The Score

by HJ Golakai

  She switched back to her Gmail inbox and sighed again over Coetzee’s reply:

  From: Marielise Coetzee

  To: Voinjama Johnson

  Cc: Kobus Marais

  Sent: Monday, 29 March 2011, 19:32

  Subject: Autopsy concerns re: Greenwood, R

  Dear Ms Johnson,

  Hope I find you well. I’ll cut right to the chase:

  After discussions with my colleague Dr Marais (copied here), we’re convinced positional asphyxiation was indeed the cause for Rhonda Greenwood’s death. In a nutshell, we found petechial haemorrhaging of conjunctiva (broken blood vessels in the eyes), oedematous lungs (fluid in the lungs), more haemorrhaging in the heart and lung surface, and congestion of her internal organs. Also, her stomach contents were approx. 160ml semi-digested material with a strong smell of alcohol, which was also present in the vomitus. All these findings plus positioning of the body and high level of Zoloft in the bloodstream lead us to accidental positional asphyxia (PA) due to intoxication as the justified cause of death.

  Please be aware that in cases like these the death must satisfy certain criteria: 1. body discovered in a position that hindered normal breathing; 2. evidence that they placed themselves in that position without interference by another person; 3. sufficient reason they couldn’t free themselves from that position due to intoxication/other drugs, unconsciousness, epilepsy etc.; and 4. there should be no other cause of death that could conflict with PA.

  I hope this answers your questions, good luck with your article!

  Best regards,

  Marielise Coetzee

  Senior Forensic Pathologist

  Western Cape Forensic Pathology Services

  South African Police Service (SAPS)

  Baron van Reede Street, Oudtshoorn 6625

  cell: 0837238999

  Vee opened the next reply, tickled at Coetzee’s less formal banter:

  From: Marielise Coetzee

  To: Voinjama Johnson

  Sent: Monday, 29 March 2011, 19:46

  Subject: Autopsy concerns re: Greenwood, R

  Hi Voinjama,

  How’s Cape Town, still as hectic as I remember? I keep thinking of moving out there one day … I need a social life haha!

  RE previous email: sorry, had to copy Marais in so it’s above board. I’m sure you got the gist that I had to tell him something; he thinks you’re a medical reporter doing articles on interesting cases in the area. Just go with it if he follows up (he’s been here for yonks, never follows up anything!). I still stand by our diagnosis, though, unfortunately it isn’t in line with your colourful theory. But it piqued my interest, got me thinking. Yes, gash behind ear could be caused by the fall no doubt, but the bruising on the nose, broken fingernail … it’s not impossible. If you smell a rat and it stinks badly enough, contact me again if it’s solid.

  Cheers!

  M

  Vee agitated her bottom lip till it throbbed. The straps of both handbag and laptop case cutting into her shoulder, she blitz-typed a new email in the dark lounge, trying to focus through her excitement and Monro’s incessant barking as she outlined her request to Richie. It ought to be a cinch for him. Wasn’t he always carrying on about –

  A chilly draft swept through, lifting a swell of goosebumps on her arms. The days were scorchers but with April dawning, evenings had taken on a more hostile bite. Vee rubbed her forearms as she peered into the downstairs guest toilet, cursing at the beam of the streetlights coming through the raised window. She had to get that thing fixed once and for all. Get on Mrs Konstantinou to send workmen round this very weekend before it slipped her mind again. And take Monro to the vet. Thumbs flying, she zipped through the rest of the email, attached two photographs she hoped met tech wizardry’s exacting standards, and pressed send.

  Was she still hungry? Hell no, she flexed her stomach, Joshua had put in work with that curry and she’d appreciated his efforts with gusto. She’d head upstairs, throw on a cardigan and work a couple more hours before bed. Or maybe just clean her teeth and face properly and crash.

  Vee crossed the lounge and bounded up the first two steps.

  She stopped.

  She shook her head and climbed the next two.

  She stopped again, frowning.

  She descended slowly, climbing down each step backwards, then tiptoeing across the dark plum carpet. She stopped in front of the open doorway of the guest bathroom. A breeze sifted merrily through the window, hitting her in the face, ruffling her hair. She cocked her head. Had it been open, though …?

  The tiles smelled of cleaner, but vaguely, not with the sharp freshness her personal bathroom radiated, plus there was no can of air freshener. And Tambudzai called herself a great maid. Only twice a week her services were required, and she slacked off on that? Vee drew further in, eyes drawn up. The window gaped, propped open on the metal lever that was usually down in the lock position. Usually. As if on cue, a dangling strip of white caulk broke off the ledge and smattered to crumbs on the floor.

  “How the hel–”

  Air whooshed behind her as the door swung. The full weight of a human body, a hefty one, rammed into her back. Vee screamed to wake the dead; it faded to a gargle as her head met the wall with a crack. Pain and light scratched hateful lines inside her skull. Her eyes swam. She buckled and clung to the wall, sick moans leaving her lips, her bags sliding to the floor.

  She kept her head pressed to the cool paint, shaking it to clear it. She was cornered; no way of flinging the door open and making a run for it. Her senses picked up the assailant bearing down in charge. She braced her forearms against the wall and pushed off with all her remaining strength, one leg shooting out. Her heel connected with flesh, hip twisting as she ground it in. An ‘uummmpphh!’ of surprise echoed off the tiles. Scratches and scrapes flew down her back as her attacker stumbled over her bags’ tangle of straps and fell onto her.

  The one breath she tried to grab was snuffed out as fingers scraped over her scalp, gripped and yanked. Howling, she dropped to a squat, wriggling until the hand lost its grip. She bounced to her feet and swung an elbow, missed, and pin-wheeled. Slammed into a wall of flesh. Hands grappled over her, she grappled back, fighting off the fingers closing around her throat. As the attacker’s other arm swung in to close the throttle, Vee drew her head back and swung it in a roundhouse arc. The whites of her attacker’s eyes filled her field of vision, the head ducked. Fast, but not fast enough: Vee felt the howl of dispute from her throbbing head even before it connected with the solid bone of another’s.

  The jagged corner of what could only be a tooth scraped along her scalp. Vee shrieked, shooting out a fist that bounced off what felt like a neck. She stumbled, heard the crack and skid of her laptop case under her feet. She flailed desperately, groping the air for purchase, finding none, freefalling, wrists issuing a distasteful pop as she landed on them. Agony bolted up into her forearms. Her belly hit the toilet seat; she wheezed and bounced, legs kicking up in the air.

  Vee howled, positive if she opened her eyes she’d see a circle of cartoonish stars spinning round her head. At her elbow, coughs and rasps for breath drowned out hers. Good to know she wasn’t the only one losing steam, she almost smiled to herself.

  Hands dragged her to her feet and rammed her chest into the rose-and-vine patterned wall. Vee lost her breath as her breasts first went numb, then lit up her chest like two little solar flares erupting in her ribs. Slowly, carefully, her opponent’s hands grasped hers and drew them, crossed in an ‘X’, behind her back. Grinding and popping, her shoulder blades popped up, lifting the flesh of her upper back. Vee’s eyes popped, mouth agape in anguish, yet all she sucked was air. One deft sweep kicked her feet out from under her. Her knees hit the tile. Strong arms kept her pinioned, arms crisscrossed behind her back, as a heel stamped into her lower back. Pulling her wrists, her attacker heav
ed with exertion. Screams finally ripped from Vee’s throat when the pointy arches of bone that were her shoulder blades threatened to meet.

  A heel dug into her back one final time before it all stopped. Vee gasped, almost sobbing as her arms dropped like dead branches by her side. Cheek to lino, she watched the figure mount the cistern, then brace, jump, grasp, and wriggle through the window.

  The toilet flushed as the toe of a shoe cranked the handle, then slipped through the other side into darkness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Van Wyk scrubbed his hands over his face till his eyebrows looked like warring caterpillars when his arms dropped. “How the fuck does this happen?!”

  Vee and Chlöe snuck each other side-eye.

  “Uhhhh. Think this qualifies as an unforeseen attack, a home invasion if we’re being American. The kinda thing that can’t be predicted. Therefore can’t be explained … necessarily …” Chlöe tapered to a whisper, Nico’s glare lasering her lips shut.

  “I mean,” he loomed over Vee, “how does someone break into your house and wait, undetected, in a secure neighbourhood? Don’t you have an alarm system? Don’t you realise you’re in a field where disgruntled thugs may potentially moer you at the slightest provocation? Hasn’t past experience taught you anything?!”

  “I … it … it has. I have a dog, a big one. He was barking like crazy. But I was preoccupied so I didn’t …”

  The glare silenced her too. Vee massaged her throbbing scalp wound through the Band-Aid. Of all her aches, it hurt the worst. Thank God her tetanus shot wasn’t overdue. Now all she needed was to find out from her GP what else she could get from a stranger’s nasty ass spit.

  “Look, nobody feels stupider than me. I’m pretty sure I interrupted the break-in and there was no way of sneaking past me. As to how, one panel of the sliding glass doors leading out to my porch got broken over a year ago. The guys had to disable the alarm to re-fit the glass. But then my landlady decided, well why not repair the security bars all over the house before the comp–”

  “Shut up. I don’t care,” Nico snarled. “This man could’ve killed you.”

  Vee shook her head with care. “I keep telling you, definitely a woman. ’Less it was a man on sex change hormones. Boobs and hips all over the place. She wasn’t fat but she had body, she was hefty.” She flexed her shoulders, then wrists, grimacing at the nagging throb in them. “And she fought dirty. Ghetto kinda dirty.”

  “And she should know,” Chlöe popped a finger at her with a sage nod at Nico. “She grew up on the streets.”

  “I grew up in a two-parent household,” Vee cuffed her. “But it was no joke ooo, I swear. This woman tried to tappay me without rope. Like this, she held me,” she flinched, shoulder blades protesting a re-enactment. “That’s how the rebels did it, to civilians, in the war. They’d, like, butterfly your arms behind you and cut off your circulation till your arms almost drop off. Only they used to tie your arms to your legs, so any movement made it tighter …”

  She trailed off. Both Van Wyk and Bishop shuffled their feet, avoiding her eyes, staring instead at the wall, through the window. “Oh, come on. What, I can never say the word ‘war’ in this office now, it’s too un-PC? Y’all better stop.” She clucked her tongue. “She had skills, is all I’m saying. Even in the dark I could tell she was black. She had her hair tied up good behind her. I’m positive it was dreadlocks. I’d say she was about this big.” Vee levelled a pointed look at Chlöe as she ballooned her arms to demonstrate. “But she could move. If she could kick my ass like that, she could definitely take on a man.”

  Realisation slowly lit the darker flecks in Chlöe’s eyes. “Ohhh, you mean the woman, the shadowy stranger Zintle and Mamelo mentioned at the lodge. Of course!”

  “Who’s Zintle and Mamelo?” Nico snapped. “Look.” He scrubbed his face again. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We –”

  “Wait!” Vee whirled over to his desk, reaching for her manila folder, uttering a low howl as her lower back glowed in pain.

  “Maybe you should go home.”

  “No.” Vee flashed a glower to match the pain throbbing in her abused parts. “That woman broke into my house and knocked me round like a village wife. Y’all want know why? She thinks we’re close to knowing who she is, or we have something that’ll tell us who she is. She’s already gotten rid of one person who ID’d her. Rhonda Greenwood –”

  “Oiii,” Chlöe groaned into her palms.

  “– was collateral damage, taken out of the equation because she knew something. Whatever it was, it was enough to make her killer nervous.”

  “Her death was ruled accidental. Twice confirmed by two pathologists.”

  “How hard could it have been to fake? Given that her lifestyle was pretty common knowledge, not hard at all. Look at these.” Vee practically ripped the envelope trying to brandish the sheaf of colour print-outs, brightened and resized onto standard A4 sheets.

  “Surely you didn’t,” Chlöe recoiled.

  “I damn well did.” Leavened by Nico leaning in with a glimmer of new interest, Vee rushed on. “The bruises, the way she just lay there in her own vomit? She was a functional alcoholic; this is the demise of a dumb amateur. The chipped nail?!”

  “You and this fingernail.”

  “Bishop, human beings are a sum of their habits. They scatter them all over like a trail of breadcrumbs. Everyone said she was two things: meticulous and very friendly. Precise, and never forgot a face. Those are our clues.”

  “I feel like I’m in an episode of Veronica Mars,” Nico murmured.

  “Greenwood drank, but she had it on lock. Yeah it stirred up whispers, but she never let it screw with her performance. If she’d chipped her nail polish, she’d have fixed it first chance she got, done both coats before a drop of liquor touched her lips, I’m sure of it. She wouldn’t leave it till the morning, when she was rushed and it could get all smeared up. Neither was she the type to paint one application and fall asleep drunk before doing the next.”

  “How –”

  “Aaand …” Vee brandished another A4, tapped the top photo covering half the page: a shot of the deputy manager’s dresser, lined with feminine products. “The nail polish. Essie Peach Surprise. See how the top wasn’t closed properly? I think what happened …” She closed her eyes as she stroked the bridge of her nose. “There was an innocent exchange between her and this killer, for argument’s sake let’s assume the same one who beat my ass last night. At the time Rhonda probably didn’t get the significance of it ’cause she barely had a free second with the conference going on; or maybe she did, who knows. But it didn’t make her feel she was in danger, because that night she let the killer in without a second thought. Because she knew her.”

  “How?”

  “That I don’t know yet. But we do know she died stone drunk and zonked out on anti-depressants too. Maybe she took them herself, or was duped into taking more, I don’t know.” Vee shook her head, settling the scenario in her mind. “Liquor going, drugs going, she conks out. On the bed, or she’s moved there.”

  “And then the genius part. She’s lying on the bed, and gets rolled up in the duvet, arms down by her sides so she couldn’t move.” Vee stood ram-rod straight, arms flattened to her hips, did a couple of spins for effect. “The duck-down duvet was used because it was heavy enough to keep her in. Otherwise why was it even on the bed? It’s summer, for God’s sake. Now she’s rolled like … a sausage roll. Passed out, can’t move. Lift her head gently, bury her face in a pillow …” She spread her hands in finish. “Watch the clock till it’s over. It would cause the bruising of her nose, but that would be passed off as the position she asphyxiated in or the fall. Nothing else would be out of place.”

  “Then the fingernail would be?” Nico asked.

  “A mark of her final struggle. Didn’t know how it fit before, but if she wriggled around as she was dying, that’s how she fell off the bed and hit her head on the dresser. That’s probably
what knocked her out finally. She finished suffocating face down on the rug. But her arm got free, because she wasn’t so tightly wrapped when we found her. However that nail got messed up, I don’t know. With her dying breath a woman thrashes around, gets some bruises, broken nails, perhaps scratches her assailant. But that touch-up was fresh, and it’s a red flag of some kind. This was no accident. Someone killed Greenwood.”

  “Is she kidding me?” Nico muttered to Chlöe.

  “The lady doth not shit about with matters of this ilk. Every stupid little detail, she’ll link to Armageddon.”

  “The break-in happened because of this. No, crap, this. Umm. Where the …” Vee upturned the envelope, emptying more papers, a flash drive, a USB cord, a Post-it pad and a pen onto the desk.

  “Oops, sorry. You mean this.” Chlöe fished the CD, still secure in its square paper jacket, out of another envelope she was carrying and handed it to Nico, tossing Vee a silent apology for ruining her flourish.

  “And?” Nico arched his brows, looking back and forth between them as he turned it over and over in his hand.

  “And what?” they chorused.

  “What’s on it?!” Nico roared like a man at sanity’s end.

  “Ohh! Yeah. We … still don’t really know. It’s computer language. Gibberish. A code of some kind. Fragments of a code. The disk is kind of corrupted. Which wasn’t our fault, we’ve handled it like an egg. But Guy Richie’s still on it,” Vee sped over Nico’s ever-narrowing squint. “The best is on it and we’ll have an update real soon. Without fail.” She flashed all her teeth.

  “Where’d it come from? Am I right in suspecting it may or may not be evidence in the Berman investigation?”

  Vee’s grin collapsed. “Errrr. We can’t, shouldn’t, disclose that till we know what’s on it. In case it comes back to bite any of us at some point … you know, liability typa thing.”