Recipes for Love and Murder (6 page)

I had run out of rusks at home and at the office. And rusks should dry out overnight. So I got up and made a big batch and put them into two baking trays in the oven. I let the warm sweet smell fill my lungs, and somehow it helped fight away the memories, and the worry. Maybe duck lady's husband was not as bad as my husband. And even my husband didn't kill me . . .

When the dough was baked and had cooled a little, I cut it into rusk-sized pieces and put them into the warming drawer. I ate two of the biggest pieces while they were still soft, with a cup of tea. They were like buttery cake. I went back to bed and kept my mind on the sweet bread that was becoming rusks, all safe and warm and dry, and I finally managed to fall asleep.

I woke early, just before the birds, and sat on the stoep in my nightie and looked on the dark shapes of the veld and hills and drank coffee and ate two of the golden-brown beskuit. I put on my veldskoene, walked around to the side of the house and opened up the chicken hok. I checked all five hens were in there, and listened to their sleepy chicken noises. I always close the hokkie door at night, because you never know when a jackal or rooikat is in the area. I threw some crushed mielie corn on the lawn and called
kik kik kik
and they woke up fast.

The flashbacks were gone with the morning light, but the worries were still there, and my mind wouldn't settle. So I made my farm bread with oats, sunflower seeds and molasses.

I put the dough into a cast-iron pot and took it outside onto my stoep where the sun was now shining.

I phoned the
Gazette
but there was no reply. When the dough had risen, I divided it into two bread pans and put them in the oven. While they baked I got dressed, but stayed barefoot. Then I brushed the loaves with butter and wrapped each one in its own cloth.

I ate the soft warm bread, with butter and apricot jam on one slice and cheese on the other. I am not sure how settled my mind was, but the food settled very nicely in my belly.

While I cleaned up I listened to a cicada's buzzing song. I wondered if he was screaming for rain – the days were just getting hotter. But I suppose he was shouting for a mate. Cicadas aren't shy to call and call. After years of living underground he comes out for just a short while and makes his mad music. But it seems he only plays one note, which goes on and on. I suppose his life in the sunshine is too short to be fussy. Maybe what sounds like a desperate racket to me is beautiful music to a lady cicada.

I filled a tin with muesli buttermilk beskuit for the
Gazette
. I didn't want to go in to the office; I couldn't say why. But I brushed my hair and put on lipstick and my khaki veldskoene and headed for the car.

Lying near the front tyre of the car was a small feathered thing. It was a dead bird. A dove. I wondered if I had hit it, but it didn't look run over. It was all in one piece, just soft and dead. I put the rusks down on the passenger seat, and picked up the bird. It was so light in my hands, but it gave me a heavy feeling in my heart. I laid it under a bread-flower bush on the edge of my driveway. The bush had little red flowers.

My sky-blue bakkie was not too hot, thanks to the morning shade of the eucalyptus trees. I wound down my windows as I drove and the warm wind unbrushed my hair and dried my lipstick.

At the
Gazette
, I pulled in some distance behind Hattie's Etios, which was parked very skew. As I walked up the path to the office, I could hear Hattie talking loudly.

‘Golly, Jess,' she was saying. ‘I wouldn't have thought you an ambulance chaser.'

Jessie's voice: ‘Aw, Hattie— '

‘And privacy for the poor chap? The bereaved?'

‘I used a telephoto lens, he didn't even see me.'

‘Were you invited there? Or did you really just follow the ambulance?'

‘C'mon . . . Its siren was on; it was right in front of me. I'm an investigative journalist.'

‘Pish posh.'

The door was open and they were at Jessie's desk. Hattie was frowning but she tried to rearrange her face when she saw me.

‘Maria . . . ' she said.

‘Hello, Tannie,' Jessie grinned.

Hattie was too polite to carry on skelling Jessie out in front of me. But Jessie wasn't going to let it go.

‘Just have a look at the photos,' she said to us both.

I looked at the pictures on her computer.

The first photograph was from a bit of a distance: a farm, an ambulance, and paramedics.

She clicked slowly through a few pictures:

Men in white. A stretcher, a woman's body, her arm in a plaster cast. Pretty nose and mouth, brown hair loose across her shoulder. Pale skin, eyes closed. Maybe in her forties. A man in his fifties, standing, hands hanging useless at his sides, the ambulance driving off. His hair wiry with scraggly sideburns, his mouth a little open. His face full and empty at the same time.

A photo of the same man, squatting on the ground, in front of a pond surrounded by reeds, his face buried in his hands.

‘Is she dead?' I asked, although my bones already knew the answer.

Jessie nodded.

‘I spoke to my ma, at the hospital,' she said. ‘Her name is Martine van Schalkwyk. The husband is Dirk.'

‘Can you do a close-up on that picture?' I said. ‘No, not his face, the pond.'

At the edge of the water, caught in the base of the reeds, were a few feathers. Small and white.

I felt strange and had to sit down. I managed to get to my desk chair.

‘Maria, you're pale as a ghost,' said Hattie.

Jessie put the kettle on while Hattie fanned me with a piece of paper.

They pulled up their chairs and sat down on either side of me. Jessie handed me a cup of coffee and I took a big sip. It was sweet and strong.

‘The ducks,' I said. ‘It was the lady with the ducks.'

‘Oh, heavens, yes, the one who wrote to you,' said Hattie.

‘The bastard,' said Jessie. ‘He killed her.'

‘Oh, if only . . . ' I said, but the list of the things I wished was too long to say.

‘Have some beskuit,' Hattie said, opening my tin and offering a rusk to me.

‘Let me investigate,' said Jessie, standing up. ‘Please, Hattie.'

Hattie sighed.

‘Talk to the police and the hospital,' she said. ‘But you leave that husband alone.'

Jessie opened her mouth like she was going to speak but then closed it again. She grabbed her notebook, helmet and jacket and headed off.

Hattie shook her head.

‘That girl.'

‘I think she'll go far,' I said.

‘Maybe too far,' said Hattie.

CHAPTER TWELVE

We heard the buzz of Jessie's scooter fading away and then the rattling of a big car arriving, its brakes screeching as it stopped; a door slamming, boots stomping up the pathway.

Hattie peeped outside. Her eyebrows shot up and she scooted backwards, her hand on the door, like she might close it.

‘Haai!' a woman shouted. ‘Ek soek Tannie Maria!'

She was looking for me. Her voice was rough but had some sweet flavour, like Christmas cake with stones in it.

‘I'm afraid she's not currently available,' said Hattie.

‘Where's she? Who're you?'

‘Would you like me to take a message?'

Hattie was blocking the door but the woman pushed past her.

‘Blikemmer
,'
she swore. Tin bucket. ‘I must see her.'

She was wearing a man's overall and no make-up. Her hair was short but deurmekaar, like she'd been running her hands through it. But you could still see she was a good-looking woman in her thirties, her eyes brown with dark eyelashes.

‘And you?' she said when she saw me.

She looked like she was going to klap one of us. Who was she going to smack first? She wasn't as tall as Hattie, but she looked strong enough to take us both on.

I was going to tell this rude woman that I was the cleaning lady and she was messing up the floor with her dirty shoes.

But then I saw, stuck to the mud on one of her big leather boots, a little white feather.

‘I am Tannie Maria,' I said. ‘Sit. Sit. I'll make us coffee.'

She sat on the edge of Jessie's chair and frowned at me, like she didn't like the way I was putting sugar in her coffee. But I carried on anyway, and added milk too.

Then there was a sound like someone had stood on a puppy, and I got a fright. The woman's face crumpled and the sound was her crying. Then she was tjanking, howling like a dog that's been left alone. I put her coffee along with the tin of rusks on the table next to her, and pulled my chair closer to hers.

‘Heavens above,' said Hattie and closed the door.

But she needn't have worried because the woman got much quieter. Tears ran down her face; you could see the lines because her cheeks were a bit dusty. They ran right into her mouth. She was tjanking softly now, and I could make out some words:

‘Tienie. My Tienie,' she said. ‘I love her.'

The tears kept streaming down. Ag, I felt sorry for her.

Then there was a loud knocking, and Hattie went to open the door.

‘Police!' barked a man's voice. ‘I am Detective Lieutenant Kannemeyer. We are looking for Anna Pretorius. Her bakkie is outside.'

Hattie said nothing and for the second time someone pushed past her. The policeman was big and tall with short hair and a thick handlebar moustache. It had a nice shape, like he took care of it. His moustache was a chestnut colour and his hair was a darker brown with silver streaks above his ears.

The woman jumped up from her chair, knocking the tin, and spilling the rusks onto the floor.

‘Anna Pretorius,' said the man, ‘you must come with me for fingerprinting.'

Anna wiped her face with the back of her hand and then, with that same hand full of dust and tears, she made a fist and punched the policeman in his jaw. He jerked back and touched his fingers to his face. His eyes were a storm-cloud blue. He reached out his long arm. The long arm of the law they say, but I'd never seen it in person before, you know, reaching out like that. But she ducked under his long arm and darted for the door. He seemed to move slower than her, but somehow he caught her. She was jumping, and beating out with her fists, her face as red as a beetroot. But he just wrapped his arms around her, like a giant bear, and pinned her to him until she went still. There was sunlight shining on his arms and you could see that chestnut-coloured hair again.

‘Konstabel Piet Witbooi,' he said.

A little guy with the high cheekbones of a Bushman popped up beside the detective. His hair was like peppercorns and his skin was wrinkled and yellow-brown like a sultana. His hands moved quickly and quietly as he slipped handcuffs around Anna's wrists. I thought she was still going to kick and bite, but when I saw her face I realised the fire had gone out of her. The tears were slipping down her cheeks again.

‘Why do you need fingerprints?' I said to the policemen.

They did not reply, but I knew the answer. Anna was a suspect in the murder of her friend.

‘You've got to help me,' Anna said, looking at me with her wet brown eyes.

I knew that I would try. But I also knew that I would never be able to help her with her biggest trouble. That huge eina loss of the one she loved.

And then, it was funny, and I know it was a selfish thing to do, but I felt jealous of her, standing there looking so miserable, with the big policeman holding her. I envied her love. That deep love I had never had.

Constable Witbooi and Detective Kannemeyer and Anna left Hattie and me standing there, looking down at the muesli buttermilk rusk crumbs, trampled all over the floor.

I shook my head. What a sad story.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘You blerrie dyke bitch,' said the pink-faced man in khaki shorts.

Now that wasn't how I expected to be greeted when I went into the Ladismith police station. I was there to tell the detective about the
Gazette
letters I'd got from the dead woman and her friend. I didn't get a chance to talk to him earlier.

The rude man was swearing at Anna: ‘Blerrie bitch.'

Anna stood in front of a long wooden counter next to Constable Piet Witbooi. He turned and greeted me with a nod. Anna's handcuffs were off and there was ink all over her fingers. The room was big, with pale yellow walls and small metal-framed windows, and an old humming air-conditioning unit. There was a corridor leading off this room, with doors to smaller offices. On the other side of the counter sat a young black policewoman at a wooden desk, busy with some paperwork.

Anna glared at the rude man, her eyes bright and her nose twitching.

‘She hated you, you ugly warthog,' she said. ‘Vlakvark.'

He did look a bit like a warthog: stocky, his eyes small and his hair wiry. A big nose. And brown and grey scraggly whiskers on his jaws. Where had I seen him before?

‘You blerrie fat rat,' he said.

She was baring her teeth at him now, but not in smiling way. She didn't look like a rat; more like a rock-rabbit, a dassie. With her soft fur and dark eyes. I wondered if the dassie was going to sink her teeth into the warthog.

‘She was mine,' he said.

Now I recognised him: Dirk van Schalkwyk – from Jessie's photographs.

The policewoman said something, but I could not hear, because at that moment the aircon unit made a loud rattling sound.

‘She hated you,' Anna hissed.

‘I'll blerrie kill you, you fat kakkerlak,' he shouted.

That was just silly. She looked nothing like a cockroach.

‘Hey!' said Detective Kannemeyer, coming out of the office at the back. He stared down at us all. He really was a tall guy. ‘Stop that.'

‘Go ahead, warthog,' said Anna, standing up straight, pushing her shoulders back. ‘Kill me, you murderer.'

‘You're not gonna get away with it,' said Dirk, pulling a gun out from under his shirt.