? Dead at Daybreak ?
40
Nagel.
Captain Willem Nagel, South African Police, Murder and Robbery.
The first sound I heard him make was a fart, an impossibly long, endless, flat sound as I was coming down the passage on my way to his office. It carried on when I walked in and he looked up and went on farting and it was only when the sound had ended that he put out his hand.
He was always and unashamedly flatulent, but that was probably the least of his socially unacceptable traits.
Nagel was shameless. Nagel was a sexist, a racist, a womanizer, constantly on the lookout for a new “piece,” a braggart, a liar, a show-off.
Nagel was a painfully thin man with a hopping, bobbing Adam’s apple and a deep voice and a love for that voice and everything it uttered. Nagel dressed tastelessly and lived tastelessly, ate Kentucky Fried Chicken “because my fucking old lady can’t cook to save her life,” until his whole office stank of a mixture of farts and the reek of the Colonel’s chicken, as did the Ford Sierra we shared as a squad car, and the stench became part of my daily existence.
Nagel was my mentor within the system run by Colonel Willie Theal, and I came to love him like a brother.
He listened to Abba and to Cora Marie (“That woman can make me cry, Van Heerden”) and said: “Jesus, your classic shit drives me crazy,” and all he ever read was “Advice to the Lovelorn” in a women’s magazine he’d discovered in a doctor’s consulting room. He spent his evenings in his favorite bars with “the boys” and told tall tales about the number, variety, and type of extramarital sex acts he had performed and would soon perform again, and then, late at night, drunk but upright, he had to go back to the “chains” of his marriage.
Willem Nagel. Wonderful, eccentric, politically incorrect Nagel. With a legendary detective brain and phenomenal arrest statistics.
I wish I had never met him.
? Dead at Daybreak ?
41
Mavis Petersen, the receptionist at Murder and Robbery, said that Mat Joubert was out. “He’s on leave for personal reasons because he’s getting married on Saturday,” she said in a confidential tone. “To Mrs. Margaret Wallace, an English lady. Oh, we’re so pleased for his sake. We’re not made to be alone.”
“Then I’ll have to see Nougat, Mavis,” said Van Heerden.
“That one will never get a wife,” she laughed. “The inspector is in court. He has to give evidence.” She leafed through the book in front of her. “B court.”
“Thank you, Mavis.”
“And when is the captain getting married?”
He merely shook his head as he walked away. “Good-bye, Mavis.”
“We’re not made to be alone,” he heard her calling as he went out the door.
First his mother, and now Mavis.
His mother, arranging things so that he and Hope would share a house this evening.
He drove to the city on the N1, the traffic heavy, even before peak hours. He wondered for how long the Cape roads would be adequate, checked the rearview mirror for a white truck, realized it was going to be very difficult to establish whether he was being followed, put his hand under the blanket on the passenger seat, felt the Heckler & Koch.
He hadn’t shot too badly. Tiny Mpayipheli had said in his almost accentless English, “It’ll do,” enough holes in the paper target, but it was Hope who stole the limelight. She had held the SW99 pistol in both hands, feet planted apart, the curve of earmuffs over the short hair, and pumped ten rounds at ten meters into the target, somewhat spread grouping but all the shots within the outer circle with monotonous regularity, then smiled apologetically at him, Van Heerden.
“And where did you learn to shoot?” Billy September asked her in his melodious voice.
“I did a course last year. A woman should be able to protect herself.”
“Amen,” said Billy September.
Mpayipheli took the nine millimeter from her, reloaded, put up a new target against the Port Jackson tree, and aimed from fifteen meters.
“He wants to show off a bit.”
The pistol was dwarfed in the huge hand. Ten shots. One hole in the center of the target. Then he turned to them, took off the earmuffs, and said, “Orlando said to make sure you know you’re getting the best.”
When they got back to the house, his mother had started the “Where is everyone going to sleep?” bit.
“Who is going to look after Wilna and Hope?” she’d asked.
“Schlebusch only threatened you, Ma.”
“And if he sees he can’t achieve anything here, who do you think will be next on his list?” Joan had looked at Wilna van As and Hope Beneke and said: “The two of you must sleep here as well. Until this thing is over.”
“My house is safe,” Hope had said with no conviction.
“Nonsense, you’re all alone.”
“She’s a very good shot,” was Mpayipheli’s contribution.
“I won’t hear of it. There’s room enough here for Carolina and Wilna and the two of you. Hope can sleep at Zet’s house. There’s room.”
He had opened his mouth to say something, to object – he didn’t trust his mother’s motives – but she didn’t give him a chance. “There’s a madman out there and you can’t afford to take chances,” his mother had said in her effective, organizing mode, unstoppable, adamant.
“I must go,” he’d said. “There’s work to do.”
For five years the only women in his life had been a few divorcees, bewildered, broken partners in bed, picked up in Table View pubs for a night of physical relief – when he was sober enough, when he could scrape together enough energy and courage to complete the ritual. What was his average? Once a year? Perhaps twice when his body screamed at him and the hormones took over in automatic gear. And now there was a different one in his house every night.
Good material for a situation comedy. He and Hope and Kara-An. The Three Stooges.
It wasn’t Hope. It was just…his house was his sanctuary.
He looked for parking at the magistrate’s court. There was none. He had to park on the Parade and walk, through the clothing district. He hadn’t been there for a long time, had forgotten the hodgepodge, the colors and smells, the busy sidewalks.
Hope in his house. Discomfort in his stomach. It wasn’t going to work.
¦
O’Grady stood outside the courtroom, in the passage, talking to other detectives, a closed circle, a close brotherhood. He stood on one side and waited, no longer part of it, until Nougat saw him.
“What do you want?” Still unforgiving.
“To share information, Nougat.” But he had to suppress his reaction to the fat man’s tone of voice.
O’Grady’s little eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you have?”
He took the envelope out of his jacket pocket. “This is the guy.”
“Schlebusch?”
O’Grady took the photo carefully, by its edge, looked at it.
“Mean mother.”
“Yes.”
Suddenly saw the light. “You’re going to the newspapers again.”
