So am I, bro, so am I.
This is the Mauser murderers other pistol.
Its not me, brother. Im bad but I dont kill.
Youll have to come with us, sister.
I know my rights. I have an alibi.
You think the magistrate will take your word?
No, but hell probably take the word of a policeman.
Sister?
Ask Hatting, the desk sergeant at the Bays station, which evening of the week he gets his brown bread, brother. On the house. Sunset to sunup.
* * *
Hatting was a middle-aged man, balding, which he tried to disguise by combing the few remaining hairs over the bald patch. He was in civvies because the station commander had called him in.
Im going to lose my pension, Hatting said and he looked old and frightened and defenseless.
It wont go any further, Sergeant, said Joubert and looked at Petersen, Snyman, and the Hout Bay OC. They all gave affirmative nods.
My wife is deceased, Captain. Its been twelve years. No one said anything. Hatting rubbed his hands and stared at the floor, his face contorted with regret. The children go back to boarding school on Sunday afternoons, Captain . . . dear God, the Sunday evenings.
They sat in an uncomfortable silence. But Joubert had to make sure.
Sergeant, are you very sure that Eleanor Davids was with you until after seven on Monday morning?
Hatting merely nodded. He couldnt look at Joubert.
The whole night?
Nod. Then silence again.
Never again, said Hatting, and he wept.
* * *
Griessels eyes were deeply sunken into their dark sockets, his skin the bluish yellow of the very ill, but he listened to Jouberts every word, craving normality, the routine, the life outside. Joubert sat on one iron bed, on a bare mattress. Benny sat on the other, his legs drawn up. The sanatorium was quiet, a mausoleum.
Snyman will follow Nienaber, from tomorrow morning. With Louw relieving him in the evening. Thats all weve got, Benny.
Cant be him. Griessels voice was vague, as if he were speaking from a distance.
I dont know, Benny. Hairdresser. I was . . . He had to think when he had been at Anne Boshoffs. Today? It felt like yesterday or the day before. He remembered her and his discomfort and he wanted to laugh at himself and tell Benny Griessel about her, but he merely gave a slightly embarrassed smile. I saw a beautiful woman today, Benny. A doctor in criminology. She said that the murderer could be queer. Nienaber is married but hes a hairdresser . . .
My nephew is a hairdresser in Danielskuil and hes screwed every farmers wife in the area.
Its all Ive got, Benny. Because Nienaber is lying. I dont know why or about what, but hes lying. Hes slippery, Benny. As an eel.
Joubert looked at his watch. It was half past ten. The nurse had said only fifteen minutes.
I want to come and help, Captain.
Come when youre ready. He got up. Night, Benny.
Joubert walked down the ward. His footsteps echoed off the walls. He had almost reached the double doors when he heard Griessel calling him.
Mat.
Joubert stopped, looked back.
Why dont you ask her out? The doctor.
He stood in the semidark and looked at the figure on the bed.
Maybe, Benny. Sleep well.
* * *
A block away from his house he stopped at a stop sign, his window open so that the smoke of the Special Mild could waft outside. He heard the big motorcycle before it stopped next to him. The driver, in a black safety helmet, looked straight ahead, a passenger clung to him.
Joubert looked up, curious, instinctively, and saw the eyes of Yvonne Stoffberg through the narrow opening of her helmet.
Then the motorcycle revved up and drew away from his car. Jouberts mind put two and two together. Ginger Pretoriuss Kawasaki, just before midnight on a Monday night. Yvonne Stoffbergs eyes.
There was something in the way she looked at him, something in the frown, the sudden manner in which she looked away. Perhaps it was only his imagination, he thought, when he drove away from the stop sign. But it seemed as if she was slightly self-conscious. I can do better than Ginger Pretorius, is what he thought she wanted to say.
And then he knew he wasnt going to follow Griessels advice. He wasnt going to ask Anne Boshoff out.
Because he wanted Dr. Hanna Nortier.
30.
M
argaret Wallace woke just after three in the morning with the realization that Tuesday was garbage removal day and that she would have to lug the garbage bags from the kitchen door to the front gate on her own. Early. They usually came before six. Last week her brother-in-law had still been there to lend a hand but she was alone now. Without Jimmy. Tomorrow it would be two weeks. And there were so many things to do. A thousand things. Too many.
She got up, put on her dressing gown, and went to the kitchen, knowing that sleep would elude her. She switched on the kettle, unlocked the back door, took the garbage bin by the handle, and manhandled it to the gate, a long and tiring job, by the light offered by the garden lights and the streetlamps. But it gave her satisfaction. In future she would have to be self-sufficient. Jimmy wouldve expected it of her. She owed it to the children.
At the front gate, she removed the garbage bags from the bin, placed them on the pavement, dusted her hands, and turned back to the kitchen, dragging the empty bin.
She remembered Ferdy Ferreira.
Without warning, without encouragement, her memory suddenly released the information, between the gate and the kitchen.
The man on the television. The third victim. Ferdy Ferreira. She remembered where she had seen the face before. Hed been here, in their house, one evening. She was busy in the kitchen when the doorbell had rung. Jimmy had answered it. They had gone to the study without her seeing the man. But when he left, she thought, I saw him hobbling through the living room, slightly lame. He had looked up and met her eyes, a man with a sad face, like a large, faithful dogs. But he hadnt greeted her, simply kept on walking to the door.
A long time ago. Four years? Five?
She had asked Jimmy who the man was. Just business, my sweet. Some or other explanation, vague, lost in the mists of so many people who had come and gone, traipsing through her house, Jimmys business acquaintances, instant friends, cricket people . . .
But Ferdy Ferreira had been there. And later today she would phone the big policeman with the unseeing eyes and tell him.
Perhaps it would help.
* * *
He was already swimming just after six, knowing that it was going to be a long day, determined to make an early start. He counted the first two lengths and then became enmeshed in a search for solutions. What did he have to do today? Oliver Nienaber. Suspect number one. Gerrit Snyman was probably parked in front of the expensive house by now, ready for the first round of follow-the-hairdresser. The autopsy. Find out whether the pathologist had been able to establish the time of death. That might pin Nienaber down . . . despite Petersens blow. Talk to the previous victims relatives about MacDonald. Who had known him? Where? The bank robber. Ask Brigadier Brown whether people had been deployed in all Premier Banks branches by now.
Two more days before he would see Hanna Nortier again, he thought. Only two days.
He wanted to ask her out. Where to? Drink in the canteen, Doc?
Ha.
Dinner by candlelight in a good restaurant, one of those in Sea Point with the heavy curtains, perhaps one of the new ones in the Waterfront that everyone was talking about? No. Not for a first time it would be too intimate, too much him and her.
Flick? Perhaps. What? Seen
Rocky VII,
Doc? Maybe one of those European numbers with the subtitles that showed in the southern suburbs? No. Too many bare breasts and blatant sex. She would get a wrong impression about him.
Joubert suddenly realized that he had subconsciously kept count and that he had completed eight lengths. And he wanted more.
He couldnt believe it. Eight lengths. How about that? Eight fucking lengths.
Who needed to give up smoking? He turned the way hed been taught all those years ago, in one smooth movement, his feet kicking against the swimming pool wall. He slid through the water until his big body broke surface and his arms stretched and his head turned to inhale and he tilted his chest for the next stroke upward and the next. Left, right, left, breathe, right, left, right, breathe . . .
He swam another four lengths, rhythmically, easily, while his heart beat deep in his chest, a thrust. His satisfaction grew until he knew after the twelfth that it had been great and it was enough. He hauled himself effortlessly out of the pool and, dripping water, walked to the changing room. The long room was still empty at that time and the temptation was suddenly overwhelming. He bellowed:
BAAA!
One sound, explosive, an echo in the building. The shout that resounded in his ears was an embarrassment, but the feeling enfolded him like a cloak even when he got out of the car at the Hout Bay police station, passed the voices of the journalists, and walked up the stairs and through the big wooden door.
But it melted away when he saw the district commissioner, the chief of detectives, and de Wit.
They said good morning, the eyes of the three senior officers fixed hopefully on Joubert. His own revealed nothing. They walked to the ops rooms and closed the door.
Joubert told them everything up to the point of Petersens blow. And he began to lie. We had to let him go.
You had to let him go, the district commissioner said without intonation, stunned.
We thought about the reputation of the force, General, in these difficult times. Our image is at stake. Oliver Nienaber is a well-known personality. If we lock him up, we must have sufficient evidence. And we havent. One witness who saw him at the scene of the murder. The pathologist hasnt even established whether MacDonald was murdered at more or less that time. We have no proof that Nienaber owns a Mauser. His story . . . It might well be true. But our image, General. If we charge the wrong man now . . . Joubert stressed the image, knew that it was the one strong point in his argument.
Ye-e-es, the General said thoughtfully.
But I have a team following Nienaber, General.
What do we tell the press? the Brigadier asked. After last nights drama at the news conference theyre like hyenas whove smelled blood.
Die Burger
even says someone might well be charged today. Where do they get hold of such nonsense?
Silence fell in the room.
Dont we have anything else, Captain? the General asked but knew the answer.
We have a great deal of follow-up work to do today, General. It might produce something.
We have to sound positive in front of the media. Ill say weve had a breakthrough and are following up new leads now. Thats virtually the truth.
The medium, said de Wit, making his first contribution. The others stared at him. Shes arriving tonight. Madame Jocelyn Lowe.
We cant be the ones to tell the press, Bart. The Brigadier sounded irritated.
I know, Brigadier. Nor will we. The Madame has a press agent. And the press agent said she was sending faxes to the local newspapers this morning. From London. De Wit looked at his watch. I promise you, our lack of success wont be the main copy this afternoon.
I hope youre right, Bart, the General said. Lets go and speak to the vultures.
While the General spoke to the media, Joubert stood to one side. He listened but his thoughts were still concentrated on the things that had to be done. Here and there he caught press questions: When is an arrest going to be made? Is there a connection between the murders and the bank robberies? The usual stuff. And then a new one. General, have you heard that the so-called field marshal of the Army of the New Afrikaner Boer Republic said that the Mauser was a voice calling the Afrikaners to the service of their nation?
No, said the General.
The reporter paged back in his notebook. I quote: The Mauser is the voice of our forefathers, the echo of their blood, spilt for freedom in two wars against overwhelming odds. It is a trumpet call for the uprising of the nation, a war cry from a forgotten era when Afrikaner pride was still pure and true.
The whole press group was silent. So was the General. Joubert looked at his shoes, which shone in the sharp sunlight.
