“Cool,” he said.


“Oh?”


“Bachelor pad,” said his son in answer and went in. “Haven’t you got a TV, Dad?”


“No, I . . .”


“You’ve got a

sweet

place, Dad,” said Carla from the top of the stairs. Then his cell phone rang, he unclipped it from his belt and said, “Griessel,” and Jamie Keyter said, “I thought I should come over to you and report. Where do you live?”


He would have to talk to Keyter even though he didn’t want him here. He gave directions and said goodbye.


“I’ll have to do a little work today,” he said to the children.


“What kind of work?”


“It’s a case. My shift partner is coming round.”


“What case, Dad?” asked Carla.


“It’s a guy who’s stabbing people with an assegai.”


“Cool,” said Fritz.


“Artemis? You’re working on the Artemis case?” asked Carla in excitement.


“Yes,” he said, and wondered if he had ever discussed his work with his children before. When he was sober.


Carla dived onto the new couch with the anonymous stains and said: “But that’s not a guy. The television says it’s a woman. Artemis. She’s taking revenge on everyone who messes with children.”


“It’s a man,” said Griessel, and sat down on one of his new chairs, opposite his son. Fritz’s legs hung over the armrest. He had taken a magazine out of his rucksack.

New Age Gaming.

He flipped through it.


“Oh,” said Carla deflated. “Do you know who it is, Dad?”


“No.”


“So how do you know it’s a man?”


“It’s highly improbable that it’s a woman. Serial killers are usually men. Women almost never use—”


“Charlize Theron was a serial murderer,” said Carla.


“Who?”


“She got an Oscar for it.”


“For the murders?”


“Dad doesn’t know who Charlize Theron is,” said Fritz from behind his magazine.


“Dad knows,” said Carla, and they both looked at him to settle the argument and he knew the time had come to say what he must say, the words he had composed in his head while he drove to Brackenfell that morning.


“I am an alcoholic,” he said.


“Dad . . .”


“Wait, Carla. There are things we must talk about. Sooner or later. It’s no use pretending.”


“We know you’re an alky,” said Fritz. “We know.”


“Shut up,” said Carla.


“What for? That’s all we did and what use was that and now they’re getting divorced and Dad drinks like a fish.”


“Who says we’re getting divorced?”


“Dad, he’s talking rubbish . . .”


“Did your mother say we’re getting divorced?”


“She said you could come back when you stop drinking. And we know you can’t stop drinking.” Fritz’s face was hidden behind the magazine again, but he could hear the anger in his son’s voice. And the helplessness.


“I have stopped.”


“It’s eight days already,” said Carla.


Fritz sat motionless behind

NAG.


“You don’t think I can stop?”


Fritz clapped the magazine shut. “If you wanted to stop, why didn’t you do it long ago? Why?” The tears were close. “Why did you do all those things, Dad? Why did you hit Mom? Swear at us. Do you think it’s funny seeing your father like that?”


“Fritz!” But she couldn’t shut him up.


“Putting you in bed every night when you pass out? Or finding you in a chair in the morning, stinking and you never even remembered what you did? We never had a father. Just some drunkard who lived with us. You don’t know us, Dad. You don’t know anything. You don’t know we hide the liquor away. You don’t know we take money out of your wallet so you can’t buy brandy. You don’t know we can’t bring our friends home because we’re ashamed of our father. We can’t sleep over at our friends because we’re scared you’ll hit Mom when we’re not there. You still think we like to go to the Spur, Dad. You think Charlize Theron is a criminal. You don’t know anything, Dad, and you drink.”


He could no longer hold back the tears and he got up and rushed up the stairs. Griessel and Carla stayed behind and he could not meet her eyes. He sat in his chair and felt shame. He saw the fuck-up he had made of his life. The whole irrevocable fuck-up.


“You

have

stopped, Dad.”


He said nothing.


“I

know

you have.”

* * *

The unease had driven Thobela up Table Mountain early Sunday morning. He drove to Kirstenbosch and climbed the mountain from behind, up Skeleton Gorge, until he stood on the crest and looked over everything. But it didn’t help.


He pulled and kneaded the emotion, looking for reasons, but none came.


It wasn’t only the woman.


“Oh God,” she had said. He had come from the shrubs and the shadows and in the dark he grabbed the firearm in her hand and gave it a sharp twist, so that she lost her grip. The dogs were barking madly around them, the sheepdog biting at his heels with sharp teeth. He had to kick the animal and Laurens had formed her last word.


“No.”


She had shielded herself with her hands when he lifted the assegai. When the long blade went in, peace had come over her. Just like Colin Pretorius. Release. That was what they wanted. But inside him there was a cry, a shout that said he couldn’t make war on women.


He heard it still, but there was something else. A pressure. Like walls. Like a narrow corridor. He had to get out. Into the open. He must move. Go on.


He walked over the mountain in the direction of Camp’s Bay. He clambered over rocks until the Atlantic Ocean lay far beneath his feet.


Why did he feel this urge now? To fetch his motorbike and have a long, never-ending road stretching ahead. Because he was doing the right thing. He did not doubt anymore. In the Spur with the street children he had found an answer that he hadn’t looked for. It had come to him as if it were sent. The things people did to them. Because they were the easiest targets.


He walked again. The mountain stretched out to the south, making humps you don’t expect. How far could you walk like this, on the crest? As far as Cape Point?


He was doing the right thing, but he wanted to get away.


He was feeling claustrophobic here.


Why? He hadn’t made a mistake yet. He knew that. But something was wrong. The place was too small. He stood still. This was instinct, he realized. To move on. To hit and then disappear. That was how it was, in the old days. Two, three weeks of preparation until you did your job and you got on a plane and were gone. Never two consecutive strikes in the same place: that would be looking for trouble. That left tracks, drew attention. That was poor strategy. But it was already too late, because he had drawn attention. Major attention.


That was why he had to get away. Get in his truck and drive.


28.


He put the kettle on.


“I’ll make the coffee, Dad,” said Carla.


“I want to do it,” he said. Then: “I don’t even know how you take your coffee.”


“I drink it with milk and without sugar and Fritz takes milk and three sugars.”


“Three?”


“Boys,” she said with a shrug.


“Do you have a boyfriend?”


“Kind of.”


“Oh?”


“There is a guy . . .”


“Is powdered milk okay?”


She nodded. “His name is Sarel and I know he likes me. He’s quite cute. But I don’t want to get too involved now, with the exams and things.”


He could hear Anna’s voice in hers, the intonation and the wisdom. “That’s smart,” he said.


“Because I want to study next year, Dad.”


“That’s good.”


“Psychology.”


In order to analyze her father’s mind?


“Maybe I can get a bursary if I do well, that’s why I don’t want to get involved now. But Mom says she’s put a bit of money aside for our studies.”


He knew nothing about it. He poured the water into the mugs, then the powdered milk and the sugar for Fritz.


“I want to take him his coffee.”


“Don’t worry about him, Dad. He’s just a typical teenager.”


“He’s struggling with his father’s alcoholism,” he said, climbing the stairs. Fritz lay on Griessel’s bed with the photo in his hands, the photo of them together as a family.


“Three sugars,” he said.


Fritz said nothing. Griessel sat on the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said.


Fritz replaced the photo on the windowsill. “It doesn’t matter.” He sat up and took the coffee.


“I’m sorry about everything I did to you. And to your mother and Carla.”


Fritz looked at the steam rising from the coffee mug. “Why, Dad? Why do you drink?”


“I’m working on that, Fritz.”


“They say it’s genetic,” said his son, and tested the temperature of the liquid with a cautious sip.

* * *

Jamie Keyter was wearing a sports shirt and tight khaki trousers. The short sleeves of the shirt were too narrow and had shifted up above the bulging biceps. He sat on one of the bar stools at the breakfast bar and drank coffee with two sugars and milk and he glanced periodically at Carla while he spoke. That annoyed Griessel.


“And I went up to the little house, like a little

kaia,

and you couldn’t see anything, hear anything but the TV show inside, the one with the crazy kaffi . . . green fellow who gives away prizes in green language and I knocked but they didn’t hear me. So I opened the door and there they sat drinking. All four, glass in the hand. Cheers! But when they saw me, you should have seen them jump and it was mister this and mister that. The house was dirty and it was empty. Typical greens: they have nothing, but there’s this giant TV in the corner and there are four greens living in the

kaia,

two old and two young ones. I don’t know how people can live like that. And they didn’t want to talk; they just sat there and stared at me. And when they did talk, they lied. The girl works in the house and it was all: ‘Miss Laurens was a good missus, she was good to all of us.’ They’re lying, Benny, I’m telling you.” He looked pointedly at Carla, who lay on the couch.


“Did you ask them about her fits of rage?”


“I asked and they said it wasn’t so, she was a good missus and they kept turning back to the TV and looking sideways at the wine box. Bloody drunken lot, if you ask me.” He was still looking at Carla.


“And they didn’t see anything?” He knew what the answer would be.


“Saw nothing, heard nothing.”


“The pathologist says it was the same weapon. The same assegai as the previous murders.”


“Okay,” said Keyter.


“Did you ask about Bothma? What she’s like?”


“Oh, no. We already know.”


He let that go. He didn’t want to say something in front of the children.


“So,” said Keyter to Carla. “What do you do?”


“I’m writing matric.”


“Okay,” he said. “I get it.”


“What?” she asked.


“If I give you a rand, will you phone me when you’re finished.”


“In your dreams,” she said. “And what is your problem anyway?”


“My problem?”


“Greens? Only racists say things like that.”


“I haven’t got a racist hair on my head.”


“Yeah, right.”


Griessel had been busy with his thoughts. He missed this exchange. “Do me a favor, Jamie.”


“Okay, Benny.”


“The file on Cheryl Bothma, the daughter. Find out who’s handling that.”


“I thought you talked to them yesterday?”


“I only talked to the guys who dealt with the assegai murders. I’m talking about the case of the child. When they arrested Laurens.”


“I get it.”


“Please.”


“No, I mean I know which one you mean. But what’s the use?”


“Something is not right with this thing. I don’t know what. Yesterday Bothma . . .”


“But the pathologist said it’s the same guy?”


“I’m not talking about the murder of Laurens. I’m talking about the murder of the child.”


“But that’s not our case.”


“It’s our job.”

* * *

“He’s weird,” said Carla when they eventually got rid of Keyter.


“He’s a

drol,

” Fritz called down the stairs.


“Fritz!” said Griessel.


“I could use a ruder word, Dad.”


“But where does he get the money?” asked Carla.


“What money?”


“Didn’t you notice, Dad? The clothes. Polo shirt, Daniel Hechter trousers. Nikes.”


“Who’s Daniel Hechter?”


“He’s married to Charlize Theron, Dad!” yelled Fritz from upstairs. “But he’s not a murderer.”


For the first time Carla laughed and then Griessel laughed with her.

* * *

In the Ocean Basket in Kloof Street, while they waited for their food, Carla asked him about the Artemis case. He suspected that was her way of avoiding the silences. Out of the blue, in the middle of the discussion, she asked: “Why did you become a policeman, Dad?”


He had no ready answer. He hesitated and saw Fritz look up from the magazine and knew he had to get this right. He said, “Because that is who I am.”


His son raised an eyebrow.


Griessel rolled his shoulders. “I just knew I was a policeman. Don’t ask me why. Everyone has a vision of himself. That is how I saw myself.”


“I don’t see myself,” said Fritz.


“You’re still young.”


“I’m sixteen.”


“It will come.”


“I am not a policeman. And besides, I’m not going to drink. Policemen drink.”


“Everyone drinks.”


“Policemen drink more.”


And with that he went back to his magazine and took no further part in the conversation. Until they had eaten and Griessel asked Carla casually if she knew an Afrikaans song with the words:

“ ’n Bokkie wat vanaand by my kom le a, sy kan maar le a, ek is ’n loslappie.”

A babe who wants to lie with me tonight, can lie with me, I’m free and easy.


She was still pointing her thumb at her brother when Fritz, without looking up, asked: “What recording?”


“I don’t know, I just heard it the other night over the radio.”


“Was it a medley or a whole song?”


“A whole song.”


“Kurt Darren,” said Fritz.


Griessel had no idea who Kurt Darren was but he wasn’t going to admit it. He didn’t need another Charlize Theron quip.


“Kurt Darren needs to get himself a decent bass guitarist,” said Griessel.


Something changed in his son’s face. It was as if the sun came up. “Yeah right, that’s right, his whole mix is wrong. It’s an ancient song, but it has to rock. Theuns Jordaan does it better. He’s the guy who does the medley with

‘Loslappie,’

but he’s just as scared of proper bass. There is only one oke in Afrikaans who makes good use of bass, but he doesn’t sing that song. It’s a helluva pity.”


“Who’s that?”


“Anton Goosen.”


“I know Anton Goosen,” said Griessel with relief. “He’s the guy who sang that thing about the donkey cart?”


“A donkey cart?”


“Yes, what was the name of the song?

Kruidjie-roer-my-nie?

”


“That’s like, a hundred years ago, Dad,” said Fritz in amazement. “The Goose doesn’t sing stuff like that anymore. He rocks now. He’s got the Bushrock Band.”


“Unbelievable.”


“No, you know what’s really unbelievable, Dad? The guy who plays bass for the Bushrock Band is the same guy who backed Theuns Jordaan with his

‘Loslappie’

medley. And he had Anton L’Amour on lead, but Theuns is too middle-of-the-road. Not bad, but he doesn’t want to rock. He doesn’t want to badass. Diff-olie is badass. And . . .”


“Diff-olie?”


“Yes. And—”


“Diff oil is the name of a

band?

”


“With all due respect, how long were you drunk, Dad? There’s Diff-olie and Kobus and Akkedis and Battery 9 and Beeskraal and Valiant Swart and they all kick butt. There’s every type of rock in Afrikaans now, from heavy metal to Country. But you have to listen to Anton live in concert if you want to hear bass and genuine rock. Anton likes heavy bass, he turns it on. The only downside of that concert is the flippin’ audience.”


“The flippin’ audience?”


“Yup. That will teach the Goose to play in the State Theater. They did this awesome rock and instead of the people going ape, they clapped. I ask you. It’s not a flippin’ school concert, it’s rock, but they gave him these self-conscious ovations. Flippin’ Pretoria.”


“Mister Boere Rock,” said Carla, and cast her eyes up to heaven.


“It’s better than that Leonard Cohen crap that

you

listen to.”


Griessel was beginning to form a reproof when he began to laugh. He couldn’t help himself and he knew why: he was in total agreement with his son.


When he had stopped laughing Fritz said, more to himself than to Griessel: “That’s the one way I see myself.”


“How?”


“Bass guitarist.”


“For Karen Zoid, I suppose,” said his sister.


He pulled up his nose at Carla. “Only the uninformed think she’s into rock only. You read too much

You

magazine. Zoid is closet ballad queen, not a rock chic. But she

is

awesome and that’s a fact.”


“And you have an enormous crush on her.”


“No,” said Fritz with regret. “Karen is spoken for.” Then he turned to his father. “So you like bass too, Dad?”


“A little,” said Griessel. “A little.”

* * *

Cloete phoned again when they were on their way to Brackenfell.


“I thought you had a thing about the media, Benny.”


“What?”


“Last night. Then it was ‘vultures’ and ‘tell them to go to hell’ and this morning I see you prefer to speak to them direct.”


“What are you talking about?”


“Front page of the

Rapport,

Benny. Front fucking page: ‘A source close to veteran Detective Inspector Benny Griessel of the Peninsula Unit for Serious and Violent Crimes (SVC) says that the team is still investigating the possibility that the vigilante was not responsible for the murder of Laurens.’ I know I didn’t fucking say that.”


“I did not f . . .” He realized the children were in the car with him. “It wasn’t me.”


“Must have been the ghost girl of Uniondale.”


“I’m telling you, it wasn’t me . . .” Then he fell silent because he knew who it was. Biceps Keyter. That’s who.


“Doesn’t matter. Thing is, the dailies want a follow-up, because everyone has an opinion now. Even the politicians. The DP says the ANC is to blame, the Death Penalty Party say it’s the voice of the people and the

Sunday Times

ran an opinion poll and seventy-five per cent of the nation say the assegai man is a hero.”


“Jissis.”


“Now the dailies are phoning me like crazy. So I thought, while you’re doing my job, you can handle the inquiries yourself.”


“I told you, Cloete, it wasn’t me.”


Cloete was quiet for a moment, then asked, “What’s new?”


“Since yesterday?”


“Yes.”


“Nothing.”


“Benny, you have to give me something. The dailies want blood.”


“One thing, Cloete, but you have to clear it with Matt Joubert.”


Cloete said nothing.


“Do you hear?”


“I hear.”


“We were with the commissioner last night. The plan is to put together a task team tomorrow. We’re bringing people in from the stations.”


“To do what?”


“I’m not telling the press that.”


“That’s fuck-all, Benny. A task team. So what?”


“Talk to Joubert.”


“I prefer to talk to the source close to veteran Detective Inspector Benny Griessel,” said Cloete, and put the phone down in his ear.


“What was that all about?” asked Fritz from the back.


“The media,” said Benny and sighed.


“They’re like a bunch of hyenas,” said Fritz.


“Vultures,” said Griessel.


“Yup,” said Fritz. “When there’s a carcass they start circling.”


He dropped them off at his wife’s at three minutes to six. Fritz said: “Hang on just a minute,” and jumped out of the car.


“It was a lovely day, Dad,” said Carla and hugged him.


“It was,” he said.


“Bye, Dad. See you next week.”


“Bye, my child.”


She got out and went into the house. Fritz came out of the door with an object in his hand. He came up to Griessel’s window and held it out.


Griessel took it. It was a CD case. Anton & Vrinne & Die Bushrockband. Anton & Friends & the Bushrockband.


“Enjoy,” said Fritz.

* * *

His flat was silent. Suddenly empty. He sat down on the couch where Carla had sat. He turned the CD case over and over in his fingers. He had fuck-all to play it on.


He needed to do something. He couldn’t just sit here and listen to the silence. There was too much trouble in his head.


Where had Anna been today? Why was she all dolled up? What for?


Why did Fritz think they were getting divorced? Had she said something? Made some remark? “Your father won’t stop drinking anyway.” Is that what his wife believed?


Of course she fucking believed that. What else, with his record? So, if she knew how it would end, what stopped her from filling the vacuum in the meantime? Why not allow some or other young, handsome and sober shit to take her out. And what else did she allow him? What else? How hungry was she? Anna, who always said, “I like to be touched.” Who was doing the fucking touching now? God knows it wasn’t veteran Detective Inspector Benny fucking Griessel.


He got up from the couch, his hands searching for something.


What a day. His children. His wonderful children. That he barely knew. His son with his bass guitar genes and accusing words. Carla, who tried so desperately to pretend everything was normal, everything would work out right. As if her sheer willpower would keep him sober, if only she believed strongly enough.


We never had a father. Just some drunkard who lived with us.


Shit. The damage he had done. It burned him inside, the extent of it, all the multiple implications. It gnawed at him and he looked up and realized he was searching for a bottle, his hands itching to pour, his soul needing medication for this pain. Just one drink to make it better, to make it manageable, and that was when he realized he didn’t stand a chance. Here he was with all the shit of his life suffocating him, the shit his boozing had created—and he wanted a drink. He knew with absolute certainty that if there had been a bottle in the flat he would have opened it. He had already ticked off the possibilities in his mind—where he could go to get a drink, what places would still be open on a Sunday evening.


He made a noise in the back of his throat and kicked one of his new secondhand armchairs. What the fuck was it about him that had made him such an absolute shit? What?


He felt for the cell phone with trembling hands. He typed the number and when Barkhuizen answered he just said: “Jissis, Doc. Jissis.”


29.


At half-past six the next morning he walked to the reservoir and he knew the feeling he had was vaguely familiar, but he did not yet recognize it. First he looked at the mountain. And the sea. He listened to the birds and thought about one more day he had survived without alcohol. Even if yesterday had been touch and go.


“What is it about me, Doc?” he had asked Barkhuizen in despair. Because he needed to know the cause. The root of the evil.


The old man had talked about chemistry and genes and circumstance. Long, easy explanations, he could hear how Barkhuizen was trying to calm him down. The oppression and the gnawing anxiety slowly ebbed away. At the end of the discussion the doctor told him it didn’t matter where it came from. What counted was how he went on from here, and that was the truth. But when Griessel lay in bed with a great weariness upon him, he still searched, because he could not fight a thing he could not understand.


He wanted to go back to the source, wanted to remember how things were when the drinking began. Sleep overcame him before he got there.


By five o’clock he was awake, fresh and rested, with the assegai affair occupying him and his mind full of ideas and plans. It drove him out of bed, here to the park in shorts and T-shirt and he felt that pleasure again. The morning and the view belonged only to him.


“My name is Benny Griessel and I am an alcoholic and this is my ninth day without alcohol,” he said out loud to the morning in general. But that was not the reason he felt a certain rush. Only once he was on the way to work did he realize what it was. He shook his head because it was like a voice from his past, a forgotten friend. Today the race was on. The search was about to begin. It was the first tingle of adrenaline, expectation, a last short silence before the storm. What surprised him most was how hungry he was for it.

* * *

Matt Joubert told the detectives on morning parade that Griessel would lead the assegai case and through the tepid applause he heard the jokesters calling, “Klippies and Coke squad” and, “So, we don’t really want to catch him.”


Joubert held up a hand. “The officers who will assist him are Bushy Bezuidenhout, Vaughn Cupido and Jamie Keyter.”


Fantastic, thought Griessel. Now he had the sloppy one and the braggart and the semi-useful detective. Where the fuck were all the stalwarts? He did an involuntary stocktaking. Only Matt Joubert and himself remained from the old days. And Joubert was at least the commanding officer, a senior superintendent. The rest were new. And young. He was the only inspector over forty.


“This morning the commissioner is pulling in four people from the Domestic Violence Unit and ten uniformed people from the Peninsula to help with research,” said Joubert. Here and there people whistled. The political pressure had to be intense because it was a big team. “They will use the old lecture hall in B-block as a center of operations. Some of you are storing stuff there—please remove it directly after parade. And give Benny and his team all the cooperation you can. Benny?”


Griessel stood up.


“Drunk, but standing,” someone said in an undertone. Some muffled laughs. There was an air of expectation in the room, as if they knew he was going to make a fool of himself.


Fuck them, he thought. He had been solving murders when they were investigating how to copy their Science homework without getting caught.


At first he just stood there, until there was complete silence. Then he spoke. “The greatest single reason that we have case discussions at morning parade is because thirty heads are better than one. I want to tell you how we are going to approach this case. So that you can blow holes in my argument. And make better suggestions. Any ideas are welcome.”


He saw he had their attention. He wondered for an instant if it was astonishment that he could string five sentences together. “The bad news is the similarity between the assegai vigilante murders and serial murders. The victims are, I believe, unknown to the murderer. The choice of victims is relatively unpredictable. The motive is unconventional and, although we can speculate about it, still reasonably unclear. I don’t know how many of you remember the red ribbon murders about six years ago: eleven prostitutes murdered over a period of three years. Most were from Sea Point, the murder weapon was a knife, and all the bodies were found with mutilated breasts and genitalia and a red ribbon around the neck. We had the same problem then. The choice of victim was limited to a specific category, the motive was psychological, sexual and predictable and the murder weapon consistent. We could build a profile, but not one definite enough to identify a suspect.


“In this case we know he has a hang-up about people who molest or murder children. That is our category, regardless of race or gender. From that we can more or less deduce the motive. And the weapon of choice is an assegai that is used in a single fatal stab. The psychologists will tell us that indicates a highly organized murderer, a man with a mission. But let us focus on the differences between the typical serial murderer and our assegai man. He does not mutilate the victims. There are no sexual undertones. The single wound is deep. One terrible penetration . . . There is anger, but where does it originate? The only reasonable conclusion is that we are dealing with revenge. Was he personally molested as a child? I think the possibility is very strong. It fits. If that is the motive we are in trouble. How do you track down such a suspect? However, there is another possibility. Perhaps he lost a child through some crime. Perhaps the system failed him. We will have to look at the baby that was raped by Enver Davids. Is there a father who wants revenge? The families of the children molested by Pretorius. But it’s possible that he was not directly affected by any of these crimes.


“As far as his race goes, we must not be blinded by the assegai. It could be a deliberate ploy to mislead us. Here is a man who found Davids in a colored neighborhood just as easily as he got into Pretorius’s house in a white neighborhood in the early evening. We must keep our options open. But I swear the assegai means something. Something important. Any comments?”


They sat and listened in absolute quiet.


“We can approach this thing from four perspectives. The first is to find out if we can identify any suspects close to the original child victims. The second is to look at all unsolved crimes against children. We must begin in the Western Cape, since that is where he’s operating. If we find nothing, we must expand the search. A long process, I know. Needle in a haystack. But it must be done. The third thing is the murder weapon. We know it’s a typical Zulu assegai. We know it was made by hand in the traditional way, most likely in the last year or so. That means we might determine

where

it was made. How it was distributed and sold. But why would someone choose an assegai? We will talk to the forensic psychologists too. Everyone with me so far?”


He saw Bushy Bezuidenhout and Matt Joubert nod. The rest just sat and stared at him.


“The problem with all three of these strategies is that they are speculative. We must go on with them and hope they produce results, but there are no guarantees. They will take time too—the one thing we don’t have. The media is on fire and there are political aspects . . . That is why I want to try a fourth approach. And for that I need your help. The question I ask myself is how he selects a victim. I think there can only be two methods: he is part of the system, or he sees it in the media. All three victims were in the news. Davids when he was acquitted, Pretorius when he was in court, Laurens when she was arrested. So he is either part of the justice system, a policeman, prosecutor, court orderly or something—” they shifted around for the first time since he had begun to speak “—or he’s just a member of the public with time to read the papers or watch the news on TV. That’s more likely. But one or the other—that is how we are going to catch him. I want to know of every serious crime against children in the next week or so. We want something we can blow up in the media. We want something that will get everyone talking.”


Jamie Keyter’s voice came from somewhere near the wall: “You want to set a trap for him, Benny?”


“That is correct. We want to catch him in a snare.”

* * *

“Sup,” said Bushy Bezuidenhout, “there’s something I want you all to know from the start.”


Griessel, Keyter, Bezuidenhout and Cupido sat in Joubert’s office while they waited for the lecture hall to be cleared.


“Go on, Bushy,” said Joubert.


“I don’t have a problem with this guy.”


“You mean the assegai man?”


“That’s right.”


“I am not sure I understand you, Bushy?”


“Benny says he’s like a serial killer. I don’t see it like that. This guy is doing what we should have done a long time ago. And that is to take these evil fuckers who do things to children and hang them by the neck. Christ, Sup, I worked on the original Davids case. Lester Mtetwa and I stood and cried over that baby’s body. When we arrested Davids, I had to hold Lester back, because he wanted to blow that fucking animal’s head away, he was that upset.”


“I understand, Bushy. We all felt like that. But the big question is: will it prevent you doing your work? From bringing him in?”


“I will do my best.”


“Benny?”


He could not afford to lose Bezuidenhout. “Bushy, all I ask is: if you feel there is something you can’t do, just tell me.”


“Okay.”


“I don’t know what your problem is,” said Keyter to Bezuidenhout.


“Jamie,” said Griessel.


“What? All I said was—”


“I agree,” said Cupido. “He’s a murderer, end of story.”


“Listen,” said Bezuidenhout. “You’re still wet behind the ears and you want to—”


“Bushy! Leave it.” Griessel turned to Cupido and Keyter. “Everyone has the right to feel what he feels. As long as it doesn’t affect the investigation, we respect each other. Do you understand? I don’t need any trouble.”


They nodded, but without conviction.


“Talking of trouble,” said Joubert. Their heads turned to him. “The trap, Benny . . .”


“I know. It’s a risk.”


“I don’t want another Woolworths episode, Benny. I don’t want people in hospital. I won’t have civilians in danger. If there is any chance it could turn into a fiasco, walk away. I want your word on that.”


“You have it.”

* * *

Keyter told him it was Inspector Tim Ngubane who had investigated the murder of Cheryl Bothma. Griessel found Ngubane in the tearoom.


“Tim, I need your help.”


“Impressive speech this morning, Benny.”


“Oh, I . . . er . . .”


“You’ve got all the angles on this one.”


“I hope so.”


“What can I do for you?”


“The Bothma child . . .”


“Yes.”


“You handled that.”


“Anwar and I did.”


“An easy one?”


“Open and shut. When we got there, Laurens was already waiting with her wrists together, ready for the cuffs. Crying a river, ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ that sort of thing.”


“She admitted it?”


“Full confession. Said she was drunk and the kid was going on and on, being disgusting, disobedient, a real little terror. Ignored her mother . . .”


“Bothma.”


“Yes, the mother. And then Laurens lost it. Grabbed the pool cue, actually wanted to hit the kid on the backside, but because she was drunk . . .”


“Fingerprints on the pool cue?”


“Yes.”


“Only

her

prints?”


“What are you saying, Benny?”


“I’m not saying anything.”


“It was open and shut, Benny. She confessed, for fuck’s sake. What more do you want?”


“Tim, I don’t want to interfere. I’m just curious. I thought Bothma—”


“You’re not just curious. What do you have that I don’t know about?”


“Did you test her blood?”


“What for?”


“For alcohol.”


“Why the fuck would I need to do that? I could smell the booze. She fucking confessed. And then the prints came back and they were hers on the pool cue. That’s enough, for fuck’s sake. What’s your story?”


“I don’t have a story, Tim.”


“You fucking whiteys,” said Ngubane. “You think you’re the only people who can do detective work.”


“Tim, it’s nothing to do with that.”


“Fuck you, Benny. It has everything to do with it.” Ngubane turned and walked away. “At least I was able to smell the booze on her breath,” he said. “Not everyone in this building could have done that.”


He disappeared down the corridor.

* * *

By eleven the assegai task team were still waiting for computers and extra telephone lines, but Griessel couldn’t wait any longer. He called the team together and began to allocate work. The most senior officer of the Domestic Violence Unit was a colored woman, Captain Helena Louw. He made her group leader of research into previous cases where minors were the victims. He gave Bezuidenhout five uniformed men to help with the reinvestigation of the first two assegai victims. He took Cupido aside and spoke to him seriously and at length about his responsibility to investigate the assegai background. “Even if you have to fly to Durban, Vaughn, but I want to know where it comes from. Make yourself the greatest expert on assegais in the history of mankind. Do you understand?”


“I understand.”


“Well then. Get going.” Then he raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. “I will move between teams and check out a lot of the stuff myself. My cell phone number is up on the board. Anything, day or night. Call me.”


He walked out, down the stairs. He heard steps behind him, knew who it was.


Keyter stopped him just outside the main entrance.


“Benny . . .”


Griessel stood.


“What about me, Benny?”


“What about you, Jamie?”


“I haven’t got a group.”


“How do you mean?”


“You haven’t given me anything to do.”


“But that’s not necessary. You already are the unofficial media liaison officer, Jaaa-mie.”


“Uh . . . I don’t get it.”


“You know what I mean, you little shit. You talked to the papers behind my back. That means I can’t trust you, Jaaa-mie. If you have a problem with me, talk to the sup. Tell him why I haven’t given you anything to do.”


“It’s this chick at the

Burger,

Benny. I’ve known her since the car syndicate case. She phones me non-stop, Benny. The whole day. You don’t know what it’s like . . .”


“Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like. How long have I been a policeman?”


“No, what I mean . . .”


“I don’t give a fuck what you mean, Jaaa-mie. You only drop me once.” He turned on his heel and strode to his car. He thought about self-control. He could not afford to hit a colleague.

* * *

He drove through Durbanville and out along the Fisantekraal road. He could never understand why this piece of the Cape was so ugly and without vineyards. Rooikrans bushes and Port Jackson trees and advertising hoardings for new housing developments. How the hell would the Cape handle all the new people? The road system was already overloaded—nowadays it was rush hour from morning till night.


He turned right on the R312, crossed the railway bridge and stopped on the gravel road that turned off to the left. There was a small hand-painted sign that read

High Grove Riding School. 4 km.

Assegai man would have seen it in the dark and begun to look for a place to leave his car. How far was he prepared to walk?


He drove slowly, trying to imagine what a person would see in the night. Not much. There were no lights nearby. Plenty of cover, the rooikrans grew in dense, ugly thickets. He stopped awhile, took out his cell phone and rang Keyter.


“Detective Sergeant Jamie Keyter, Serious and Violent Crimes Unit.”


“What’s with all that, Jamie?”


“Er . . . hello, Benny,” in a cautious tone. “It’s just in case.”


“In case of what?”


“Oh . . . um . . . you know . . .”


He didn’t, but he left it at that. “Do you want to help, Jamie?”


“I do, Benny.” Keen.


“Phone the weather office at the airport. I want to know what the phase of the moon was on Friday night. Whether it was overcast or not. That night, specifically, let’s say between twelve and four.”


“The phase of the moon?”


“Yes, Jamie. Full moon, half moon, understand?”


“Okay, okay, I get it, Benny. I’ll call you just now.”


“Thanks, Jamie.”


Roads turned off to other smallholdings with ridiculous names.

Eagle’s Nest.

But an eagle wouldn’t be seen dead here.

Sussex Heights

but it was flat.

Schoongesicht.

More like a dirty view.

The Lucky Horseshoe Ranch.

And then

High Grove Riding School.

If it were him, he would have driven past the turnoff. Gone quite a bit further on, perhaps, to check out the area. Then turned around.


He did exactly that. Nearly a kilometer beyond High Grove the road ended at a gate. He stopped twenty meters in front of the gate and got out. The southeaster blew his hair up in the air. There was an old gravel pit beyond the gate, desolate, obviously long out of use. The gate was locked.


If it were him, he would have parked here. You wouldn’t want to turn into the High Grove driveway. Not if you had never been there before. You wouldn’t know what to expect, or who would see you.


His phone rang.


“Griessel.”


“It’s Jamie, Benny. The guy at the weather office said it was half moon, Benny, and zero per cent cloudy.”


“Zero per cent.”


“That’s right.”


“Thank you, Jamie.”


“Is there anything else I can do, Benny?” Sucking up.


“Just stand by, Jamie. Just stand by.”


A clear night, light of a half moon. Enough to see by. Enough to keep your headlights switched off. He would have parked here. Somewhere around here, since this section of road would have no traffic, a dead end. The road up to the gate was too hard to show tracks. But he would have to have turned around if he came this far. Griessel began to walk down the boundary fence on the High Grove side of the road, searching for tracks on the sandy verge. Where would he have parked? Perhaps over there, where the rooikrans bushes leaned far over the fence. Bleached white grass tufts and sandy soil beside the fence.


Then he spotted the tracks, two vague rows of tire marks. And in one spot the unmistakable hollow where a tire had stood still for a while.


Got you, you bastard!


He walked with care, building the picture in his mind. Assegai man had driven to the gravel-pit gate and turned around. Then the car would be facing in the direction of the High Grove turnoff. He would see the rooikrans thicket in the moonlight even with his lights turned off. He left the road about here and pulled up close to the fence. Opened the door and put a foot on the ground. Griessel searched for the footprint.


Nothing. Too much grass.


He squatted on his haunches. Only one cigarette butt, that was all he needed. A little trace of saliva for DNA testing. But there was nothing to find, only a fat black insect that scurried through the faded grass.


Still squatting, he phoned Keyter.


“I have another job for you.”


30.


He knew it would be an hour or two before Forensics turned up. He wanted to determine assegai man’s route to the house. Had he climbed through the fence, here, without knowing where the homestead was? Possible, but unlikely. Along the road would be better. He could see headlights coming from far off and have enough time to duck into the shadows.


Griessel walked slowly along the road. The wind blew from diagonally in front. The sun shone on his back, his shoes crunched on the gravel. He scanned the ground for footprints. He became aware of a pleasurable feeling. Just him here. On the trail of the murderer. Alone. He never had been a team player. He had done his best detection work on his own.


Now he was a task team leader.


Joubert was hiding Benny’s alcoholism from the Area and Provincial Commissioners. Maybe he was lying about that because, despite the recent appointments of the top structures, the Force was like a small village. Everyone knew everything about everybody.


But why? Did Joubert feel sorry for Anna? Or was it loyalty to an old colleague who had come through the wars with him? The last two old soldiers, who had survived the antics of the old regime and affirmative action of the new era. Who had survived without becoming entangled in politics or monkey business.


No. It was because there was no one else. This morning he had sat and watched them. There were good people, enthusiastic young detectives, clever ones and hard workers and those with ambition, but they didn’t have the experience. They didn’t have twenty years of hard-grind policing behind them. Task team leader because he was a drunk-but-standing veteran.


But it was neither here nor there. He had better make it work, because it was all he had.

Last stand at the High Grove corral.


He walked as far as the smallholding’s driveway. No footprints. He turned up the drive, the wind now at his back. He knew the house was four hundred meters north. The question was, how long was it before the dogs had heard assegai man in the quiet of the night? He would have stopped, moved off the road and into hiding, at a place where he could overlook the yard.


The stables were ahead, on his left. A colored man was busy with a pitchfork. The man didn’t notice him. He kept on walking and could see the house now, two hundred meters further on. The place where Laurens had fallen.


The dogs began to bark.


He stopped. The workman looked up.


“Afternoon, sir,” said the man warily.


“Good afternoon.”


“Can I help you, sir?”


“I’m from the police,” he said.


“Oh.”


“I just want to look around.”


“Okay, sir.”


The garden began here, shrubs and bushes in old overgrown beds. He would have jumped in behind the shrubbery when the dogs started barking in the night. Then made his way through the plants till he was closer to the house. Plenty of camouflage. He followed the imaginary route searching for tracks. He estimated the distance and built a picture. You could survey the whole yard from behind the garden plants. You could watch a woman in her nightclothes, with a firearm in her hand. You could see the dogs that barked nervously in the darkness. Now you were close to the house, close to her. You ignore her shouts. “Who’s there?” Or perhaps a more threatening, “Come out or I’ll shoot!” You wait until her back is turned and then you rush out of the shadows. Grab the firearm. Raise the assegai. The dog bites at your trousers. You kick.


Something like that.


He looked for footprints in the flowerbed.


Nothing.


How likely was that? Or was the fucker cool and calm enough to wipe them out?


The laborer was still standing and watching.


“What is your name?”


“Willem, sir.”


He walked over to the man and put out his hand. “I’m Benny Griessel.”


“Pleased to meet you, sir.”


“Bad business this, Willem.”


“A very bad business, sir.”


“First the child and then Miss Laurens.”


“Ai, sir, what will happen to us?”


“What do you mean, Willem?”


“It was Miss Laurens’s place. Now it will be sold.”


“Maybe the new owners will be good people.”


“Maybe, sir.”


“Because I hear Laurens could be quite difficult.”


“Sir, she wasn’t so difficult. She was good to us.”


“Oh.”


“The people around here pay minimum wage, but Miss Laurens paid us a thousand clean and we didn’t have to pay for the house.”


“I believe she drank, Willem.”


“Hai, sir! That’s not true.”


“And had a terrible temper . . .”


“No, sir . . .”


“No?”


“She was just strict.”


“Never got angry?”


Willem shook his head and glanced at the house. Elise Bothma stood there in her dressing gown just outside the homestead door.

* * *

It was late afternoon by the time he got back to the SVC building. He found Matt Joubert in his office with a stack of files in front of him.


“Do you have ten minutes, boss?”


“As much time as you need.”


“We have a possible tire print of the assegai man’s car.”


“From the smallholding?”


“Just outside, along the fence. Forensics have made a plaster mold. They will let us know. If you could hurry things up, I would be glad.”


“I’ll give Ferreira a ring.”


“Matt, the Bothma child . . .”


“I hear you have a problem with it.”


“You hear?”


“Tim was here, just after lunch. Upset. He says you’re a racist.”


“Fuck.”


“Relax, Benny. I talked to him. What’s the problem?”


“It wasn’t Laurens, Sup.”


“Why do you say that?”


“When we questioned Bothma on Saturday . . . There was something—I knew she was lying about something. I thought at first it was about Laurens’s death. But then I got to thinking. Keyter questioned the laborers. This morning I went myself. And I don’t think it was Laurens.”


“You think it was Bothma?”


“Yes.”


“And Laurens took the blame to protect her? Hell, Benny . . .”


“I know. But it happens.”


“Do you have proof?”


“I know Bothma is the one with the temper.”


“That’s all?”


“Matt, I know it’s too thin for the courts . . .”


“Benny, Laurens made a statement. She admitted guilt. Her fingerprints are on the billiard cue. And she’s dead. We don’t have a snowball’s chance.”


“Give me an hour with Bothma . . .”


Joubert sat back in his chair and tapped a ballpoint pen on the folder in front of him. “No, Benny. It’s Tim’s case. The best I can do is ask him to look at it carefully again. You have the assegai case.”


“It’s the same thing. If Laurens was innocent, it means the vigilante punished the wrong one. It changes everything.”


“How so?”


Griessel waved his arm. “The whole fucking world out there is on his side—the guy who reinstated the death penalty. The noble knight who is doing the pathetic police force’s work. Even Bushy says we should leave him; let him get on with it . . . Say there is a witness somewhere. Someone who saw him. Or knows something. He could have a wife or a girlfriend, people who support him because they think he is doing the right thing.”


Joubert tapped his pen again. “I hear what you’re saying.”


“I hate that expression.”


“Benny, let me talk to Tim. That’s the best I can do. But they will kill us in court.”


“We don’t need the court. Not yet, in any case. All I want is for the media to know we suspect Bothma. And that Laurens might have been innocent.”


“I’ll talk to Tim.”


“Thanks, Matt.” He turned to go.


“Margaret and I want to ask you to dinner,” said Joubert before he reached the door.


He stopped. “Tonight?”


“Yes. Or tomorrow, if that suits you. She’ll be cooking anyway.”


He realized that he had only had a tearoom sandwich since that morning. “That would be . . .” But he envisioned himself at Joubert’s family table surrounded by Matt’s wife and children. He, alone. “I . . . I can’t, Matt.”


“I know things are crazy here.”


“It’s not that.” He sat down on the chair opposite the commanding officer. “It’s just . . . I miss my family.”


“I understand.”


He suddenly needed to talk about it. “The children . . . I had them yesterday.” He felt the emotion well up. He didn’t want that now. He raised a hand to his eyes and dropped his head. He didn’t want Joubert to see him like this.


“Benny . . .” He could hear the awkwardness.


“No, Matt, it’s just . . . shit, I fucked up so much.”


“I understand, Benny.” Joubert got to his feet and came around the desk.


“No, fuck. Jissis. I mean . . . I don’t know them, Matt.”


There was nothing Joubert could say, just put a hand on Griessel’s shoulder.


“It’s like I was away for fucking ten years. Jissis, Matt, and they are good children. Lovely.” He dragged a sleeve under his nose and sniffed. Joubert patted his shoulder rhythmically.


“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bloody cry.”


“It’s okay, Benny.”


“It’s the withdrawal. Fucking emotional.”


“I’m proud of you. It’s already, what, a week?”


“Nine days. That’s fuck-all. What’s that against ten years of damage?”


“It’s going to be okay, Benny.”


“No, Matt. I don’t know if it will ever be okay.”

* * *

He walked into the task group office in the old lecture hall. They were all sitting waiting for him. He was tired. It was as if the tears he had shed with Joubert had drained him. Captain Helena Louw motioned him closer. He went to her. “How’s it going, Captain?”


“Slowly, Inspector. We have—”


“My name is Benny.”


She nodded and pointed at the computer in front of her. “We have started a database of all the unsolved cases where children were the victims. There are a lot . . .” She had a peaceful manner, a slow way of speaking. “We start with the most serious. Murder. Rape. Sexual abuse. So far one hundred and sixty.”


Griessel whistled softly through his teeth.


“Yes, Inspector, it’s bad. This is only the Peninsula. Lord knows how many in the whole country. We put in the names of the children, the next of kin and the suspects. We include the nature of the crime and the location. If it’s gang-related, we mark it ‘B’ because those are a bit different. We indicate the weapon, if there is one. And the dates of the offenses. That’s about it. Then we can start cross-referencing. As new information comes in, we can plot it against what we have.”


“Sounds good.”


“But will it help?”


“You never know what will help. But we can’t afford not to do something.”


He didn’t know if he had convinced her. “Captain, we need two more items.”


“Call me Helena.”


“I want another field in the database. For vehicles. We have a tire print. Maybe we’ll get something from it.”


“That’s good.”


“I’m not sure how we will handle the last thing. I wonder how he makes his choices. The murderer. How does he decide who the next victim will be?”


She nodded.


“There are two possibilities. One is that he is part of the system—policeman or prosecutor or something. But if you say there are more than a hundred and sixty . . . and the victims are too disparate regarding their location and their offenses. I have a feeling he is using the media. Radio, or newspapers. Maybe TV. My trouble is I don’t read the papers and I don’t listen to the radio much. But I want to know when the victims were in the news. I want to know the date of the reports compared to the date of the assegai murders. Am I being clear?”


“Yes. Is it okay if we draw up a table on this blackboard?” She pointed at the front wall of the old lecture hall.


“That would work,” he said. “Thanks.”


Griessel stood up. Jamie Keyter sat in the corner at the back and watched him in expectation. Cupido and Bezuidenhout sat beside each other, each at his own desk. He drew up a chair and sat down opposite them.


“The assegai is a stuff-up,” said Cupido. He leaned back and from behind him picked up a wrapped parcel, long and thin. He unrolled the brown paper and let the assegai drop onto the desktop. The shiny blade gleamed in the fluorescent light.


“Wallah!” he said. He pronounced the “W” like “Willy.”


“Voilŕ,” Bezuidenhout corrected him with a fake accent. “It’s a fucking French word. It means ‘check me out.’ ”


“Since when are you the great language expert?”


“I’m just helping you not make a fool of yourself.”


Griessel sighed. “The assegai . . .” he said.


“On loan from Pearson’s African Art. In Long Street. Six hundred rand, VAT included. Imported from Zulu Dawn, a distributor in Pinetown. I talked to Mr. Vijay Kumar, the sales manager at Zulu Dawn. He says they have agents who drive around and buy them up, there must be at least thirty places in KwaZulu that make them.”


“That’s not

art,

” said Bezuidenhout.


“Bushy . . .” said Griessel.


“I’m just saying. Nowadays everything is art. I wouldn’t pay fifty rand for that thing.”


“But you’re not a German tourist with euros, pappa,” said Cupido. “The fact of the matter is, our suspect could have bought it on any street corner. Pearson’s say there are five or six chaps in the city alone who peddle them. And then there’s another place or two on the Waterfront, two in Stellenbosch and one in the southern suburbs. The whiteys from Europe like them and the African masks like nobody’s business. And ostrich eggs. They sell ostrich eggs for two hundred rand apiece. And they’re empty . . .”


“I want Forensics to look at the thing, Vaughn . . .”


“Sorted. They’re busy already. I took two on loan; I wanted to bring one in for you to see, Benny. Forensics will compare it with the chemical results of the three stab wounds.”


“Thanks, Vaughn. Good work.”


“You said it. But it doesn’t look like I’m going to score a trip to Durbs.”


“You’ll let me know what Forensics say?”


“Absolutely. Tomorrow I’m going to all the places that sell assegais. See if they have sales records we can trace. Credit-card slips, tax invoices, anything. See what I can find.”


“I want those names in the database, please. They must be compared with the names Captain Louw has.”


“You got it, chief.”


Griessel turned to Bezuidenhout. “Anything, Bushy?”


Bezuidenhout pulled a pile of files closer with an air of getting to the important stuff at last. “I don’t know.” He pulled them one by one off the pile. “The Enver Davids rape,” he said. “Strongest possibility so far. The baby’s parents live in the informal settlement on the corner of Vanguard and Ridgeway. Residents call it Biko City; municipality doesn’t call it anything. Father is unemployed, one of those men who stand on Durban Road in the morning and raise their hands if the builders come to pick up cheap labor. The mother works at a paper recycling plant in Stikland. They buy old cardboard boxes and turn them into toilet paper. Dawn soft. What the ‘dawn’ has to do with ‘soft’ who the fuck knows, but then I’m just a policeman. Anyway, they say they were together in their shack in Biko City the night of Davids’s murder. But the father says, and I quote, ‘good riddance’ about Davids’s death. He says if he had known where to find the bastard, he would have stabbed him himself. But he says it wasn’t him and he doesn’t own an assegai. Their neighbors say they know nothing about that night. Saw nothing, heard nothing.”


“Hmm,” said Griessel.


Bezuidenhout took another file off the heap. “Here’s a list of all the children that were molested by Pretorius. Eleven. Can you believe it! Eleven that we know of. I have started phoning. Most of the parents are in the Bellville area. I’ll start with them tomorrow. It will be a long day. I’ll get the names onto the database too.”


“Use the uniform guys, Bushy.”


“Benny, I don’t want to be funny, but I prefer to talk to them myself. The uniforms are very green.”


“Let them talk to neighbors or something. We have to use them.”


“What about Jamie?”


“What about him?”


“He’s doing fuck-all.”


“Do you want him?”


“I could use him.”


“Bushy . . .” Then he changed his mind. “Jamie,” he called in Keyter’s direction.


“Yes, Benny?” Keyter responded eagerly. He leapt up, almost knocking his chair over.


“Tomorrow you go with Bushy.”


He had reached them. “Okay, Benny.”


“Do the first few interviews with him. Is that understood?”


“Okay.”


“I want you to learn, Jamie. Then Bushy will let you know which you can do on your own.”


“I get it.”


“Jamie . . .”


“Yes, Benny.”


“Don’t say that.”


“Don’t say what?”


“Don’t say ‘I get it.’ It irritates the hell out of me.”


“Okay, Benny.”


“It’s Amerikaans anyway,” said Bezuidenhout.


“Amerikaans?” asked Cupido.


“Yes, you know. The way they say it in America.”


“An Americanism,” said Griessel wearily.


“That’s what I said.”


Griessel said nothing.


“You said ‘Amerikaans,’ you clot. You’re not a language expert’s backside,” said Vaughn Cupido, getting up to leave.


31.


He wanted to go home. Not to the flat, but to his

home.

Where his wife and children were. He had a pounding headache and a sluggishness as if his fuel had run out. But he steered the car towards the city. He wondered what the children were doing. And Anna.


Then he remembered. He wanted to phone her. About the thing that had been bothering him since yesterday. He took out his phone while driving and looked up her number on the list. He pressed the button and it rang.


“Hello, Benny.”


“Hello, Anna.”


“The children say you are still sober.”


“Anna . . . I want to know. Our agreement . . .”


“What agreement?”


“You said if I could stop drinking for six months . . .”


“That’s right.”


“Then you’ll take me back?”


She said nothing.


“Anna . . .”


“Benny, it’s been barely a week.”


“It’s been nine fucking days already.”


“You know I don’t like it when you swear.”


“All I’m asking is if you are serious about the agreement?”


The line was quiet. Just as he was about to say something, he heard her. “Stay off the booze for six months, Benny. Then we can talk.”


“Anna . . .” but she had disconnected him.


He didn’t have the energy to lose his temper. Why was he putting himself through this? Why was he fighting the drink? For a promise that was suddenly no longer a promise?


She had someone else. He knew it. He was a bloody detective; he could put two and two together.


It was her way of getting rid of him. And he wasn’t going to fall for that. He wasn’t going through this hell for fuck-all. No, damnit, not the way he felt now. One glass and the headache would be gone. Just one. Saliva flooded his mouth and he could already taste the alcohol. Two glasses for energy, for gas in the tank, for running the assegai task force. Three, and she could have as many toy boys as she liked.


He knew it would help. It would make everything better. Nobody need ever know. Just him and that sweet savor in his flat and then a decent night’s rest. To deal with this thing with Anna. And the case. And the loneliness. He looked at his watch. The bottle stores would still be open.

* * *

When he arrived at his door with the bottles of Klipdrift and Coke in a plastic bag, there was a parcel on the threshold wrapped in aluminum foil. He unlocked the door first and put the bottles down before picking up the package. There was a note stuck to it. He unpeeled the sticky tape.


For the hard-working policeman. Enjoy. From Charmaine—106.


Charmaine? What was the woman’s case? He unwrapped the foil. It was a Pyrex dish with a lid. He lifted the lid. The fragrance of curry and rice steamed up to his nostrils. Boy, it smelt good. His hunger overcame him. Light-headed, he grabbed a spoon and sat down at the counter. He dug in the spoon and filled his mouth. Mutton curry. The meat was tender under his teeth; the flavor seeped through his body. Charmaine, Charmaine, whoever you are, you can cook, that’s for sure. He took another spoonful, picked out a bay leaf with his finger, licked it off and put it aside. He took another mouthful. Delicious. Another. The curry was hot and fine beads of perspiration sprang out on his face. The spoon fell into a rhythm. Damn, he was hungry. He must make a plan about eating. He must take a sandwich to work.


He looked at the bottle of Klippies on the counter beside him. Soon. He would relax in his armchair with a full belly and take his drink as it should be: slowly, with savor.


He ate like a machine down to the last spoonful of curry, carefully scraped up a morsel of meat and a last bit of sauce and brought it to his mouth.


Damn. That was good. He pushed the dish away.


Now he would have to take it back to Charmaine at 1

0

6. He had a mental picture of a plump young woman. Why was that? Because her food was so good? Somewhat lonely? He got up to rinse the dish in the sink, then the lid and his spoon. He dried it off, found the foil, folded it neatly and placed it inside the dish. He fetched his keys, locked the door behind him and walked down the passage.


She knew he was a policeman. The caretaker must have told her. He would have to tell her he was a married man. And then he would have to explain why he was living here alone . . . He stopped in his tracks. Did he really need to go through all that shit? He could just leave the dish at her door.


No. He must thank her.


Perhaps she wouldn’t be in, he hoped. Or asleep or something. He knocked as softly as possible, thought he could hear the sound of a television inside. Then the door opened.


She was small and she was old. The wrong side of seventy, he judged.


“You must be the policeman,” she said, and she smiled with a snow-white set of false teeth. “I’m Charmaine Watson-Smith. Please come in.” Her accent was very British and her eyes were large behind the thick lenses of her spectacles.


“I’m Benny Griessel,” he said and his intonation sounded too Afrikaans to him.


“Pleased to meet you, Benny,” she said and took the dish from him. “Did you enjoy it?”


“Very much.” The inside of the flat was identical to his, just full. Crammed with furniture, lots of portraits on the walls, full of bric-a-brac in display cabinets, on bookshelves and small coffee tables: porcelain figurines and dolls and framed photographs. Crocheted cloths and books. A giant television set with some or other soapie on the go.


“Please take a seat, Benny,” she said and turned the sound of the television completely off.


“I don’t want to interrupt your program. I’ve actually just come to say thank you very much. It was very nice of you.” He sat down on the edge of a chair. He didn’t want to stay long. His bottle awaited him. “And the curry was fantastic.”


“Oh, it was a pleasure. You not having a wife . . .”


“I, uh, do. But we are—” he searched for the word—“. . . separated.”


“I’m sorry to hear that. I sort of assumed, seeing your children yesterday . . .”


She didn’t miss much. “Yes,” he said.


She sat down opposite him. She seemed to be settling in for a long discussion. He didn’t want . . .


“And what sort of policeman are you?”


“I’m with the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit. Detective Inspector.”


“Oh, I’m delighted to hear that. Just the right man for the job.”


“Oh? What job is that?”


She leaned forward and stage-whispered conspiratorially: “There’s a thief in this building.”


“Oh?”


“You see, I get the

Cape Times

every morning,” she said, still in that exaggerated whisper.


“Yes?” A light began to go on for him. There is no such thing as a free curry and rice.


“Delivered to my postbox at the entry hall. And somebody is stealing it. Not every morning, mind you. But often. I’ve tried everything. I’ve even watched the inner door from the garden. I believe you detectives would call it a stakeout, am I right?”


“That’s right.”


“But the perpetrator is very elusive. I have made no headway.”


“My goodness,” he said. He had no idea what else to say.


“But now we have a real detective in the building,” she said with immense satisfaction and sat back in her chair.


Griessel’s phone rang in his shirt pocket.


“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to take this.”


“Of course you do, my dear.”


He took the phone out. “Griessel.”


“Benny, it’s Anwar,” said Inspector Anwar Mohammed. “We’ve got her.”


“Who?”


“Your assegai woman. Artemis.”


“Assegai woman?”


“Yup. She’s made a complete statement.”


“Where are you?”


“Twenty-three Petunia Street in Bishop Lavis.”


He got up. “You’ll have to direct me. I’ll phone you when I’m nearby.”


“Okay, Benny.”


He switched off the connection. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”


“Of course. Duty calls, it seems.”


“Yes, it’s this case I’m working on.”


“Well, Benny, it was wonderful meeting you.”


“And you too,” he said on the way to the door.


“Do you like roast lamb?”


“Oh, yes, but you mustn’t go to any trouble.”


“No trouble,” she said with a big white smile. “Now that you’re working on my case.”

* * *

Petunia Street was in uproar. Under the streetlights stood a couple of hundred spectators, so that he had to drive slowly and wait for them to open a path for him. In front of number 23 rotated the blue lights of three police vans and the red ones of an ambulance. Forensics and the video team’s two Toyota minibuses were parked halfway up the pavement. In front of the house next door were two minibuses from the SABC and e.tv.


He got out and had to push his way through the bystanders. On the lawn a colored constable in uniform tried to stop him. He showed his plastic ID card and instructed him to call in more people for crowd control.


“There aren’t any more, the entire station is here already,” was the reply.


Griessel walked through the open front door. Two uniformed members sat in the sitting room watching television.


“No, damnit,” Griessel said to them. “The crowd is about to come in the door and you sit here watching TV?”


“Don’t worry,” one answered. “This is Bishop Lavis. The people are curious, but decent.”


Anwar Mohammed heard his voice and came out of an inner room.


“Get these people outside, Anwar, this is a fucking crime scene.”


“You heard the inspector, hey?”


The men stood up reluctantly. “But it’s Frasier, ” said one, pointing at the screen.


“I don’t care what it is. Go and do your work,” said Mohammed. Then, to Griessel: “The victim is here, Benny.” He led the way to the kitchen.


Griessel saw the blood first—a thick gay arc of red starting on the kitchen cupboard door and sweeping up, all the way to the ceiling. To the right against the fridge and stove was more blood in the distinctive spatters of a severed artery. A man lay in a fetal position in the corner of the smallish room. The two members of the video team were setting up lights to film the scene. The light made the reddish-brown blood on the victim’s shirt glisten. There were a few rips in the material. Beside him lay an assegai. The wooden shaft was about a metro long, the bloodied blade about thirty centimeters long and three or four centimeters wide.


“This is not the assegai man,” said Griessel.


“How can you know?”


“Whole MO is different, Anwar. And this blade is too small.”


“You better come talk to the girl.”


“The girl?”


“Nineteen. And pretty.” Mohammed gestured with his head to the door. He walked ahead.


She was sitting in the dining room with her head in her hands. There was blood on her arms. Griessel walked around the table and pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. Mohammed stood behind him.


“Miss Ravens,” said Mohammed softly.


She raised her head from her hands and looked at Griessel. He could see she was pretty, a delicate face with deep, dark, nearly black eyes.


“Good evening,” he said.


She just nodded.


“My name is Benny Griessel.”


No reaction.


“Miss Ravens, this inspector has been working on the assegai case. Tell him about the others,” said Mohammed.


“It was me,” she said. Griessel saw her eyes were unfocused. Her hands trembled slightly.


“Who is the man in there?” he asked.


“That’s my dada.”


“You did that?”


She nodded. “I did.”


“Why?”


She slowly blinked her big eyes.


“What did he do?”


She was looking at Griessel but he wasn’t sure she was seeing him. When she spoke there was surprising strength in her voice, as if it belonged to someone else. “He would come and sleep with me. For twelve years. And I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”


Griessel could hear the anger.


“And then you read about the man with the assegai?”


“It’s not a man. It’s a woman. It’s me.”


“I told you,” said Mohammed.


“Where did you get this assegai?”


“At the station.”


“Which station?”


“The station in Cape Town.”


“At the station flea market?”


She nodded.


“When did you buy it?”


“Yesterday.”


“Yesterday?” queried Mohammed.


“And then you waited for him to come home tonight?”


“He wouldn’t stop. I asked him to stop. I asked him nicely.”


“Did you two live here alone?”


“My mother died. Twelve years ago.”


“Miss Ravens, if you only bought the assegai yesterday, how could you have killed the other people?”


Her black eyes moved over Griessel’s face. Then she looked away. “I saw it on TV. Then I knew. It’s me.”


He put out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. She jerked away and in her eyes he saw momentary fear. Or hate, he couldn’t differentiate. He dropped his hand.


“I called SS,” said Mohammed quietly behind him.


“That’s good, Anwar,” he said. Social Services could handle her better. He rose and led Mohammed out by the elbow. In the kitchen, beside the body, he said: “Watch her. Don’t leave her alone.”


Before Mohammed could reply, they heard Pagel’s voice in the door. “Evening, Nikita, evening, Anwar.”


“Evening, Prof.”


The pathologist was in evening wear with his case in his hand. He shuffled past the video team and squatted down beside the man on the floor.


“This is not our assegai, Nikita,” he said as he opened his case.


“I know, Prof.”


“Benny,” a voice called from the sitting room.


“Here,” he said.


Cloete, the officer from Public Relations, walked in. “Hell, but it’s busy here.” He looked at the victim. “He’s copped it.”


“Oh, so now you’re a pathologist too?” asked one of the video men.


“Look out, Prof, Cloete’s after your job,” said the other.


“That’s because Benny’s sober now. One less job opportunity for Cloete.”


“But Benny doesn’t

look

better.”


“Shit, but you’re funny tonight,” said Griessel. To Cloete: “Come, we’ll talk in there.” He saw Mohammed following them. “Anwar, get someone to watch the girl before you come.”


“Will she try to escape?” asked Cloete.


“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” said Griessel, and sat down on a chair in the sitting room. The television was still showing a situation comedy. Laughter sounded. Griessel leaned forward and turned it off.


“Did you see the television people outside?”


Griessel nodded. Before he could say more the cell phone in his pocket rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Cloete as he took the call: “Griessel.”


“It’s Tim Ngubane. Joubert says you’re looking for bait. For the assegai thing . . .”


“Yes.” A little surprised at the friendly tone.


“How does a Colombian drug lord who’s got a thing for little girls grab you?”


“It sounds good, Tim.”


“Good? It’s perfect. And I’ve got it for you.”


“Where are you?”


“Camps Bay, home to the rich and famous.”


“I’ll come as soon as I can.”


Before he could put the phone away, Cloete forged ahead. He pointed outside: “Someone told them it was Artemis. The papers are here too. I had to hear it from them.” Accusing.


“I just got here myself.”


“I didn’t say it was you, but the fuck knows . . .”


“Cloete, I’m sorry about yesterday. It was one of my team members that talked to the media. It won’t happen again.”


“What do you want, Benny?”


“What do you mean?”


“The day you apologize is the day you want something. What’s going on here?”


“This is a difficult one. Nineteen-year-old girl stabbed her father with an assegai because he molested her. But she didn’t commit the other murders.”


“Are you sure?”


“Absolutely.”


“How do you want me to handle this?”


“Cloete, there are politics involved with the assegai thing. Between you and me, the girl in there was partly inspired by our murderer, if you know what I mean. But if you tell the media that, the commissioner will have a stroke, because he’s under pressure from above.”


“The minister?”


“Parliamentary Commission.”


“Fuck.”


“You must talk to Anwar, too, so we all have the same story. I feel we should only mention a domestic fight and a sharp instrument. Don’t let on about the weapon for now.”


“That’s not the thing you want from me, Benny, is it?”


“No, you’re right. I need another favor.”


Cloete shook his head in disbelief. “The fuck knows, I am nothing but a whore. A police prostitute, that’s what I am.”


32.


The town was too small.


He couldn’t reconnoiter. This afternoon when he drove down the long curve of the main street there were eyes on him. The eyes of colored people in front of a few cafés, the eyes of black petrol attendants at the filling station, which consisted of a couple of pumps and a dilapidated caravan. The eyes of Uniondale’s few white residents watering their dry gardens with hosepipes.


Thobela knew he had only one chance to find the house. He wouldn’t be able to look around; he wouldn’t be able to drive up and down. Because here everyone knew about the Scholtz scandal and they would remember a black man driving a pickup—a strange black man in a place where everyone knew everybody.


He had to be content with a signboard in the main street indicating the road. It was enough. He took the R339 out of the town, the one running east towards the mountain. As the road curved around the town, he saw there was a place to park with pepper trees and clefts in the ridges beside the road where he could leave the vehicle in the dark. He drove on, through the pass, along the Kamannasie River, and at twelve kilometers he filled up with petrol beside the cooperative at Avontuur.


Where was he going? asked the Xhosa petrol attendant.


Port Elizabeth.


So why are you taking

this

road?


Because it is quiet.


Safe journey, my brother.


The petrol attendant would remember him. And that forced him to drive back to the main road and turn right. Towards the Langkloof, because the man’s eyes could follow him. If he deviated from that route, the man would wonder why and remember him even better.


In any case he had to pass the time until dark. He made a long detour. Gravel roads, past game farms and eventually back via the pass. To this spot above Uniondale where he stood beside the pickup in the moonlight and watched the town lights below. He would have to walk through the veld and over the ridge. Sneak. Between the houses. He would have to avoid dogs. He must find the right house. He must go in and do what he had to do. And then come back and drive away.


It would be hard. He had too little information about the lay of the land and the position of the house. He didn’t even know if they would be home.


Leave. Now. The risk was too great. The town was too small.


He took the assegai from behind the seat. He stood on a rock and looked over the town. His fingertips stroked the smooth wooden shaft.


He had all night.

* * *

Between Bishop Lavis and Camps Bay his cell phone rang twice.


First it was Greyling from Forensics: “Benny, your man drives a pickup.”


“Oh, yes?”


“And if we are not mistaken, it’s a four-by-two with diff lock. Probably a double cab. Because the imprint is from a RTSA Wrangler. A Goodyear 215/14.”


“What make is the pickup?”


“Hell, no, it’s impossible to say, the whole lot come out of the factory with the Wrangler—Ford and Mazda, Izuzu, Toyota, you name it.”


“How do you know it’s not an ordinary pickup?”


“Your ordinary one comes out with the CV 2

000

from Goodyear, which is a 195/14, the G 22, they call it. Trouble is, nearly every minibus-taxi comes out with the same tire, so it’s chaos. And your four-by-four is a 215/15. But this print is definitely a 215/14, which is put on the four-by-twos. And eighty per cent of your four-by-twos are double cabs or these other things with only two doors, the Club Cabs. Which also means our suspect is not a poor man, because a double cab costs the price of a farm these days.”


“Unless it’s stolen.”


“Unless it’s stolen, yes.”


“Thanks, Arrie.”


“Pleasure, Benny.”


Before he had time to ponder the new evidence, the phone rang again.


“Hi, Dad.” It was Fritz.


“Hi, Fritz.”


“What’re you doing, Dad?” His son wanted to chat?


“Working. It’s a circus today. Everything is happening at once.”


“With the vigilante? Has he nailed someone else?”


“No, not him. Someone else who thinks they are the assegai man.”


“Cool!”


Griessel laughed. “You think it’s cool?”


“Definitely. But I actually wanted to know if you listened to the CD, Dad.”


Damn. He had completely forgotten about the music. “I only realized last night that I didn’t have a CD player. And there wasn’t time today to get one. It was a madhouse . . .”


“It’s okay.” But he detected disappointment. “If you want it, I’ve got a portable CD player. The bass isn’t too great.”


“Thanks, Fritz, but I must get something for the flat. I’ll make a plan tomorrow, I promise.”


“Great. And then let me know.”


“The minute I have listened to it.”


“Dad, don’t work too hard. And Carla sends her love and says yesterday was cool.”


“Thanks, Fritz. Give her my love too.”


“Okay, Dad. Bye.”


“Sleep well.”


He sat behind the wheel and stared into the dark. Emotion welled up in him. Maybe Anna didn’t want him anymore, but the children did. Despite all the harm he had done.

* * *

The dramatic difference between the crime scenes at Bishop Lavis and Camps Bay was immediately apparent. In the wealthy neighborhood there were practically no onlookers, but at least twice as many police vehicles. The uniformed officers huddled on the sidewalk as if they expected a riot.


He had to drive down the street a bit to find parking and walk back up the slope. All the houses were three stories high to see the now invisible view of the Atlantic Ocean. They were all in the same style of concrete and glass—modern palaces that stood empty most of the year while their owners were in London or Zurich or Munich, busy raking in the euros.


At the steps a uniform stopped him. “Sorry, Inspector Ngubane only wants key personnel inside,” the constable said.


He took out his identity card from his wallet and showed it. “Why are there so many people here?”


“Because of the drugs, Inspector. We have to help move them when they are finished.”


He walked up to the front door and looked in. It was as big as a theater. Two or three sitting areas on different levels, a dining area and, to the right, on the balcony side, a sparkling blue indoor swimming pool. Two teams of Forensics were busy searching for bloodstains with ultraviolet lights. On the uppermost level, on a long leather couch, four men sat in a neat row, handcuffed and heads bowed as if they felt remorse already. Beside them stood uniformed policemen, each with a gun on his arm. Griessel went up.


“Where is Inspector Ngubane?” he asked one of the uniforms.


“Top floor,” one indicated.


“Which one of these fuckers messed with the girl?”


“These are just the gofers,” said the uniform. “The inspector is busy with the big chief. And it’s not just about

messing

with the kid.”


“Oh?”


“The child has disappeared . . .”


“How do I get up there?”


“The stairs are there,” pointed the constable with the stock of his shotgun.

* * *

In the first-floor passage, Timothy Ngubane stood and argued with a large white detective. Griessel recognized him from the faded blue and white cloth hat sporting a red disa flower emblem and the word

WP Rugby

: Senior Superintendent Wilhelm “Boef” Beukes, a former member of the old Murder and Robbery and Narcotics branches and now a specialist in organized crime.


“Why not? The girl is not in there.”


“There might be evidence in there, Sup, and I can’t risk . . .” He spotted Griessel. “Benny,” he said with a degree of relief.


“Hi, Tim. Boef, how are you?”


“Crap, thanks. Drugs haul of the decade and I have to stand in line.”


“Finding the child has priority, Sup,” said Ngubane.


“But she’s not here. You already know that.”


“But there might be evidence down there. All I’m asking is that you wait.”


“Get your butts moving,” said Beukes and stalked off down the passage.


Ngubane sighed deeply and at length. “It’s been an amazing night,” he said to Griessel. “Absolutely amazing. I’ve got everybody down there—”


“Down where?”


“There’s this storeroom in the basement with more drugs than anyone’s ever seen, and the entire SAPS is here—the commercial branch and organized crime and the drugs guy from Forensics, and they all have their own video teams and photographers, and I can’t let them in, because there might be leads to where the girl is.”


“And the suspect?”


“He’s in here.” Ngubane pointed at the door behind him. “And he’s not talking.”


“Can I go in?”


Ngubane opened the door. Griessel looked in. It was not a big room. Untidy. A man sat on a cardboard box. Thick black hair, drooping black mustache, white shirt unbuttoned, the breast pocket seemed torn. A red bruise on the cheekbone.


“Sy naam is Carlos,”

began Ngubane deliberately in Afrikaans so that Sangrenegra would not understand and took a small notebook from his trouser pocket. “Carlos San . . . gre . . . ne . . . gra,” he carefully enunciated the syllables.


“Fuck you,” said Sangrenegra with venom.


“Did someone beat him up?” Griessel spoke Afrikaans.


“The mother. Of the little girl. He’s a Colombian. His visa . . . expired long ago.”


“What happened, Tim?”


“Come in. I don’t want to leave the cunt alone.”


“You curse very prettily in Afrikaans.”


Ngubane moved into the room ahead of Griessel. “I’m well coached.” He closed the door behind him. It looked as if it was meant to be a study. Shelves against the wall, dark glowing wood, but empty. Boxes on the floor.


“What’s in the boxes?” Griessel asked.


“Look,” said Ngubane and sat down on the single chair, an expensive piece of office furniture with a high back and brown leather.


Griessel opened one of the boxes. There were books in it. He took one out.

A Tale of Two Cities

was printed in gold lettering on the spine of the book.


“Look inside.”


He opened it. There were no pages—just a plastic filler with sides that looked like paper.


“Not a great reader are you, Carlos?” said Griessel.


“Fuck you.”


“A woman phoned Caledon Square about eight o’clock.” Ngubane continued in Afrikaans. “She was crying. She said her child had been abducted and she knew who it was. They sent a team to the flat in Belle Ombre Street and found the lady. She was confused and bleeding from the head and she said a man had assaulted her and taken her child. She was . . .” he searched for the Afrikaans word.


“Unconscious.”


Ngubane nodded. “She gave the man’s name and this address and she said he had raped her too. She said she knew him and he liked children . . . you know? And then she told us he’s a drug lord.”


Griessel nodded and turned to look at Sangrenegra. The brown eyes smoldered. He was a lean man, veins prominent on his forearms, dressed in blue denim and trainers. His hands were cuffed behind his back.


“The uniforms phoned the station commander and the SC phoned us and I was on call and talked to Joubert and got the task force. Then we were all here and the task force arrived by helicopter and the works. We found five men here. Carlos and those four downstairs. They found the drugs in the basement and the girl’s clothes in this one’s room. Then they found blood in his BMW and a dog, one of those stuffed toys, but no child and this cunt won’t talk. He says he knows nothing.”


“The child. It’s a little girl?”


“Three years old. Three.”


Griessel felt a red flood of revulsion. “Where is she?” he asked Carlos.


“Fuck you.”


He jumped up and grabbed the man by the hair, jerked his head back and kept pulling the dark locks. He shoved his face close up to Sangrenegra. “Where is she, you piece of shit?”


“I don’t know!”


Griessel jerked his hair. Sangrenegra winced. “She lie. The whore, she lie. I know nothing.”


“How did the girl’s clothes get in your room, you cunt?” He jerked again as hard as he could as frustration gnawed at him.


“She put it there. She is a whore. She was

my

whore.”


“Jissis,” said Griessel with disgust and gave the hair one last pull before he left him. His hand felt greasy. He wiped it off on Sangrenegra’s shirt. “You lie. You cunt.”


“I’ve been through that process,” said Ngubane behind him in a calm voice, as if nothing had happened.


“Ask my men,” said Sangrenegra.


Griessel laughed without humor. “Who gave you this?” he asked and shoved a finger hard onto the bruise on Carlos’s cheek.


The Colombian spat at him. Griessel drew his hand back to slap him.


“He said he visited the complainant today,” Ngubane said. “He says she is a prostitute. She invited him to her flat. The child wasn’t there. Then she hit him for no reason. So he hit her back.”


“That’s his story?”


“That’s his story?”


“And the mother?”


“Social Services are with her. She’s . . . traumatized.”


“What do you think, Tim?” Griessel realized he was out of breath. He sat down on a box.


“The child was in his car, Benny. The blood. And the dog. She

was

there. He drove somewhere with her. We have two hours from the assault on the complainant until we got here. He took the child somewhere. He thought because the mother is a call girl, he could do what he wanted. But something happened in the car. The child got scared, or something. So he cut her. That’s what the blood looks like. It’s against the armrest of the back seat. Looks like an—” he searched for the Afrikaans word again—“. . . artery. Then he knew he was in trouble. He must have got rid of the kid.”


“Jissis.”


“Yes,” said Ngubane.


Griessel looked at Sangrenegra. Carlos stared back, with disdain.


“I don’t think we should be optimistic about the child. If she was alive, this cunt would want to bargain.”


“Can I try something?” Griessel asked.


“Please,” said Ngubane.


“Carlos,” said Griessel, “have you heard of Artemis?”


“Fuck you.”


“Let me tell you a story, Carlos. There is this guy out there. He has a big assegai. Do you know what an assegai is, Carlos? It’s a spear. A Zulu weapon. With a long blade, very sharp. Now, this guy is a real problem for us, because he is killing people. And do you know who he kills, Carlos? He is killing people who fuck with children. Sure you haven’t heard about this, Carlos?”


“Fuck you.”


“We are trying to catch this guy. Because he is breaking the law. But with you we can make an exception. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell all the newspapers and the television that you have abducted this beautiful little girl, Carlos. I will give them your address. And we will publish a photograph of you. And I’m going to see to it that you make bail. And I’m going to keep all your friends in jail, and leave you here, in this big house, all alone. We will sit outside to make sure you don’t go back to Colombia. And we will wait for the guy with the spear to find you.”


“Fuck you.”


“No, Carlos. You are the one who is fucked. Think about it. Because when he comes, we will look the other way.”


Sangrenegra said nothing, just stared at Griessel.


“This assegai guy, he has killed three people. One stab, right through the heart. With that long blade.”


No reaction.


“Tell me where the girl is. And it can be different.”


Carlos just stared at him.


“You want to die, Carlos? Just tell me where the girl is.”


For a moment Sangrenegra hesitated. Then he shouted, in a shrill voice: “Carlos don’t know! Carlos don’t fucking know!”


33.


When they shoved Sangrenegra into the back of a police van and clanged the door shut, Ngubane said: “I owe you an apology, Benny.”


“Oh?”


“About this morning.” Griessel realized he had already forgotten the incident; it had been a long day.


“We get a little paranoid, I suppose,” said Ngubane. “Some of the white cops . . . they think we’re shit.”


Griessel said nothing.


“I went to visit Cliffy Mketsu. In hospital. He says you’re not like that.”


Griessel wanted to add that no, he wasn’t like that. His problem was that he thought

everyone

was crap. “How’s Cliffy doing?”


“Good. He says you have more experience than the rest of us combined. So I want to ask you, Benny, what more can I do here? How do I find this kid?”


He looked at Ngubane, at the neat suit, the white shirt and red tie, at the man’s ease with himself. In the back of his mind a light began to shine.


“Are there other properties, Tim? These drug guys, they have more than one place. They have contingency plans.”


“Right.”


“Talk to Beukes. They must have known about Sangrenegra. They will know about other places.”


“Right.”


“Has Forensics been to the mother’s place?”


He nodded. “They got his prints there. And they drew the mother’s blood. For DNA comparison with the blood in the car. They say that way they can tell if it belongs to the kid.”


“I don’t think she’s alive, Tim.”


“I know.”


They stood in silence a moment. “Can I go and see the mother?”


“Sure. Are you going to use this guy as bait?”


“He’s perfect. But I have to talk to the mother. And then we’ll have to talk to the sup, because Organized Crime is involved, and I can tell you now, they won’t like it.”


“Fuck them.”


Griessel chuckled. “That’s what I was thinking too.”


When he drove through the city towards Tamboerskloof, his thoughts jumped between Boef Beukes and Timothy Ngubane and the children he saw in Long Street. At half-past eleven at night there were children everywhere he looked. Teenagers on a fucking Monday night at the top end of Long Street, at the clubs and restaurants and cafés. They stood on the pavements with glasses and cigarettes in their hands, small groups huddled beside parked cars. He wondered where their parents were. Whether they knew where their children were. He realized he did not know where his own children were. But surely Anna knew. If she were at home.


Beukes. Who had worked with him in the old days. Who had been a drinking partner. When his children were small and he was still whole. What the hell had happened? How had he progressed from drinks with the boys to a full-blown alcoholic?


He had started drinking when Murder and Robbery was still located in Bellville South. The President in Parow had been the watering hole, not because it was anything like a presidential hotel, but there would always be a policeman leaning on the long mahogany bar, no matter what time of the day you turned up there. Or that other place beyond Sanlam in Stikland that made those delicious pizzas, the Glockenberg or something, Lord, that was a lifetime ago. The Glocken

burg.

There was a Spur Steak Ranch there now, but in those days it had been a colossal tavern. One night, thoroughly drunk, he had climbed on the stage and told the band they must cut the crap and play real rock ’n’ roll and give me that bass, do you know “Blue Suede Shoes”? His colleagues at the big table had shouted and kicked up a row and clapped and the four-piece band had nervously said yes, they knew it, young Afrikaner fuckers with soft beards and long hair who played “Smokie” and he put the bass around his neck and got behind the mike and sang “One for the money . . .” and they were off and rocking, between the commotion from the floor and the orchestra’s relief that he was not hopeless. They were cooking; they thrashed that fuckin’ song and people came in from the bar and from outside. And that Benny Griessel had run his fingers up and down the neck of the bass guitar and he laid down a fucking carpet of bass for the rock ’n’ roll and when they had finished everybody screamed for more, more, more. So he let rip. Elvis songs. And he sweated and played and sang till who knows what time, and Anna came looking for him, he saw her at the back of the Glock. At first angry with arms folded tight, where was her husband, look at the time. But the music melted her too, she loosened up and her hips began to sway and she clapped too and screamed: “Go, Benny, go!” because that was

her

Benny up there on the fucking stage,

her

Benny.


Lord, that was a lifetime ago. He hadn’t been an alky then, just a hard-drinking detective. Like the rest of them. Just like Matt Joubert and Boef Beukes and fat Sergeant Tony O’Grady, the whole damn lot of them. They drank hard because, hell, they worked hard, back then in the late eighties. Worked like slaves while the whole world shat on them. Necklace murders, old people murdered, gays murdered, gangs, armed robbery wherever you turned. It never stopped. And if you said you were a policeman, the room would fall silent and everyone looked at you as if you were lower than lobster crap, and that, they always said, was as low as you could go.


Then he had been as Tim Ngubane was now. At ease with himself. Lord, and he

could

work. Hard, yes. But clever. He nailed them, murderers and bank robbers and kidnappers. He was ruthless and enthusiastic. He was light of foot. That was the thing—he had danced when the others plodded. He was different. And he thought he would be like that always. But then all the shit had a way of overwhelming you.


Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the booze only got the dancers; look at Beukes and Joubert, they don’t drink like fish, they plod along still. And he? He was fucked. But there in the back of his mind the germ of an idea remained that he was better than them all, that he was the best fucking detective in the country, end of story.


Then he laughed at himself there behind the steering wheel, at the top end of Long Street near the swimming baths, because he was a wreck, a drunkard, a guy who had bought a bottle of Klippies an hour ago after nine days of sobriety and only half an hour ago had lost control with the Colombian because he was carrying so much shit around with him and here he was, thinking he was the be-all and end-all.


So what had happened? Between Boef Beukes and the Glockenburg and now? What the fuck happened? He had reached Belle Ombre Street and there was no parking so he pulled half onto the pavement.


Before he opened the door, he thought about the body tonight in Bishop Lavis. There had been no death screams in his head. No dreadful voices.


Why not? Where had they gone? Was it part of his drinking; was it the alcohol?


He paused a few moments longer and then pushed open the door, because he had no answers. The building had ten or twelve floors so he took the lift. There were two black policemen in civilian clothes at the door, each with a shotgun. Griessel asked who they were. One said they were from Organized Crime and that Boef Beukes had sent them, since she would be a target now.


“Did you know about Sangrenegra before this happened?”


“You should talk to Beukes.”


He nodded and opened the door. A young woman jumped up in the sitting room and came over to him. “Did you find her?” she asked, and he could hear the hysteria just below the surface. Behind her on the couch sat two police officers of the gentler sort, smaller and thinner, with caring hands folded sympathetically on their laps. Social Services. The members of the Force who appear on the scene when all the shit is already cleared away. A man and a woman.


“Not yet,” he said.


She stood in the middle of the room and uttered a sound. He could see her face was swollen and there was a cut that someone had treated. Her eyes were red with weeping. She balled her fists and her shoulders drooped. The colored woman from SS got up and came over to her and said: “Come and sit down, it’s better if you sit.”


“My name is Benny Griessel,” he said and held out his hand.


She shook it and said, “Christine van Rooyen.” He thought that she didn’t look like your usual whore. But then he smelt her, a mixture of perfume and sweat; they all smelt like that, it didn’t wash out.


But she looked different from the ones he knew. He searched for the reason. She was tall, as tall as he was. Not scrawny, strongly built. Her skin was smooth. But that wasn’t it.


He said he worked with Ngubane and he knew it was a difficult time for her. But perhaps there was something she knew that could help. She said he must come through and she went over to a sliding door and pushed it wider. It led onto a balcony and she sat on one of the white plastic chairs. He got the idea that she wanted to get away from the SS people and that said something. He joined her on another of the chairs and asked her how well she knew Sangrenegra.


“He was my client.” He noticed the unusual shape of her eyes. They reminded him of almonds.


“A regular client?”


In the light from the sitting room he could only see her right hand. It was on the arm of the chair, finger folded into the palm, the nails pressing into the flesh.


“At first he was like the rest,” she said. “Nothing funny. Then he told me about the drugs. And when he found out I had a child . . .”


“Do you know what we found at his house?”


She nodded. “The black man phoned.”


“Did Carlos ever take you to other places? Other houses?”


“No.”


“Have you any idea where he would have taken . . . er . . . your daughter?”


“Sonia,” she said. “My daughter’s name is Sonia.”


The fingers moved in her palm, the nails dug deeper. He wanted to reach out to her. “Where would he have taken Sonia?”


She shook her head back and forth. She did not know. Then she said: “I won’t see her again.” With the calm that only absolute despair can bring.

* * *

In the early hours it was only five minutes’ drive from Belle Ombre to his flat. The first thing he saw when he switched on the light was the brandy bottle. It stood on the breakfast counter like a sentry watching over the room.


He locked the door behind him and picked up the bottle and turned it in his hands. He examined the clock on the label and the golden brown liquid within. He imagined the effect of the alcohol in his fibers, light-headedness, and effervescence just under his skull.


He put down the bottle as if it were sacred.


He should open the bottle and pour the brandy down the sink.


But then he would smell it and he wouldn’t be able to resist it.


Get control first. He rested his palms on the counter and took deep breaths.


Lord, it had been close, earlier that evening.


Only his hunger had stopped him getting drunk.


He took another deep breath.


Fritz was going to phone him to find out if he had listened to the CD and he would have been drunk and his son would have known. That would have been bad. He considered his son’s voice. It wasn’t so much the boy’s interest in his opinion about the music. Something else. A craving. A longing. A desire to make contact with his father. To have a bond with him.

We never had a father.

His son wanted a father now. So badly. He had been so close to fucking it up. So close.


He drew another deep breath and opened a kitchen cupboard. It was empty inside. He quickly picked up the bottle and put it inside and shut the door. He went upstairs. He didn’t feel so tired anymore. Second wind, when your brain gets so busy you just keep on going, when your thoughts jump from one thing to another.


He showered and got into bed and shut his eyes. He could see the prostitute and he felt a physical reaction, tumescence and he thought, hello, hello, hello? He felt guilty, as she had just lost her child and this was his reaction. But it was odd because whores had never done it for him. He knew enough of them. They were in a profession that was a magnet for trouble; they worked in a world that was just one small step away from serious crime. And they were all more or less the same—regardless of the fee they charged.


There was something about Christine van Rooyen that set her apart from the others he knew. But what? Then when he lined her up against the rest he identified it. Prostitutes, from the Sea Point streetwalkers to the few who serviced the tourists for big money in the Radisson, had two things in common. That distinctive bittersweet smell. And the damage. They had an atmosphere of depression. Like a house, a neglected house, where someone still lives, but you can see from the decay that they don’t really care anymore.


This one was not like that. Or less so. There was a light still burning.


But that wasn’t what was giving him an erection. It was something else. The body? The eyes?


Hell, he had never once been unfaithful to Anna. Except by boozing. Maybe Anna reasoned like that: he was unfaithful to her because he loved alcohol with an all-encompassing passion. So she was justified in looking elsewhere. His head said she had the right, but the green monster sprang to life, made him writhe in the bed. He would pulp the fucker. If he caught them. If he should walk into his house and bedroom and they were busy . . . He saw the scene too clearly. He turned over violently, pulled up the sheet, thrust his head under the pillow. He did not want to see. Some or other handsome young shit pumping his wife and he could see Anna’s face, her ecstasy, that small private sublime smile that told him she was in her own little world of pleasure and her voice, he remembered her voice, the whispering. Yes, Benny, yes, Benny, yes, Benny. But now she would be saying someone else’s name and he leapt up and stood beside the bed and he knew: he would shoot the fucker. He had to phone her.

Now.

He had to drink. He must get the bottle out of the kitchen cupboard. He took a step toward the wardrobe. He clenched his fist and stopped himself.


Get a hold of yourself, he said out loud.


He felt the absence below. His erection was gone.


No fucking wonder.

* * *

It was an old stone house with a corrugated iron roof. He climbed a sagging wire boundary fence and had to deviate around the carcass of a Ford single cab pickup on blocks before he could make out the number on one of the pillars of the verandah. The seven hung askew.


It was dark inside. Thobela retraced his steps to the back door. He turned the knob. It was open. He went in, closing the door quietly behind him, assegai in his left hand. He was in the kitchen. There was an odor in the house. Musty, like fish paste. He allowed his eyes to grow accustomed to the deeper dark inside. Then he heard a sound from the next room.

* * *

Once the two from the police force’s Social Services had gone, she took a big flask of coffee and two mugs to the armed men on guard outside her door. Then she locked the door and went out onto the balcony.


The city lay before her, a creature with a thousand glittering eyes that breathed more slowly and deeply in the depths of night. She gripped the white railing, feeling the cold metal in her hands. She thought about her child. Sonia’s eyes pleading with her.


It was her fault. She was responsible for her child’s fear.

* * *

From the sitting room he heard a snore like the grunt of a boar: short, crude and powerful.


Thobela peered around the doorframe and saw the man on the couch under a blanket.


Where was the woman?


The Scholtzes. Their two-year-old son had died in hospital in Oudtshoorn two weeks ago from a brain hemorrhage.


The district surgeon had found lesions on the tiny organs and thin fragile ribs and ulna, cheekbones and skull. From them he had reconstructed a jigsaw of abuse. “The worst I have seen in fifteen years as coroner,” the Sunday paper had quoted his testimony.


He walked closer to Scholtz over the bare floor. In the dark the silver half-moons of rings gleamed in the visible ear. Across the bulky arm was a spider web of black tattoo, the pattern unclear without light. The mouth was open and at the peak of every breath he made that animal noise.


Where was the woman? Thobela smoothed the cushion of his thumb over the wooden shaft of the assegai as he slipped past, deeper into the house. There were two bedrooms. The first one was empty; on the wall hung a child’s drawings, now without color.


He felt revulsion. How did these people’s minds work? How could they display the child’s art on his bedroom wall and moments later smash his head against it? Or batter him until the ribs splintered.


Animals.


He saw the woman in the double bed of the other room, her shape outlined under the sheet. She turned over. Muttered something inaudible.


He stood still. Here was a dilemma. No, two.

* * *

Christine let go of the railing and went back inside. She closed the sliding door behind her. In the top drawer in the kitchen she found the vegetable knife. It had a long narrow blade, slightly curved with a small, sharp point. It was what she wanted now.

* * *

He didn’t want to execute the woman. That was his first problem.


A war against women was not a war. Not

his

war, not a Struggle he wanted to be involved in. He knew that now, after Laurens. Let the courts, imperfect as they were, take responsibility for the women.


But if he spared her, how would he deal with the man? That was his second problem. He needed to wake him. He wanted to give him a weapon and say: “Fight for your right to crack a two-year-old skull, and see where justice lies.” But the woman would wake up. She would see him. She would turn on lights. She would get in the way.

* * *

Christine sat on the edge of the bath after closing the bathroom door. She took the cap off the bottle of Dettol and dipped the blade of the little knife into the brown fluid. Then she lifted her left foot onto her right knee and chose the spot, between her heel and the ball of her foot. She pressed the sharp point of the blade gently against the soft white skin.


Sonia’s eyes.

* * *

He walked around the door of the bedroom where the woman lay, right up close. That’s when he saw the key in the lock and knew what he must do.


He pulled the key out of the lock. It made a scraping sound and he heard her breathing become shallow. Quickly he closed the door. It creaked. He pushed the key in from the outside. In haste he struggled to get it in.


He heard her say something in the room, a bleary, unrecognizable word.


At last the key went in and he turned it.


“Chappie?” called the woman.


The man on the couch stopped snoring. Thobela turned towards him.


“Chappie!” she shouted, louder now. “What are you doing?”


The man sat up on the couch and threw the blanket aside.


“I am here about the child,” said Thobela.


He noted Scholtz’s shoulders. A strong man. It was good.


“There’s a kaffir in the house!” the man shouted to his wife.

* * *

She jabbed the blade into her foot, as hard as she could. She could not help the cry that fell from her lips.


But the pain was intense. It burned the hurt away; it covered over everything, just as she had hoped.


34.


He dreamed wild, mixed-up dreams that drove him from his sleep and made him get up twice before he finally dropped off again at three in the morning. He was busy talking to Anna, a conversation of no use or direction, when the cell phone woke him. He grabbed it, missed, the handset fell from the windowsill and landed somewhere on the bed. He found it by the light of the screen.


“Yes?” He couldn’t disguise his confusion.


“Inspector Griessel?”


“Yes.”


“Sorry to wake you. Tshabalala here, from Oudtshoorn detective branch. It’s about your assegai murderer.”


“Yes?” He felt for his watch on the windowsill.


“It seems he was in Uniondale last night.”


“Uniondale?” He found his watch and checked it.

0

4:21.


“We have a child batterer here, Frederik Johannes Scholtz, out on bail with his wife. Stabbed to death in his house last night.”


“Uniondale,” he repeated. “Where is Uniondale?”


“It’s about a hundred and twenty kilos east of here.”


It made no sense. Too far from the Cape. “How do you know it’s my assegai man?”


“The wife of the deceased. The suspect locked her in the bedroom. But she could hear what was going on . . .”


“Did she see him?”


“No, he locked the door while she was asleep. She heard Scholtz shout from inside the house. And he said the guy had an assegai.”


“Wait, wait,” said Griessel. “He locked her in the bedroom? How did he get the man out of the bedroom?”


“The woman says they don’t share a bed anymore, since the child died. He slept in the sitting room. She woke up when Scholtz began shouting. She heard him say: ‘He’s got an assegai.’ But there’s something else . . .”


“Yes?”


“She said he shouted it was a black man.”


“A black man?”


“She said he shouted: ‘There’s a kaffir in the house.’ ”


It didn’t fit. A black man? That’s not how he had pictured the assegai man in his head.


“How reliable that is, I’m not sure. It seems they were fighting in the dark.”


“What does the wound look like?”


“The fatal wound is in the chest, but it looks like he was trying to fend it off with his hands. There are some cuts. And there is furniture overturned and broken. They obviously fought a round or two.”


“The chest wound—is there an exit wound in the back?”


“Looks like it. The district surgeon is still busy.”


“Listen,” said Griessel. “I am going to ask our pathologist to phone him. There are a lot of forensic details they must see to. It’s important—”


“Relax,” said Tshabalala. “We have it under control.”

* * *

He showered and dressed before he phoned Pagel, who took the early call with grace. He passed on the numbers to call. Then he drove to the Quickshop at the Engen garage in Annandale Road. He bought a pile of pre-packed sandwiches and a large take-away coffee and drove to work. The streets were quiet, the office quieter still.


He sat down behind his desk and tried to think, pen in hand.


Union-fucking-dale. He opened a sandwich. Bacon and egg. He took the lid off the coffee. The steam drifted lazily upwards. He inhaled the aroma and sipped.


It would be a day or two before they knew whether it was the same assegai, regardless of how much pressure the commissioner exerted. He bit into the sandwich. It was reasonably fresh.


A black man. Scholtz wrestling with an attacker in the dark, frightened, he sees the long blade of the assegai. Had he made an assumption? Could he really see?


A black man with a pickup. In Uniondale. Big surprises. Too big. The sudden detour to a place five hundred kilos from the Cape.


They didn’t need a copycat, God knows. And this thing could easily spawn a lot of copycats. Because of the children.


He began to jot down notes in the crime report file in front of him.

* * *

“No, damnit,” said Matt Joubert and shook his head with finality.


Griessel and Ngubane were in the senior superintendent’s office at seven in the morning. All three were too frenetic to sit.


“I’ve—” said Ngubane.


“Matt, just a few days. Two or three,” said Griessel.


“Lord, Benny, can you see the trouble if he gets away? Flees the country? These fuckers have false passports like confetti. There’s no way . . .”


“I—” said Ngubane.


“We have the manpower, Matt. We can shut the whole place down. He won’t be able to move.”


Joubert still shook his head. “What do you think Boef Beukes will do? He has the biggest drug bust of his career and you want to let his big fish out on bail? He’ll squeal like a skinny pig.”


“Matt, last night I—” said Ngubane.


“Fuck Beukes. Let him squeal. We won’t get bait like this again.”


“No, damnit.”


“Listen to me,” barked Ngubane in frustration, and they looked at him. “Last night I talked to one of the people from Investigative Psychology at head office. She’s here in Cape Town. She’s helping Anwar with a serial rapist in Khayelitsha. She says if he gets the chance, Sangrenegra will go to the child. Whether she is alive or not. She says the chances are good that he will lead us to her.”


Joubert sat down heavily on his chair.


“That makes our case very strong,” said Griessel.


“Think about the child,” said Ngubane.


“Let the commissioner decide, Matt. Please.”


Joubert looked up at the pair of them leaning shoulder to shoulder over his desk. “Here comes trouble,” he said. “I can see it a mile away.”

* * *

Pagel phoned him before eight to say indications were that the Uniondale assegai was the same blade, but he would have to wait for the tissue samples being brought by car from Oudtshoorn. Griessel thanked the prof and called his team together in the task team room.


“There have been a few interesting developments,” he told them.


“Uniondale?” asked Vaughn Cupido with a know-it-all smirk.


“It was on Kfm news,” said Bushy Bezuidenhout, just to spoil Cupido’s moment.


“What did they say?”


“It’s all Artemis, Artemis, Artemis,” said Cupido. “Why must the media always give them a name?”


“It sells newspapers,” said Bezuidenhout.


“But this is radio . . .”


“What did they say?” asked Griessel louder.


“They said there is a suspicion that it is Artemis but that it can’t be confirmed,” said Keyter piously.


“Our assegai man is black,” said Griessel. That shut them up. He described what they knew of the sitting-room battle in the small town. “Then there is the question of the tire tracks from yesterday. Forensics says he drives a pickup, probably a two-by-four. Not yet a breakthrough, but it helps. It can help us focus . . .” He saw Helena Louw shaking her head. “Captain, you don’t agree?”


“I don’t know, Inspector.” She got up and crossed over to the notice board on the wall. There were newspaper clippings in tidy rows, separated into sections by pinned strands of different colored knitting wool.


“We researched the publicity surrounding each of the victims,” she said and pointed at the board. “The first three were in all the papers, and probably on the local radio too. But when we heard about Uniondale this morning we had a look.”


She tapped a finger on the single report in a red-wool section. “It was only in

Rapport.

”


“So what’s your point, sister?” asked Cupido.


“Afrikaans, genius,” said Bushy Bezuidenhout. “

Rapport

is Afrikaans. Blacks don’t read that paper.”


“I get it,” said Jamie Keyter, followed by: “Sorry, Benny.”


“Colored,” said Griessel. “Maybe he’s colored.”


“We colored chaps are always handy with a blade,” said Cupido proudly.


“Or it could just have been very dark in that house,” said Griessel.


Joubert appeared at the door with a somber face and beckoned Griessel to come out. “Excuse me,” he said and left. He shut the door behind him.


“You’ve got four days, Benny,” said the senior superintendent.


“The commissioner?”


Joubert nodded. “It’s just the political pressure. He sees the same dangers I do. But you have till Friday.”


“Right.”


“Jesus, Benny, I don’t like it. The risks are too high. If it goes bad . . . If you want to get the assegai man you will have to use the media. Organized Crime is highly pissed. The child is still missing. There’s just too much—”


“Matt, I will

make

it work.”


They looked each other in the eyes.


“I will make it work.”

* * *

He took ten of the uniformed members of the task team along with Bezuidenhout, Cupido and Keyter and they drove in four cars to the house in Shanklin Crescent, Camps Bay to investigate the lay of the land.


He knew the problem was the rear of the castle-like dwelling. It was built against the mountain, with a plastered wall to keep trespassers out, but it was less than two meters tall—and it was a large area.


“If he comes here and spots us, he’ll disappear—we won’t find him in the bushes. So the men lying here must not be seen, but must be able to see everything. If you see him, you must allow him to get over the wall. Everyone understand?”


They nodded solemnly.


“If I were him, I would come down the mountain. That’s where the cover is. The street is too problematic, too open. Only two entry points and it’s practically impossible to get into the house from that side. So we will deploy most of our people on the mountain.”


He checked his street map. “Kloof Nek runs up above, on the way to Clifton. If he doesn’t park there, he will at least drive up and down a few times. Which of you can handle a camera?”


Keyter raised his hand like a keen prep-school boy.


“Only Jamie?”


“I can try,” said a black constable with alert eyes.


“What’s your name?”


“Johnson Madaka, Inspector.”


“Johnson, you and Jamie must find a spot where you can watch the road. I want photos of every pickup that passes. Jamie, talk to the photography guys about cameras. If you have trouble, phone me.”


“Okay, Benny,” said Keyter, pleased with his task.


He divided them into two teams—one for day and one for night. He determined every point on the street and against the mountain that would be manned. He asked Bezuidenhout to find out if any house in the street was empty, and whether they could use it. “I’m going to talk to Cloete. The media should start humming by tonight. All of you go home and rest, but at six I want the night shift in place.

* * *

He walked into Joubert’s office and found Cloete and the senior superintendent wearing graveyard faces. Cloete said: “I want you to know that I had nothing to do with this, Benny.”


“With what?” he asked and Cloete handed him the

Argus.


COP SCRAP OVER ARTEMIS


Front page.


“They haven’t got news, that’s the fucking problem,” said Cloete.


He read the article.

* * *

Senior police officials are up in arms over the appointment of a confirmed alcoholic as leader of the task team investigating the Artemis vigilante murders in the Peninsula. A source within the senior ranks of the SAPS called it “a huge blunder” and “a mess-up just waiting to happen.”


The top cop in the firing line is veteran Serious and Violent Crimes Unit Detective Inspector Bennie Griessel, who was reportedly admitted to Tygerberg Hospital just a fortnight ago after an alleged drinking binge. A hospital spokesperson confirmed that Griessel had been admitted, but declined to comment on his illness.

* * *

“Fuck,” said Griessel, and all he could think about were his children.


“Benny . . .” said Joubert and Griessel knew what was coming and said: “You’re not taking me off this case, Sup.”


“Benny . . .”


“Not a fock, Matt. Not a fock, you won’t take me off.”


“Just give me a chance . . .”


“Who are these cunts?” he asked Cloete. “Who gave them this?”


“Benny, I swear I don’t know.”


“Benny,” said Joubert. “This is not my call. You know I wouldn’t take you off if it was my call.”


“Then I’m coming along to the commissioner.”


“No. You have enough to do. You have to get the media sorted. Go. Let me talk to the commissioner.”


“Don’t take me off, Matt. I’m telling you.”


“I will do my best.” But Griessel could read his body language.

* * *

He struggled to concentrate on his strategy with Cloete. He wanted to know who the shits were who had sold him out to the press. His eyes strayed back to the copy of the

Argus

lying on Cloete’s desk.


Jamie Keyter, the well-known newspaper informant? He would kill him, the little shit. But he had his doubts: it was too political for Keyter, too sophisticated. It was interdepartmental. Organized Crime must have got wind of his plans. That was what he suspected. He had four people from Domestic Violence in his task team. And Domestic Violence fell under OC in the new structure, God knows why. Was Captain Helena Louw the tattle tale? Perhaps not her. One of the other three?


When he had finished with Cloete, he drove into the city. He bought a newspaper at a streetlight and parked in a loading zone in Caledon Street. The SAPS Unit for Organized Crime was located in an old office building just around the corner from Caledon Square. He had to take the lift up to the third floor and he could feel the pressure of rage inside him and he knew he must slow down or he would stuff up everything. But what did it matter, they were going to pull him anyway.


He walked in and asked the black woman at reception where he could find Boef Beukes and she asked, “Is he expecting you?”


“For sure,” he said with emphasis, newspaper in hand.


“I’ll find out if he can see you.” She reached out for the telephone and he thought what shit this was, policemen hiding behind secretaries like bank managers, and he slapped his ID card down in front of her and said, “Just show me where his office is.”


With wide-open eyes that clearly showed her disapproval, she said, “Second door on the left,” and he walked out down the corridor. The door was open. Beukes sat there with his fucking ridiculous little Western Province hat. There was another detective present, seated, collar-and-fucking-tied, and Griessel threw the newspaper down in front of him and said: “Was it your people, Boef?”


Beukes looked up at Griessel and then down at the paper. Griessel stood with his hands on the desk. Beukes read. The detective in the suit just sat and looked at Griessel.


“Ouch,” said Beukes after the second paragraph. But not terribly surprised.


“Fuck ouch, Boef. I want to know.”


Beukes pushed the newspaper calmly back to him and said: “Why don’t you sit down a moment, Benny?”


“I don’t want to sit.”


“Was I ever a backstabber?”


“Boef, just tell me—do you guys have anything to do with this?”


“Benny, you insult me. There are only ten or twelve of us left from the old days. Why would I nail you? You should look for traitors at Violent Crimes. I hear you are one big happy family there after all the affirmative action.”


“You are pissed, Boef, about Sangrenegra. You have the motive.” He glanced at the other detective sitting there with a taut face.


“Motive?” Beukes queried. “Do you think we really care if you keep Sangrenegra busy for a few days? Do you think it makes a difference to us . . . ?”


“Look me in the eyes, Boef. Look me in the eyes and tell me it wasn’t you.”


“I understand that you’re upset. I would have been too. But just calm down so you can think straight; was I ever a backstabber?”


Griessel examined him. He saw the mileage on Beukes’s face. Police miles. He had them too. They had been together in the dark days of the eighties. Copped the same deal, ate the same shit. And Beukes had never been a backstabber.

* * *

Griessel sat in the back of the courtroom and waited for the moment when the state prosecutor said, “The state does not oppose bail

per se,

your honor.” He watched Sangrenegra and saw his surprise, how he stiffened beside his lawyer.


“But we do ask that it be set at the highest possible figure, at least two million rand. And that the defendant’s passport be held. We also ask the court to rule that the defendant reports to the Camps Bay Police Station every day before twelve noon. That is all, Your Honor.”


The magistrate shuffled papers around, made some notes, and then he set bail at two million rand. Lawyer and client conferred under their breath and he wished he knew what was said. Just before Sangrenegra left the court, his eyes searched the public benches. Griessel waited until the Colombian spotted him. And then he grinned at him.


Sangrenegra’s shoulders sagged, as if a great burden had come to rest on them.

* * *

He was on the way to Faizal’s pawnshop in Maitland when Tim Ngubane phoned him.


“The blood in Sangrenegra’s BMW belongs to the kid. The DNA matches,” he said.


“Fuck,” said Griessel.


“So you’ll have to watch him very carefully, Benny.”


“We will,” he said and he wanted to add: if I am still on the case by tonight. He thought better of it.


“Tim, I have a suspicion Organized Crime have been after Sangrenegra longer than they let on. Just a feeling. I have just come from Beukes. He knows something. He’s hiding something.”


“What are you saying, Benny?”


“I wonder more and more whether they were following Sangrenegra before he abducted the child.”


Ngubane paused before he answered. “Are you saying they know something? About the kid?”


“I’m not saying anything. I’m just wondering. Perhaps you can try and find out. Talk to Captain Louw. She’s from Domestic Violence, but she’s working on my task team. Maybe her loyalty will be to the child. Maybe she can find out.”


“Benny, if they do know something . . . I can’t believe it.”


“I know. I’m also having trouble with it. But see it from their point of view. They are messing about with Nigerian syndicates distributing crack in Sea Point when suddenly they come across something a hundred times bigger. Something that makes them look like real policemen. Colombia. The Holy Grail. There was a shithouse full of drugs in that storeroom. If it were me, I would have gone to the national commissioner and made a stink about jurisdiction. But they just sit there. Why? They know something. They’re busy with something. And I think they have been busy with it for quite some time.”


“Geeeeez,” said Ngubane.


“But we’ll have to see.”


“I’ll go talk to the captain.”


“Tim, the number of that shrink . . . do you still have it?” asked Griessel.


“The one who was down here from Pretoria? The profiler?”


“Yes.”


“I’ll text it.”


35.


Faizal said the bass guitar was not in the market; the rapper from Blackheath had paid up and collected it. Griessel said what he was looking for now was a CD player, nothing fancy, just something for listening to music at home.


“Car, portable, or hi-fi component?” asked Faizal.


Griessel thought about it and said portable, but with good bass.


“Portable with speakers or portable with headphones?”


Headphones would be better in the flat. Faizal took a Sony Walkman out and said: “This is the D-NE seven-ten, it can also play MP threes, sixty-four-track programmable, but the most important thing is, it has an equalizer and bass boost, the sound quality is awesome, Sarge. Great headphones. And just in case you are chilling in the bath and it falls off the soap dish, it’s waterproof too.”


“How much?”


“Four hundred, Sarge.”


“Jissis, L.L., that’s robbery. Forget it.”


“Sarge, this is brand new, slightly shop-soiled, no previous owner. Three fifty.”


Griessel took out his wallet and held two hundred-rand notes out to Faizal.


“Think of my children, Sarge,” groaned the shopkeeper. “They must eat too.”

* * *

He stood in the street beside his car with his new CD player in his hand and felt like going home, locking the door and listening to the music his son had lent him.


Because they

were

going to pull him off the case. He knew it. It was too political to keep an alky in charge. Too much pressure. The image of the Service. Even though he and the other dinosaurs like Matt Joubert talked about the Force, it was the Service now. The politically correct, criminal-procedures-regulated, emasculated and disempowered Service, where an alcoholic could not be the leader of a task team. Don’t even talk about the fucking constitutional protection of criminals’ rights. So let them pull him, let them give the whole fucking caboodle to someone else, one of the Young Turks, and he would watch from the sidelines as chaos descended.


He unlocked his car and got in. He opened the box of the CD player, shifted the plastic flap and pushed in the batteries. He leaned across and took the CD out of the cubbyhole. He scanned the titles on the back of the jewel case. Various artists performing Anton Goosen’s songs. He knew almost none of them.

“Waterblommetjies.”

Lord, that took you back. Twenty years? No. Thirty! Thirty years ago, Sonja Herholdt sang

“Waterblommetjies”

and the whole country sang along. He had a crush on her, then. A vague teenage desire. I will cherish-and-protect-and-regularly-service-you. She was so . . . pure. And innocent. Darling of the people, the Princess Di of the Afrikaners before the world knew Princess Di. With those big eyes and that sweet voice and the blonde hair that was so . . . he didn’t know what the style was called, but it was seventies cool, if anything could be “cool” back then.


He had been sixteen. Puberty in Parow. All he could think about in those days was sex. Not always about the deed itself, but how to get some. With the girls in Parow in the seventies it was well nigh impossible. Middle-class Afrikaners, the iron grip of the Dutch Reformed Church and girls who didn’t want to make the same mistakes as their mothers, so that the best a guy could do was perhaps some heavy petting in the back of the bioscope. If you were lucky. If you could draw the attention of one. So he began to play bass guitar to get their attention, since he was no athlete or academic giant, he was just another little fucker with a sprinkling of pimples and an ongoing battle with school rules to grow his hair long.


In Standard Nine at a garage party there was this four-man band, guys of his age from Rondebosch. English-speaking

Souties,

not very good, the drummer was so-so and the rhythm guitarist knew only six chords. But the girls didn’t care. He saw how they looked at the band members. And he wanted to be looked at like that. So he talked to the leader when the band took a break. He told him he played a bit of acoustic and a bit of piano by ear, but the guy said get a bass guitar, china, because everyone played six-string and drums, but bass guitarists were hard to find.


So he began to look into it and he bought a bass for a knockdown price from an army guy in Goodwood whose Ford Cortina needed new rings. He taught himself in his room, with the help of a book that he bought in Bothners in Voortrekker Road. He dreamed dreams and he kept his ear to the ground until he heard of a band in Bellville that was looking for a bass. Five-piece: lead, rhythm, drums, organ and bass. Before he knew what happened he was on the stage of an English-medium primary-school hall laying down a foundation of Uriah Heep’s “Stealin” and he sang the fucking song—he, Benny fucking Griessel, stood in front of the teen girls in an undersized T-shirt and his Afrikaans haircut and he sang, “Take me across the water, ’cause I got no place to hide, I done the rancher’s daughter and it sure did hurt his pride,” and they all looked at him, the girls looked at him with those eyes.


It only brought him one sexual experience while he was at school. What he hadn’t known was that while the band played, the guys who were dancing had the advantage. By the time the party broke up, all the girls had to go home. But it had given him the music. The deep notes he picked off the strings and via the amplifier, resonating through his whole body. The knowledge that his bass was the basis of every song, the substructure, the defining foundation from which the lead guitarist could deviate or the organist could drift away, always to return to the steadfast form that Benny laid down. Even though he knew he would never be good enough to go pro.


Unlike the police work. He knew from the start that was his thing. That was the place where all the connections came together, that was how his brain was wired.


Now they were going to pull him off the assegai case and he put the CD down and took out his phone, because he wanted to talk to the psychologist before they posted him. He wanted to test a few of his theories before they took him off.

* * *

She met him at the Newport Deli in Mouille Point, because she was “mad about the place.” They sat outside on the pavement at a high, round table.


Captain Ilse Brody, Investigative Psychology Unit, Serious and Violent Crime, Head Office,

he read on the card she passed across the little table. She was a smoker, a woman in her thirties with a wedding ring and short black hair. “You’re lucky,” she said. “I fly back tonight.” Relaxed, self-assured. Accustomed to the man’s world she worked in.


He remembered her. He had been on a course she presented two or three years ago. He didn’t mention it, as he couldn’t remember how sober he had been.


They ordered coffee. She ordered a flat biscuit with chocolate on top and nuts underneath with some Italian-sounding name that he didn’t quite catch.


“Do you know about the assegai murders?” he asked.


“Everyone down here is talking about them, but I don’t have the details. I hear the media first speculated that it was a woman.”


“Couldn’t be a woman. The weapon, the MO, everything . . .”


“There’s another reason too.”


“Oh?”


“I’ll get to that. Tell me everything first.”


He told her. He liked the intense way she listened. He began with Davids and finished with Uniondale. He knew she wanted details of the crime scene. He gave her everything he knew. But two things he withheld: the pickup and the fact that the suspect might be black.


“Mmm,” she said, and turned her cigarette lighter over and over in her right hand. Her hands were tiny. They made him think of an old person’s hands. There were fine gray hairs between the black at her temples.


“The fact that he confronts them in their own homes is interesting. The first deduction is that he is intelligent. Above average. And determined. Orderly, organized. He has guts.”


Griessel nodded. He agreed with the guts part, but the intelligence was a surprise.


“It will be difficult to determine a vocational group. Not a laborer, he’s too clever for that. Something that allows him to be alone so he doesn’t have to explain how he spends his time. He can drive to Uniondale without anyone asking questions. Sales? His own business? He must be quite fit. Reasonably strong.”


She took a cigarette from a white packet with a red square on it and put it in her mouth. Griessel liked her mouth. He wondered what effect her work had on her. To use the gruesomeness of death to paint a mental picture of the suspect, until she could see him, vocation and all.


“He’s white. Three white victims in white neighborhoods. It would be difficult if he wasn’t white.” She lit the cigarette.


Exactly, he thought.


“In his thirties, I would say.” She drew on the cigarette and blew a long white plume into the air. It was windless here where the mountain blocked the southeaster. “But what you really want to know is why he is using an assegai. And why he is killing people.”


He wondered why he was so conscious of her mouth. He shifted his eyes to a point on her forehead, so that he could concentrate.


“I think the assegai is one of two things. Either he is trying to convince you he is not white, to put you off the trail. Or he is looking for media sensation. Is there any indication that he has made contact with the media yet?”


Griessel shook his head.


“Then I would go with the first option. But I’m guessing.”


“Why doesn’t he just shoot them? That’s what I’m wondering.”


“I think it must be connected to the why,” she said, and drew again on the cigarette. There was a masculine manner to her smoking, probably because she always smoked with men. “It definitely isn’t because he was molested or abused himself. In that case the victims and the MO would have been very different. That’s another reason it has to be a man. When men are damaged, if they are abused or molested, they want to do the same to others. Women are different. If there is damage from a young age, they don’t do it to others. They do it to themselves. Therefore not a woman. If it had been a man who was damaged, his target would have been children. But this one is going for the ones who are doing the damage. And he is psychologically strong. What makes more sense to me is that a child of his has been a victim. Or at least a close member of his family. A younger sister or brother perhaps. A personal vendetta. A pure vigilante. They are rare. In our country it is usually a group with a very specific dynamic.”


“And the assegai?”


“I have to admit the assegai bothers me. Let’s think about stabbing versus shooting. Stabbing is much more personal. Intimate and direct. That fits a personal loss. It makes him feel that he himself is exacting retribution. There’s no distance between him and the victim, he isn’t acting on behalf of a group, he represents only himself. But he could have done that with a knife. Because he is smart, he knows a knife can be messy. Also less effective. He wants to get it over quickly. There is no pathology of hanging about at the scene. He leaves no messages. But maybe he wants to intimidate them with the assegai; maybe it’s a tool to gain immediate control, so that he can do his work and be done with it. Now I’m speculating freely, because I can’t be sure.” She stubbed out the cigarette in the small glass ashtray.


He told her he also thought the suspect was white. And he still thought so, but there was evidence to the contrary. He told her about Uniondale and the fact that the child abuse report only appeared in

Rapport.

She pressed the tip of a finger on the biscuit crumbs in her plate and licked them off. She did it again. He wondered if she knew it made him think of sex, and then he was faintly surprised that he was thinking of sex at all and eventually he said: “If he is black, you have much bigger problems.”


A third time the finger went to the plate and then to her mouth and he looked at her mouth again. An eyetooth, just the one, was canted to the inside.


“I would also put more check marks against intelligence and motivation. And that puts another light on the assegai. Now we start to talk of symbolism, of traditional values and traditional justice. He’s sophisticated, at home in a city environment. He’s not a country boy—it takes too much skill to execute three white victims in white neighborhoods without being seen. He reads Afrikaans newspapers. He is aware of the police investigation. That’s possibly why he went to Uniondale. To divide attention. You should not underestimate him.”


“If he’s black.”


She nodded. “Improbable but not impossible.” She looked at her watch. “I will have to finish up,” she said and opened her handbag.


Quickly he told her about Sangrenegra and asked if she thought the ambush would work.


She held her purse in her hand. “It would have been better if you could have set your trap outside Cape Town. He feels the pressure here.”


“I’m paying,” he said. “But will he come?”


She took out a ten-rand note. “I’ll pay half,” she said and put the money under the saucer with the bill. “He will come. If you play your cards right with the media, he will come.”

* * *

He drove along the coast, because he wanted to go to Camps Bay again. He saw the new developments on the sea front in Green Point. Big blocks of flats under construction, with advertising boards romantically depicting the finished product.

From R1.4 million.

He wondered if it would revive this part of the city. What would they do with the

bergie

hobos that lived on the commonage behind? And the old, dilapidated buildings in between, with paint peeling off in long strips and the rooms rented out by the hour?


That made him think of Christine van Rooyen and that he should tell her what they were planning, but he would have to pick his words carefully.


Along Coast Road through Sea Point. It looked a lot better here by the sea. But he knew it was a false front—further inland was erosion and decay, dark corners and dirty alleys. He stopped at a traffic light and saw the scaffolding on a sea-front building. He wondered who would win this battle. It was Europe against Africa—rich Britons and Germans against Nigerian and Somalian drug networks, the South Africans marginalized as spectators. It depended on how much money poured in. If it was enough, the money would win and crime would find another place, southern suburbs, he thought. Or the Cape Flats.


The money ought to win, because the view was stunningly beautiful. That’s what money did. Reserved the most beautiful for the rich. And shunted policemen off to Brackenfell.


At the traffic circle he turned left in Queens, then right in Victoria, all along the sea, through Bantry Bay. A Maserati, a Porsche and a BMW X5 stood side by side in front of a block of flats. He had never felt at home here. It was another country.


Clifton. A woman and two young children walked over the road. She was carrying a big beach bag and a folded umbrella. She was wearing a bikini and a piece of material around her hips, but it blew open. She was tall and pretty, long brown hair down the length of her back. She looked down the road, past him. He was invisible to her in his middle-class police car.


He drove on to where Lower Kloof Street turned up left and then took the road round the back, to Round House. He drove up and down three times and tried to assess it as the assegai man would. He couldn’t park here, it was too open. He would have to walk a long way, above maybe, from the Signal Hill Road side. Or below. So that, when he had finished with Sangrenegra, he could flee downhill.


Or would he choose not to come through the bushes? Would he chance the street?


He has guts,

Ilse Brody had said. He has guts

and

he’s clever.


He phoned Bushy Bezuidenhout and asked him where he was. Bezuidenhout said they had found a house diagonally opposite Sangrenegra’s. Belonged to an Italian who lived overseas. They had got the keys from the estate agent. They were not allowed to smoke in the house. Griessel said he was on his way.


His cell phone rang almost immediately. “Griessel.”


“Benny, it’s John Afrika.”


The commissioner.


Fuck, he thought.


36.


He wanted to shower, eat and sleep.


Thobela was driving down York Street in George when he spotted the Protea Forester’s Lodge. It was nameless enough for him. He parked in front of the building and had already put a hand on his bag when the newsreader began to talk about the Colombian and the child over the radio.


He listened with one hand still on the carry straps of his bag, the other on the door latch and his eyes on the front door of the hotel.


He sat like this for three or four minutes after he had heard everything. Then he let go of the bag, started the pickup and put it in reverse. He made a U-turn and drove down York Street, turned right into C.J. Langenhoven Street. He headed for the Outeniqua Pass.

* * *

The policemen who should have been guarding Christine van Rooyen’s door were not there. Griessel knocked and assumed they would be inside.


“Who’s that?” her voice sounded faint from the other side of the door. He gave his name. The guards were not inside, or she would not have answered. As the door opened he saw her face first. It didn’t look good. She was pale and her eyes were swollen.


“Come in.” She was wearing a jersey, although it wasn’t cold. Her shoulders were hunched. He suspected she knew she would not see her child again. She sat down on the couch. He saw the television was showing a soapie, the sound muted. Is that how she got time to pass?


“Do you know he was granted bail?”


She nodded.


“Do you know we arranged it?”


“They told me.” Her voice was toneless, as if she was beyond caring.


“We think he will lead us to Sonia.”


Christine just stared at the television, where a man and woman stood facing each other. They were arguing.


He said: “It’s a possibility. We have forensic psychologists helping us. They say the chances are good he will go to her.”


She turned her eyes back on him. She knows, he thought. She knows now.


“Would you like coffee?” she asked.


He considered a moment. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Can I go and buy food? Take aways?”


“I’m not hungry.”


“When did you last eat?”


She didn’t answer.


“You have to eat. What can I get you? Even if it’s something small.”


“Whatever.”


He stood. “Pizza?”


“Wait,” she said and went into the kitchen. A Mr. Delivery booklet was stuck to the door of the big two-door fridge with a magnet. “They can deliver,” she said and brought the booklet to him. She sat down again. “I don’t want you to leave now.”


“Where are the two policemen that were at the door?”


“I don’t know.”


He flipped through the booklet. “What do you like?”


“Anything. Just not garlic or onion.” Then she reconsidered. “It doesn’t matter. Anything.”


He took out his cell phone, phoned and placed an order. He hesitated when asked for the address and she provided it. He said he had an official call to make and asked if he could go out on the balcony. She nodded. He slid the door open and went out. The wind was blowing. He closed the door behind him and found Ngubane’s number on the cell phone.


“Tim, are you aware that Organized Crime’s people aren’t guarding the mother anymore?”


“No. I haven’t been there today. I called, but she didn’t say anything.”


“Jissis, they’re idiots.”


“Maybe they think she isn’t in danger anymore.”


“Maybe they think it’s not their problem now.”


“What can we do?”


“I haven’t any spare people. My entire team is busy in Camps Bay.”


“I’ll talk to the sup.”


“Thanks, Tim.”


He gazed out over the city. The last rays of the sun reflected off the windows of the hotels in the Strand area. Was she in danger? His SVC team was watching Sangrenegra. His four henchmen were still in the cells.


Boef Beukes would know. He would know how big Sangrenegra’s contingent was. How many there were who did not live at the Camps Bay place. There had to be more. Local hangers-on, assistants, people involved: you don’t run such a big drug operation with only five people. He called SVC and asked if Captain Helena Louw was still there. They put him through and he asked her if she had Boef Beukes’s cell phone number.


“Just a minute,” she said. He waited until she came back and gave it to him.


“Thanks, Captain.” Could he trust her? With Domestic Violence part of the Organized Crime structure? Where did her loyalties lie?


He called Beukes. “It’s Benny, Boef. I want to know why you withdrew Christine van Rooyen’s protection.”


“It’s your show now.”


“Jissis, Boef, don’t you think you might have told us?”


“Did you tell us anything? When you decided to hang Carlos up for bait. Did you have the decency to consult with us?”


“You feel fuck-all for her safety?”


“It’s a question of manpower.” But there was something in his voice. He was lying.


“Fuck,” said Griessel. He ended the call and stood with his handset in his hand thinking, that’s the problem with the fucking Service, the jealousy, the competition, everyone had to fucking PEP, everyone was measured by Performance Enhancement Procedure and everyone’s balls were on the block. Now they were stabbing each other in the back.


Commissioner John Afrika had phoned him while he was on his way to Christine van Rooyen. Benny, are you sober? he had asked. He had said yes, Commissioner, and John Afrika had asked him, Are you going to stay sober and he said yes, Commissioner. Afrika said, I will get the people who ran to the papers, Benny. Matt Joubert tells me you are the best he has. He says you are on the wagon and that’s good enough for me, Benny, you hear? I will stand by you and I’m going to tell the papers that. But, fuck, Benny, if you drop me . . .


Because if he dropped the commissioner, then the commissioner’s PEP was blown to hell.


But he appreciated it that the man was standing by him. A colored man. He was thrown on the mercy of a colored man who had to swallow so much crap from the whites in the old days. How much mercy had John Afrika received, then?


He had said: “I won’t drop you, Commissioner.”


“Then we understand each other, Benny.” There were a few beats of silence over the air, then John Afrika sighed and said, “This backstabbing gets me down. I can’t get a grip on it.”


Griessel thought over his conversation with Beukes. Organized Crime were onto something. He knew it. That’s why they went to the papers. That’s why they withdrew the guard detail.


What?


He opened the sliding door; he couldn’t hang around out there forever.


Before he came in, while he was putting his phone away, he tried to think like Boef Beukes. Then he understood and he froze. Christine van Rooyen was OC’s bait. They were using

her

as an ambush. But for whom? For Sangrenegra?


His visit to Beukes’s office. The other detective there, the one in the suit and tie. Nobody dressed like that anymore. Who the fuck was that? The Scorpions, the special unit for the public prosecutor?


Never. Beukes and Co. would rather slit their wrists in the lavvy than work with the Scorpions.


He became aware that Christine had got up and was standing watching him.


“Are you okay?”


“Yes,” he said. But would

she

be okay?

* * *

In the sultry late afternoon of a Highveld summer, at the New Road filling station between the old Pretoria Road and Sixteenth Avenue in Midrand, the stolen BMW 32

0

d stopped in front of the Quickshop. John Khoza and Andrew Ramphele got out and walked through the automatic glass doors. They walked casually up to the fast-food counter in the back of the shop.


While Ramphele ordered two chicken burgers, Khoza inspected the four corners of the large room. There was only one security camera. It was against the eastern wall opposite the cash register.


He murmured something to Ramphele, who nodded.

* * *

Griessel’s phone rang while they waited for the pizzas.


“Benny, the boss says we can give her Witness Protection, but it’s going to take time,” said Ngubane.


“How much time?”


“Probably only tomorrow. That’s the best we can do.”


“Okay, Tim. Thanks.”


“What are you going to do? For tonight?”


“I’ll make a plan,” he said.

* * *

Khoza waited until the last of the four clients in the shop had paid and left. Then he walked up to the woman behind the cash register, shoved his hand in the back of his denim jacket and drew out a pistol. He shoved it against her face and said, “Just open it up, sister, and give us the cash. Nobody will get hurt.”

* * *

“I’ll have to sleep on your couch tonight,” said Griessel.


Christine looked up at him and nodded.


“We will place you in Witness Protection tomorrow. They are organizing it now, but it takes a little time.”


“What does that mean?” she asked.


“It depends.”


There was a knock on the door. Griessel got up and took out his Z88 service pistol. “That must be our pizzas,” he said.

* * *

The Toyota Microbus of the South African Police Services Task Force Unit stopped at the filling station for petrol. The nine policemen were stiff from hours of sitting and thirsty. They had last stretched their legs at Louis Trichardt. They all got out. The young black constable, the sharpshooter of the team, knew it was his duty as the youngest to take the orders for cool drinks.


“What do you want to drink?” he asked.


That was when two men came out of the Quickshop, each carrying a pistol in one hand and a green, purple and red plastic bag in the other.


“Hey,” said the sharpshooter and dropped a hand to the firearm on his hip holster. The other eight members of the Task Force team looked instinctively at what the constable had seen. For a moment they could hardly believe their eyes. For a very short moment.

* * *

“Just now, you said you did not want me to leave. Why?” asked Griessel, but her mouth was full of pizza and she had to finish chewing before she answered.


“You are the first person I have seen today,” she said and left it at that. He could see she was struggling not to cry.


He understood. He visualized her day. Her child was missing, probably dead. The awful worry and doubt. Fear perhaps, because the guards were gone. Alone, between these four walls. “I’m sorry,” he said.


“You needn’t be sorry. It’s my fault. Only mine.”


“How can you say that?”


She closed her eyes. “If I wasn’t a whore, I would never have met him.”


The first thing that popped into his head was to ask her why she had become a whore. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. She just shook her head, keeping her eyes closed. He wanted to get up and go over and put his arm around her shoulders.


He stayed where he was. “It’s a psychological thing,” he said. “We see it often. Victims or their families blame themselves. You can’t be responsible for someone else’s behavior.”


She didn’t react. He looked down at the pizza on the plate in front of him and pushed it away and wiped his hands on a paper serviette. He looked at her. She was wearing jeans. She sat on the chair with her bare feet folded under her. Her long blonde hair was half covering her face. What could he say to her? What could anyone say to him if it had been his child?


“I actually came to tell you about something else.”


She opened her eyes. “I don’t want to hear bad news.”


“I don’t think it is bad news. It’s just that I think you have the right to know. You know about the Artemis affair the papers are writing about?”


With a sudden movement of her head she tossed her hair back and said, “Yes. And I wish he would come and kill Carlos.” She said it with hate he could understand.


“It’s my case. The assegai man. I want to use Carlos to catch him.”


“How?”


“We know he picks his victims when the media writes about them. About their crimes. Today we gave the media a lot of information about Carlos. About how he . . . abducted Sonia. About his drug-dealing background. We think it will lure the assegai man.”


“And then?”


“That’s another reason we’re watching Carlos so carefully.”


It was some time before she answered. He saw the process in her face, the eyes narrowing, the lips thinning. “So it’s not about Sonia,” she said.


“It

is

about her. All the indications are that he will lead us to her.” He tried hard to be convincing, but he felt guilty. He had told Sangrenegra what they were going to do. This morning in court he had looked Carlos in the eyes and reinforced the message: you are bait. He knew Carlos was going nowhere, because Carlos knew the police were watching him. The chances that the Colombian was going to lead them anywhere were nil.


“I don’t believe you.”


Could she hear from the tone of his voice that he was lying? “My black colleague talked to the psychologist this morning. She said people like Carlos go back to their victims. I give you my word. It’s true. It’s a chance. It’s possible. I can’t swear it will happen, but it’s possible.”


Her face altered, the venom dissolved and he saw she was about to cry. He said: “It’s possible,” again, but to no avail.


She put her face in her hands and said: “Leave him. Let him kill Carlos.” Then her shoulders heaved. He couldn’t take it anymore. Guilt and pity drove him to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I understand,” he said.


She shook her head.


“I have children too,” he said, and inhaled her smell, perfume and the faint scent of perspiration.


He sat on the arm of the chair. He put his hand behind her neck onto her far shoulder. His fingers patted her comfortingly. He felt a bit of an idiot because she was unyielding under his touch. “I understand,” he repeated.


Then she moved and he felt her soften and she pressed her head against him. With her arm around his hip she wept.


37.


He thought many thoughts while she leaned against him, shrunken under his arm. For the first time since Anna had kicked him out, some sort of calm came over him. A kind of peace.


He looked around the flat. The sitting room and kitchen were one big room separated by a white melamine counter. A passage led off to the right behind him. To the bedrooms? He noted the large fridge and big flat-screen television. New stuff. A child’s drawings of multicolored animals were stuck up on the fridge with magnets. A crocodile and a rhinoceros and a lion. He noted the coffee machine in the kitchen, shiny chrome, with spouts and knobs. But the chairs at the counter were scuffed; one sitting-room chair was old and worn. Two worlds in one.


Leaning against the wall to the left of him was a painting. Large and original. A rural landscape, a blue mountain in the distance and a green valley, the grass in the veld growing high and verdant. A young girl was running through the grass. She was a tiny figure on the left, dwarfed by the landscape, but he could distinguish the blonde hair bouncing up behind. Four or five steps ahead of her there was a red balloon, with a string hanging down, a thin, barely visible black stripe against the blue of the mountain. The girl’s hand was stretched out to it. The grass bent away from her. It must be the wind, he thought. Blowing the balloon away from her. He wondered if she were running fast enough to catch it.


He had a partial erection.


She wouldn’t be able to feel it, as she wasn’t in contact there. Her breathing was quieter now, but he couldn’t see her face.


He crossed his legs to hide his state. He couldn’t help it; there were a lot of things affecting him here. Knowing that sex was her job. She was attractive. And vulnerable. Hurt. Something in him that responded to that. Something that somewhere in his brain did surveys and sent out primitive orders: take your chance, the time is right. He knew that was how his head worked. He—and the other members of his sex. Also the mentally ill, those for whom it was more than just an opportunity for sexual victory. Like serial murderers. They searched out the weak, soft targets for their dark deeds. Often prostitutes. Not always deliberately, with preconceived reasoning and planned strategy. Instinct. Somewhere, in the pre-alcoholic period a memory stirred, something he had worked out for himself. He was a good policeman because he understood others through self-knowledge. He could use his own weaknesses, his own fears and instincts, because he knew them. He could magnify them, amplify them like turning up an imaginary volume control to the level where they made other people commit murder or rape, lie or steal. As he sat there he realized it was one of the things that had made him start drinking. The slow realization that he was like them and they were like him, that he was not a better man. As he had felt last night or the previous, he couldn’t remember which, when he had seen Anna and her young, imaginary lover in his mind and the jealousy had turned on the switches with an evil hand and he had wanted to shoot. If he were to find them like that and he had his service pistol on his hip, he would shoot the fucker, between the eyes, no fucking doubt about that.


But that was not the main reason he drank. No. It was not the only reason. There were others. Large and small. He began to realize it all now. He was a rough stone and he was cut with a thousand facets and it was his bad luck that this shape fitted so well into the crooked hole of alcoholism.


The thing that he was had consequences. The way in which the fine wiring of his brain made connections, had implications. It enabled him to view a crime scene and

see

things; it also wakened an urge in him to hunt. It made the search sweet; inside his skull he experienced an addictive pleasure. But the selfsame wiring made him drink. If you wanted to hunt and search, you had to look death in the eye. And what if death frightened you? Then you drank, because it was part of you. And if you drank long enough, then the alcohol created its own wiring, its own thoughts, its own justification. Its own thick glasses through which you saw yourself and the world.


What do you do about it? What do you do about the consequences, the opposite sides of the coin, if it fucked up your life? Leave the police and go and drive a white Toyota Tazz for Chubb Security around Brackenfell’s streets at night and leave notes under people’s doors?

You left your window open. Your alarm went off.

Or do you sit behind the small black-and-white screens of a shopping center’s closed-circuit television and watch the dolled-up mommies spending the daddies’ money?


And you never hunt again and you die here inside.


He experienced a sudden feeling of despair, like someone trapped in a labyrinth. He needed to think of other things—of the woman leaning against him and the fact that it satisfied a need. The need to be held. That he needed to be touched. Ever since he had been thrown out of his house, he had an increasing need for it.


He wondered about her.


Why had she found it necessary to become a whore? An

Afrikaner

girl. Not as beautiful as a model. Attractive rather, sexy.


Did all women have this potential? Did it lie hidden until circumstances arose? Or was it, like his own polished facets, connected to a specific combination of angles and surfaces?


It hadn’t been necessary for him to come around here tonight. But it had been in the back of his mind all day: he wanted to look in.


Was it coincidence that he had recalled his first experience of sex with such clarity on his way here? At the same time he had been wondering how alcohol and memory interacted. He had a mental image of synapses submerged in brandy; while he stayed sober the level kept dropping and, like a dam drying up, exposed old, rusty objects.


Not all the memories were pleasant, but he focused on those from long ago: the one of the girl with the gold chain around her neck and her name in gold letters against her throat. YVETTE. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with blue-and-white horizontal stripes and she had used too much perfume. But it smelt heavenly.


There were odd details that he had remembered this afternoon. They had a gig in Welgemoed against the Tygerberg at the sixteenth birthday party of some or other rich man’s son. They set up beside the swimming pool on imported ceramic tiles. The rich wanker had kept hanging around and asking, “Have you got rubbers for the feet of the drums?” When he was a distance away, the drummer said, “I have rubbers for your daughter,” and they all laughed. The rich wanker, one of those men who dress as if they were still sixteen too, stopped and asked, “What did you say?” The drummer said: “I said I have rubbers,” but with a smirk. The rich man stood there knowing he was making a fool of himself, but there was not a lot he could do about it.


When they played, the girl was there. She moved at the edge of the big group, half in the twilight. She wasn’t truly part of it. Or didn’t want to be. Sometimes she danced on her own. She looked at him and he noticed her eyes first, big brown eyes that looked sad. Long straight brown hair. Then he noticed her neat little breasts and pretty round bottom and he saw a potential opportunity and began to play to her.


The prospect was nearly too much for him. He was afraid his hopes were unrealistic. He waited until late that night, until their very last break. He went over to her and said “Hi” and she said “Hi” and looked at him with that lost smile as if to say I know what you’re thinking. Then the strangest thing happened. She took his hand and led him past the house into the shadows. She opened a door low down at the side of the house. It was a storeroom of sorts. She closed the door and it was pitch-dark. He could see fuck-all. Then she was against him, hands around his neck and kissing him. He tasted alcohol on her tongue and Spearmint Beechies and smelt her perfume. Lust took hold of them in the dark, they kissed and undressed each other with searching hands and he felt her body—he ran his palms over her face and neck and breasts and hips and bottom. They bumped into invisible garden tools and somehow or other found a place to lie, a canvas tarpaulin over some sacks—not soft, but not as hard as the floor. He remembered the smell of turpentine and old paint, but above all, her perfume. The only sounds were their breathing and urgency. She took his dick and put it in her mouth. Lord, he would never forget that. For a moment she was nowhere to be found and then her hand was around his thing and then there was something warm and wet around it and it hit him like a sledgehammer, his dick was in her mouth. The realization of every masturbatory dream. He wanted to see it. He wanted terribly to capture it in his mind, so that he could know what it looked like and remember, but there was no light, absolutely none. He groaned partly from frustration and partly from ecstasy and he stretched out his hand until he found her bush, slid his finger in and felt her heat like glowing coals inside.


Afterwards she opened the door for light so they could find their clothes and dress. He watched her silhouette faintly etched against the little light from outside. That was the last he saw of her. He went back, self-conscious and worried he hadn’t dressed properly in the storeroom. He hadn’t been missed. He looked around for her, but she was gone.


Yvette.

That was all he knew. That night he had lain in bed with a strange melancholy. Her smell was on his fingers and on his body. But the next morning it was gone. Just like her.

* * *

While she was in the bathroom, he walked quickly out to his car and fetched the music and the CD player.


When she came out her hair was clean and wet. She made up a bed on the couch for him. She put out a big blue towel for him and said he was welcome to use the bathroom. He said he would like to shower. He was aware of the awkwardness between them. Or was it just him?


Tonight he was going to share a house with a whore. He couldn’t look at her and forced a polite smile.


“Well, I’ll say goodnight, then.”


“Sleep well,” he said.


“You too.” She went down the passage and shut her door. He went to the bathroom. It was still steamy from her shower and filled with her fragrances, soap and shampoo and lotion. It smelt different from Anna’s bathroom. Fuller. Richer.


He undressed and neatly folded his clothes and put them on the toilet lid, on top of his service pistol. He looked down at his body. Naked in a whore’s bathroom. He looked at the chest hairs already turning gray and the middle age slackening of his belly. His penis was in that no-man’s land between indifference and desire, a half-smoked cigar. Not exactly your Greek god. Not exactly seductive in Christine van Rooyen’s eyes. He smiled wryly at himself in the steamy mirror.


He showered using her semi-transparent soap that was the color of red wine, and shampoo from a white bottle. He rinsed off and toweled. Put only his trousers on and carried the rest of his clothes and his firearm to the sitting room. He stacked them in a neat pile beside the couch and sat. He examined his bed. It was a big, wide couch. Long enough. He took out the Anton Goosen jewel case and had another look at it. He took out the second disc of the double set and put it in the player. Earphones on. He switched off the standard lamp beside the couch, swung his feet up and placed the player on his stomach. Pressed Play.

* * *

Only once the nine members of the Task Force had grown tired of laughing and jesting and gone on their way did the detective in Midrand get a chance to take the fingerprints of the two suspects. Then he had them locked up in the cells again.


He sat down at his desk and began to go through the evidence systematically. In one of the transparent plastic evidence bags he saw the identity documents that the Task Force men had found in the BMW. He took them out and looked at the names.


Let’s see, he thought, and picked up the phone. The number he keyed was that of the SAPS Criminal Records Center in Pretoria.

* * *

As the applause after the last cut faded, he lay with closed eyes and a light heart. He wondered what he had lost in the past few years. He was the drinking equivalent of Rip van Winkle with this huge hole in his life, a black hole of unconsciousness. Everything had grown up. His children, the music of his culture . . . his fucking country. Everything except him. In his mind he was being exposed to the alternatives, how different things might have been. He didn’t want to see that now. He took the earphones off.


City sounds penetrated faintly from outside. His eyes were adjusted to the dark now. Streetlights illuminated the room sufficiently through the gauzy curtains. The outlines of the furniture, the dark shape of the painting against the wall. Small red and green lights shone from the fridge and the TV.


He wanted to tell Fritz. Reaching over the little table he found his cell phone and scrolled through the menu to text messages. He struggled a bit with the tiny pads of the keyboard. CD IS BASS HEAVEN. THANKS. DAD.


He sent the SMS and put the CD player and phone on his pile of clothes. He must sleep. He didn’t want to think, enough thinking for one day. He shifted around on the couch, struggling to be comfortable. It was best with his back against the backrest. Too hot for the blanket. Sleep.


He thought once of Christine lying in the bedroom, but he put her out of his mind and tried to think of Anna. That brought no peace so he thought about the music and he did what he used to do when he was seventeen: he visualized himself on stage. At the State Theater. With Anton & friends. He was playing bass guitar. Playing without effort, going with the flow of the music, letting his fingers run where they would and he heard the bedroom door open and soft footfalls on the carpet. She must be going to the bathroom. But here she was beside him. She lay down on the couch. Her back was against him. She shifted up close to him so they lay like two spoons. He hardly dared breathe. He must pretend to be asleep. Keep his breathing even and calm. He could smell her, her shoulder right by his nose.


She wanted comfort. She just needed a person. She didn’t want to be alone, she missed her child, she was raw and hurting. He knew all that.


He made a sound that he hoped would sound like a person asleep and put a hand on her hip. A comforting gesture. Half on thin material and half on bare flesh.


He felt the heat of her body. Now he was getting a fucking erection, it blossomed irreverently and there was no way to stop it. He had to think of something. He made another vague noise and shifted his hips back. Lord, she mustn’t know. He should have put his underpants on, that would have kept it reined in. Perhaps she wasn’t fully awake. He tried to listen to her breathing, but all his senses returned to him were her heat and her scent.


She shifted back against him. Right against him. Up here. Down there.


He wanted to apologize. He wanted to mumble “I’m sorry” or something, but he was too scared. She was half asleep and that would make it all worse. He lay very still. Thought about the music. Played bass guitar along with

“gee die harlekyn nog wyn, skoebiedoewaa, skoebiedoewaa, rooiwyn vir sy lag en traan en pyn, skoebiedoewaa, skoebiedoewaa . . .”

Give the harlequin more wine, scoobydoowaa, scoobydoowaa, red wine for his laughter and tears and pain . . .


She moved her arm, her hand, put it over his. She held it on her hip a moment and then drew it up under her nightie, oh fuck, up to her breast, her palm on the back of his hand and he felt her, felt the softness and she sighed deeply and pressed his hand tightly and roughly against her. Moved again, her hips away from his pelvis and her hand came down there, behind her back and undid the clip of his trousers, how he had no idea. Unzipped his trousers. Slipped in her hand and grasped him. Lust was one high perfect note in his head, a lead guitar that took flight to the rhythm of his heart’s bass and then she pushed him into her from behind.


Long after his orgasm they lay still like that, belly to back, still inside her, though spent and flaccid now. The first words she spoke, barely aloud, were: “You are broken too.”


He thought for a long time before answering. He wondered how she knew. How she could see it. Or feel it. Why had she come to him? Her need? Or her gift to him? A comfort?

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