The Memory of Water

¹¹ DON’T ACT CREEPY, OR, ^{PINK STRYCHNINE}

On the way to the library I feel fit. I haven’t felt this good in seasons. I feel so good that I stop at the carwash to have the Jag given the platinum treatment. What it really needs is a good service, a new tail light and a bit of a panel beating but I haven’t been able to afford that for a while. The sorrowful glances which come my way for having a dirty, dinged sports car is enough to drive anyone off the edge. Even taxi drivers shake their heads at me. But today money is no object for my beautiful baby. As long as they don’t cut up the credit card. It occurs to me that I am spending money I don’t have on a car I don’t own. Ah, credit is a beautiful thing! I watch the attendant swipe the card and wait. Three, two, one – and yes! – the payment goes through. I turn the key and the nice carwash man waves me off. He may as well be waving a chequered flag. I pop the car into first, rev a little to warm her up, and accelerate in a wide arc onto the main road.

God, Jo’burg is beautiful in summer. Everything is so green. I can’t help feeling optimistic. I love going to the library. Especially nowadays when no one really needs a library because of Kindle and Google. It’s like having a huge revolving bookcase all to oneself. I walk up the corkscrew staircase with a bounce in my step.

My mother introduced me to libraries. It was ‘our thing’: books and reading. Emily would use her books to make stables for her fragrant pastelplastic ponies while Mom and I smirked at her.

If we had been good children during the day, she would let us climb into bed with her and read to us. One child on either side, with the book balanced on the incline of her warm, slanted thighs. I would edge nearer and nearer as the story progressed so that my whole body was in contact with hers. She would fidget and tell me to move over. ‘Claustrophobic’ was one of the first words I learnt. I craved proximity to her as if I had some kind of prescience of her leaving us. As if I knew that one day she would just vanish, and take colour with her.

But I still have those memories; she couldn’t take those away, those golden hours. I still have Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sometimes I wonder if I truly did love books as much as I remember, or if I was so desperate for her attention that I just grabbed on to the only thing that she would – with reluctance – offer me. In true Oedipal fashion I guess I had a love/hate relationship with my mother’s world of fiction. It erratically offered me the bliss of library trips and bedtime stories, but more often it took our mother away from us.

At first I didn’t understand the lucky logic of libraries. Books for free? As often as you wanted? It defied all I had learnt in my five years of being. Amazed at my appetite for words, my mother coerced some friends into registering for library cards and then handing them over to us, so that we could borrow thirty books at a time. She would wink at me if the librarian seemed sniffy, then we’d giggle to our ‘getaway car’, clutching our precious plunder.

First I case the joint. Familiarise myself with the categories and layout. Then I move closer: grazing book spines with my fingers as I go. I seize any title I think will come in handy and when the load becomes too heavy, carry them over to the most private reading table I can find. There are whole books dedicated to anthrax and letter bombs. The selection process having gone well, I make myself comfortable and start taking notes.

I pore over books with titles like Alchemy of Bones, An Almost Perfect Murder, Arsenic Under the Elms, Getting Away With Murder, In The Wake Of The Butcher, The Encyclopaedia of Murder, In Cold Blood, and Assassin!

I discover concepts like seppuku (Japanese ritual disembowelment, hara-kiri style). I discover the difference between hydrazine and chloroform.

When I’ve finally read all I can about bloody and bloodless ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, I decide to take the rest of the books home. The bug-eyed librarian glowers at me as she sweeps the barcode reader over the five books I’ve chosen. Her mouth is a small pink pucker. A cat’s bum. I think of my mother winking. I smile at her, which only seems to alarm her further, and skip out of there.

After two days of obsessive note-taking and more visits to the library I feel I have absorbed every relevant thing I can from the written word. Now it’s time to move on to popular culture. I go to my local DVD store and pick up a stack of murder mysteries, true-crime documentaries and enough microwave popcorn to stuff a horse. I pay very careful attention. I try to identify the mistakes the killer makes before the detective does. Sometimes I end up watching a scene over and over.

Nurse Daisy De Melker was caught only after poisoning her third victim. Before that she killed her previous husbands by sneaking strychnine into their daily fare. In those days pink strychnine was in fashion, which turned the bones of her prey pink. They hanged Daisy after finding evidence of arsenic in the thermos she prepared for her son the day he died.

‘Son of Sam’ mailman killer, David Berkowitz, despite being trained in Vietnam guerrilla warfare, made the mistake of parking his cream-coloured Ford Galaxy in the area where he shot those who were to be his last victims. In the car they found a loaded submachine gun and one of his infamous letters to the police. The lesson here is if you get away with too much, you get sloppy. Don’t get sloppy.

Over the years, Belle Sorensen Gunness (also known as the Black Widow) killed as many men as she could persuade to marry her and cashed in on the insurance. She also killed her ranch hands and some of her children. Her sister blamed Belle’s first husband who, in public, kicked the pregnant Belle in her stomach, resulting in her losing the baby.

Moses Sithole, South Africa’s most reviled serial killer, murdered over forty people, before making the mistake of using his real name on an application form to lure a victim. The court verdict took three hours and Sithole was sentenced to over two thousand years in jail.

Coral Eugene Watts used to drown women in baths to keep their spirits from escaping. Herman Mudgett lured people to his hundred-room torture castle where he would throw them down an elevator shaft and later dissect the bodies. He sold the reconstructed skeletal models to medical schools. Charles Manson loved the Beatles and made his spaced-out groupies call him Jesus Christ. Former boy-scout Richard Angelo injected his patients with Pavulon and then ‘saved their lives’. Sometimes the latter didn’t happen. Aileen Wournos, famous for killing at least seven men, was finally tracked down at a biker bar called The Last Resort.

Who were the killers that weren’t caught? Jack The Ripper, the bag-headed Zodiac killer, the Cleveland Torso murderer. And whoever killed Bubbles Schroeder.

I learn that in order to get away with murder there are some ground rules. Have a simple plan. Don’t have a motive. Have an alibi. Don’t boast. Don’t act creepy. Socialise as usual. Obey all other laws, especially on the road. Don’t leave DNA. Don’t keep the murder weapon. Get rid of the body: no body + no weapon = no murder.

Slowly, deliciouslyachinglyslowly, the plan comes to me, like chapters in a book. I write everything down. It’s not a novel yet, it’s not even the beginning of the novel. It’s the work I have to commit to paper before I write the first sentence. I don’t have a plot yet, or even a premise, but I have a good feeling about this. There is a thrill in my fingers. I think this will lead to my best one yet.

My cliché: I feel alive again.

I arrange to see my GP, ostensibly for my annual check-up but really so I can ask him questions. (His name is Doctor Olaf, I kid you not). Also, I thought it would be the clever thing to do after passing out in the shower for no particular reason.

The conversation goes something like this:

(SFX: rustling of papers as crazy-looking doctor speed-reads five pages of blood test results.)

Doc: “I’m happy with your cholesterol but you need to watch your blood pressure. You know what I always say about blood pressure.”

Me: “It’s the most important number.”

His face lights up. He has the energy of the eccentric professor in Back ToThe Future. His office is cluttered with promotional medical paraphernalia, as if he has promised to keep every freebie he has ever been sent. There is a stopped clock on the wall: an advert for a wrinkle cream.

Doc: “Yes! It can strip years off your life, you know.”

As if I don’t feel old enough.

Dr Olaf delights in facts. The more he can fit into the limited time we see each other, the better. I am fascinated by a gaudy model on the tangle that is his desk: a man’s severed torso holding internal organs. Pink lungs, green liver, yellow spleen. I have the inexplicable urge to touch them.

“Now, if you pass out again, you have to come back here for more tests.”

That seems like reasonable advice. He lifts his arms above his head and stretches.

“Everything else is good. Maybe don’t drink so much.”

That’s what he says every year, even though when he asks me, I always divide how much I really drink by a third. I don’t take his wrist-slapping too seriously: he has a year-round tan and always smells like cigarettes.

“So, Doc, I need to ask you something. It’s kind of private.”

“Your blood tests are fine! Whatever you think you picked up, you didn’t,” he winks.

“It’s not really about me, it’s a rhetorical question.”

“Ah. Your ‘friend’ has got a rash? Warts? Erectile dysfunction?”

I wish he’d keep his voice down.

“It’s a strange question.”

“Oh, believe me son, I’ve heard them all. They keep my job interesting! The stranger the better!”

“It’s for my new novel,” I say, savouring the sound of my words.

Doc doesn’t care; he is waiting for me to get on with the question.

“If you stab someone, in the heart, how long will it take for that person to die? Would it be quick?”

Now he is excited. Time to flex his medical brain. He does a two-step then begins talking with overt hand gestures.

“It would depend on a great deal of factors. If the knife is small it might only puncture the heart; if it’s blunt it might get stuck in the ribs and intercostals. A large, sharp knife would obviously inflict the most damage. And the knife should be removed afterwards, so that the heart can collapse. That would be the quickest and least painful way, if you choose the heart. If you choose something else, for example the throat, it would be even quicker.”

I can’t slit throats – too brutal. I’m not a barbarian. Next he’ll be telling me to scalp her.

“So you’re picturing, like, a samurai sword?” I ask. Not very practical.

“If you feel the need to be aesthetic,” he says dryly. “Otherwise, a kitchen knife will do.”

I’m grateful to Doctor Olaf for his advice, but the whole experience left me feeling a little empty. No murderer would ask his doctor how to kill his victim. I feel I’ve cheated. So for the pharmaceutical side of the affair I decide to go underground. My drug dealer usually delivers (isn’t that great? Door-to-door Diazepam! He’s really business-savvy. If he had a credit card facility I would nominate him for entrepreneur of the year. What’s also great about him is he takes real pride in his work) but I need my purchase this time around to be a bit more ghetto. Plus, I don’t think my dealer is any way interested in what I am looking for. He prefers designer drugs with their appropriate prices. Also, he has added vitamin supplements to his offering, which I find disturbing.

I drive to Hillbrow, stop in a nice-looking suburb on the way and draw a thousand Rand. I don’t even bother to look at the slip the machine spits out at me. Once on Louis Botha I slow down and look around. I ask the potential hijacker at the robot if he knows where I can score. He just shakes his head at me and there’s a strange look in his eyes. He either wholeheartedly disapproves of drug taking or he thinks I’m undercover.

I ask a few more people but it’s hard to not look suspicious. I’m in a Jag convertible in Hillbrow, for God’s sake. Besides, everyone looks suspicious. It was a lot easier to score when I was a student. Not that I had to come to Hillbrow for a banky. I only moved on to harder stuff when I needed to, for a short story I wrote in my early twenties.

I pull in at the notorious petrol station and ask the attendant. He doesn’t seem to speak a great deal of English. He just shouts in the general direction of the building and a few faces look up out of the dim interior. He puts the petrol pump nozzle in my fuel tank but doesn’t turn it on. Another guy in greasy blue overalls ambles out to my window for a chat.

“Nice ride,” he smiles. He’s laid back, like a Rasta, but without the trappings.

“I need GHB. Just enough for one night. But it has to be GHB, untraceable, nothing else. No mixed shit. And I don’t want roofies.”

“Angazi.” He shakes his head and sucks his lips. “I got roofies. More kick. Much better.”

I can tell why this guy’s a drug dealer and not a brain surgeon.

“I don’t want roofies. You can trace it. I need GHB.”

I’m starting to think this is a bad idea. Strictly speaking I don’t even need to be here. You can make your own damn GHB, if you know how. If you have an iPhone and know how to spell Google. But the fear gnawing at my stomach is the reason I came, this dull paranoia, this feeling: you can’t get this by sitting on your Chesterfield in the ’burbs.

It’s hot. The tattiness of this place and the smell of petrol is getting up my nose.

“Well?” I’m trying to act cool but I can hear tick-tock before some ego in a cop car pulls up. I wind my watch.

“Drive around, I’ll see you now,” says the lipsucker.

“What?”

The other attendant chips in. He turns out to be able to speak very good English. They seem amused at my presence.

“Drive around the block, then come back here. Park in the carwash.”

He takes back his nozzle, closes my petrol cap and pats the back window, leaving a nice set of fingerprints on the glass. It seems that these guys have lost their healthy sense of fear a long time ago.

I cruise around the block feeling like an idiot in my flashy car. This neighbourhood is Dodge City. The roads are full of potholes and the uneven pavements teem with weeds and junk. There are no road names. I should have parked somewhere and caught a taxi in. Doctor Olaf wouldn’t be happy: I can feel my blood pressure spiking. There is a certain relief in pulling into the cool shade of the car wash, until someone switches the damn thing on and the old rollers scratch the shit out of my duco.

We take care of business without much going wrong. They hand me three pink powdery pills in a used Ziploc and grossly overcharge me for it. My dealer would tell me that it serves me right, buying from the competition.

Eve hasn’t called and I’m thankful for that. It would be awkward. I wouldn’t be comfortable seeing her. Looking at her thin, pale neck, so easy to strangle, or sitting across from her, thinking of the blood moving in her veins. And her beating heart.