Thirteen Hours

'Fax them a photo, Vusi. They might be able to identify her.'

'Great idea.'

Griessel's cell phone rang shrilly in his pocket. He took it out and answered.

'Griessel.'

'Benny, it's Mavis. An Inspector Fransman Dekker called. He said to tell you he has a murder at Forty-seven Brownlow Street in Tamboerskloof, if you want to mentor him.'

'If I want to?'

'That's what he said. Wound-up guy, bit of a windgat.'

'Thanks, Mavis. Forty-seven Brownlow?'

'That's right.'

'I'm on my way.' He ended the call and told Vusi, 'Another murder. Up in Tamboerskloof. Sorry, Vusi...'

'No problem. I'll call you when we find something.'

Griessel began to walk away. Ndabeni called after him: 'Benny .,.'

Griessel turned. Vusi came up to him. 'I just wanted to ask you ... I... uh ...

'Ask me, Vusi.'

'The pathologist... She ... Do you think .. .Would a coloured doctor go out with a darkie cop?'

It took him a few seconds to make the leap. 'Er ... you asking the wrong guy, Vusi... but yes, why not? A man can only try ...'

'Thanks, Benny.'

Griessel climbed over the wall. At the churchyard gate he saw a tall, sombre man unlocking it with an extremely worried frown. The priest had arrived, he thought, or did the Lutherans call their ministers something else?

Chapter 5

The traffic was impossible now. It took fifteen minutes just to get from Long Street to Buitengracht. They were bumper to bumper up Buitesingel's hill. He drained the dregs of the sweet coffee. It would last him until he could get something to eat. But his plan to quickly download Carla's email was stuffed. It would just have to wait until tonight. He had been offline for a week already with that damn laptop - he could wait a few more hours. Carla would understand - he'd had problems with the stupid machine from the start. How was he to know there were laptops without internal modems? He had bought his for a knock-down price at a police auction of unclaimed stolen goods. Once Carla left for London, he needed to know how she was - his Carla who needed to 'sort her head out overseas' before she decided what to do with the rest of her life.

So how did vacuuming floors in a hotel in London sort out your head?

It had cost him R500 to get the laptop connected to the Internet. He had to buy a damn modem and get an Internet service provider. Then he spent three hours on the phone with a computer guy getting the fucking connection to work and then Microsoft Outlook Express was a nightmare to configure. That took another hour on the phone to sort out before he could send an email to Carla saying:

Here I am, how are you? I miss you and worry about you. There was an article in the Burger that said South African kids in London drink a lot and cause trouble. Don't let anyone put pressure on you...

Writing this, he discovered that putting in the Afrikaans punctuation symbols was just about impossible on these computer programmes.

Dear Daddy

I have a job at the Gloucester Terrace Hotel near Marble Arch. It is a lovely part of London, near Hyde Park. I'm a cleaner. I work from ten in the morning to ten at night, six days a week, Mondays off. I don't know how long I will be able to do this, it's not very pleasant and the pay's not much, but at least it's something. The other girls are all Polish. The first thing they said when I told them I was South African was 'but you're white'.

Daddy, you know I will never drink...

When he read those words they burned right through him. A sharp reminder of the damage he had caused. Carla would never drink because her father was an alcoholic who had fucked up his whole family. He might have been sober for one hundred and fifty-six days, but he could never erase the past.

He hadn't known how to respond, his words dried up by his insensitive blunder. It took two days before he answered her, told her about his bicycle and his transfer to the Provincial Task Force. She encouraged him:

It's nice to know what you're doing, Daddy. Much more interesting things than I am. I work and sleep and eat. At least I was at Buckingham Palace on Monday...

Their correspondence found a level both were comfortable with: a rhythm of two emails a week, four or five simple paragraphs. He looked forward to them more and more - both the receiving and the sending. He mapped out replies in his head during the day - he must tell Carla this or that. The words gave his small life a certain weight.

But a week ago his Internet connection stopped working. Mysteriously, suddenly, the computer geek on the phone, who made him do things to the laptop that he hadn't known were possible, was also at a loss. 'You'll have to take it to your dealer,' was the final diagnosis. But he didn't have a fucking dealer: ultimately, it was stolen goods. On Friday afternoon after work he bumped into Charmaine Watson-Smith on the way to his door. Charmaine was deep in her seventies and lived at number 106. Everyone's grandma, with her grey hair in a bun. Devious, generous, full of the joys of living, she knew everyone in the block of flats, and their business.

'How's your daughter?' Charmaine asked.

He told her about his computer troubles.

'Oh, I might just know someone who can help.'

'Who?'

'Just give me a day or so.'

Yesterday, Monday evening at half past six he was ironing clothes in his kitchen when Bella knocked on his door.

'Aunty Charmaine said I should take a look at your PC.'

He had seen her before, a young woman in an unattractive chunky grey uniform who went home to her flat on the other side of the building every evening. She had short blonde hair, glasses and always looked tired at the end of the day, carrying a briefcase in her hand.

He had hardly recognised her at his door: she looked pretty. Only the briefcase alerted him, because she had it at her side.

'Oh ... come in.' He put down the iron.

'Bella van Breda. I'm from number sixty-four.' Just as uncomfortable as he was.

He shook her hand quickly. It was small and soft. 'Benny Griessel.' She was wearing jeans and a red blouse and red lipstick. Her eyes were shy behind the glasses, but from the first he was aware of her wide, full mouth.

'Aunty Charmaine is ...' He searched for the right word. '... busy.'

'I know. But she's great.' Bella had spotted the laptop that he kept in the open-plan kitchen, his only worktop. 'Is this it?'

'Oh ... yes.' He switched it on. 'My Internet connection won't ... it just stopped working. Do you know computers?'

They stood close together watching the screen as it got going.

'I'm a PC technician,' she answered and put her briefcase to one side. 'Oh.'

'I know, most people think it's a man's job.' 'No, no, I... um, anyone who understands computers ...' 'That's about all I understand. Can I .. . ?' She gestured at his machine.

'Please. He pulled up one of his bar stools for her. She sat down in front of the tin brain.

He realised she was slimmer than he had previously thought. Perhaps it was her two-piece uniform that had