Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

Bushy Schlebusch, older, sturdier, not quite a bull’s-eye, more of an impression. He looked for a face that would match the voice: You have a mother, policeman. Do you hear me? You have a mother .

“I think the face is too fat.”

“Okay. Let’s try this.”

“Hi.” He heard the voice behind him, turned. Small, slender, brown-haired girl.

A multitude of earrings.

“We’re busy, Charmaine,” Marshall said.

She ignored him. “I’m Charmaine.”

“Van Heerden.”

“Your jacket. It’s so…so retro. Don’t you want to sell it?”

He looked at his jacket. “Retro?”

“Y-e-e-e-s.” With feeling.

“Charmaine!”

“If you ever want to sell it…” She turned away, unwillingly, walked to a desk.

“What does it look like?”

Schlebusch’s face filled the whole screen, the lip still curled in derision, the eyes, older, still…

“It’s better.”

“Who is this dude?”

“A murderer.”

“Oh, cool,” said Marshall. “Now for the hair. It’s going to take a little longer.”

♦

“Jeez,” said the night editor of Die Burger when he looked at the photographs. “You should’ve told us earlier. The front page is full. So is page three.”

“Can’t we move the Chris Barnard story?” the crime reporter asked.

“Lord, no. His new girlfriend is a scoop and the posters are carrying the story.”

“And the Price Line pic?”

“The chief will kill me.”

“If we have a Price Line kicker on the front page and move the photo inside?”

The night editor scratched his beard. “Hell…” He looked at Van Heerden. “Can’t we put it on hold for Friday’s edition?”

“I…” He couldn’t afford to lose another day. “Maybe it’s time for me to tell you about the will.”

“What will?” they asked in an inquisitive chorus.

♦

He only got away after nine. It was cold outside the NasPers building but windless, cloudless, quiet, the city calm on a Tuesday evening, and he hesitated before starting the truck, not keen on going home, not keen on doing what he had to do.

But he would have to. Switched on the ignition, drove through the city toward the mountain, the traffic lights unsynchronized at that time of night, every red light an avenue of escape until he stopped in front of the large house and saw lights burning. He got out, locked the pickup, walked up the drive, climbed the steps, heard the rock music. Did she have guests? Pressed the bell, didn’t hear it ring. Waited.

He saw a shadow behind the spy hole before the door opened. Young man, tight pants, white shirt unbuttoned to the navel, sweat on the pale torso, pupils too small. “Hey,” too loudly.

“I’m looking for Kara-An.”

“Come in.” Tight jeans turned, dancing, leaving the door as it was. Van Heerden closed it, followed him, the music louder and louder, and found them in the living room, lines of cocaine on the glass of the coffee table. Kara-An dancing, wearing only a T-shirt, two more young women, jeans, and two more men, all of them dancing. He stood in the doorway – a woman danced past, leather trousers, pretty, and a man, overweight, laughed at him until Kara-An saw him. She didn’t stop dancing. “Help yourself,” she said, waving toward the coffee table.

For a moment he stood there, indecisively, then turned, walked back to the front door, down the steps to his mother’s faded pickup, got in, switched on the ignition, and looked back at the big veranda across the street for a moment. Kara-An stood in the doorway, etched against the light, her hand lifted in farewell. He drove away.

He wanted to tell her that they were not the same.

And perhaps to ask her where her pain came from.

He shook his head at himself.

He heard the Violin Concerto no. 1 before he even opened the front door.

Hope sat in his chair with a mug of coffee, in her dressing gown and slippers, the couch made up as a bed, the light from the kitchen casting a soft glow over her.

“Hi,” she said. “Forgive me, but I’ve made myself at home.”

“That’s fine. But I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“You’re too tall for the couch. And I’m intruding.”

“You’re not.”

“Of course I’m intruding. Your house, your privacy, your routine…”

He put the Heckler & Koch on the kitchen table, switched on the kettle, saw the flowers. She had picked an enormous bunch of flowers from his mother’s garden and put them in a vase on his kitchen counter.

“No problem.”

“I still think it wasn’t necessary, but your mother…”

“She can be too much.”

While he made coffee, he told her about the photograph, its aging by Russell Marshall, his struggle with Die Burger – until the story about the will became the decisive factor.

“Someone is going to recognize Schlebusch. We’re going to find him.”

“If he doesn’t find us first.”

“We’re ready for him.”

They drank their coffee.

“Hope,” he said, “if I said your dressing gown is retro, what does it mean?”

♦

She lay on the couch in the dark, warm under the blankets, comfortable. She listened to the sounds of Van Heerden in the bathroom, involuntarily wondering what his body looked like under the shower. Her own body was restless, a thief in the night, a response, a tingling that suffused her.

She smiled at herself. Everything was still in working order.

She lay listening to him until the last light went out.

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

42

It was one thing to leaf through the dossiers of twenty years ago and to stare in aversion at black-and-white photographs of forgotten murders. It was very different being the first on the scene, experiencing death in full color and with all your senses, the odors of blood, of bodily excretions, of death itself – that strange, loathsome sweetish odor of human flesh beginning to decay.

The visual impact of murder: the gaping, bloodred cave of the slashed throat, the multicolored mixture of entrails where a shotgun had wrought devastation, the huge rose of the exit wound made by an AK’s 7.62 mmround, the staring, dull eyes, the impossible angles at which limbs are aligned to the body, the bits of tissue against the wall, the sticky, reddish brown pool of coagulating blood, the pallor of a decomposing body among autumn leaves and green grass, in contrast with the diners at the feast, the dark insects that show up so dramatically against the pale background.

During the first weeks and months at Murder and Robbery, I often thought about the psychological implications of the work.

My daily task distressed me. It gave me nightmares and kept me awake, or woke me in the small hours of the morning. It made me drink and swear and blunted me on my stumbling path to find ways to cope with it all, become accustomed to it.

It was a permanent state of post-traumatic stress syndrome, a never-ending attack, a constant reminder that we are dust, that we are infinitesimal, that we are nothing at all.

The murder scenes were only part of it.

We worked with the scum of the earth, day in and day out, every day and every night. The trash and the debris, the crazy and the greedy, the hotheaded and the callous, the morally weak, a never-ending exposure to evil.

We worked long, impossible hours against a constant stream of criticism from the media, the public, and the politicians, at a time of great political change in an area where the differences between a white First World population and a deprived black Third World were incessantly fanned by the flames of baser instincts. We were undermanned, underpaid, and overworked.