Blue Sunday. Irma Venter
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It’s one of the old types, with the sharp point you hammer into the tin and then jiggle up and down to cut the metal. By now I know how to use it.
“Slowly, Maria! Don’t hurt yourself. We need to look after you.”
I hate being called Maria. I don’t know why he does it. It sounds like something from the Bible. And I hate this awful place. And I’m not in the mood for beans.
I want to cry, but I fight the tears. Crying doesn’t change anything.
I bend the loose metal flap open carefully and stick a teaspoon into the red tomato sauce. I need to eat. You never know what’ll happen tomorrow. That’s what Mom always said, before she …
I wipe my cheek, swallow the heartache pushing up into my throat. About Mom. About Dad. About dying. About everything. Then I give in, and cry. There’s no one here to see me anyway.
AJ
1
Thursday, 8 February, 14:00
“How are you getting along?” Reggie Ndlovu’s voice mirrors his personality: alert and aggressive.
“I’ve only had the case for one day, Colonel.”
I hold the cellphone between my shoulder and ear and pull the red Merc 300D out of the queue of cars waiting to go in through the Stables’ main gate. Park in the closest visitors’ parking spot and wind down the window for some cool afternoon air.
“Ja, you’re right.” He sighs. “It’s just too much… all these damn dogs.”
The media and the police commissioner are breathing down Ndlovu’s neck. Crime in wealthy suburbs is always special. On top of this, the victim is a well-known ex-adventurer whose ravishing blonde wife has an American passport. And the kids are just as bad. Beautiful, willowy, long-fringed advertisements for fashion houses you only find at Sandton City’s Diamond Walk – Gucci, Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton.
But I get that. Children are special. We must worry about them. They still have the opportunity to do something with their lives, something good and meaningful. Not like the rest of us who have already messed up too often.
“It’s been six weeks and we have nothing to show,” says Ndlovu. “Why did Sydney have to get sick now?”
The head of the Brooklyn police station’s detective services pronounces the word “sick” with unusual respect. He normally reserves such gentle tones for his family, or when one of his troops performs a miracle. Not that we necessarily agree about how often that happens.
But I feel the same, and speak about Sydney Mthembu with the same respect. What happened to him could have happened to any of us. At just after 8 pm on a Tuesday evening in early January, a drunken dickhead walked into Brooklyn police station looking for his wife, who’d fled there for protection. A middle-aged lawyer, the wife his third. He got badly hurt, but not before he’d emptied his shiny new Glock on every police official in the vicinity.
Three of our people died at the scene. The doctors say Sydney was lucky.
He fought it for a long time, but in the end, the black dog caught up to him.
And the media have no respect. They keep asking what happened to the Van Zyls – why, weeks later, the police still know nothing. Their concern for Captain Sydney Mthembu lasted 48 hours and one Sunday afternoon’s in-depth interview with his wife just after he’d been put on leave.
“You need to find them, Captain Williams,” says Ndlovu.
“Yes, Colonel.”
“You know Sergeant Josephs is going to help you, right? She did the crime scene with Sydney that week. She was part of the original task team.”
“Just her?”
“Forensics and hi-tech will give you priority. Find something concrete and I’ll give you more people.” A moment’s silence. “Unless you want the Hawks or the Province on your turf? They’ve been threatening to take over the dossier as it is.”
“No thanks.”
“If you don’t find anything in the next week, the case will probably become theirs anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Josephs has all the results from forensics. And hi-tech is done with the computers. And the phones.”
“And tox?”
“It came through this morning. Lafras van Zyl looks clean.”
Ndlovu must have pulled every possible string to get it done this quickly. Toxicology reports can take months, even years. And sometimes you get nothing, because the sample is old or contaminated.
“Captain Williams? There’s one other thing.”
I don’t like the sudden hesitation in his voice.
“Colonel?”
“We have to involve the media.”
This is a surprise. “The media? Why?”
“The American tabloids aren’t letting up, even though Katerien van Zyl was born here and is actually Afrikaans. They keep writing stories about the high crime statistics in South Africa. Apparently, the American ambassador confronted the commissioner about it at a formal dinner.” He swears softly. “The Afrikaans newspapers are just as bad. They’ve been hounding us non-stop. Saying we don’t care.”
“Lots of people are saying that. What makes them so special?”
He ignores my sarcasm. “Katerien van Zyl’s sister is unhappy too. And that’s putting it mildly.”
“What would you like me to do, Colonel?”
“You need to give an interview or two. Start with NewsNow. One journalist is handling the story for their newspapers and websites, including the Afrikaans ones. You’re meeting him at the Van Zyl house at 3 pm today. They’re sending us someone senior who knows what he’s doing. Apparently, he’s done lots of crime stories.”
“Why can’t the media guys do it?”
“Because I want something in return. Maybe someone out there has seen something that can help us. Keeping quiet hasn’t got us anywhere. Sydney kept the journalists at a distance, but we can no longer afford to say nothing. Use the media. But don’t let anyone quote you, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Are you sure, Colonel?”
“Do I sound uncertain, Captain?”
“No, no. I’ll do it. Who’s the journalist I need to speak to?”
“Alex Derksen.”
Derksen? I can’t believe it. The partner of that woman I was chasing just over a year ago. The serial killer Ranna Abramson’s boyfriend. That Alex?
“Colonel, do you remember him?” It was Ndlovu who first put me on Abramson’s trail.
I hear paper being shuffled at the other end of the line. Ndlovu has clearly moved on to something else already.
“We have to get the right information out there at the right time. Don’t give anything away, just tell him what happened. Ask for time, a bit of leeway, the right help. Leave a bone here and there. And do what you can to solve this case.”
ALEX
1
Thursday, 8 February, 14:45
Brooklyn is almost unrecognisable. When last was I in this suburb of Pretoria? I do the maths in my head. Eight years ago, when the Rolex gang got busted, the night I turned thirty.
Many of the old houses look different from how I remember them. They are more modern, renovated, with fashionable raw brick and rough paint in natural colours. There are newly laid gravel paths dotted