Dead at Daybreak

? Dead at Daybreak ?

43

He was jolted awake from chaotic dreams, and the radio alarm next to the bed showed an unsympathetic 3:11.

The dreams had been about Schlebusch.

Dreams of escape and confrontation and fear, and he lay in the dark and realized that the accident, the moments on the road, and the man with the long blond hair and his threats were stuck in the cells of his subconscious, unprocessed. This was the first time that he had been both hunter and prey. And there was no protection, no SAPS net, not officially.

Rupert de Jager’s last three letters had brought no new insights, opened no new vistas, only confirmed the brooding, growing feeling that Bushy Schlebusch had taken the road to viciousness some twenty years ago. The signs of psychopathology there, a lack of emotion, an attraction to violence, an explosive personality. He was prepared to bet money – fuck, he didn’t have money – that Rupert de Jager/ Johannes Jacobus Smit hadn’t been the first victim.

The blowtorch. The threat. The curt words when he hung in the wreck of the Corolla.

Are you alive? Schlebusch had asked. With utter, uninterested contempt, the only reason for the question so that he wouldn’t have to waste his breath.

You have a mother, policeman. Do you hear me? You have a mother. I’ll burn her with a fucking blowtorch, do you hear me? You don’t know me, you pig, cunt, leave me alone or I’ll burn her.

He wasn’t the one under threat; it was his mother. The terrain was known to him, the pathology, the playing field of the serial killer, the woman as helpless victim over whom control must be exercised. And the love of fire. But Schlebusch was different, evidently not driven by a sense of inferiority. For him, killing wasn’t a relief mechanism, a leveling of the playing field. For him murder was an instrument, a final solution when the other means of persuasion didn’t do the job.

The reaction to the news stories. There was something to learn there. Calculation. He had followed Van Heerden, checked up on him, established his route, found out about his family, waited for the right moment, and attacked with a ruthless, cool effectiveness. No panic, no running away or hiding. A clinical operation to stay in control.

What did you do when you were hunting such an animal? What did you do if the prey didn’t flee or hide? What did you do if the hunted hunted you?

You got a camp karateka and a large black sniper and you packed a machine pistol and you shared your house with a woman who sometimes asked questions you didn’t want to hear because you were afraid you would answer her. He was prepared to be bad, to accept that he was evil and to live with that, but no one else must know the truth. He didn’t want to experience total rejection.

And then the night with Kara-An came and the fucking problem was he’d discovered he wasn’t as bad as he’d wanted to believe.

He knew it was her challenge, her implicit invitation. He knew it was her search for someone to share her world, to confirm her own self-disgust, to sink to the dregs with her. And he had been willing to chance the downward spiral with her, but then he had balked because he discovered that he didn’t have it in him and it made him feel…good about himself. Lord, it was a new experience.

And last night Hope’s flowers had touched him.

He had been annoyed with himself then, hadn’t wanted to feel the small stutter of emotion, the gratitude. No, it was something else. It was the nature of the present, the contrast. Kara-An had blown into his house on a wind of decadence, and Hope had brought flowers as if he was worthy of the gift.

He who had made an appalling fool of himself twice yesterday. The first was in the hospital room when he had spelled out his 1976 theory with so much self-confidence. Then he read the letters and they blew his neat theory to kingdom come. Schlebusch, De Jager, and Company hadn’t worked for Military Intelligence. They weren’t the execution squad – simply another Recce unit that had escorted supplies to Angola.

No question of dollars. No sign of American intervention.

Then what the fuck had happened in 1976? What had this valiant group been involved in that the authorities so badly wanted to hide and that had left death and dollars and riddles behind?

Schlebusch was the key. Schlebusch was the piece that wouldn’t fit into a puzzle of ordinary eighteen-year- old soldiers thrown together from a host of backgrounds and circumstances.

Damn. The frustration of loose ends. He wanted to know, wanted to yank down the great blanket hiding this thing, wanted to know. He and his mother were being hunted by an animal and he was desperate for a head start. The accident had opened a door to fear in his head and he wasn’t able to close it and it amazed him, he who had lived the last five years as if looking for a place to die, to be with death, to escape the memories in his head.

And now he was terrified of the black scythe. He had seen the face of Death under the long blond hair.

And then he had made an asshole of himself again by slapping at Billy September and his legs had been swept from under him and there he lay, and Hope and Tiny Mpayipheli and September had simply stood there, all too afraid to laugh, but he knew they’d wanted to. Then he smiled at himself. It must’ve been pretty funny. He sat up in bed, could no longer lie still, couldn’t get up to put on music and make coffee because Hope was sleeping in his living room, but he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.

Because we owe you, Van Heerden. All of us.

Mat Joubert’s ironic words.

Why couldn’t he have the personal integrity and the righteous pain of the big detective? Joubert, who had lost his first wife some time ago, another casualty in the line of police duty. And through it all Joubert had fought the good fight and bit by bit put his life together again and now he was getting remarried, and here sat Van Heerden and what were his chances?

The debt Joubert had spoken about was based on a breathtaking misconception that might never be corrected. No one must know how bad he really was.

Joubert, who had a message for him. What message?

He would have to see if he could get hold of the bridegroom today. It was going to be a great day. Schlebusch. The photographs in Die Burger were going to arouse anger in that beast. Were two soldiers enough to guard the women against a psychopath with an American attack rifle and a calm, white anger?

He got up in one smooth movement, pulled on jeans, shirt and sweater and sneakers, looked at the figures on the alarm: 3:57. He opened the door very slowly, very softly, stood still, heard Hope’s deep, peaceful breathing, put his feet down carefully, closer and closer to her, the woman who had brought him flowers, about whom he had fantasized before Kara-An arrived with her champagne. Hope’s face was almost buried in the blanket, she lay on her side, and he saw the rapid movements of her eyeballs behind the lids, wondered what she was dreaming of – court edicts and crazy private investigators? He looked at the shape of her nose and her mouth and her cheek. There was something sad in her features. Was it because the sum total, the architecture, the final construction, formed an incomplete beauty, forcing the imagination to reconstruct it, rearrange it so that she could be breathtaking? There was something childlike there, something untouched. Did that evoke this strange feeling in him? Had that woken the aggression in him during the past week because he didn’t want to be reminded of innocence, because it was lost to him forever?

He closed his eyes. He had to get out of here.

He walked softly and carefully to the door. First switch on the outside light, warn Tiny Mpayipheli and Billy September that he was on his way. Pressed the switch, opened the door very, very carefully, closed it behind him, the click of the lock muffled, stood outside, the night quiet and cold, but never as cold as the biting, black-frost nights of Stilfontein. He stood in front of the door, hoping the soldiers had seen him, walked to the big house, looked up at the stars. A satellite winked its orbit to the north.

“Coming to inspect the guard?” Tiny Mpayipheli’s deep voice asked.

He hadn’t seen him, the black man in the dark coat in a corner of his mother’s garden, on the bench under