?I want you to go and talk, Jamie. Watch the body language, look at the eyes. Don?t make accusations. Just talk. Ask if they saw anything. Ask if Laurens was a difficult employer. Be sympathetic. Ask if they have heard of the assegai man. Give them a chance to talk. Sometimes they talk easily and too much. Listen, Jamie. Listen with both your ears and your eyes and your head. The thing with a murder investigation is, first you look at it from a distance, look at everything. Then you come a step closer and look again. Another step. You don?t charge in?you stalk.?
?I get it.?
?I?m going in to the office. We need the other case files. I am going to ask the investigating officers to tell me everything about Davids and Pretorius. Phone me when you are finished, then you come in.?
?Okay, Benny.? Grateful.
?Okay,? he said, turning to go to his car and thinking: fuck, I?m starting to talk like him too.
25.
He was still in conference with the other two investigating officers when Cloete, the liaison officer, phoned and said the media had heard there was another Artemis murder.
?A what??
?You know, the assegai thing.?
?Artemis??
?The
?That a Greek god went around . . .?
?
that the Laurens woman who beat the child to death is the latest victim??
The media. Fuck. ?All I can say now is that Laurens was found dead outside her house this morning. The post mortem is not finished yet.?
?They will want more than that.?
?I don?t have more than that.?
?Will you phone me when there is more??
?I will,? he lied. He was definitely not intending to feed information to the press.
Faizal phoned him just before he went to the mortuary, to ask if he could deliver the sitting-room suite. He drove to the flat to open up and then raced to Salt River where Pagel was waiting for him.
He heard the music as he closed the door of the state mortuary behind him and it made him grin. That is how you could tell Professor Phil Pagel, chief pathologist, was at work. For Pagel played only Beethoven on his ten- thousand rand hi-fi system in his office, as loud as was necessary.
?Ah, Nikita,? said Pagel with genuine pleasure when Griessel looked in his door. He was seated behind a computer and had to get up to turn the music down. ?How are you, my friend??
Pagel had been calling him ?Nikita? for twelve years. The first time he had met Griessel he had remarked: ?I am sure that is how the young Khruschev would have looked.? Griessel had to think hard who Khrushchev was. He had always had immense respect for highly educated and cultured people, he who had only his matric and police examinations. Once he had said to Pagel: ?Damn, Prof, I wish I were as clever as you.? But Pagel had looked back at him and said: ?I suspect you are the clever one, Nikita, and you have street smarts, too.?
He liked that. Also the fact that Pagel, who featured so often on the social pages, Friends of the Opera, Save the Symphony Orchestra, Aids Action Campaign, treated him as an equal. Always had. Pagel didn?t seem to age?tall and lean and impossibly handsome, some people said he looked like the star of some or other television soap that Griessel had never seen.
?Well, thank you, Prof. And you??
?Splendid, my dear fellow. I have just finished with the unfortunate Miss Laurens.?
?Prof, they have given me the whole show?Davids, Pretorius, the works. Bushy and them tell me you think this is also an assegai.?
?Not think. I am reasonably sure. What is different about you, Nikita? Have you cut your hair? Come, let me show you.? He walked ahead down the passage and opened the swing doors of the post mortem laboratory with a deft thump of his palms. ?It?s a long time since we saw an assegai?it?s no longer a weapon of choice. Twenty years ago it was more common.?
There was the smell of death and formalin and cheap air freshener in the room and the air conditioning was set quite low. Pagel unzipped the black body bag. Laurens?s remains lay there naked, like a cocoon. There was a single wound in the middle of her torso between two small breasts.
?What was not present with Davids,? said Pagel as he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, ?is the exit wound. Entry wound was wide, about six centimeters, but there was nothing behind. My conclusion was a very broad blade, or two stabs with a single, thinner blade?most unlikely, however. But I didn?t think ?assegai.? With Pretorius we have the exit wound, two point seven centimeters wide, and the entry wound of six point two. That?s when the penny dropped.?
He turned Laurens?s body on its side. ?Look here, Nikita. Exit wound right behind, just beside the spinal column. I had to cut the entry wound for chemical analysis, so you can no longer see, but it was even wider?six point seven, six point seven five.?
He lowered the body carefully on its back again, and covered it again.
?It tells us a couple of things which you will find interesting, Nikita. The blade is long; I estimate about sixty centimeters. We see a great deal of stab wounds inflicted with butcher?s knives?you know, the kind you can buy at Pick and Pay, about a twenty-five centimeter blade. Those wounds display clearly only one cutting edge and
