Thirteen Hours

out the window.

This morning Alexa Barnard had offered him a cigarette and he had said no thank you. 'An alcoholic that doesn't smoke?' she had asked. He had said he was trying to cut down because his AA sponsor was a doctor.

Then she said get another sponsor.

He liked her.

He should never have given her the alcohol.

And then he remembered that he wanted to atone for his mistake. He felt in his pocket while moving one car-length forward, found the phone and pressed the keys with his thumb.

It rang for a long time, as usual.

'Benny!' said Doc Barkhuizen, always bloody upbeat. 'Are you persevering?'

'Doc, you ever heard of the famous singer, Xandra Barnard?'

'They're taking a lot of interest in a house here,' said Barry over the cell phone. He drove slowly down Upper Orange in his beat- up red Toyota single-cab.

'What sort of interest?'

'There's a thousand uniformed Constables on the pavement, and this fat woman detective standing in the garden with a geriatric guy.'

'So find out what it's about.'

Barry looked at the houses in the street. On the right, a hundred metres down and opposite the Victorian house was a possibility. A long tar driveway to a single garage. 'Yeah...' He saw the uniforms watching him. 'Maybe. But not right now, there are too many eyes. Let me give it ten minutes or so ...'

11:03-12:00

Chapter 21

The hissing gas lamp that stood on the mixer bench threw an absurd shadow of Melinda Geyser onto the opposite wall. She stood with her face only centimetres from the glass, the recording booths behind her shaded in gloom. Dekker leaned forward in a leather chair on wheels, his elbows on his knees, because the leather back creaked loudly when he leaned back. He was perspiring. Without air conditioning it was getting hotter.

'Sorry about the misunderstanding,' she said, folding her arms under her breasts. Her figure was not without its attractions - the green blouse, jeans with white leather belt and big silver buckle, white pumps with wedge cork heels. But it bothered him, it wasn't what he expected from a gospel artist, the clothes were just that little bit too tight. They made him think of the kind of women who were most blatantly interested in him - late thirties, early forties, looks just starting to fade, and wanting to make the most of the last years of their sensual prime.

Maybe that was just how musicians were. 'Maybe I overreacted,' he said, and the sincerity in his voice was a surprise to him.

'Do you know what the difference is between life and making a CD?' she asked. She kept staring at the glass. He wondered if she was watching her own reflection.

'No,' said Dekker.

'The difference is that in life there is only one take.'

Was she about to lecture him?

'Adam had never asked me to come on my own before .Yesterday morning he phoned to say he had to see me. Those were his words, as though he had no choice. As though I was in trouble. 'I have to see you. Just you.' Like a headmaster sending for a naughty child.'

Then she moved, unfolding her arms, and turning to face Dekker. She took two steps and sat down on a two-seater leather couch opposite him, with her right arm on the armrest and the left on the cushions. She looked him in the eye and said: 'If you have done things in your life that might catch up with you, then you don't argue. You lie to your beloved husband, Mr Dekker, and you go to Adam Barnard's office and ask him what is going on.'

Mister. Now I'm a Mister.

The usually jovial Adam Barnard was serious, she said. Melinda sat dead still while she talked, not moving her hands or body, as if she was on thin ice, over deep waters. There was a determination in her voice.

Barnard had pushed a slim DVD case across his desk to her, the rewritable kind with the manufacturer's logo visible through the transparent plastic. She had looked at him, questioning. He had said nothing. She'd opened it. Inside someone had written on the white surface of the DVD in permanent ink, Melinda 1987. She had known right away what it was.

She took a deep breath, looked to the right at the glass, as if to see herself one last time.

'You need to know about my background, Mr Dekker. We live in a strange world, in a society that has to label things to accommodate them.' Her use of language surprised him, more sophisticated than he had expected.

'But the process is neither logical nor fair. If you are a person who by nature struggles to conform, you're called a rebel when you're young. Later you're called other things. I was a so-called rebel. At school I was ... disobedient. I wanted to do everything my way. I was inquisitive. About everything. I had a craving for excitement, for the things a good little Afrikaans girl was not supposed to do. For many years I picked men who represented a certain amount of risk. It was instinctive, not conscious. Sometimes I wonder if it would have turned out differently if that had been my only weakness. But it isn't. From an early age I had a need for recognition. An affirmation that I am not ordinary. I wanted to stand out from the crowd. It's not necessarily a search for fame, just a need for attention, I think. In the end it is this combination that makes me who I am.'

She was not stupid, he thought. She was a woman who could easily deceive people. 'I was never terribly pretty. Not that I'm ugly, I'm grateful for that. If I use what I have I can attract attention, but I don't take men's breath away. I knew I was smart enough to study, but there is no degree in what I wanted to do. All I had left to me was my voice. And a stage personality, but that I only discovered later. Then I crossed paths with Danny Vlok. He can play anything from a violin to a trumpet. He had a music shop in the city, in Bloemfontein, and a four-piece band for weddings and parties. I saw his ad for a singer in the Volksblad's Classifieds. Danny dreamed of being a rock star. He tried to look like one. I thought it was cool then, and he was ten years older than me. Worldly wise. He tried to live like a rocker too. Drink and dagga. The problem was that Danny could only sing other people's music. His own was ... not good. I went for an audition with his band and afterwards we went to his flat in Park Road and had a zol and then sex. Two months later we got married in the magistrate's court. Four years later we were divorced.'

She was using the story to punish herself, thought Dekker. It was her penance, this exposure. But she stopped and looked around. 'There's usually some water here. It's hot...'

'I'll ask Natasha,' he said and got to his feet. When he went out of the door he saw Josh down the passage, looking restless and worried.

'Are you finished?'

'Not yet, Mr Geyser.'

The big man nodded and went back into the conference room.

Rachel Anderson heard the voices further off, but not the words. They went on for so long that she grew increasingly convinced that there were no tracks leading to her. The tension dissipated slowly from her body; her heartbeat steadied.

Until she heard the click-clack of a woman's shoes, right up close to her, just two or three steps away.

'OK. Thank you,' said the same black woman as earlier.

'I hope you find her,' said the man's voice.

'She can't be far. We will go and search the park.'