Last Train to Retreat (11 page)

B
ella Ontong, seated behind a computer in the charge office of the Lavender Hill police station, looked up as Sergeant Vincent Bruins walked in, boots thudding like a marching
troopie’s
on the hard floor. ‘Vince, I hear somebody got killed, is that right?’ Her fingers shot up from the keyboard in elegant suspense. The bright overhead light gave a shine to her short black hair, caught the pips on her shoulders – three on each side – and the narrow band of gold on her left hand.

Sergeant Bruins nodded. ‘
Ja,
Captain. I was on call-out number six when the station sent me to this house … a neighbour heard the screams. I walked through the gate and there this guy was, throat ripped out, looking
arag.
Most of the
stoep
was red – a
gemors
if ever I saw one! And you won’t believe who did it!’

Everyone stopped what they were doing – the charge office went quiet. Sergeant Bruins was an imposing man. His head was always scraping against the cabin roof of the patrol car and his leg got in the way of the gear lever. If the sergeant happened to be in the passenger seat, whoever was driving would say, ‘Legs together, please, Sarge – like a good girl now.’ The sergeant’s blue-clad body was now looming over the counter – the wood dark and shiny like an old pub’s except the rubbing had come not from elbows holding glasses but from members of the public under stress 24/7.

‘His neighbour did him in, Sarge!’

‘
Nooitie,
it was his
vrou!
’

‘Okay, a gang then? It had to be a gang.’

‘
Nwata
, it was his kid who got violent … needed
tik
money.’

‘
Minute,
Vince, we haven’t got all day! Some of us work, you know,’ Bella Ontong said. As officer commanding on this Sunday shift she was happy that both policemen had returned from their rounds unscathed. On this early evening with no members of the public in the charge office her staff deserved to unwind a little.

‘It was his two pit bulls that did it,’ the sergeant said solemnly. ‘Turned on him,
net so,
just like that!’ He clicked two fingers. ‘Why, we don’t know. We called the SPCA.’

Suddenly there was no more breezy banter – a pit bullterrier getting you by the throat had to rank near the top of horrible deaths, and they’d witnessed plenty of sticky ends on the Flats. Weekends were always the worst. The gangs partied at
shebeens
, pool joints, and clubs and maimed and killed one another. The trouble was that most joints had steel gates to keep the police out. Sunday was the day of domestic violence. It wasn’t too bad in the morning when people were in church, dressed in their Sunday best – hat, tie, suit – but once home they drank and did drugs, whole families sometimes. Gang and family killings were horrific but sometimes Bella wondered if the dead weren’t better off than the mentally-wounded living. Last week a father high on booze, Mandrax and meth ended up fucking his equally zonked-out daughter.
Ja,
that’s
tik
for you – made you as
jags
as a rabbit (the hysterical wife had laid a charge of rape – rape? To make sure, Bella had added incest and the fact that at 17 the daughter was under-age). Then a frightened father called from a street corner because his
tik-
crazed son was on the rampage in their house; as the police van pulled up the mother emerged swearing at the father for being a terrible parent (the embarrassment of having police outside her house outweighing the plight of her family, Sergeant Bruins had concluded sagely). Then there was the drunk, jealous lover who beat his girlfriend to a pulp, called the police then broke down in the sergeant’s bear-like arms. And the sobbing single mother whose son stayed out all night, missed church, and finally arrived with a wound in his neck still ‘
meth befok’
, as the sergeant explained later. He had spoken to the boy sternly, like a good father might have, ‘Next time I’m taking you to the station for a drug test, you hear me?’ Bella was always worrying about her staff and about the community. The sergeant and his colleagues had to be not just enforcers of the law but also counsellors, psychiatrists, and surrogate fathers and mothers. The needs of the people of the Flats went way beyond where the next meal was coming from.

‘Sergeant, your vest … you’re not wearing it! You think it’s a drive through the wine lands that you’ve been on, or what?’

‘Sorry, Captain, my locker was broken into yesterday … nothing missing except the vest. I’ve done a report but you know how long it takes to replace stuff.’

Bella sighed. Bullet-proof vests were like gold to gangs. Vests made them feel invincible and they paid top dollar for them. The theft of Vince’s vest pointed to the possibility of crooked cops at the station. Just days earlier Detective Warrant Officer Quentin Philander had said, ‘Bella, I’ve got my suspicions but I can’t prove a thing, not yet … how terrible to look at colleagues and wonder if they’re in the pockets of the gangs.’ He’d shaken his head – thoughtful, a little desperate. ‘That’s the thing about corruption – no smashed window, no body, no knife or gun, no blood, no fingerprints – it leaves
nothing
behind. Corruption talks softly, it’s educated, earns a salary, wears a suit or a uniform …’ Philander had been consumed by it to the detriment of his cases piling up like Table Mountain in his cramped detective’s office at the back of the station. Just as well the likes of Bella worried about the safety and well-being of the operational staff.

Bella looked at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 6 pm, the end of her day shift. Around her on the walls were reminders of what her life was about, had been for so many years – photos of police top brass, a poster on the rights of children, pictures and descriptions of missing persons, a help-line poster for those with drink and drug problems, a notice offering a reward for the recovery of a quad bike, an ad for a debt counsellor, a HIV-Aids educational poster, a prominent board with the words,
We are committed to quality service. Are we delivering?
We welcome your suggestions
, and below it a poster advising citizens on how they should go about lodging complaints and compliments.

Captain Bella Ontong loved her job even though she knew she would never win the big war out there. She took it battle by battle in the knowledge that where she could, she made a difference to the lives of those who reported to her and those who lived in despair all around her.

•

Bella was packing up in the OC office when Detective Warrant Officer Philander walked in wearing his metal-grey suit that picked up the grey spreading around his temples. Of his three suits she liked it best. What she liked least was his uniform which he was required to wear on Wednesdays – it made him look like just another cop and reminded her of the difference in rank between them even though they were almost the same age – she 37, he 40 – and had both been in the force for 18 years. She knew the reason all too well. When he was 12, Philander’s blue eyes and wavy hair had prompted a concerned, zealous apartheid official to apply the comb test and thereafter to declare him White. The comb test worked like this: if a fine-toothed comb (which many officials carried in their long socks) ran through a person’s hair easily he or she was classified as White; if it got stuck the person was non-White. This was in spite of the fact that Philander’s father, brother and sister
looked
Coloured (there had been some doubt about his mother). In that year, 1984, Philander was one of 518 people who’d been re-classified from Coloured to White. He ended up in a school for Whites while his brother and sister remained in the co-ed school for Coloureds. He escaped the fate of Vic Wilkinson who was reclassified
four
times: from mixed race to White to Coloured, back to White, and finally to Coloured again. But since 1994 the new South Africa had dealt Philander the ultimate ironic blow: as a White, promotion in the force passed him by in favour of his Black, Indian, and Coloured colleagues, aggravated by the fact that he was male.

‘Quentin, you’ve been in your office all day, no lunch even,’ she said accusingly.

‘Lone wolves we are, Bella, sniffing and sniffing until we get the scent of corruption and murder. Then we track, catch and eat!’ Philander grinned. With his blue eyes and greying temples he looked like a sun-tanned White. He was serious about his work but with Bella he could be playful. In private it was first names; everywhere else it was Captain and Warrant Officer. A bond had developed between them since the murder of Philander’s wife seven months earlier. Bettie had driven to the station one night from their home in Retreat to fetch Philander who was ill. She never got there. She was found hours later in his burnt-out car in Lentegeur, a suburb of Mitchell’s Plain, her hands and feet tied with wire. God! To kill someone in that manner in a place called Lentegeur – the fragrance of spring – what meaning was there to
anything
? The murder remained unsolved. Philander had no idea if it was a lone-wolf or a gang. If a gang, they could have come from anywhere but Philander doubted it – Bettie’s route would have been through Retreat and Lavender Hill. Only members of a gang could have orchestrated such wholesale destruction – filing off the serial and chassis numbers, defacing the registration plates then dousing the car with petrol. They didn’t count on dental identification. Philander had thanked God that he would never know if she was gang-raped first.

‘You’re getting anywhere?’ Bella asked rummaging in her bag for her car keys.

‘Maybe, Bella, I’m not sure.’ Philander ripped an out-dated circular from the board on the wall, squashed it into a ball and launched it at Bella’s bin. It went in cleanly. ‘Good omen,’ he said and sat down, calmed somewhat.

‘Tell me.’ She stayed in her chair even though she knew she should go home. The stained white tiles, the walls as bare as a skull except for a notice board, the pitted desktop, worn-out chairs – none of it she saw. She was aware only of Philander’s eyes deep in his face, the carved lines around his mouth. She couldn’t leave now.

He said slowly, ‘What if I tell you there could be a link between Bettie’s murder and crooked cops at our station?’

‘Christ, Quentin, that’s serious!’

‘Well, I can’t prove anything – not yet. Remember I wasn’t allowed to handle Bettie’s case myself and that it was given to two other officers?’

She nodded. ‘Kuscus and Fritz, wasn’t it?’ Quentin’s superiors had insisted it would be wiser. It tormented him. When the case went nowhere Quentin had threatened to resign if he couldn’t take it over.

‘Yup, and you recall that the case was amongst those mentioned in a recent report?’ A review of 78 murder and attempted murder dockets had revealed gross negligence in the handling and investigation of dockets by investigating officers in the past year in the Western Cape.

‘So, Kuscus and Fritz got warning letters and you got your case … what’s new, Quentin?’

‘
Shebeen
talk is that they’re in the pockets of the Evangelicals. Remember the police raid a week ago – the gang was tipped off.’ In the
shebeens
the air was denser and the tongues looser than on the street. ‘I have informants … they cost me, Bella, but I’ll do anything to find Bettie’s killers.’

‘And Kuscus and Fritz were the ones who botched the case. Hmm … I still don’t get it though.’ But Bella sat up. Philander never blabbed about his cases – a true bloodhound running silently even when the quarry was in sight.

‘I found out that some
laaities
from the Evangelicals hijacked a car as part of their initiation, and guess what – it was about the time Bettie was killed.’ Philander hardly paused, ‘Don’t you remember a gang nearly copped Victoria Smurfit, the British actress, in Strand Street – in the middle of Cape Town – as part of their initiation? “Kill a tourist day” was their entrance exam.’

Bella stared at him. ‘It explains why they drove all the way to Mitchell’s Plain – to divert suspicion from them in Lavender Hill. What are you going to do?’

‘Listen, look, sniff around,’ Philander said as he rose from his chair. ‘
Ja,
Bella, it’s been a good day at the office.’

•

Bella got into her VW Polo, loosened the laces of her boots to relieve her ankles from hours of entombment and set off feeling slightly breathless as if she were running home. What would she wear if ever she were to see Philander outside of work? There was nothing feminine about her formless uniform, not like Philander’s suits that brought out his handsomeness. She always felt at a disadvantage at the station in spite of outranking him.

She was approaching Heathfield where she lived, near Princess Vlei and near the railway line that cut through the southern suburbs, on the wrong side of the track to be sure but she’d resigned herself to it long ago – how else could she properly serve the communities? As her reward she knew that they accepted her as one of their own. It was why she hated crooked cops – they helped criminals to break down what little was left of society on the Flats.

As she reached home she was thankful that she had such a good husband in Wayne. He was wonderful with the kids while she was at work – Bokkie bless her, and Greg aka Snelvoet because he could run so fast. She loved her family dearly but on days after seeing Philander she’d come home and feel as if there wasn’t enough air in the flat – she’d open doors and windows and gulp in the evening or early morning air, depending on whether she’d been on a day or a night shift, and try to get rid of the stifling, smothering sensation in her chest. ‘Just a hectic day at work,’ she’d say and throw herself into preparing dinner or breakfast. By the time they gathered around the table and said grace she’d be in control again – Captain Bella Ontong, dependable, caring cop, main provider, mother, and occasionally, when her husband needed it, loving wife.

J
erome Sasman, aka the Gnome, never failed to remind Hannibal of a spider – small, hairy, creased, and dangerous. The dangerous part didn’t register with people at first – a fact many regretted later. They’d see Sasman in other, sometimes condescending terms – dwarf-like, sharp and jovial, and, if they were women, weird but rich enough to cuddle and fondle.