?I want another field in the database. For vehicles. We have a tire print. Maybe we?ll get something from it.?
?That?s good.?
?I?m not sure how we will handle the last thing. I wonder how he makes his choices. The murderer. How does he decide who the next victim will be??
She nodded.
?There are two possibilities. One is that he is part of the system?policeman or prosecutor or something. But if you say there are more than a hundred and sixty . . . and the victims are too disparate regarding their location and their offenses. I have a feeling he is using the media. Radio, or newspapers. Maybe TV. My trouble is I don?t read the papers and I don?t listen to the radio much. But I want to know when the victims were in the news. I want to know the date of the reports compared to the date of the assegai murders. Am I being clear??
?Yes. Is it okay if we draw up a table on this blackboard?? She pointed at the front wall of the old lecture hall.
?That would work,? he said. ?Thanks.?
Griessel stood up. Jamie Keyter sat in the corner at the back and watched him in expectation. Cupido and Bezuidenhout sat beside each other, each at his own desk. He drew up a chair and sat down opposite them.
?The assegai is a stuff-up,? said Cupido. He leaned back and from behind him picked up a wrapped parcel, long and thin. He unrolled the brown paper and let the assegai drop onto the desktop. The shiny blade gleamed in the fluorescent light.
?Wallah!? he said. He pronounced the ?W? like ?Willy.?
?Voilr,? Bezuidenhout corrected him with a fake accent. ?It?s a fucking French word. It means ?check me out.? ?
?Since when are you the great language expert??
?I?m just helping you not make a fool of yourself.?
Griessel sighed. ?The assegai . . .? he said.
?On loan from Pearson?s African Art. In Long Street. Six hundred rand, VAT included. Imported from Zulu Dawn, a distributor in Pinetown. I talked to Mr. Vijay Kumar, the sales manager at Zulu Dawn. He says they have agents who drive around and buy them up, there must be at least thirty places in KwaZulu that make them.?
?That?s not
? said Bezuidenhout.
?Bushy . . .? said Griessel.
?I?m just saying. Nowadays everything is art. I wouldn?t pay fifty rand for that thing.?
?But you?re not a German tourist with euros, pappa,? said Cupido. ?The fact of the matter is, our suspect could have bought it on any street corner. Pearson?s say there are five or six chaps in the city alone who peddle them. And then there?s another place or two on the Waterfront, two in Stellenbosch and one in the southern suburbs. The whiteys from Europe like them and the African masks like nobody?s business. And ostrich eggs. They sell ostrich eggs for two hundred rand apiece. And they?re empty . . .?
?I want Forensics to look at the thing, Vaughn . . .?
?Sorted. They?re busy already. I took two on loan; I wanted to bring one in for you to see, Benny. Forensics will compare it with the chemical results of the three stab wounds.?
?Thanks, Vaughn. Good work.?
?You said it. But it doesn?t look like I?m going to score a trip to Durbs.?
?You?ll let me know what Forensics say??
?Absolutely. Tomorrow I?m going to all the places that sell assegais. See if they have sales records we can trace. Credit-card slips, tax invoices, anything. See what I can find.?
?I want those names in the database, please. They must be compared with the names Captain Louw has.?
?You got it, chief.?
Griessel turned to Bezuidenhout. ?Anything, Bushy??
Bezuidenhout pulled a pile of files closer with an air of getting to the important stuff at last. ?I don?t know.? He pulled them one by one off the pile. ?The Enver Davids rape,? he said. ?Strongest possibility so far. The baby?s parents live in the informal settlement on the corner of Vanguard and Ridgeway. Residents call it Biko City; municipality doesn?t call it anything. Father is unemployed, one of those men who stand on Durban Road in the morning and raise their hands if the builders come to pick up cheap labor. The mother works at a paper recycling plant in Stikland. They buy old cardboard boxes and turn them into toilet paper. Dawn soft. What the ?dawn? has to do with ?soft? who the fuck knows, but then I?m just a policeman. Anyway, they say they were together in their shack in Biko City the night of Davids?s murder. But the father says, and I quote, ?good riddance? about Davids?s death. He says if he had known where to find the bastard, he would have stabbed him himself. But he says it wasn?t him and he doesn?t own an assegai. Their neighbors say they know nothing about that night. Saw nothing, heard nothing.?
?Hmm,? said Griessel.
Bezuidenhout took another file off the heap. ?Here?s a list of all the children that were molested by Pretorius. Eleven. Can you believe it! Eleven that we know of. I have started phoning. Most of the parents are in the Bellville area. I?ll start with them tomorrow. It will be a long day. I?ll get the names onto the database too.?
?Use the uniform guys, Bushy.?
?Benny, I don?t want to be funny, but I prefer to talk to them myself. The uniforms are very green.?
