A moment’s silence. “No,” he said. “Go to the Coffee King at the Protea Hotel next to your building. I’ll phone there in five minutes.”
“Fffff – ” said Hope Beneke, biting back the word. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and stood up swiftly behind the desk.
“I’m coming with you,” said Nougat. “Where are we going?” They ran down the passage, out through the door, down the stairs, and out of the building, a fit Hope ahead, a puffing O’Grady a few yards behind her.
“Wait up,” he shouted. “They’ll think I’m trying to assault you.” But she kept on running, jerked open the door of the Coffee King, and stopped at the counter.
“I’m expecting a telephone call,” she said to the Taiwanese woman.
O’Grady steamed in, breathing hard.
“This is not a telephone booth,” said the Taiwanese woman.
“It’s police business, madam,” said O’Grady.
“Show me your identification.”
“Jeez, everybody watches television these days,” he said, still trying to catch his breath as he put his hand in his pocket.
The telephone next to her began ringing.
♦
“This man urgently needs hospitalization,” said the captain with the insignia of the SA Medical Services on his uniform.
“Not necessarily,” said Bester Brits.
“He’s dying.”
“He has to talk before he turns up his toes.”
The captain looked disbelievingly at the officer from Military Intelligence. “I…I thought the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had eradicated your kind.”
“I wasn’t always like this.”
“Colonel, if I don’t get him stabilized in intensive care, he’s never going to speak again. We have half an hour, maybe less.”
“Take him, then,” said Bester Brits, and walked out. He walked to a Port Jackson tree, leaned against the trunk. Hell, he wished he still smoked.
Oh-ri-un.
Orion.
“No, no, no,” Gary had said. Not Operation Orion?
What, then?
Oh-ri-unSh…
♦
Tiny Mpayipheli held the Rossi in both hands and stood next to the door while Van Heerden knocked, on the sixth floor of a block of flats in Observatory with a view over the mountain and Groote Schuur Hospital.
“Yes?” A male voice on the other side of the door.
“Parcel for W.A. Potgieter,” said Van Heerden, imitating the bored voice of a delivery man.
Silence.
“Get away from the door,” said Tiny.
Van Heerden stood aside, pushed his hand down inside his jacket, felt the butt of the Z88, knocking again with his other hand. “Halooo.”
The bullet holes splintered out in that nanosecond before they heard the automatic gunfire, the cheap door exploding in a rain of wooden chips. They dropped to their knees – he held the Z88 in his hand now, the other hand protectively over his eyes – then sudden silence.
“Shit,” said Tiny Mpayipheli.
They waited.
“You should have kept the Heckler and Koch.”
“Maybe.”
“And that?” Tiny nodded at the Z88.
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time,” said Tiny, and grinned.
“Is this the only door? The fire escape is in front, next to the lifts.”
“He can only get out through here.” Tiny pointed the Rossi’s barrel at the remains of the door.
“And they have the heavy artillery in there.”
“Yes, but you have your Z88.” Sarcasm.
“Anything in your Russian training for this situation?”
“Yes. I take my antitank missile out of my backpack and blow them to smithereens.”
“We need them alive.”
“Okay, scrap the missile. You’re ex-SAP. You ought to know what to do.”
“Gunfights were never my strong point.”
“I’ve heard.”
Voice from inside. “What do you want?”
“His ammunition is finished,” said Van Heerden.
“Is that a wish or a fact?”
“Do you want to bet?”
“One of your mother’s pictures that’s hanging on your wall.”
“What do I get if I’m right?”
“The Heckler and Koch.”
“Forget it.”
From inside: “What are you looking for?”
“I see you’re also hopeless with women. Your mother’s painting against a guaranteed formula for getting the attorney into bed.”
“That Russian training was thorough.”
“Come in with your hands up. Or we’ll blast you,” the voice yelled from inside the flat. From somewhere in the streets outside came the sound of the first sirens.
“He’s bluffing about the ‘us,’ ” said Tiny.
“You want to bet?”
“No.”
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” said Van Heerden.
Tiny sighed. “Fire away.”
“I was a policeman for a long time, but I never had the opportunity to do the kick-open-the-door-and-rush-in-shooting bit. And to do it for the first time scares me more than you can ever imagine.”
Voice inside: “We’re counting to ten.”
“All I need. A cowardly whitey.”
“We going in?”
“Yes,” said Tiny. “You first.”
“Fucking cowardly Xhosa,” said Zatopek van Heerden, and then he moved, rose from the crouch, shoulder first, and burst through the door.
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
52
He first used a red ribbon because it was there, in the prostitute’s hair: he picked her up in his Volkswagen Kombi in Sea Point and drove up to Signal Hill, where he strangled her after oral sex. He dumped her body, spread-eagled her arms and legs, put her in the middle of the road, his “signature,” his statement that she meant nothing to him, that he despised her and her kind. And when the media focused on the red ribbon, he bought a roll of it at Hymie Sachs in Goodwood and either strangled or decorated the next sixteen of his victims with a meter of red ribbon. He broke the ribbon-strangulation habit with the thirteenth and used his hands, but the red strip was still tied around the necks of his spread-eagled victims. His mocking message to Nagel and me. His mark of superiority. His relishing of the media spotlight.
He sent a letter to the Cape Times after the third murder, when they had described him as the Red Ribbon Murderer. “I AM NOT A MURDERER. I AM AN EXECUTIONUR,” he had written, bad spelling and all, in block letters. And then he became the Executioner, the criminal whom I hated more than anyone else in my whole career because he kept Nagel in the Cape and me away from Nonnie.
The hunt placed enormous tension on my partnership with Nagel. The pressure, because of media interest, was unbearable toward the end, when he so unexpectedly uttered his warning about his wife.
In all the previous cases that we had investigated, the competition between us had been amiable, always on the safe side of the border drawn by mutual respect. But it seemed as if Nagel used Red Ribbon as a measure of who deserved Nonnie. Like those head-butting rams that have to prove their genetic superiority in order to mate with the ewe, he tackled me in my one area of speciality, the serial killer, and questioned and refuted my every profile, every possible statement, every conceivable judgment, forecast, and trapping method.
With the first victim I had already forecast that he would kill again: all the signs were there.
“Bullshit,” said Nagel.
But with the second it was he who shared his “theory” with the media: “We have a serial killer here. Ever since the first murder I have had no doubt about it.”
As the death toll grew, as the media hysteria increased, as the pressure from the commanding officer and top structure became stronger, the friendship and professional partnership between Nagel and me crumbled. His criticism of me and his passing remarks became personal, disparaging, cutting. The one big difference between us, the fact that I could never get used to the heartlessness and the violence of murder scenes, the fact that I was constantly shocked and upset, evoked no sympathy, merely scorn, during the months when I vomited again or, with a pale face and shaking hands, tried not to. He deliberately emphasized his own icy approach, the detachment he had built up over the years. But now the gloves were off. “You don’t have the heart of a policeman,” he said, with so much disapproval that it cut me like a knife. It was only my conscience, my guilty, guilty conscience, and the quiet knowledge that Nonnie was mine, not his, that prevented an all-or-nothing confrontation, that allowed me to give way, even when I knew with absolute certainty that he was wrong about the methods needed to stop Red Ribbon.