The previous night in Van Hunks in Cape Town he had cracked under the strain. What he ought to have said was: 'I can see something is bothering you, Rachel. Do you want to talk about it?' But he had already downed too many beers for Dutch courage. He sat down beside her and like a complete idiot said: 'I don't know why you suddenly hate me, but I love you, Rachel.' He had gazed at her with big hungry puppy eyes in the crazy hope that she would say, 'I love you too, Ollie. I've loved you since that magical day in Zanzibar.'
But she hadn't.
He thought she hadn't heard him over the loud music, because she just sat there staring into the middle distance. Then she stood up, turned to him and kissed him on the forehead.
'Dear Ollie,' she said and walked away between the crush of people.
'That's why I came back here,' Sands said to Vusi.
'I'm not following you.'
'Because I knew the dorm would be empty. Because I didn't want anybody to see me cry.' He did not remove his glasses. The tears trickled under the edge of the frame and down his round, red cheeks.
Chapter 12
Rachel Anderson lay on her stomach behind the stacked pine logs, powerless and gutted.
Something pressed uncomfortably against her belly, but she did not move. She couldn't hold back the self-pity any longer; it overwhelmed and paralysed her. She did not cry; it was as though her tear ducts had dried up. Her breathing fast and shallow, mouth gasping, she stared at the grain of the sawn wood, but saw nothing.
Her thoughts had stalled, trapped by a lack of alternatives, the door to all escape routes slammed shut, except this single option, to lie in this shade, a gasping, helpless fish on dry land.
She couldn't hear the voices any more. They had walked uphill. Maybe they would see her footprints and follow them here. They would look at the unfinished garage and realise it offered a hiding place and then they would look behind the pine logs and one would grab her hair with an iron grip and slash open her throat. She didn't even think she would bleed, there was nothing left. Nothing. Not even the terror of that chunky blade; it did not release the flood of adrenaline in her guts any more.
Oh, to be home.
It was a vague longing that slowly overcame her - a ghostly vision emerging from the haze, the safe haven, her father's voice, far off and faint. 'Don't you worry, honey, just don't you worry.'
Oh, to be held by him, to curl up on his lap with her head under his chin and close her eyes. The safest place in the world.
Her breathing steadied and the image in her mind was clearer.
The idea took shape, instinctive and irrational, to get up and phone her father.
He would save her.
If there was a murder or armed robbery in his area at night, the SAPS members of Caledon Square had instructions to call the station commander at home. But the more mundane affairs of the previous night had to wait until he was at his desk in the morning and could scan the notes in the register from the charge office. The SC was a black Superintendent with twenty-five years' service to his name. He knew there was only one way to tackle this job, slowly and objectively. Otherwise the nature and extent of that list could undo you. So he ran his pen down the list with professional distance, over the domestic violence, public drunkenness, the theft of cell phones and cars, drug sales, disturbance of the peace, burglaries, assault, indecent exposure and various false alarms.
At first his pen slid over the Lion's Head incident on page seven of the register, but it hovered back. He read through it again more carefully. The reluctant woman who had seen a young girl on the mountain. Then he reached for the bulletin that lay to his left on the corner of the scarred wooden surface. A Constable had brought it in only minutes before. He had scanned it quickly. Now he gave it his full attention.
He saw the connection. At the bottom was Inspector Vusumuzi Ndabeni's name and phone number.
He picked up the phone.
Vusi was walking down Long Street towards the harbour, on his way to the Van Hunks nightclub, when his phone rang. He answered without stopping.
'Inspector Ndabeni.'
'Vusi, it's Goodwill,' said the Caledon Square SC in Xhosa. 'I think I have something for you.'
Benny Griessel stood with his colleagues in one of the examination rooms of the City Park Hospital Casualty Department. He had a strong sense of deja vu.
Space was limited, so they were quite an intimate little group behind the closed door. While Fransman Dekker talked with his habitual frown, Griessel observed the people around him: John Afrika, District Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, in full impressive uniform, his epaulettes weighed down with symbols of rank. Afrika was shorter than Dekker, but he had presence, an energy that made him the dominant force in the room. Beside Afrika was the fragile Tinkie Kellerman, her delicate features overshadowed by her huge eyes revealing how intimidated she was by this gathering. Then there was the broad- shouldered Dekker with his crew cut and angular face; serious, focused, voice deep and intense as he talked. They said he made women weak at the knees but Griessel couldn't see how. They said Dekker had a beautiful coloured wife in a senior position at Sanlam, and that's how he could afford to live in an expensive house somewhere on the Tygerberg. They also said that he sometimes played away from home.
And Cloete, beside him, the liaison officer with tobacco stains on his fingers and permanent shadows under his eyes. Cloete, with his endless patience and calm, the man in the middle, between the devil of the media and the deep blue of the police. How many times had he been through this, Griessel wondered, in this kind of emergency meeting, the one who had to make sure all the bases were covered, so that explanations higher up in the SAPS food chain would be consistent. The difference now was that he, too, like Cloete, was caught in a no-man's-land, his created by the mentorship that he didn't think was going to work.
Dekker concluded his explanation and Griessel drew an unobtrusive breath, preparing for the predictable conclusion.
'Are you sure?' Afrika asked and looked at Griessel.
'Absolutely, Commissioner,' he said. Everyone but Cloete nodded.
'So why is the
Tinkie merely nodded. She had heard everything by now.
'He was trouble from the start,' said Fransman Dekker. 'He gave the Constable trouble at the gate, insisted on coming in. It was a crime scene, sir, and I do things by the book.'
'Fair enough,' said John Afrika and dipped his head thoughtfully with a hand over his mouth. Then he looked up. 'The press ...' he looked at Cloete enquiringly.
'It's a major story,' said Cloete, on the defensive as usual, as if he was implicated in the blood lust of the media. 'Barnard is a celebrity of sorts ...'
'That's the problem,' said John Afrika, and thought some more.
When he looked up and focused on Dekker with an apologetic slant to his mouth, Griessel knew what was coming.
'Fransman, you're not going to like this ...'
'Commissioner, maybe ...' Griessel said, because he had been the one who had control taken away from him before, and he knew how it felt.
Afrika held up a hand. 'They will tear us apart, Benny, if Mouton puts the blame on us. You see, we were there, in her room . . .You know what the papers are like. Tomorrow they will say it's because we put inexperienced people on the case ...'
Dekker got it now. 'No, Commissioner ...' he said.
'Fransman, don't let us misunderstand each other; it happened on
'Protect?'
