Devil's Peak

by Deon Meyer

Genres: Mystery; Thrillers

Synopsis

Bennie Griessel may be losing his battle with alcohol but he still knows enough to head up the police team tracking 'Artemis', a vigilante killer who targets child murderers. The killer is in fact Thobela Mpayipheli, a former freedom fighter robbed of everything by the murder of his son. And when Griessel's daughter is kidnapped, his world and Thobela's converge towards a devastating climax...

Release date: March 26, 2008

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 416

Sample

Also by Deon Meyer

Heart of the Hunter

Dead at Daybreak

Dead Before Dying

Dedicated to my wife, Anita

PART ONE

Christine

1.

The moment before the clergyman folded back the carton flaps the world stood still and she saw everything with a greater clarity. The robust man in his middle years had a diamond-shaped birthmark on his cheek that looked like a distorted pale rose teardrop. His face was angular and strong, his thinning hair combed back, his hands massive and rough, like those of a boxer. The books behind him covered the whole wall in a mosaic of alternating colors. The late afternoon Free State sun threw a shaft of light onto the desktop, a magic sunbeam across the box.

She pressed her hands lightly against the coolness of her bare knees. Her hands were perspiring, her eyes searching for clues in the slightest shift of his expression, but she saw only calm, perhaps some suppressed, benign curiosity about the content of the carton. In the moment before he lifted the flaps, she tried to see herself as he saw her — evaluate the impression she was trying to create. The shops in town had been no help; she had to use what she had. Her hair was long, straight and clean, the multicolored blouse sleeveless; a shade too tight, perhaps, for this occasion, for him? A white skirt that had shifted up to just above her knees as she sat down. Her legs were smooth and lovely. White sandals. Little gold buckles. Her toenails unpainted, of that she had made sure. Just a single ring, a thin gold band on her right hand. Her make-up was light, delicately downplaying the fullness of her mouth.

Nothing to betray her. Apart from her eyes and her voice.

He lifted the flaps, one after the other, and she realized she was sitting on the edge of the armchair, leaning forward. She wanted to lean back, but not now, she must wait for his reaction.

The last flap was folded back, the box open.

“Liewe Genade,” he said in Afrikaans and half rose to his feet. Sweet Mercy.

He looked at her, but he seemed not to see her and his attention returned to the contents of the box. He thrust one of his big hands in, took something out and held it up to the sun.

“Sweet mercy,” he repeated with his hands in front of him. His fingers felt for authenticity.

She sat motionless. She knew his reaction would determine everything. Her heart thumped, she could even hear it.

He replaced the object in the carton, retracted his hands, leaving the flaps open. He sat again, taking a deep breath as if he wanted to compose himself and then looked up at her. What was he thinking? What?

Then he pushed the carton to one side, as if he didn’t want it to come between them.

“I saw you yesterday. In church.”

She nodded. She had been there — to take his measure. To see if she would be recognized. But it was impossible, since she had attracted so much attention anyway — a strange young woman in a small town church. He preached well, with compassion, with love in his voice, not so dramatic and formal as the ministers of her youth. When she walked out of the church she was certain it was right to come here. But now she wasn’t so sure . . . He seemed upset.

“I . . .” she said, her thoughts scrambling for the right words.

He leaned towards her. He needed an explanation; that she well understood. His arms and hands made a straight line on the edge of the desk, from elbow to interlinked fingers flat on the desk. He was wearing a formal shirt unbuttoned at the neck, light blue with a faint red stripe. His sleeves were rolled up, forearms hairy where the sun caught them. From outside came the sounds of a weekday afternoon in a small town — the Sotho people greeting one another across the breadth of the street, the municipal tractor accelerating duh-duh-duh up to the garage, the cicadas, the clanging beat of a hammer alternating with the mindless barking of two dogs.

“There’s a lot I have to tell you,” she said, and her voice sounded small and lost.

At last he moved, his hands folded open.

“I hardly know where to start.”

“Begin at the beginning,” he said softly, and she was grateful for the empathy.

“The beginning,” she approved, voice gaining strength. Her fingers gathered the long blonde hair from where it hung over her shoulder and tossed it back with a rhythmic, practiced motion.

2.

It began for Thobela Mpayipheli late on a Saturday afternoon at a filling station in Cathcart.

Pakamile was seated beside him, eight years old, bored and tired. The long road from Amersfoort lay behind them, seven dreary hours of driving. When they turned in at the garage the child sighed. “Still sixty kilometers?”

“Only sixty kilometers,” he said consolingly. “Do you want a cold drink?”

“No thanks,” said the boy and lifted up the 500-ml Coca Cola bottle that had been lying at his feet. It was not yet empty.

Thobela stopped at the pumps and climbed out of the pickup. There was no attendant in sight. He stretched his limbs, a big black man in jeans, red shirt and running shoes. He walked around his vehicle, checked that the motorbikes on the load bed were still firmly strapped down — Pakamile’s little KX 65 and his big BMW. They had been learning to ride off-road that weekend, an official course through sand and gravel, water, hills, humps, gullies and valleys. He had seen the boy’s self-confidence grow with every hour, the enthusiasm that glowed within him like an ember with every “Look, Thobela, watch me!”

His son . . .

Where were the petrol attendants?

There was another car at the pumps, a white Polo — the engine idled, but there was no one in the car. Strange. He called out, “Hello!” and saw movement in the building. They must be coming now.

He turned around to unlatch the pickup bonnet, glancing at the western horizon where the sun was going down . . . soon it would be dark. Then he heard the first shot. It reverberated through the quiet of the early evening and he jumped in fright and dropped instinctively to his haunches. “Pakamile!” he screamed. “Get down!” But his last words were deafened by another shot, and another, and he saw them coming out of the door — two of them, pistols in hand, one carrying a white plastic bag, eyes wild. They spotted him, shot. Bullets slammed against the pump, against the pickup.

He shouted, a guttural roar, leapt up, jerked open the pickup door and dived in, trying to shield the boy from the bullets. He felt the little body shiver. “Okay,” he said, and heard the shots and the lead whining over them. He heard one car door slam, then another and screeching tires. He looked up — the Polo was moving towards the road. Another shot. The glass of an advertising display above him shattered and rained down on the pickup. Then they were in the road, the Volkswagen’s engine revving too high and he said, “It’s okay, okay,” and felt the wet on his hand and Pakamile had stopped shivering and he saw the blood on the child’s body and he said: “No, God, no.”

That is where it began for Thobela Mpayipheli.

He sat in the boy’s room, on his bed. The document in his hand was his last remaining proof.

The house was as quiet as the grave, for the first time since he could remember. Two years ago Pakamile and he had pushed open the door and looked at the dusty interior, the empty rooms. Some of the light fittings were hanging askew from the ceiling, kitchen cupboard doors were broken or just ajar, but all they saw was potential, the possibilities of their new house overlooking the Cata River and the green fields of the farm in high summer. The boy had run through the house leaving footprints in the dust. “This is my room, Thobela,” he had called down the passage. When he reached the master bedroom he had expressed his awe at the vast space in a long whistle. Because all he knew was a cramped four-room house in the Cape Flats.

That first night they slept on the big verandah. First they had watched the sun disappear behind the storm clouds and the twilight deepen over the yard, watched the shadows of the big trees near the gate blend with the darkness, and the stars magically open their silver eyes in the firmament. He and the boy, squeezed up against each other with their backs against the wall.

“This is a wonderful place, Thobela.”

There was a deep sense of comfort in Pakamile’s sigh and Thobela was eternally relieved, because it was only a month since the boy’s mother had died and he had not known how they would adjust to the change of environment and circumstance.

They spoke of the cattle they would buy, a milk cow or two, a few fowls (“. . . and a dog, Thobela, please, a big old dog”). A vegetable garden at the back door. A patch of lucerne down by the riverbank. They had dreamed their dreams that night until Pakamile’s head had dropped against his shoulder and he had laid the boy down softly on the bedding on the floor. He had kissed him on the forehead and said, “Good night, my son.”

Pakamile was not of his own blood. The son of the woman he had loved, the boy had become his own. Very quickly he had come to love the boy like his own flesh and blood, and in the months since they had moved here he had begun the long process of making it official — writing letters, filling in forms and being interviewed. Slow bureaucrats with strange agendas had to decide whether he was suitable to be a parent, when the whole world could see that the bond between them had become unbreakable. But, at last, after fourteen months, the registered documents had arrived; in the long-winded, clumsy language of state officialdom, these put the seal on his adoption.

And now these pages of yellow-white paper were all he had. These, and a heap of new ground under the pepper trees by the river. And the minister’s words, meant to comfort: “God has a purpose with everything.”

Lord, he missed the boy.

He could not accept that he would never hear that chuckling laugh again. Or the footsteps down the passage. Never slow, always in a rush, as if life were too short for walking. Or the boy calling his name from the front door, voice loaded with excitement over some new discovery. Impossible to accept that he would never feel Pakamile’s arms around him again. That, more than anything — the contact, the absolute acceptance, the unconditional love.

It was his fault.

There was never an hour of the day or night that he did not relive the events at the garage with the fine-tooth comb of self-reproach. He should have realized, when he saw the empty Polo idling at the pumps. He should have reacted more swiftly when he heard the first shot, he should have thrown himself over the child then, he should have been a shield, he should have taken the bullet. He should. It was his fault.

The loss was like a heavy stone in him, an unbearable burden. What would he do now? How would he live? He could not even see tomorrow, neither the sense nor the possibility. The phone rang in the sitting room, but he did not want to get up — he wanted to stay here with Pakamile’s things.

He moved sluggishly, feeling the emotion pressing against him. Why could he not weep? The telephone rang. Why would the grief not break out?

Inexplicably, he was standing with the instrument in his hand and the voice said: “Mr. Mpayipheli?” and he said: “Yes.”

“We’ve got them, Mr. Mpayipheli. We’ve caught them. We want you to come and identify them.”

Later he unlocked the safe and placed the document carefully on the topmost shelf. Then he reached for his firearms, three of them: Pakamile’s airgun, the .22 and the hunting rifle. He took the longest one and walked to the kitchen.

As he cleaned it with methodical concentration he slowly became aware that guilt and loss were not all that lay within him.

“I wonder if he believed,” she said, the minister’s full attention on her now. His eyes no longer strayed to the box.

“Unlike me.” The reference to herself was unplanned and she wondered for a moment why she said it. “Maybe he didn’t go to church or such, but he might have believed. And perhaps he could not understand why the Lord gave to him and then took away. First his wife, and then his child on the farm. He thought he was being punished. I wonder why that is? Why we all think that when something bad happens? I do too. It’s weird. I just could never work out what I was being punished for.”

“As an unbeliever?” asked the minister.

She shrugged. “Yes. Isn’t it strange? It’s like the guilt is here inside us. Sometimes I wonder if we are being punished for the things we are going to do in the future. Because my sins only came later, after I was punished.”

The minister shook his head and took a breath as if to answer, but she didn’t want to be sidetracked now; didn’t want to break the rhythm of her story.

They were out of reach. There were eight men behind the one-way glass, but he could only focus on the two for whom his hate burned. They were young and devil-may-care, their mouths stretched in the same “so-what” smirks, their eyes staring a challenge at the window. For a moment he considered the possibility of saying he recognized none of them and then waiting outside the police station with the hunting rifle . . . But he wasn’t prepared, hadn’t studied the exits and streets outside. He lifted his finger like a rifle barrel and said to the superintendent: “There they are, numbers three and five.” He did not recognize the sound of his own voice; they were the words of a stranger.

“You are sure?”

“Dead sure,” he said.

“Three and five?”

“Three and five.”

“That’s what we thought.”

They asked him to sign a statement. Then there was nothing more he could do. He walked to his pickup, unlocked the door and got in, conscious of the rifle behind the seat and the two men somewhere inside the building. He sat and wondered what the superintendent would do if he asked for a few moments alone with them, because he felt the compulsion to thrust a long blade into their hearts. His eyes lingered a moment on the front door of the police station and then he turned the key and drove slowly away.

3.

The public prosecutor was a Xhosa woman and her office was filled with the pale yellow dossiers of her daily work. They were everywhere. The desk was overloaded and the heaps overflowed to the two tables and the floor, so they had to pick their way to the two chairs. She had a somber quality and a vague absence, as if her attention was divided between the countless documents, as if the responsibility of her work was sometimes too heavy to bear.

She explained. She was the one who would lead the state prosecution. She had to prepare him as a witness. Together they must convince the judge that the accused were guilty.

That would be easy, he said.

It is never easy, she replied, and adjusted her large gold-rimmed spectacles with the tips of her thumb and index finger, as if they could never be wholly comfortable. She questioned him about the day of Pakamile’s death, over and over, until she could see the event through his eyes. When they had finished, he asked her how the judge would punish them.

“If they are found guilty?”

“When they are found guilty,” he replied with assurance.

She adjusted her spectacles and said one could never predict these things. One of them, Khoza, had a previous conviction. But it was Ramphele’s first offense. And he must remember that it was not their intent to murder the child.

“Not their intent?”

“They will attest that they never even saw the child. Only you.”

“What sentence will they get?”

“Ten years. Fifteen? I can’t say for sure.”

For a long moment he just stared at her.

“That is the system,” she said with an exonerating shrug.

A day before the court case was to begin he drove his pickup to Umtata because he needed to buy a couple of ties, a jacket and black shoes.

He stood in his new clothes before the long mirror. The shop assistant said, “That looks sharp,” but he did not recognize himself in the reflection — the face was unfamiliar and the beard which had appeared on his cheeks since the boy’s death grew thick and gray on the chin and cheeks. It made him look harmless, and wise, like a stalwart.

The eyes mesmerized him. Were they his? They reflected no light, as if they were empty and dead inside.

From the late afternoon he lay on his hotel bed, arms behind his head, motionless.

He remembered: Pakamile in the shed above the house milking a cow for the first time, all thumbs, in too much of a hurry. Frustrated that the teats would not respond to the manipulation of his small fingers. And then, at last, the thin white stream shooting off at an angle to spray the shed floor and the triumphant cry from the boy: “Thobela! Look!”

The small figure in school uniform that waited every afternoon for him, socks at half-mast, shirt-tails hanging, the backpack disproportionately big. The joy every day when he drew up. If he came on the motorbike, Pakamile would first look around to see which of his friends was witness to this exotic event, this unique machine that only he had the right to ride home on.

Sometimes his friends slept over; four, five, six boys tailing Pakamile around the farmyard. “My father and I planted all these vegetables.” “This is my father’s motorbike and this is mine.” “My father planted all this lucerne himself, hey.” A Friday night . . . everyone in a Christmas bed in the sitting room, jammed in like sardines in a flat tin. The house had vibrated with life. The house was full. Full.

The emptiness of the room overwhelmed him. The silence, the contrast. A part of him asked the question: what now? He tried to banish it with memories, but still it echoed. He thought long about it, but he knew in an unformulated way that Miriam and Pakamile had been his life. And now there was nothing.

He got up once to relieve himself and drink water and went back to lie down. The air conditioner hissed and blew under the window. He stared at the ceiling, waited for the night to pass so the trial could begin.

The accused sat alongside each other: Khoza and Ramphele. They looked him in the eyes. Beside them the advocate for the defense stood up: an Indian, tall and athletically lean, flamboyant in a smart black suit and purple tie.

“Mr. Mpayipheli, when the state prosecutor asked you what your profession was, you said you were a farmer.”

He did not answer, because it was not a question.

“Is that correct?” The Indian had a soothing voice, as intimate as if they were old friends.

“It is.”

“But that is not the whole truth, is it?”

“I don’t know what . . .”

“How long have you been a so-called farmer, Mr. Mpayipheli?”

“Two years.”

“And what was your profession before you began farming?”

The state prosecutor, the serious woman with the gold-rimmed spectacles, stood up. “Objection, Your Honor. Mr. Mpayipheli’s work history is irrelevant to the case before the court.”

“Your Honor, the background of the witness is not only relevant to his reliability as a witness, but also to his behavior at the filling station. The defense has serious doubts about Mr. Mpayipheli’s version of the events.”

“I shall allow you to continue,” said the judge, a middle-aged white man with a double chin and a red complexion. “Answer the question, Mr. Mpayipheli.”

“What was your profession before you went farming?” repeated the advocate.

“I was a gofer at a motorbike retailer.”

“For how long?”

“Two years.”

“And before that?”

His heart began to race. He knew he must not hesitate, nor look unsure.

“I was a bodyguard.”

“A bodyguard.”

“Yes.”

“Let us go one step further back, Mr. Mpayipheli, before we return to your answer. What did you do before you, as you say, became a bodyguard?”

Where had the man obtained this information? “I was a soldier.”

“A soldier.”

He did not answer. He felt hot in his suit and tie. He felt sweat trickle down his back.

The Indian shuffled documents on the table before him and came up with a few sheets of paper. He walked to the state prosecutor and gave her a copy. He repeated the process with the judge and placed one before Thobela.

“Mr. Mpayipheli, would it be accurate to say you tend towards euphemism?”

“Objection, Your Honor, the defense is intimidating the witness and the direction of questioning is irrelevant.” She had glanced at the document and began to look uncomfortable. Her voice had reached a higher note.

“Overruled. Proceed.”

“Mr. Mpayipheli, you and I can play evasion games all day but I have too much respect for this court to allow that. Let me help you. I have here a newspaper report” — he waved the document in the air — “that states, and I quote: ‘Mpayipheli, a former Umkhonto We Sizwe soldier who received specialist training in Russia and the former East Germany, was connected until recently to a drugs syndicate on the Cape Flats . . .’ End of quote. The article refers to a certain Thobela Mpayipheli who was wanted by the authorities two years ago in connection with the disappearance of, and I quote once more, ‘government intelligence of a sensitive nature.’”

Just before the prosecutor leapt up, she glanced fiercely at Thobela, as if he had betrayed her. “Your Honor, I must protest. The witness is not on trial here . . .”

“Mr. Singh, are you going somewhere with this argument?”

“Absolutely, Your Honor. I ask for just a moment of the court’s patience.”

“Proceed.”

“Is that what this newspaper article is referring to, Mr. Mpayipheli?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me, I can’t hear you.”

“Yes.” Louder.

“Mr. Mpayipheli, I put it to you that your version of the events at the filling station is just as evasive and euphemistic as your description of your background.”

“That is . . .”

“You are a highly trained military man, schooled in the military arts, urban terrorism and guerrilla warfare . . .”

“I object, Your Honor — that is not a question.”

“Overruled. Let the man finish, madam.”

She sat down, shaking her head, with a deep frown behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “As it pleases the court,” she said, but her tone said otherwise.

“And a ‘bodyguard’ for the drug syndicate in the Cape for two years. A bodyguard. That is not what the newspapers say . . .”

The state prosecutor stood up, but the judge pre-empted her: “Mr. Singh, you are testing the patience of the court. If you wish to lead evidence, please await your turn.”

“My sincere apologies, Your Honor, but it is an affront to the principles of justice for a witness under oath to fabricate a story —”

“Mr. Singh, spare me. What is your question?”

“As it pleases the court, Your Honor. Mr. Mpayipheli, what was the specific purpose of your military training?”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I was trained in counter-espionage activities.”

“Did this include the use of firearms and explosives?”

“Yes.”

“Hand-to-hand combat?”

“Yes.”

“The handling of high-pressure situations?”

“Yes.”

“Elimination and escape.”

“Yes.”

“And at the filling station you say, and I quote: ‘I ducked behind the petrol pump,’ when you heard the shots?”

“The war was over ten years ago. I was not there to fight, I was there to fill up . . .”

“The war was not over for you ten years ago, Mr. Mpayipheli. You took the war to the Cape Flats with your training in death and injury. Let us discuss your role as bodyguard . . .”

The prosecutor’s voice was high and plaintive. “Your Honor, I object in the strongest —”

At that moment Thobela saw the faces of the accused; they were laughing at him.

“Objection sustained. Mr. Singh, that is enough. You have made your point. Do you have any specific questions about the events at the filling station?”

Singh’s shoulders sagged, as if wounded. “As it pleases the court, Your Honor, I have.”

“Then get on with it.”

“Mr. Mpayipheli, did you forget that it was you who attacked the accused when they left the filling station?”

“I did not.”

“You did not forget?”

“Your Honor, the defense . . .”

“Mr. Singh!”

“Your Honor, the accused . . . excuse me, the witness is evading the question.”

“No, Mr. Singh, it is you who are leading the witness.”

“Very well. Mr. Mpayipheli, you say you did not charge at the accused in a threatening manner?”

“I did not.”

“You did not have a wheel spanner or some tool . . .”

“I object, Your Honor, the witness has already answered the question.”

“Mr. Singh . . .”

“I have no further questions for this liar, Your Honor . . .”

4.

I think he believed he could make things right. Anything,” she said in the twilit room. The sun had dropped behind the hills of the town and the light entering the room was softer. It made the telling easier, she thought, and wondered why.

“That is the thing that I admired most. That somebody stood up and did something that the rest of us were too afraid to do, even if we wanted to. I never had the guts. I was too scared to fight back. And then I read about him in the papers and I began to wonder: maybe I could also . . .”

She hesitated a fraction and then asked with bated breath: “Do you know about Artemis, Reverend?”

He did not react at first, sitting motionless, tipped slightly forward, engrossed in the story she was telling. Then he blinked, his attention refocused.

“Artemis? Er, yes . . .” he said tentatively.

“The one the papers wrote about.”

“The papers . . .” He seemed embarrassed. “Some things pass me by. Something new every week. I don’t always keep up.”

She was relieved about that. There was an imperceptible shift in their roles — he the small-town minister, she the worldly-wise one, the one in the know. She slipped her foot out of its sandal and folded it under her, shifting to a more comfortable position in the chair. “Let me tell you,” she said with more self-assurance.

He nodded.

“I was in trouble when I read about him for the first time. I was in the Cape. I was . . .” For a fraction of a second she hesitated and wondered if it would upset him. “I was a call girl.”

At half-past eleven that night he was still awake on his hotel bed when someone knocked softly on his door, apologetically.

It was the public prosecutor, her eyes magnified behind the spectacles.

“Sorry,” she said, but she just looked tired.

“Come in.”

She hesitated a moment and he knew why: he was just in his shorts, his body glistening with perspiration. He turned around and picked up his T-shirt, motioning her to take the single armchair. He perched on the end of the bed.

She sat primly on the chair; her hands folded the dark material of her skirt over her plump legs. She had an officious air, as if she had come to speak of weighty things.

“What happened today in court?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“He wanted to blame me. The Indian.”

“He was doing his job. That’s all.”

“His job?”

“He has to defend them.”

“With lies?”

“In law there are no lies, Mr. Mpayipheli. Just different versions of the truth.”

He shook his head. “There is only one truth.”

“You think so? And what one truth is there about you? The one where you are a farmer? A father? A freedom fighter? Or a drug dealer? A fugitive from the state?”

“That has nothing to do with Pakamile’s death,” he said, anger creeping into his words.

“The moment Singh brought it up in court, it became part of his death, Mr. Mpayipheli.”

Rage flooded over him, reliving the day of frustration: “All that Mister, Mister, so polite, and objections and playing little legal games . . . And those two sitting there and laughing.”

“That is why I have come,” she said. “To tell you: they have escaped.”

He did not know how long he sat there, just staring at her.

“One of them overpowered a policeman. In the cells, when he brought him food. He had a weapon, a knife.”

“Overpowered,” he said, as if tasting the word.

“The police . . . They are short of manpower. Not everyone turned up on shift.”

“They both got away.”

“There are roadblocks. The station commander said they won’t get far.”

The rage inside him took on another face that he did not wish her to see. “Where would they go?”

She shrugged once more, as if she was beyond caring. “Who knows?”

When he did not respond, she leaned forward in the chair. “I wanted to tell you. You have the right to know.”

She stood up. He waited for her to pass him, then stood up and followed her to the door.

There was doubt in the minister’s face. He had shifted his large body back and cocked his head sideways, as if waiting for her to qualify her statement, to complete the sentence with a punch line.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I find it . . . unlikely.”

Somewhere she felt emotion. Gratitude? Relief? She did not mean to show it but her voice betrayed her. “My professional name was Bibi.”

His voice was patient as he responded. “I believe you. But I look at you and I listen to you and I can’t help wondering why. Why was that necessary for you?”

This was the second time she had been asked that. Usually they asked “How?” For them she had a story to fit expectations. She wanted to use it now — it lay on her tongue, rehearsed, ready.

She drew a breath to steady herself. “I could tell you I was always a sex addict, a nymphomaniac,” she said with deliberation.

“But that is not the truth,” he said.

“No, Reverend, it is not.”

He nodded as if he approved of her answer. “It’s getting dark,” he said, standing up and switching on the standard lamp in the corner. “Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“Tea would be lovely, thank you.” Did he need time to recover, she wondered?

“Excuse me a moment,” he said, and opened the door diagonally behind her.

She remained behind, alone, wondering what was the worst thing he had heard in this study. What small-town scandals? Teenage pregnancies? Affairs? Friday night domestics?

What made someone like him stay here? Perhaps he liked the status, because doctors and ministers were important people in the rural areas, she knew. Or was he running away like she was? As he had run off just now; as if there was a certain level of reality that became too much for him.

He came back, shutting the door behind him. “My wife will bring the tea soon,” he said and sat down.

She did not know how to begin. “Did I upset you?”

He pondered a while before he answered, as if he had to gather the words together. “What upsets me is a world — a society — that allows someone like you to lose the way.”

“We all lose our way sometimes.”

“We don’t all become sex workers.” He motioned towards her in a broad gesture, to include everything. “Why was that necessary?”

“You are the second person to ask that in the past month or so.”

“Oh?”

“The other one was a detective in Cape Town.” She smiled as she recalled. “Griessel. He had tousled hair. And soft eyes, but they looked right through you.”

“Did you tell him the truth?”

“I almost did.”

“Was he a . . . what do you call it?”

“A client?” She smiled.

“Yes.”

“No. He was . . . just . . . I don’t know . . . lost?”

“I see,” said the minister.

There was a soft tap on the door and he had to get up to take the tea tray.

5.

Detective Inspector Benny Griessel opened his eyes to his wife standing before him, shaking his shoulder with one hand and urgently whispering, “Benny,” she said. “Benny, please.”

He was lying on the sitting-room couch, that much he knew. He must have fallen asleep here. He smelt coffee; his head was thick and throbbing. One arm squashed under him was numb, circulation cut off by the weight of his body.

“Benny, we have to talk.”

He groaned and struggled to sit up.

“I brought you some coffee.”

He looked at her, at the deep lines on her face. She was still stooped over him.

“What time is it?” His words battled to connect with his vocal chords.

“It’s five o’clock, Benny.” She sat next to him on the couch. “Drink the coffee.”

He had to take it with his left hand. The mug was hot against his palm.

“It’s early,” he said.

“I need to talk to you before the children wake up.”

The message borne on her tone penetrated his consciousness. He sat up straight and spilled the coffee on his clothes — he was still wearing yesterday’s. “What have I done?”

She pointed an index finger across the open-plan room. The bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood on the dining-room table beside his plate of untouched dinner. The ashtray was overflowing and a smashed glass lay in shards beside the overturned bar stools at the breakfast counter.

He took a gulp of coffee. It burned his mouth, but could not take the sick taste of the night away. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry isn’t good enough anymore,” she said.

“Anna . . .”

“No, Benny, no more. I can’t do this anymore.” Her voice was without inflection.

“Jissis, Anna.” He reached a hand out to her, saw how it shook, the drunkenness still not expelled from his body. When he tried to put his hand on her shoulder, she moved away from his touch, and that’s when he noticed the small swelling on her lip, already beginning to turn the color of wine.

“It’s over. Seventeen years. That’s enough. It’s more than anyone could ask.”

“Anna, I . . . it was the drink, you know I didn’t mean it. Please, Anna, you know that’s not me.”

“Your son helped you off that chair last night, Benny. Do you remember? Do you know what you said to him? Do you remember how you cursed and swore, until your eyes rolled back in your head? No, Benny, you can’t — you can never remember. Do you know what he said to you, your son? When you were lying there with your mouth open and your stinking breath? Do you know?” Tears were close, but she suppressed them.

“What did he say?”

“He said he hates you. . .