Деон Мейер - Cobra

Afterwards, he would lie beside her, spent and wet with perspiration, in love, lost, and so immensely pleased with himself and with her, and with them. He thought, fuck, finally life had given him a break, this sexy creature, this fabulous woman.

And from there on it only got better.

Between her busy scheduleand his unpredictable work, at least once a week – now and again two heavenly times – they would repeat the miracle in her big double bed. A couple of times in the sitting room, and once in the shower, soaking wet and slippery with soap. They learned more of each other’s tastes and bodies and pleasures, grew relaxed and easy, and Griessel was happy for the first time in he didn’t know how long.

And then he went and moved in.

‘It would be so nice to have just a little more of you, Benny. Even if it is a half an hour in the morning, or evening.’ That’s how Alexa brought it up.

He thought that, if it was so amazing when he saw her so seldom, it could only be better when he saw her more. Logical argument. In addition, it made economic and practical sense. She was alone in that rambling house, he was cooped up with his cheap furniture in his cramped bachelor fl at.

And they loved each other.

So he gave up his flat, and took the furniture back to Mohammed ‘Love Lips’ Faizal’s pawn shop, and with the proceeds he took Alexa to her favourite restaurant, Bizerca, where he, SAPS Detective Captain, sat eating oysters in the knowledge that his constant struggle was over, life was good. That first moving-in night they fucked like teenagers, and he knew it had been the right decision.

The second night, when he came to bed, Alexa slipped her hand under the elastic of his pyjama bottoms and she stroked and teased and kissed him, and he njapsed her again.

The third night, the same thing. His soldier struggled to stand quite to attention, and his performance was not what you’d call first rate, but he pressed through.

And by night four he knew he was in trouble.

In his twenties, when he and his ex, Anna, were young and horny and newly married, he could do the deed two, three times a day.

But that was in the old days. A quarter century and a thousand litres of Jack Daniel’s ago.

Now it was altogether a different matter.

So, what did you do?

He couldn’t say to Alexa ‘no, fok weet , this is a bit much’. Not when she looked at you with those eyes full of love and compassion and sexual need, not when you had been njapsing her with such abandon for the past six months. Not if she had bought you clothes and an iPhone, and treated you like this big hero.

There was no way he could sit in front of a doctor and say ‘I want a prescription for Viagra’. His sexual prowess had nothing to do with anyone, he didn’t have that sort of courage, and he couldn’t swallow those pills every day. Then he would be addicted all over again to something new, walking around with a permanent Jakob Regop – a constant boner was trouble that he really didn’t need.

All he could do, was to sleep over at work. To get the lead back in his pencil.

Which meant he looked rough in the morning, and lied to all and sundry, and his boss and his colleagues thought he was drinking again.

He knew it couldn’t go on like this.

But what was he to do?

He was fucked. He knew it.

She met him at the door, kissed him, clucked over him, led him to the kitchen ‘for lasagne, it didn’t come out exactly as I hoped, Benny, but you must be terribly hungry’. She sat with him in the kitchen. He ate, and told little white lies about the taste of the food. She asked about his day. He told her everything, except the part about Adair. She listened so attentively, was so impressed. Then she said: ‘My master detective. You’ll catch them.’

He asked about her day. She told him about the negotiations and recordings, about the battle to get publicity and time on air for her artists. ‘The market is getting a bit overcrowded.’

They went to the bedroom.

He brushed his teeth, put on his new pyjamas. She sat in front of the mirror chatting, taking off her make-up, told him she had left Woollies food in the fridge for while she was away in Johannesburg from tomorrow. She said she would miss him. And he must keep safe. And phone when he could, she had a horde of meetings and one appearance at Carnival City, but byThursday she would be back again.

He made the calculations. Two nights to recover, to reload his pistol.

She undressed, rubbed her body with creams and oils. She put on her nightclothes, switched off the light. She lay down close to him, held him tightly, her mouth against his neck.

‘I love you, Benny.’

‘And I love you too.’

Her hand moved to his belly, slipped under the pyjama bottoms.

‘Where’s that rascal?’ she asked playfully.

The ringing of his cellphone woke him.

He saw it was the DPCI number. It was 2.12 in the morning. He picked it up and walked out so as not to disturb Alexa any more. It was cold in the passage without the pyjamas that still lay bundled up somewhere under the sheets.

‘Griessel,’ he answered.

‘Benny, this is Philip. I’m sorry to wake you . . .’

‘No problem,’ he said, and tried to keep the sleepiness out of his voice.

‘I thought you should know: we have just received a call from Senior Superintendent Jean-Luc Bonfils from Interpol in Lyon. It’s about the snake on the cartridges.’

He went into the sitting room. There had been a heater on when he came in earlier.

‘Do they know something?’

‘Yes, “something” is probably the best description. He received our query, and he’s sending us everything they have within the next hour, but in the meantime he wanted to tell me: this is the sixteenth international murder that they know of with that “snake trademark”, as he calls it . . .’

‘ Jissis ,’ said Griessel. The heater in the sitting room was off, but the room was not as chilly as the passage. He turned it on, up to maximum while he listened and stood wide-legged over it.

‘I made a few quick notes,’ said van Wyk. ‘The details are not quite right, but here is what I have: the first crime scene where such a marked cartridge was found, was seven years ago in Portugal. I’ll come back to that just now. Most of the consecutive murders were in Europe – Germany, France, Spain, Holland, Poland, Belgium, and Italy. One was in Britain, one in New York, and one in Reykjavik, Iceland. He says there may be one or two in Russia, but these have never been officially handed over to Interpol. This one in Franschhoek is the first in the southern hemisphere.’

‘Each time the cartridges had the snake on them?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the targets?’

‘That’s the funny thing. He says they have no doubt it is a hired assassin, but there is no specific pattern, except for the engraving, of course. In Poland, Spain, and France, the victims were definitely organised crime. The one in New York was a woman of eighty-two, a multimillionaire and an art collector. In Germany it was a young dotcom entrepreneur, and the other a very pretty teacher in her thirties. They were not connected in any way, and the murders were fourteen months apart. I could go on. Bonfils said their theory was that he works for anyone who is prepared to pay. And apparently he charges a lot. A hundred thousand euro per victim, at least.’

‘Do they know who he is?’

‘They have a few interesting theories, really just based on a single informant who doesn’t know the whole story either. Bonfils says the snake on the cartridges is most probably the Mozambican Spitting Cobra, and the letters NM stand for Naja mossambica , the Latin name for the snake. Apparently very poisonous, and deadly accurate . . .’