The shaven head nodded.
?If you make a noise before we are outside, I will cut you.?
Nod.
?Come.? He allowed him to get up, got behind him with the assegai under Davids?s chin, arm around his throat. They shuffled through the dark house to the front door. He felt the tension in the man?s muscles and he knew the adrenaline was flowing in him too. They were outside, on the pavement, and he took a quick step back. He waited for Davids to turn to him, saw the dragon?s raging red eyes, and took the knife from his pocket, a long butcher?s knife he had found in a kitchen drawer.
He passed it to the colored man.
?Here,? he said. ?This is your chance.?
At quarter-past seven when Griessel entered the parade room of the Serious and Violent Crimes building in Bishop Lavis, he did not feel the buzz.
He sat with his head down, paging aimlessly through the dossier on his lap, searching for a starting point on which to build his oral report. He was light-headed?thoughts darting like silver fish, diving aimlessly into a green sea, this way, that way, evasive, always out of reach. His hands were sweating. He couldn?t say he had nothing to report. They would laugh at him. Joubert would crap him out. He would have to say he was waiting for Forensics. Jissis, if he could just keep his hands still. He felt nauseous, an urge to throw up, vomit out all the shit.
Senior Superintendent Matt Joubert clapped his hands twice and the sharp sound echoed through him. The voices of the detectives quieted.
?You have probably all heard,? said Joubert, and a reaction ran through his audience: ?Tell them, Bushy.? There was contentment in his voice and Griessel read the mood. Something was going on.
Bezuidenhout stood against the opposite wall and Griessel tried to focus on him, his eyes flickering, blink- blink-blink-blink. He heard Bushy?s gravely voice: ?Last night Enver Davids was stabbed to death in Kraaifontein.?
A joyful riot broke out in the parade room. Griessel was perplexed. Who was Davids?
The noise droned through Griessel, the sickness growing inside. Christ, he was sick, sick as a dog.
?His pals say they went drinking at a shebeen in Khayelitsha and came home to the house in Kraaifontein about one a.m., when they went to sleep. This morning, just after five, someone knocked on the door to say there was a man lying dead in the street.?
Griessel knew he would hear the sound.
?Nobody heard or saw anything,? said Inspector Bushy Bezuidenhout. ?It looks like a knife fight. Davids has slash wounds to the hands and one on the neck, but at this stage the fatal wound seems to be a stab through the heart.?
Griessel saw Davids fall backwards, mouth stretched wide, the fillings in his teeth rusty brown. The scream, at first as thick as molasses, a tongue slowly sticking out, and the scream growing thin, thinner than blood. And it came to him.
?They should have cut off his balls,? said Vaughn Cupido.
The policemen laughed and that made the sound accelerate, the long thin trail scorched through the ether. Griessel jerked his head away, but the sound found him.
Then he vomited, dry and retching and he heard the laughter and heard someone say his name. Joubert? ?Benny, are you alright? Benny?? But he was not fucking alright, the noise was in his head, and it would never get out.
He drove first to the hotel room in Parow. Davids?s blood was on his arms and clothes. Boss Man?s words repeated in his head:
wyfie.
He washed his big body with great concentration, scrubbed down with soap and water, washed his clothes afterwards in the bath, put on a clean set and walked out to his pickup.
It was past five when he came outside?the east was beginning to change color. He took the N1 and then the N7 and the Table View off ramp near the smoking, burning refinery where a thousand lights still shone. Minibus taxis were already busy. He drove as far as Blouberg, thinking of nothing. He got out at the sea. It was a cloudless morning. An unsettled breeze still looking for direction blew softly against his skin. He looked up to the mountain where the first rays of the sun made deep shadows on the cliffs, like the wrinkles of an old man. Then he breathed, slowly in and out.
Only when his pulse had slowed to normal did he take from the cubbyhole, where he had stowed it yesterday, the
article, neatly torn out.
?Does someone want to harm you?? asked the minister.
She blew her nose loudly and looked at him apologetically, rolling up the tissue in her hand. She took another and blew again.
?Yes.?
?Who?? He reached under his desk and brought out a white plastic wastepaper basket. She tossed the tissues into it, took another and wiped her eyes and cheeks.
?There is more than one,? she said, and the emotions threatened again. She waited a moment for them to subside. ?More than one.?
12.
Are you sure he is guilty?? he had asked Boss Man Madikiza, because ideas had materialized in his head out of nowhere and his blood was boiling.
