Sacrifices

by Roger Smith

  Another pause. “I need to speak to Michael. Urgently.”

  “I’m afraid he’s in a meeting.”

  “Oh nonsense, he’s sitting in his office moping. Put me through.”

  “I’m sorry, Bev. I’ll have to take a message.”

  “Jesus. Tell him to call me.”

  Beverley is gone with no goodbye. Louise replaces the receiver and allows herself a small smile of satisfaction as she carries on punching information into the database.

  Then she stops and finds herself staring at the closed door of Michael’s office.

  Louise should be happy. She has installed herself here in the bookstore, given herself the best seat in the house to witness the power of her revenge, to see the shadow of the man Michael has become.

  But revenge, she realizes, is not enough. She wants Michael Lane. Not in a sexual sense—God forbid—she wants what he cheated her out of all those years ago. She wants his respect. She wants his affection. She wants his fucking attention. This somnambulistic version of Michael Lane is a poor second prize.

  When she talks to him his eyes remain unfocused, his smile a rictus. She brings him food at lunch time which lies untouched on his desk, Louise unloading it on the homeless man who lives in the alley as she leaves at night.

  Give it time, she tells herself, as she carries on typing—resuscitating Michael’s business if not the man himself—he’ll get over this. But she feels a familiar depression enveloping her.

  She stands and taps on Michael’s door. “Mike, I’m going to get something from Mumeenah’s.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anything you want?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Louise turns and leaves.

  Shut out.

  Again.

  8

  Lane’s aching bladder uproots him from his chair and drives him to the small bathroom wedged beneath the stairs. He urinates then washes his hands with a cherry-red cake of soap, one of the bars that Tracy bought from the health store down Long Street. She’d also used the soap in the shower at her apartment, and this bar brings back to him the smell of her skin so pungently that he closes his eyes, gripping the cool porcelain of the sink.

  Lane is almost pleased when he hears the harsh grind of the door buzzer. He quits the bathroom and sees a woman in a pants suit out on the sidewalk, looking in at him through the glass. It takes him a moment before he recognizes her and presses the button beside the cash register. The lock clicks and the cop who investigated the Melanie Walker murder steps into the bookstore.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Lane. Detective Perils.”

  “I remember you. Are you shopping for a book?”

  “No, not much of a reader, me.” She flashes a smile. “Can we maybe talk inside?”

  He nods and leads her into his office, closing the door after them. They seat themselves at his desk and the cop places a buff-colored envelope on the wooden surface before her.

  “Mr. Lane I am now handling the investigation into Tracy Whitely’s murder.”

  “I see,” he says, not seeing at all.

  “The commissioner wasn’t happy with the lack of results from the detectives previously in charge, so he moved the investigation to my unit.”

  “I hope I don’t have to go over it all again? It was very painful.”

  She holds up a hand. “No, please, don’t worry, I have reviewed your statement and it’s extremely detailed. I’m here about something new that has surfaced, that could be a lead.” She taps the envelope. “There’s a photograph in here, captured by one of the city’s CCTV cameras the night Ms. Whitely died. There was some technical glitch and it initially appeared that the camera, positioned near the Long Street Baths, hadn’t been operational, but I got technicians to do another search and they were able to pull this image from the hard drive.”

  Perils opens the envelope and removes a photograph.

  “Please tell me if you recognize this person.”

  She slides the photo across the desk to Lane and he is jolted out of the half-life he has been living this past month when he stares down at Tracy’s killer.

  9

  The scars on Louise’s arms start to itch, a maddening sting in stereo. This happens only when she’s feeling nervous, a sensation that she’s experienced very seldom since her suicide attempt.

  But the arrival of the woman cop—still in the bookstore—has got Louise’s nerves going, and as she sits at her usual table in the window of the coffee shop she has to grip the cup of decaf with both hands to stop herself from pulling back her long-sleeved T-shirt and clawing at her vexed pulses.

  When Louise, crossing Long Street, carrying a couple of greasy samoosas from the halal take-out, saw Perils entering the bookstore she threw a U-turn and ducked into the coffee shop and ordered an unwanted decaf.

  Now, sitting with her eyes fixed on Lane’s Books—the cop still in there with Michael—she feels the approach of something threatening, leaving her as skittish as a barometer in the face of a looming storm.

  At last the door opens and Gwen Perils emerges. She gets into a white Nissan and disappears down Long Street. Louise pays for her coffee and crosses the road, letting herself into the bookstore.

  Under the pretext of taking the samoosas through to the kitchen she passes Michael’s office. The door stands ajar, bisecting him as he sits at his desk, staring down at something.

  “Louise?” he says, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Yes, Michael?” She dumps the greasy junk food into a saucer.

  “Could you come through here, please?”

  She wipes her fingers on a kitchen towel and enters his office. He holds a photograph in his hands, tilted so that she can’t see it.

  “Close the door please.” She does as he says. “Sit down.” Again, she obeys him.

  His eyes are fixed on the photograph, then they lift and lock on hers and he stares at her for what seems like hours, the A/C hissing, the window rattling, the muted babble of traffic spilling in from the street.

  Louise realizes she’s holding her breath and sighs it out. “What’s wrong, Michael?”

  He blinks. “This,” he says, twisting the photo in his hands, “is an image captured on a CCTV camera outside Tracy’s flat, the night she was murdered.”

  He lowers the picture so that it lies face-up, then he rotates it and slides it toward Louise.

  “This is the person who killed her.”

  As Michael’s hand moves the glossy monochrome print across the desk, Louise knows she’s done for. It’s her, of course, in her hoodie and her sweatpants, pack slung over her shoulder, leaving the lobby of Tracy’s building and turning into Long Street, a shaft of streetlight catching her like a followspot. There’s a time code printed at the bottom of the image: the date, hour, minute and second.

  Louise looks up at Michael, feeling an enormous pressure in her head, a pressure that leaves her mute and dizzy and when he speaks it’s if she’s hearing him through dense layers of cotton wadding.

  “We both know who that is, don’t we?” he says and her heart races to a gallop and she feels a pain in her chest so intense that she’s sure she’s suffering cardiac arrest.

  “Michael . . . ” Her voice is a torn whisper.

  Louise is ready to pass out, the light in the room sucked into the vortex of her terror, and she grips the arms of the chair as if that will stop her plunging into a future of infinite darkness.

  Michael says, “Tell me I’m not crazy, Louise, but that’s Beverley in her gym outfit, isn’t it?”

  Louise’s heart lurches as if she’s been hit with the paddles of a defibrillator, and she looks down at the photograph, seeing what Michael sees: a small, slender woman, face hidden by the hoodie. She flashes on Beverley coming into the Newlands house after her gym sessions, dressed in clothes like these.

  Clothes interchangeable with Louise’s.

  She looks up into his eyes, eyes hungry for affirmation, and she breathes deeply the
n says, “It looks like her, Mike. I can’t be sure, but it does look like her.”

  He nods and runs a hand through his hair, his haunted eyes locked on hers. “It’s her, Lou. It’s Beverley. I know it.”

  10

  I want her dead.

  I. Want. The. Fucking. Cunt. Dead.

  The words loop in Lane’s mind as he drives away from Long Street, the road a dark ribbon unspooling in the headlights of the BMW, white lines sucked up and spat out. As he passes The Mount Nelson Hotel he realizes he can’t face his soulless apartment so he turns down toward Dunkley Square, making his way through the narrow streets that wind between rows of Victorian terrace houses.

  The area has barely changed since he lived here as a student a quarter of a century ago. A few movie equipment rental companies, restaurants and bars have moved in, but the neighborhood is still low-rent, waiting for some miracle of transformation that’ll never come.

  As he parks outside a bistro a homeless man wearing a day-glo bib appears from the shadows, windmilling his arms, directing Lane into the bay.

  Lane locks the car and the man salutes him. “Evening, captain.”

  “Evening.”

  Lane enters the eatery. A beefy man slouches behind the bar, watching rugby on TV. There are no other customers. Lane takes a table in the window and a chubby girl with pimples comes over.

  “Drink?” she asks.

  Before he can stop himself Lane says, “Do you have single malt?”

  “Ja, Islay. Okay?”

  “Fine. Make it a double.”

  “You eating?”

  He shakes his head and the girl slouches off. Lane’s eyes are drawn to the TV: a rugby player dives over a try line and jumps to his feet in celebration, swamped by his team mates who hoist him into the air. Lane looks away, staring out into the night. When he hears his fingers drumming on the tabletop he stills them.

  The girl is back with his drink. As he lifts it to take a sip, the peaty aroma filling his nostrils, a clatter has Lane turning his head, watching the homeless man wheeling a supermarket cart past the window to where a small, frail young woman stands, leaning on a storefront. The man lifts sections of flattened cardboard from the cart and lays them down in the doorway, helping her to sit. Lane sees she is heavily pregnant.

  He sets his drink down and pushes the glass away.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket he removes the photograph the detective left with him, sets the picture down on the table and stares at it for a very long time.

  “Do you recognize this person?” Detective Perils had asked.

  Lane, certain that his face made a lie of his words, said, “No. Is it a young man?”

  Perils shook her head. “I’m pretty sure it’s a woman. I’ve shown the photograph around the apartment building but nobody knew her.” The cop’s eyes holding his. “Rings no bells?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Why had he lied? Why hadn’t he said, it’s my wife, it’s Beverley Lane?

  Because this photograph was inconclusive. Because Beverley had planned everything meticulously. She’d chosen a night when she knew he’d be out of town. She’d disguised herself. And, he has no doubt, their son would be her alibi.

  Lane can hear Chris saying, “Ja, my mom was home the whole night. We watched TV together.”

  Lane would end up looking like an hysteric and Beverley would walk free. No, if there was to be payment for what she did, Lane would have to exact it.

  But how?

  For a moment he’s back on the slopes of Table Mountain, in the rain, reaching for the knife, hearing the ratcheting sound as he extends the blade, grabbing Jade’s sodden hair, lifting her jaw, exposing her neck.

  Would he have done it, cut the girl’s throat?

  He doesn’t know. Perhaps, driven by fear and adrenaline he would have. But, sitting in this dire bistro, ice melting in his untouched single malt, he knows he will never be able to murder his wife in cold blood. He doesn’t have the guts for that.

  So what will he do?

  Unable to answer the question Lane pockets the photograph, wedges a banknote under the whiskey glass and walks out to his car. The homeless man stands at the door of the BMW, saluting.

  “Everything’s okay, captain.”

  Lane digs in his pocket and gives the man a fifty rand note. The man smiles, revealing a drug-ravaged mouth, and gets in Lane’s way when he reverses out of the bay.

  As Lane drives off he checks his rearview and sees the man running up to where the woman sits, giving her the money. She embraces him.

  Lane turns a corner and loses sight of them, driving toward his apartment, toward a night without sleep.

  11

  Louise sits at her computer, the fluorescents leaching the bookstore of life. A day has passed since Michael showed her the photograph. Another frustrating day. He’s lapsed back into his semi-catatonia, marooned behind his desk, ignoring her.

  She knows she should leave, go and feed and love-up poor neglected little Harpo. Clean her grungy apartment. Wash her underwear. Anything at all but sitting vigil here waiting for Michael Lane to thaw.

  Louise grabs her backpack and crosses to Michael’s closed office. She knocks and without waiting for a reply opens the door. He sits in the dark, the only light coming from the glow of his monitor, staring through the hatch at the neon of the strip club: the red-outlined dancer endlessly kicking her leg up in a jerky goosestep to the distant rasp of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.”

  “Michael?” Louise says, not sure exactly why she’s come into this room.

  He turns to look at her, one side of his face lit by the monitor. “Yes?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  “No, I mean I’m leaving for keeps. I’m out of here.” The words surprising Louise as they exit her mouth.

  Okay girl, she thinks, and where the fuck are you going with this?

  “I see,” he says. “Well, thanks and good luck, Louise. I’m sorry things haven’t worked out.”

  He is already turning away and she feels a hot jab of rage, letting it carry her over to his desk where she clicks on the Anglepoise lamp. She shoves her sleeves past her elbows and lays her arms on his desk, pulses upward, the suture scars thick and puckered. Michael stares at her arms then looks up at face, blinking in the glare of the lamp.

  “You know why I did this, Michael?”

  “No.”

  “Because I got into that place you’re in now. Like I was already dead. So I thought well, what the fuck, why not just make it permanent?”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Nothing. Medics found me and got me to the hospital. Long boring story. Point is, Michael, you can’t carry on like this.”

  He nods. “I suppose not.”

  “You have to live your life.”

  He shrugs. “I have no life. Beverley robbed me of it.”

  “So what are you going to do about her?”

  Lane says nothing, looks away from Louise’s eyes—eyes that seem to X-Ray his soul—and stares at her arms. Fighting the urge to lay his fingertips on that puckered flesh, the keloid scars gray and yeasty against her light brown skin, he remembers sitting with the soap-scented child in pajamas and dressing gown, her eyes never leaving his face as he read to her at the kitchen table in the Newlands house.

  A time of infinite possibility.

  Louise draws her arms out of the pool of light and lets her sleeves fall to her wrists. She stands, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.

  “Bye, Mike.”

  “Wait,” he says. “Please don’t go.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “Sit.”

  She hesitates, shrugs almost imperceptibly, then perches on the edge of the seat opposite him.

  “What’s your plan, Michael?”

  “The thing with Lyndall wasn’t the worst thing Bev and I are gui
lty of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lane tells her about Jade—Sally Skinner—about that rainy night on the mountain, about watching his wife throttle the life from the girl.

  Louise stares at him. “Jesus, Michael.”

  “If I tell the police it’s Beverley in that CCTV photo she’ll slip through the cracks. It’s too inconclusive. But if I tell them about Chris and Lyndall and the girl there’s no way she’s going to walk.”

  “But you’ll take yourself down too, Mike. Surely you know that?”

  “Of course I do, but what choice do I have?”

  Louise doesn’t answer and he searches the darkness for her eyes.

  “There’s another option,” she says.

  “Is there?”

  “What if she gets taken out? Permanently?”

  He laughs. “Jesus, Lou, don’t you think I haven’t considered that? But I can’t do it. I’m too weak. Too spineless.”

  She shakes her head. “Not by you.”

  “By who then?”

  “I know somebody.”

  “You? Come on.”

  “I’m serious.

  “Who?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “This is crazy, Louise.”

  “I can organize it. But you understand what we’re talking about here, Michael?”

  “Paying somebody to kill Beverley? I understand.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I don’t need to think about it.”

  “It’ll cost.”

  “Money’s not the issue.”

  She nods, standing. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Why would you want to get involved in this?”

  “Let’s just say I have a vested interest.” She crosses to the door. “And I never liked the bitch.”

  As she leaves he sees that child again walking out into the night with Through the Looking-Glass tucked under her arm, Lane holding the kitchen door open, letting her go.

  12