Dead at Daybreak

What I did say had the same tenor, was the product of my feeling of guilt, my fear, my focus.

“How do we get rid of Nagel?” I asked, without thinking too deeply, without measuring the meaning of my words.

? Dead at Daybreak ?

51

Bart de Wit and Mat Joubert had Tony O’Grady on the carpet.

“Van Heerden made something of this case with nothing – no forensics, no team of detectives, no squad of uniforms, nothing. Now’s the time for you, Anthony O’Grady, to move your ass, because the SANDF is laughing at us and the media are laughing at us and the district commissioner screams over the telephone and the provincial minister of justice phoned to say you’ve got to move it, it can’t carry on like this. You’re in charge now. Tell us what you need. Make things happen.”

And now he was standing in front of an impressive matron of the Milnerton MediClinic and his meaty face blushed a dark red and his lumpish body shook with rage and his mouth was struggling to choke back words that shouldn’t be used in front of a woman.

“He’s gone?” he managed eventually.

“Yes, sir, he’s gone. The military people took him away against the wishes of the entire medical team.” Her voice was calm and soothing; she saw O’Grady’s red face and shaking torso and wondered whether he was going to have a heart attack in her office.

“Ffffff…” he said, and controlled himself with superhuman effort.

“Just about ten minutes ago. Not even in an ambulance.”

“Did they say where they were taking him?”

“Into custody. When I objected, they said they had medical treatment available for him.”

The curses were poised on his tongue but he bit them back.

“What was his condition?”

“He was stable but we were about to run tests on him. A blow like that to the head, there could be major brain damage.”

“Was he conscious?”

“Delirious, I would say.”

“Coherent?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who took him?”

“A Colonel Brits.”

The frustration, the impotent rage, washed through O’Grady’s big body. “The bastard,” he said, and then he could no longer hold the obscenities back. “The motherfucking, absolute, total, complete cunt of a bastard,” he said, and deflated like a big balloon.

“Feeling better now?” asked the matron. But O’Grady didn’t hear her. He was on his way down the passage, cell phone in his hand. He was going to speak to that dolly-bird attorney, but first he would phone Mat Joubert. Joubert must phone Bart de Wit. Bart de Wit must phone the commissioner and the commissioner could phone whomever he wanted, but Bester Brits was going to get fucked before the day was out.

He was wrong.

¦

The man whose skull had been cracked by a spade was sitting on a wooden Defence Force chair, in a prefab building in a forgotten area in a Port Jackson thicket on the far edge of the Ysterplaat Air Force Base. He wasn’t tied down or shackled. Bester Brits, standing in front of him, was in complete control: there was no need for restraints.

Outside there were four soldiers with R5 rifles, and in any case, Spadehead wasn’t in great shape. His head was lolling, the eyes rolled up every few seconds, his breathing was fast and uneven.

“Does it hurt?” Bester Brits asked, and slapped Spadehead on the purplish red head wound.

The sound that came through the swollen lips was just decipherable as “Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

No reply. Brits lifted his hand again, poised threateningly.

A sound.

“What?”

“Ghaarie.”

“Gary?”

Nod, head rolling.

“Who sent you, Gary, to the house to attack the women?”

Sound.

“What?”

“Please.” Hands lifted to protect the wound.

Brits swept the hands aside, slapped again. “Please? Please what?”

“My head.”

“I know it’s your fucking head, you moron, and I’ll keep on hitting it until you talk, do you understand? The faster you talk, the faster – ”

Sound.

“What?”

“Oh-ri-un.”

“Orion?”

“Yes.”

Brits hit him again with the frustration of more than twenty years, all the hatred, the rancor in him that opened like an old, stinking sore. “I know it was Operation Orion, motherfuck.” The words unlocking memories.

Gary moaning, “No, no, no.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“O-ri-unShh…” The word slurred in the saliva that ran from a corner of his mouth.

“What?”

No reply. Gary’s eyes were closed, the head flopping.

“Don’t pretend to be unconscious, Gary.”

There was still no reply.

¦

“I can’t talk to you now,” Van Heerden said to Kara-An Rousseau.

“I heard it on the radio. About the shooting.”

“I’ve got to go.” He stood in the doorway of his house, machine pistol in his hand.

“Why were you at my house last night?”

“I wanted to…tell you something.”

“Tell me now.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“You want to know why I am like I am.”

He shifted past her. “This isn’t a good time,” he said, and walked toward his mother’s house. He had to get Tiny.

“Because you’re afraid you’re like that, too.” Not a question.

He halted, turned. “No,” he said.

She laughed at him. “Zatopek, it’s in you, too. And you know it.”

He looked at her beauty, her smile, the perfect teeth. Then he walked away, faster and faster, to get away from the sound of her laughter.

¦