Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

They sat in Van Heerden’s house in the dark living room, his couch and his dining-room chairs filled to capacity, Petersen, O’Grady, Mat Joubert, Brits, and Tiny Mpayipheli, whom he had merely introduced as a colleague.

Brits stood up slowly, his face contorted as if he were in severe pain. He walked down the passage and back again, the others watching him, down the passage and back again, then looked at Van Heerden.

“I can’t,” he said.

He walked back and forth again, the others quiet, aware of his inner struggle. “I can’t. I’ve lived with this thing for twenty-three years, but I can’t talk about it. It’s bigger than…” His hands embraced the group in the living room. “Than this.”

He walked, thought again, sat down, gestured with his hands, looked for words, breathed out with a sharp exhalation, then slumped back in the chair. “I can’t.”

A silence fell: there was nothing to say. Bester Brits leaned his head back, as if the weight of the past was too much for him. And then his voice, almost inaudible. “So many dead,” he said. And whispered: “Manley.”

Breathed out. In.

“Verster.”

Out. In.

“De Beer.”

Again the breath, as though he could hear a shot with every name.

“Van Rensburg.”

Van Heerden’s heart was beating, hammering in his chest, too scared to breathe, too scared that he wouldn’t be able to hear, but the officer’s voice had stopped. He waited for the last two names, but they didn’t come.

Then, whispering as well: “What about Venter and Vergottini?”

Brits closed his eyes as if he was tired to the bone. “I don’t know, Van Heerden, I don’t know.”

“How did they die?” Almost inaudible, but the moment had passed. Bester Brits sat up again.

“It doesn’t matter. It was – ” He bit off the word sharply.

“It matters, Brits.”

Brits started to rise. “It doesn’t matter to you , Van Heerden. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. Take my word for it. They’re dead.”

“Who shot Schlebusch, Brits?”

“I don’t know.”

“Vergottini? Verster?”

“I fucking well don’t know. I don’t know, are you deaf?”

Mat Joubert said softly: “It must be hard, Brits, to live with this for twenty-three years.” He wanted him in memory mode again, Van Heerden thought.

“It is.”

“And to pray it’ll never come again.”

Brits dropped his head into his hands. “Yes.”

“Unload it, Brits, the whole burden. Lay it down.”

He sat like that for a long time, the big hands moving slowly over his eyes and his nose and his forehead, rubbing, rubbing as if comforting himself. Then he got up with difficulty and his body shivered. “Do you know how much I’d like to? All these years. Do you know how close I sometimes came? Do you know how close I came just now?” Brits walked to the front door, opened it, and looked out. He looked back once at the men, who remained seated, then shook his head as if saying no to himself and walked out. They listened to his footsteps on the path and then there was only silence.

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

48

Perception. And reality.

The perception of Nagel’s “chains”: a large battleship with curlers in her hair and a permanent frown, a complaining, nagging millstone, a sloppy television addict, a caricature of a wife in a suburban comic strip.

The reality: this dream woman, this beautiful, gentle, laughing miracle who walked ahead of me through a painfully neat house filled with books, to the small garden at the back, an enchanted spot created with her own hands.

Why had he hidden her? Why, over so many months, had he created the false impression? So that we – I – should have sympathy with his chronic extramarital wanderings, his drinking with the boys?

He had telephoned from De Aar, where he’d gone to investigate a serial rapist case, to say that he had left his service pistol at home. “I know my fucking wife – she’ll let the thing go off and someone will get hurt and then it’s a disciplinary hearing and I don’t know what other shit, so can you fetch the fucker and keep it with you until I get back?”

I phoned his house first and her voice hadn’t prepared me; there was politeness, but the technology hadn’t carried the music, the beauty, so there was no forewarning. That day we had talked and couldn’t stop. We sat next to the little swimming pool and later went inside and I prepared supper in her kitchen and we talked, I can’t remember what about – it wasn’t important, it was what was implied between the words and the sentences, it was the thirst for each other. We ate and talked and looked and laughed and I couldn’t believe it: the search of a lifetime, and here she was, here I was.

I didn’t touch her that evening.

But I was there again the following day after I had phoned Nagel and heard that he was making slow progress and I was glad, my first act of treason, that call, my first betrayal of my friend and colleague. “Hallo, Nagel, how’s it going?”

“Did you get the pistol?” And I went ice-cold because I had forgotten about the weapon. It was still lying around in her house.

“Yes.” And then I realized it was an excuse to go back and I stopped talking, heard that he was still going to be busy for days, that there were a few suspects but “the country members of the Force are hopeless, let me tell you,” and then I drove back to Nonnie Nagel.

The story of their marriage unfolded gradually during our conversations, the true story, not the imaginary tales Nagel would dish up to anyone who would listen.

It had been a whirlwind courtship. He was a smooth-talking lover who promised her the world, who painted a dream future for them, told her he was on his way up in the South African Police, and she was enchanted by the charm, the humor, the self-assurance. She, a junior-school teacher who had reported a burglary in her Bellville flat and found Nagel, Detective Constable Willem Nagel, the man who had the culprit behind bars within days and then used his considerable ingenuity to put her in a prison as well.

It went well for the first year or two. She worked, he worked, they went visiting, had barbecues, and sometimes went to the movies, and then when he couldn’t get her pregnant, he sent her to a doctor, time after time. Every time the message came back – she was normal, that there was nothing wrong – and every time he swore and said there had to be, and gradually he lost interest in her, in sex, and on top of it he was promoted to Murder and Robbery as sergeant, his talents recognized, his prophecy of promotion fulfilled, his hours longer and longer, endlessly longer, and the green monster of jealousy began raising its ugly head.

She said she believed he had realized that the problem of conception lay with him. Perhaps he had had tests done without her knowledge, discovered that he was infertile or had too low a sperm count. She could only guess, but something triggered the jealousy, only insinuations at first, then hints, later direct accusations, as if he was afraid that someone else would make her pregnant. That was all she could imagine – there was no other reason. And then one evening, when she was at a school concert, he came to fetch her, out of the hall, dragged her to the car, and told her she was going to be a housewife from now on, that she was going to resign, that he didn’t want to come home and find no food. His work, the tension, the hours, the stress – he needed her at home. She had cried that evening, through the night, and he had said: “Cry – it’s no use. Your place is at home.”

And then he would phone. At any hour of the day or night, and if she wasn’t home, there was trouble. No, he had never hit her, only verbal abuse.