afford that.
He just moaned, lying on his side in a pool of blood around his face.
She heard doors opening.
?The ambulance is on its way.? She squeezed Wasserman?s hand and then ran upstairs to her room and locked the door behind her. Feverishly she dressed herself. Carlos. What was she to do?
When she went out quietly, she went down first. She saw there were security personnel with Wasserman at the foot of the stairs. They did not see her. She walked up one flight of stairs, trying to keep calm. She walked slowly so as not to attract attention. She pressed the button for the lift, waited. Voices below. The lift took an eternity to arrive.
Carlos.
She phoned him once she reached the street. He did not answer his phone.
She went to her flat, sat on a chair in her sitting room with her phone in her hand. What was she going to do?
Later she phoned the ambulance services. They had taken Wasserman to City Park. She phoned the hospital. ?We can?t give out information.?
?This is his sister.?
?Hold on.?
She had to listen to synthesized music, sounding tinny in her ear.
Eventually Casualty answered. ?He?s in Intensive Care, but he should be okay.?
Carlos. She phoned again. It just kept on ringing. She wanted to get in her car and drive to his house. She wanted to hit him, smash his skull with a pick handle. He didn?t have the right. He couldn?t do this. She wanted to go to the police, she wanted to blow him off the earth. Rage consumed her. She looked for her telephone book and got the number of the police.
No. Too many complications.
She wept, but from frustration. Hate.
When she had calmed down she went to fetch Sonia. When she crossed the street holding her daughter?s hand, she saw the BMW on the other side, back window rolled down. He sat there watching, but not her. His eyes were on the girl and there was a strange expression on his face. It felt as if someone had their fist around her heart and were squeezing her to death.
The BMW pulled up alongside her when she was helping Sonia into her car.
?Now I know everything, conchita.? He looked at Sonia, looked at her child. If she had had a gun at that moment, she would have shot him in the face.
PART TWO
Benny
23.
Griessel was never uncomfortable with the bosses, mainly because he could drink them under the table singly or as a group. Or outwork them. He maintained a higher case solution rate than any one of them had in their days as detectives, alcoholic or not. But tonight he was not at ease. They stood in the little sitting room outside the Intensive Care Unit of City Park Hospital, although there were chairs available: Senior Superintendents Esau Mtimkulu and Matt Joubert, first and second in command of SVC, Commissioner John Afrika, the provincial head of detection, and Griessel. Cupido and Keyter sat just out of hearing. Their ears were pricked but they could not hear anything. When a member lay in Intensive Care, the big guns spoke in muffled tones.
?Give me that Woolworths man?s number, Matt,? said Commissioner Afrika, a colored veteran who had come up through the ranks in Khayelitsha, the Flats and the old Murder and Robbery Units. ?I hear they are running to the minister, but to hell with them. I?ll deal with him. That is the least of our problems . . .? Here it comes, thought Griessel. He should never have hit the bastard, he knew that; never in his life had he carried on like that before. If they were to throw out the case because he had lost control, if a fucking serial murderer were to walk because Benny Griessel was angry at the entire world . . .
?Benny,? said Commissioner Afrika, ?you say it was the tackle that caused his face to be injured like that??
?Yes, Commissioner.? He looked into the man?s eyes and they knew, all four of them in the circle, what was happening now. ?There was this shop mannequin standing just in the wrong place. Reyneke?s face hit the face of the mannequin. That?s where the cuts came from.?
?He must have hit it fucking hard,? said Superintendent Mtimkulu.
?When I tackled him, I held his arms down because he had a firearm. So he couldn?t shield his face with his hands. That?s why he hit it so hard.?
?And then he confessed??
?He lay there bleeding, and then he cried, ?I can?t help it, I can?t help it,? but with Cliffy wounded my attention was . . . er . . . divided. Only later under interrogation did I ask him what he meant. What it is that he can?t help.?
?And what did he say then??
?At first he didn?t want to say anything. So . . . I asked Cupido and Keyter to leave, so that I could talk to him alone.?
?And then he confessed??
?He confessed, Commissioner.?
?Will it stand up in court??
