?Looks like it.?
As they squeezed past him to the bedroom, Forensics sniffed theatrically and said, ?But something smells bad.? Then he said in a lower voice, familiarly, ?You ought to take a shower, Benny.?
?Do your fucking job.?
?I?m just saying,? he said, and went into the bedroom. Griessel heard the clips of their cases open and Forensics say to the photographer: ?These are the only girls I see naked nowadays. Corpses.?
?At least they don?t talk back,? came the response.
A shower was not what Griessel needed. He needed a drink. Where could he go? Where would he sleep tonight? Where could he stash his bottle? When would he see his children again? How could he concentrate on this thing? There was a bottle store in Sea Point that opened in an hour.
How did she think he would manage it? By throwing him out? By putting yet more pressure on him? By rejecting him?
He couldn?t lose them, but he couldn?t stay dry. He was fucked, totally fucked. Because if he didn?t have them, he wouldn?t be able to stop drinking?couldn?t she understand that?
His cell phone rang.
?Griessel.?
?Another one, Benny?? Senior Superintendent Matt Joubert. His boss.
?It?s the same MO,? he said.
?Any good news??
?Not so far. He?s clever, the fucker.?
?Keep me informed.?
?I will.?
?Benny??
?Yes, Matt??
?Are you okay??
Silence. He could not lie to Joubert?they had too much history.
?Come and talk to me, Benny.?
?Later. Let me finish up here first.?
It dawned on him that Joubert knew something. Had Anna . . .
She was serious. This time she had even phoned Matt Joubert.
He rode the motorbike to Alice, to see the man who made weapons by hand. Like their ancestors used to.
The interior of the little building was gloomy; when his eyes had adjusted to the poor light, he looked through the assegais that were bundled in tins, shafts down, shiny blades pointing up.
?What do you do with all of these??
?They are for the people with tradition,? said the graybeard, his hands busy shaping a shaft from a long sapling. The sandpaper rasped rhythmically up and down, up and down.
?Tradition,? he echoed.
?They are not many now. Not many.?
?Why do you make the long spears too??
?They are also part of our history.?
He turned to the bundle with shorter shafts. His finger stroked the blades?he was looking for a certain form, a specific balance. He drew one out, tested it, replaced it and took another.
?What do you want to do with an assegai?? asked the old man.
He did not immediately reply, because his fingers had found the right one. It lay comfortable in his palm.
?I am going hunting,? he said. When he looked up there was great satisfaction in the eyes of the graybeard.
?When I was nine, my mother gave me a set of records for my birthday. A box of ten seven-inch singles and a book with pictures of princesses and good fairies. There were stories on them and every story had more than one ending?three or four each. I don?t know exactly how it worked, but every time you listened to them, the needle would jump to one of the endings. A woman told the stories. In English. If the ending was unhappy I would play it again until it ended right.?
She wasn?t sure why she had brought this up and the minister said: ?But life doesn?t work that way??
?No,? she said, ?life doesn?t.?
He stirred his tea. She sat with her cup on her lap, both feet on the floor now, and the scene was like a play
