Deon Meyer: Dead at Daybreak

“At this stage it seems to be just under two million.”

He had suspected it. “Van As is your client.”

“She lived with Mr. Smit for eleven years. She supported him in his business interests, prepared his meals, cleaned his house, looked after his clothes, and at his insistence had their child aborted.”

“He never offered to marry her?”

“He was no…advocate of marriage.”

“Where was she on the evening of the…”

“Thirtieth? In Windhoek. He sent her there. On business. She returned on the first of October and found him dead, tied to a kitchen chair.”

He slid farther down in his chair. “You want me to trace the will?”

She nodded. “I’ve already explored every possible legal loophole. The final sitting at the Master of the Supreme Court is in a week’s time. If we cannot supply a legal document by that time, Wilna van As doesn’t get a cent.”

“A week?”

She nodded.

“It’s almost…ten months. Since the murder.”

The attorney nodded again.

“I take it the police haven’t had a breakthrough.”

“They did their best.”

He looked at her and then at the two certificates on the wall. His ribs were hurting. He made a short, obscene noise, part pain, part disbelief. “A week?”

“I – ”

“Didn’t Kemp tell you? I don’t do miracles anymore.”

“Mr. van – ”

“It’s ten months since the man’s death. It’s a waste of your client’s money. Not that that would bother an attorney.”

He saw her eyes narrowing, and a small rosy fleck in the shape of a crescent moon slowly appeared on one cheek. “My ethics, Mr. van Heerden, are above reproach.”

“Not if you give Mrs. van As the impression that there’s any hope,” he said, and wondered just how much self-control she had.

“ Miss van As is completely informed about the significance of this step. I advised her of the potential uselessness of the exercise. But she is prepared to pay you because it’s her last chance. The only remaining possibility. Unless you don’t see your way clear, Mr. van Heerden. Evidently there are other people with the same talents…”

The crescent was bright red but her voice remained measured and controlled.

“Who would be only too pleased to join you in taking Miss van As’s money,” he said, and wondered if the fleck could become any redder. To his surprise she smiled slowly.

“I’m really not interested in how you acquired your wounds.” With her manicured hands she gestured at his face. “But I’m beginning to understand why.”

He saw the crescent moon slowly disappearing. He thought for a moment, disappointed. “What else was in the safe?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t know? She sleeps with him for eleven years and she doesn’t know what’s cooking in his safe?”

“Do you know what’s in your wife’s wardrobe, Mr. van Heerden?”

“What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Hope.”

“Hope?”

“My parents were somewhat…romantic.”

He rolled the name around in his mouth. Hope Beneke. He looked at her, wondered how someone, a woman, thirty years old, could live with the name Hope. He looked at her short hair. Like a man’s. Fleetingly he wondered with which angle of her face the gods of features had fumbled – an old game, vaguely remembered.

“I don’t have a wife, Hope.”

“I’m not surprised…What’s your name?”

“I like the Mister.”

“Do you want to accept the challenge, Mister van Heerden?”

♦

Wilna van As was somewhere in her indefinable middle years, a woman with no sharp edges, short and rounded, and her voice was quiet as they sat in the living room of the house in Durbanville while she told him and the attorney about Jan Smit.

She had introduced him as “Mr. van Heerden, our investigator.” Our . As if they owned him now. He asked for coffee when they were offered something to drink. Strangers to one another, they sat stiffly and formally in the living room.

“I know it’s almost impossible to find the will in time,” Van As said apologetically, and he looked at the female attorney. She met his gaze, her face expressionless.

He nodded. “You’re sure of the existence of the document?”

Hope Beneke drew in her breath as if she wanted to raise an objection.

“Yes. Jan brought it home one evening.” She gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “We sat at the table and he took me through it step-by-step. It wasn’t a long document.”

“And the tenor of it was that you would inherit everything?”

“Yes.”

“Who drew up the will?”

“He wrote it himself. It was in his handwriting.”

“Did anyone witness it?”

“He had it witnessed at the police station here in Durbanville. Two of the people there signed it.”

“There was only the one copy?”

“Yes,” said Wilna van As, in a resigned voice.

“You didn’t find it odd that he didn’t have an attorney to draw up the document?”

“Jan was like that.”

“How?”

“Private.”

The word hung in the air. Van Heerden said nothing, waiting for her to speak again.

“I don’t think he trusted people very much.”

“Oh?”

“He…we…led a simple life. We worked and came home. He sometimes referred to this house as his hiding place. There weren’t any friends, really…”

“What did he do?”

“Classical furniture. What other people describe as antiques. He said that in South Africa there weren’t really any antiques; the country was too young. We were wholesalers. We found the furniture and provided traders, sometimes sold directly to the collectors.”

“What was your role?”

“I began working for him about twelve years ago. As a kind of…secretary. He drove around looking for furniture, in the countryside, on farms. I manned the office. After six months – ”

“Where’s the office?”

“Here,” she indicated. “On Wellington Street. Behind Pick ’n Pay. It’s a little old house – ”

“There was no safe in the office.”

“No.”

“After six months…” he reminded her.

“I quickly learned the business. He was in the Northern Cape when someone telephoned from Swellendam. It was a jonkmanskas , a wardrobe, if I remember correctly, nineteenth-century, a pretty piece with inlays…In any case, I phoned him. He said I had to have a look at it. I drove there and bought it for next to nothing. He was impressed when he got back. Then I started doing more and more…”

“Who manned the office?”

“We started off by taking turns. Afterward he stayed in the office.”

“You didn’t mind?”

“I liked it.”

“When did you start living together?”

Van As hesitated.

“Miss van As…” Hope Beneke leaned forward, briefly searched for words. “Mr. van Heerden must unfortunately ask questions that might possibly be…uncomfortable. But it’s essential that he acquire as much information as possible.”

Van As nodded. “Of course. It’s just that…I’m not used to discussing the relationship. Jan was always…He said people didn’t have to know. Because they always gossip.”

She realized that he was waiting for an answer. “It was a year after we began working together.”

“Eleven years.” A statement.

“Yes.”

“In this house.”

“Yes.”

“And you never went into the safe.”

“No.”

He simply stared at her.

Van As gestured. “That’s the way it was.”

“If Jan Smit had died under different circumstances, how would you have got the will out of the safe?”