Dead Before Dying

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”

He was annoyed by the decided tone of her voice. “Why not?”

“He refused medication.” She saw that the man opposite her didn't grasp what it meant. “We don’t think Adjutant Griessel wants to see anyone at present.”

“I don’t think you have the right to make decisions for him, nurse,” Joubert said aggressively.

The nurse stared at him through her pebble-lensed glasses as if she was weighing him up. Then she said softly: “Come along, then.”

They walked in a direction opposite to where Benny’s room was, she leading, he on her heels, pleased at having overcome bureaucracy.

They walked along silent passages and then up steps.

He heard the sounds long before they reached the door.

Griessel’s voice, vaguely recognizable. Cries of pain. The bellowing of an animal filled with a deadly fear. A plea for help, for mercy.

Joubert’s walk slowed. He wanted to stop. The nurse turned, took him by the sleeve of his jacket, and pulled him closer— her method of punishment.

“Come,” she said. He didn't look at her. He walked toward the door, the sounds resonating in his head.

There were six hospital beds. Only on one, in the corner, a figure lay. Joubert stopped in his tracks. In the semidarkness Griessel’s black hair was visible above the white of the sheets. Heavy leather straps stretched across him from one side of the bed to the other. Benny Griessel’s body jerked under the buckles, spasmodically, like convulsions before death. The noises emanated from deep within his bowels, regular and jolting with each exhalation of breath.

The nurse stood next to him. She said nothing. She merely looked at Joubert.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I made a mistake.”

Then he turned on his heel and walked quickly down the gray passage. The sounds of Benny Griessel’s tortured soul still sounded in his ears long after he had reached his car.

* * *

Margaret Wallace sat in the television room with her family. Her mother, her son, and her daughter were there. They were having their meal in front of the set because the silence and unease at the dinner table upset them all.

“In the news tonight,” the newscaster said, his face serious, and gave the headlines. Margaret didn't listen. The newscaster reported a new political crisis, a drought disaster in Northern Transvaal and then . . . “A third victim of the Cape’s Mauser murderer but the police are still baffled.”

Margaret looked up and saw the photo of Ferdy Ferreira. Then the newsreader supplied the rest of the events.

Didn't she know that face?

“You want me to switch it off, Maggie?” her mother asked.

Margaret shook her head. She looked at the screen while shots were being shown about politics and agriculture but searched her mind for a file that would supply a connection between man and place.

“In what seems to be developing into a major serial killer scare, the Cape’s Mauser murderer struck for the third time this morning. The victim was fifty-four-year-old Mr. Ferdy Ferreira of Melkbosstrand. Police say the antique murder weapon, a hundred-year-old Mauser Broomhandle pistol, is the only connection between this murder and the deaths of businessman James Wallace and jewelry designer Drew Wilson, who both died from close-range gunshot wounds during the past ten days.”

While the newsreader uttered the words, the visuals that the cameraman had shot in the dunes appeared— the camera moving over the beach, ending in the patch of blood that had soaked into the sand.

Margaret looked away because it still reminded her . . .

Then she heard a voice she knew and looked up again. Captain Mat Joubert’s face filled the screen. His hair was still too long and somewhat untidy. His shoulders sagged as if bowed down by an invisible weight. His tie was too thin. His English accent was acceptable.

“The only connection seems to be the murder weapon. We have no reason to believe that the victims knew one another,” the big policeman said. At the bottom of the screen the captain read CAPT M.A.T. JOUBERT-MURDER AND ROBBERY SQUAD.

The reporter’s face appeared. “But Mr. Ferreira and his two dogs died of gunshot wounds made with a smaller caliber?”

“Yes,” Mat Joubert replied. “We believe the murderer carries a small-caliber firearm as backup, because the Mauser seems to have been fired first but it did not prove to be fatal.”

“Captain, do you think the Mauser murderer will strike again?”

“It’s impossible to say,” said Joubert and he looked uncomfortable.

Then the photo of Ferdy Ferreira appeared on the screen with two telephone numbers next to it. The newscaster said: “Anyone with information that could assist the police in their investigation, can call . . .”

Margaret stared at the picture of Ferdy Ferreira. She knew she had seen him. But where? How?

Should she phone the detective?

No, not until she remembered.

* * *

On the thirteenth floor of an apartment building in Sea Point a thirty-two-year-old woman sat in front of the television.

Her name was Carina Oberholzer. Since the visuals of the Mauser murderer she had seen nothing else that was showing on the screen. She rocked back and forth in the armchair, ceaselessly, a human metronome. Her lips murmured one word, over and over again: “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord . . .”

Carina Oberholzer was reliving a piece of her past. The images she recalled would take her life before the night was over.

* * *

The forty-six-year-old man was watching the news bulletin with his beautiful wife. His name was Oliver Nienaber. His four sons, the eldest finishing up secondary school, the youngest in fourth grade, were somewhere in the large house, busy with their own affairs. Oliver Nienaber had spent the past three weeks in Pretoria. He too had been very busy. He hadn't read the newspapers. The news visuals of the Mauser murder were like a hammer blow to his chest. But he stayed calm so that his wife wouldn't notice.

He looked for solutions, weighed the implications, recalled incidents. Oliver Nienaber was intelligent. He could think fast even when fear gripped him like an evil spirit. That was why the man had made such a success of his calling.

He got up after the weather report. “I still have some work to do,” he said.

His wife looked up from her needlework and smiled at him. He saw the flawlessness of her blond beauty and wondered if he was going to lose her. If he was going to lose everything. If he was going to lose his life.

“Don’t work too late, darling,” she said.

He walked to his study, a large room. Against the walls hung the photographs, the certificates. His rise. His triumph. He opened his slender attaché case of real gray buffalo hide and took out a thin black notebook and a fountain pen. He made a list of names.

Mac McDonald, Carina Oberholzer, Jacques Coetzee.

Then he skipped a few lines and wrote the name

Hester Clarke

. He put the notebook on his desk and reached for the new Cape telephone guide next to the telephone. He paged to M. His finger moved quickly down the columns. It stopped at MacDonald Fisheries. He underlined the number, then wrote it down. Then he paged to O, looked for Carina Oberholzer’s number, and wrote that down. He had trouble with Jacques Coetzee’s number because there were a great many J. Coetzees and he didn't know the precise address. At Hester Clarke’s name he left only a question mark. Then he took a bunch of keys out of the attaché case, walked to a corner in the study, unlocked the safe, and took out the big Star 9 mm pistol. He checked the safety catch and put the pistol, the notebook, and the pen into the case.