Sacrificed

by Chanette Paul

  “Out with it, Laura. We can’t work like this.”

  “Very well then.” She rearranged the notes on her desk although they looked perfectly symmetrical. “I’ve always respected you and dismissed the rumors as gossip, but lately I don’t know what to think any more.”

  He sat down to face her. Where was this coming from? “Think about what?”

  “Your appearance has always been impeccable, but recently ... The other day I saw the way that little student looked at you, the fluttering hands as she talked to you. The scales fell from my eyes and I noticed the change.”

  “What change, Laura?” he asked, confused. What little student was she talking about?

  “Your new glasses. The longer hair.”

  “Heavens, Laura, I had my eyes tested in the summer holidays and I needed new glasses.” He hadn’t been too sure about the frame the optometrist’s receptionist had helped him pick out, but glasses were glasses. “I’m in need of a haircut. It’s on my to-do list. Are you chairperson of the fashion police now?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. Look at you today. In denims!” She spat out the last word as if it was an expletive.

  Luc shook his head. “I can’t believe new glasses, an overdue visit to the barber and a pair of jeans could upset you like this. You were annoyed with me before the jeans, which, by the way, I’m only wearing because I spilled coffee on my good trousers. What’s your point?”

  “Luc, the academic fishbowl is small here in Belgium. We know what happened at KU Leuven. I’ve always assumed the stories were exaggerated. I also presumed that, though you might have been guilty of indiscretion, you clearly saw the error of your ways and learned from it. Everyone makes mistakes, I thought, and I can forgive you as long as there isn’t a repeat. And now ... this.” The chubby hand waved in his general direction.

  Luc suppressed the anger building up inside him. “‘This’ being glasses, hair and jeans?”

  “The general effect. You look ... what do you call it ... sexy.” Her voice dripped with displeasure.

  “Me? Sexy?” He burst into laughter.

  Laura blushed a deep red. “There’s a student in your life again, am I right? That pale little one who looks at you as if you have descended from heaven. I saw you talking on campus. And she’s not the only one looking at you like that. After your lecture today I overheard three female students talk. How they couldn’t understand that students from previous years called you drab and boring. One of them called you a ... a ... hunk!”

  Luc stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “Don’t act all innocent. You provoke naive young girls into having dirty daydreams about you.”

  His annoyance changed to cold fury. Luc got up slowly, bent down and leaned with his hands on the table. His face was barely a meter from Laura’s. “Laura, let me make it clear to you. I left KU Leuven under a cloud because of biased, petty people like you. I kept quiet and took the beating because the student concerned gave up her studies and left anyway. I thought the sooner the whole thing died a quiet death, the better for everyone. Until today I thought it was the right decision but, damn it, I’m not going to allow you to insult me and accuse young girls of having ‘dirty daydreams’ about me. Maybe you would have been married today if you’d had a few daydreams yourself.”

  Laura gasped, but he gave her no chance to interrupt.

  “The student I had a relationship with was in her late twenties. She was a postgraduate student, not an innocent young girl. I was in my thirties, not a dirty old man. We were both single. Yes, I suppose our relationship contravened the code of ethics, but I was in love.

  “The things she accused me of were a pack of lies. She deliberately set out to win my affections and when it came to the assessment of her dissertation, she blackmailed me. If I didn’t give her a cum laude pass, she would charge me with sexual harassment. The reason? She was aiming for a post at a university in the Netherlands, but her academic record didn’t meet the required standard.

  “She tried to use me as a stepping stone to get the post she was after. I gave her dissertation the grade it deserved and she carried out her threat.

  “Yes, we had a relationship. Yes, we had sex. There was no hint of harassment. Not from my side, anyway.

  “And just so there’s no misunderstanding: I have no wish ever to get involved with a student in any capacity other than that of a lecturer again. Especially not at my age. I want to be a good lecturer. I want to spark the students’ interest in contemporary history. Help them think further than dates and rebellions and riots and wars. If I happen to look more approachable with my new glasses, longer hair and jeans and it makes them take part in class discussions instead of sitting there like dummies, then it’s a good thing.”

  He was slightly out of breath when he straightened up. “The glasses are staying. I’ll have the hair cut at the first opportunity. If I want to wear jeans, I will.”

  Laura covered her mouth with her hand, jumped up and rushed from the room. But not before Luc had noticed the tears in her eyes.

  Instantly he felt like a louse. Couldn’t he have taken a gentler approach? Where had his usual composure disappeared to?

  Verdomme. That’s what happens when a man allows women into his life. First Lieve Luykens convinced him to visit Ammie, thereby complicating his life no end. Now Laura, with this attack on his integrity. Not to mention Caz Colijn—a woman who created chaos wherever she went, who was possibly the mastermind behind a murder and, to crown it all, had drawn him into the mess.

  Wednesday, October 1

  Caz

  Ghent

  Last night she had been so exhausted and her headache had been so severe that she hadn’t even considered inspecting the contents of the backpack. The most important thing was that she had her laptop back.

  With breakfast and a few painkillers inside her, she was prepared to face the world again. Provided she remembered to avoid mirrors. The swelling in her face had gone down, but she still looked like someone who had come second in a bar fight.

  Caz unpacked everything on the bed and ticked off the items on De Brabander’s list despite the difficulty the task presented to her injured fingers.

  Her wallet was not among the items, but except for the cash and Lilah’s photo, everything that had been in it had been found: all her cards and fortunately also her driver’s licence.

  The bottle of Red Door perfume had evidently broken but the cordless mouse had survived. Her sunglasses and the Belgian cellphone, even her lipstick and comb were there. Also the thriller she had bought for Lilah but had begun to read herself.

  De Brabander’s people had been thorough and the residents of Leuven seemed to be exceptionally honest.

  Caz walked out on the roof terrace. It faced away from the main street, overlooking a side street, but if she peered around the wall, she could see the bus stop. Yes, the car was still parked opposite the stop. She could swear it was Grevers behind the wheel, this time with his cellphone against his ear.

  She had seen the car while she was enjoying her first cup of coffee on the terrace. Kind of them to keep an eye on her, she had thought like a fool. It only struck her later that Grevers was watching Erdem’s front door and therefore her movements. Well, he could watch as much as he liked.

  Today she was tackling her laptop. Sore fingers be damned.

  She would have to upgrade her antivirus program. Get a new email address. Change a bunch of passwords.

  Hopefully she would be able to focus better than yesterday. She thought she had managed to figure out last night how the whole Erevu-Njiwa thing fitted together.

  They found her because of Tieneke’s call, broke into her house in Stanford in search of whatever was in the bank, but found nothing. From there they physically and electronically followed her, hoping she would lead them to the contents of the safe-deposit box.

 
; They had been the tenants next door. They searched Tieneke’s house and realized that the key held the answer. Tieneke surprised them and was fatally injured during a scuffle, after which they had to make her body disappear. They would keep searching for the key until they found it.

  There were a myriad questions she would like the answers to. How did they know about Ammie Pauwels and what did they know about her? How did they think Caz could lead them to Ammie? How did they know about her connection with Fien and Tieneke Colijn?

  In other words, how did they know about things that happened fifty-three years ago? At a guess she and Matari were more or less the same age. He must have been a baby at the time.

  Besides, why did they wait for more than half a century before they came looking for whatever it was they were looking for?

  And the million-dollar question: What did they want the bloody stuff in the strongbox for? According to Tieneke, it was a mask and a figurine that might as well have been bought at a curio shop. Or was there more?

  If she could answer the last two questions, the other mysteries might be solved.

  Conclusion? She had to get to Pretoria and open the bloody strongbox. Discover what was worth a life. And she had to do it without Njiwa or the person in possession of her computer stopping her.

  Because they had access to her laptop, they knew when she would be landing. She would have to leave either earlier or later. She couldn’t risk letting Lilah know of her changed plans, so she would have to wait until the eighth to tell her she was cutting her visit short.

  If she could find a flight, of course. If she had her passport back. So many ifs.

  There was another if. If she could call on Ammie Pauwels, she might get answers to her questions. But she would have to look her birth mother in the eye. Hear the truth—which she could never again unhear.

  Ammie

  Leuven

  For fifty-three years she could ignore the fact that she had a daughter. She had her reasons and that was the end of it, had been her point of view. Except for the episode with Jacq. The day he found out.

  She would never forget the look in his eyes. Not shock alone. Disgust as well.

  “How could you, Ammie? To think how desperately I wanted another child. With you. When you told me you were infertile, I made peace with it, but I always longed for a child. Now you’re telling me you have a daughter and you simply threw her to the wolves?”

  “You’re being melodramatic, Jacq. I made certain she was well cared for.” That was her defense, but deep inside she knew he was right. Fien was not mother material. Perhaps even less so than herself.

  She had moved out of Jacq’s home and began to make plans for a new life. She relegated Cassandra’s existence to its proper place again—behind the lead curtain she had drawn between the past and the present. Between Africa and Belgium.

  She had always been good at compartmentalizing the various phases of her life. Her Congolese childhood before her mother’s death. The period after her mother’s death until she married César. The period from her wedding until she found out César had married her to get a hold over her father and, when he had served his purpose, had arranged for his death. The time between that realization and the moment she had looked into Elijah’s eyes. The time between her meeting with Elijah and his murder. The time between his murder and the day she boarded the plane for Belgium. The Jacq epoch. The Tobias epoch. The period after Doel until the present.

  She had carefully stored each of those eras in her life in a separate box. A box only she could open. She had believed the final era, after Tobias’s death, would last until the day she died. But yesterday, when she discovered that her daughter was about to find her, a new box was opened.

  No, she corrected herself, not yesterday. The lid of the new box sprang open the day Luc arrived. Inside that box were Luc and Cassandra, memories, and a stroke. All new to her. All connected.

  How was she going to close and seal this box? Could she?

  Caz

  Ghent

  Caz jumped at the strange sound. The Belgian phone. The name TU2 did not appear on the screen. It was a landline number. After the fifth ring she answered.

  “Good day?” If it was a wrong number, hearing her answer in English would hopefully make that clear to the caller.

  “Good day, Ms. Colijn.”

  De Brabander. Of course. The phone had been in her backpack.

  “I presume not telling us you have two phones was just an oversight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It resulted in us not knowing you and TU, or Professor DeReu, had changed the time and place of your appointment in Leuven?”

  “It slipped my mind.”

  “That’s why you could meet Matari before TU arrived.”

  “No. That’s why Matari didn’t know where and when I was meeting TU until someone, at some point, informed him. Anyway, why didn’t the professor inform you of the change of plans?”

  De Brabander remained silent.

  “Commissioner, I’m getting a bit tired of being under suspicion.” Tired wasn’t the word.

  “We got the results of the post mortem. Maybe you’ll understand why I’m really keen to find the murderer if you realize how serious the matter is.”

  “So you don’t think I understand that murder is a serious matter, Commissioner?”

  “I hope you understand. Your foster sister didn’t die of the injury to the back of her head. It wasn’t simply a tussle that ended badly. After she was injured, she was strangled with brute force. Such force that her hyoid, her tongue bone, was crushed. Intentionally.”

  Caz sank down on the bed. Intentionally. Not by accident. Tongue bone.

  “At the estimated time of Tieneke’s death, Matari was playing his mvet in Leuven. Your helpful young friend Njiwa must have committed the murder.”

  Caz covered her eyes with her hand. Njiwa with the white smile. The pretentious private-school accent. Blue Bulls cap.

  “Ms. Colijn, I’m asking you again. What was Matari looking for? Where did this Njiwa go with it?”

  “Commissioner ...” Caz struggled to put sound to the word. “I know only one thing. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it. Only my wallet, containing some cash and my daughter’s photo, is missing from my backpack.”

  “You know where to find me if you miraculously remember what they are after.” He seemed to be forcing the words out between clenched teeth.

  Caz stood with the dead phone in her hand for a while before she went out on the terrace and sank down on a chair, her legs suddenly rubbery. If she hadn’t already mailed the bloody key, she would have seriously considered telling him about it after all. But to confess now would serve no purpose. It would just get her deeper into trouble.

  She understood why De Brabander was angry, but it was the least of her problems. Even if she could convince him of her innocence, even if he gave back her passport and gave her his blessing to return home, she was still in big trouble.

  At the time of the murder Matari had been in Leuven and, ironically, she was part of his alibi. Matari might be found guilty of assaulting her and stealing her cash and wallet, maybe even of helping Njiwa to flee, but not much more. How long he would spend in prison, she couldn’t guess. In all likelihood not long, though she didn’t know how that kind of thing was regarded in Belgium. If he was even found guilty, of course. No one had seen him attack her or throw her into the water or take her backpack. It was her word against his.

  In a few months, weeks, even, he could be free.

  In the meantime Njiwa was still at large. Njiwa, who had strangled Tieneke with his bare hands until her tongue bone was crushed. Intentionally.

  Even if neither of them had personally been responsible for the burglary at her Stanford home, they knew where she lived. Her laptop would have revealed it. Th
ey would come looking. Whether for the key or the contents of the strongbox. Or her.

  No, even if she hadn’t mailed the bloody key, giving it to De Brabander would have solved nothing. If she could, she would give it to Matari. In his hands. Tell him he could have whatever it unlocked. But even if she did, she doubted they would leave her alone. They would think she knew what was in that bloody strongbox. She would have to be silenced.

  It had to be more than two pieces of African kitsch.

  Thirty-two

  Thursday, October 2

  Caz

  Ghent

  By the time Lilah’s text message came through, Caz had finished her first cup of coffee. When “Happy Birthday” began to play, Caz realized what the date was.

  Fifty-three. Humanly speaking, about two-thirds of her life was over. Old age and loneliness lay ahead. If her tongue bone survived the onslaught, of course.

  The macabre thought caught her unawares.

  Another SMS pinged. See email.

  Finally. She’d been wondering why Lilah had been silent since yesterday. She’d presumed the email in which she revealed that the Colijns were not blood relatives after all would take a while to digest. Even though she’d sent a carefully edited version to make sure Lilah didn’t get too upset. She hadn’t said a word about the murder and the assault. One thing at a time.

  Caz switched on her laptop and waited impatiently. Of course Lilah’s mail would be the last one to be downloaded.

  MaCaz, I know it must have been a shock to find out your birth mother abandoned you, but I have to say it’s the best news I’ve had in a long time.

  I wanted to wait until we see each other again before I told you about Aubrey. It’s the kind of thing one does face to face, but things are looking slightly different now. With you in Belgium, where you have the chance to find out certain things, maybe even where you and I come from, you need to know what’s going on. You can help us.

  MaCaz, Aubrey is the man of my dreams. We’re crazy about each other. He has asked me to marry him.

  Caz had to get her breath back before she could continue.