Devil's Peak

?Right.?

?Has Forensics been to the mother?s place??

He nodded. ?They got his prints there. And they drew the mother?s blood. For DNA comparison with the blood in the car. They say that way they can tell if it belongs to the kid.?

?I don?t think she?s alive, Tim.?

?I know.?

They stood in silence a moment. ?Can I go and see the mother??

?Sure. Are you going to use this guy as bait??

?He?s perfect. But I have to talk to the mother. And then we?ll have to talk to the sup, because Organized Crime is involved, and I can tell you now, they won?t like it.?

?Fuck them.?

Griessel chuckled. ?That?s what I was thinking too.?

When he drove through the city towards Tamboerskloof, his thoughts jumped between Boef Beukes and Timothy Ngubane and the children he saw in Long Street. At half-past eleven at night there were children everywhere he looked. Teenagers on a fucking Monday night at the top end of Long Street, at the clubs and restaurants and cafes. They stood on the pavements with glasses and cigarettes in their hands, small groups huddled beside parked cars. He wondered where their parents were. Whether they knew where their children were. He realized he did not know where his own children were. But surely Anna knew. If she were at home.

Beukes. Who had worked with him in the old days. Who had been a drinking partner. When his children were small and he was still whole. What the hell had happened? How had he progressed from drinks with the boys to a full-blown alcoholic?

He had started drinking when Murder and Robbery was still located in Bellville South. The President in Parow had been the watering hole, not because it was anything like a presidential hotel, but there would always be a policeman leaning on the long mahogany bar, no matter what time of the day you turned up there. Or that other place beyond Sanlam in Stikland that made those delicious pizzas, the Glockenberg or something, Lord, that was a lifetime ago. The Glocken

burg.

There was a Spur Steak Ranch there now, but in those days it had been a colossal tavern. One night, thoroughly drunk, he had climbed on the stage and told the band they must cut the crap and play real rock ?n? roll and give me that bass, do you know ?Blue Suede Shoes?? His colleagues at the big table had shouted and kicked up a row and clapped and the four-piece band had nervously said yes, they knew it, young Afrikaner fuckers with soft beards and long hair who played ?Smokie? and he put the bass around his neck and got behind the mike and sang ?One for the money . . .? and they were off and rocking, between the commotion from the floor and the orchestra?s relief that he was not hopeless. They were cooking; they thrashed that fuckin? song and people came in from the bar and from outside. And that Benny Griessel had run his fingers up and down the neck of the bass guitar and he laid down a fucking carpet of bass for the rock ?n? roll and when they had finished everybody screamed for more, more, more. So he let rip. Elvis songs. And he sweated and played and sang till who knows what time, and Anna came looking for him, he saw her at the back of the Glock. At first angry with arms folded tight, where was her husband, look at the time. But the music melted her too, she loosened up and her hips began to sway and she clapped too and screamed: ?Go, Benny, go!? because that was

her

Benny up there on the fucking stage,

her

Benny.

Lord, that was a lifetime ago. He hadn?t been an alky then, just a hard-drinking detective. Like the rest of them. Just like Matt Joubert and Boef Beukes and fat Sergeant Tony O?Grady, the whole damn lot of them. They drank hard because, hell, they worked hard, back then in the late eighties. Worked like slaves while the whole world shat on them. Necklace murders, old people murdered, gays murdered, gangs, armed robbery wherever you turned. It never stopped. And if you said you were a policeman, the room would fall silent and everyone looked at you as if you were lower than lobster crap, and that, they always said, was as low as you could go.

Then he had been as Tim Ngubane was now. At ease with himself. Lord, and he

could

work. Hard, yes. But clever. He nailed them, murderers and bank robbers and kidnappers. He was ruthless and enthusiastic. He was light of foot. That was the thing?he had danced when the others plodded. He was different. And he thought he would be like that always. But then all the shit had a way of overwhelming you.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the booze only got the dancers; look at Beukes and Joubert, they don?t drink like fish, they plod along still. And he? He was fucked. But there in the back of his mind the germ of an idea remained that he was better than them all, that he was the best fucking detective in the country, end of story.

Then he laughed at himself there behind the steering wheel, at the top end of Long Street near the swimming baths, because he was a wreck, a drunkard, a guy who had bought a bottle of Klippies an hour ago after nine days of sobriety and only half an hour ago had lost control with the Colombian because he was carrying so much shit around with him and here he was, thinking he was the be-all and end-all.

So what had happened? Between Boef Beukes and the Glockenburg and now? What the fuck happened? He had reached Belle Ombre Street and there was no parking so he pulled half onto the pavement.

Before he opened the door, he thought about the body tonight in Bishop Lavis. There had been no death screams in his head. No dreadful voices.

Why not? Where had they gone? Was it part of his drinking; was it the alcohol?

He paused a few moments longer and then pushed open the door, because he had no answers. The building had ten or twelve floors so he took the lift. There were two black policemen in civilian clothes at the door, each with a shotgun. Griessel asked who they were. One said they were from Organized Crime and that Boef Beukes had sent them, since she would be a target now.

?Did you know about Sangrenegra before this happened??

?You should talk to Beukes.?

He nodded and opened the door. A young woman jumped up in the sitting room and came over to him. ?Did you find her?? she asked, and he could hear the hysteria just below the surface. Behind her on the couch sat two