I thought about the game Tertia wanted to play. Wondered how many hundred-rand notes she had won from travelling salesmen. It was easy if you had enough experience of people and knew how to ask your questions and make your statements. I could do better, because I knew them. I had met women like her in the Cape, when Parliament was in session and I could wander around Long Street and St George’s Mall and Green-market Square. They all had the same basic story. I had formulated a Law. Lemmer’s One-Night Law of Quasi-Artistic Women. More than one night and you became an insect in a spiderweb.
She was from the country, within a radius of two hundred kilometres of here at best. Lower middle-class Afrikaans. Intelligent. Rebellious at school.
After school she left for the city with a feeling of euphoria. To Pretoria, to flee her childhood home and position, not knowing that she would carry it with her. She lived in a tiny single flat somewhere in the city centre, took a clerical position with a big company, temporary only, as she fostered vague ideas of studying art. She began to read Oriental philosophy, study astrology.
She reassessed her life. Resigned from her job, packed her Volkswagen Beetle and drove alone to Cape Town. Moved into a commune in Obs or Hout Bay and made quasi-art pieces to sell in Greenmarket Square, wore loose dresses, sandals and coloured bandannas in her hair. Called herself Olga or Natasha or Alexandra. Smoked a bit of pot, slept around a little. She did not feel fulfilled.
Some time or other in the years to come she would relax her standards and say ‘yes’ to the short, middle- aged small businessman or beer-bellied banana farmer who had been asking her so long and politely. So she wouldn’t have to grow old alone.
32
Tertia didn’t ask me to guess about her again, because the restaurant filled up and the orders streamed in. Someone turned up the music. Pop music from the seventies. She put down a bowl of peanuts on her way past. She winked and shouted, ‘We’ll have to try tomorrow evening.’ Ten minutes later a second bar lady came on duty, ten years younger than Tertia, though I suspected her life story was not remarkably different. Red hair and freckles, smaller breasts. She compensated by not wearing a bra. Bigger earrings. They worked well together, never in each other’s way.
I shifted to the corner to make way for the crowd. I watched the people. The purpose with which they drank, the frenzy of their pursuit of pleasure. I could never understand this dedication to New Year, but perhaps it was because for so long I had spent it on my own or with Mona. Or just couldn’t understand the festivity of the occasion. Another mediocre year past. Gone, lost. Another one to come.
I wanted to get out. I couldn’t think here.
I realised that I had no place to stay.
Unasked, Tertia brought me a plate of food. I thanked her and asked her how I could hire a chalet for the night. She couldn’t hear me. She had to hold her ear to my mouth. I asked again. Her skin glistened and I smelt her perspiration and cigarettes. She laughed and frowned simultaneously. ‘On New Year’s Eve?’ and she went off to deliver four beers to a table.
I ate the spit-braaied mutton, potato salad, three-bean salad, cheese bread and grape jam. The racket continued to escalate. She came past again and plonked a set of keys down in front of me. The key ring was a silver dolphin with a blue bead for an eye. She leaned over the bar counter, her mouth against my ear. ‘Straight down the road past the garages. It’s the last place on the left, with the blue door. Take the room with the single bed.’
Then she was gone.
I unlocked the blue door with my black sports bag in my hand.
A lava lamp glowed in the corner, its orange light threw long shadows across the sitting room. It was a busy room. Dark blue and green material with delicate Indian patterning swept down from the ceiling to the wall, which was hung with paintings, etchings and drawings. Mythical and fantastic figures, unicorns and dwarves. Princesses with incredibly long hair. Each was signed in big round letters: Sasha.
She was a painter, not a brilliant one, but not a bad one either. Somewhere in the gap in between.
The heavy curtains were drawn. There was a deep-pile carpet. A bookshelf stood against another wall. Sofa and two armchairs, a coffee table in the middle on which stood an ashtray, three books and a small woven basket. In the basket were more dolphins with blue-beaded eyes like the one on the key ring.
The whole room smelled of incense.
To the left were two bedrooms, to the right a small kitchen and a bathroom.
The bedroom with the single bed was somewhat more spartan. The duvet had big multicoloured blocks. There was a single painting on the wall. It was a moonlit scene, featuring a longhaired princess standing with her back to the observer and her hand stretched out to a unicorn foal. I put my bag down on the bed, unzipped it, took out the Glock and put it on the bedside cupboard. Pulled off my shoes and socks, found my washbag and put that on the bed. I picked up the cell phone and called the SouthMed Hospital. It took a few minutes before I got a nurse from intensive care on the line. She said there was no change in Emma’s condition. ‘But we live in hope, Mr Lemmer.’
I phoned B. J. since he was on night duty.
‘All quiet,’ he said.
Jeanette Louw answered on the second ring. ‘South-easter is blowing us away,’ she said. I could hear the wind howling. There were voices in the background, the faint rush of the sea. I wondered where and with whom she was celebrating on New Year’s Eve. ‘Your Jeep has a false number plate. Where are you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Are you making progress?’
‘No. But I’m working on it.’
‘I’m sure it will take time,’ she said.
I picked up my washbag and went to the bathroom. When I switched the light on it was blue. Every white tile was colourfully decorated by hand with patterns, fish, dolphins, shells and seaweed. On the toilet cistern there were fourteen candles. Only a bath, no shower. On the edge of the bath against the wall the bottles stood in a row: oils, creams, shampoo and herbal bath salts.
I opened the taps and undressed. I briefly considered experimenting with a bubble bath. Laughed at myself.
I got in and lay in the hot water.
In the distance I could hear the bass beat of the music – and now and again people screaming jubilantly. I checked my watch. Another two hours to midnight.
I closed my eyes and set my mind to work.
Forget about the frustration. Drop the urge to do something. Review everything. Objectively. Coldly. I arranged all the facts slowly and carefully in a row like dominoes. What had tipped the first one over; what started the whole chain of events? No matter how and where I looked, it all came back to one cause: Emma’s phone call to Phatudi.
I took it step by step from there. Four key events. The attack on Emma. The murder of Wolhuter. The attack on us. The murder of Edwin Dibakwane.
The thought process brought a new perspective to bear. At first there were only actions of eco-terrorism that were within the law and relatively harmless. Then there was a systematic escalation to illegal offences like arson and assault. Suddenly the big jump to murder, the ice broken by Cobie de Villiers, with attempts to murder Emma and the death of Wolhuter and Dibakwane following shortly after.
Why? What was the catalyst? Why so suddenly?
I didn’t know, didn’t fret over it.
What made the big dominoes fall? First there was a telephone call. Then there was a second one. I sat upright in the bath and pressed my palms to my temples. Think now. Third one? Fourth one? No, no phone call. Or was there? How had the day gone, the day Emma stood in the rain?
We drank coffee on the veranda. Her head was a bit sore, but her self-mocking smile was beautiful. She had phoned Mogale. Branca had phoned back. Two calls. But we hadn’t learned about the letter at the gate yet. Dick
