Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

“I don’t know yet. Something. Maybe nothing. But let me make sure first.”

“Something?” The fear in her voice again, in her eyes.

“Let me make sure first. May I take the ID?”

“Yes,” she said, but hesitantly.

♦

On the way to Mitchell’s Plain he was in the foothills of that curious breakthrough euphoria, the Everest of insight still hidden behind mist and clouds, data stored in his head, in his notes. The columns of the investigation ledger didn’t balance yet: a theory, somewhere between the figures and the years and the information of Wilna van As the truth lay hidden. His heart now beating lightly, his head touching on this and that, he felt light as air. Fuck, fuck, fuck, it was like the old days. What was happening to him? Was it that easy? Release, liberation, freedom, walking the old roads with the compass of knowledge and procedures and instructions and senses and Nagel’s nagging voice in the back of your head?

Not likely…

Don’t think about it. Like a man climbing, don’t look down.

Did he want to climb up? Did he want to get up out of the safe, stinking shit of his existence?

Orlando Arendse’s house had been here five, six years ago. Things had changed.

Security wall with razor wire on the top, Fort Mitchell’s Plain. He stopped at the gate and got out. Behind the gate a man came walking up, large pistol holstered at his belt.

“What?”

“I’m looking for Orlando.”

“Who’re you?”

No respect anymore.

“Van Heerden.”

“SAP?” Spelling out the initials.

“Used to be.”

“Wait.”

SAP. They had always had the gift of smelling a cop, even if you were no longer official. Even if you didn’t look like a policeman. He looked at the extensive burglarproofing against the windows. Battlefield Mitchell’s Plain. Now there were gangs and Pagad – People Against Gangsterism and Drugs – and Chinese Mafia and Colombian and Nigerian cartels and Russian Mafia and solo flyers and an alphabet soup of splinter groups. No wonder the police couldn’t keep up. In his day there were only gangs – jittery teenagers and fucked-up jailbirds…

The man came back, opened the gate. “You’d better bring in the car.”

He drove in. Got out.

“Come,” said pistol-on-the-hip.

“Aren’t you going to search me?”

“Orlando says I don’t have to because you can’t hit a double-door shithouse at two yards.”

“It’s always nice to be remembered.”

In at the front door. The living room was furnished like an office. Home industry of organized crime. In the corner sat three more soldiers, while Orlando sat at a large table. Older than he remembered, gray at the temples, looking like a headmaster now, still fond of cream-colored three-piece tailor-made suits.

“Van Heerden,” Orlando said, unsurprised.

“Orlando.”

“You want something from me.” The soldiers in the corner busy with paperwork, ears pricked, ready for action.

He took the identity book out of his pocket, handed it to Orlando.

“Sit,” said Orlando, waving him to a chair. He opened the booklet, put the reading glasses that hung around his neck on a string on his nose, pulled the lamp nearer, switched it on, held the book under the light.

“I don’t do IDs any longer.”

“What do you do now, Orlando?”

“You’re not official anymore, Van Heerden.”

He grinned for a moment. So fucking true .

Orlando closed the book. “It’s old. And it’s not my work.”

“But it’s forged.”

Orlando nodded. “Good job. Could be Nieuwoudt’s.”

“Who’s Nieuwoudt?”

Orlando put the ID down on the table, flicked it deftly across the surface to him. “You come in here, Van Heerden, unannounced, as if I owe you. You’ve been out of the Force for five, six years. Rumor has it you’re a bottom-feeder going down. Where’s your negotiating power?”

“I don’t have negotiating power.”

Orlando stared at him, a man with brown skin and the features of a Xhosa, the unsympathetic genes of his legendary white wine-farmer father and his servant mother. “You were always honest, Van Heerden, I’ll give you that. A straight shooter as long as it’s not with a firearm.”

“Fuck you, Orlando.”

The hands of the soldiers in the corner grew still.

Orlando folded his hands in front of him, gold rings on each small finger. “You still touchy about Nagel, Van Heerden?”

“You know fuck-all about Nagel, Orlando.” His voice was high, hands shaking. He sat on the edge of the chair.

Orlando rested his chin on his folded hands, his eyes black and glistening. “Relax,” he said quietly. Soldiers holding their breath.

Steady on, struggling, can’t lose control, not now, not here, red tide slowly receding, a deep breath, felt his heart beating, slowly, slowly.

Orlando’s voice was gentle. “You’ll have to let go, Van Heerden. We all make mistakes.”

Breathe, slowly.

“Who’s Nieuwoudt?”

Orlando’s eyes and hands were quiet for a long while, measuring, thoughtful. “Charles Nieuwoudt. Boer. White trash. Been riding the slow train for ten years, even missed Mandela’s birthday-bash amnesty.”

“Forger.”

“One of the best. An animal but an artist. But he got sloppy, too much work, too much money, too much weed, too many women. Tried to make a fortune, so he made six millions’ worth of twenty-rand notes without the watermark and dumped the printer in the Liesbeek River with a hole in the head to get his hands on his part of the profit as well. So they got him for the murder and the money.”

Soldiers started moving papers around again.

“And this is his work?”

“Looks like it. He was the king of the blue books. The blues were easier to fake. The seventies and early eighties were good years…”

“One more question, Orlando.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s 1983. I have dollars. American. Many dollars. I want to buy a house and start a legal business. I need rand. What do I do?”

“Who’re you working for, Van Heerden?”

“An attorney.”

“Kemp?”

He shook his head.

“So now you’re a PI for an attorney?”

“Freelance, Orlando.”

“It’s lower than shark shit, Van Heerden. Why don’t you go back to the Force? We need all the opposition we can get.”

He ignored it. “Dollars in ’eighty-three.”

“It’s a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“I was small-time in ’eighty-three. You had to take thirty or fifty cents to the dollar. But if you’re looking for names, I can’t help you.”

Van Heerden got up. “Thank you, Orlando.”

“Are there still dollars in this thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe, though.”

“Maybe.”

“Dollars are big money now.”

He only nodded.

“You owe me one, Van Heerden.”

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

12

Aunt Baby Marnewick.

Every time I hear about a new movie in which fearless American heroes save us all from a virus, meteorites, or enemy aliens threatening humankind, I wonder why they are so completely unaware of the far more interesting, small, yet life-altering suburban intrigues.

The Marna Espag love affair didn’t survive our first clumsy and incomplete sexual effort. There was no sudden dramatic ending, simply a systematic cooling off, aided by my disappointment in my performance and her shame because she hadn’t been able to hide her own frustration.

But at sixteen, seventeen, the soul and the body heal amazingly fast, and we remained friends, even when she started dating the head boy, Lourens Campher, during the July of our senior year. I’ll wonder forever whether she and Lourens managed it successfully and if he gained the trophy of her virginity and restored her faith in men.