?A thousand,? he said hopefully.
Thobela turned around. ?A thousand. How long will it take to copy??
?I will have to do it tonight. Come tomorrow.?
?No. Tonight.?
The detective looked at him, his eyes not quite so weary now. ?Why such a hurry??
?Where can I meet you??
The poverty here was dreadful. Shacks of planks and corrugated iron, a pervasive stink of decay and uncollected rubbish. Paralyzing heat beat upwards from the dust.
Mrs. Ramphele chased four children?two teenagers, two toddlers?out of the shack and invited him to sit down. It was tidy inside, clean but hot, so that the sweat stained his shirt in great circles. There were schoolbooks on a table and photos of children on the rickety cupboard.
She thought he was from the police and he did not disillusion her as she apologized for her son, saying he wasn?t always like that; he was a good boy, misled by Khoza and how easily that could happen here, where no one had anything and there was no hope. Andrew had looked for work, had gone down to the Cape, he had finished standard eight and then he said he couldn?t let his mother struggle like this, he would finish school later. There was no work. Nothing: East London, Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth, Jeffreys Bay, Knysna, George, Mossel Bay, Cape Town . . . Too many people, too little work. Occasionally he sent a little money; she didn?t know where it came from, but she hoped it wasn?t stolen.
Did she know where Andrew would go now? Did he know people in the Cape?
Not that she knew.
Had he been here?
She looked him in the eye and said no, and he wondered how much of what she had said was the truth.
They had erected the gravestone.
A simple stone of granite and marble set in the green grass by the river. He leaned against the pepper tree and reflected that this was the child?s favorite place. He used to watch him through the kitchen window and see the small body etched here, on his haunches, sometimes just staring at the brown water flowing slowly past. Sometimes he had a stick in his hand, scratching patterns and letters in the sand?and he would wonder what Pakamile was thinking about. The possibility that he was thinking of his mother gave him great pain, because it was not something he could fix, not a pain he could heal.
Occasionally he would try to talk about it, but carefully, because he did not want to open the old wound. So he would ask: ?How are things with you, Pakamile?? ?Is something worrying you?? or ?Are you happy?? And the boy would answer with his natural cheerfulness that things were good, he was so very happy, because he had him, Thobela, and the farm and the cattle and everything. But there was always the suspicion that that was not the whole truth, that the child kept a secret place in his head where he would visit his loss alone.
Eight years, during which a father had abandoned him, and he had lost a caring mother.
Surely that could not be the sum total of a person?s life? Surely that could not be right? There must be a heaven, somewhere . . . He looked up at the blue sky and wondered. Was Miriam there among green rolling hills to welcome Pakamile? Would there be a place for Pakamile to play and friends and love? All races together, a great multitude, all with the same sense of justice? Waters beside which to rest. And God, a mighty black figure, kingly, with a full gray beard and wise eyes, who welcomed everyone to the Great Kraal with an embrace and gentle words, but who looked with great pain over the undulating landscape of green sweet veld at the broken Earth. Who shook his head, because no one did anything about it because they were all blind to His Purpose. He had not made them like
Slowly he walked up the slope to the homestead and stood again to look.
His land, as far as he could see.
He realized that he no longer wanted it. The farm had become useless to him. He had bought it for Miriam and Pakamile. It had been a symbol then, a dream and a new life?and now it was nothing but a millstone, a reminder of all the potential that no longer existed. What use was it to own ground, but have nothing?
6.
From the second-story flat in Mouille Point you could see the sea if you got the angle from the window right. The woman lay in the bedroom and Detective Inspector Benny Griessel stood in the living room looking at the photos on the piano when the man from Forensics and the scene photographer came in.
Forensics said: ?Jesus, Benny, you look like shit,? and he answered: ?Flattery will get you nowhere.?
?What have we got??
?Woman in her forties. Strangled with the kettle cord. No forced entry.?
?That sounds familiar.?
Griessel nodded. ?Same MO.?
?The third one.?
?The third one,? Griessel confirmed.
?Fuck.? Because that meant there would be no fingerprints. The place would be wiped clean.
?But this one is not ripe yet,? said the photographer.
?That?s because her char comes in on Saturdays. We only found the others on Monday.?
?So he?s a Friday-night boy.?
