?Don?t tell me I don?t know what it?s like. How long have I been a policeman??
?No, what I mean . . .?
?I don?t give a fuck what you mean, Jaaa-mie. You only drop me once.? He turned on his heel and strode to his car. He thought about self-control. He could not afford to hit a colleague.
He drove through Durbanville and out along the Fisantekraal road. He could never understand why this piece of the Cape was so ugly and without vineyards. Rooikrans bushes and Port Jackson trees and advertising hoardings for new housing developments. How the hell would the Cape handle all the new people? The road system was already overloaded?nowadays it was rush hour from morning till night.
He turned right on the R312, crossed the railway bridge and stopped on the gravel road that turned off to the left. There was a small hand-painted sign that read
Assegai man would have seen it in the dark and begun to look for a place to leave his car. How far was he prepared to walk?
He drove slowly, trying to imagine what a person would see in the night. Not much. There were no lights nearby. Plenty of cover, the rooikrans grew in dense, ugly thickets. He stopped awhile, took out his cell phone and rang Keyter.
?Detective Sergeant Jamie Keyter, Serious and Violent Crimes Unit.?
?What?s with all that, Jamie??
?Er . . . hello, Benny,? in a cautious tone. ?It?s just in case.?
?In case of what??
?Oh . . . um . . . you know . . .?
He didn?t, but he left it at that. ?Do you want to help, Jamie??
?I do, Benny.? Keen.
?Phone the weather office at the airport. I want to know what the phase of the moon was on Friday night. Whether it was overcast or not. That night, specifically, let?s say between twelve and four.?
?The phase of the moon??
?Yes, Jamie. Full moon, half moon, understand??
?Okay, okay, I get it, Benny. I?ll call you just now.?
?Thanks, Jamie.?
Roads turned off to other smallholdings with ridiculous names.
But an eagle wouldn?t be seen dead here.
but it was flat.
More like a dirty view.
And then
If it were him, he would have driven past the turnoff. Gone quite a bit further on, perhaps, to check out the area. Then turned around.
He did exactly that. Nearly a kilometer beyond High Grove the road ended at a gate. He stopped twenty meters in front of the gate and got out. The southeaster blew his hair up in the air. There was an old gravel pit beyond the gate, desolate, obviously long out of use. The gate was locked.
If it were him, he would have parked here. You wouldn?t want to turn into the High Grove driveway. Not if you had never been there before. You wouldn?t know what to expect, or who would see you.
His phone rang.
?Griessel.?
?It?s Jamie, Benny. The guy at the weather office said it was half moon, Benny, and zero per cent cloudy.?
?Zero per cent.?
?That?s right.?
?Thank you, Jamie.?
?Is there anything else I can do, Benny?? Sucking up.
?Just stand by, Jamie. Just stand by.?
A clear night, light of a half moon. Enough to see by. Enough to keep your headlights switched off. He would have parked here. Somewhere around here, since this section of road would have no traffic, a dead end. The road up to the gate was too hard to show tracks. But he would have to have turned around if he came this far. Griessel began to walk down the boundary fence on the High Grove side of the road, searching for tracks on the sandy verge. Where would he have parked? Perhaps over there, where the rooikrans bushes leaned far over the fence. Bleached white grass tufts and sandy soil beside the fence.
Then he spotted the tracks, two vague rows of tire marks. And in one spot the unmistakable hollow where a tire had stood still for a while.
Got you, you bastard!
He walked with care, building the picture in his mind. Assegai man had driven to the gravel-pit gate and turned around. Then the car would be facing in the direction of the High Grove turnoff. He would see the rooikrans thicket in the moonlight even with his lights turned off. He left the road about here and pulled up close to the fence.
