The Woman in the Blue Cloak

by Deon Meyer

  Alexa listened attentively, as always. Her face radiated admiration for him, and her fingers empathetically touched his hand every now and then. It was moments like these that convinced him that marrying her was the right thing to do. Moments when she made him feel worthy and useful and important and appreciated. And loved.

  How did you explain that to Cupido?

  She said she was going to cook him a nice cheese and mushroom omelette. He said he must get back to the office in a hurry, he would just eat Weet-Bix.

  ‘Go and shower, and when you come back your omelette will be ready.’

  ‘Thank you, Alexa.’ With a silent prayer that the omelette would at least be reasonably edible.

  While he was in the shower he heard her come into the bathroom: ‘Your telephone keeps ringing.’

  He slid the shower door open, holding his towel in one hand.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just a number.’

  He looked at it. Two missed calls.

  ‘Thanks, Alexa,’ he said, drying his hands, and took the phone from her. Standing there in his birthday suit, he called the number back.

  A voice answered straight away. ‘Hello, this is Willie.’

  ‘My name is Benny Griessel. You called me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re the captain of the Hawks? The one who’s investigating the Bleached Body case?’

  An excited male voice.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Man, I think I’ve got a photo of the murderer.’

  Griessel’s heart sank. With every investigation you got your jokers and your crazies, the smart alecks, the obsessive and the lonely, phoning in with their suggestions and solutions, criticisms and theories.

  ‘Where did you get my number?’

  ‘Yes, that was quite a thing. From your forensic chaps. I talked to the police in Grabouw first, who gave me the number of the forensic people, and then the Arnold guy said I should talk to you.’

  ‘And the photo?’ He was sure now it was one of Arnold’s jokes.

  ‘I’m with the Cape Leopard Trust. I’m actually based in Betty’s Bay, but we have nearly fifty cameras, from the Groot Winterhoek Mountains at Porterville, to the Kogelberg here. We set up the cameras to photograph the leopards. When they walk between the sensor and the camera, it interrupts the beam and it takes a photo. We’re researching their numbers and movements.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Griessel, with the first inkling that this might not be a joke after all.

  ‘After the rain we battled a bit, yesterday, with so much mud on the mountain tracks, and I was running late. By the time I got to the Groenland Mountain cameras it was already dark, so I just changed the memory card in the camera and came home. When I checked the photos this morning there was a leopard, a Toyota, a Volkswagen, and then a bunch of policemen, and a minibus with SAPS Provincial Crime Scene Investigation Unit on the side. I phoned the police in Grabouw, and they told me they found the car there yesterday. Of the Bleached Body woman.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a photo of the man who drove the car in there. Date stamp on the photo says Monday night, just after eleven.’

  Griessel asked where the man on the phone was speaking from, and he said he was at his house in Betty’s Bay, but he would bring the original memory card with the photos on it to them, he didn’t want it to ‘disappear or something’.

  Benny thanked him, hurriedly pulling on some clothes while explaining to Alexa he wasn’t going to have time to eat an omelette after all. She fetched him some of the rusks she always bought from Woolworths Food, put them in a plastic bag, and then in his jacket pocket, while he phoned Vaughn Cupido. His colleague said, ‘We’ve got him, Benna, we’re going to nail that lowlife Fillis today, I’m telling you now.’

  In the car he munched on the dry but delicious muesli rusks, not waiting for coffee to dunk them in. He was first to arrive at work: Cupido turned up ten minutes later and they waited impatiently outside on the steps of the DPCI building for Willie Bruwer, leopard researcher.

  ‘You should have told the guy to email the photos,’ said Cupido.

  ‘He was so keen to bring them to us,’ said Griessel. ‘I think he wants to be a small part of this.’

  ‘His moment of glory . . .’

  They waited nearly a quarter of an hour, until a Landcruiser turned the corner of Voortrekker Street with squealing tyres, made a wide U-turn, and stopped in front of them. Bruwer was young; Griessel guessed he wasn’t much past twenty-four. He was wearing the khaki and green clothes of a nature conservation officer. He gave a wave of the hand, got out, slamming the door of the vehicle shut, and strode towards them with a black carrying case in his hand.

  He introduced himself, shook hands with them both. Cupido invited him in, and in the deserted reception area of the Hawks, at the desk where Mavis sat on weekdays, Bruwer fired up his laptop, pushed in the memory card, and accessed the photographs. First the female leopard, and then the white Toyota.

  The face of the driver wasn’t clear, but there was more than enough detail to identify him.

  ‘Well, you could blow me over with a bloody feather,’ said Vaughn Cupido. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  They stopped at the entry boom of the Schonenberg Retirement Village at 10.24. Both men got out and presented their SAPS ID cards to the guard at the gate. ‘We’re here to see Prof Marius Wilke. Open the gate and don’t tell him we’re coming.’

  ‘The prof has gone to church,’ the guard said.

  That deflated them. They had been all fired up and ready to confront him.

  ‘Is this the only gate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time will he be back?’

  ‘About half past eleven, if they don’t go out to eat. Some Sundays they eat here at Waterstone’s.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Him and the Hulk.’

  ‘Who’s the Hulk?’

  ‘Prof’s driver. He doesn’t drive himself any more.’ Then: ‘Bertie,’ with a certain tone, and a fingertip tapped on the temple. ‘A little bit soft up here.’

  They gave the guard precise instructions, then they drove in, to Marius Wilke’s house.

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ said Griessel while they sat watching from the street.

  ‘Why, Benna?’

  ‘Wilke told me he doesn’t drive any more. I should have asked him how he got to the hotel, for his breakfast with Lewis.’

  ‘No, Benna, there’s lots of ways, these days. Uber, taxis, the train . . .’

  Griessel shook his head. ‘No, I don’t see him in one of those.’

  ‘Well then, we were both idiots.’

  At 11.37 the guard phoned. ‘They’ve just gone through.’

  Less than a minute later they saw the Volkswagen Caddy bus turn the corner. They got out and waited for the vehicle. It stopped in the middle of the road, fifty metres from them. They could see the professor’s snow-white head, and behind the wheel, a bulky shape.

  The Caddy idled, its doors still closed. They walked closer, and could see Wilke talking and gesticulating, his sturdy companion just sitting and listening to him. Cupido drew his service pistol, held it against his side. Griessel did the same. They walked faster.

  The door opened on the passenger side. Wilke got out. ‘Old Vaughn . . .’ But this time the smile was forced.

  Cupido raised his pistol and aimed it at the big man behind the steering wheel. ‘Tell him to switch off, Prof. Now!’

  Wilke spoke into the vehicle; they couldn’t hear what he said. Without a word, both of them broke into a run. Griessel was closest to the driver; he saw that the man’s eyes were wild, flickering between them and the professor. ‘Turn off the vehicle, or I’ll shoot,’ Griessel shouted, seeing the fear in the big man’s eyes, knowing he was going to do something.

  ‘Bertie, do as they say!’ Marius Wilke’s shrill duck-voice cut through everything, a sharp command.

  Bertie switched
off the Caddy, and slowly raised his hands.

  In the Somerset West police station they showed the photo to Prof Marius Wilke, the one where he sat behind the wheel of Alicia Lewis’s rented Toyota. He looked at it, and let out a long deep sigh. ‘It was an accident. I swear to you, it was an accident. She fell. There at the bridge over the Theewaterskloof Dam. It was just an accident. But I knew nobody would believe us. I knew.’

  They recorded him with a video camera and with their phones. He said, ‘Old Benny, I didn’t tell you the whole truth.’

  But at least he had shared some of the truth with them: he had done the research on the painting, he had found the reference to the painting by Thibault, that wonderful, honest, clever, versatile man. The artwork was part of the Cape, part of the tapestry of history that was woven into this land. He had researched the family tree of Gysbert van Reenen for Alicia Lewis. All the way back to the one who had bought the painting, right down to Willem Vermeulen Junior. Cape people. South Africans. Part of this region. This country. Which meant it was South African: the Fabritius painting was part of the very marrow and bone of the Cape. And South Africa.

  And they had to understand, someone had to preserve the heritage. But people didn’t care any more, nobody cared about history and culture, not even about Die Taal, the Afrikaans language; everyone was just chasing after money and fame now. He had seen, through his entire life, how the country’s history and its precious historical artefacts were neglected and defaced, how Afrikaans was attacked and broken down. Now, in the last year or two, the artworks and statues on campuses were being burned and broken in the name of decolonisation and Rhodes Must Fall and other senseless campaigns. Surely we couldn’t deny our own history? Or change it? Couldn’t people understand that we had to know where we came from to know who we were, and where we were heading?

  Marius Wilke kept on talking in that vein, a constant stream of words and passion and pleading in his shrill voice. He told them that he had tried to track down the nine people himself, but progress had been too slow.

  Then he heard from Alicia Lewis again, recently. And he said, she was coming to the Cape, and he had once promised her a book. That’s when he knew she had found the painting. And so he saw his chance: he went and had breakfast with her and took her his best book, so that hopefully she could understand the Cape history and appreciate it a little. So that she could look kindly on his earnest plea. At the hotel, that morning, he begged her: don’t allow greed to rule. Don’t take the painting out of the country. Let it stay here. Make it known, but help to keep it here.

  But she laughed at him, and she took his book and left.

  21

  So he got into the car with Bertie and told him they were going to wait there outside the hotel, watch for her to come out and then follow her.

  Lewis drove to Franschhoek. Over the Franschhoek Pass, to Theewaterskloof. To Villiersdorp. Through to the other side, to the farm, Eden, owned by Willem and Minnie Vermeulen.

  That was one of the names on the list that he had sent to Lewis. Willem Vermeulen.

  Then he knew that was where the painting was. She had come to get it.

  He and Bertie waited, and when Lewis left late in the afternoon, they wanted to see what the painting looked like. Yes, he wanted to see it very badly. It was probably the only time in his life that he would have that privilege, he was an old man already. After all, he had researched and traced it, he had earned the right.

  Yes, he wanted to see the painting, and he wanted one last chance to try and persuade her not to take it out of the country. He believed he could reason with her: his intellect and logic, his clarity of reason had often swayed people. And after all, she was an intelligent woman.

  Griessel and Cupido had heard many confessions in their lives. Marius Wilke’s voice kept rising in tone, as his emotions were heightened. His slight frame jerked and twisted with every revelation, the face, eyes, his whole body combined in a frenzied, frenetic attempt to persuade them that this was the truth.

  He had instructed Bertie to overtake her Toyota, and force her to pull over.

  On the bridge across the dam he managed it, she was forced to slow and stop at the side of the road. Alicia Lewis was furious, she had jumped out of her car, shouting, ‘How dare you, how dare you!’ at him. He tried to calm her down, tried to explain, but she threatened to call the police, she wouldn’t listen to reason. He said he just wanted to see the painting, that was all he asked.

  ‘Fuck off, you little freak,’ she screamed.

  That was when he lost his temper. Because she was a bully. He knew all about bullies; when he was a child, bullies who hated him and his small stature and keen mind had called him a freak, a little monster. It was the name-calling, that’s what made him lose his temper. And also, his passion, his mission in life, his love for the treasures of history – that was why he’d had to make her stop, and now she was swearing at him? At him, Professor Marius Wilke? The one who had helped her find the painting in the first place?

  His vengeance, his reaction to her bullying words, was not violence. No, that wasn’t his way. All he wanted to do in the moment of rage was to get his book back. The one that he had signed and given to her at breakfast.

  He walked to her car, jerked open the door and snatched her handbag out. The book was inside.

  She screamed and swore, grabbed one of the handbag’s straps and tugged. He tugged back. He was small and old and weak, she was stronger, bigger, younger, heavier. He realised it was futile.

  He made a dreadful mistake, he let go of the handbag strap. Without warning.

  She staggered backwards. And toppled over the bridge railing.

  They heard the sickening thud as she hit something.

  He was frozen in horror. He heard Bertie, dear, dear Bertie, moaning like a child. He stood there in shock, his mind racing, Bertie moaning, and then he realised he had to use his intellect to protect them both, his logic, his reasoning ability. But especially for Bertie. Bertie was like a child, he couldn’t be held responsible. Bertie was the son of a neighbour when Wilke had lived in Stellenbosch. Bertie had a fall from a motorbike, years ago. There was brain damage. Bertie was living with his mother, she took care of him. But then his mother died, and Bertie had nobody, and so he took pity on Bertie and gave him a job. Be my driver, Bertie, I can’t drive myself any more. That gave Bertie some sense of pride. That wasn’t the act of an evil man.

  He stood there in silent shock, on that bridge across the dam, and then he pulled himself together and said, ‘Bertie, be quiet. It was just an accident.’

  He thought through everything. He thought how it would look to others. They had been following her. Like criminals. They had forced her off the road. That looked extremely bad. Nobody was going to believe him. He had to make a plan. To protect Bertie, really just to protect Bertie.

  So he made his plans.

  In the dusk they found a dirt track leading down, so that they could fetch her body below the bridge, on the dry ground of the dam floor. ‘It’s because of the drought that she’s dead, two years ago she would just have fallen in the water. The drought is to blame.’

  They loaded her body into the boot of the Toyota. He sent Bertie to Grabouw to buy bleach, as much as he could find, but not more than two bottles at each shop. And bottles of water, and wash cloths, and a bucket. Wilke was well-read, he was informed, he watched all the crime programmes on TV, he knew about bleach and DNA.

  He also took her cellphone out of her handbag and smashed it against the concrete of the bridge pillar, because he knew about cellphones and all they could give away.

  He had waited with her until Bertie returned.

  He drove ahead in her car, searching for a small farm track, and found one, the one where he’d been photographed by the leopard camera. He was so tense, so distraught, he hadn’t even realised he’d been photographed.

  Bertie followed. They washed her car. They stripped her, and washed her. Then they put her back
in the boot. They took her handbag and clothes and car keys with them, all the empty bleach bottles, water bottles and cloths. They threw them out of the Caddy, one by one, all along the road, every five or six kilometres.

  Bertie dropped him off at the house in Somerset West.

  Next thing he saw the news report about the woman in the pass, and he was on the phone to Bertie asking him, Bertie, what have you done?

  And Bertie said, ‘She was alone in the dark, Prof. That wasn’t right, you don’t leave someone all alone like that in the dark.’

  Bertie had gone to fetch her and arranged her up there at the lookout point.

  22

  On Tuesday the bank phoned Benny Griessel just before lunch.

  The woman was very friendly. ‘You’re all over the newspapers,’ she said. ‘You’re actually quite famous.’

  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were with the Hawks?’

  It was right there on his application form: DPCI. But of course they had no idea that was the Hawks. Again Griessel was silent.

  ‘We are pleased to approve your loan, Benny. May I call you Benny? Please come in and sign all the forms – and we would like to have a few photographs with you, if that’s all right with you. When would suit you?’

  He just shook his head. Now at last he had something that they wanted.

  Discover more books in the thrilling Benny Griessel series, available in paperback and ebook.

  Devil’s Peak

  ‘If you want a glimpse of the soul of the new South Africa in all its glory, and with all the gory details of its problems and corruption, Meyer is your man. Devil’s Peak reflects the country’s spiralling crime rate . . . I marvelled at the intricacy of the plotting, I smiled at Christine’s cheeky ingenuity, I felt Thobela’s pain and Benny’s desperation, and I was stunned by a dénouement of awesome power and accomplishment.’