Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

Uneasy, he located Libby Wiseman’s street and drove up to her house. It was a large rambling edifice with peeling paintwork, surrounded by similar properties in a worse condition. Fifty years ago it might have been a grand residence; now it was a dump. The street was busy with hawkers and loafers. A painfully thin, very black man tried to sell him a packet of something. Calder said no without really knowing what it was. He looked about him. He felt like a sitting target for Visser, or anyone else for that matter. He was relieved when the door was opened.

Libby Wiseman was a heavy-set woman of about sixty. Her dark hair was streaked with grey and hung loose down to her shoulders. She was dressed in a long denim skirt and a baggy green sweatshirt. She was expecting him: he had called earlier that morning. She smiled as she led him into a large kitchen smelling of damp and gas.

‘Interesting neighbourhood,’ Calder said.

‘It’s a war zone,’ Libby said.

‘Ah.’

‘Yeoville used to be the radical capital of South Africa,’ Libby said. ‘My grandparents came here from Lithuania a hundred years ago. Good Bolsheviks, they were. The tradition lived on: in the early nineties, when the ANC exiles began to return to South Africa, they set up home here. I was born here and after my divorce in 1991 I left Cape Town to come back. I even had a brief stint in politics myself.’

She picked out a cigarette from a packet on the kitchen table and lit up. ‘Sorry, do you want one?’ she said, waving the packet vaguely at him. He shook his head. ‘Thought not.’

‘Then the whole world wanted to move here,’ she continued. ‘South Africans, Nigerians, Congolese, Kenyans, everybody. The area became very cosmopolitan. Too cosmopolitan for all those radicals. They hightailed it for the white suburbs, leaving a couple of old crones like me behind them.’

‘Why do you stay?’ Calder asked.

‘I spent the first half of my life fighting segregation. I’m not going to spend the second half running away from the consequences.’

‘You said you were a politician for a while?’

Libby laughed. ‘That only lasted a year. I soon realized my mistake.’

‘Didn’t you like Mandela?’

‘Oh, everyone loves Mandela, even me. No, it wasn’t that. The ANC was supposed to be a socialist organization. I was a member of the Communist Party. We were going to nationalize the means of production, feed the poor, give them schools and hospitals and houses and land. I know it sounds incredibly old-fashioned these days, but I really believed that stuff; still do, as a matter of fact. As soon as the ANC comes to power, what does it do? Privatizes everything in sight. A government like that wasn’t for me, so I quit.’ She stared at Calder’s face. ‘What did you do to your cheek?’

Calder touched the scab. The damage from the plaster on Visser’s study wall had only been superficial, but the memory of that rifle shot distracted him. He didn’t answer.

‘Do I take it you have already experienced the warmth of sunny South Africa’s hospitality?’ Libby said.

‘Er... yes. You could say that.’

‘Sorry, I’m getting cynical, I suppose. I just hoped that when apartheid disappeared, so would the violence in this country. It hasn’t.’

‘It’s violence I wanted to talk to you about. Murder, specifically.’

‘Yes. George Field called me and said you were trying to find out what happened to Martha van Zyl. He said I should trust you and give you all the help I can, by the way. I don’t know George well, but he was a brave man in his time, and I’m inclined to do what he asks.’

‘Thank you. I understand you and Martha were friends. You were both on the board of a charity?’

‘Yes. A literacy project in Guguletu. We weren’t great friends, I’m not sure Martha had many true friends in South Africa, but we liked each other. She was a little naïve, but her heart was in the right place. Her husband sold out, though, and I don’t think she was very happy with that.’

‘Sold out?’

‘Yes. Literally in his case. I was never convinced by those businessmen who raked in profits off the backs of the black labour they were exploiting and then wrung their hands in anguish over apartheid. But in his case he gave up, demolished the Cape Daily Mail and disappeared to America to make his millions. He must be seriously rich by now, isn’t he?’

‘I think so,’ Calder said.

‘Well, Martha didn’t like his plan, and I don’t blame her.’

‘Do you have any idea why she was killed? Do you believe it was the ANC?’

‘It may have been. Or it may have been someone else.’ Libby smiled conspiratorially. ‘I know one thing that the official account missed out. She didn’t travel to Kupugani alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She went with a man.’

‘What!’

Libby smiled. ‘Cornelius had found himself a lover. So Martha did the same. He was quite a bit younger than her, but she was nuts about him. I think it was as much the excitement of conducting an illicit affair as anything else, and this one was very illicit. I was all in favour of it, by the way. In fact, I was jealous; my own marriage was on the rocks and I could have used a toyboy to cheer me up.’

‘So that’s why she went up to Kupugani?’

‘That’s right. It was me who suggested it. I went to school with the owner, Phyllis Delahay. She’s an old friend. Kupugani is a beautiful place. Very discreet. And Martha needed somewhere discreet. Somewhere where her lover wouldn’t attract attention.’

‘Why would he attract attention?’

‘He was black. A black American.’

Benton! Benton bloody Davis. No wonder Martha wanted her mother to talk to him if anything happened to her. And what had Benton said? That he knew nothing, when in fact he knew everything.

‘You don’t look very happy with that information,’ Libby said. ‘I take it you know the man in question?’

‘I do. I used to work with him.’

‘Well, she never told me his name, but she did say he was a banker working with Cornelius.’

‘And you never told anyone else about him?’

‘No,’ Libby said. ‘There was no way I was going to talk to the police about it, especially since they almost certainly knew already, and her husband was out of the question.’

‘So why tell me now?’

Libby examined Calder’s face. ‘I trust you. God knows why, but I do. I’ve thought for a while now that it would be wrong to keep silent for ever. Someone has to know. Someone probably should tell Martha’s children; I’m not sure about that, I’ll leave that up to you. And someone needs to find out what really happened to her. Perhaps that person is you.’

‘Did Cornelius know about him?’

‘That’s the big question, isn’t it?’ Libby took a last drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘It seems to me that in these circumstances the husband is the most likely suspect. He was rich enough and powerful enough to ensure the police stayed quiet. Martha told me she was scared of him, especially when he was angry. He had a motive: men like that do not enjoy being cheated on, whatever their own record of fidelity. He probably didn’t do it himself: perhaps he paid someone. Who knows? But it would explain why no one has come to talk to me about her death until you show up on my doorstep eighteen years later.’

August 22, 1988

He’s coming to Cape Town! Tomorrow. I can’t believe it. Neels told me this morning. It was one of the few things we actually said to each other all day. Apparently he asks about me quite often. Apparently I made quite a hit with him, baking those cookies. I asked innocently whether he would be coming to dinner again. Neels said no. But I’ll see him. I’ll figure out a way of seeing him.