and the whole country sang along. He had a crush on her, then. A vague teenage desire. I will cherish-and- protect-and-regularly-service-you. She was so . . . pure. And innocent. Darling of the people, the Princess Di of the Afrikaners before the world knew Princess Di. With those big eyes and that sweet voice and the blonde hair that was so . . . he didn?t know what the style was called, but it was seventies cool, if anything could be ?cool? back then.
He had been sixteen. Puberty in Parow. All he could think about in those days was sex. Not always about the deed itself, but how to get some. With the girls in Parow in the seventies it was well nigh impossible. Middle-class Afrikaners, the iron grip of the Dutch Reformed Church and girls who didn?t want to make the same mistakes as their mothers, so that the best a guy could do was perhaps some heavy petting in the back of the bioscope. If you were lucky. If you could draw the attention of one. So he began to play bass guitar to get their attention, since he was no athlete or academic giant, he was just another little fucker with a sprinkling of pimples and an ongoing battle with school rules to grow his hair long.
In Standard Nine at a garage party there was this four-man band, guys of his age from Rondebosch. English- speaking
not very good, the drummer was so-so and the rhythm guitarist knew only six chords. But the girls didn?t care. He saw how they looked at the band members. And he wanted to be looked at like that. So he talked to the leader when the band took a break. He told him he played a bit of acoustic and a bit of piano by ear, but the guy said get a bass guitar, china, because everyone played six-string and drums, but bass guitarists were hard to find.
So he began to look into it and he bought a bass for a knockdown price from an army guy in Goodwood whose Ford Cortina needed new rings. He taught himself in his room, with the help of a book that he bought in Bothners in Voortrekker Road. He dreamed dreams and he kept his ear to the ground until he heard of a band in Bellville that was looking for a bass. Five-piece: lead, rhythm, drums, organ and bass. Before he knew what happened he was on the stage of an English-medium primary-school hall laying down a foundation of Uriah Heep?s ?Stealin? and he sang the fucking song?he, Benny fucking Griessel, stood in front of the teen girls in an undersized T-shirt and his Afrikaans haircut and he sang, ?Take me across the water, ?cause I got no place to hide, I done the rancher?s daughter and it sure did hurt his pride,? and they all looked at him, the girls looked at him with those eyes.
It only brought him one sexual experience while he was at school. What he hadn?t known was that while the band played, the guys who were dancing had the advantage. By the time the party broke up, all the girls had to go home. But it had given him the music. The deep notes he picked off the strings and via the amplifier, resonating through his whole body. The knowledge that his bass was the basis of every song, the substructure, the defining foundation from which the lead guitarist could deviate or the organist could drift away, always to return to the steadfast form that Benny laid down. Even though he knew he would never be good enough to go pro.
Unlike the police work. He knew from the start that was his thing. That was the place where all the connections came together, that was how his brain was wired.
Now they were going to pull him off the assegai case and he put the CD down and took out his phone, because he wanted to talk to the psychologist before they posted him. He wanted to test a few of his theories before they took him off.
She met him at the Newport Deli in Mouille Point, because she was ?mad about the place.? They sat outside on the pavement at a high, round table.
he read on the card she passed across the little table. She was a smoker, a woman in her thirties with a wedding ring and short black hair. ?You?re lucky,? she said. ?I fly back tonight.? Relaxed, self-assured. Accustomed to the man?s world she worked in.
He remembered her. He had been on a course she presented two or three years ago. He didn?t mention it, as he couldn?t remember how sober he had been.
They ordered coffee. She ordered a flat biscuit with chocolate on top and nuts underneath with some Italian- sounding name that he didn?t quite catch.
?Do you know about the assegai murders?? he asked.
?Everyone down here is talking about them, but I don?t have the details. I hear the media first speculated that it was a woman.?
?Couldn?t be a woman. The weapon, the MO, everything . . .?
?There?s another reason too.?
?Oh??
?I?ll get to that. Tell me everything first.?
He told her. He liked the intense way she listened. He began with Davids and finished with Uniondale. He knew she wanted details of the crime scene. He gave her everything he knew. But two things he withheld: the pickup and the fact that the suspect might be black.
?Mmm,? she said, and turned her cigarette lighter over and over in her right hand. Her hands were tiny. They made him think of an old person?s hands. There were fine gray hairs between the black at her temples.
?The fact that he confronts them in their own homes is interesting. The first deduction is that he is intelligent. Above average. And determined. Orderly, organized. He has guts.?
Griessel nodded. He agreed with the guts part, but the intelligence was a surprise.
?It will be difficult to determine a vocational group. Not a laborer, he?s too clever for that. Something that allows him to be alone so he doesn?t have to explain how he spends his time. He can drive to Uniondale without anyone asking questions. Sales? His own business? He must be quite fit. Reasonably strong.?
She took a cigarette from a white packet with a red square on it and put it in her mouth. Griessel liked her mouth. He wondered what effect her work had on her. To use the gruesomeness of death to paint a mental picture of the suspect, until she could see him, vocation and all.
?He?s white. Three white victims in white neighborhoods. It would be difficult if he wasn?t white.? She lit the cigarette.
Exactly, he thought.
?In his thirties, I would say.? She drew on the cigarette and blew a long white plume into the air. It was
