Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

I learn that in order to get away with murder there are some ground rules. Have a simple plan. Don’t have a motive. Have an alibi. Don’t boast. Don’t act creepy. Socialise as usual. Obey all other laws, especially on the road. Don’t leave DNA. Don’t keep the murder weapon. Get rid of the body: no body + no weapon = no murder.

Slowly, deliciouslyachinglyslowly, the plan comes to me, like chapters in a book. I write everything down. It’s not a novel yet, it’s not even the beginning of the novel. It’s the work I have to commit to paper before I write the first sentence. I don’t have a plot yet, or even a premise, but I have a good feeling about this. There is a thrill in my fingers. I think this will lead to my best one yet.

My cliché: I feel alive again.

Iarrange to see my GP, ostensibly for my annual check-up but really so I can ask him questions. (His name is Doctor Olaf, I kid you not). Also, I thought it would be the clever thing to do after passing out in the shower for no particular reason.

The conversation goes something like this:

(SFX: rustling of papers as crazy-looking doctor speed-reads five pages of blood test results.)

Doc: “I’m happy with your cholesterol but you need to watch your blood pressure. You know what I always say about blood pressure.”

Me: “It’s the most important number.”

His face lights up. He has the energy of the eccentric professor in Back ToThe Future . His office is cluttered with promotional medical paraphernalia, as if he has promised to keep every freebie he has ever been sent. There is a stopped clock on the wall: an advert for a wrinkle cream.

Doc: “Yes! It can strip years off your life, you know.”

As if I don’t feel old enough.

Dr Olaf delights in facts. The more he can fit into the limited time we see each other, the better. I am fascinated by a gaudy model on the tangle that is his desk: a man’s severed torso holding internal organs. Pink lungs, green liver, yellow spleen. I have the inexplicable urge to touch them.

“Now, if you pass out again, you have to come back here for more tests.”

That seems like reasonable advice. He lifts his arms above his head and stretches.

“Everything else is good. Maybe don’t drink so much.”

That’s what he says every year, even though when he asks me, I always divide how much I really drink by a third. I don’t take his wrist-slapping too seriously: he has a year-round tan and always smells like cigarettes.

“So, Doc, I need to ask you something. It’s kind of private.”

“Your blood tests are fine! Whatever you think you picked up, you didn’t,” he winks.

“It’s not really about me, it’s a rhetorical question.”

“Ah. Your ‘friend’ has got a rash? Warts? Erectile dysfunction?”

I wish he’d keep his voice down.

“It’s a strange question.”

“Oh, believe me son, I’ve heard them all. They keep my job interesting! The stranger the better!”

“It’s for my new novel,” I say, savouring the sound of my words.

Doc doesn’t care; he is waiting for me to get on with the question.

“If you stab someone, in the heart, how long will it take for that person to die? Would it be quick?”

Now he is excited. Time to flex his medical brain. He does a two-step then begins talking with overt hand gestures.

“It would depend on a great deal of factors. If the knife is small it might only puncture the heart; if it’s blunt it might get stuck in the ribs and intercostals. A large, sharp knife would obviously inflict the most damage. And the knife should be removed afterwards, so that the heart can collapse. That would be the quickest and least painful way, if you choose the heart. If you choose something else, for example the throat, it would be even quicker.”

I can’t slit throats – too brutal. I’m not a barbarian. Next he’ll be telling me to scalp her.

“So you’re picturing, like, a samurai sword?” I ask. Not very practical.

“If you feel the need to be aesthetic,” he says dryly. “Otherwise, a kitchen knife will do.”

I’m grateful to Doctor Olaf for his advice, but the whole experience left me feeling a little empty. No murderer would ask his doctor how to kill his victim. I feel I’ve cheated. So for the pharmaceutical side of the affair I decide to go underground. My drug dealer usually delivers (isn’t that great? Door-to-door Diazepam! He’s really business-savvy. If he had a credit card facility I would nominate him for entrepreneur of the year. What’s also great about him is he takes real pride in his work) but I need my purchase this time around to be a bit more ghetto. Plus, I don’t think my dealer is any way interested in what I am looking for. He prefers designer drugs with their appropriate prices. Also, he has added vitamin supplements to his offering, which I find disturbing.

I drive to Hillbrow, stop in a nice-looking suburb on the way and draw a thousand Rand. I don’t even bother to look at the slip the machine spits out at me. Once on Louis Botha I slow down and look around. I ask the potential hijacker at the robot if he knows where I can score. He just shakes his head at me and there’s a strange look in his eyes. He either wholeheartedly disapproves of drug taking or he thinks I’m undercover.

I ask a few more people but it’s hard to not look suspicious. I’m in a Jag convertible in Hillbrow, for God’s sake. Besides, everyone looks suspicious. It was a lot easier to score when I was a student. Not that I had to come to Hillbrow for a banky. I only moved on to harder stuff when I needed to, for a short story I wrote in my early twenties.

I pull in at the notorious petrol station and ask the attendant. He doesn’t seem to speak a great deal of English. He just shouts in the general direction of the building and a few faces look up out of the dim interior. He puts the petrol pump nozzle in my fuel tank but doesn’t turn it on. Another guy in greasy blue overalls ambles out to my window for a chat.

“Nice ride,” he smiles. He’s laid back, like a Rasta, but without the trappings.

“I need GHB. Just enough for one night. But it has to be GHB, untraceable, nothing else. No mixed shit. And I don’t want roofies.”

“ Angazi.” He shakes his head and sucks his lips. “I got roofies. More kick. Much better.”

I can tell why this guy’s a drug dealer and not a brain surgeon.

“I don’t want roofies. You can trace it. I need GHB.”

I’m starting to think this is a bad idea. Strictly speaking I don’t even need to be here. You can make your own damn GHB, if you know how. If you have an iPhone and know how to spell Google. But the fear gnawing at my stomach is the reason I came, this dull paranoia, this feeling: you can’t get this by sitting on your Chesterfield in the ’burbs.

It’s hot. The tattiness of this place and the smell of petrol is getting up my nose.

“Well?” I’m trying to act cool but I can hear tick-tock before some ego in a cop car pulls up. I wind my watch.

“Drive around, I’ll see you now,” says the lipsucker.

“What?”

The other attendant chips in. He turns out to be able to speak very good English. They seem amused at my presence.

“Drive around the block, then come back here. Park in the carwash.”

He takes back his nozzle, closes my petrol cap and pats the back window, leaving a nice set of fingerprints on the glass. It seems that these guys have lost their healthy sense of fear a long time ago.

I cruise around the block feeling like an idiot in my flashy car. This neighbourhood is Dodge City. The roads are full of potholes and the uneven pavements teem with weeds and junk. There are no road names. I should have parked somewhere and caught a taxi in. Doctor Olaf wouldn’t be happy: I can feel my blood pressure spiking. There is a certain relief in pulling into the cool shade of the car wash, until someone switches the damn thing on and the old rollers scratch the shit out of my duco.