Sacrificed

by Chanette Paul

  Caz looked down the street. There were still vehicles parked in front of Tieneke’s home. Probably the crime-scene unit. The house and the area leading up to the front door had been cordoned off with police tape.

  “Thanks, Inspector. Goodnight,” she said when they reached Erdem’s front door.

  “Ms. Colijn?”

  She looked at him inquiringly, her hand on the doorknob.

  “Commissioner De Brabander asked that you hand me your passport.”

  Grevers had taken a call just after they had left. It must have been De Brabander whose suspicion had got the better of him.

  “Fine, but I have to insist on a receipt. I’m sure you understand?” All she needed now was for her bloody passport to get lost somewhere in the process.

  Grevers nodded.

  “Everything okay?” Erdem asked behind her.

  “Can you help with pen and paper, please? The inspector has to take my passport and wants to write out a receipt.” Now she had an eyewitness as well. It was probably only South Africans who had such a distrust of the police.

  Erdem took them to a room that looked like an office. He handed the inspector writing materials and made her a copy of the first page of her passport and her visa.

  “Thanks, Erdem,” she said when Grevers had finally left. “I appreciate it. I feel like a criminal even though I did nothing wrong.”

  Erdem gave her a lopsided smile. “I know the feeling.”

  “How’s that?”

  He rubbed his cheek. “Incomers are distrusted everywhere. Probably with reason. Here in Belgium a Turk or a Moroccan or some incomer is involved in nearly every murder. Either as the victim or as the guilty party.”

  “I didn’t think there were many murders here,” Caz said, slightly dismayed.

  “Very few, compared to other parts of the world, but more than you’d think. Believe me, Tieneke Colijn isn’t the only one whose body has been found in the Leie.” He bit his lower lip. “Sorry, that was insensitive of me. The entire neighborhood is up in arms and rumor is rife.”

  Caz motioned with her hand to stop him from apologizing. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? Anyway, thanks for your help. I just want to take a shower and go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  “Oh, by the way, someone from the police brought your luggage just before you came. He asked that you make sure everything is there. I had him put it in your room.”

  “Thanks, Erdem. At least one good thing came from this horrid day.”

  When she entered the room, her belongings stood neatly in a corner. When she opened the lilac case, it was clear that someone had gone through the contents. It didn’t surprise her. The police had obviously inspected everything that had been in the murder house. She was much too tired anyway to feel that her privacy had been invaded. She was only too thankful she had clothes again and no longer had to wash the essentials every night.

  She remembered noticing that the zipper of the case was slightly open when she had entered Tieneke’s home with the locksmith. At the time she had thought it must have been Tieneke, but now she knew Tieneke could not have been the one who had opened her case.

  Caz shivered. It must have been the murderer. At first glance nothing seemed to be missing, but why then? What interest could he have had in luggage that was in the attic? And why had the envelope been on the floor?

  A shower was what she needed now to try to rinse off the day and all these questions. And then she’d have to make up her mind about tomorrow.

  Luc

  Leuven

  Luc hastened to look when a text message came through. “CC-new,” the screen said. Groot Begijnhof. 10:30.

  See you there, he typed hastily, as if he wanted to make sure she didn’t change her mind. Which could still happen, of course.

  See you there. As if it was an ordinary date with an ordinary woman. Yet it wasn’t.

  During this date he would have to admit that he was Luc DeReu and tell a woman that her mother hated her, that her father had murdered both her grandfather and her mother’s lover. That she carried inside her the genes of a murderer and those of a heartless woman.

  No, this date was anything but ordinary, and neither was the woman.

  Caz

  Ghent

  Caz could not get comfortable in her bed. It had been a hellish day but, strangely enough, it wasn’t identifying Tieneke’s body or knowing she was suspected of murder that was preventing Caz from falling asleep.

  She was worried that she had indirectly involved Lilah. It was the last thing Lilah needed in her life. Now that she was on the crest of the wave.

  She would have to let Lilah know about recent developments, but how she was going to break the news, Caz didn’t know. Hey, my little jacaranda blossom, your mother is suspected of having murdered her sister ... oops, foster sister, and maybe her foster mother as well.

  Lilah didn’t even know yet that “those two” weren’t family after all. Caz had put off telling her until she had more details.

  There was only one solution and it would simplify a few other matters as well. Caz would let Lilah know she had decided to stick to their original plan after all. Of course she wouldn’t tell Lilah her passport had been confiscated. Nor that she had to arrange Tieneke’s funeral. There would be enough time to explain everything when they saw each other. Hopefully the nightmare would be over by then and everything sorted out.

  Her return flight was booked for October 15. Two weeks from now. De Brabander ought to be convinced of her innocence by then. Now that she thought of it, she was booked on a daytime flight. If she remembered correctly, she would land in Johannesburg in the evening and her flight back to Cape Town was only the next afternoon. If she rented a car and slept over in Pretoria instead of Johannesburg, she could be at the bank in Silverton when they opened their doors, find out what was in the safe-deposit box and be at OR Tambo in time for her flight.

  The publisher of the book she was translating lived in Pretoria. Annika might be able to recommend affordable accommodation.

  October in Pretoria. Jacaranda time. It would be quite fitting for her to close the book on the past in Pretoria, where she had parted ways with Fien and Tieneke. Where the jacaranda blossom had floated down and came to rest in Lilah’s hair.

  Out of the blue, Caz remembered the day she had burned the potatoes. Lilah was still Lila then. She must have been about five. Caz was struggling with an assignment and had forgotten about the potatoes on the stove. When the sickening smell got through to her, it was too late. The potatoes had been burned to a cinder.

  She had plucked the pot off the stove and upended the charred remains on the breadboard to cool down.

  Lila was watching her keenly. “Why are the potatoes black, Mama?” she asked, a serious expression on her little face.

  “They burned.” She was annoyed with herself and spoke curtly. “Look at the mess. Completely useless.”

  “Did I burn too, Mama?” Lila asked, looking up at her with those strange, wise eyes.

  She had turned ice cold, grabbed Lila and held her close. “No, my love, you didn’t burn.”

  “Then why am I black?”

  Caz still remembered the dismay she had felt. “To me you’re not black, Lila, you’re just Lila.”

  “You said Lila means purple. Am I purple?” the child asked earnestly.

  “Do you like purple?”

  Lila nodded.

  “Well then, from now on you are purple. Until you decide you like another color better. The color of your skin doesn’t define you, Lila. You are defined by what you are on the inside.”

  Those might have been wise words for the moment, and they had satisfied Lila, but in reality her words were proved wrong. In the eyes of society Lila had always remained the black child of a white mother.

  Caz didn’t give a hoot
about the gossip that she had broken the law and, Lord forbid, slept with a black man. More “sympathetic” people, wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt, speculated that she had been raped.

  That had also been Andries’s unshakable conviction and therefore Hentie’s and Magdel’s as well.

  It was Hentie who had planted the seed. He had tried to persuade her to admit she had been raped by terrorists the night she had gone for a walk and returned breathless and bewildered. He would never blame her, he said. He loved her. She could tell him the truth.

  The more she denied having been raped, the less he believed her, and the harder he pleaded for her to be honest. He said he realized it wasn’t her fault, understood why she had remained silent. He believed Andries and Magdel would also understand.

  Of course he shared his theory with Andries and it was immediately accepted as the truth.

  Andries had the solution. The child would be sent overseas for adoption as soon as she had been weaned onto a bottle and was old enough to travel. Foreigners raised children of all colors and flavors, were his exact words; they would snatch her up. He undertook to personally make sure she was placed with good parents.

  She had to grit her teeth. “Pa, ‘the child’ is my child. And even if Hentie refuses to believe it, she’s his child too. His flesh and blood. I’m not sending my child away to be raised by strangers in a strange country,” she told him, repeating it so often that it became a refrain.

  After about four weeks she realized it was futile. She packed everything she owned that could fit into the trunk of her car and told Hentie to file for divorce.

  He begged her to stay.

  “It’s our child and me, or nothing, Hentie,” was her ultimatum.

  Andries came to speak to her. At first he asked her politely to stay and let the child go. Then he berated her. “A woman who has lain with a kaffir isn’t welcome on this farm anyway!” was his parting shot.

  She had looked him in the eye, turned, put her daughter in her carrycot and walked to her car. Hentie came running, in tears as he pushed five hundred rand into her hand before storming off.

  Caz was too blinded by tears to pull away immediately. She was tempted to throw the money through the window. Fortunately she didn’t. She had a child to look after and she didn’t have much money of her own. Pride bowed before pragmatism.

  Magdel approached and, through the open window, placed two hundred rand on her lap.

  “It’s better this way, Sandra. God bless you,” was all she said before returning to the kitchen.

  Caz still didn’t know how she had got to Pretoria. Of the five, six hundred kilometers she drove she didn’t remember a thing. Only the fury, the humiliation, the powerlessness.

  When she stopped in front of her parental home she thought she would at least have a temporary refuge.

  Andries or Hentie or Magdel must have warned Josefien she was on her way. She was at the car as Caz got out.

  “There’s no room here for you and your bastard child,” she said without greeting.

  Caz lifted her baby daughter out of the carrycot. “Mother, this is your granddaughter,” she said, stupidly thinking Fien’s heart would melt when she saw how lovely the little one was.

  Fien backed away. “She’s even darker than I imagined!” She hurried back to the porch where Tieneke was standing.

  Moments later a jacaranda blossom floated down, landing on the curly black hair, and “the child” got her name.

  If De Brabander knew about the pain and humiliation, the helpless anger she had felt that day, he would lock her up without further ado. What he probably wouldn’t understand was that she had felt no hatred that day. There had been no time or room for hatred. From that moment on, everything had been focused on survival. Hatred would have been a waste of energy and she needed every bit of resolve to find a place where she and her daughter could stay.

  That night she had cried her eyes out in a third-rate hotel room. It was the last time she had succumbed to hopeless tears. She had no energy to waste on tears either.

  Caz took a few sips of water from the glass on her bedside table and tried to get comfortable again.

  Now she had to rally that same resolve and get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a difficult day. But surely it couldn’t be much worse than today.

  Luc

  Leuven

  When a phone rang, Luc was baffled for a moment. It wasn’t his cellphone, neither was it Herman’s landline. At the second ring he realized it was his spare phone. The one he had used to contact Caz. He had brought it along in case she used that number instead of the one he had given her on the note he had sent with the waiter.

  This time it wasn’t a private number, but it was still a number he didn’t recognize. After the fourth ring he pressed the green button.

  “Good evening?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  “Good evening. This is Commissioner De Brabander of the Ghent police. Who am I speaking to?’

  The policeman must have dialed the wrong number. “DeReu. Luc DeReu.”

  “Oh? Mr. DeReu, I’m phoning in connection with a text message that was sent from your phone to Cassandra Colijn’s phone.

  A lump formed in Luc’s throat. “Yes?”

  “I didn’t expect to find you. The contents of the message indicated that the sender was a friend of Luc DeReu’s. Can you explain, please?”

  “Commissioner, that is a private matter.”

  “Mr. DeReu, Cassandra Colijn’s foster sister was murdered and I’m the investigating officer. In a murder case nothing is private.”

  “Murdered? Her sister? Good grief!”

  “It’s been on the news, since we’re looking for two men who might be able to tell us more, so I can give you the basic information.

  “Tieneke Colijn’s body was found in the Leie this morning, but it’s estimated she was murdered in her home on Thursday afternoon, barely a week after the death of her mother, Josefien Colijn. Her mother’s death occurred the day after Cassandra Colijn arrived here from South Africa. I ask you again, why did you pretend to be someone else?”

  The messages they exchanged made everything clear. The police were probably just trying to tie everything together. Anyway, he had nothing to hide.

  “Caz phoned the landline of the woman who cares for her biological mother, Ammie Pauwels, and left a message. She asked Lieve to tell me to contact her. I found it strange. I haven’t been able to work out how she knew about Lieve without knowing about Ammie.”

  “You’ll have to start at the beginning and explain everything, including who Lieve and Ammie Pauwels are.”

  It took Luc a good half-hour to explain and then to answer De Brabander’s questions.

  “Should I take it that Caz Colijn is a suspect?” Luc asked when the conversation seemed to be drawing to a close.

  “Family members are always the first suspects if there’s no clear alternative.”

  An evasive answer. He wondered what De Brabander’s reaction would be if he told the detective Caz Colijn carried the genes of a murderer.

  “Is your appointment with Ms. Colijn still on?” asked the commissioner.

  “She hasn’t canceled.”

  “Mr. DeReu, if I were you, I wouldn’t tell her the whereabouts of Mrs. Ammie Pauwels. Make sure you and Ms. Colijn are always among people. Keep your eyes open. I expect you to give me feedback on the entire conversation. And I want to meet with you as soon as possible. You don’t happen to be coming to Ghent in the near future?”

  The man was probably under the impression that he lived in Leuven. Possibly because the appointment was to take place there.

  “I work in Ghent. At the university. History department. I’ll be back there on Tuesday. I’m in Leuven at present because m
y stepmother is unwell.” He didn’t have to give the entire game away.

  “That makes it easier. I’ll phone again to set up a meeting. Goodnight.”

  Luc ended the call. It was only when he switched off the phone that he remembered that it wasn’t the phone he normally used. Now he would have to hang on to both phones, even though Caz would be using his regular number.

  He was lying in bed when he realized that De Brabander didn’t know about the last few texts on his regular phone. It meant that De Brabander was unaware that the time and place of their meeting had changed. It was probably not important. He was certainly not going to call the man to tell him.

  The bed in Herman’s guest room was hard, but that was not why sleep wouldn’t come. Luc lay wondering about Caz. The attractive woman with Africa in her posture, her walk, her gaze. With a murderer’s blood in her veins.

  Didn’t she have a little too much bad luck in one go? Coming to Ghent and having first her mother die and then her sister murdered?

  To think he had almost decided to take her to see Ammie. The way things were going, he didn’t even know whether he wanted to meet her himself.

  Twenty-six

  Monday, September 29

  Caz

  Leuven

  Caz woke up early. Erdem’s internet connection was fast and she was an expert by now at finding train routes on the NMBS website. She wrote down what she needed to know and studied the map of Leuven, just to make sure she knew which way Groot Begijnhof lay from the station.

  To find out what to expect, she googled “begijnhof.” Google complied. It was a medieval city within a city where pious women who didn’t belong to a conventional monastic order lived.

  It sounded a bit like the kind of life she would have wanted if she had lived in medieval times. Only the piousness would have been a bit of a problem. She wasn’t so sure about a bunch of old maids living together either.

  With time on her hands, she sent Lilah an email about her change of plans. Then she took a fresh outfit from her case and began to get ready for the day. A day in which she would hopefully find out more about Ammie Pauwels, the woman who had carried her under her heart for nine months. She would rather not speculate about what she would hear.