Dead Before Dying

Griessel sat down and felt people looking at him. He didn't fit in here. He looked self-consciously at the dishes on the menu and saw that he wouldn't be able to afford much. He decided on the pumpkin soup and looked up again. There were only two men serving, both white— the refined one who had taken him to his table and another one, of average height and build. Both were dressed in the same outfit, a pair of black trousers, white shirt, and black bow tie. Both had short dark hair and were clean-shaven. Each had a nose that looked somewhat like the bank robber’s.

Mr. Average made a beeline for him, notepad and pen in his hand.

“May I tell you about our specials, sir?” he asked mechanically, without really seeing Griessel.

“What’s your name?”

“Michael Stewart,” said the man and looked with closer attention at his client.

“I would like to have the pumpkin soup, please.”

“Yes.” He wrote it down. “And then?”

“That’s all, thank you, Mr. Stewart.”

“You’re welcome.” The man hurried away, into the kitchen.

He speaks English, Griessel thought. The robber speaks Afrikaans. A smokescreen?

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands under his chin. He looked at the people around him. Men, mostly, a woman here and there. They were close to the Supreme Court and Parliament, he thought. Important people, these, with BMWs and Jettas and cell phones. At the table next to him a man swallowed a beer with great enjoyment, the glass tilted, the Adam’s apple moving up and down, up and down, until the last foam slid out of the glass and he put it down on the table and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

Griessel imagined the warm glow the liquor would cause in the man’s stomach, how it would spread through the body, to the head, warm and easy and pleasant— a tingling, a tide of pleasure, a smoother of sharp corners and edges.

He looked down, at the salt and pepper shakers on his table, put out his hand, picked up one. His hands were sweating.

George Michael Stewart hadn't reappeared from the kitchen, he realized.

Griessel fingered the Z88 fastened to his belt. He shouldn't have asked the man for his name. He looked at the kitchen door. How long had it been? Five minutes. It was only Mr. Refined who hurried between the tables, removing an empty wine bottle at one, asking whether the food was to their satisfaction at another.

Where was Stewart?

Minutes went by, during which his uneasiness grew. If the man had suspected something and escaped through the back door, he could be at the railway station by now, Griessel thought.

Soup couldn't take that long.

He made a sudden decision, got up, his hand on the grip of the firearm, and walked hurriedly to the kitchen door, a metal door that swung open easily. With his back against the door and his pistol in his hand, he banged open the door with some force and walked straight into George Michael Stewart and a plate of bright yellow soup. The hot liquid splashed on Griessel’s shirt and tie, Stewart staggered back, fell, and sat down on his backside. With his eyes huge, he looked at the square figure who loomed over him with a pistol.

“My service can’t be that bad!” he said nervously.

* * *

Attorney Kemp, nattily dressed in a dark gray suit and a fashionable tie, was as big as Mat Joubert. He sat on the edge of the untidy desk with Joubert and Louw in the chairs in front of him. The attorney was busy telephoning East London, in the Eastern Cape, because that was where his client, Mrs. Ingrid Johanna Coetzee, lived now.

He had immediately been willing to help the detectives. He was a hasty, efficient man with a deep voice and hair painfully neatly barbered and combed.

Joubert looked at the man’s clothes again— the double- breasted coat, the fine stripe in the texture of the material.

Joubert had no clothes for tomorrow night’s opera. He would have to buy a suit like that. He would have to have his hair cut. Everything had to be just right. If Hanna Nortier told him this afternoon that she was going with him. If he managed to get to Hanna Nortier this afternoon.

“I see,” said the attorney into the receiver. “I see. Fine. Thank you. Good-bye.” He put the phone down. “She’s on holiday. Gone diving. I didn't even know she was into diving. Small, colorless little woman.”

The attorney walked round to the big chair behind his desk. “I didn't want to mention the man’s death.” He wrote on a large notepad, tore off the page, and handed it to Joubert. “That’s where she works. The accounts department. They said she would only be back in the office on Monday.”

“You’ll have to fly,” Joubert said to Louw. Then he looked at the attorney. “Why were they divorced?”

“His religion,” said Kemp. “He used to be a television technician or something. Here in Bellville at a repair shop. And then suddenly he turned holy and lost his work because he spent the whole day in church, one of those charismatic ones where they spend every evening saying hallelujah and amen and clapping their hands. She couldn't bear it any longer. Luckily there were no children. He didn't want to divorce her at first. Against the Law and the faith. But we gave him merry hell. And the alimony . . . She had never worked. He wanted her to stay at home, be mama, and do housework. He was never quite all there . . .”

“Then he started his own church?”

“It was after the divorce. I only know a part of it, what she told me over the telephone. She couldn't believe he could preach. He had always been a silent, sulky man. But there you have it, cometh the hour . . . He fell out with all the other churches and founded his own. Lot of money in it, you know.”

“The place where he worked?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”

“Thank you very much.” Joubert got up. So did Louw.

“It’s a pleasure. I like to help the legal process when I can. Will you get the Mauser man?”

“It’s a matter of hours.”

Joubert turned back at the door. “If I may ask, where do you buy your clothes?”

“Queenspark.” The attorney smiled. “But I must confess. My wife does the buying. I’m too damn stupid at it.”

* * *

Christie’s was empty now. Griessel sat at his table, his shirt and tie reasonably clean but very damp from repeated applications of a wet cloth. Stewart sat opposite him. They were smoking Stewart’s Gunstons.

“I don’t rob banks,” said Stewart, and his Afrikaans was reasonable but not without an accent.

“Can you prove it?”

“Ask Steve.” And he pointed his cigarette at the other man in a bow tie. He was still clearing tables with a few black women. “I’m here every day from ten in the morning until midnight.”

“My brother Jack lies just like I do . . .”

“Hell, Steve owns the place. He makes the money. Why would he lie?”

“Why are you working here?”

“Because there’s not enough makeup work in the Cape. I should never have come.”