said something he hadn't heard and he blushed at his thoughts and his mouth, which hung slightly open because of the intensity of the memory.

She saw that he hadn't heard. “I’ll tape it. You have a cassette player?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And a television.” It wasn'’t a question.

“No.” He wasn'’t going to tell her that he had given the television to his cleaning woman because he’d sat in front of it night after night, like a zombie, while one American sitcom after the other rolled across the screen and the canned laughter had rubbed his nerve ends raw, and each stupid story of each stupid program with its own stupid moral had been a rearrangement of his own stupid life.

“Then you didn't see yourself on television on Friday night?”

“No.”

He didn't want their meeting to turn into a therapy session. He and a pretty woman together in a restaurant. So different from last night. He wanted to keep up the appearance. What other people were seeing, a couple.

“The media are really giving it a run for its money,” she said, and he realized that she also wanted to avoid their professional status.

“Ja. Seems as if other news is low on the ground.”

“Did you see yesterday’s

Burger

?” He could just think that she must be desperate— because the man didn't have either a CD player or a television.

“Yesterday’s, yes.”

“Do you think it’s the same person? The murderer and the robber?”

He took a deep breath, his uncertainty willing him to close the door in her face, to give her a brief reply, afraid that he might not be able to motivate it, afraid that he might make a fool of himself in front of this small, pretty woman.

“I doubt it,” he said and began speaking, slowly and carefully. He told her about the murders, one by one, about the suspects and the intrigues and the dead-end streets. He forgot about himself when he explained patterns and criminal behavior and his earlier experiences. His monologue became a proof of himself, an argument for the defense, that he was still worthy of his vocation. That he still had a reason for existence.

She asked questions, dared him in a subtle manner to answer questions, tested the validity of his arguments with slender fingers. His eyes remained on her face, on the cheekbones that seemed so frail beneath the pale skin, on the eyes, the eyebrows, created to frown, the line of her jaw, immeasurably perfectly drawn.

“You read what they said? About the woman in the bank? About how brave she was? She’s a heroine. That’s not true. I think she was scared and the robber had a fright. The Mauser murderer wouldn't have been frightened. He would’ve shot. It’s not the same person. To shoot someone at point-blank range with a large pistol needs . . . it needs a certain absence. Sometimes murderers and robbers are the same. But this robber is different. He’s a clown. The disguises, the sweetheart nonsense. I simply can’t believe it.”

“Are you going to speak to the criminologist?”

He was still too involved in his argument to grasp her meaning.

“The one they quoted? Who said the mass murderer’s acts were a revolt against society. Dr. Boshoff, I think.”

He shrugged his shoulders. He hadn't considered it.

“Don’t you think it would help to get to know the psyche of the murderer?”

How could he explain to her that the examinations he wrote for sergeant and lieutenant and captain had contained nothing about the psyche? He only knew how to ask questions, how to look for the numbers in the spider’s web of the law’s thousand and one rules, to add them up until the sums made sense. Until the books balanced and he asked for a warrant of arrest and went to hammer on someone’s door with the face of an executioner.

“I don’t know. That’s your field.”

“It can’t do any harm. They’ve got all that data and research results. They teach it to the students. It would be a good thing if it could be used somewhere.”

“Perhaps I should,” he said.

The same nurse was on duty. “I'’ve come to ask how Sergeant Griessel is,” he said politely and carefully.

Her eyes were large behind her glasses. “He asked for medication last night.” It sounded as though she had forgiven him.

“May I see him?”

“He’s sleeping. He won’t know that you’re here.”

He accepted her word. He thanked her and turned away. Then he stopped. “Why didn't he want medicine before?”

“He said he didn't deserve it.”

He just stood there and looked at her while the gears in his head slowly shifted.

“Are you a relative?”

“No,” he said. “Just a . . . friend.”

“They are like that sometimes. They fight it for so long. The bottle. They think that the next time round it’ll be easier to remember how bad it was to leave it.”

“Thank you,” he said without thinking and walked out.

There were still books that had to be arranged on the shelves. And his shoes. He wanted them shining. By evening.

24.

He wasn'’t alone in the swimming pool this morning. The business club was there in full force, possibly because people were back from their holidays.

He swam grimly.

The bloody diet. He’d been hungry last night. Was it the conversation with Hanna Nortier or the physical effort with the bookcase that had sharpened his hunger? But he would not eat fattening foods, even though he yearned for Russian sausages and chips and toasted egg and bacon sandwiches from the bloody café. He would lose the weight and show Bart de Wit and the doctor and the psychologist . . .

So he smoked. As if his stomach would get nourishment through the tubes of his lungs. Food or cigarettes. Last night he had smoked the Special Milds without satisfaction, one after another until his mouth was dry and his tongue tasted foul, while he considered the curious relationship between the Detective and the Psychologist and wondered whether he was falling in love. Suddenly you’re a sexual whirlwind, Mat Joubert? One randy young thing you couldn't even get into your gunsight and you’re busy with the next one. Don Juan Joubert. What has happened to your grief and pain? Do you really think you can escape Lara Joubert?

He had mocked himself, one section of his mind a spectator, watching his life passing, commenting and laughing at the owner of a video machine and a pile of cassettes. Let’s play one for you, Mat Joubert. See, there’s your dead wife, Lara. There, at the dressing table, the brush being dragged through her hair with irritable strokes. Watch the biceps and the triceps of her arm bunching under the tanned skin with each stroke. Watch the breasts bobbing, her bare breasts, which you can see in the mirror, small annoyed little tremors that make the nipples dance. Listen to her voice. “Jesus, Mat, we spend every weekend at home.”

There you are, lying on the bed, a book on your chest. “That place’s music deafens me,” you say weakly, a pathetic defense. Look at her turning toward you, look at her glowing with life. Look at her ardor. That was the way one should live. With every fiber of your being feeling, experiencing, expressing itself. “I’ll go alone. As God is my witness, Mat, one day I’ll go alone.”

There were other images as well. Before her death, after her death. Was the demon who orchestrated the libretto of his dreams also the mad scriptwriter in his head?

Now he swam even more grimly to escape too many cigarettes, his fear of his mind, which he didn't understand.

He swam more lengths than he had ever swum before. And that made him feel slightly better.

The forensic report lay on his desk. He opened it. Mauser Broomhandle. The ammunition old.

His phone rang. De Wit wanted to see him. He got up, took the report with him. Gerbrand Vos stood in front of de Wit’s office.

“I just want to have a quick word with Captain Joubert,” de Wit said to Vos. He held the door for Joubert, walked in, and sat down. Vos remained outside.

“You must understand me clearly, Captain, it’s nothing personal. But this Mauser number is getting out of hand. The Brigadier’s coming here at eleven. He wants a complete report. And the media. They’re running with the murders. And it’s my duty to protect you.”

“Colonel?”

“I’m afraid someone might talk, Captain. People are people, even here. I want to take you off the case before they find out.”

“Find out what, Colonel?”

“About your psychological treatment, Captain. The force can’t afford it. Can you imagine how the newspapers would react?”

De Wit said it as if Joubert’s psychological treatment was a transgression for which he could be held directly responsible.

“I don’t understand, Colonel.”

The nervous smile was back on de Wit’s face. “What don’t you understand, Captain?”

“How they would find out. Surely only you and I and the psychologist know about it?”

The smile disappeared for a moment, then reappeared. “The service pays the psychologist, Captain. There are clerks who do the documentation, who send through files . . . Listen, it’s a preventive measure. It’s nothing personal.”

Joubert was caught unawares. He collected the loose threads of counterarguments, tried to arrange them. De Wit got up. “I’ll just let Captain Vos in.”

He opened the door, called Vos, sat down again. Vos sat down next to Joubert.

“Captain Joubert and I have just agreed that you must take over the Mauser investigation, Captain,” de Wit said.

Joubert’s thoughts scurried between the walls of his skull, looking for a way out, panic-stricken. He had to stop this. It was an urge for survival. It was his last chance. But he found no argument. He found calm.

“No, Colonel,” he said.

Vos and de Wit looked at him.

“We didn't agree, Colonel,” he said, controlled and with precision.

De Wit’s mouth opened and closed.

“Colonel, the reason you gave for removing me from the investigation is not acceptable.” He turned to Vos. “I’m with a psychologist, Gerry. I’m ashamed of it but perhaps it’s a good thing. The Colonel is afraid the newspapers may find out about it. That’s why he wants to hide me. But I’ll carry on, Colonel, until I’m officially relieved of my duty, and through the correct channels.”

“Captain . . .” de Wit said, his face heavy with perturbation. He couldn't find the words to match it.

Vos gave a broad smile. “The Mauser thing is enough to make one fuckin’ loony tunes, Colonel. I don’t want it.”

“You . . .” De Wit looked at Vos in disbelief, then at Joubert and back at Vos.

There was a knock at the door.

“Not now!” de Wit shouted. His voice threatened to crack. He looked at the officers in front of him again. “You have—”

The knock at the door was louder.

“Not now!” de Wit screamed with recognizable hysteria. He shook his head as if he’d walked into a spider’s web. He shook his mole finger at Joubert and Vos. “You’re conspiring against me.” The finger shook. So did his voice.

The knock at the door was insistent.

De Wit jumped up. Behind him his chair fell over. He walked to the door and jerked it open. Gerrit Snyman stood there.

“Are you deaf?” De Wit was a soprano.

“Colonel—”

“I said not now.” De Wit started closing the door.

“There’s been another murder, Colonel,” Snyman said quickly before the wood could reach the frame. The door came to an abrupt halt. All three looked at Snyman.

“They’re looking for Captain Joubert on the radio. A man in Hout Bay, Colonel. Two shots. Two 7.63 cartridge cases.”

They stared at Snyman as if they were waiting for him to say he was only joking. De Wit cooled down, slowly, almost imperceptibly.

“Thank you, Constable,” he said, in his normal bandsaw tenor voice. Snyman nodded and turned away. De Wit closed the door. He walked back to his chair, picked it up, set it in place, and sat down.

Joubert considered his words as he started speaking, only aware that the Mauser investigation was his lifeline and that he had to give de Wit a way out of this confrontation. “Colonel, there is no conspiracy. Captain Vos and I couldn't have known beforehand what you were going to tell us. But I’m asking you to reconsider.”

He realized that it wasn'’t enough. Not for a man like de Wit. He knew the time had come to save himself, to grab at the straw. “Colonel, you were right when you said that my record for the past few years hasn’t been good. Perhaps you were also right about my attitude, which was wrong. Even toward the Mauser case— I could’ve put in more by now. But I give you my word. I’ll give it all I'’ve got. But don’t take it away from me.”

He heard himself, how close he was to begging. He didn't care.

De Wit looked at him. His hands were on the table. His right hand moved slowly up to his face. Joubert and Vos knew what its destination was.

“I can’t stop the press if they find out,” he said when the finger reached the mole. Joubert was grateful that the smile remained absent.

“I know, Colonel.”

“And if they find out, the commissioner will take you off. You know that?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

De Wit pointed his mole finger at Joubert. “You must realize one thing. You’ve had your last chance.”

“Yes, Colonel.” He was grateful that de Wit was using the opportunity for peace. And to regain lost esteem.

“You’re going to be watched like no other policeman has ever been watched. And I’m not referring to the media, I’m referring to me.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“One slipup, Captain . . .”

The phone rang. De Wit’s eyes were still fixed warningly on Joubert. He picked up the phone. The smile suddenly reappeared. “Good morning, Brigadier.” He waved a hand at Vos and Joubert, dismissing them. The officers got up and closed the door behind them. They walked down the passage.

“Thanks, Gerry.”

“It was fuckall.”

They walked in silence, their footsteps hurried on the bare tile floor. Vos stopped in front of his office door. “Mat, may I ask you something?”

Joubert nodded.

“How the fuck do you suddenly get your shoes so shiny?”

First of all he had the whole area cordoned off— the plot, the small wooden house, the sidewalk, and a part of the street.

He was astonished by the beauty of the surroundings. The street was a contour against the slopes of Karbonkelberg, the wooden frame houses in an uneven row a picture postcard of Cape beauty. It wasn'’t a place for death.

He had placed the local station’s uniform personnel at the garden gate with instructions that for the present only the pathologist and the forensic unit were to be allowed access to the scene of the murder.

Fat Sergeant Tony O’Grady had waylaid Joubert and Gerrit Snyman in Murder and Robbery’s parking area. “Can I come with you, Cappy? This thing fascinates me. And Captain Vos says it’s okay.”

Now the three were looking at the corpse. They couldn't get too close because blood lay in a wide pool around the body. But they could see that Alexander MacDonald had been a big, rugged man, with thin red hair, a red beard, and huge hands and feet. In his last moments he’d worn nothing except a pair of shorts. Even in death the bulk of his chest and upper arms was impressive.

They could also see that the murder of Alexander MacDonald was somewhat different from the previous ones.

The one shot was through his neck, and the blood had spouted onto the wall and the few pieces of furniture and eventually spilled over the floor.

The other was between his legs, more or less where his sexual organs had been.

Fat Sergeant Tony O’Grady’s mouth was full of his staple food. It was his escape and his downfall. It was also the reason for his nickname, Nougat. He trod carefully between the pool of blood’s tributaries and said: “This is new, Cappy. This is new.”

Joubert said nothing. He looked at the room, the way the body was lying.

“Doesn’t look like an accident, the shot between the balls.” O’Grady bit off another piece of nougat. “Wonder if he was shot there first? Must be fucking sore, hey, Cappy?”

“Looks as if he was shot at the door. First in the neck, I think. Look at the blood against the wall here. Carotid artery spouts like that. Then he fell. Then he gave him the second shot.”

“Right up the prick, poor bastard.”

A uniformed constable called carefully from the small front veranda. Joubert peered around the door. “Here are a lot of people from Murder and Robbery looking for you, Captain,” said the constable and pointed to the street. Joubert’s eyes followed the pointing finger. Eight unmarked police cars had suddenly filled the street. The detectives stood at the garden gate like a rugby team posing for a group photo. He walked to them.

Murder and Robbery’s only officer of color, Lieutenant Leon Petersen, was the group’s spokesman.

“The Colonel sent us, Captain. To help. He said the district commissioner had phoned the Brigadier and the Brigadier had phoned him. They’re suddenly wide awake about this”— he indicated the house—“thing. He said the Captain needed more people, the Brigadier must get detectives from all the stations, especially for the groundwork. But we’re here to help.”

“Thanks, Leon.”

It was the press, he knew. The pressure was increasing on everyone— from unimportant captains up to generals. Reputations were being laid on the line. The smell of blood was going to drive the press crazy.

He explained to the group of detectives that he wanted to keep the house and the plot clean until the laboratory team arrived. He sent them in pairs down the street. Perhaps the neighbors had seen something. Maybe they knew something about the deceased.

The police video unit was the first to arrive. He asked them to wait. They moaned. He beckoned the uniformed sergeant. “Where’s the woman who found the body?”

“In the back of the police van, Captain,” said the sergeant.

“In the back of the van?”

“Just to make sure, Captain,” the sergeant said, aware of Joubert’s disapproval.

“Bring her here, please.”

She was a black woman, big and heavy. Her mouth was stiff with anger about the treatment she had received. Joubert held the garden gate for her.

“I’m sorry about the inconvenience,” he said in Afrikaans.

“I only speak English.”

He repeated the sentence.

She shrugged her shoulders.

He walked around the house with her to the back door. On the stoop there was an old couch and two old steel-and-plastic kitchen chairs. “Please sit down,” he said, then called Snyman and O’Grady. When they were all present he asked her what her name was.

“I didn't do it.”

He knew that, he said. But they had to have it for the witness forms.

Miriam Ngobeni, she said.

Her address?

The informal settlement, here in Karbonkelberg.

What precisely happened this morning?

She had come to work as usual at about half past seven. But the door was open and her employer was there, lying in all that blood. She had a fright and ran to the neighbor.

Had she seen anyone? Someone who looked suspicious?

No. Could she leave now?

If she would answer a few more questions, please.

According to the uniformed police the man’s surname was MacDonald. Did she know his first name?

Mac.

Did she know where in the house he kept his personal documents, like an ID book?

No. Not in the house. Probably on the boat.

The boat?

One of the two fishing boats lying in the harbor. MacDonald’s fishing boats. She had never seen them, but every day she had to try to wash the stink of fish out of MacDonald’s clothes with her hands because he didn't have a washing machine. You couldn't leave the clothes in the laundry basket for one day. The smell . . .

Did MacDonald live alone?

She thought so. Sometimes, on a Monday morning, there were signs of big parties. Empty bottles and cigarette butts and liquor stains and burn marks on the tables and the chairs and the floors and the few loose carpets. Sometimes the bed in the main bedroom . . . But apart from that she knew of no permanent woman. She seldom saw him. Often only on Saturdays, when she came to fetch her money. And then she waited at the door.

What was he like?

White.

What did she mean?

He was difficult, always threatening and complaining that he paid her too much and that she stole his liquor and took the change out of his pockets.

So she hadn't liked him?

Not so. That’s the way white people are.

Thank you very much for your willingness to answer questions, he said. Could someone take her home a bit later?

Please not.

Joubert explained the pattern of the investigation of the house to her. He asked her whether she was willing to wait until it had been completed. He said she had to look through the house to see if anything was missing.

Must she sit in the van again?

No. She could sit on the back stoop if she wanted to.

She nodded her assent.

They walked round to the front gate. The press had arrived. A horde. In a single glance he counted ten, mostly reporters and photographers. The cameras flashed. “Is there a suspect?” one called out. It became a chorus. They rushed toward the gate. The uniformed constables stopped them.

“Forensics are inside, Captain,” the constable at the gate said.

“Thank you. Tell your sergeant to keep the press out, please.”

He sent O’Grady and Snyman to the harbor to have a look at the boats and to talk to the crew. Then he walked into the house and told the forensic team that they had to search the entire house and the plot as well. They complained. He said they had to hurry because he was allowing no one else into the area until they had finished. They moaned again.

He stood at the window and looked outside. The appearance of a murder scene, he thought. They all looked alike. Township or downtown. A group of curious onlookers, avid for details, talking to one another behind their hands in hushed voices as if they thought they could wake the dead. The uniforms’ yellow cars with the blue lights. The red and white turning lights of the ambulance. Sometimes, if there was enough hysteria, the press— a moving, noisy mass, almost like a mobile stock exchange. Sometimes the next of kin were also on the stage of death, a small group who clung quietly to one another and hoped for guidance to avoid the bitter knowledge.

He saw the pathologist making his way past the people at the hedge and reaching the gate, where he showed his plastic card to the uniform. Then he walked over the neglected lawn and entered the house.

He whistled through his teeth, then saw Joubert.

“Messy,” said Professor Pagel. He saw the second wound in Alexander MacDonald’s groin. “And a new twist, I see.”

“Yes,” said Joubert and sighed. “A new twist.”

Outside, the photographer, the video unit, and the dog unit had arrived. They would all have to wait. They wouldn't like it but they would have to wait.

He lit a cigarette and walked out. His radio on his hip suddenly spoke loudly. De Wit wanted him urgently. He thought he knew why.

25.

The district commissioner was a major general, a short, square man with black hair that he wore well oiled and combed straight back. He also had a black Charlie Chaplin mustache. The chief of detectives was a brigadier, a tall, large man with a bald patch. They looked like a South African edition of Laurel and Hardy. With one difference: Bart de Wit did not find their presence amusing in the least. The smile on his face was present, but Joubert decided that beyond reasonable doubt it was a nervous smile.

They were in the General’s office. The office was large and attractive, the walls paneled in dark wood, a large desk at one end and a circular conference table at the other, with ten chairs around it. They sat at the table. Joubert had been in the office before, more than three years ago, after an award ceremony at which he had been honored. The office hadn't changed, he noticed. But a great many other things had.

The General wanted to know if the latest murder had supplied any new clues. Joubert told him about the circumstances, the shot in the groin.

“That’s a new one,” the General said.

“Indeed.” De Wit grinned.

“We’ve installed a temporary investigation office at the Hout Bay station, General. The men are still busy doing the legwork, the neighbors, the crew of the boats. We’re looking for relatives and friends.”

“What else?”

De Wit’s hopeless gaze was fixed on Joubert. Relax, Two Nose, he thought, I have things under control.

“I would like to send men to all the arms dealers in the Cape, General,” Joubert said.

“Haven’t you as yet?”

“We first tried to trace all the licensed Mausers in the Western Cape, General. It yielded nothing. Now we have to talk to dealers and gunsmiths. Maybe someone somewhere had a Mauser Broomhandle serviced.”

“Makes sense,” the General said.

“Undeniably,” said the Brigadier.

“Of course,” de Wit said.

“But will it help? People must show licenses if they want to have weapons serviced.”

“The dealers are only human, General. A few fast rands are often more effective than the rules. If we apply enough pressure . . . Even if they don’t have a name and an address, they might remember what the person looks like.”

“Then we’ll have a description at least,” the General said. He turned to the Brigadier. “Would you assist in getting Captain Joubert more manpower, Pete? As long as necessary.”

The Brigadier nodded enthusiastically.

“There’s something else, General,” Joubert said. “The other weapon in the Ferreira murder. We still haven’t had the ballistic report. If we know the caliber and what kind of weapon it was, we can ask arms dealers about that as well. Maybe, if we’re lucky, someone had both weapons serviced at the same time.”

“You’ll have your report within the hour, Captain. Believe me.”

Joubert believed him.

“And if there’s anything else moving too slowly to suit you, let me know. Or if you need more men. Got that?”

“Thank you, General.”

“What else?”

“I’m going to see all the relatives of the previous victims, General. With the new murder . . . perhaps they’ll remember something.”

“Fine. What else?”

“I’m seeing a doctor in criminology at the University of Stellenbosch, General. I—”

“The one who was in

Die Burger

?”

“Yes, General, I—”

“Why?”

“I want to put together a profile by tonight, General. Everything we know. It’s not much but we have to take the chance. We think it’s a man because the weapon is large. Perhaps the doctor can help to compile the profile. I want to give it to the press. Maybe someone knows somebody with a Mauser and a small-caliber handgun.”

“It’s a shot in the dark.”

“Indeed,” said the Brigadier.

De Wit nodded and grinned.

“I simply want to make sure that I’m doing everything possible, General.”

“Might just work.”

“More like than not,” said the Brigadier.

De Wit nodded.

“What about the bank robber?”

“General, I firmly believe the robber has nothing to do with the murders.”

“Tell that to the newspapers.”

“All we can do is to put a policeman in every Premier Bank branch in the Peninsula— in civilian dress, General. And hope that the man strikes again. But the manpower . . .”

“Captain, if we’ve made an error of judgment and the robber and the Mauser guy prove to be the same person, you and I will be selling insurance by morning. Every station can afford a few men. I’ll speak to Brigadier Brown. Then you have to talk to Premier.”

“Thank you, General.”

“Is that the lot?”

“For the moment, General.”

“What about a medium?” de Wit asked.

“A what?” the General asked on behalf of everyone else.

“A medium. A spiritualist. The English refer to them as psychics.”

“You mean someone with second sight? A fortune-teller?” the Brigadier said.

“Are you serious?” the General asked disbelievingly.

“General, they often use them in England. While I was there they solved two murders like that. One was a body they couldn't trace. The site the psychic indicated was no more than five hundred meters from where the body was found.”

“Do you want the Minister to sh—” The General controlled himself. “There’s no money for a circus like that, Colonel. You should be aware of that.”

De Wit’s smile was a mask. “It needn't cost us a cent, General.”

“Oh?”

“Sometimes these people do the work for free. It’s like a marketing ploy. Publicity.”

“Mmm. I don’t know. Sounds like a circus to me.”

“The media would like it,” Joubert said. The others looked at him. “It would give them something to write about, General. Take the pressure off us so that we can get on with it.”

Joubert caught a glimpse of de Wit’s surprise.

“That’s true,” the General said. “But on one condition. It doesn’t cost us a cent. And the psychic doesn’t reveal that we asked him to come.”

“Her,” de Wit said. “The best psychic in England is a woman, General.”

“Indeed,” said the General.

“But surely we have psychics here,” said the Brigadier.

“It’s just that I know her. And the publicity value of a foreign person . . .”

“Imagine that,” said the Brigadier.

Joubert said nothing.

The man in the overalls, with no neck and a head as bald and as round as a cannonball, walked through the crowd of detectives and uniforms looking for someone. He could hardly believe that the Hout Bay station could be so busy. He asked where Captain Mat Joubert of Murder and Robbery was. In that storeroom, someone replied. It’s the investigation office, someone else said.

He tried getting in through the door. The room was full of people and smoke. In one corner, sitting at a table, was a big man with hair that was too long and too untidy to be a detective’s. It tallied with the description he’d been given. He walked toward him. The man had a cigarette in one hand and a pen in the other. He was talking to a fat man in front of him.

“They must divide the Peninsula into sectors, Nougat. And not skip an arms dealer or a gunsmith, no matter how small. Now we’re just waiting for the bloody ballistics report.”

“Here it is,” said the man with the cannonball head and handed Joubert a brown envelope.

Joubert looked up in surprise. “Thank you,” he said. “Did the General send you?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Joubert looked at his watch. “He’s a man of his word.” He tore open the envelope and read the report.

“Twenty-two Long Rifle caliber. According to the marks on the case and the cartridge, a Smith & Wesson Escort, the so-called Model 61.”

“Point two two. Shit. Common as muck,” Nougat said.

“It does help us, though. They must question the dealers, Nougat. Has someone bought a Smith & Wesson and perhaps had a Mauser serviced. Or bought .22 long ammunition. Or had a Smith & Wesson and a Mauser serviced. Or just a Smith & Wesson . . .”

“I catch your drift.”

“Anything, Nougat. We’re looking for needles in a haystack. That doesn’t mean asking a few simple questions and going on to the next shop. They must do it properly. Apply some pressure. Threaten with inspections. The Mauser isn’t licensed.”

“Leave it to me, Cappy. We’ll get our man.”

“Woman,” said the man with the cannonball head.

“What did you say?” asked Joubert, slightly irritated.

“I think it was a woman, Captain.”

“Oh?”

“The Model 61 is a woman’s weapon, Captain.”

“And who are you, if I may ask?” said Nougat O’Grady.

“I’m Adjutant Mike de Villiers. From the armory. The General phoned me and asked me whether I’d look through the ballistic report and bring it to you. He said you could ask me questions if you want to. I . . . er . . . I know something about guns, Captain.”

Joubert looked at the man opposite him, the round head, the absence of a neck, the blue overalls covered in gun oil marks. If the General had sent him . . .

“What do you know about the .22, Adjutant?”

Mike de Villiers closed his eyes. “Smith & Wesson made the Escort for the female market. In the seventies. Short grip, small weapon. People called it the Model 61. Fitted easily into a handbag. Semiautomatic pistol, five in the magazine. Not a great success, especially the first produced, which had a weak safety indicator. Smith & Wesson built a magazine safety mechanism into the second model, in ’70, but owners had to take the pistol back to the factory for adjusting. Four models between ’69 and ’71. Good penetration capacity, better than the Baby Browning. Accurate at short distance. Jamming rare but not impossible.”

Mike de Villiers opened his eyes.

Joubert and O’Grady stared at him.

“That doesn’t mean a man won’t use it,” Joubert said, still bemused.

The eyes closed again. “Short grip, Captain, very short. Small weapon. Your finger won’t even fit into the trigger guard. Doesn’t fit into a man’s hand, doesn’t fit a man’s ego. A man looks for a large gun—9-millimeter, .45 Magnum. Statistics show that eighty-seven percent of handgun murders are committed by men with large calibers. Shooting incidents by women are rare, generally in self-defense, generally small caliber.”

The eyes opened slowly, like a reptile’s.

O’Grady’s jaw had come to a halt and dropped slightly. Joubert frowned.

“But the Mauser is a man’s weapon.”

“I don’t know anything about the Broomhandle, Captain. If it was made before 1918, I’m not interested,” de Villiers said.

“Is Captain Joubert here?” the leader of a group of uniforms who had walked through the door called out.

“Here,” Joubert said and sighed. The place was a madhouse.

“Did the Captain want to know anything else?”

“Thank you, Adjutant. I know where to get hold of you if there’s anything else.”

De Villiers nodded, said good-bye, and quietly left.

“Looks like a lizard, talks like a computer,” said O’Grady. “Man’s a fucking genius.”

Joubert didn't hear him. His thoughts were frustrated, confused by the new information. “Nothing in this investigation makes any sense, Nougat. Nothing.”

He phoned Stellenbosch University and asked to speak to Dr. A. L. Boshoff.

“Anne Boshoff,” a woman’s voice answered. He sighed quietly. Another female doctor.

He explained who he was and asked whether he could speak to her that afternoon, explaining that it was urgent.

“I’ll prepare in the meanwhile,” she said.

He closed the station commander’s door. “How peaceful the silence is,” said Lieutenant Leon Petersen.

O’Grady wiped his handkerchief over his forehead. “All we need is air-conditioning,” he said. Next to him sat Gerrit Snyman with his notebook in front of him.

“Get on with it,” said Joubert.

“His full name is Alexander MacDonald, born in Humansdorp on April 8, 1952. Unmarried, no dependents. He is the sole owner of two fishing trawlers, the

High Road

and the

Low Road.

According to his documents he still owes the bank 110,000 rand on the

Low Road.

He had a contract with Good Hope Fisheries and delivers solely to them. John Paulsen is the skipper of the

High Road.

He’s worked for MacDonald for eighteen years. He says the man was good-hearted but had a terrible temper. When we asked him who would have had reason to murder MacDonald, he said he could think of at least two hundred with no effort. MacDonald never drank at sea but when they were in the harbor . . . He has a criminal record. Driving under the influence, Hout Bay, ’88; assault with intent to cause severe bodily harm, ’89; fifteen complaints of disturbing the peace since ’79. One conviction for deliberate injury to property. He and a few crew members smashed up a bar in Simons Town. And here’s an interesting one. An accusation of rape was laid by one Eleanor Davids two years ago. She later withdrew it. The investigating officers suspected that MacDonald threatened her with violence, but they couldn't prove anything.”

“A difficult customer,” Petersen said.

“A chat with Eleanor Davids could be interesting,” Joubert said.

“That’s the idea, Captain, that’s the idea.”

26.

He drove to Stellenbosch, late for his appointment with Dr. Anne Boshoff. The district manager of Premier Bank, in his luxurious office, had been impatient. The robber was bad for business, bad for the bank’s image. All the negative publicity. Nor was he impressed by the SAPD’s plans. A plainclothes policeman in every branch? What would happen if a policeman scared the robber? He could start shooting. Premier Bank didn't want to expose its clients or its employees to danger.

Patiently Joubert had explained that the members of the force were very aware of the danger and that confrontation with the robber would be handled with great circumspection.

The district manager had said that he saw examples of the police’s circumspection on television every evening.

Joubert had sighed, stood up, and said that he would mention Premier Bank’s attitude at the press conference.

The district manager also sighed and said Joubert must sit down. He had to consult head office.

Head office couldn't decide, either. They wanted to call a meeting to discuss it. Joubert said he had to go to Stellenbosch. He left Dr. Boshoff’s telephone number. The bank must inform him when a decision had been reached.

He took the N2 and drove too fast. The big white Sierra kept his thoughts on the traffic. The road was quieter after the R300 exit. He didn't want to think about the investigation too much, about de Wit’s attempt to replace him, about the meeting at the General’s, about the adrenaline of the chase which, like an old, almost forgotten friend, was rearing its head again. Because he didn't know whether any of it was worthwhile. Tomorrow or the day after, the excitement would die down. Then he would be alone again, with only his thoughts and his memories.

He forced his mind back to the appointment ahead. What was he going to say to Dr. Boshoff?

I’m here because my psychologist suggested it. She’s a pretty, frail woman with sad eyes and I think I’m in love with her because I told her something about my father that I'’ve never told anyone else. Because she’s the first person in more than two years to whom I can talk without being scared of that overdone, artificial sympathy of those who don’t really care. That’s why I’m here, Dr. Boshoff.

No. He had to get a profile. Not only for the newspapers but for himself. He couldn't chase a phantom. He was looking for a face. A person with a disturbed mind who took other people’s lives.

Anne Boshoff’s office was in an old, restored gabled house. In front, in the neat garden, there was a sign: CRIMINOLOGY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF STELLENBOSCH. He parked the car and got out. The afternoon was warm and windless. He took off his jacket and hung it over his shoulder. He adjusted the Z88 in the leather holster on his belt.

Two male students were walking ahead of him on the pavement. They looked at the police vehicle with curiosity, at him and the gun. They saw him opening the garden gate.

“I knew that paper was too difficult,” one said. “Lock them up.”

Joubert grinned and walked onto the cool veranda. The front door was open. He walked in hesitantly. The front entrance was deserted. He saw nameplates on doors. He walked down the passage. Right at the end he saw Anne Boshoff’s door. It was open. He peered inside.

She sat in front of a computer, her back to him. He noticed her short black hair, shorter than his own. He saw her neck, a part of her shoulder.

She became aware of him and turned.

He saw her face, the high forehead, the eyes set wide apart, the cheekbones, broad in an almost Eastern manner, mouth wide and full, the strong jaw. She looked measuringly at him from head to toe with dark, bright eyes.

“I’m Mat Joubert,” he said, aware of his discomfort.

“You sounded like an old man on the telephone,” she said and swiveled the chair round. He saw that she was full-bodied, her dress short. He tore his eyes away from the well-shaped, tanned legs.

He stood between the door and the woman. She got up. She was tall, almost as tall as he was.

“Let’s sit down,” she said and walked to a small desk in the corner of the large room. He saw the muscles of her strong legs moving under the skin. Then he looked away at the rest of the office. It was untidy. There were piles of books everywhere. The small bookcase behind the desk was spilling over. A racing bicycle stood against one wall. The only chair in the room was the one at the computer. Against another wall, under the window, there were cartons filled with documents. She turned and sat down on one of the cartons, the long legs stretched out in front of her. Her ringless hand indicated another carton.

“Make yourself at home.”

He shifted the Z88 into a more comfortable position on his hip and sat down.

“Is it true what they say about men who carry large guns?”

He looked at her. Her mouth was wide and red and smiling.

“I . . . um . . .” She was so extremely sexy.

“Great answer,” she said.

“Well, I . . .”

“What do you want from me, Mat Joubert?”

“I . . .”

“About the murder case, I mean.”

“Yes, I . . .”

“The statistics? They could help. Could give you a picture. But it’s an American picture. They set the pace for mass murderers. And we follow in their footsteps. Little America, that’s what we are. So the figures might help you. Do you know how they’ve increased in the past twenty years? Exponentially. It’s an accusation against Western civilization, Mat Joubert.” She looked at him when she spoke, a focus, a direct spotlight of a focus, a beam, a ray.

“Is . . .”

“The statistics say your murderer is a man. A middle-class man with the weight of his background on his shoulders. Why a man? Because most of them are. They’re the sex who have problems in accepting the prison of middle-classness. We live in an era in which we teach our sons that they must achieve, be better, become rich. And if they can’t . . . Why middle class? Because most people are. Isn’t it curious? In previous ages the small handful of mass murderers came from the lowest classes. Slaves and prostitutes and the scum of the earth. In our time it’s the middle classes. Sometimes lower middle class like Charles Starkweather, sometimes upper middle class like Ted Bundy. Their background? It can vary. Do you know how many mass murderers were adopted children? Kallinger. Bianchi. Earle Nelson. And illegitimate. Now some psychologists are of the opinion that Ted Bundy killed because he knew he was an illegitimate child. David Berkowitz was adopted and illegitimate. And so many were orphans or taken by welfare. Fish. Kemper. Olson. Panzram. Bonin. And then they murder to assure themselves of a small place in the community. Tragic, isn’t it.”

He wrote. It kept his eyes and his hands busy.

“But do you know what bothers me, Mat Joubert? The weapon and the victims. The Mauser is too blatant. Too macho. A statement. It bothers me. Here sex is raising its horrible head. That long barrel. I checked. Ian Hogg’s book

German Pistols and Revolvers.

That long barrel. A phallic symbol. A male symbol. This is a man with a problem. All the victims are male. It bothers me. A man with a problem who kills other men. But the victims aren’t gay . . .”

“They . . . One was,” he said loudly.

“One? Just one, Mat Joubert? Are you sure? Do you know for certain?”

“Wallace was . . . promiscuous but heterosexual. Wilson was homosexual. Ferreira . . . I don’t know. He liked blue movies, his wife said. And MacDonald, the one we found this morning. He’d been charged with rape. But the woman withdrew the case.”

“You see— you can actually speak,” she said in a mock serious tone, frowning, and he wondered whether there was something this woman could do that didn't make him think of sex.

“It sounds to me as if they were all closet queens, Mat Joubert. Do you know how many men suppress their homosexuality with promiscuity? And the rape. Perhaps he wanted to prove his masculinity to himself. Come on, I bet you your murderer is going to be gay. It fits. The Mauser. It’s a statement. A sexual statement. By a homosexual man.”

“From the middle classes. Who was adopted,” he said and frowned as she had frowned earlier on.

“The captain has a sense of humor,” she said to her bike. She looked at him again.

“What are you doing this evening? You’re too precious to get away.”

“Doctor, the problem is . . .”

“Please don’t call me doctor. Call me anything. Call me sexy. But not doctor. Do you think I’m sexy? Where do you get your name? Mat? An abbreviation of Matthew?”

“Yes,” he said to save time.

“Yes, I’m sexy, or yes, it’s short for Matthew?”

Somewhere on her desk the telephone rang. She got up smoothly and gave one long step. She scrabbled under the books and documents. He watched the muscle of her calf tensing and relaxing and was amazed by its perfection.

“Anne Boshoff,” she said in an irritable voice. “Just a moment.” She held out the receiver. “For you, Matthew.”

He got up, put his notebook down on the carton, and took the receiver. It was the district manager of Premier Bank. Head office had agreed that the police could deploy members of the force in their branches. But they urgently requested that the SAPD consider the lives and safety of the bank’s personnel and clients. Joubert assured him that they would.

“May I use the phone?” he asked and looked round. She was sitting on a carton again, her legs crossed, paging through his notebook.

“Your handwriting is awful. The long loops of your

y

and

j

and

g

indicate that you’re sexually frustrated. Are you? You’re already using the telephone, Matthew. Just carry on.”

He dialed the number and tried concentrating on the call. He patted his shirt pocket in search of a cigarette. Then he remembered that they were in his coat pocket. He wanted to smoke. He wanted to do something with his hands to hide his dreadful discomfort and his awkwardness. De Wit answered his telephone in the manner prescribed by the circular of the office of the district commissioner. “Murder and Robbery. Colonel Bart de Wit, good afternoon.”

He told de Wit about Premier Bank’s decision. De Wit promised to liaise with Brigadier Brown about the arrangements.

“Where are you, Captain?” de Wit asked.

“In Stellenbosch, Colonel. With the crimina . . . criminologist.”

“The press conference has been scheduled for eighteen hundred. In the General’s office. Please don’t be late.”

“Very well, Colonel.”

He looked at his watch. He would have to hurry.

“Freudian slip, Matthew?” Anne Boshoff asked. Her knees were together now, almost chaste.

“No, it’s a press conference . . .”

“I’m speaking about the criminal you so very nearly mentioned. Tell me, was it Bart de Wit to whom you spoke?”

He nodded.

“I know him. He was in the criminology department at the University of South Africa. I attended a few conferences where he was also present. Good example of a small man. His nickname was Kilroy. Kilroy the killjoy. He looks exactly like Kilroy, the little graffiti man who peers over the wall. Kilroy was here. With his nose. He just doesn’t have the hormones. Didn't try it on, at even one conference. It made a girl think.”

“May I have my notebook?”

“Tell me, Matthew, are you absent, or is it merely your way of putting crooks and villains at ease?” She handed over the notebook. He took his jacket, took out a cigarette, and lit it.

“Do you know how bad that is for your health?”

“It’s a Special Mild.”

“Oh. So that doesn’t cause cancer.”

“Doctor,” he said firmly, “the weapon used in the Ferreira murder was a Smith & Wesson Model 61. According to one of our weapons experts, it’s typical of a gun a woman would use.”

“And?”

“It doesn’t match your theory, Doctor . . .”

“Doctor. You sound like a vicar. Call me Anne. And drop the ‘doctor’ bit. I like it when men are rude to me. It keeps me in my place. Of course it matches my theory. If you have a Mauser, you already have a large pistol, no matter how small your prick is.”

“Are you certain it’s a man?”

“Of course I’m not sure. It could be a woman. It could be a lesbian chimpanzee. I can only tell you what the law of averages says. I don’t have an ashtray. You’ll have to open the window.”

“I must go.”

“You’re so beautifully tall and big. Your body, I mean. I like big men. Small ones carry too much inferiority. Bodies too small for all the hormones.”

He was confused. He looked at the window to avoid the legs and the full breasts.

“You look like a bear. I like bears. I think a person’s looks have a great influence on their personality. Don’t you agree?” Her eyes were still fixed on him, her concentration aimed at him like a weapon. He looked at her and then away. He hadn't the vaguest idea of what to say.

“Do I make you uncomfortable? Are you the kind of man who likes more subtle women?”

“I . . . er . . .”

“Are you married, Mat Joubert?”

“No, I—”

“Neither am I. I’m divorced. One of those heartrending affairs that didn't pan out. He was . . . is a surgeon. We’re still friends. That’s it. Now you know.”

“Oh.” He knew he had to get the conversation under control. He decided to be decisive. “I—”

She interrupted him. “I hate social games. I hate the artificial manner in which people communicate. The superficiality. I think one should say what you want to say. Say what you mean. People don’t always like it. Especially men. Men want to be in control, they want to play the game according to their rules. The love games, especially. Why go through all the pretense first? If I think a man is sexy, I want to say so. If a man wants me, he mustn’t take me to an expensive restaurant first and send me flowers. He must take me. Don’t you think it saves time?”

He looked at her legs. “I know an eighteen-year-old student in Monte Vista who agrees with you,” he said and felt better.

“Tell me about her. Is she your lover? Do you like them young? I’m thirty-two. Does that disqualify me?”

“She’s not my lover.”

“Why do you sound disappointed about it?” She didn't give him a chance to reply.

“You’re very different from what I imagined you to be, you know. A Murder and Robbery detective. I imagined this hard, sophisticated man with a scar on his face and cold, blue eyes. And here you are. A big, shy bear. And absent. You look absent to me, Mat Joubert. Are you?”

“A little,” he said and felt it was a victory.

“Do you know one lives only once?”

“Yes . . .”

“You must grab it.”

“I . . .”

“Every day, every moment.”

“I must go.”

“Do I exhaust you? Many people say I exhaust them. But I do have friends. I can prove it.”

“In a court of law?”

She smiled. “I’m going to miss you, Matthew.”

He put his cigarettes, pen, and notebook in his coat pocket.

“Thank you very much for your time, Doc . . . Anne.”

“You see, we’re making progress. Hang on, I’ll walk out with you.”

They walked in silence down the house’s passage, over the veranda, into the sunlight. He saw her gleaming skin brown and bright, her open shoulders, her legs. He saw her buttocks moving under the minidress.

She looked round, caught him looking. “Will I see you again?”

“If there’s anything else . . .”

“I’ll see you again, Matthew Joubert. That’s a promise.”

27.

The press conference had been moved to the entrance hall of police headquarters because there were too many people.

“You’re late,” Cloete of PR said when he caught sight of Mat Joubert. He looked worried and panicky. “There are two TV teams present from overseas stations. And one from the SABC. And one from M-Net— they were making a program for Carte Blanche.

There are newspaper people here I'’ve never seen before.” Then he hurried away to inform the General that Joubert had arrived.

The press formed a semicircle. The bright television lights shone on a small table. The General sat at the table. Next to him sat the Brigadier and de Wit. The General crooked a finger at Joubert. “Found anything?”

Had he found anything? He had tried to think on the way back to Cape Town. But Dr. Anne Boshoff lay like a shadow over his thoughts. He wondered whether women with a double f in their names were all the same. Bonnie Stoffberg, Anne Boshoff. Did the extra f stand for . . . He’d shaken his head at his inability to rid his mind of sex. Barely in love with Hanna Nortier and now you want to lie between the other clever doctor’s legs. Raging bull. From conscientious objector to Ramblin’ Rambo in a mere two weeks. Yes, General, I'’ve found something. Something I can’t handle very well.

“I think so, General.”

“Good. I’ll begin and then introduce you.”

No. He wasn'’t prepared. He couldn't tell them they were looking for a middle-class homosexual who had possibly been adopted or illegitimate.

“

Dames en here

. . .” the General said loudly and the media scrambled for cameras and notebooks. More bright lights were switched on.

“Dames en here.”

No quiet.

“Can you speak English?” someone called. Camera motor drives whirred. Flashlights went off.

“

Dames en here, dankie

. . .” Cloete had jogged round to the General and whispered in his ear. The General looked annoyed. Then he nodded.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being here. Let me start by saying that the South African Police Service are doing everything they can to apprehend the ruthless murderer who are killing people without apparent reason.”

Is,

Joubert thought. The murderer who

is.

“We regard this matter in a very serious light and are allocating as many people as we can to assist with the investigation. I cannot tell you everything we are doing, because some of it is part of our strategy to catch the person or persons involved. What I can tell you, are that the investigating officer, Captain Mat Joubert, have as many policemen at his disposal as he needs. We have already given him all available staff from Murder and Robbery. If necessary, we will also give him more. This now has become the biggest manhunt the Cape has ever seen. We will not rest before the person or persons responsible for these thoughtless murders is apprehended. Now, I leave you in the hands of Captain Mat Joubert. Afterward, I will answer your questions. If you have any.”

Then the General announced: “Captain Joubert.”

Joubert walked round the table. The press buzzed. The General got up and offered him his chair. The lights shone in his eyes. The cameras clicked again. He could see no one beyond the lights. He sat down. The bunch of microphones in front of him was intimidating.

“Good afternoon,” he said and hadn't the faintest idea of what else to say.

The press waited.

Begin with this morning, he thought, panicking. After all, he had spoken in front of people before. But there were so many here.

“E . . .”

His heart thudded in his chest. His mouth was dry. He was breathing too quickly.

“As you know . . .”

He heard his own strong Afrikaans accent. His heart beat faster.

“. . . the Mauser killer struck this morning for the fourth time.”

His notebook. Where was his notebook? He felt in his inside pocket. It wasn'’t there. Had he taken it back from Anne Boshoff? The other pocket. Felt in the other pocket. He found it. The relief was brief. The silence was heavy in the hall. Someone giggled, someone coughed. He took out the notebook and opened it. He saw that his hands were shaking.

“The victim . . .”

De wiektum.

Fucking stupid policeman.

“. . . was forty-one-year-old Alexander MacDonald of Hammerhead Street in Houtbaai . . . er . . . Hout Bay.”

Someone called his name. He ignored it.

“The perpetrator used a weapon similar to the previous . . .”

“Captain Joubert . . .”

“Just a moment,” the Brigadier said next to him. Joubert was confused.

Then he saw a figure moving past the lights, toward the table. It was Petersen.

“Excuse me, Captain. I’m sorry. But we’ve found something. This very minute.”

The General joined them. “Who the hell are you?” he asked in a lowered tone.

“Lieutenant Petersen, of Murder and Robbery, General.”

“They’ve found something, General,” Joubert said. He heard the buzz of the press increasing in volume.

“It better be important, Lieutenant,” the General said.

“Indeed,” said the Brigadier.

“One of the neighbors, General,” Petersen said in a whisper. “He saw a car at the murder scene this morning. A new five series BMW.”

“And?” said the General impatiently.

“He said it was early. He was on his way to the bus stop. Then he saw a man getting out of the BMW and walking into MacDonald’s house. And minutes later the BMW raced past him.”

“Did he see the man? Recognize him?” The General had trouble in keeping his voice down.

“Barely. He said it happened too quickly. But he saw the registration number. It was easy to remember. CY 77.”

“Fuckit!” said the General. “Find out who it is.”

“We already have, General. That’s why we’re here. We want Captain Joubert to come with us.”

“Fuckit,” said the General and cleared his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Quiet please. Ladies and gentlemen.” One could hear a pin drop. “Our efforts has paid off.”

Have,

Joubert thought.

Have

paid off.

“We now received fresh information and I think a suspect will be arrested in a matter of hours. We will now excuse Captain Mat Joubert, who will follow up this new lead.”

Joubert got up with the buoyancy of total relief. The press shouted questions but Joubert walked to the door past the group, with Leon Petersen.

“Please, ladies and gentlemen, please, can I have your attention,” the General shouted.

Then Joubert and Petersen were out the door.

“To whom does the BMW belong?” Joubert asked.

“Oliver Sigmund Nienaber.”

For a moment he was speechless. He stopped in his tracks. “

The

Oliver Nienaber?”

“The very same. ‘No one cuts your hair better or cheaper. I promise.’ ”

“Fuckit,” said Joubert and felt like a general.

The house was high up against the rise of Tygerberg, with a view across Bellville and the Cape Flats, to the Hottentots-Holland range. It was built on three levels, a modern building of white-painted concrete and glass. They stopped in front of the three-door garage.

“Rich, because of woman’s vanity,” Petersen said.

They walked up the stairs next to the garage. The front door was large. Joubert pressed the doorbell. They couldn't hear it ring. They waited.

The front door opened. A black woman in a neat uniform appeared.

“Can I help you?”

Joubert flashed her the plastic card on which his photo, the police crest, and his details were shown. “We’re from the police. We would like to see Oliver Nienaber, please.”

Her eyes widened. “Please come in,” she said and turned round. They walked into the entrance hall. She disappeared down the passage. They heard women’s voices while they studied the modern painting against the wall. Then a blond woman appeared. They recognized her. Mrs. Antoinette Nienaber, née Antoinette van Zyl, star of such unforgettable movies as

A Rose for Janey, Seven Soldiers,

and

A Woman in Love.

And today, as so many magazine and newspaper articles repeated over and over again, she was still happily married to the hairdresser king, owner of a chain of salons, the head of Hair Today, Oliver Nienaber.

She was still beautiful enough to take their breath away. She gave them a friendly smile. “Good evening. May I help you?”

Joubert coughed. “Mrs. Nienaber, I’m Captain Joubert and this is Lieutenant Petersen. We’re from the police’s Murder and Robbery squad and would like to speak to Mr. Nienaber.”

Her smile widened. “Of course. Please come in. He’s playing snooker with the boys.” She walked ahead, and Joubert thought that she must be close to forty but that there was nothing wrong with her body.

She stood in the doorway of a large room. “Oliver, someone to see you.”

They heard his voice. “At this time of the evening?”

His wife didn't reply.

“You carry on. Play for me, Toby. We can still win.”

“Okay, Pa.”

Oliver Nienaber came through the door. The well-known face could be seen virtually every day in full-page advertisements in the newspapers with the equally well-known words: NOBODY CUTS YOUR HAIR BETTER OR CHEAPER. I PROMISE. And his flamboyant signature and the big logo of Hair Today. And, usually, at the bottom: NOW OPEN AT . . . George. Or Laingsburg. Or Oudtshoorn. Or Kimberley.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said jovially. “I’m sorry, but I don’t cut hair in the evening.”

“They’re from the police, darling,” said Antoinette Nienaber softly. She introduced them. “Take them to the study and I’ll organize something to drink. Tea? Coffee?”

They all wanted coffee. Nienaber led them to his study.

He didn't sit behind the desk. The room was big enough to have a corner for a couch and armchairs. “Please sit down. I don’t have a visit from the police every day.”

Joubert saw the framed certificates and photos and newspaper advertisements against the wall.

“The same advertisements for the past six years. And they’re still working,” Nienaber said as he followed Joubert’s eyes.

“How many salons do you have now?” Joubert asked.

“The sixty-second opened its doors in Cradock last week. And now we’re going to Gauteng. If I can find a good local manager. How about it? Don’t you feel like it?” Nienaber spoke to Joubert, ignored Petersen completely. He was relaxed and comfortable but Joubert knew it meant nothing.

“Mr. Nienaber . . .”

“How can I help you?”

“We’re from Murder and Robbery . . .”

“Goodness, it sounds serious.”

“Does the name Alexander MacDonald mean anything to you?”

“MacDonald? MacDonald? You know, I meet so many people . . .”

“Mr. MacDonald is the owner of MacDonald Fisheries, a small concern in Hout Bay with two fishing trawlers. Big man. Red hair,” Petersen said.

“What’s his name? Alexander? Why does it sound vaguely familiar?” Nienaber stared at the ceiling and rubbed his ear.

“You didn't visit anyone with that name today?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“You are the owner of a new dark red BMW with the license plate CY 77?”

“That’s right.” No sign of worry.

“You used the vehicle today?”

“I use it every day.”

“To your knowledge the vehicle wasn'’t used by anyone else today?”

“No . . . Could you tell me . . . Has my car been stolen?”

“When last did you see your car, Mr. Nienaber?” Joubert asked.

“This afternoon, when I came home.”

“And at what time did you leave this morning?”

“Six o’clock. I think it was around six. I always like to be in the office early.” His face began to show concern. “Would you like to tell me what this is about, please?”

“You weren’t—”

“Knock, knock,” Antoinette Nienaber said at the door, a tray with coffee mugs in her hands. Nienaber sprang up. “Thank you, love,” he said.

“Pleasure,” she smiled, as relaxed as before. “Is everything okay, darling?”

“Just fine.”

“Do help yourselves to biscuits,” she said and walked out. Nienaber held the tray for the detectives in silence. Then he sat down. “You have to tell me what this is about.”

“You weren’t in Hout Bay between six and half past six this morning?”

“No, I'’ve told you . . .”

“Think carefully, Mr. Nienaber,” Petersen said.

“Heavens, Sergeant, I know where I was.”

“Lieutenant.”

“Sorry. Lieutenant,” Nienaber said, and there was a lot of irritation in his voice.

He doesn’t like Petersen asking the questions, Joubert thought. Rich, racist bastard.

“Do you know about the Mauser murders that have been committed in the Cape recently, Mr. Nienaber?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Yes. I mean . . . I read the newspapers. There was something on television.”