still.
He sat down behind his desk and tried to think, pen in hand.
Union-fucking-dale. He opened a sandwich. Bacon and egg. He took the lid off the coffee. The steam drifted lazily upwards. He inhaled the aroma and sipped.
It would be a day or two before they knew whether it was the same assegai, regardless of how much pressure the commissioner exerted. He bit into the sandwich. It was reasonably fresh.
A black man. Scholtz wrestling with an attacker in the dark, frightened, he sees the long blade of the assegai. Had he made an assumption? Could he really see?
A black man with a pickup. In Uniondale. Big surprises. Too big. The sudden detour to a place five hundred kilos from the Cape.
They didn?t need a copycat, God knows. And this thing could easily spawn a lot of copycats. Because of the children.
He began to jot down notes in the crime report file in front of him.
?No, damnit,? said Matt Joubert and shook his head with finality.
Griessel and Ngubane were in the senior superintendent?s office at seven in the morning. All three were too frenetic to sit.
?I?ve?? said Ngubane.
?Matt, just a few days. Two or three,? said Griessel.
?Lord, Benny, can you see the trouble if he gets away? Flees the country? These fuckers have false passports like confetti. There?s no way . . .?
?I?? said Ngubane.
?We have the manpower, Matt. We can shut the whole place down. He won?t be able to move.?
Joubert still shook his head. ?What do you think Boef Beukes will do? He has the biggest drug bust of his career and you want to let his big fish out on bail? He?ll squeal like a skinny pig.?
?Matt, last night I?? said Ngubane.
?Fuck Beukes. Let him squeal. We won?t get bait like this again.?
?No, damnit.?
?Listen to me,? barked Ngubane in frustration, and they looked at him. ?Last night I talked to one of the people from Investigative Psychology at head office. She?s here in Cape Town. She?s helping Anwar with a serial rapist in Khayelitsha. She says if he gets the chance, Sangrenegra will go to the child. Whether she is alive or not. She says the chances are good that he will lead us to her.?
Joubert sat down heavily on his chair.
?That makes our case very strong,? said Griessel.
?Think about the child,? said Ngubane.
?Let the commissioner decide, Matt. Please.?
Joubert looked up at the pair of them leaning shoulder to shoulder over his desk. ?Here comes trouble,? he said. ?I can see it a mile away.?
Pagel phoned him before eight to say indications were that the Uniondale assegai was the same blade, but he would have to wait for the tissue samples being brought by car from Oudtshoorn. Griessel thanked the prof and called his team together in the task team room.
?There have been a few interesting developments,? he told them.
?Uniondale?? asked Vaughn Cupido with a know-it-all smirk.
?It was on Kfm news,? said Bushy Bezuidenhout, just to spoil Cupido?s moment.
?What did they say??
?It?s all Artemis, Artemis, Artemis,? said Cupido. ?Why must the media always give them a name??
?It sells newspapers,? said Bezuidenhout.
?But this is radio . . .?
?What did they say?? asked Griessel louder.
?They said there is a suspicion that it is Artemis but that it can?t be confirmed,? said Keyter piously.
?Our assegai man is black,? said Griessel. That shut them up. He described what they knew of the sitting-room battle in the small town. ?Then there is the question of the tire tracks from yesterday. Forensics says he drives a pickup, probably a two-by-four. Not yet a breakthrough, but it helps. It can help us focus . . .? He saw Helena Louw shaking her head. ?Captain, you don?t agree??
?I don?t know, Inspector.? She got up and crossed over to the notice board on the wall. There were newspaper clippings in tidy rows, separated into sections by pinned strands of different colored knitting wool.
?We researched the publicity surrounding each of the victims,? she said and pointed at the board. ?The first three were in all the papers, and probably on the local radio too. But when we heard about Uniondale this morning we had a look.?
She tapped a finger on the single report in a red-wool section. ?It was only in
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