Dead Before Dying

Petersen turned it in his hands. “It’s an Escort, sister.”

She sat down again, lit another cigarette, shrugged her shoulders.

“So am I, bro’, so am I.”

“This is the Mauser murderer’s other pistol.”

“It’s not me, brother. I’m bad but I don’t kill.”

“You’ll have to come with us, sister.”

“I know my rights. I have an alibi.”

“You think the magistrate will take your word?”

“No, but he’ll probably take the word of a policeman.”

“Sister?”

“Ask Hatting, the desk sergeant at the Bay’s station, which evening of the week he gets his brown bread, brother. On the house. Sunset to sunup.”

* * *

Hatting was a middle-aged man, balding, which he tried to disguise by combing the few remaining hairs over the bald patch. He was in civvies because the station commander had called him in.

“I’m going to lose my pension,” Hatting said and he looked old and frightened and defenseless.

“It won’t go any further, Sergeant,” said Joubert and looked at Petersen, Snyman, and the Hout Bay OC. They all gave affirmative nods.

“My wife is deceased, Captain. It’s been twelve years.” No one said anything. Hatting rubbed his hands and stared at the floor, his face contorted with regret. “The children go back to boarding school on Sunday afternoons, Captain . . . dear God, the Sunday evenings.”

They sat in an uncomfortable silence. But Joubert had to make sure.

“Sergeant, are you very sure that Eleanor Davids was with you until after seven on Monday morning?”

Hatting merely nodded. He couldn't look at Joubert.

“The whole night?”

Nod. Then silence again.

“Never again,” said Hatting, and he wept.

* * *

Griessel’s eyes were deeply sunken into their dark sockets, his skin the bluish yellow of the very ill, but he listened to Joubert’s every word, craving normality, the routine, the life outside. Joubert sat on one iron bed, on a bare mattress. Benny sat on the other, his legs drawn up. The sanatorium was quiet, a mausoleum.

“Snyman will follow Nienaber, from tomorrow morning. With Louw relieving him in the evening. That’s all we’ve got, Benny.”

“Can’t be him.” Griessel’s voice was vague, as if he were speaking from a distance.

“I don’t know, Benny. Hairdresser. I was . . .” He had to think when he had been at Anne Boshoff’s. Today? It felt like yesterday or the day before. He remembered her and his discomfort and he wanted to laugh at himself and tell Benny Griessel about her, but he merely gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “I saw a beautiful woman today, Benny. A doctor in criminology. She said that the murderer could be queer. Nienaber is married but he’s a hairdresser . . .”

“My nephew is a hairdresser in Danielskuil and he’s screwed every farmer’s wife in the area.”

“It’s all I'’ve got, Benny. Because Nienaber is lying. I don’t know why or about what, but he’s lying. He’s slippery, Benny. As an eel.”

Joubert looked at his watch. It was half past ten. The nurse had said only fifteen minutes.

“I want to come and help, Captain.”

“Come when you’re ready.” He got up. “’Night, Benny.”

Joubert walked down the ward. His footsteps echoed off the walls. He had almost reached the double doors when he heard Griessel calling him.

“Mat.”

Joubert stopped, looked back.

“Why don’t you ask her out? The doctor.”

He stood in the semidark and looked at the figure on the bed.

“Maybe, Benny. Sleep well.”

* * *

A block away from his house he stopped at a stop sign, his window open so that the smoke of the Special Mild could waft outside. He heard the big motorcycle before it stopped next to him. The driver, in a black safety helmet, looked straight ahead, a passenger clung to him.

Joubert looked up, curious, instinctively, and saw the eyes of Yvonne Stoffberg through the narrow opening of her helmet.

Then the motorcycle revved up and drew away from his car. Joubert’s mind put two and two together. Ginger Pretorius’s Kawasaki, just before midnight on a Monday night. Yvonne Stoffberg’s eyes.

There was something in the way she looked at him, something in the frown, the sudden manner in which she looked away. Perhaps it was only his imagination, he thought, when he drove away from the stop sign. But it seemed as if she was slightly self-conscious. “I can do better than Ginger Pretorius,” is what he thought she wanted to say.

And then he knew he wasn'’t going to follow Griessel’s advice. He wasn'’t going to ask Anne Boshoff out.

Because he wanted Dr. Hanna Nortier.

30.

Margaret Wallace woke just after three in the morning with the realization that Tuesday was garbage removal day— and that she would have to lug the garbage bags from the kitchen door to the front gate on her own. Early. They usually came before six. Last week her brother-in-law had still been there to lend a hand but she was alone now. Without Jimmy. Tomorrow it would be two weeks. And there were so many things to do. A thousand things. Too many.

She got up, put on her dressing gown, and went to the kitchen, knowing that sleep would elude her. She switched on the kettle, unlocked the back door, took the garbage bin by the handle, and manhandled it to the gate, a long and tiring job, by the light offered by the garden lights and the streetlamps. But it gave her satisfaction. In future she would have to be self-sufficient. Jimmy would’ve expected it of her. She owed it to the children.

At the front gate, she removed the garbage bags from the bin, placed them on the pavement, dusted her hands, and turned back to the kitchen, dragging the empty bin.

She remembered Ferdy Ferreira.

Without warning, without encouragement, her memory suddenly released the information, between the gate and the kitchen.

The man on the television. The third victim. Ferdy Ferreira. She remembered where she had seen the face before. He’d been here, in their house, one evening. She was busy in the kitchen when the doorbell had rung. Jimmy had answered it. They had gone to the study without her seeing the man. But when he left, she thought, I saw him hobbling through the living room, slightly lame. He had looked up and met her eyes, a man with a sad face, like a large, faithful dog’s. But he hadn't greeted her, simply kept on walking to the door.

A long time ago. Four years? Five?

She had asked Jimmy who the man was. “Just business, my sweet.” Some or other explanation, vague, lost in the mists of so many people who had come and gone, traipsing through her house, Jimmy’s business acquaintances, instant friends, cricket people . . .