The Lazarus Effect (16 page)

A white Opel Astra sat across the street from the cosy house with an orange picket fence. The driver had been sitting in the vehicle for close to three hours, working through bags of junk food and recycling his own stale air. A faint smell of farts hung over him.

At about 8 p.m., the tenant of the house drove up in a Toyota Corolla and idled in front of the remote-operated garage door. The man in the Opel imagined the driver stamping her finger on the button of the garage remote, irritation growing at its unresponsiveness. He knew the door wouldn’t open, because he’d disconnected the wires. Eventually, the driver plunged from her car’s warmth into the evening drizzle. She held a magazine over her hair and yanked at the hinge mechanism, trying to operate the gate manually. It was a clumsy struggle, what with a laptop bag strapped across her chest and only one free hand, but finally it gave. Unaware she was being watched, Voinjama Johnson scrambled for shelter and drove inside.

She hurried back out to shut the gate and jumped. There was a kid in the driveway.

The boy was anywhere from nine to twelve, so small and thin it was hard to tell his age, and dressed in a shabby tracksuit
top. He shivered under the open garage door, cowering, one hand outstretched for small change. Opel Man watched with interest, waiting for the tall woman to shrink in fear and drive the street kid away. Instead, she pulled him out of the wet and said something to him. The boy kept his head down and shuffled his feet. There was a language barrier, it seemed. She used her hands a lot, and the boy didn’t say much in response.

A dog emerged from the house, jumped off the back porch and pushed open the gate of the picket fence. Neither the woman nor the boy saw it, or they were too engrossed in their exchange to pay it any mind. The dog padded across the road, stopped right in the middle of it and stared, oblivious to the rain. It was a huge animal, more like a wolf than a dog. One of those sled-pulling breeds from snowy lands. Its coat was jet black, with smaller tufts of pure white around the ears and underside. Something about the way it didn’t bark, growl or advance made the creature a lot more threatening.

The dog’s blue eyes were questioning. They asked the Opel driver what the fuck he was doing skulking around, and how a very different kind of conversation would be had if he didn’t push off. The Opel driver stared back into the dog’s eyes, a little mesmerised. As if to stress the point, the dog took a step closer. The Opel burst into life and ground into gear. The last thing the driver saw before he sped off was the woman crossing the road and trying to peer into the car, a curious frown on her face.

Vee gave the shivering child a warm blanket, sandwiches and a hot drink. The damp magnified his body odour to an unbearable hum, but he refused to remove anything other than his old sneakers. He didn’t say much, having sussed out by now that her Afrikaans was non-existent. He muttered a thank you for the ten rand note, and finished the sandwiches and hot chocolate in silence.

Vee left him and retreated to the veranda with a cup of Ovaltine, where Monro crouched on the stairs, staring out into the rain. Vee leaned against his warm fur. The strange car was gone but Monro would play sentry all night, radiating stern disapproval. It was his job to protect their home from harm, and she had no business interfering.

‘You jeh comin’ sit down heah de whole night?’ she said. Monro snuffled, never taking his eyes off the street. She squinted into the night, straining to catch a glimpse of whatever it was, if there was indeed anything, that his canine senses were picking up. ‘Nobody’s trying to kill us in our sleep.’

Being away at work all day was hard on both of them. Part Siberian husky and part timber wolf, the husky was an intelligent breed of working, running dogs. On weekends, he could streak to his heart’s content in open fields, but evening walks and a backyard littered with chew toys were not enough. Circumstances like these, sprinkled with excitement, were few and far between. Monro gave her a long look, surprisingly human in its condescension, licked her face and resumed his lookout.

‘Ehn. Dah yor biznis o,’ Vee gave up, and went back inside.

The kid was gone. The lounge and kitchen were empty, as were the plate and mug on the table. Vee checked upstairs. For all she knew, he was lying in wait for her with a weapon. She hadn’t checked his pockets. The possibility of a boy that skinny leaping out of a closet with a butcher knife didn’t fill her with dread, but safe was better than dead.

In the end, all that was missing were the blanket and a bulb from a lamp in the lounge. Her computer, handbag, cell phone and wallet were still there. Vee felt bad. She’d wanted to give him some new sneakers; not that anything she had would fit, but it was better than what he was relying on now. The blanket, at least, would add some extra comfort to whichever rough spot he laid his head on at night. She looked over her pile of work things on the lounge table and noticed that the Paulsen case file wasn’t where or how she’d left it. A streak cut across the smiling picture of Jacqui stapled to the front of the folder, likely dirt from the boy’s fingers when he was nosing through it. He had also splashed some cocoa, and the photo was soaking it up and turning opaque. Vee sighed and got a cloth to mop it up.

Parked well out of sight of Vee’s front walk was another car, a BMW this time. A different, braver man languished against the door of the driver’s side, hands in his pockets, watching and imagining Vee’s movements within the house.

He pictured her eating, much too quickly and standing up, rifling through her unfinished assignments. She would watch the news with the top button of her pants undone, the sound on mute. She preferred newspapers; if she had to follow reports of
a world falling to ruin, the printed page was less depressing than live images. She’d brush her teeth sitting on the toilet, or decide sleeping alone meant she didn’t have to bother. She’d make plaits in her hair to protect it during the night and finger-comb the waves out in the morning. It was unlikely she missed his presence or still dreamt about him, and the thought hurt like hell.

The man considered going up the walk and knocking on the door. He chewed on the odds of making it further than a few feet from his car, contemplating the very real presence of Monro as much as he knew the dog contemplated his. It was late; showing his face could wait another day. He had wasted enough valuable time, anyway. Titus Wreh blew out a breath, got back in his car and drove on.

The wall ran into Marieke Venter. Hard.

At twenty-two, Marieke knew there were many perfectly innocent sayings that had lost meaning, thanks to society’s perversion. ‘We’re just friends’, for instance. She and Ryan from the garage were ‘just friends’, although very little of what they did together could be qualified as friendship, much less innocent.

‘Walking into a wall’ was another example. Lots of people, through their own clumsiness, walked into walls. Accidents happened. She was making a conscious choice that she wasn’t having her ass kicked by her own brother, but rather that one of the four walls of the house they shared had chosen to forcefully run into her. By tomorrow, she would have come up with a better excuse for her swollen face.

Ashwin rammed into her from behind, using the full weight of his body to shove hers into the cold cement. Marieke choked on a scream, her jaw crunching into the wall. She tried to wriggle and felt something hard, probably his knee, digging into the small of her back.

‘Ashwin, please …’ she moaned, gulping down the bloody saliva pooling near a loose tooth. ‘Please, I didn’t tell her anything!’

He laughed in her ear. There was no alcohol on his breath, and Marieke’s heart sank. Ashwin sober was a lot more dangerous.

‘Lying bitch,’ he growled, striking her head with the flat of his hand.

Ten minutes earlier, he had walked in on her having supper. The look on his face had made her mouth go dry. He knows about Ryan, her first thought had been. The rule was never mess with other employees, although she suspected Ashwin meant for her never to get involved with any man at all.

When he’d asked what she’d done over lunch that afternoon, she’d known that he knew. Pieter must’ve told him. She’d forgotten to cover her tracks by telling Pieter to forget Miss Johnson completely.

She had opened her mouth to lie and he had slapped her so hard the chair had almost toppled. She had grabbed the table to steady herself. Ashwin had made a grab for her, too. At first she’d thought he was reaching out to help, that his anger had immediately dissolved and he’d come to his senses.

But he’d gripped her by the shirt and dragged her to her feet, shaking her and shouting. What the fuck did she say to the journalist? How dare she talk to the press about their private family business? Marieke had started to cry, blubbering that she hadn’t said anything and Voinjama Johnson wasn’t from the press, she worked for a fashion magazine. Ashwin had shaken her harder and she’d spilled: they’d met for lunch, she was trying to help him, to make sure it was absolutely clear he hadn’t done anything wrong to Jacqui.

His irises had turned to chips of dirty ice at the mention of that name. ‘You made it worse!’ he’d bellowed, and slapped her again. Marieke had screamed as she had gone down, her chin connecting with the edge of the couch, cutting her cries short. She had rolled onto the floor, dizzy and panting as the warm taste of iron had rushed onto her tongue.

Someone had banged on the front door, one of the neighbours. A woman’s voice had shouted a frightened question and Ashwin had scuttled to the door and locked it. He had stridden back and yanked Marieke up, demanding to know what else her stupid mouth had said. Marieke had known he only wanted to know one thing. But never in a thousand hells would she admit to sharing his private shame, to confessing to another soul about the rape in police custody that was still eating him up inside.

‘You lying bitch.’ Ashwin’s voice clogged with tears. His body shook with sobs and he put his cheek against the back of her head, disappointed at what she had made him do. ‘You women are all the same, all lying bitches.’

Ashwin crushed the back of her neck with his forearm. Marieke gurgled and writhed against the wall as her head started to balloon, her vision blossoming red. The last thing she heard before she slumped out of consciousness was Ashwin’s voice telling her over and over again that she was the bitch. Women were the bitches, not him – never, ever him.

‘It was for tik,’ Chlöe said sagely. ‘The light bulb that street kid took. You hear about these addicts breaking into houses and not stealing anything but bulbs. They smoke tik out of them.’

‘Oh, wow. That’s
news
to me,’ Vee said, rolling her eyes.

Chlöe pursed her lips.

‘Oh, come off it, Bishop. Every journalist in the Western Cape has covered some story or other on meth and street junkies. Where to get it, how they cut it, how they use it. Hell, for one assignment this lady of publicly traded pleasures …’

‘A what now?’ Chlöe frowned.

‘A public woman. Dammit, Princess Di – a prostitute. She described,
graphically
, how they insert crystals up the brown corridors of their clients to get them off. Please don’t make me explain–’

‘I get it, I get it, stop,’ Chlöe said quickly. ‘I just thought, erroneously I now see, that
you
didn’t get why the kid did it. You’ve been staring into space since you told the story. It’s creepy.’

Vee left the window and eased into her swivel chair. The office was shrinking;
that
was creepy. They’d been going at it since morning and nothing was tying up.

Like where Philemon Mtetwa fitted in, for instance. Vee knew there had to be more going on under the gloss of nouveau riche entrepreneurship, so she took it upon herself to root around in his backyard. Zilch. Nothing germane anyway, though some of it would’ve made riveting headlines elsewhere. Investment-wise, Mtetwa dabbled in shades of grey closer to black, not to mention a few women his wife wouldn’t be overjoyed to learn about. The climb to the top was steep, and victors seldom made it purely on talent, resolve and integrity. Mtetwa was no exception. For their purposes, they had nothing.

One small detail stood out, though. Eight years ago, Mtetwa had undergone a major cardiac operation at the then Claremont Life and Medicare Clinic. During the same period, one Sean Fourie had been at the butt end of the national transplant registry. Strangely enough, his name had shot to the top during the months preceding his death. Philemon Mtetwa had a revamped heart that was clearly thumping fit. Ian Fourie was an excellent cardiologist whose clients included some of the richest men in the country. It was hardly a huge leap.

‘I’m saying it
is
a leap,’ Chlöe said.

‘It’s too much of a coincidence to be nothing. You’re new at this. Don’t dismiss what’s right under your nose because it looks easy. Oftentimes the thing we think happened, is the thing that happened. This shows that the WI isn’t the only link between these two, and by this afternoon we’ll have proof.’

At that very moment, The Guy was skulking through cyberland, hacking through walls with his prying, nimble phalanges. Getting into the WI’s old patient records would be like picking his
teeth. It wouldn’t be long before he emailed scans of Mtetwa’s medical file from 2002, detailing everything from which drug regimen he’d been on to how many times a day he’d squatted over the toilet.

‘I bet you eight years ago Ian was Mtetwa’s doctor, and he probably made the diagnosis that saved his life. Working that kinda magic can buy a lot of gratitude,’ said Vee. She recalled Rosie’s words to the effect that her father only had time to spare on rich, diseased old men. Someone that dedicated was bound to have buddies with clout.

‘How could a man who gets handed a new lease on life stand by and do nothing a year later when he hears your son is terminal and desperately needs a transplant? That he has to wait his turn on some list with a thousand other nobodies? Mtetwa’s got the power to bump a kid to the top of a registry.’

‘Fine, let’s say I buy that.’ Chlöe spread her palms, and Vee noticed they were covered to the wrists in inky scribbles, personal notes she’d been taking all day. Vee warmed with pride. Her protégé was turning into a real newswoman. ‘Let’s say Ian and Mtetwa have more than a business relationship. If he owes Ian a debt of gratitude, then yes, making some calls would be a great way to pay it back. But Sean got a match
before
his spot on the registry even came into play, so that’s a grand gesture totally wasted. And, more importantly, what does it matter? If these two men were playing ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’, what does it have to do with Jacqui?’

Vee rubbed her temples hard, trying to defy anatomical barriers and massage her overheated brain. ‘All right, I haven’t thought
that far yet. But I know whatever the Fouries needed to do to keep their boy alive, they did. And it ties in with Jacqui’s disappearance.’ For heaven’s sake, Carina, the embodiment of feminism and modern education, sacrificed her pride and approached the mistress for help. ‘It all comes back to Sean one way or the other. We just need to find the connection.’

She scrawled on the list on the wall-mounted chalkboard: find the connection. Medical connection number one: find Rachelle Duthie. The nurse’s involvement with Sean’s therapy had been key. She was still practising and living in the city, but they hadn’t fixed a time to speak with her. Vee tossed the stub of blue chalk, noting a few other points were yet to be crossed off. Why the hell couldn’t anyone locate Bronwyn Abrams, for a start?

Chlöe licked melted chocolate off a KitKat wrapper. ‘Why d’you keep pushing the Ian angle? Arrogant, career-advancing jerk he may be, but Jacqui was still his child. Kids drive parents crazy all the time, but you gotta be one hell of a psychopath to actually kill them.’

Vee nodded grudgingly. ‘He knows something, though,’ she muttered. Ian had the most powerful hand, and that spelled motive. The rest were a pack of scrambling jokers in comparison.

‘I’m liking Ashwin for this, big time,’ Chlöe went on. ‘As you said, the most obvious scenario tends to be the truth. He has a violent history and sounds immature. I say Jacqui tried to end it one final time, they had a huge argument and things got out of hand. Accidents like that happen every day.’ She shook her head, eyes adrift. ‘Women are evil, twisted sirens. They love
you one minute and then flip their shit, blame you for it and crush you like a cockroach.’

Vee cocked her head.

‘Ahem. Crime of passion is what I’m getting at.’

‘Where did it take place? Yes, the mechanics saw them get into it at the garage on the day she disappeared, but they also saw her leave. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to go ballistic in broad daylight in front of half a dozen witnesses.’

‘He was stupid enough to slap her around in public before, so methinks that makes him contender number one for murder.’ Chlöe puffed her cheeks. ‘Let’s say she left and he followed her. He followed her by car, they made nice, she got in … they fight again, and this time he kills her.’

‘What did he do with the body, Bishop? A human body doesn’t just vanish. The police searched his car and house; they practically went up his butt crack with a microscope.’ Vee flinched. ‘Poor choice of words.’

‘You think?’ Chlöe sniggered. ‘Okay, maybe he didn’t kill her right away. Say he held her captive for a few days, just to scare her. But after the hell he’d been through with the police, and with the whole community ready to torch him with no proof, he started blaming Jacqui for everything and snapped. Or maybe he meant to let her go, but by then it had got so out of control that he had to keep her quiet.’

‘And maybe he smuggled her through the Underground Railroad and set her free in Canada. That’s too many maybes, Chlöe.’ Vee plonked back down and put her feet up on the desk. No matter which way she squirmed, the twinge in her
lower back wasn’t letting up. They’d been at it for too long; they needed a recess. ‘Ashwin doesn’t have the smarts to’ve kept a mami peppe like Jacqui hostage for long, especially not with all those eyes on his every move. Somebody would’ve noticed a false move.’

The cobalt blue of Chlöe’s eyes sharpened to azure. She took the chocolate-smeared pacifier out of her mouth. ‘Oooh, what’s a mami peppe? Sounds sexy.’

‘It’s …’ Vee flapped a hand. How would one describe it in the Queen’s language? ‘Like a hot-blooded woman, a feisty geh.’

‘Geh meaning girl?’ Vee nodded. Chlöe murmured the phrase to herself a few times, doing her best to mimic the right accent. ‘I like it,’ she tittered. ‘It does sound hot. Hey, am I a mami peppe?’

‘No,’ Vee snapped. ‘And if you don’t take that goddamn wrapper outta your mouth, I swear to God …’

‘But I’m huuuuungry …’

Like a winged messenger from heaven, a colleague stuck his head in. ‘You guys ordered the pizza? The delivery guy wants to leave it in the foyer. You better get out there before the vultures descend.’

Chlöe smiled coquettishly at Vee, raising and lowering her lashes like a lost puppy. The look wasn’t new. She was broke, too broke to chip in for lunch. Vee sighed and got up. The tin of petty cash in the receptionist’s office had better have enough in it. She damn sure wasn’t paying for a communal meal out of her own pocket. If Portia wanted a stellar output, it was her duty to feed the hungry slaves that made the magic happen.