7 Days (44 page)

‘Reasonably
sure. What does reasonably sure mean?’ asked van Eeden.

‘How could the SMSes have been sent from here if you and your laptop were in Somerset West?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Mr van Eeden, within the hour we will know what was written in those SMSes.’

He jumped up, waving his arms, almost shouting now. ‘What does it matter? What does it matter? I’m telling you
that
is what happened. I killed her. She wanted everything. My work, my money, my life. She was like a bloodsucker, a parasite, she wanted to suck me dry, she just wanted
more
and
more
. She swallowed me whole. I know I should never have jumped into bed with her, I
know
, but it was too late by then. I made a mistake, one massive mistake, but I’ll pay for it now – isn’t that enough for you?’

‘Why are you lying?’ Cupido asked.

‘Who are you protecting?’ asked Griessel.

‘I am not protecting anyone.’ He walked up to them, his wrists held close together. ‘Take me. Lock me up. You have everything that you want.’

‘He’s protecting me,’ said Annemarie van Eeden from the doorway.

‘Don’t listen to her. Annemarie, go away.’

‘I am the one who killed that woman.’

‘Annemarie, please …’

‘Henry,’ she said soothingly, ‘you didn’t handle it very well. Sooner or later they would have realised.’

‘Annemarie …’ he said helplessly, knowing everything was lost.

She came in and sat down with them, with an immense inner calm.

She said she only found out about the affair early in December last year, but she had suspected it for months. There were so many telltale signs for a wife to spot.

In December, alone at home, she had walked into Henry’s study, and saw the laptop unattended. And it was on. Henry, who always carefully turned off his laptop, protected it with a password, had apparently forgotten. Or maybe he had wanted her to see. Maybe he had wanted her to do something about it.

And she had begun searching deliberately, because the suspicion, the doubt was too great. She came across the SMSes. She saw how intense it was. She saw a side of Henry that she hadn’t been aware of. Her husband, the dirty talker. Her husband, the sex addict.

She wrote down all the cell modem’s details. She hired a private detective, who found someone to intercept the SMSes.

She received them all. For a month and a half, a flood of vulgar sex messages, like a banal bodice-ripper paperback.

And the increasing demands of ‘that woman’. And Henry’s reluctance to end the affair. Then she knew she was going to lose everything.

She didn’t know what to do.

She could deduce from the messages between the woman and her husband that he had a key to her door. She went looking for it and found it in Henry’s jacket pocket. She had a duplicate made, quickly one afternoon between Christmas and New Year. She knew the woman was visiting her parents, and Henry wouldn’t miss it. It was without premeditation, a way of hitting back, a small triumph.

And then that Tuesday night.

‘Annemarie, please,’ van Eeden warned again.

She gave him a serene smile and said, ‘Henry, the courts are much more lenient to the wronged wife.’

On that Tuesday night of the eighteenth of January, Henry left just after six, a little late, for Somerset West. He wasn’t telling the truth when he said his notes were on the laptop. Henry never spoke from notes, he talked off the cuff. He was such a smooth talker. Usually.

Shortly after his departure she heard a telephone ringing, and went into Henry’s office to answer it, it was the nearest room at the time. The call was insignificant, one of the garden staff was sick.

She dealt with the phone call. Then she noticed that the computer was on, with a screen that read:
Shut down. Log off. Restart
. She realised Henry had been in too much of a hurry for the last command. She sat down, without a plan. And she saw the little block that signalled a new SMS.

It was from ‘that woman’.

It asked:
Are you there?

So she answered:
Yes
.

And so the conversation began.

The rest just happened, while she was perpetuating the fraud. Because later, the woman asked:
Why don’t you come around quickly?

Quickly for a quickie?
she answered, in the language she had been familiar with for over a month.

A cum-quickly quickie
.

You’ll have to make it worth my while
.

Shall I wait for you without panties?

I want more
.

What exactly are you thinking, Mister Kinky?

She looked up, and saw the sword in the glass case. A moment’s hesitation, then everything fell into place. In her mind’s eye she could see how it might unfold.

A blindfold
.

That’s new. I like that
.

At the door
.

On the carpet?

No. At the door. Ten o’clock. Sharp
.

She left at about twenty to nine, with the sword on the seat beside her.

At ten o’clock she unlocked the door with her duplicate.

The woman was standing there, wearing the blindfold.

She lifted the sword, and with a sense of incredible relief and immense violence, she stabbed it into the woman’s heart, and pulled it out. The woman fell, silent, the only sound the crack of her head hitting the floor.

She put the sword down. Because she knew the police would find it, along with the SMSes on the laptop. They would accuse Henry.

That was what she wanted. That he should be punished for the pain. She had already lost her man, it was the rest she wanted to protect.

‘Would you like to continue the story, Henry?’

He shook his head.

‘Correct me if I get something wrong. Apparently she had sent Henry another SMS, to his phone. Something like:
I’m not going to stand at the door blindfolded and without panties the whole night you know
. Because she assumed he was on his way to her already, and not at his computer. Dear Henry only received it after his speech, and he knew something was wrong. So he phoned her, but she didn’t answer. Then he drove to her apartment. I can’t deny it, it gives me pleasure to imagine what he must have thought when he saw his sword lying there, beside his soulmate. Then he saw the SMSes on her laptop. He tried so hard to clean up, to protect himself and me. But it didn’t work, did it, Henry?’

His cellphone woke him.

He mumbled, ‘
Jissis
,’ grabbed it and said, ‘yes?’

That’s when he saw that it was already nine o’clock.

‘Benny,’ said Colonel Nyathi, ‘I know you were probably sleeping, but I just wanted you to know the brigadier is flying back this morning. The hearing was cancelled.’

‘That’s good, sir,’ he said in a voice croaky with sleep.

‘He asked me to thank you, Benny. He will do it personally when he gets back.’

‘But it wasn’t me, sir. It was Vaughn who cracked it.’

‘That’s not what Vaughn is saying. Oh, and we’re waiting for you before we start the meeting.’

‘What meeting, sir?’

‘The celebratory one.’

‘Sir, my car is at work …’ Cupido had dropped him off at four this morning.

Nyathi laughed. ‘I’ll send someone.’

He stood waiting at the gate to his block of flats for a detective from the Violent Crimes group to pick him up. He looked at the opposite corner where Brecht had sat in wait for him. He thought how he had got it all wrong.

Mbali Kaleni and Fanie Fick had caught the shooter.

Vaughn Cupido, who had wangled the timely phone call last night with a program on his cellphone. ‘It’s an Android app, Benna. Fake-Call Me.’ And he still didn’t know how it worked. Cupido had caught the van Eedens, and now he was giving Griessel the credit – his respect for his colleague had risen to new heights.

But it was only one of the many things that he had read incorrectly. Cupido, the shooter, the Sloet case. He had to accept that he didn’t have the head for the deals, the companies, the trusts. He didn’t have the knowledge of computers and cellphone modems and iPhones that couldn’t ‘hotspot’.

He wasn’t worth a Hawk’s arse.

Old fox.
Wily old veteran
. Fool. Alexa Barnard didn’t even want to talk to him. It was her concert tonight, and she wouldn’t want him there to share her great moment.

Because he was a fuck-up.

Mbali shook her head when the gathering applauded her. She waddled to the front, and then said, ‘Some of you thought that I was appointed because John Afrika could manipulate me.’

A murmur rippled through the room.

‘I heard the gossip,’ she said. ‘I know I am not popular. I know I can be difficult to work with. I know it is not easy to have a woman around. But I want you to know nobody will manipulate me. So, let me tell you what happened in Amsterdam, so that it can be out in the open.’

Dead silence.

‘Our hosts, the Amsterdam police, thought it would be a treat to take us on a bicycle tour of the city. And I was too proud to tell them that I cannot ride a bicycle. I did not want them to think that South Africans are backward. So I tried. And I lost my balance, and I lost my way, and I rode into a canal. They had to rescue me from that filthy water. With a boat. It must have been pretty funny. But for me it was a very big embarrassment. And then my pride kept me from laughing at myself, and I wanted to keep it a secret. But I have now learned that secrets have consequences. Next time it will be different. Thank you.’

And she sat down, in the midst of them.

Griessel made another mistake.

Nyathi said, ‘Go, Benny, take the rest of the day off, you deserve it,’ and he instinctively drove to Stellenbosch, to someone who cared for him, someone who said with pride: ‘My father is doing the Sloet case.’ To look for comfort there.

He phoned Carla when he arrived on the campus, and said he was there to take her to lunch. She was uncomfortable and said, ‘We’re in the Neelsie …’ She hesitated before she invited him to join them.

He found her there, with the Neanderthal, a giant. He towered over Griessel and over Carla, as she introduced him, ‘Pa, this is Calla; Calla this is my pa.’

The Neanderthal crushed his hand, pumping it enthusiastically: ‘Oom, it’s a privilege, Oom.’

They sat down, Carla and the Neanderthal close together, his muscular arm around her. Carla’s little hand was on the tree trunk of a leg.

‘Calla is my friend, Pa.’

‘I’ll look after your daughter very well,’ he said.

He can actually talk, Griessel thought.

‘You’d better,’ said Carla, and gazed at her rugby player with love and admiration. ‘My pa is a Hawk.’

‘With a gun,’ said Griessel. He wanted to say it light-heartedly, but the threat was still there.

They didn’t hear him. They kissed. Right there in front of him.

He drove to his flat, collected his dirty laundry and took it to the Gardens Centre.

He sorted it in pathetic little piles in front of the washing machine. The sum total of his wardrobe.

He thought of searching Henry van Eeden’s walk-in wardrobe, the row upon row of shirts and trousers, brand new and fashionable, that had been hanging there. He thought of Makar Kotko’s expensive suit and shirt.

Life wasn’t fair.

He hung the clothes up on the washing line at the block of flats. He must buy underpants, there were too many with holes. And more new shirts. Some time or other, when his credit card recovered.

In his sitting room he took out his bass guitar and sat down on the couch. He found no solace in it. It reminded him of the concert tonight, and that he wouldn’t be going.

He lay down on his bed, his head filled with self-pity.

The ringing of his cellphone woke him.

This is no life, every fucking day the same thing, he thought.

He answered.

‘Benny, Alexa has gone,’ said Ella, shrill and anxious. ‘And she has to sing at eight.’

‘What’s the time now?’

‘It’s nearly half past six.’

‘What happened?’

‘We were here at her house. She was terribly nervous, since yesterday, after the bad rehearsal. She hardly slept at all. She was so stubborn, I practically had to beg her to get ready. I was in the bath, and when I came out, she was gone.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘About fifteen minutes.’

‘OK,’ he said.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I’ll go and fetch her.’

He found her sitting in the Mount Nelson’s Planet Bar, at one of the little tables, alone. There was a bottle of gin on the table, a glass in her hand.

He first walked to the barman, unnoticed. He asked for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

‘I’ll have to open it, sir.’

‘That’s fine.’

He paid, got a glass, and walked over to her. Pulled out a chair and sat down.

She looked at him in surprise.

He picked up the bottle of Jack, and poured a full glass.

‘What are you doing?’ she said in a frightened voice.

‘I’m drinking with you.’

‘Benny …’

‘Alexa, be quiet. I’m drinking.’

She put her glass down. ‘You’ve been clean for two hundred and twenty days.’

‘Two hundred and thirty three.’ He lifted the glass to his mouth, his whole being ready for the heavenly taste.

She grabbed his arm. The liquor spilled on the table. ‘Benny, you can’t do it.’

‘Alexa, please let go of my arm.’

‘You can’t do it.’

‘Why not? At least I have an excuse. I’m a fuck-up. What do
you
have?’

‘What happened, Benny?’ she asked, but she didn’t let go of his arm.

‘What does it matter?’

‘Benny, please. What happened?’

‘Everything happened. Fanie Fick was shot dead, because I am a moron. My colleagues had to solve the Sloet case, because I’m not a detective’s arse. I can’t read people any more. I have lost Carla, the only person … the only woman who still wanted anything to do with me. She’s in love with the Missing Link. My son wants to have “Parow Arrow” tattooed on his arm, and I have no way to stop him, because I need to ask him to give me lessons about Wi-Fi hotspots and Twitter and Facebook and cellphone modems, so that I don’t make more of a fool of myself than I already have. Like Saturday night, when I humiliated the woman I am half in love with, in front of her friends. And drove her back to drink. And now she won’t answer me when I call. That’s my reason to drink, Alexa, not the pile of crap you have deluded yourself about. Let go of my arm.’