Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

“I never realized…”

“He doesn’t advertise the connection. I think it’s a matter of honor. He doesn’t want to use it. Misuse it.”

“I never realized.” She was still finding it difficult to connect these two people, mother and son: famous artist, good-looking and dignified, and…dysfunctional son.

“He’s had a hard time, Hope.”

“I…he…I don’t think he’s working for me any longer.”

“Oh.” Disappointment.

“This afternoon he…he’s…” She searched for euphemisms, greatly empathetic toward the woman in front of her. “I find it difficult to communicate with him.”

“I know.”

“He’s…resigned, I think.”

“I didn’t know. I wanted to prepare you.”

Hope made a movement with her hands, a sign of helplessness.

“I haven’t come to apologize for him. I thought if I tried to explain…”

“You needn’t.”

She leaned forward, her voice soft. “He’s my only child. I must do what I can. He had to grow up without a father. He was a wonderful child. I thought I’d been successful, even as a single parent.”

“Joan, you don’t have to – ”

“I must, Hope.” Her voice was decisive. “It was my…our choice to bring him into the world. I have to shoulder my responsibilities. I have to try to rectify the mistakes I made. I raised him and thought I could be both father and mother if I tried hard enough. I was wrong. I want to tell you what he was like. A good-looking boy, cheerful, who found it easy to laugh, the world a wonderful place, a journey of discovery. He didn’t know about the dark side of life. I didn’t tell him. I should have. Because when he discovered it, I wasn’t there to help him and it changed everything.”

There was no self-pity in her voice, only calm rationality.

“He had a soft center, still has. They teased him in the police that he was too soft for the work, and he liked it, the way we all like to be a little different. And then…I was so pleased when he went to university, he was so happy, so enthusiastic, and I was proud of him and knew his father would also have been proud of him. But life takes strange byways, and he went back to the Force and his mentor was shot, right in front of him, and he believes it was his fault, and then he changed because I hadn’t prepared him for things like death and human fallibility. That’s what I think. If he could believe in himself again, if he could be given another chance…”

She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to reach out. “Joan…”

“That attorney, Kemp, he looks so angry, but I think he has a kind heart. He knows my child isn’t bad. There were others, but they didn’t give him much of a chance. And I don’t know how many chances he has left. This issue with the will…Zet can do it. He needs it so much.”

“I…”

“I’m not making excuses for him.”

“I know.”

“He mustn’t know that I was here.”

“He won’t.”

The telephone rang. Hope frowned.

“Please answer.”

“It must be urgent. They don’t usually phone.” She picked up.

“I’m in consultation, Marie.”

“Mr. van Heerden is here again, Hope. He’s looking for an identity document.”

She closed her eyes. The day couldn’t get any worse. “Tell him to stay where he is and wait. Under no circumstances will you allow him in here.”

“Very well, Hope.”

“I’m on my way.” She put down the receiver very gently.

“Zatopek has just arrived at reception.”

“Damn!” said Joan van Heerden.

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.” She got up, walked to the door, opened it carefully. The passage was empty. She closed the door behind her and walked to the reception area. He stood there, impatient. She saw that he wore dry clothes, jeans, trainers.

He saw her. “I’m looking for Smit’s ID book.”

“Wilna van As has it. Shall I phone her?”

“I’ll drive there. I want to see the shop.” He didn’t look at her. He stared at a Piet Grobler painting on the wall. It was one of her favorites: Man with Writer’s Block Eating an Apricot Sandwich .

“May I ask why you want the ID document?”

“Murder and Robbery have the wrong ID number. I must get the right one for the birth certificate.”

“Will it help us?”

He looked past her. “I’ll know where he was born. Who his parents were. His life before Van As.”

“It’s a start.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Fine.” And then, when he’d turned, she added quietly and impulsively: “Zatopek.”

He stopped at the glass doors. “Fucking Kemp,” she heard, and then he was gone. She smiled for the first time since lunch. The day couldn’t…

The receptionist held out a telephone. “It’s Kara-An Rousseau, Hope.”

She took the call at the reception desk. “Hallo.”

“Hi, Hope. I’m looking for the phone number of that detective of yours.”

“Van Heerden?”

“Yes, the one in the restaurant today.”

“He’s…somewhat fully booked at the moment.”

“No, not for a job.”

“Oh?”

“He’s very, very sexy, Hope. Hadn’t you noticed?”

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

10

My mother thought it was Nagel’s death that had screwed me up. Everyone thought it was Nagel’s death.

Why, when people thought about other people’s lives, did they only add a few large numbers to make a judgment? But with the arithmetic of their own lives, they were prepared to juggle a thousand figures, to multiply, add, subtract, until the books had been cooked, until the sum total suited them.

Had I also been guilty of that? I didn’t know. I had tried to leave the unimportant figures out of the equation. And to allow the negatives equal value. But could we ever be trustworthy accountants of our own lives?

I’d keep trying.

I was fifteen years old when she called me to the living room one evening and said she wanted to speak seriously to me. She had a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the coffee table and poured a tot into each.

“I don’t drink that stuff, Ma.”

“They’re both for me, Zet. I want to talk to you about sex.”

“Ma…”

“You’re not the only one for whom it’s uncomfortable. It’s just something we have to do.”

“But Ma – ”

“I know you know about sex. I, too, heard all about it from my school friends long before my mother spoke to me.”

“Ma – ”

“I just want to make sure you hear the right side, the other side as well.”

And then she knocked back the first glass of whiskey.

“Humankind is old, Zet. Millions of years. And what we are wasn’t created yesterday. We were formed and shaped and molded when we were still uncivilized, when we still roamed in small groups over the savannas of Africa and Europe, looking for food, using stone knives, and wearing clothes of animal skin. When there was no certainty that we would be the species that would win, we had to survive. And to do that, everyone had to play his or her part. Men and women. The men hunted and fought and protected. And impregnated as many women as possible so that the gene pool wouldn’t stagnate, and because tomorrow they might be lion food. And women had to keep their group together, and to make sure of that they seduced the strongest, fastest, cleverest men, to survive. We still have these urges, Zet. It’s in us and we’re not aware of it, because we no longer know ourselves, and it’s no one’s fault because the problem is that we no longer need it. We’ve won. We’re at the top of the food chain and there are too many of us and if half of us don’t procreate, it wouldn’t matter.”