holes.
He was thinking of the moment when the door had opened, thinking of his self-control, his victory of reason over instinct, suppressing the almost irresistible impulse, and he was filled with satisfaction. He felt like telling Miriam. Sometime he would phone her and tell her he was okay. She would be worried. But what tales he would have to tell Pakamile in the evenings. Koos Kok the Gri-qua. ?don'?t you know about Adam Kok, Xhosa? He went to live with you guys.? And he heard the short version of that history.
The brandy had made him drowsy, and as they turned toward Loxton on the tar road between Rosedene and Slangfontein, the soft rocking of the Chevy lulled him to sleep. His last thoughts were of a river god. Otto Muller had told of the theory of two British scientists that animals deliberately behave unpredictably in order to survI've, the way the hare flees from the dog.
After the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will from a stone to a tree, from a tree to an animal, in order to confound his enemies.
The big, bad Xhosa biker had become the big, bad Xhosa passenger. Muller would have approved of the change of form to avoid the opponent.
His last conscious thought as he slipped into a deep, restful, satisfying sleep was of his friend Zatopek van Heerden, who would not believe that he had become the Proteus of his inherent nature.
Allison Healy had knocked, walked around the house, knocked again, but there was no life there. She leaned against her car in the driveway and waited. Perhaps Monica Kleintjes had gone out for a while. The photographer had come and left again, saying he could not wait, he had to get to the airport? Bobby Skinstad was arriving after the losing rugby tour to Europe. He took some pictures of the house, just in case. It was not an unusually large house, pretty garden, big trees, tranquilly unaware of the drama that surrounded the occupants.
She lit a cigarette. She was comfortable with her habit, ten a day, sometimes less. Nowadays there were few places where one could smoke. It was her appetite suppressant, her consolation prize, an escape to small oases through the day.
She had learned it from Nic.
Nic had seduced her while he was still married.
Nic said he had the hots for her from day one when she had walked into the SAPS office to introduce herself. He said he couldn'?t help it.
The affair had lasted sixteen months. An uncomplicated, chainsmoking man, a good man, basically, if you left his unfaithfulness to his wife out of the equation. Emotionally needy, not very attractive, an unexceptional lover. But then she was no great judge of that. five men, since that first time at University.
She and Nic in her flat once or twice a week. Why had she let it happen?
Because she was lonely.
A thousand acquaintances and not one bosom friend. This was the lot of the fat girl in a world of skinny standards. Or was that just her excuse?
The truth was that she could not find her place. She was a round peg in a world of square holes. She could not find a group where she felt at home among friends.
Not even with Nic.
It felt better after he left, lying naked alone on the bed, sexually sated, with music and a cigarette, than it did in the moment of passion, the peak of orgasm.
She did not love him. Just liked him a lot. She did still, but after the divorce and the guilt he carried around like a ball and chain, she had ended the relationship.
He still asked every now and then. ?Could we start again? Just one more time?? She considered it. Sometimes seriously because of the desire to be held, to be caressed ? He had liked her body. ?You are sexy, Allison. Your breasts ?? Maybe that was the thing, he had accepted her body. Because she could not change it, the curves were genetic, passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter in an unbroken succession, stout people, plump women, regardless of the best efforts of diets and exercise programs.
She crushed the cigarette into the grass with the tip of her shoe. The butt lay there like a reproach. She picked it up and threw it behind a shrub in a bed of daisies.
Where was Monica Kleintjes?
Her cell phone rang.
?It?s the boss, Allison. Where are you??
?Newlands.?
?You had better get back. The minister is doing a press conference in fifteen minutes.?
?Which one??
?Intelligence.?
?I?m on my way.?
During the design and equipping of the interview/interrogation room of the Presidential Intelligence Unit, Janina Mentz has asked why a table was necessary. Nobody could give her an answer. That is why there wasn'?t one. She had asked why the chairs should be hard and uncomfortable. Why the walls must be bare except for the one with the one-way mirror. She asked whether a stripped, unpleasant, chilly room yielded better results than a comfortable one. Nobody could answer that. ?We are not running a police station? was her argument. So there were three easy chairs of the sort that Lewis Stores or Star Furnishers sold in the hundreds for people?s sitting rooms. They were upholstered in practical brown and treated with stain-resistant chemicals. The only difference was that these chairs could not be moved, so no one could prevent or delay entry to the room by pushing the chairs under the door handle. The chairs were bolted down in an intimate triangle. The floor was covered in wall-to-wall carpet, uniform
