Blue Sunday. Irma Venter
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popping up on every corner.
The street’s trees carry the wounds of the suburb’s progress – if you can call it progress. The jacarandas, always so dense, have been thinned out, disfigured, pruned to the bone.
I almost feel like turning back. I like old houses with wooden floors, big kitchens, fireplaces and pressed ceilings. And trees older than me. I don’t trust anyone who cuts down a tree or demolishes an old house.
Lightning flashes brightly above me, followed by a clap of thunder.
I look at my watch. I’m hungry. After the Midnight Club, I dropped Ranna at Sarah’s block of flats in Pretoria West. Surprisingly, the hacker wasn’t sitting at her computer. She was getting ready for a run before the rain came down. Ranna won’t join her – she’ll be counting down the minutes till I get back so that we can go through Martina’s stuff. And she’ll definitely raid Sarah’s fridge. How anyone can eat that much and stay thin, I have no idea.
I turn left, right, stop at a heavy black gate and security office as big as my first flat. Peer through the gate. The Stables Estate is big. I would never have guessed there’d be a security village hiding here amongst the embassies, businesses and houses.
The gate guard asks for my ID and a print of my right index finger, then he consults a list and phones to establish whether I’m an invited guest. What next? A blood sample?
I can’t believe I have to do an interview with Captain AJ Williams. Ranna burst out laughing when I told her, and then warned me to be careful.
I know to keep my distance from the persistent policewoman. She almost caught up with Ranna the last time. Captain Williams called me twice after that xenophobic attack on the church we covered for the newspaper in Pretoria. I still have no idea how she knew to pitch at that exact moment. She wanted to know whether Ranna Abramson had contacted me at all. Whether I knew where the woman was who’d murdered Tom Masterson, and all those other men around the world.
What would she do if I told her the truth? That Ranna and I killed Tom after he’d spent years hunting her down? That he was the one who’d killed all those men to make her look guilty?
Maybe it doesn’t even matter any more. There’s very little evidence left against Ranna, if any. We’ve taken care of that over the years. Her new identity is watertight. Francis Beekman even has her own birth certificate. Our only worry is that the police might have a DNA sample from her.
AJ knows that. Must know that.
Doesn’t mean she’s going to stop.
I drive slowly past houses that scream money. Every house in the Stables is individually designed and sits on an enormous plot. Some have boundary walls and others have open lawns. Few burglar bars, or none at all.
A young woman runs by with two Labradors, in a hurry to get inside before the rain comes. She probably left work early. Or doesn’t work at all. What would I know about how Pretoria’s elite live their lives?
A Mercedes-Benz minibus sweeps past, three young schoolchildren larking through the open windows. The young woman driving, an au pair maybe, shouts shrilly for them to keep quiet.
I drive past a big green park where karee and acacia trees wrestle the wind. I park the Land Rover on the grass in front of number 25, the house furthest from the main gate, and get out.
From here, the Van Zyls’ double-storey house looks like a church. Impressive cathedral windows above the front entrance, double wooden doors with leaded-glass windows down either side. There’s even a bit of a tower towards the back.
I look left. Yes, as Google Maps said: the house is in the corner of the estate, next to the ten-foot boundary walls topped with electric fencing. Would the intruders have come in over the wall?
The first raindrops plop down onto the warm tar. Lightning crashes so close by that I instinctively flinch.
I open the garden gate. There’s a five-foot wall around the property that gives the residents privacy. The three-car garage is at the front of the house, with only the front door and a part of the stoep visible from the street.
I run to the front door. A row of bay laurels hides something to the left. I stop and prick my ears. The patient, faraway thump of a pump tells me it’s a swimming pool. A classic red Merc with tinted windows is parked in front of the shrubs. Beside it is a big round fountain with a concrete fish spewing water over white lilies.
How did the car get here? There must be a gate I didn’t spot from the front. Probably on the other side of the garage.
I climb the stairs to the stoep and knock on the front door. Hurried footsteps. A young woman opens, slender with long, long legs in skinny jeans. Her shoes are covered with white shoe covers and she’s wearing latex gloves.
There’s a testy look in her eyes, accentuated by prominent red-framed spectacles. Her curly brown hair is loose around her shoulders. There’s a small mole just above her mouth à la Cindy Crawford, the supermodel who kept 1980s’ schoolboys like me awake at night.
“Hello. I’m Alex Derksen. I’m meeting Captain AJ Williams.”
The woman walks out onto the stoep. “Well, well. I’ll be damned.”
I stare at her, waiting for an explanation. Wonder briefly why the house has wheelchair access – a wide concrete ramp onto the stoep. Then I remember what I read about Katerien van Zyl’s younger sister, Annabel Kirkpatrick, in the newspapers.
The woman looks at me, frowning, as if she has no idea what to do with me.
“Captain Williams?” I ask again.
“You’re early.”
I know. Being early sometimes helps. It makes people hurry up, feel bad that they’re late, even when they’re not. Sometimes it makes them say things they shouldn’t.
And since when has it been bad manners to be early?
“Ten minutes early,” she says.
“Sorry?” I offer, reluctantly.
She looks past me at the rain and lightning. Sighs.
“Well then.” She motions towards the Mercedes. “Go and knock on the window. Captain Williams is waiting in the car.”
I pat my bush jacket’s pockets to make sure I have my notebook, recorder and pen, and then offer my hand in a way she can’t ignore. “Alex Derksen.”
She waves a gloved hand in the air. “Sergeant Faradien Josephs.”
Her frown sharpens. “Put those on before you come into the house.” She points at a box of shoe covers and gloves on the table behind me on the stoep. “You’re not messing up my crime scene.”
“Will do.”
I turn around, jog down the steps to the passenger side of the Merc. Knock on the misted-up window, ducking away from the rain that’s coming down harder now.
The door opens and I get in, sinking down into the light-brown leather seat. Thank goodness for big old cars with space for six-foot-two bodies and size-eleven boots.
The water drips from my shoes onto the black mat. I look at it guiltily and then at AJ Williams, who is staring grumpily at my wet jacket. It’s clear she adores her car, even though it must be more than thirty years old.
“Captain,” I greet her. “Nice to see you again.”
She puts her hands under her silky-smooth brown hair and takes out white iPod earphones.
“Don’t lie. Don’t ever lie. You’re just going to fuck up whatever working relationship we might have.” She takes my hand, pressing it too hard when another thunderclap hits.
In spite of the dusk of the rain and the car’s dark interior, I can see that one of her eyes is brown and the other blue. Both were brown last time. But then again, it was the middle of the night outside a church that protestors