Деон Мейер - Cobra

And then, in the months since, something had developed: ‘a dynamic’ Doc Barkhuizen would call it. Alexa treated him as though he was a good, solid man. A hero. Confidant, advisor. Introduced him as her ‘master detective’, and to his dismay even once or twice as her ‘rock’.

He, Benny Griessel, someone’s rock? Solid? A hero?

He was an idiot and an ape, because despite his discomfort, despite his awareness of fraud, he loved it. That Xandra, the former star who could still bring people to a standstill in the street, thought he was OK. It was the first time in more than ten years that anyone except his daughter Carla thought and said he was OK, in any way. And he was weak, he didn’t want it to end.

And now?

Now he had been drawn in, and his sins had caught up with him.

It wasn’t that he could no longer play the bass guitar in the evenings. It was that he was ashamed of what he wanted to play when he was practising.

Last week, on the way home, he heard Neil Diamond’s ‘Song Sung Blue’ over the radio – the Hot August Night recording that began with just acoustic guitar, and where the bass guitar only kicked in halfway through the first verse, suddenly giving the song rhythm and depth and familiarity – and he thought he would like to play it as soon as he was home. Only to remember he lived with Alexa now, maybe she would think Neil Diamond wasn’t sophisticated enough, that he should rather practise something else, that he had an image to maintain . . .

He had to be what he was not.

And that was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg.

There was the money thing as well. Alexa had inherited well from her late husband – including his record company Afrisound, which brought in a constant stream of royalties. The firm was not in good shape, but she was rebuilding it with a natural, instinctive business acumen. Alexa’s own comeback album, Bittersoet , was doing better than expected, her concerts were fully booked again.

She was a rich woman. And he was a policeman.

She had bought him the iPhone. And a new amplifier for his bass guitar. And clothes – a jacket, and expensive shirts that he didn’t want to wear to work, because he knew that colleagues like Vaughn Cupido would tease him mercilessly. Not to mention the new winter pyjamas. They were an embarrassment to him – he felt like a baboon in fancy dress. What was wrong with an old pair of tracksuit pants and a T-shirt? But when he put on the new pyjamas and stood there in front of Alexa like a moron, she said, with a big, appreciative smile, ‘Come here, Benny,’ and she held him tightly and kissed him until his knees buckled . . .

What would it help to share it all with Doc?

That’s why he avoided all mention of the Big Problem. He could never tell Barkhuizen about that. Or anyone else, that was the big fuck-up. He would have to sort it out himself, but he couldn’t, not at all – he didn’t even know where to begin.

And as if that wasn’t enough to complicate his life, Alexa added another dilemma this afternoon.

When he had showered and was putting on fresh clothes in their bedroom, Alexa had come to sit on the bed, excited, as though she couldn’t keep the ‘surprise’ to herself any more. She said bass guitar player Schalk Joubert was going to perform with Lize Beekman at Die Boer in Durbanville next Friday night. ‘But Schalk has to rush to New York for a gig, and I said to Lize, what about Benny? He knows all your music off by heart and he’s not only a master detective, he’s grown amazingly as a musician. And then she said that’s a brilliant idea. Benny, you’re going to play with Lize Beekman – I’m so proud of you . . .’

At first he felt relief that it was not the surprise he had suspected.

And then the knowledge dawned on him: he was not in that league, no matter how hard he practised with Rust, his foursome of amateur-veterans. They did covers of time-worn hits, played every now and then at golden and silver wedding anniversaries in front of middle-aged audiences. But this was Lize Beekman, the singer who, the one or two times he’d been in her presence, had left him tongue-tied and dumbstruck by her immense talent and her quiet beauty and her aura.

What was he to do? Alexa sat there in joy and expectation, waiting for his response to the great gift. He had forced a smile and said ‘ Sjoe ,’ an innocuous exclamation that he fokken never used. He said: ‘Thank you, Alexa, but I don’t know if I’m good enough,’ and knew exactly what her reaction would be.

‘Of course you are good enough. I didn’t start singing in bands yesterday, Benny. You’ve grown so much in your music the past year.’ One of her typical artistic expressions that he struggled to handle. ‘Lize is emailing me the repertoire, and you have to go and rehearse a few times, but that’s only next week, you’ll be able to arrange that with work . . . Put on your new blue shirt, you look so good in it.’

So he put the blue shirt on.

He was fucked. In at least two ways.

He found his team members at IMC, the Hawks’ Information Management Centre.

‘You look a bit better, Benna,’ said Cupido when he looked up from the computer screen he was staring at, along with the other Violent Crimes detectives. ‘Nice shirt, partner . . .’

The whole room gawped at him.

‘We got the two-oh-five subpoena quickly,’ said Captain Philip van Wyk, IMC commanding officer, referring to the Hawks’ responsibilities according to article 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act when obtaining cellphone records. ‘Seems like this has really caught the attention higher up . . .’

‘’Cause why, it’s a foreigner,’ said Cupido reproachfully.

‘. . . But it’s the data from three cellphone towers that’s relevant,’ said van Wyk. ‘And weekends are prime time in Franschhoek. It’ll take time to analyse everything.’

‘And I can tell you now, there are going to be lots of international calls,’ said Cupido. ‘Half of those wine farms are in the hands of foreigners.’

‘The logs of the Internet service provider to La Petite Margaux show there were seven computers and three iPads on that IP address since Friday. We’ll have to identify and isolate the computers and traffic belonging to the farm personnel before we know what Morris’s activities were.’

Griessel tried to remember what van Wyk had taught him. ‘That means we’ll have to go and collect their computers.’

‘Please.’

‘They’re not going to like that.’

‘I can send Lithpel to them. It may be less disruptive, and it shouldn’t take too long.’

‘Maybe Ulinda as well; those foreigners won’t understand a word Lithpel says,’ said Cupido.

‘I’m right here,’ said Reginald ‘Lithpel’ Davids, the lisping computer whizz van Wyk had recently poached from Forensics. Davids was small and frail, with the face of a schoolboy. He shook his big Afro hairstyle indignantly. ‘It’th sometimeth like I don’t exthitht to you.’

‘I rest my case,’ said Cupido.

‘I’ll phone Franschhoek so long,’ said Radebe and reached for a phone. ‘This is new, it’s the first time I’ve been an English interpreter for a coloured outjie .’

‘ Jithith ,’ Lithpel said, but he grabbed his worn old rucksack of computer equipment and stood up.

‘Anything on Paul Anthony Morris?’ Griessel asked.

One of van Wyk’s researchers said: ‘We started with Google, Captain. It’s a relatively common combination of names, and there are quite a lot of references that don’t have photos with them. But we’re working on it.’

‘And the snake on the cartridges?’

‘That’s a difficult one to isolate in the database records,’ said van Wyk. ‘The query is still running, we might have to refine it. But nothing so far.’