Lt. Fred Lange was a veteran with twenty-six years in the police. When he’d started out, the unit he’d worked for had been called Murder and Robbery. It had become the Unit for Serious and Violent Crime when the new rulers took over; they’d also introduced an experiment with demilitarised ranks, which was quickly aborted. Fred hated that: lieutenant, that was what he was, not inspector. Not a meat inspector, building inspector, livestock inspector or shithouse inspector. Lieutenant. The word commanded respect. And a promotion could be in the cards. He like the sound of Captain Fred Lange. He also liked the sounds coming out of the commissioner’s office: war had been declared against criminals, shoot first, ask questions later. It was a language Fred understood.

      At the corner café in Brixton, Fred stopped at the Coca-Cola signboard: Frank’s Deli. He liked that corner café. He liked all cafés not yet supplanted by supermarkets where nobody knew your name. He’d left the exhumation site in Dorado Park late, and he’d promised his wife he’d buy bread and milk on his way home.

      All the damn faffing around Ella Neser. What made her so special? If she wanted to be a homicide detective, she’d have to grow some hair on her chest. Not much of a chest though; little oranges, tucked under Col. Sauls’s big armpit.

      He wouldn’t be surprised if she was recommended for a promotion, as if she’d solved the Nightstalker case. She hadn’t: the killer was still on the loose. God knew where, but in the meantime she was the new poster girl. As if Abel Lotz was already in C-Max, keys thrown away, docket buried in the archives.

      The radio was crackling as he got back into the car. Constable Stallie Stalmeester from Dispatch. Stallie was a good boy. Knew his place, respected the old hands. A body in Hillbrow, Stallie said, his voice giving nothing away. A patrol vehicle was already at the scene, didn’t appear to be natural causes.

      Natural causes in that hellhole? C’mon, Stallie.

      Fred said he was in Brixton, would proceed to the scene. But first he’d swing by his house with the bread and milk. Ans was used to eating a lonely TV supper from a tray on her lap. She’d understand. A good woman, she’d put up with his moods and irregular working hours for far too long, yet she stayed. Now that the kids had left, there were only the two of them. If he made captain, he’d take her to fancy restaurants more often – not just on their wedding anniversary or her birthday.

      He turned right into Catherine and spotted the two patrol vehicles, blue lights flashing, saw the crowd that had gathered at the corner of Soper. The body might have been mistaken for part of the pavement debris. An old mattress, a chair with no seat and only two legs, boxes, part of an old hotplate, red KFC cartons with chicken bones covered with ants, plastic bags, beer bottles – the wreckage of Hillbrow’s putrid streets.

      Pushing his hands into latex gloves, Fred crouched next to the body, noticed the wound on the forehead. Fred was the kind of cop who carried a pocketknife. He felt around in his pocket and took out the Rodgers, the blade only four centimetres long but razor-sharp and worn thin on the fine carborundum whetstone in his garage. He used the knife to carve biltong and clean his nails. Now he inserted the blade under the sleeve of the dead man’s shirt and lifted it to inspect the gold bracelet round the wrist.

      Fred was hungry. His dinner of lamb chops, roast potatoes and sweet pumpkin would be waiting in the warming oven at home. And Ans in front of the TV. She refused to go to bed when he worked late. Said getting into bed alone was bad karma for a marriage. Karma, for crying out loud! She watched too much TV.

      Ella Neser would also be alone right now. He wondered what her favourite TV programme was. Young and fit, he could imagine her karma, hers and Zack’s … before that unfortunate thing happened to the rugby player. Karma gone wrong. Miss Prissy with her willowy figure and uptight little arse. Never joining the rest of the squad for a couple of beers to celebrate the end of a difficult case. Which was fine, actually, because Ella Neser wasn’t ready for a beer with the boys. Her case was still unsolved. The suspect had been identified, but not apprehended.

      As Fred had told Ans a few nights ago in front of the TV, Ella Neser had a lesson or two to learn. Could Ella Neser determine cause of death and motive for murder at a glance, as she crouched beside a body on a Hillbrow pavement? No. But she was pampered and put on sick leave, sent for trauma counselling. Not how the old hands had to deal with their woes: you just got up, shook out the dust, washed off the blood, took an aspirin, and rushed out for the next criminal. Old-fashioned gumshoes pounded the pavements – without the need for intuition or sixth sense or the hocus pocus of the shrinks.

      Trauma counselling. Blah!

      * * *

      Though she’d been expecting it – everyone had been expecting it – it was still a shock. When you exhume a coffin and open the lid, you expect to see human remains. It’s a normal expectation. It’s the reason a coffin is placed in a grave: to lay the deceased to rest. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that sort of thing.

      “Come have a look,” invited Dr Koster. “Just as we thought.”

      Ella stepped closer to inspect the contents of the mouldy pine coffin: chunks of moss-clad concrete, rusty scrap metal, two coils and the connecting rod of an old car, a few lengths of metal pipe, a brass garden tap. All embedded in a layer of soil, presumably to suppress the noise so there’d be no rattling when the coffin was transported or lowered into the grave.

      Dr Koster took photos, the coffin now an addendum to his forensic report on Dorcas Lotz and to Ella’s murder docket. New charges would be added: it was an offence to remove a body without a permit, to commit fraud with the contents of a coffin.

      “Do you want to keep all this as evidence?” asked Dr Koster.

      Silas looked at Ella. “What do you think?”