“I think you may be asking a bit much, but is there anything specific you want the guys at the lab to look for?”
“Ja, I want to know what the alcohol level was in all their bloodstreams.”
“Come to think of it, that’s a good idea. It’ll certainly confirm my suspicion that he targets drunken women. And then I think we should issue a press release and let them know the victim profile.” Nico frowned. “Look, I know how you feel about issuing the details, but we have a responsibility to let women of a certain age know that they need to be aware of the goings on around them.”
“Fine, but we need to be careful about the wording. I don’t want a full-scale panic from all the alcoholic old women out there. We have enough crank calls on our hands as it is.”
“I’ll word it very carefully. I promise.”
“You’d better and don’t forget to call me once you get the results from the lab.”
Nico, still frowning, walked back towards the building leaving Pete delighted with himself for persuading Nico to agree to release some information to the press. But he wasn't all that sure how Colonel Moses Molwedi would feel about it. The big man might not be all that thrilled with Pete's idea or Nico's consent, especially after the whole Helen debacle.
NICO WAITED FOR EVERYONE to leave the scene. He watched the forensics’ van drive around the corner and disappear down Lynette Street. He parked his car in the parking lot across the street and made sure he had a perfect view of the entrance to the block of flats. Fortunately, there was only one entrance to keep an eye on. This was probably where the killer had waited and watched. He wondered what the killer had done to pass the time while he stalked his victim. Had he listened to Radio Jacaranda or 5FM? Did he drink coffee or tea or a beer?
The winter morning sun rose higher in the sky. It began to get hot in the car, and the damn thing didn’t have aircon. He switched on the car radio. Some woman was reading the news on Radio Jacaranda. She gave an update on the Bathroom Strangler case, letting the general populace know that there'd been another victim. Kurt Darren took over and a local Afrikaans singer he'd never heard of before and whom he hoped he'd never hear again, moaned through the speakers as his cell phone started ringing in his jacket. The speakers in the back of the car objected to the interference caused by the incoming call. He turned down the volume and answered it.
“Hi, Doc. What have you got for me?”
“They all had alcohol content in their bloodstreams except Theresa van Wyk. She was the only sober one at the time of death.”
“Why the fuck wasn’t the blood tested before? What’s the point of taking a sample of the victims if they aren’t going to test it?”
“Nico, I’m sorry. The lab is snowed under and besides, didn’t we have this conversation just a short while ago?”
“I don’t care if we have this conversation a hundred fucking times.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. You can vent with the guys over at the lab as much as you like. Don’t take your shit out on me.”
Nico could hear him sulking through the phone.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated.”
“You aren’t the only one. Don’t you think I want to catch this guy as badly as you do?” Pete took a breath. “I know this brings back memories of what happened to your mother, but you have to realise that you aren’t alone in this.”
“Please, don’t pull your head-shrink stuff on me.”
“Nico, you need help.”
“Okay Doc, I’ll promise to get help after the case is over if you promise to leave my mother out of this.”
“Fine, but when this is over, I’m going to check you into therapy myself.”
“Okay, Doc. Whatever you say, but can we please get off my problems and back to the case.”
“Sorry. Now, where were we?” Pete asked.
“The fact is that if I’d had those test results, I could have made the connection between the victims earlier.”
“That they were all drunk the night they died?”
“Yes, well all of them except Theresa van Wyk.”
“But she was also a heavy drinker according to her neighbours. So the connection still stands. They were all full-blown alcoholics.”
“Another lead to follow up. I'll have someone check out the liquor stores in their neighbourhoods. Maybe somebody saw someone watching the victims. He has to find them somewhere; maybe he uses the bottle stores to find his victims. It's one of the best places to find an alcoholic.”
“Good idea and at least it’ll keep you busy and out of trouble.” His voice faded, and Nico could hear someone else in the background. The doctor’s voice came back. “Sorry, Nico, but I have to go. I’ve got to check on something for another murder case.” The line went dead. Another piece of the puzzle found, but he didn’t know where it fitted.
He needed the toilet. One of the many drawbacks of doing a stake-out alone was the difficulty of taking a leak when required. Maybe he should have asked one of the women at the station to back him up. None of them would have had the strength to garrotte someone and therefore couldn’t be included as suspects. Come to think of it maybe one or two of them could: Mavis was a big girl, and he wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. But if things became dangerous, he would rather be alone than have an inexperienced woman guarding his back. If Janet had any clue how he felt about women in the police force, she would have his balls in a sling. His bladder started to pull. Maybe he should have trusted Pete. The doctor was a good guy, and if he trusted Pete, he wouldn’t have to sit here trying to control his bladder. He shouldn’t have had that last cup of coffee this morning and, to make things worse, he was thirsty.
Think of the desert, he kept telling himself, don’t think of water. Whatever you do, don’t think about water. Except trying to tell himself not to think about water and needing to empty his bladder only made him more desperate for the toilet.
He opened the glove compartment and found an empty 500ml Valpré bottle. Someone had probably left it behind on a previous stake-out. It must have been missed during the car's weekly clean out. Nico didn’t really care where the bottle came from: all he cared about was that he could urinate in it. He unzipped his pants. The urine hitting the inside of the empty bottle was the most heavenly sound Nico had heard all day. Relief flooded over him. If he trusted Pete, he wouldn’t have to piss in a bottle.
The Afrikaans singer was, thankfully, replaced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were in turn replaced by Nickleback. He drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel in time with the music. Time ticked past and the radio's appeal started to wear thin. He just wanted the killer to hurry up and make his appearance. He watched a police car drive past slowly. He gripped the steering wheel and wondered if this was it, but the car kept on driving. He sat back in the seat and prepared himself for another long wait. The wind started to pick up. Red and brown leaves danced across the parking lot. Sheryl Crow was crooning something about soaking up the sun when the police car returned.
He watched the police car drive past again slowly and do a U-turn at the corner. His heart pounded. The police car, a white Citi Golf with the usual police insignia on the door and blue stripe, pulled up onto the curb. A young man in the standard dark blue police uniform with black Magnum boots got out of the car. He was too far away for Nico to make out his rank. He also managed to keep his back to Nico so he couldn’t see the man’s face. Nico waited for the cop to go through the pedestrian gate before getting out of his car and followed him. Nico stopped at the white Citi Golf with the intention of taking down the number, but the licence plate had been removed.
“Shit,” he said under his breath, scratched the back of his head, and looked in the direction the suspect had gone. He picked up his feet and ran or rather jogged in the same direction.
He pressed the button for the lift. It took too long to arrive, and he decided to take the stairs up to the third floor instead. He took them two at a time and was brea
thing heavily when his right foot touched the landing. He bent over to catch his breath and turned his head in the direction of number thirteen, in time to glimpse a blond head popping out of the door of Tanya McKenzie’s flat.
“Hey, you,” he shouted as he power-walked towards his suspect.
The man didn’t miss a beat. He turned in the opposite direction and ran down the passage towards the fire escape.
“Damn! Why do they always have to run?” he grumbled as he ran after him.
Nico chased him along the passage and down the stairs. His breath came in gasps. His suspect was fast and unfortunately in a lot better shape than he was. The suspect took the stairs three at a time and jumped the last four to the landing on each floor. Nico tried to do the same but managed to trip on the ground floor and sprawled, face first, on the ground where he landed. Tyres squealed. Nico raised his face from the ground to see the white police Citi Golf screech its way down the road.
“For fuck's sake! You fucking bastard!” he shouted as he got back on his feet. He kicked the air in frustration and wished he could be kicking the suspect’s arse. He wasn’t sure who he wanted to kick more, the suspect or himself. He bent over and put his head between his legs to quieten his laboured breathing.
“I really need to join a gym,” he mumbled as he made his way back to his car. As he walked he dusted himself off. His grey slacks were now a dusty brown all the way down the front and his once-white shirt, where it wasn’t a muddy brown, was soaking wet.
“Oh, well,” he thought, “at least now I can take a proper leak that doesn't involve a bottle.”
“YOU LOOK LIKE HELL.” It was the first thing Nico heard when entering the noisy charge office of the Pretoria Central police station. Builders in blue overalls were busy building concrete benches in the entrance and the smell of cement mingled with that of sweat, urine and blood. Startled by the closeness of the voice, Nico looked to his left to discover a bored-looking Louis leaning against the wall. There was something about the way he was leaning that struck Nico: it was catlike and stealthy, almost as if he was ready to pounce. He realised that everything about Louis could be described in that one phrase. The way he moved, the way he spoke, every action he made was feline and predatory.
“What are you doing here?” Nico asked him, struggling to make himself heard above the voices of people waiting to report a crime.
“I caught this idiot trying to boost a car with a flat battery,” he said, crooking his thumb over his shoulder at a dejected-looking boy, not more than thirteen, sitting on his haunches in the corner, staring at the handcuffs binding his wrists, “but as you can see the system’s a bit busy today.” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in the direction of the lines of people waiting their turn.
“It always is, but it gets there eventually. It grinds slowly but finely,” Nico said and looked at the boy in tattered jeans and muddy jersey. “He’s just a scared kid.”
The boy had street child stamped all over him: probably addicted to smoking glue. He wouldn't survive much longer on the streets. Nico had seen so many of them slip through the cracks and found their bodies in the mortuary.
“Okay. Then I’ll let the little shit go.” Louis turned around and unlocked the handcuffs. He dragged the boy to his feet by his left arm.
“Go on, scram,” he said, as he kicked the boy’s arse, “get out of here and don’t get caught again.”
The boy looked at him with a look of total and utter shock. A smile then broke out across his emaciated face, lighting it up. He turned tail and ran through the door.
“Why did you do that?” Nico asked, with as much shock on his face as the boy’s.
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?”
“Ja. What was all that ‘he’s just a poor kid’ stuff?”
“It was an observation, not an instruction to let him go.”
“Oh.”
“What do you mean ‘Oh’?”
“So the kid gets a few more days of freedom, big deal. He’ll be back.”
“That’s the problem ... ag ... forget it.”
“Already forgotten. Now that that’s out of the way, what happened to you, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I tripped and ate some pavement.”
“Sounds painful. I was going to ask if you wanted to join me for a beer but I don’t know if I want to be seen with you in public, looking like that.”
“The beer sounds good, and it’ll wash the pavement taste out of my mouth, but I don’t know if I want to be seen with a guy in a rent-a-cop uniform.”
“Are you mocking the uniform?”
“Me? Mock the uniform? Never!”
“So ... Tell me the truth, were you stuck in a dumpster all morning or something?”
“No, I’m just way too old and too fat to be chasing some guy who is probably ten years younger than I am.”
“So you thought you could still keep up with the young studs of today’s criminal association?”
“Yes.”
“And ended up with your face in the dirt – very clever.”
“Thank you. What can I say? I do try.”
“I think you deserve that beer for the attempt.”
“I don’t think I deserve it; I might need it, but I don’t deserve it.”
“Okay, so the fucker got away from you. You’ll get him next time.”
“Ja. Next time,” Nico sighed and dropped his head. He felt drained and angry with himself. Because of him, another woman would be dead in a few days.
“Hey, snap out of it, bro. Tomorrow’s another day and things will look a whole lot better after a few beers.”
“I’m just going to put on another shirt.”
“Let me guess ... you keep an extra shirt in the top drawer of your desk?”
“Wrong, it’s in my bottom drawer. You never know when you’re going to get covered in blood and shit on this job.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to do your laundry. Now hurry up and change your shirt. There’s a Black Label calling my name.”
Nico walked through the crowded charge office and into the office he shared with two Lieutenant Colonels from the Detectives division, Steven Maritz and Paul Lubbe. Steven, also known as Laurel, was tall and skinny whereas Paul, known as Hardy, was short and squat. Luckily they were off somewhere else, so he had his office all to himself for a change. They were only his superiors in rank, not in intellect. His desk was in the corner, opposite the window looking into the charge office. The office was a fishbowl. He closed the blinds on all windows so that neither insiders nor outsiders could see him. Opening his bottom drawer, he removed a plain, light blue, button-down shirt. He shook it out and examined it: wrinkled and frayed at the cuffs, but at least it was clean. He took off his favourite jacket and hung it on the back of his desk chair. It was navy blue. Janet had bought it in April for his birthday, the first present she’d bought him. He unbuttoned the dirty white shirt he was wearing. He sniffed it and crinkled up his nose. He needed some deodorant as well, but that would have to wait until he got home. He took off the shirt, crumpled it up and tossed it into the open bottom drawer, then kicked the drawer closed. Nico buttoned up the last button of his shirt and was tucking it in over his white vest when Louis walked in and surveyed the room.
“Nice view,” Louis said, moving the blind out of his way, peering through the gap to watch the comings and goings in the charge office.
“It has its moments,” Nico said, buckling his belt.
“So is this where you guys get together to hunt down that killer.”
“No, this is just my little fishbowl. The task team uses a boardroom upstairs. We converted it to look like a classroom. It suits our needs, and we’ve given some of the clerical staff a few extra duties like answering crank calls.”
“And I bet they just love you for it.”
“Absolutely.”
“So ... can I see it?”
“See what?”
“I'm sorry, but the ops room is off limits to civilians.”
“Come on. Can't you make an exception, just this once?”
There was something in the way he asked, the way he pleaded to see the room that made Nico wonder about his motives, it made those bells clang in his head. Maybe seeing Louis' reaction to the photos on the walls would answer a few questions he had about him.
“Okay, I'll let you see it, but it's our little secret.”
“Excellent.” Louis looked like an excited schoolboy who'd been granted access to an exclusive club.
Nico led him through the charge office towards the back of the police station. They walked up the dirty stairs in silence. The staircase smelt of urine and other body fluids that Nico didn’t even want to think about. The station was not one of the cleanest in the city. He couldn’t fathom why people used the stairs to take a piss when there were perfectly good toilets just down the passage. He only hoped that it wasn’t his fellow policemen using the stairs as a toilet. The task team's operations room was on the first floor.
Nico led Louis along a narrow passage. Instead of plastering the walls in the station, they had just painted over the brick, alternating between white and institutional-blue panels of paint. It was the same blue as the hanging files in his filing cabinet. There were dirty scuff marks all over the walls. Nico often felt that walking along these passages on his way to the operations room was, in a strange way, preparation for the grim task of facing the dead women whose pictures were stuck on the walls with Prestik.
The open-plan office outside was its usual hive of activity. The phones never stopped ringing. Young constables, fresh out of Police College, and the station’s clerical staff were assigned to answer the crank calls. Serial killers always managed to bring all the psychos out of the woodwork, wanting their piece of the action. He’d even had a few people claiming to be the Bathroom Strangler. Thank heavens he and Pete had kept some facts of the case out of the press. It was, as far as he was concerned, the best way of determining which were crank calls and which were legitimate.
Requiem in E Sharp Page 8
