The First Rule of Survival

by Paul Mendelson

  Du Toit urges: ‘Somebody saw. Maybe they don’t even know it. We have to find them.’

  ‘And then, sir, this afternoon, as you know, Toby Henderson goes missing following our own SAPS Family Day.’

  ‘Where’s Trevor Henderson now?’

  ‘God knows.’ De Vries holds his head. ‘Must be going out of his mind. Last I heard, he was still talking with Toby’s friends, trying to see if anyone knows anything. Jesus, for this to happen in broad daylight, at the police’s own event, for Christ’s sake.’

  Du Toit nods again, this time remains mute. A silent acknowledgement: Toby Henderson, son of SAPS Inspector Trevor Henderson, is today missing, surely now abducted. They imagine how the scene must have unfolded. A perfect late-summer’s afternoon. The cricket club sports ground, an idyllic occasion: the match in play, officers, wives and families, girlfriends, all at tables around the pitch, a running buffet up at the pavilion, braais smoking, filling the air with sweet meat-scented smoke, a cake-stall under bunting. Around the corner, a playground for the kids, a golf speed-gun for the guys, measuring the longest drive in the force. Between cricket sessions, the divisional jazz band playing on the pavilion balcony.

  When, thinks de Vries, was the critical moment? In the midst of the afternoon, when the game was in full flow, the party beginning to swing as the effects of long, cold beers on a hot, dry afternoon begin to take hold. One moment when everything is as it should be . . . the next, when you become aware of a low whine of hysteria beginning to disturb the calm – and then that second when everything breaks down. The match stops, the players’ formation disintegrates. Policemen congregate, begin to splay out through the crowds, imparting the news, satiating the increasing need to know. And then mothers calling children, older siblings running towards the play area, desperate to claim their own.

  A child is missing.

  ‘Everyone cooperating?’

  ‘As you’d expect, sir. None of the men are going home. Uniformed guys are passing through all neighbouring streets to the cricket club, with Toby Henderson’s picture, and Steven Lawson’s and Bobby Eames’ too. I worked through last night and I’ll do it again if we have even the slightest chance of finding Toby – not to mention the other boys.’

  ‘And you’ll instruct Trevor, how?’

  ‘I’m not going to be the officer calling him off the team, sir.’ The ‘sir’ emphasizing who is of higher rank, who makes decisions. ‘If this were my son, nothing on earth would keep me from being right in the middle of the action.’

  Du Toit approves.

  ‘Keep an eye on him. We don’t want to compromise a prosecution, or the safety of the other abducted boys. You happy I handle the press, leave you alone?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But expect a call, Vaughn. They’re going to want to talk to you too.’

  He looks out towards the now-dark city. ‘You think we can issue a warning of some kind?’

  De Vries snorts. ‘The moment this breaks, there won’t be a parent in Cape Town letting go of their child’s hand.’

  2014

  To support power-saving, the SAPS hierarchy have decreed that at the SAPS central building after dark, all non-essential lights are switched off. De Vries, glad to be rid of the pervading fluorescence, has only one small Anglepoise lamp illuminating his office and conference room. He sits, head in hands, nose low over a large beaker of whisky. He’s meditating – something he would never do consciously. Steven . . . Bobby . . . Toby . . . : mug-shots, school photographs, headlines, bylines, memories, the file cover closing over them.

  From the squad room, Don February has watched him like this for the last fifteen minutes; he is thinking, too. Dr Harry Kleinman enters the squad room and knocks briskly at de Vries’ door. Don gets up and follows him into the office, staring at the coroner’s thick bare legs in shorts and his short-sleeved pilot’s shirt with epaulettes.

  De Vries looks up, gestures them to sit down, but Kleinman starts talking immediately.

  ‘It’s pretty much confirmed,Vaughn. I went back through the records. Toby Henderson sustained a multiple break in his left ankle, aged six years, seven months. That matches exactly with what I can see.’

  De Vries shuts his eyes. Steven . . . Bobby . . . Toby . . .

  ‘I’ve viewed the case photographs at the time of their abduction, and I believe that the other boy is extremely likely to be Steven Lawson. I’ve cross-checked the blood type, and that’s a match. His group’s AB, which is less than five per cent of the population, so it’s strong, but certainly not conclusive. We should be able to DNA a confirmation from a hairbrush, or something that his family have kept. In any case, the age, physical features, all seem right.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. What do I tell their parents? After seven fucking years, we’ve found your son; he was alive until forty-eight hours ago, and now you have to come identify your lost, dead child. I fucking hate this job.’

  Harry Kleinman slumps down in the chair directly opposite de Vries, his voice weary but soothing.

  ‘In my experience,Vaughn, however traumatic the news, in the long run, the parents of missing children just want to know what happened. They can bury their sons, grieve properly, find closure.’

  ‘I hate that fucking word,’ de Vries spits, looking up from his desk.

  Kleinman continues smoothly, ‘This is what we do,Vaughn. We find out what happened to them. We tell the parents, we catch the bad guy.’

  ‘If I’d caught him seven years ago – Jesus, any time in the last seven years – those boys would still be alive. I should have revisited the files more often.’

  Don February asks: ‘The third boy . . .’

  Kleinman says, ‘Bobby Eames.’

  ‘Surely this means that he could still be alive? Two bodies, but three abductions.’

  De Vries looks at his Warrant Officer. A tiny light illuminates inside his consciousness.

  ‘One boy unaccounted for,’ Don says quietly. ‘One to be saved.’

  Vaughn sits up, focus coming slowly to his eyes.

  ‘Listen, both of you,’ he says. ‘This goes far deeper than either of you know. You see the name of the Superintendent back in 07, Harry?’

  Kleinman looks at his sheets.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ de Vries tells him. ‘It’s du Toit. That means we have our Director back in the headlines for the one big case that nearly screwed his career.’

  ‘He’s a grown man.’

  ‘He’s in a dog-fight,’ de Vries retorts. ‘So am I. That slimy little shit, David Wertner, at the new Internal Investigations Bureau, is on my back, and he’s looking to pay back some old favours to our almighty General. Discrediting me, and ousting du Toit; we’re top of his list.’

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ de Vries replies, losing momentum. He frowns, takes a deep breath, counts his decisions off his fingers. ‘Nobody hears about this until the morning. I want to brief du Toit personally and hear from him how he wants to proceed. There’s going to be a shitstorm in the press, everyone will be watching us and this time, no matter what, we have to find Bobby Eames.’

  ‘And the parents?’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t even know what happened to Trevor Henderson. He spent every working moment hunting for his kid, we scarcely saw him for months; he took all his leave. Everyone turned a blind eye when he missed shifts; frankly, he wasn’t much use. When he was told that the case was unsolved, he resigned, carried on searching. Last time I heard, he was in some drink, drug rehab place in Wilderness. I know his wife took their daughter back to England. He was English police, Mounted Division originally. Came to the Cape, fell in love with it, and brought his family out here. Good man. I think his wife filed for divorce the moment the plane hit the tarmac. Don’t think they even talk. She never wanted to come to Africa, I know that.’

  De Vries sighs, sadly. ‘I’m pretty certain that the Lawsons are still here, though. I see the father sometimes in Claremont. I fucking
hide. Can’t bear to face him.’ He bows his head, fights tears.

  Don February says: ‘I will find out what I can about them – their current addresses. And regarding the whereabouts of the Eames family, I will give you what I have. Are you staying here?’

  De Vries nods.

  ‘I will find you.’ Don struggles out of the low guest chair and stumbles out of the office.

  Kleinman gestures back at the closed door. ‘I like him.’

  De Vries says: ‘Don’t tell him.’

  ‘There is carrot as well as stick, man.’

  De Vries snorts.

  Kleinman leans forward. ‘February is a Cape Coloured name, isn’t it? Your man looks pure black African to me.’

  ‘He told me it’s his mother’s name; says no one could ever pronounce his African name. I’m trying not to see him for his colour.’

  ‘Perhaps that is what he is hoping. Anyway, if you’ve found a good man there, what does it matter? He seems to be able to cope with you, anyway.’

  ‘Do I need to be coped with?’

  Kleinman raises his eyebrows. He smiles, goes on: ‘You know, back in 07, I wasn’t here. At that time I was living in Durban – spent three years there. I heard about it, of course. This is one out of nowhere.’

  De Vries picks up the whisky bottle, pours a second glass when Kleinman nods, topping up his own.

  ‘All these years, Harry, all this time, those boys have haunted me. You realize what this looks like? Those kids were taken, held hostage in secret: ill-treated, abused, imprisoned for seven long fucking years. How can that happen? How can nobody see, nobody know?’

  ‘I find myself saying it more and more: it is unbelievable.’

  ‘You have a murder, you do all you can to find the bastard responsible. There’s a focus, but these boys – we didn’t know anything. Weeks went by, and nothing. Complete, total blank. We reckoned pretty quickly they were dead. No ransom demands, no more abductions: three in three days, and then nothing. Never heard of a case like it. These sick fucks start, they go on, never stop until they’re caught. But those three. Shit knows how many man-hours we all put in, every one of us, but not one shred. Never seen a case with no evidence like that.’

  Kleinman lowers his voice. ‘Assuming you did your best, you have to focus only on what happened today. You can’t afford to dwell on an investigation that is seven years old.’

  ‘Maybe the answer was there, all the time.’

  ‘No,Vaughn. If it was there, you would have found it.’

  ‘Maybe I missed something. I don’t know. Whatever, this guy is still around.’

  Kleinman leans forward, his big head casting de Vries in shadow from the feeble lamp.

  ‘You have your murders now. And big questions: after seven years, why kill them? He’s hidden them perfectly. Why dump the bodies where they could easily be found? Not my department, but I’d say your man just made his first mistake, and that’ll be what leads you to him. All this time, a seemingly perfect crime, and now something surely unplanned: to leave the bodies there. Find the man who did this; find Bobby Eames. It’s all you can do.’

  De Vries nods, thinking ahead.

  ‘And I’ll do it too. I fucking swear I will. But, Jesus Christ, what a night ahead.’

  ‘I’ll be down below for the next few hours. You want to bounce anything off me, if du Toit wants me, just call me up.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Kleinman takes a couple of breaths. Then he asks: ‘What made you think of those boys back in the lab?’

  De Vries doesn’t look up.

  ‘I never stop thinking about them.’

  Harry Kleinman heaves himself up, pats Vaughn’s shoulder and stomps off down the grey corridor which leads past the squad room to the elevators. Vaughn hears his heavy footsteps get fainter, one by one, until he is alone, in silence.

  2007

  Inspector Dean Russell says, ‘I’ve spoken with the last two people to see Toby Henderson: his friends Jacob Oland and Bryan Hollander. Talked to their folks too. Seems they were round the back of the old pavilion, smoking.’

  ‘Smoking at ten years old?’ de Vries says. ‘Jesus. I was twelve before I started.’

  ‘I got the feeling it was grass.’

  De Vries snorts. ‘Christ. They’re smoking ganja before they’re teenagers and they pick a spot behind a field packed with policemen.’ He looks back up at Russell. ‘You sure they didn’t see, hear anything?’

  ‘Toby Henderson told them he felt sick, wandered off towards the trees. They waited for him, looked for him. Nothing. We’re still canvassing the neighbouring homes for unusual cars, people, but with SAPS Family Day, the area was packed with strange faces.’

  ‘Shit. All right, keep on with all the usual stuff.’

  ‘He knew,’ Russell says. ‘He knew that with all those people he could just blend in and take Toby, and nobody would see him.’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  ‘That shows a fuckload of confidence though, doesn’t it?’

  2014

  Don February watches light grey silhouettes posture and dance through the frosted-glass window of de Vries’ office, which is next to the dark conference room in which he waits. He knows that he is witnessing the professional agonies of two men, history clawing its way up through the floors, the walls enclosing them, to strangle them with their memories. Everyone who works this job has them; it’s endemic. You just pray that you have a chance to solve the cases one day, resolve your unending painful curiosity.

  Don, too, keeps his mind moving, zig-zagging to evade demons; he remembers the three-year-old girl, raped and tortured. The wall of silence in the squatter camp, no one breaking. He recalls his anger, the unbearable frustration that he could persuade none of them to talk. Would no one identify her parents? Her relatives? Days of it, unending. Don became convinced that she had been brought to the outskirts of Cape Town from far away with one sole intention: to torture and kill her. And then, six sleepless nights after that revelation, another case came up, and Don could not be spared. The docket was marked unsolved and stored. Don still remembers her nameless tattered corpse; still remembers that somewhere a baby girl is missing, taken to an alien place, from a village far away.

  The door to de Vries’ office opens.

  ‘Come in, Don.’

  Don gets up, walks gingerly into the office; he had no idea they knew he was in there.

  ‘Warrant Officer.’ Du Toit shakes Don’s hand. ‘I’m pleased you are involved in this at this point.’

  Don bows politely.

  ‘I gather that Colonel de Vries has already run through with you why this is going to be such a big case. When these boys disappeared seven years ago, it was media saturation for weeks, so the public, the press, everyone will be scrutinizing us. Whether we like it or not, there are always politics in an organization. We have some bloody-minded people on our backs. You were completely uninvolved in the original inquiry. I think it’s absolutely right that we add a man unfamiliar with the emotional history of this case.’

  Exhausted, but still able to appreciate his superior’s talent for saying nothing at length, de Vries smiles to himself.

  Du Toit snaps his fingers.

  ‘Notification to the families will be undertaken by me personally tomorrow morning, after which I will hold a press conference.’ He turns to Vaughn, who is having trouble keeping his eyes open. ‘Assuming that the man who abducted these boys is the same man who killed them, we now have a unique opportunity to catch him. That’s what I want emphasized to the press. In fact, there is only one sensible way to play . . . describe this . . . There is now a chance, hitherto thought impossible, of finding Robert Eames alive, and of arresting whoever this monster turns out to be. This is a whole new case, ultimately a completely different case to the original presumed abductions.’

  De Vries realizes how that would sound, the way it could influence, even manipulate, how the papers cover the story. He is too tired to be angr
y, but he knows that this man, whom he has followed up through the ranks, cares less about the victims than how things appear in the media. De Vries is not like this. He stands up, a new wave of adrenalin hitting him.

  ‘There are some things I want to check.’ He looks over to du Toit. ‘If we’re done here, sir?’

  ‘All right,Vaughn. At seven a.m. tomorrow morning, I am visiting Steven Lawson’s parents, then Mr and Mrs Eames. Finally, if no one can find out what the hell’s happened to Trevor Henderson, I’ll be calling Mrs Henderson in the UK. Then, I give a press conference.’ He turns to de Vries. ‘Make sure I have something to tell them.’

  This crime lab is only for the specialized units in town, but it is still open, two men and a woman bent over benches, faces illuminated by bulky computer monitors. The Crime Scene leader stands before de Vries, bleary-eyed. Vaughn still can’t remember the man’s name.

  ‘Don’t expect anything till the morning. Yes, first thing, I know. We’ll work it all night.’ He gestures to the technicians, but they do not look up. ‘Blown the month’s overtime in one go.’

  De Vries thanks him, strides out of the laboratory and takes the lift back up to his office. It is 2 a.m., and he knows that he cannot progress without forensic evidence. He sits in the low, comfortable chair, wondering why he has never discovered its charms before now, takes off his shoes and lies back. His mind is filled with images of the three abducted boys, the gaunt, hopeless looks on the faces of their families, for seven years an investigation without end – until now.

  Don February waits until 7 a.m. exactly before waking De Vries. He has managed a few hours dozing on the floor of the shared Warrant Officers’ offices, drunk some tepid, weak coffee, and washed inadequately in the dirty toilets. None of it as demeaning as hearing his wife tell him all the ways her life is not matching up to her dreams; bitter, biting into him. His promotion sought only for her, now resented and despised.

  ‘I am paying for our house,’ he tells her, his voice echoing back to him from his cellphone.

  Don checks his appearance in the mirror, exits the bathrooms and heads to de Vries’ office, where he finds him slumped in his chair, his mouth open, gaping to the right, as if he has suffered a stroke.