A Sailor's Honour (10 page)

De Villiers's identity document had a photograph of Annelise and the children in a sleeve. He put that in the top pocket over his heart. The passport followed. He rummaged in a drawer until he found their joint will. He folded it carefully and put it in the backpack. He leaned down and picked up his discarded trousers. His wallet had bloodstains, but it was his own blood. There was cash and a credit card inside. He slipped the wallet into another pocket.

De Villiers hopped on one leg to the front door and locked it behind him. He retrieved his crutches from the garage and made his way towards the street. He passed the fish pond on the way. It was empty but for a drift of leaves.

The bus stop was blocks away, but he made it.

The centre of Pretoria was familiar to him. The Air Force building where the car bomb had exploded was diagonally across the street. It still carried the scars. He took the lift upstairs. The receptionist told him he could wait until one of the partners was free. She offered him something to drink and he settled for a strong coffee. Sweet and black.

The young man who came out to meet him in the reception area looked far too young to be a partner. He introduced himself as Gerhardt Breedt and carried De Villiers's coffee to his office. Breedt walked patiently next to his client. He made small talk, but didn't ask where De Villiers had suffered his injuries. This was a city of wounded men, carrying the scars of the conflict in Angola.

‘What can I do for you?' Breedt asked when they were seated. His office was small but tidy. There were no files in sight.

‘My wife has been murdered and I need to sort out the estate.'

‘Oh,' Breedt said. ‘Now I know who you are. It was all over the news.'

De Villiers didn't want to talk about it. ‘I want to sell my house and I need to get some money out of the country,' he said

Breedt became businesslike and made a note on a sheet of yellow paper. ‘Let me make a list,' he said. ‘We need to report an estate. So you want us to be the executors?'

‘I am the executor,' De Villiers said. He pulled the will from his pocket and handed it to Breedt.

Breedt read the will in silence and nodded. ‘We can do the administration for you.'

They spoke for half an hour while Breedt took detailed notes. He made copies of the will and De Villiers's passport and
ID
document. ‘Let's recap,' he said to De Villiers. ‘You are – uhm, were – married out of community of property. In terms of the will, you inherit everything anyway. I'll report the estate and finalise it. I'll sell the house on your behalf. What else is there?'

De Villiers placed the keys to the house and the remote for the garage door on the desk. ‘You may give everything in the house to a charity of your choice,' he said. ‘The keys for the car are in the ignition.' He didn't tell Breedt about the blood.

Breedt placed the keys and remote on top of his yellow pad. ‘I'll prepare the documents immediately. It should take about two hours. Can you wait, or do you want to come back tomorrow?'

‘I prefer to wait,' De Villiers said. ‘I can go to the bank in the meantime.'

Breedt escorted him to the lift. They shook hands.

The bank was at street level in the same building. ‘I need foreign currency,' De Villiers explained. ‘Pounds.'

‘We need your air ticket, your passport and the money you want to convert,' the foreign currency clerk said.

‘I have an account here,' De Villiers said. ‘How much can I take?'

‘Fifteen thousand rand per person,' the clerk said. ‘And half that for each child under fourteen. If you want to take more, we will need a letter from a company to say that you are going on business and that you need more money in the foreign currency. There must be a full motivation.'

‘I understand,' De Villiers said. ‘I'll come back tomorrow morning.'

He went back upstairs and explained the position to Breedt. ‘No problem,' Breedt said. ‘I know an orthopaedic surgeon who will give us a letter saying you need an operation in London. We'll justify the extra funds that way.'

‘Thanks,' De Villiers said. ‘I'll wait in the reception area for the documents.'

‘By the way,' Breedt said, ‘if I were you, I would take as much cash as I could stuff into my pockets. You can always exchange that for pounds when you get to London.'

De Villiers arrived at Heathrow three days later. He had the clothes on his back, his backpack, ten thousand pounds in American Express travellers cheques, about three hundred pounds in cash and twenty five thousand rand in fifty-rand notes in the pockets of his cargo pants. He took the tube to Russell Square.

When he emerged from the lift, De Villiers followed the snake of pedestrians across the street. It was slow going with the crutches and backpack. There was an open Travelex at the corner. He went inside and offered his rands in exchange for pounds.

The man behind the bulletproof glass partition shook his head. ‘Not interested in South African currency.'

De Villiers pointed at the board where the current exchange rates were given. ‘But it says there that you buy and sell rands.'

‘Fuck off,' the man said. ‘You South Africans all come here to sell the rands you've smuggled out in your underwear. I'm not interested.'

De Villiers left and bought coffee in a polystyrene cup at the kiosk in the square. He saw an American Express outlet across the street and hobbled across on the crutches. ‘Could you please tell me where I can exchange South African rands for pounds?' he asked.

The man behind the counter was a foreigner, from somewhere in the Far East. ‘There is a place near Harrods,' he said without looking up. He tied yet another bundle of money with elastic bands. ‘Take the blue line and get out at Knightsbridge.'

The man behind the glass in Knightsbridge watched De Villiers crossing the street and stop in front of his kiosk. ‘You a soldier?' he asked when De Villiers put his passport in the cash tray.

De Villiers first nodded but then he shook his head.

‘Vietnam?' the man said, pointing at De Villiers's leg.

‘No,' De Villiers said. ‘And I'm not a soldier anymore.'

The exchange rate for notes was
R
6.50 to the pound. A rip-off, he thought, but he had no choice.

De Villiers found a place to stay at the back of a pub miles from the heart of London. He walked the streets by day and drank the time away until the pub closed. He would retire to his room at midnight to thrash about in his nightmares. It was my fault, he kept saying to himself. I should have seen it coming.

After three months, he thought that his leg was strong enough to sustain a short run. He looked at himself in the small mirror on the side of the wardrobe. He had not shaved since his arrival and the eyes staring back at him were those of a hobo. He decided to buy a razor. He bent down and washed his face in the icy water. He brushed his teeth with a toothbrush that had seen better days. He had run out of toothpaste weeks earlier. He held his right hand up and watched it shaking in the mirror. He wished it was from the drinking, but knew that it wasn't.

He had to clean up.

He started jogging. The first few steps were awkward and he wobbled, uncertain on his feet. He stopped and heaved against a railing.

‘Go away,' someone shouted from the flat below. ‘Fuck off.'

De Villiers turned and started jogging again. Every jarring step reminded him of the weakness of his leg and the face of the man who had held the gun to his head.

Two policemen stepped onto the pavement from in front of their car and barred his way. De Villiers stopped.

‘What are you running away from?'

‘I'm not running away from anything,' he said.

The two bobbies exchanged a look. ‘Doesn't look like that to me,' the one said.

‘Where do you live?' the other asked.

De Villiers pointed over his shoulder. ‘Back there,' he said. ‘Behind the pub.'

‘Do you have any means of identification on you?' the first bobby asked.

‘It's back there,' De Villiers said. ‘In my room.'

‘Show us,' the bobbies said in unison.

They escorted De Villiers to his room and followed him inside. His army jacket was draped over a rickety chair and he pulled his passport from its pocket. De Villiers studied the two policemen while they scrutinised his passport. They were young and, on the face of it, fit. Their uniforms fitted perfectly. Their shoes were police-issue but clean. They were clean-shaven and their hair was neatly trimmed. They looked professional.

‘Sit down,' one of the bobbies ordered.

De Villiers sat down on his bed.

‘I'm Police Constable Jones and my colleague here is
PC
Crosthwaite,' the bobby holding the passport said. ‘Your passport is in order and you haven't yet overstayed your welcome here. We're investigating a series of burglaries and thefts from cars in this street.'

‘When did you move in?'
PC
Jones asked.

‘Three months ago,' De Villiers said.

PC
Jones flipped through the pages of a small notebook. ‘That's when the burglaries started here. Empty your pockets,' he said.

De Villiers stood up and turned his pockets inside out. There was nothing in them. He wondered whether they would pat him down and find the Leatherman strapped to his left ankle. They could lock him up for that. And deport him.

‘Now tell us why you were running,'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

‘For exercise,' De Villiers said.

PC
Crosthwaite shook his head. ‘Wearing army boots, heavy cotton trousers and a button-down shirt? I don't think so.'

De Villiers didn't know what to say and tried to make a joke of it. ‘Emil Zátopek used to train in army boots, and look what he achieved. Three gold medals at the same Olympics.'

The bobbies were not amused. It struck De Villiers that they had probably never heard of Zátopek.

PC
Jones ran his finger along the wall and looked at his fingertips. ‘Clean,' he said. ‘Most unusual.'

PC
Crosthwaite ran his fingers over the top of the ramshackle wardrobe. ‘Clean here too, even more extraordinary.' He lifted De Villiers's army jacket from the chair and sniffed at it. ‘Clean,' he said. ‘Are you sure it's yours?'

‘Of course,' De Villiers said.

PC
Crosthwaite threw the passport on the bed. ‘May we search your room?'

De Villiers nodded. He had nothing to hide.
PC
Jones opened the wardrobe. De Villiers didn't have to look to know what they would see. One pair of good shoes. Two shirts, neatly folded and stacked, military style, on top of one another. One pair of grey flannel trousers, on a hanger. One navy blue blazer, on a hanger. One red tie. A few pairs of socks. Three pairs of underpants. All neatly stacked. A thick woollen jersey. A blue beret. Flannel pyjamas.

‘Do you have a job?'
PC
Jones asked.

‘No,' De Villiers said.

They finished their search. ‘Now tell us why you were running,'
PC
Jones said. ‘And don't give us that bullshit about exercising.'

‘I was going to buy a razor and toothpaste,' De Villiers said.

‘I didn't see any money,'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

De Villiers didn't respond.

‘We need to see some money,'
PC
Jones said.

De Villiers pulled the money belt from under his shirt. ‘See for yourself,' he said. He handed the money belt to
PC
Crosthwaite.

PC
Crosthwaite opened the first compartment and whistled. ‘How much?' he asked De Villiers.

‘About three thousand in cash and ten thousand in American Express.'

PC
Crosthwaite unzipped the second compartment and made a show of counting the banknotes. De Villiers watched in silence. ‘Three thousand one hundred and twenty, all in crisp new banknotes,'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

‘Do you have a bank account?'
PC
Jones asked.

De Villiers shook his head.

He watched as
PC
Crosthwaite put the notes back in the belt and opened the next compartment.
PC
Crosthwaite splayed the travellers cheques like a deck of cards. ‘Let's have a look,' he said. He opened the passport at the signature page and compared the signature with that on the cheques.

‘It's yours, alright,' he said. He replaced the cheques in their compartment.

‘There's something wrong here,'
PC
Jones said. ‘You look like a tramp but you have lots of money and this room is as clean as a whistle. I'm sure if we dusted it for fingerprints, we wouldn't find any. You say you don't have a job, but you have all this money on you.'

De Villiers took a deep breath. His explanation would either make no sense to them or require further explanation.

‘And you were limping,'
PC
Crosthwaite said. ‘Why run when you're limping?'

De Villiers shrugged. ‘I told you I wanted some exercise. I hurt my leg and I'm trying to get it strong again.'

‘What are you doing here?'
PC
Jones asked. ‘You're not working. You're not a tourist. And this room is as bare as a billiard ball. You look like someone who's just come out of prison.'

‘See it from our view, it looks suspicious,'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

De Villiers looked about the room. It was no more than three metres by three, with a single bed which was too short for him, an old oak wardrobe, a small table and chair, and a bucket with cleaning materials in the corner. The door was of steel with two heavy-duty security bolts on the inside as well as a standard lock. The small window was high up, almost flush against the wall of the next building, and let in little light. The steel bars on the outside threw faint shadows on the glass.