In the Midst of Wolves

by Kurt Ellis

  Meyer guffawed without humour. ‘I mean, I explained to him that this guy had been molesting boys for over four decades. It was not likely that he would just turn himself in after so many years. I mean, part of me wondered whether the only reason he chose to confess to me in the first place wasn’t because he wanted forgiveness, but wanted to brag to someone; to safely be able to tell someone about what he had been doing without any ramifications. To gloat, even. Father Walters preached that the sacrament of confession and its secrecy were beyond reproach.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that it can be broken if the person confesses that they are about to commit a crime?’

  ‘That’s just a myth. There’s no such clause. A priest cannot share anything he hears under the protection of a confession with anyone, not even the authorities.’

  ‘But you told Father Walters?’

  ‘I confessed to Father Walters,’ he corrected. ‘A loophole. I knew that the privacy of confession cannot be broken, but I was hoping Father Walters could give me a way to work around it. Give me another option. Give me permission to take what I’d heard to the police. But that wasn’t forthcoming.’ He glanced down at the plate in front of her. ‘Your food’s getting cold.’

  ‘That’s fine. I own a microwave,’ she said jokingly. ‘I’ll take it home, but tell me what happened next.’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I just stared at the ceiling and prayed, for guidance, for help. It was in the early hours of the next morning that I made up my mind. I called the local police and gave them an anonymous tip about Willie Lubbe. I knew I was breaking a sacred vow, but I also had to have faith that my forgiving God would understand the reasons for my transgression. But a week went by and nothing was done. I phoned the police again and left a second anonymous tip. And yet another week passed and nothing had been done. I just couldn’t take it any more. For two Sundays I had to stand at the pulpit and preach while a monster stared at me. For two Sundays I had to give him the Eucharist. I couldn’t do it for a third Sunday. It was then that I stormed into the local police station and demanded to see the station commander.’

  With a sardonic smile he added, ‘It’s amazing how quickly you get a response from people when they see the white collar. I told the commander everything I knew. Lubbe was picked up later that afternoon. It was the same afternoon that I called Father Walters and told him what I’d done. I had expected him to be angry but he wasn’t. He was understanding and he again heard my confession telephonically. After that call, I contacted the Archbishop of the Western Cape and informed him of my resignation from the priesthood. A few weeks later, I applied to join the police.’

  ‘And Lubbe?’ she probed. ‘What happened with him?’

  ‘Well, at first Lubbe remained silent. And without an admission, the police had nothing to hold him on. It was just my word on what I’d heard in a confession. But it wasn’t enough, so I forced my way in to help the police as they searched his home. I helped them scratch around the house while Lubbe’s wife spat curses at me. And we came up empty. But then I remembered a specific part of the confession. The part where he said that he had kept his first victim’s underwear under his bed. I went to have a look. On my hands and knees, I searched under the bed and found nothing but dust bunnies. I was getting frustrated, angry. I mean, this man was going to get away with it. But then I had another idea, and with a young policeman, we took the sheets off and turned the mattress over. We found a slit cut into the corner of it, almost completely hidden. The cop pushed his hand in and the innards of the mattress spewed out, onto the floor in a rainbow of colours. Red, white, blue, green and many other colours of underpants. There were dozens. The officer then reached further inside the stuffed mattress and pulled out pictures. Photographs of nude boys. Photographs of nude boys and a naked Willie Lubbe. Disgusting images. But it was more than enough to arrest and convict him.’

  She looked at him, stunned. ‘Now that’s a story worth telling, Luke.’

  ‘Too bad everything I told you is off the record.’

  Pause, then another smile. ‘Of course it is.’

  He felt the vibration at his hip before he heard the beep of his cellphone. Pulling the device from his pocket, he read the text message. ‘2003 Opel Corsa RBW 390 GP found. Abandoned – Linksfield.’

  43

  Thursday, 13 June

  He held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. His left ankle rested on his right thigh as he reclined in the chair. Creed tapped the filter of the cigarette against the instep of his shoe.

  ‘I thought you said I can talk about whatever I wanted to.’

  Dr Tlau smiled encouragingly. ‘You can, but I’m asking you if you can talk to me about your father … if you want. Tell me whatever you’d like to tell me about him.’

  Creed sighed and put the cigarette to his lips. He didn’t light it but left it perched precariously in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘My father’s from Cape Town. A Cape Malay. One of nine children. When they were forcefully removed from District Six, his father moved them all to Durban where he worked in the sugar-cane fields of Newlands East. My dad wasn’t even a teenager yet when he stopped going to school and joined a local gang. They did petty stuff – a few housebreakings, stealing tyres from cars, getting into fights with other gangs over girls. That sort of crap.’ His tongue pivoted the cigarette back and forth, ‘My dad and his older brother Francis got arrested by the police on a Friday. There was no reason for the arrest. Ironically, it was probably the one day that my father hadn’t done anything illegal except walking while non-white. He was fourteen years old at the time; his brother was maybe sixteen. They were taken to a police station where they were beaten and tortured for the entire weekend. Probably out of boredom.’ He shrugged. ‘And when the cops were done with them, they were dumped in the middle of the sugar-cane fields that Monday morning, naked, bloodied and broken.’

  Creed took the cigarette from his mouth and tapped it on his ankle again. ‘My father had remained conscious. He carried his brother for over ten kilometres to the nearest road for help. He walked with a concussion, a broken jaw, two broken cheekbones, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a bruised kidney. They even broke the toes on his right foot with the butt of a gun. But he still carried his brother out of that sugar-cane field. Carried him for over ten kays with a damn dislocated shoulder.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘It was for nothing. Franky was already dead before they had even dumped them.’

  He saw a glimpse of horror in her eyes, but she quickly hid it by looking down at her notepad.

  Creed continued. ‘But my father made the police and the South African government regret what they did to him. Because that day, Ukufa Okunsundu was born. Do you know what Ukufa Okunsundu means?’

  Dr Tlau nodded. ‘It’s Zulu. It means Brown or Black Death.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he grinned. ‘My father left the gang and joined the ANC as soon as he could, in particular, the armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe. Pretty soon they learnt he had a unique talent. He was a better shot than any of them. His first kill as a sniper was an Afrikaans businessman, a huge financial backer of the National Party at the time. My father shot him as he was leaving Saambou Bank in Central Jo’burg. He was seventeen years old when he pulled the trigger. A few months later, he took out another financer of the National Party, a mining millionaire. And a few months after that, an NP politician. Now that was a shot.’

  Creed adjusted in his seat. ‘This guy, named Van der Watt, or Van de Venter, something like that, was in a hotel room with his mistress, and my father was on the roof of the building across the street. There was only a small sliver in the curtain to aim through.’ He used his forefinger and thumb to show the size of the gap. ‘But that was all he needed. Pop, he took him out. Just one shot. Just one. But by then, a certain Major de Kock and his Vlakplaas death squad had caught a whiff of him from some spies within MK. They were after him, so the ANC got him over
the border and into Mozambique. But that wasn’t before he took his revenge on the commander of the station where he and his brother had been tortured.’

  ‘How did he do that?’ She didn’t look up from her notes.

  ‘A bullet to the head,’ Creed responded curtly. ‘My father then went from Mozambique to Zambia, then on to Russia where he received secret training from the Spetsnaz.’

  Dr Tlau cocked her head. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Russian equivalent of the American Navy SEALs. Or our Recces. He did sniper training with them and became an even better shot.’ He stopped tapping the cigarette to his shoe and placed it in his jacket pocket. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. ‘My father was a myth. He’d sneak into the country like a soft breeze, unseen, unnoticed. Then … POP! A gun shot would go off somewhere, an apartheid loyalist would fall, and then that breeze would disappear. Ukufa Okunsundu. It was during one of these trips into the country that he met and married my mother. In another trip, he fathered me. He snuck into the country, unseen. POP! He was gone and my mother was pregnant. That’s that. That’s my father.’

  Dr Tlau raised her gaze from the notes on her lap, closed the book and placed it on the coffee table between them. ‘That’s your father’s biography, Nick. I could’ve learnt all of that from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports. I want to know what your views of your father are. Like, when you think of him, what’s the image that comes to your mind?’

  Creed sat back and returned his ankle to his thigh. ‘I was about eleven years old, maybe twelve. It was a year after he had been allowed back into the country, officially. A few months before the Rumples incident. My mother, brother and sister weren’t at home. Not sure where they’d gone, but I had been playing soccer in the park with some friends and I came home at about six that evening. The sun was just going down and the lights were off in our house. The electricity had been cut: Eskom had disconnected the power that afternoon and I walked into the pitch blackness of home. And the only thing I could see was a small, glowing, orange dot in the far corner. The embers of a cigarette. And all I heard were his sobs. I don’t know if he saw me, because I couldn’t see his eyes. I slipped out of the house to wait for my mother outside. I learnt later that she’d gone to borrow money from my grandfather to put the lights back on.’

  ‘Do you know why your father was crying?’

  ‘At the time, no. But now I can offer a reasonably certain guess.’

  She kept silent, encouraging him to go on.

  ‘You see, when my father was allowed back for good, he was jovial. Happy. He spoke of how our lives were going to get better, about how his comrades, who were now the government, would look after us. About how he would get a job in the police, or army or something and look after us. And every day he would sit in his chair in the corner of the lounge, waiting for them to call him. Waiting that phone to ring. And every day his smile would get smaller and smaller. They never called him. They abandoned him. I imagine that made him feel … Wait!’

  Creed sat forward. ‘I’ve got a better image of the man. The day I came home from school and found our yard full of neighbours and police. My mother was outside, tears still drying on her cheeks. She told me that my father had had an accident, and that he was dead. I remember I didn’t cry. And I know you might think that makes me sound heartless, but that man was fucking heartless. Instead of being a father to us, he decided to go crawl around in some fucking bush. He was more interested in helping people he didn’t know than in his own family. He didn’t give two shits about his family, about his wife who was being harassed by police, or about how she struggled to feed and clothe us. Or about me, or Josh or Lizzie, who’d waited for years to get to know him. For him to come back so we’d know what it was like to have a father. But when he did come home, he didn’t do anything. He just sat there, waiting for that damn phone to ring.’

  ‘You were angry.’

  ‘Of course I was fucking angry.’ Creed clenched his jaw. ‘I still am. Where was he when I was growing up and needed him? Nowhere. Where was he when Josh and Lizzie needed a father? Nowhere. I had to be the father. Me!’ He balled up his fists in anger. His fury raged through his veins like logs in rapids. Creed realised he had raised his voice. He took a deep breath, then continued, calmer. ‘We spent the night at my grandfather’s home in Sherwood, but my mother didn’t. I didn’t know why but I wanted to find out. So, when everyone else was asleep, I snuck out and walked home. A long walk.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I think it was my own ten-kilometre walk. And as I walked into our front door, I saw my mother, in that same corner where my father always sat waiting for that fucking phone to ring. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the blood and the brains out of the carpet. It was then that I realised that the coward had shot himself.’

  ‘Why do you call him a coward?’

  ‘Because that’s what he was. A coward who took the easy way out. Not giving a damn about his wife and kids, not taking responsibility for his actions. If he was hurting, then good. That’s what he deserved, but to take an easy exit like eating a bullet, then that’s a coward.’ A single tear slipped over the lower rim of his eyes and he roughly wiped it away with the back of his hand, disgusted in himself for crying. ‘So, you wanna know what picture I have in my head when I think of my father? It’s my mother on her hands and knees, scrubbing away his blood.’

  Dr Tlau let his words slowly settle like dust on furniture before she spoke. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’

  Creed took the cigarette from his jacket. ‘See what?’

  She leaned forward. ‘The similarities.’

  His eyebrows were lowered, his nostrils flared.

  ‘Just listen to me, please, Nick, without interrupting. And with … an open mind. Your father joined a gang when he was young, and so did you. Your father left the gang when he heard a greater calling, and so did you. And coincidentally, both callings involved bodies in the sugar-cane field. From what you’ve told me, it’s clear that your father suffered from depression, and so do you. The parallels in your lives are obvious … even suicide.’

  Creed shook his head fast. ‘No, no, no. I’m not a coward like him. I’ll never kill myself.’

  ‘But you are, Nick. The only difference is that you’re doing it slowly. You are dismantling your life one brick at a time through drugs and alcohol, through a risky lifestyle. You curse the pain he caused you, that he caused your mother, your brother and your sister. Yet you are hurting your siblings just like he did. Except you are doing it more slowly and painfully.’

  44

  He rode down in the lift with a fat, young man in a black suit. It was silent, apart from the man’s breathing. The sound reminded Creed of an old British bulldog that he and Megan had once babysat for a friend of hers in Seattle. Loud and shallow pants. The sound cut at his already frayed temper. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you won’t die if you try a salad once in a while.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the man responded. ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘A salad. Perhaps you should leave the pizzas and hamburgers alone, you fat bastard, and try a salad occasionally?’

  Creed saw the punch coming but he didn’t try to avoid it. He let the stranger’s knuckles crack him square in the mouth just as the doors of the lift opened. He stumbled back into the corner of the box.

  ‘Hey!’ Eli Grey rushed in. He grabbed the fat man and pushed him against the back wall of the lift. ‘You’re under arrest. You …’

  ‘Let him go,’ Creed said calmly, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Grey, who already had a set of handcuffs out, ignored him.

  ‘I said let him go,’ Creed said louder. He sucked on his split bottom lip and tasted the rust-flavoured blood. ‘I deserved it.’

  ‘I know you did. But I don’t care if you deserved it. It’s assault.’

  ‘Let the guy go, Eli. You’re making him late for the gym.’

  Grey hesitated a second longer
before releasing his grip on the man. ‘Get the hell out of here.’

  A torrent of sweat poured from the stranger’s forehead and wobbly cheeks. His jowls jiggled as he rushed off.

  ‘What did you say to him, Nick?’

  ‘I just gave him a motivational speech on healthy eating.’

  Grey pulled him to his feet.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ Creed asked.

  ‘I came to update you on the case.’

  ‘I thought I was off the case.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Grey said curtly. ‘There’s a good coffee shop around the corner from here. We can chat there.’

  The two men dodged the pedestrians on Sandton’s pavements before slipping into the café. The tiny coffee bar was dominated by a counter with a blackboard above it, the menu and the day’s specials scribbled in multi-coloured chalk. High on the adjacent wall, an old French-style bicycle was fixed to the red bricks. They took a seat in the far corner, next to a shelf of homemade preserves for sale.

  ‘You’re right,’ Grey started.

  ‘You need to be more specific, Eli. I’m right about a lot of things.’

  ‘You were right about the boyfriend. Or ex-boyfriend rather.’

  A waitress came to take their order, her eyes drawn to his bloodied and swollen bottom lip. Grey ordered a black coffee. Creed asked for the coldest Coke they had and a glass with ice.

  Once the waitress had left, Creed ran his tongue over the wound again, ‘Come on, Eli. You know it’s a stock-standard theory in all murder cases: look at the spouse first. Shit, even Steenkamp would’ve got there … eventually. I didn’t do anything special.’

  Grey looked out of the large window, then shook his head. ‘Reggie’s part of a cash-in-transit robbery gang. We piggy-backed onto a raid yesterday, but he got away.’

  Creed nodded. ‘I saw Patel’s news briefing. She looked good.’ The cold drink and ice arrived. He held the can to his lip while transferring some ice from his glass to a serviette. He substituted the old compress with the new. ‘Any leads on him now?’