“I’m on a murder investigation.”
“Oh?” Adriaan looked puzzled. “Tokkie didn’t mention anything.”
It didn’t surprise Alet that her dad discussed her with Captain Mynhardt. He was probably the only reason she was still on the force, calling in favors from friends to keep her there after the affair with her superior came to light. She had the sudden urge to tell him about everything, how sorry she was for failing, for disappointing him. How scared she was of doing it again. How she hated small-town life and small-town people and arrogant assholes trying to kill each other on the N12 every day. How people like Strijdom held out their palms and turned their heads the other way and made her wonder why she even bothered doing the right thing. But if there was one thing Adriaan Berg had taught her, it’s that what happens on shift stays there. It had nothing to do with the outside world. Nothing.
“You shouldn’t jeopardize your probation.” Adriaan spoke in measured tones without looking at her. “If you mess up this investigation …”
Alet bristled. “I’ve uncovered most of the leads we have so far.”
“I’m sure you’ve contributed.”
“We don’t have money for decent forensics and the labs are slow.” She forged ahead, remembering the stories he’d told her from the old days. “You said you sometimes consulted with a forensics guy at the university when you were in homicide. He helped you catch that strangler guy when you had no leads. Maybe he can help.”
“Koch?” Adriaan had a look of distaste. “I don’t think so, Alet. Let the investigating officer handle this. Is he experienced?”
“Mathebe is okay. He’s—”
“You don’t need outside help. Just do as he tells you.” Adriaan’s words had bite.
Alet felt sure that she would burst into tears if she stayed in the car another moment. “Well, have fun on your honeymoon.” She got out and closed the car door before Adriaan could respond.
Alet snuck out, as soon as Aunt Mattie said good night and the lights went out. The velvet dress felt sticky and unglamorous against her skin, Cinderella after the clock struck twelve. The taxi she had ordered idled in the street, the driver surly, at the end of his shift, the smell of stale cigarettes and coffee permeating the upholstery. Her Toyota was parked in the lot among the last stragglers from the wedding. Alet fished the keys out of her bag, grateful that her father didn’t get it into his head to take them. She exchanged her heels for a pair of old trainers she kept in the trunk before she took off, following the signs to the N2. A drowsiness hung over Port Elizabeth’s abandoned streets, ghosts of the normal bustle illuminated by solitary streetlights. Shantytowns slumbered in the late hours, an occasional fire still smoking in a drum, the homeless crouching around it. Alet exited onto the R62 and the road opened up, illuminated only by the crisp white of her high beams, the speedometer wavering at 120 km/h.
Alet’s head was pounding, every approaching headlight waging war on her optic nerves. She almost didn’t see it, the feeble attempt of a thin arm to wave her down, the woman lying on the side of the road, pale breasts protruding from her torn blouse. It took Alet a moment to process the image, doubting her sanity even as she slammed on the brakes. The sedan strained, skidding on gravel before coming to a stop. Alet’s purse fell off the passenger seat.
Oh, God. Alet’s hands trembled as she fumbled for her purse. She squinted at the rearview mirror, barely making out the human form on the ground. She found her phone between old tissues and lipstick, almost dropping it again as she dialed 112, relieved when the call connected.
“This is Constable Alet Berg from the Unie Police. I’m about twenty kilometers outside Joubertina. I have Tracker installed. Toyota, license plate CA 893–919.” Alet pushed the tracker’s panic button. “There is an injured female lying on the side of the road. Send an ambulance right away.”
Alet reached for her holster under her seat while she waited for the operator’s confirmation, the butt of the 9mm sliding into her palm. She flipped the safety off and got out. Her eyes had trouble adjusting to the dark. She took a few steps forward, barely able to distinguish shapes. The picnic rest stop had a concrete table and bench next to a row of scraggly trees. The woman on the ground in front of it whimpered like an injured dog.
“Hallo?” The world around Alet held its breath.
The woman’s right arm lifted a few inches off the ground, dropped back as if it were encased in lead. Alet realized that the whimpers were gasps for air. Fok. She ran to the woman.
“Help is on the way.” Alet prayed it was true.
The woman’s eyes were wide with terror, her mouth opening and closing, a shrill, labored treble the only thing escaping. Dark patches of blood soaked the front of her cap-sleeved blouse. Her pinched face looked familiar, but Alet didn’t allow herself to think about why. She knelt down, peeling back what remained of the fabric. A long gash ran unevenly down the woman’s chest, as if the attacker had tried to trace a line with multiple stabs. Alet couldn’t tell how deep the wounds were, only that the woman was bleeding profusely, the bone of her sternum visible in places.
“Stay calm.” It sounded ridiculous even as Alet said it.
The woman’s eyes darted to the right. Alet turned her head in time to see a branch coming down. What would have been a blow to the back of her head caught her on her nose. A searing pain shot through her skull. She fell on her side, the 9mm pinned under her body. Something took over, instinct, or maybe it was training, but she immediately rolled onto her back. A shoe connected with her side as she lifted her gun. She pulled the trigger anyway.
The deafening pop had the desired effect. Footsteps crunched in the gravel as her attacker ran. Alet pushed herself off the ground with effort. She had trouble focusing her eyes. She aimed the gun in the direction of the footsteps. Pop. Again, aim. Pop. She tasted blood. Aim. Pop. Ah for fok’s sake. The man was still running. You’re never going to get him like this, Berg.
A car door slammed. “Shit.” Alet had left her keys in the ignition and the fokker was stealing her car. She got off the ground, raw rage propelling her. She had almost reached the Toyota when the car’s engine started up, tires spinning, kicking up dust.
If you’re going to do it, you should stop fucking around and do it right. Alet planted her legs shoulder-width apart, wrapped her hands over the butt of the gun, extended both arms and took a deep breath. She squeezed off two rapid rounds on the exhale. The car swerved, the back window blowing out. It didn’t slow down. Alet aimed. Her ears were ringing. Pop. The car veered to the side, hitting the lip on the other side of the road. It slid down the shallow embankment, wheels spinning as it flipped onto its side. Alet followed the car down, adrenaline coursing through her veins, blinding her judgment.
The Toyota had come to a stop against an old telephone pole edged by wire fencing. In the field behind it, sheep startled by the noise scattered. Alet opened the Toyota’s passenger door. A black man lay with his bloodied head against the driver-side window, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, the blood from a wound at his collarbone spreading down his T-shirt.
“Fokker!” Alet’s voice bordered on hysteria. “I got you.” Her index finger tightened around the trigger.
Yellow and blue lights caught her eye. A lone flying squad vehicle rounded a bend in the road, a siren’s wail breaking the silence. Alet lowered her gun. She reached into the car to turn the Toyota’s hazards on. The man stirred. Alet scrambled back, hitting her head on the car door. She trained the gun on him again with shaky hands. When he didn’t move, she slammed her free hand against the door. “I got you.”
1938
Tessa
“I can’t wait any longer, Theresa.” Mrs. Uys stood at the classroom door, keys in hand. “I have a choir to coach.” Tessa took the sheet music to “Für Elise” off the stand and tucked it between the schoolbooks in her satchel. It had been a trying lesson. Throughout the whole ordeal, Tessa had tried not to stare at the mus
ic teacher’s chin, where a thick, gray wire sprouted from a brown mole the size of one of Flippie’s marbles.
She wondered how old Mrs. Uys was. Her own age? Perhaps. It fascinated her to think that she should have looked like that by now. Tessa’s body carried only the hint of adolescence, her skin unblemished and smooth, her white curls still downy. Her mind was a different matter though, memories of every moment of her existence always there, years of knowledge crowding her thoughts. She had come to resent the way these so-called adults treated her, as if something as negligible as age earned them rights over her. It was getting harder to take their arbitrary abuses, harder not to correct the fallacies in their insipid ideologies.
“You should tell your pa that boy is no good,” Mrs. Uys said. “It’s not decent for him to hang around a white girl. Why does he let a black come pick you up?”
The question seemed easy, but, as with most things, once Tessa started thinking about what it really meant, she got tripped up. She obsessed about the details and nuanced variations, the language she used, what would be socially acceptable versus what she really thought and felt, the reaction of her teachers and her peers. She lost herself in a maze of possibilities too infinite to encompass in a simple answer.
“Honestly. You’d think I was talking to a wall. The good Lord gave you a tongue, girl.”
“Pa works late, Mrs. Uys.” Tessa recited the rote answer, the least interesting of the lot. Her Afrikaans was marred with soft consonants. The language felt wrong in her mouth, rigid and stiff, like the people who spoke it. But here, in the Free State, people frowned if you spoke English, calling you a redneck or a traitor behind your back.
Mrs. Uys fiddled with her keys. “What about your ma?”
“She died.” Tessa felt physical pain as she said it. It was the answer Andrew had coached her into giving all her life if anyone asked, but now that Sarah was gone, it wasn’t a lie any longer. Her mind drifted to Sarah’s frail body struggling into the back of a black man’s taxi for her weekly hospital visits. Flippie, his eyes fixed on the ground, gently squeezed in beside her as if he was scared she would break. Tessa and Andrew had had to stay behind. Whites weren’t allowed in the location, and a black would never be allowed through a white hospital’s doors. On their return, Sarah would beg Andrew not to make her go again. Tessa knew that Sarah braved that hospital in the location for Andrew’s sake. And then, one day, only Flippie climbed back out of that black man’s taxi. Tessa pressed her lips together, fighting back the sudden wave of emotion.
Mrs. Uys’s buggy eyes softened for a moment. “I hope you have someone to help you get your costume ready. The wagons pass through on Friday.”
“Ja, Mrs. Uys.” It embarrassed Tessa to admit that there was nobody. She had taken care of the monstrosity herself, sewing with clumsy fingers by candlelight to the specifications given by the home economics teacher after she handed uniform cloth out to the girls. Bloemfontein was a conservative, model Afrikaner town, the fourth (or was that fifth?) place they had lived since leaving Johannesburg, and it was buzzing in anticipation of the Big Trek Centennial. Everyone was participating in the celebrations in full costume. They practiced traditional dances during early-morning assemblies at school, and even though Tessa was new, she was forced into the fray, clumsily copying the other girls in their militaristic skirt-swishing and partner-swapping, her feet several steps behind as she did her best to avoid eye contact.
Tessa followed Mrs. Uys out of the music room and waited until she locked the door. Children from the orphanage played in the street outside the school gate. You could always tell them apart by their hand-me-down uniforms and greasy hair. Most of the town parents didn’t want their children to be friends with them, so they mainly stuck together, huddling at the edge of the school grounds, always up to no good. All of them belonged to the Voortrekkers, the Afrikaner answer to the Hitler Youth, meant to emulate and promote the culture of their forefathers who’d trekked inland to escape the British-ruled Cape Colony.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Uys,” Mr. Hugo said as he passed them on his way from coaching the rugby team, tie undone, hair wet with sweat. Tessa noticed the beginnings of a beard on his square jaw. All the men around town were suddenly sprouting facial hair in anticipation of the ox-wagons that were following the trek route up from the Cape to Pretoria.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hugo.” A blush spread over Mrs. Uys’s cheeks, her eyes lingering on his back. Old goat longing for a young leaf, Tessa thought. All the girls in school had crushes on Mr. Hugo. Tessa silently mocked them as she listened to their nervous twitter during recess, the wishful thinking of guppies. She refused to admit that she too sometimes felt a rush of something inexplicable when he called on her during history lessons, and that she worked extra hard to impress him.
These days, they had to forgo the Renaissance in favor of their Afrikaner ancestors, the original Voortrekkers. Everybody sang volk songs and learned how to make stick dolls and cook in anthills. Tessa found it unbearable, even under the guidance of Mr. Hugo, who seemed to relay the folklore with a bemused smile. The other teachers took it more seriously, treating the stories like gospel, the Voortrekkers gods from Greek mythology.
Mrs. Uys turned her attention back to Tessa as Mr. Hugo disappeared behind one of the asbestos classrooms. “Your scales are no good,” she said. “I can tell you don’t practice.”
“Ja, Mrs. Uys.” Tessa had taken to music as easily as to any other language, but her hands were too small to reach the notes on the piano. She would have liked to switch to the violin, but she didn’t want to ask Andrew for one. The only job he could find in Bloemfontein was road-building, so money was tight.
Mrs. Uys plodded down to the main gate, where her husband waited in his Chevy. She looked out of the window of the car as they drove off, a kind of sadness on her face. Tessa scanned the road, hoping to see Flippie appear among the low buildings now that she was gone. He should have been there half an hour ago, but he didn’t like having to call her “Mies” in front of her teachers and other white people. She couldn’t blame him for that, but even so, he was acting strange lately, as if graduating from high school made him too important to talk to his own sister, treating her like a leper when Andrew wasn’t around.
Tessa kicked a pebble out of frustration. A billow of red dust rose up from the dry ground, dulling her new school shoes and socks. It was only a couple of miles to their plot, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t know the way. Andrew would have a fit if he found out, though. He had forbidden her to go anywhere alone, and they both had to be home by six, at which point nobody opened the door until Andrew got home from work. Flippie wasn’t a child anymore. There would be trouble if he was discovered in the white areas after dark.
Tessa hated her child’s body, hated having to depend on either of them. Whenever Tessa had had questions about why she wasn’t growing like other children, neither Sarah nor Andrew could answer her. Last night, when she brought it up again, Andrew had called it a gift, citing God’s mysterious ways, which had only made her angry. Tessa suddenly felt sorry for the way she had behaved, for yelling at him and calling him a liar. Andrew just sat there with hunched shoulders while she vented, saying nothing. Perhaps he really didn’t know. In Tessa’s mind she was sure she was damned, like Cain. Or perhaps she was immortal, like the Titans, only she would be a child for all eternity. But that wasn’t right either. Her body was changing, even if the process was painfully slow. The hint of inchoate mounds had recently appeared on her chest. Tessa hoped that the charade of childhood might at last be coming to an end. She wondered whether she’d be too embarrassed to talk to Andrew about getting a bra.
Tessa sat down on one of the concrete steps that led down to the street, hugging her schoolbag in her lap, watching the teenage boys coming from their Voortrekker scout meeting and showing off for the girls by picking on the orphans. Boys had never shown off for her, not in any of the schools in any of the towns. For the most part they ignored her or mad
e fun of her. She touched her chest absentmindedly, wondering if that would change now.
Tessa didn’t notice the old man until he was right next to her, his weathered face as brown as his stained clothing.
“Kleinmies, why are you sitting alone?” He glanced around the schoolyard as he spoke to her. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“What do you want? I don’t have money.” Tessa was surprised by the disdainful authority of her own voice. The old man looked as if she had slapped him, a sad, disappointed look sagging his face farther. Tessa suddenly felt ashamed. People talked down to blacks, made snide remarks and jokes and treated them like dimwits. She was supposed to know better. She dropped her head, studying the dust on her shoes, not sure how to make amends.
The man sat down next to her on the step. “How old are you?”
“Twelve,” Tessa hoped he would go away, before someone saw him and caused trouble.
“There was a kleinmies on the farm where I used to work,” the man said. “She was as old as you.” He shook his head mournfully. “But the baas he didn’t want me there anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I was good friends with the kleinmies, see? It wasn’t like here in town. Here they are all so greedy, greedy, greedy. The kleinmies was my friend.” The man rubbed his head, his white hair sticking up like down. “Will you give me a hug?” He inched closer to Tessa. She was intensely aware of the rank smoke smell on his clothes. “The kleinmies on the farm always hugged me. Or do you hate an old man like the others?”
“I am not like them.” Tessa held her arms out, desperate to prove the point.
The man pulled her toward him. She could feel his bony ribs through the rough cloth of his clothes. She tried to push away, a wrong feeling clenching her stomach. The man held on to her, holding her head against him, his chest rising and falling heavily, his heart beating next to her ear. His right hand suddenly slipped under the schoolbag on her lap. His fingers gripped her thigh over her school dress, forcing the fabric back.
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