by Deon Meyer
Thobela swiftly and deftly drew the assegai by the shaft out of the white swimming-pool pipe. I am here about the girl, he said.
No, said Carlos.
He said nothing, just stepped closer to where the man stood beside the pool.
She lie, said Carlos walking backwards.
He adjusted his grip on the assegai.
Please, said Carlos. I did not touch the girl. He raised empty hands in front of him. Terror distorted his face. Please. She lie. The whore, she lie.
Fury washed over him. At the mans cowardice, his denial, everything he represented. He moved fast, raised the assegai high.
The police . . . said Carlos, and the long blade descended.
* * *
Christine saw the ministers eyes were red-rimmed and tired, but she knew she still held his attention.
She rose from her chair and leaned over the desk. When she stood like that, slightly bent over, arms stretched out to the cardboard carton, her breasts were prominent. She was aware of it, but also that it didnt matter anymore. She pulled the box to her side of the desk and folded the flaps open.
I have to explain this now, she said and reached into the carton. She took out two newspaper clippings. She unfolded one. She glanced briefly at the photograph and article on it, specifically at the young girl emerging from a helicopter with a man. She put the clipping down on the desk and smoothed it with her hand.
This is my fault, she said, and rotated the article so that the minister could see better. She tapped a fingertip on the photo. Her name is Carla Griessel, said Christine.
While the minister looked she reached for the second clipping.
* * *
He came out of Sangrenegras front door and in the corner of his eye he spotted a movement. Opposite, in the big house, behind a window. The discomfort of Carloss reaction, the Colombians choice of words and the overwhelming feeling of being watched unfolded in his belly.
Something wasnt right.
* * *
Five objects lay on the desk in an uneven row. The two newspaper clippings were on the far right. Then the brown and white dog, a stuffed toy with big, soft eyes and a little red tongue hanging out of the smiling mouth. Next the small white plastic container with medicinal contents. And last on the left, a large syringe.
Christine shifted the box to the left again. It was not yet empty.
The next morning, after Carlos had seen Sonia for the first time, I phoned Vanessa.
* * *
He braked with screeching tires next to his pickup, grabbed the white pipe holding his assegai and leapt out.
Slowly, his head told him. Slowly. Do the right thing.
He unlocked his pickup, tilted the backrest forward and put the pipe behind it. He unzipped his sports bag, looking for an item of clothing. He took out a blue and white T-shirt. He had bought it at the motorbike training center at Amersfoort. One each for himself and Pakamile. He walked back to the swimming-pool van.
A siren approached, he wasnt sure from which side, not sure how close. Adrenaline made his heart jump.
Slowly. He wiped the panel vans steering wheel with the T-shirt. The gear lever.
The siren was closer.
The inside door handle. The window winder.
What else?
Another siren, from somewhere in the city.
What else had he touched? Rear-view mirror? He wiped but he was in a hurry, didnt do it properly.
Slowly. He wiped it again, back and front of the mirror.
His eye caught the speck of the helicopter in the blue sky where it came around Devils Peak.
They were after him.
When he raced away from Sangrenegras house, just before he turned the corner at the bottom of the street, he had seen something in the rear-view mirror. Or had he?
They were onto him.
He cursed in Xhosa, a single syllable. A walker came around the bend, down the slope from the Signal Hill side.
He took four long strides to get to his pickup.
* * *
I didnt know how the whole thing would end, she said to the minister, to try and justify what she was yet to tell him. She listened to the lack of intonation in her voice. She was aware of her fatigue, as if she didnt have the strength for the final straight. It was because she had gone through it so many times in her head, she told herself.
The first time she had seen the clipping, the eyes of Carla Griessel and the terrible knowledge that it was all her fault and also the relief that she still had the ability to feel guilt and remorse. After everything. After all the lies. After all the deception. All the years. She could still feel someone elses pain. Still feel compassion. Still feel pity for someone besides herself. And the guilt that she felt that relief.
She took a deep breath to gather her strength, because this explanation was the one that mattered.
I was afraid, she said. You have to understand that. I was terrified. The way Carlos looked at Sonia . . . I thought I knew him. That was one of the problems. I know men. I
had
to know them. And Carlos was the naughty child. Sort of harmless. He was nagging and possessive and jealous, but he wanted so much to please. He had my clients beaten up, but he never did the hitting himself. Up to that moment I still thought I could control him. Thats the main thing. With all the men. To be in control without them knowing it. But then I saw his face. And I knew, everything I had thought was wrong. I didnt know him. I had no control over him. And I panicked. Totally.
I . . . It wasnt like I worked out a plan or anything. There was just all this stuff in my head. The Artemis guy and the stuff in Carloss house, the drugs and all, and the panic over the way he looked at Sonia. I think if a person is really scared, like terrified, then a part of your brain starts working that you dont know about, it takes over. I dont know if you understand that, because you have to
be
there.
I phoned Carlos and said I wanted to talk to him.
* * *
He drove with the radio on. He deliberately chose alternate routes and drove instinctively east, towards Wellington and through Bains Kloof, over Mitchells Pass to Ceres and via gravel roads to Sutherland.
At first he rejected the possibility that Sangrenegra might be innocent.
It was the other elements that came together firstthe movement in the house opposite, the man he thought he saw running across the road in his rear-view mirror. The newspaper reports that taunted him. Carloss words, The police . . . He wanted to say something, something he knew.
They were waiting for him. They had set up an ambush and he had walked into it like a fool, like an amateurunconcerned, overconfident.
He wondered how much they knew. Did they have a camera in that house across the street? Was his photograph on its way to the newspapers and television right now? Could he risk going home?
But he kept coming back to the possibility that Carlos was innocent.
His protestations. His face.
The big difference between Carlos and the rest, who welcomed the blade as an escape. Or justice.
Lord. If the Colombian was innocent, Thobela Mpayipheli was a murderer rather than an executioner.
Thirty kilometers west of Fraserburg, over a radio signal that came and went, he heard the news bulletin for the first time.
A task team of the polices Serious and Violent Crime Unit was just too late to apprehend the so-called Artemis vigilante . . . set up various roadblocks in the Cape Peninsula and Boland in an apparent attempt . . . a two-thousand-and-one model Isuzu KB two-sixty with registration number . . .
That was the moment when self-recrimination evaporated, when he knew they knew and the old battle fever revived. He had been here before. The prey. He had been hunted across the length and breadth of strange and familiar continents. He knew this, he had been trained for it by the best; they cou
ld do nothing he hadnt experienced before,
handled
before.
That was the moment he knew he was wholly back in the Struggle. Like in the old, old days when there was something worth protecting to the death. You see furthest from the moral high ground. It brought a great calm over him, so that he knew precisely what to do.
* * *
She met Carlos at the Mugg & Bean at the Waterfront. She watched him coming towards her with his self-satisfied strut, arms swinging gaily, head half-cocked. Like an overgrown boy that has got his own way. Fuck you Carlos; you have no idea.
So hows your daughter, conchita? he said with a smirk as he sat down.
She had to light a cigarette to hide her fear.
Shes fine. Curtly.
Ah, conchita, dont be angry. It is your fault. You hide things from Carlos. All Carlos wants to do is to know you, to care for you.
She said nothing, just looked at him.
She is very beautiful. Like her mother. She have your eyes. And he thought that would make her feel better?
Carlos, I will give you what you want.
What I want?
You dont want me to see other clients. You dont want me to hide things from you. Is that right?
Sí.
That is right.
I will do that, but there are certain rules.
Carlos will take good care of you and the leetle conchita. You know that.
Its not the money, Carlos.
Anything, conchita. What you want?
* * *
He drove from Merweville across the arid expanses of the Great Karoo to Prince Albert as the sun set in spectacular colors.
According to the radio they thought he was still in the Cape.
In the dark of night he crossed the Swartberg Pass and cautiously descended to Oudtshoorn. On the odd one-lane tarred road between Willowmore and Steytlerville he recognized that fatigue had the better of him and he looked out for a place to turn off and sleep. He shifted into a more comfortable position on the front seat and closed his eyes. At half-past three in the morning he slept, only to wake at first light, stiff-limbed, scratchy-eyed, his face needing a wash.
At Kirkwood, in the grimy toilets of a garage, he brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. This was Xhosa country and no one looked twice at him. He bought take-away chicken portions at Chicken Licken and drove. Towards home.
At half-past ten he crossed the Hogsback Pass and thirty-five minutes later he turned in at the farm entrance and saw the tracks on the reddish-brown dirt of the road.
He got out.
Only one vehicle. Narrow tires of a small sedan. In. Not yet out. Someone was waiting for him.
* * *
My daughters name is Sonia.
That is very beautiful. Like he really meant it.
But I will not bring her to your house, Carlos. We can go somewhere together. Picnic, or the movies, but not to your house.
But, conchita, I have this pool . . .
And you have these bodyguards with guns and baseball bats. I will not allow my daughter to see that.
They are not bodyguards. They are my crew.
I dont care.
Hokay, hokay, Carlos will send them away when you come.
You wont.
No? Why not?
Because they are with you all the time.
No, conchita, I swear, he said, and made the sign of the cross over his upper body.
When my daughter is with me, I dont sleep with you and we dont sleep over. That is final.
Carlos unnerstand, he said, but couldnt hide his disappointment.
And we will take it slowly. I have to talk to her about you first. She must get used to you slowly.
Hokay.
So, tomorrow night, we will see if you are serious. I will come to your house and it will only be you and me. No bodyguards.
Sí.
Of course.
I will stay with you. I will cook for you and we will talk.
Where will Sonia be?
She will be safe.
At the nannys place? Pleased with himself, because he knew.
Yes.
And maybe the weekend, we can go somewhere? You and me and Sonia?
If I see I can trust you, Carlos. But she knew she had him. She knew the process had begun.
42.
Thobela left his pickup behind the ridges at the Waterval Plantation and walked along the bank of the Cata River towards his house, assegai in his left hand.
A kilometer before the homestead came into view he turned northeast, so he could approach from the high ground. They would be expecting him from the road end.
He sat watching for twenty minutes, but saw only the car parked in front of the house. No antennae, nothing to identify it as a police vehicle. Silence.
It made no sense.
He kept the shed between him and the house, checking that the doors were still locked. Crouching, he approached the house, below window level, to where the car was parked.
There was one set of footprints in the dust. They began at the drivers door and led directly to the steps of the front verandah.
One man.
He ran through alternatives in his head while he squatted on his haunches with his back to the verandah wall. Something occurred to him. The detective from Umtata. Must have heard the news. Knew him, knew everything, from the start.
The detective had come for more money.
He stood, relieved and purposeful, and strode up his verandah steps and in at the front door, assegai now in his right hand.
The man was sitting there on the chair, pistol on his lap.
I thought you would come, said the white man.
Who are you?
My name is Benny Griessel, he said and raised the Z88 so that it pointed straight at Thobelas chest.
* * *
Christine took the stuffed toy dog from the desk and held it in her hands. I had a battle to get the right dog, she said. Every year there are different toys in the shops.
Her fingers stroked the long brown ears. I bought her one when she was three years old. Its her favorite, she wont go anywhere without it. So I had to get another and switch them, because the one she played with had her genetics on it. The police computers can test anything. So I had to take the right one along.
* * *
He stood in front of the white man weighing up his chances, measuring the distance between the assegai and the pistol, and then he allowed himself to relax, because now was not the moment to do anything.
This is my house, he said.
I know.
What do you want?
I want you to sit there and be quiet. The white man motioned with the barrel of the Z88 towards the two-seater couch opposite him. There was something about his eyes and voice: intensity, a determination.
Thobela hesitated, shrugged and sat down. He looked at Griessel. Who was he? The bloodshot eyes, a hint of capillaries on the nose that betrayed excessive drinking. Hair long and untidyeither he was trying to keep the look of his youth in the seventies alive, or he didnt care. The latter seemed more likely, since his clothes were rumpled, the comfortable brown shoes dull. He had the faint scent of law enforcement about him and the Z88 confirmed it, but policemen usually came in groups, at least in pairs. Police waited with handcuffs and commands, they didnt ask you to sit down in your own house.
Im sitting, he said, and placed the assegai on the floor beside the couch.
Now you just have to be quiet.
Is that what we are going to do? Sit and stare at each other?
The white man did not answer.
Will you shoot me if I talk?
No response.
&nbs
p; * * *
The pills were easy, said Christine. She indicated the white medicinal container on the desk. And the dress. I dont have it; its with the police. But the blood . . . I couldnt do it at first. I didnt know how to tell my child I had to push a needle into her arm and that it would hurt and the blood would run into the syringe and I had to spray it on the seat of a mans car. That was the hardest thing. And I was worried. I didnt know whether the blood would clot. I didnt know if it would be enough. I didnt know if the police would be able to tell it wasnt fresh blood. I didnt know how they did all those genetics. Would the computer be able to tell the blood had been in the fridge for a day?
