Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

December 16, 1975: Carletonville. A black farmhand discovered the naked body of a twenty-one-year-old waitress at 6:30 in the morning at the side of the tarred road to Rysmierbult. Masking tape, stab wounds in the chest, nipples removed. Where had she been murdered? There were no signs of a struggle where she was found, no trail of blood. No arrests.

March 9, 1976: A thirty-four-year-old prostitute was found in her flat in Welkom. The amount of blood in the room was frightening – one of the knife wounds had sliced through her aorta, which spouted a fountain of blood against the walls, over the furniture and the floor, flushing out her life. She had struggled: there was skin under her nails and she had bruises on her face. She was probably dead before he could use the masking tape, but it was found where it had rolled under a coffee table. Nipples sliced, knife wounds, and, for the first time, horrifying postmortem mutilation of the vagina.

Rage.

No fingerprints on the roll of masking tape.

Then, in 1979, after three years of silence, the death of Baby Marnewick. For the first time a victim in the kneeling position; semen found for the first time.

Where had he been for three years? After the acceleration between ’75 and ’76, the increasing aggression, the periods between the murders becoming briefer? Serial killers didn’t simply disappear of their own free will. They never stopped, they were moths around the flame of self-destruction, closer and closer, crazier and crazier, until they were burned out, usually in the white flame of justice.

The answer, the FBI said, is very often a jail sentence. Because where there is the smoke of serial murder, there is a fire that sparks off other crimes – even minor acts of white-collar theft, arson occasionally, indecent assault and rape or attempted rape. All the studies indicated that a silence of months or years that disturbed a killer’s demonic tempo was, in 80 percent of the cases, due to a jail sentence for another crime.

Three murders in 1980: In March at Sishen, a twenty-three-year-old housewife, kneeling, multiple knife wounds, nipples removed, masking tape around the ankles and wrists.

June, in Durban: A thirty-one-year-old cosmetic sales rep in her hotel room. Exactly the same modus operandi.

August in Thabazimbi: A twenty-three-year-old unemployed single woman, possibly a prostitute or a call girl, found in her small home, five days after someone had used the whole terrifying ritual to humiliate and murder her.

And after that, nothing.

The bloody trail ended sharply and suddenly, as if Masking Tape had disappeared off the face of the earth. Dead? Jail sentence again? It made no sense.

For a week I stared at the monster on my wall. The flow chart was there, the map, the notes in the margin, the main suspects – not a single duplication. The list of similarities and differences was there, as well as the gaps.

The trail was there, sharp and clear, but there was no indication of identity. The murderer of Baby Marnewick had a trail now, a history. But, as yet, no name.

For a week I brooded and gazed and reread every one of the nine documents. And the one thing I couldn’t find was the murderer of Baby Marnewick. I would have to cast my net wider.

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

33

In the late afternoon the calls lessened significantly and at 17:00 he connected an answering machine to the telephone. “This service is closed for the night. Please leave your name and number and we’ll return your call in the morning.” He knew that in the small hours of the night, the craziest would emerge from their holes, those who heard voices, those in contact with other planets. Let them talk to the machine.

He walked to Hope’s office. The door was closed. He knocked.

“Come in.”

He opened the door.

She smiled at him. “You knocked!”

He gave her a wry smile in return, sat down in the same chair that he had used when he first saw her.

“We did well today.”

“ You did well today.”

“You were a great help.”

“No. I was pathetic.”

“Merely a lack of experience.”

“It was your idea, Van Heerden. Your plan. And it worked.”

He was quiet for a moment, enjoying the praise.

“Do you really think Powell is American Secret Service?”

“Something like it.”

“Why?”

“Regular consular people don’t do things like that. They don’t walk in and offer to assist with a crime investigation. They are reactive, polite, careful not to interfere in household affairs. And if there was a real need to help, they work through official channels.”

“He looks like someone’s uncle.”

“They all do.”

“Except for the two from Military Intelligence.”

He smiled at her. “That’s true.”

“Everything for tomorrow is organized. I’m meeting Mrs. de Jager in Bloemfontein and she is flying back with me.”

“You asked her about the things she has to bring?”

“I did. She will.”

“Thank you. There’ll be publicity again. I spoke to the Cape Times and the Argus. Die Burger will also place a follow-up. Just that we’ve received information that we’re processing. And eTV…”

“I’ll bring Wilna van As up to date. On my way home.”

“Good.”

She nodded. “Zatopek,” she said softly, almost experimentally.

He grinned. “Yes?”

“There is something serious I have to discuss with you.”

♦

He put on the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, for violin, viola, and orchestra, turned up the sound, the sweet, triumphant notes filling his dark house and blotting out the howling northwester. He ate leftovers, spaghetti and then the tangy chicken livers, sitting in his battered armchair, notes on the table in front of him.

Hope wanted him to hand over the case to the police.

He had refused. And dished up excuses. They worked on hundreds of cases at once. He had focus. They had procedures and restraints; he was free. If they were so good, they would have made the breakthrough.

“Please,” she had said again. She was scared, he could see that, scared of the sudden twists, the strange groups involved, scared of the possibility that a psychopath called Bushy was going to get them.

He had refused.

Because he had to.

♦

She couldn’t concentrate on the book.

She put it back on the bedside table and leaned back against the cushions.

Wilna van As had cried again. Out of gratitude. In anticipation of the meeting with Carolina de Jager the following day. From fear of the skeletons of the past. From longing for her Johannes Jacobus Smit, who had become Rupert de Jager, someone whom she didn’t know.

“Would you like to spend the night with me?” Hope had asked, looking at the large, cold house.

“No,” Wilna van As said.

Hope had stayed as long as she could, until the other woman had realized and said she should go, tomorrow was going to be a long day.

And underlying it all was the knowledge that couldn’t be ignored.

Something had changed today. Between her and Zatopek van Heerden. Between them.

They had laughed together, heartily and honestly, even exuberantly, when she had sworn – goodness gracious, where had that word come from? She hadn’t known she had it in her, but he had laughed and looked at her and in that moment he was someone else, all the anger, the unapproachability, suddenly gone.

And he had knocked. And spoken to her calmly. When she had shared her fear, when she had said that the police should take over.

Something had changed today…

There was a knock at her door and she thought it was him. She smiled – it was becoming a habit, these late-night visits – put on her dressing gown, her teddy-bear slippers, shuffled to the front door, peered responsibly through the spy hole and saw Black and White, two peas in a pod, and said, “What do you want?”