Deon Meyer (23 page)

“I’m busy building a bookcase.”

 

 

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

 

 

“Well . . . er . . .”

 

 

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

 

 

“Maybe.” And he said good-bye.

 

 

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

 

 

It made him feel better.

 

 

 

23.

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

He would have to speak to MacDonald. And Coetzee.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

It made no sense. He got up, purposefully.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

* * *

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

 

 

But she caught a quick glimpse of the front page of the
Sunday Times
that her mother had bought. There was a report about the Mauser murders with a smallish photo of Ferdy Ferreira next to it.

 

 

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

 

 

Where had she seen that face before?

 

 

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

 

 

* * *

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

 

 

His thoughts were even busier.

 

 

The Barber
?

 

 

Was that the name of an opera? He thought so. Somewhere there was a brain cell with the information, wrestling against the dark. How silly human beings were. He laughed at himself. He could’ve asked what
The Barber
was. “Dr. Hanna, please explain to this fucking stupid policeman what
The Barber
is.” And more than likely she would’ve enjoyed it and he would’ve known by now. But human beings were odd. They didn’t want to be caught out. Live a lie and resist being caught out at any price.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

He had cut the one plank too short.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Revel in her strange attractiveness.

 

 

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

 

 

Suddenly he remembered Griessel. He would have to . . .
visit
was the wrong word. He would have to see him.

 

 

Then he might as well . . .

 

 

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

 

 

* * *

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Tell her.

 

 

“I . . .”

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

“And then, at thirty-seven, Rossini wrote his last opera.
William Tell,
” the man said.

 

 

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

 

 

“For the remaining forty years of his life, he wrote no other opera— unless one could describe the
Stabat Mater
as such. Was he lazy? Was he tired? Or had the creative urge simply dried up?” the man asked and was quiet for a brief moment.

 

 

“We will never know.”

 

 

Not the work of the Predator, Joubert thought, but Rossini remained his blood brother. Except that he had beaten the composer. He was only thirty-four and he was already tired, his creative juices exhausted. Would the brain behind great compositions like
The State Versus Thomas Maasen
and gripping works like
The Case of the Oranjezicht Rapist
never solve a classical crime again?

 

 

We will never know.

 

 

Or will we?

 

 

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

 

 

“It’s curious that the Italians almost hissed the first performance of
The Barber
off the stage,” the speaker said. “What a humiliation it must’ve been for Rossini.”

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

How very different from Captain Mat Joubert.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

* * *

They had coffee at a restaurant.

 

 

“Did you like it?” she asked.

 

 

“I know nothing about opera.”

 

 

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

 

 

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