Blue Sunday. Irma Venter
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I point at the bed again with the pretend body sleeping in it. “No one knows where Willem van Zyl is. That’s the bottom line.”
“What about the phones?” he asks again. “Are they really not helping you? Where was everyone on the morning of the 24th?”
I put my hands on my hips. “Don’t want to tell you. You already know more than you should. And I don’t want you to start meddling in the case.”
“Okay.” He gives the same warm smile from earlier. “Then tell me about the money. You said Lafras’s life was insured for R10 million and Katerien’s for R3 million. The newspapers say the wine farm was lost a long time ago. Lafras’s father gambled it away and Lafras inherited nothing. Katerien’s father died when she was little, and her mother recently died of a heart attack. Is your information correct?”
“Yes.”
Some of the facts were news even to us when the newspapers came out, but I don’t say that.
“Is there anything else, anything they didn’t write?”
“No,” I say, with the right amount of conviction.
I gesture towards the passage, tap on a door on the right. “Guest room.” Another door. “Bathroom. Nothing funny or unusual.”
We carry on. “And here’s the main bedroom.”
The door is open. It’s dark inside, the curtains are shut, just as they were that night. The bed is slept in, the duvet on the floor, the sheets bunched up on the mattress.
I switch on the light and keep my eyes trained on Alex, suddenly curious about what journalists see at crime scenes. “Tell me what you think.”
He snaps at the gloves around his wrists as though they’re starting to irritate him. Doesn’t say anything for a long time. Looks at the framed family photo above the king-size bed. One bedside table neat, the other one messy.
I know what he’s seeing: business books on the untidy side, love stories and Afrikaans and English literature on the other. Kate Atkinson, Breyten Breytenbach, Helene de Kock, Zadie Smith. The sheets are too dishevelled to distinguish whether one or two people slept here.
“His untidiness doesn’t bother her.” He finally decides to play along. “She compartmentalises it. As long as her own space remains neat and clean, it doesn’t matter. She controls what she can, and controls it well.”
Interesting observation.
“And?”
“They still shared a room.”
I nod, satisfied.
“So Katerien and Lafras still loved each other?” he asks.
“That’s what Annabel says.”
“No problems?”
“One or two. The usual.”
“But nothing that would make her want to murder him?”
“No. Unless she was able to hide it from everyone.”
He walks to the bed, looks at the tangled sheets. “Did they have sex, or was Katerien attacked? Or did you guys mess up the bed like this?”
“We didn’t find any DNA from any of the intruders in the bed or anywhere else up here.”
“Where was Katerien during the attack? Here, in bed?”
“We’re guessing upstairs somewhere.”
He stares at the photo above the bed. “Beautiful family.”
I nod in agreement. Willem looks like his mother. Dark-blonde hair, blue eyes. Open face, friendly and laughing. Cath is more like her dad, dark and brooding, but her skin is paler. They all look athletic and fit, as if they spend a lot of time outdoors.
“Come,” I say, showing Alex he must follow me.
We walk through the walk-in wardrobe, which unexpectedly opens on to a spacious study.
“This is Katerien’s work space. Annabel said she often sat here reading or listening to music.”
The room is full. There’s a small desk, a row of bookshelves, a neat pile of old LPs, alphabetically ordered, an expensive sound system and a large red leather chair with a blanket on the armrest. There’s an open book on the other armrest. A World History of Carpets and Tapestries. A yoga mat stands rolled up next to a bookshelf.
The only wall without shelves is full of holiday photographs of the family in exotic locations.
Alex goes over to study them. There’s a handful of beautiful underwater photos of Katerien. A young Lafras at the top of Mount Everest, on a mountain bike with the Giza pyramids in the background.
“If Cath was awake during the attack, do you think she might have fled here?” he asks.
“One would think she’d come here, yes.”
“But everything is so neat?”
“I know. It probably means she was caught unawares, sleeping.”
“Maybe the intruders were after the women, as you said.” He glances at me. “What would the motive be? Sex? Revenge?”
“Captain Mthembu couldn’t find a single person who didn’t like Katerien and Cath.”
He nods. “That would be too easy, right?”
He walks to the window, lifts the curtain. Unlike Cath and Willem’s rooms, this room does not look out onto the garage. Before us is a green lawn and some shrubs, with the swimming pool to the left. There’s a changing room hidden in the corner of the garden.
He drops the curtain. “I can’t believe no one called the police. Not even the neighbours.”
I decide to be honest. “Katerien’s phone shows she tried, but she had no luck on the 10111 line.” This fact makes my blood boil, but I know not to show it.
“The Stables’ security also received a call,” I continue, “but the phone cut off before anyone spoke. No one else called.” I hold up my hand. “But, please …”
“I know. Don’t write anything.”
“Correct.”
“Isn’t there an alarm? There’s a panic button in the passage.”
I feed him another crumb, watch him closely. “The account was six months in arrears, so it was cut off. Maybe Lafras thought a security alarm was unnecessary in a place like this.”
I can’t remember whether Annabel mentioned in the interviews she gave that the Van Zyls no longer had a domestic worker or a gardener. If Alex is curious about Lafras’s money matters, he’s not showing it.
“Did security at least come around after the call?” he asks.
“No.”
“And later, when they patrolled, didn’t they get suspicious when they saw the lights on?”
“The lights were off.”
“All of them?”
“Every last one, except for the lamp next to the television, which was on when we got here. People often do that when they go away.”
“And during the attack, didn’t the dog’s barking call attention? Didn’t Lafras shout? Didn’t anyone hear anything?”
“No. As I said, most of the estate’s residents were away.” I motion towards the photos on the wall. “And I wonder whether Lafras is the kind of man who would call for help. I’d imagined he’d fight until his last breath.”
4
Thursday, 8 February, 16:59
“So,