were.
Vusi came to his rescue. 'I tried to check if there was anything in her shorts pockets. For ID. There isn't anything. We're just waiting for the pathologist now.'
A bird twittered shrilly in the trees. Two pigeons landed near them and began peck-pecking. Griessel looked around him. There was one vehicle in the church grounds, a white Toyota Microbus standing on the south side against a two-metre brick wall. 'Adventure' was spelled in big red letters along the side of the vehicle.
Ndabeni followed his gaze. 'They probably park here for security,' and he indicated the high wall and locked gates. 'I think they have an office down in Long Street.'
'Could be.' Long Street was the hub of backpacker tourism in the Cape - young people, students from Europe, Australia and America looking for cheap lodgings and adventure.
Griessel squatted down beside the body again, but this time so that her face was turned away from him. He did not want to look at the dreadful wound, or her delicate features.
Please, don't let her be a foreign kid, he thought.
Things would really get out of hand then.
Chapter 2
She ran over Kloofnek Road and stopped for a second, indecisive. She wanted to rest, she wanted to catch her breath and try to control her terror. She had to decide: right, away from the city, where the road sign said 'Camps Bay' and whatever lay that side of the mountain, or left, more or less back the way she had come. Her instinct was to go right, away, further from her pursuers, from the terrible events of the night.
But that was what they would expect, and it would take her deeper into the unknown, further away from Erin. She turned left without further thought, her running shoes loud on the tarred downhill gradient. She kept to the left of the double lane road for 400 metres and then swung right, scrambled down a stony slope, over a bit of veld to the normality of Higgo Road, a residential area high against the mountain, with large, expensive homes in dense gardens behind high walls. Hope flared that here she would find someone to help her, someone to offer shelter and protection.
All the gates were locked. Every house was a fort, the streets deserted this early in the morning. The road wound steeply up the mountain and her legs just wouldn't, couldn't work any more. She saw the open gate of the house to her right and her whole being ached for rest. She glanced over her shoulder and saw nobody. She ducked through the gateway. There was a short steep driveway, a garage and car port. To the right there were dense shrubs against the high wall, to the left was the house behind high metal railings and a locked gate. She crept deep into the shrubbery, right up to the plastered wall, to where she couldn't be seen from the street.
She dropped to her knees, the backpack against the wall. Her head drooped in utter weariness, her eyes closed. Then she slid down further until she was seated flat on the ground. She knew the damp in the bricks and the decaying leaf mould would stain her blue denim shorts, but she didn't care. She just wanted to rest.
The scene imprinted on her brain more than six hours ago suddenly played unbidden through her mind. Her body trembled with shock and her eyes flew open. She dared not think of that now. It was too ... just too much. Through the curtain of dark green foliage and big bright red flowers she could see a car in the car port. She focused on that. It had an unusual shape, sleek and elegant and not new. What make was it? She tried to distract herself from the terror in her head with this thought. Her breathing calmed, but not her heart. Exhaustion was a great weight pressing on her, but she resisted; it was a luxury she could not afford.
At 06:27 she heard running steps in the street: more than one person, from the same direction she had come, and her heart raced again.
She heard them calling to each other in the street, in a language she did not understand. The footsteps slowed, went quiet. She shifted slightly forward, looking for a gap in the foliage, and stared at the open gate. One of them was standing there, barely visible, the pieces of the mosaic showing he was black.
She kept dead still.
The mosaic moved. He walked in through the gate, silent on his rubber soles. She knew he would look for hiding places, the house, the car in the car port.
The vague shape halved. Was he bending down? To look under the car?
The pieces of him doubled, the outline enlarged. He was approaching. Could he see her, right at the back?
'Hey!'
She was shocked by the voice, a hammer blow to her chest. She could not tell if she moved in that second.
The dark figure moved away, but without haste.
'What do you want?' The voice came from the house, up above. Someone was talking to the black man.
'Nothing.'
'Get the fuck off my property.'
No answer. He stood still, then moved, slowly, reluctantly, until his broken shape disappeared through the leaves.
The two detectives searched the church grounds from the southern side. Vusi began at the front, along the Long Street border with the spiked baroque railings. Griessel began at the back, along the high brick wall. He walked slowly, one step at a time, his head down and eyes moving back and forth. He battled to concentrate, there was a sense of discomfort in him, an elusive feeling, vague and formless. He had to focus here now, on the bare ground, the grass tufts around the base of the trees, the stretches of tarred pathway. He bent every now and then to pick up something and hold it in his fingers - the top of a beer bottle, two rings from cold drink cans, a rusty metal washer, an empty white plastic bag.
He worked his way around behind the church, where the street noise was suddenly muted. He glanced up at the steeple. There was a cross at the top. How many times had he driven past and never really looked? The church building was lovely, an architectural style he could not name. The garden was well cared for, with big palms, pines and oleanders, planted who knows how many years ago? He went around behind the small office building, where the sounds of the street returned. In the northern corner of the grounds he stopped and stood looking up and down Long Street. This was still the old Cape here, the buildings semi-Victorian, most only two storeys high, some painted now in bright colours, probably to appeal to the young. What was this vague unease he felt in him? It had nothing to do with last night. Nor was it the other issue that he had been avoiding for two, three weeks - about Anna and moving back in and whether it would ever work.
Was it the mentoring? To be at the scene of a murder, able to look but not touch? He would find it hard, he knew that now.
Maybe he should just get something to eat.
He looked south, towards the Orange Street crossing. Just before seven on a Tuesday morning and the street was busy - cars, buses, taxis, scooters, pedestrians. The energetic bustle of mid-January, schools reopening, holidays over, forgotten. On the pavement the murder audience had grown to a small crowd. Two press photographers had also arrived, camera bags over shoulders, long lenses held like weapons in front of them. He knew one of them, a bar-room buddy from his drinking days who had worked for the
He saw a cyclist weaving skilfully through the traffic on a racing bike, those incredibly thin wheels, the rider in tight black shorts, vivid shirt, shoes, crash helmet, the fucker was even wearing gloves. His gaze followed the cycle to the Orange Street traffic lights, knowing that he never wanted to look that silly. He felt stupid enough with the piss-pot helmet on his head. He wouldn't even have worn it if he hadn't got it for free, with the bicycle.
Doc Barkhuizen, his sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous, had started the whole thing. Frustrated, Griessel had told Doc that the pull of the bottle was not diminishing. The first three months were long over, the so-called crisis period, and yet his desire was as great as it was on the first day. Doc had recited the 'one day at a time' rhyme, but Griessel said he needed more than that. Doc said 'You need a distraction, what do you do in the evenings?'
Evenings? Policemen had no 'evenings'. When he did get home early, wonder of wonders, he would write to
