“Why do you say that?” Where was Van Heerden?
“Because they like killing. That’s what you have to understand.”
She was speechless for a moment.
“We’re…ahhh…are you prepared to come and talk? Here…”
“No.”
“We’ll be very discreet, sir.”
“No,” said the male voice. “Bushy…I don’t want him to find me.”
“Where do we find Schlebusch, sir?”
“It seems you don’t understand. He’ll find you. And I don’t want to be in the way.”
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
30
Life, people, events, are complex, multilayered, multifaceted, with innumerable nuances.
In contrast with the poverty of my words. Even more: the propaganda value of every sentence I offer, the misdirection of everything I omit.
My only experience as a writer is in academia, and I am struggling to keep that out of these chronicles. The words seem heavy, the style forced, unyielding. But you will have to bear with me. It is the best I can do.
I must try to explain who I was in the year 1991, in the weeks when I waited for replies to my letters to the officers commanding Murder and Robbery Units across the country.
Because eventually the purpose of this story is to measure, to compare, to weigh: who I was, what the potential was of the man who, at thirty-one, obsessively started an academic murder investigation. To guess and to speculate about what might have been.
Because it was a time of possibilities. If I think back on all the aspects of my existence, it is astonishing to know that there were so many tiny details that could have influenced the course of events, that could have made the road fork.
I was on the edge of a conventional future, a hairbreadth away from it. If I hadn’t read those two articles, the Marnewick dossier would have held no interest and I might have followed another, more predictable road. Wendy and I might have been married today, Professor and Mrs. Z. van Heerden of Waterkloof Ridge, middle-aged and unhappy, the parents of two or three children being systematically poisoned by the frustration of an unfulfilled marriage.
Because, despite all I’ve said about Wendy Brice up to now, I wasn’t wholly unwilling to follow the conventional route.
You see, we were, for all practical purposes, a couple in Pretoria. Our circle of friends was defined – and they defined us. We were Zet and Wendy, we entertained and were entertained, we had our routine, our moments of flickering happiness, our togetherness. We were each other’s frame of reference, and we fitted into the neat structure of our social milieu.
I’m not about to deviate and philosophize about the ties that bind, but there is substantial pressure in a circle of friends who group you together. Individuality, personal goals, are lost in the collective name: Zet-and-Wendy. The circumstances conspire to force you to conform, to take your place in the larger destiny of humankind: to procreate, to let the genes live on, to play a conservative role. Even if I knew she wasn’t the One.
We were popular. We were in, an item, and we could sparkle. I would like to think we could make heads turn, the athletic dark-haired man and the pretty little blond. It all helped to establish our path, to define our route.
I didn’t protest too much. I didn’t visualize a clear alternative future without her. I was prepared to give in eventually, like a sacrificial lamb, to marry, have children, to follow my academic career to its logical conclusion, to play golf, cut grass, take my son to watch rugby, and possibly own a Mercedes and a swimming pool.
I didn’t yearn for it, but I didn’t fight it.
I was on the border of the conventional. Close.
Who was I then?
Above all, I believed in myself – and because of that, in others. I don’t think I ever sat down to philosophize about the conflict between good and evil in me and in others. Because I didn’t see myself as evil, the belief colored the lenses through which I saw everything. Evil was the deviation of a minority that I could study through the safety glass of academe. A phenomenon like a genetic aberration, scattered percentage-wise through the population, according to the natural statistics of evolution. And my task, as criminal psychologist, as criminologist and police scientist, was to read the figures and make deductions, to develop procedures, and to institute them, assisting those who had to execute them.
I was on the side of the good. Therefore I was good.
That’s who I was.
Despite the obsession with the Marnewick case. Perhaps because of my obsession.
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
31
They sat in Hope Beneke’s office and he felt the adrenaline, the blood of the chase coursing through him, and for a moment he remembered…
“Jeez, Van Heerden, I still can’t believe you’ve turned out to be such a complete asshole. How could you stab an ex-colleague in the back and manage to disgrace the Force at the same time? All you had to do was to give me a call. Just a single call.”
He held up his hands. He was calm, his head jumping from the telephone call to Military Intelligence, to O’Grady and De Wit and Joubert, his body primed for action, but he had to focus here first. “Okay, Nougat, I know where you’re coming from and you have my sympathy…”
O’Grady’s face twisted in disgust and he began to say something, but Van Heerden went on.
“But just think of the facts for a moment. I had one more clue than you: the false ID. That’s all. The rest is pure conjecture and it’s pretty flimsy. The thing about the dollars was a huge leap of faith and it’s only because I looked at the way the guy set himself up in business with cash, in the early eighties. I have no corroborating evidence. So tell me, do you think your superior officers” – he pointed at De Wit and Joubert – “would have allowed you to go to the newspapers on the strength of that?”
“It’s the fucking principle, Van Heerden.”
“And the damage you did to the reputation of the SAPS, Van Heerden.”
“I’m sorry about that, Col – er…Superintendent, but it was the price I had to pay for the publicity.”
“Sold us down the river for a lousy newspaper story.”
“Bullshit, Nougat. You guys get worse publicity every day of the week because the media see you as a political tool to get at the ANC. Are you going to blame me for that as well?”
“You deliberately withheld information that we could use in the investigation of a murder, Van Heerden.”
“I’m more than prepared to share, Superintendent. But the time isn’t ripe, for obvious reasons.”
“You’re full of shit, Van Heerden.”
“Seventy-six,” said Mat Joubert.
They all stared at him.
“You stopped the Military Intelligence jokers dead in their tracks with ‘seventy-six,’ Van Heerden. What did it mean?”
He should have known Joubert wouldn’t miss a trick.
“First,” he said slowly and in a measured tone, “we’re going to reach an agreement about the sharing of information.”
O’Grady gave a scornful laugh. “Jesus, just listen to him.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate,” said Bart de Wit, his voice slightly higher, slightly more nasal.
“Let’s listen to what he suggests,” said Mat Joubert.
“But we can’t trust the motherfucker.”
“Inspector, we’ve spoken about your language before,” said De Wit.
O’Grady blew out his breath loudly. It obviously wasn’t a new topic.
“Superintendent, this is the way I see the situation,” said Van Heerden. “You have the law on your side and you can force me to reveal everything.”