Dead Before Dying

From the Heart Foundation. With that you can crook cleverly. Once a week.”

“Cookbook for a New Generation,”

he said later and felt like a fool. Hunger made his guts rumble again.

32.

We all know what fat looks like on the human body, it said on page eleven of the cookbook. “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” said Joubert and shifted uncomfortably on the chair in his kitchen. The book lay on the table in front of him, next to the ingredients for the recipe the dietitian had recommended.

“What do you feel like?” she’d asked after she had given him the book.

“Steak.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“I’m hungry,” he’d said with finality.

“Try the beef fillet with mushrooms. Page 113. But read the whole introduction first so that you understand your calories and unsaturated fats. And eat a small portion. There’s no point in cooking it in a healthy way and then eating the whole dish on your own.”

He had stopped at Pick ’n Pay and with the book open at page 113 he’d walked the aisles until he had all the ingredients he needed.

What you might not know, he read on, is that over and above the fat you can see around your waist, or on your thighs and breast, people who are overweight also build up interior fat. Fat usually forms around the interior organs, especially in the lower body and around the intestines, kidneys, and heart.

In his mind’s eye he saw his organs, each one wrapped in its own yellowish-white fat, and he shuddered.

THE FOLDED SKIN TEST, one of the headings read.

An easy and quick way to measure your fat is to pinch a fairly large piece of stomach skin between your thumb and forefinger. If it’s thicker than 2.5 cm then you’re fat— and you can be sure that the fat is spread right through your body.

He put the book down on the table, leaned back, pulled his shirt out of his trousers and grabbed a pinch of stomach skin. He gave it a measuring eye.

Shit. Could it be true?

He got up and went to look for his new measuring tape. He found it in the study, where the books were packed on the skew shelves. He walked back to the kitchen, sat down, pinched the skin of his stomach with his left hand, and measured with the right.

More than four centimeters. And he was giving it a bit of leeway.

Crossly he closed the cookbook with a slam.

Crook cleverly.

He couldn't afford to crook cleverly. Not with four centimeters of stomach skin. Not with organs encrusted with thick layers of fat.

He sighed, put the cookbook aside, and picked up his diet sheet: 120 grams grilled fish; 250 ml mashed potato; tomato and onion salad. 1 unit fat.

One unit of fat. He looked for the key at the end of the program. He could choose between small amounts of margarine, salad dressing, mayonnaise, peanut butter, avocado, small olives, thin cream, or a strip of bacon. He chose the salad dressing and started his preparations.

* * *

“The report on Eleanor Davids’s Escort is here, Captain,” said Snyman and handed the sheet of paper to Joubert.

“It’s negative,” he said without glancing at it.

“Yes, Captain.”

He sighed. “Thanks, Gerrit.”

He turned. It was time to go and watch

The Return of Benny Griessel.

Joubert stood unobtrusively in the door of Murder and Robbery’s parade room. Griessel mustn’t think he had come to check on him.

Griessel stood on a chair next to the TV set, addressing the twenty-two uniformed people.

“In the file you’ll find photographs taken by the security cameras in the branches of the bank and an Identikit of what our artist thinks the robber might actually look like. But these are only pointers. And it could be dangerous, as we learned from this morning’s incident. For heaven’s sake don’t confront every possible suspect who vaguely resembles the Identikit with a firearm. Use your common sense. Think. And think again,” Griessel said, and he smiled at the faces in front of him.

Joubert saw that the traces of the past week lay heavily on Griessel’s face, on his bulky body, which had shrunk visibly. But his voice was clear and enthusiastic.

“The media still don’t know that we have people in every branch. We told them Khumalo was there by chance to draw money. That means that the robber doesn’t have to suspect anything. But he’s nobody’s fool. He’ll check out the scene very well before he robs. He’ll be careful. I know thinking isn’t covered by a police salary but do it for your country. Think before you hang around looking like a cop who’s a plant. Move around. Fill in bank forms. Pretend to be drawing money. Go to the inquiries desk. Lieutenant Brand of internal stability will speak to you shortly about crisis management, which you must share with the personnel in your bank branch. Tell them they must be in on the act. They must treat you like a client. Nothing more and nothing less . . .”

Joubert turned away and walked down the passage on his way home.

Griessel didn't need his help. He walked out, into the night, toward his car.

* * *

Oliver Nienaber grinned behind the wheel of his dark red BMW.

The police must think him a fool. He had already noticed it the day before, quite by chance, when the white Opel Kadett followed him all the way home. The idiot had to jump a red light to keep up. And later he had noticed him again on the quieter roads of Plattekloof. Early this morning he had seen the red Sierra in the street, just below his house.

Now, at a quarter to six in the morning, the N1 wasn'’t busy enough for an unobtrusive tail. He could see the Ford far back in the rearview mirror.

They were wasting their time, he thought. He was innocent. He wasn'’t the hunter, he was the prey. And now they were unwittingly giving him protection.

If it hadn't been for the little brown lieutenant he would’ve gotten away with his lie. Lord, but he’d done some fast thinking. On Monday in that interrogation room. But that was why he was where he was today. Quick thinking. From hair stylist to millionaire in six, seven years.

That tale about MacDonald phoning him about the building had simply risen unbidden in his mind. Needs must when the devil drives.

Need. The whole Monday had been filled with need. From the moment he’d seen Mac lying in the door of that pitiful wooden house with blood against the wall and blood on the floor and his neck which had been blown away and the shot between the balls, he had needed to feel safe.

He had wanted to speak to him. He hadn't known at what time Mac went to sea and had hoped that he was early enough. He’d stopped in front of the door, opened the gate, and then he saw the man lying there, big Mac. Big Mac with the biggest penis he’d ever seen in his life. He could remember that.

“Mac, you’ve got a prick like a pole,” Ferdy Ferreira had said. The late Ferdy. The late, lame fool.

“A penis,” said Oliver Sigmund Nienaber loudly and snorted with laughter. That was the word that had caught the attention of that little lieutenant.