Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

“Ma.”

She held up her hand, eyes closed.

Memories flooded him, his mother in her role as disciplining parent. He knew the mannerisms so well, but it had been so many years. He saw her as she had been in Stilfontein, saw the erosion of age, and compassion filled him: she had suddenly grown so old.

“I must do something, Zatopek. I must say something. You’re my child. Your age cannot change that. But I don’t know what to say. It’s been five years. And…you can’t get over it.”

“I’m over it, Ma.”

“You’re not.”

He said nothing.

“My mother believed in emotional blackmail, Zatopek. She would’ve sat here now and asked, Do you know you’re breaking a mother’s heart? Don’t you care about my feelings? I’ll never do that to you. How everything makes me feel has nothing to do with the issue. And to give you a sermon won’t help, either, because you’re an intelligent man. You know that the sense one makes of life, the amount you grow as a human being, is in your own hands. You know you have choices.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“And one of the choices is to see a psychologist, Zatopek.”

He looked at his hands.

“As I have it from Hope, there is another choice you have to exercise today.”

“I’m not going to be involved in that stupid blackmail, Ma.”

“Do the right thing, Zet. That’s all I ask.”

“The right thing?”

“Yes, my child, the right thing.” She looked at him, her gaze, her eyes, intense. He looked away.

She got up. “I’m going to have a bath. You have a great deal to think about.”

♦

You can’t get over it .

He lay stretched out on his bed, his hands behind his head, briefly aware that this bed, this position, represented 40 to 50 percent of his time in the past few years. His mother’s words in his head – she had unleashed the hounds again. She didn’t even know what “it” was. She thought (as his colleagues and friends had thought then, when they still cared) that “it” meant exaggerated self-blame about the death of Nagel. Because he had missed his target in that life-changing moment, and the suspect, the murderer of seventeen prostitutes, the Red Ribbon Executioner, had hit Nagel once, twice. Nagel, who dropped without a sound, blood and tissue against the wall, a moment caught in his memory forever. And then he hit the target, from fear, not revenge, from fear of dying, and he hit the target, over and over and over and over, suddenly the top marksman for the first time in his life. Saw the Executioner staggering back, drop, fired until his Z88 was empty, crept to Nagel, faceless Nagel, cradled the shattered head in his hands. Nagel, who still breathed, each halting breath spraying blood over his white shirt. He saw life leaking out of Nagel and screamed to the heavens, a deep animal sound, because in that moment he knew with absolute, overwhelming certainty that nothing would ever be the same again, the sound erupting from the center of his body, from his very essence, as he roared to the sky.

The others found him like that, on his knees with Nagel’s shattered head in his hands, Nagel’s blood on his clothes, and the tears running down his cheeks, and they thought he was crying about Nagel and comforted him and loosened his fingers and led him away and comforted him with deep admiration for his loyalty, for his professional love for a comrade, supported him in the days and weeks that followed and, when eventually he said he wasn’t coming back, enfolded him in their understanding: he had been too deeply hurt, too traumatized, it happened, they understood, it happened and it was a good thing, it showed policemen also had feelings, he testified to that.

He had deceived them. Them and his mother.

The truth, the whole truth, lay deeper, far deeper, that moment in the alleyway merely the tip of the iceberg, the bloated body of deceit hidden under the sea of lies.

But he had recovered from “it.” Worked through “it.” Found himself on the other side, systematically, two, almost three years later, when the pain of the truth was contained and only self-knowledge remained. His self-knowledge and the extrapolation, that nothing mattered, that no one mattered, that all were animals, manipulative primitive beings who struggled for survival under the thin, artificial layer of civilization.

“It” changed him – that was what his mother didn’t understand. And what Hope Beneke didn’t understand. Gave him an insight that they didn’t have.

Everyone was evil. Most of them didn’t know it yet.

And now his mother wanted him to do the right thing.

The right thing was to survive. To make certain that no one fucked with you.

The doctors.

Nagel had still lived in the ambulance, in the hospital.

They worked on him behind closed doors and came out and with a shrug of their shoulders said no, he didn’t have a chance, explained his injuries with big words, those fucking big words with which they reduced you from human being to patient, big words to explain the shattered head and the hole in the chest. But they saved the Red Ribbon Executioner, took Van Heerden’s lead out of him and fastened him to their machines, pumped fluids into him, sewed and closed and let him live, and Nagel died in that cold, white-tiled place, the last life going out of his eyes, and he had stood outside with the man’s blood on his shirt and wanted to scream because he had to drive to…

The tip of the iceberg.

And now his mother wanted him to do the right thing.

The right thing was to say to Kara-An Rousseau, Fuck you and your petty show of power. I won’t be manipulated . And to tell Hope Beneke that her good fight was useless, the issue was dead, and Wilna van As would survive without a million, life would go on, and a hundred years from now no one would even know about the existence of such insignificant souls.

Nothing he did would make a difference.

Except, maybe, putting Kara-An Rousseau in her place.

She wasn’t the only one who could play at that game.

But to what purpose?

His mother and Hope Beneke. Probably had a nice chat about him over the coffee and rusks.

Odd that they’d found each other so quickly from here, down the road.

Just a moment or two’s conversation at the BMW and suddenly a visit.

Strange.

And now his mother expected.

The one person whom he really owed.

There was only one thing to do.

Deceive.

♦

“Kara-An, this is Hope,” she said on the telephone.

“Hi.”

“I would like to know why you did it.”

A laugh sounded at the other end. “I didn’t think you’d understand, Hope.”

“I’m prepared to try.”

“With due respect, Hope, you’re out of your league.”

“My league is Wilna van As. She has nothing to do with the latest developments.”

“It sounds as if you don’t think our Mike is going to accept the offer.”

“Please, Kara-An.”

“I’m not the one you should beg, angel.”

She suddenly didn’t know what to say.

“I have to go. There’s someone at the front door. Strength to your elbow, Hope.” And the line went dead.

♦

“What do you really want?” he asked as she opened the door.

For a moment there was astonishment; then she smiled. “Come in, Zatopek van Heerden. What a wonderful surprise.” She closed the door behind him, pulled him roughly toward her, put her hands behind his head, and kissed him hard on the mouth, her fingers pulling his hair, her body full of little urgent movements pressing him against the door, and then he shoved her away and said, “Fuck you,” and she stood in front of him, her lipstick smudged, and she gasped and she laughed, and he said, “You’re sick.”