Thirteen Hours (5 page)

She got to her feet.

'Sylvia,' she said.

The coloured woman kept screaming.

'Sylvia!'

The sudden silence was a huge relief. Sylvia stood at the
door with her hands over her mouth, and her eyes glued to the pistol.

Alexandra took a cautious step forward and stopped again.
Adam was dead. She knew it now, from the sum of all the wounds and the way he
was lying, but she couldn't understand it. Was it a dream?

'Why?' said Sylvia, approaching hysteria.

Alexandra looked at her.

'Why did you kill him?'

The pathologist and the two ambulance men manoeuvred the
corpse carefully into a black zip-up bag. Griessel sat on the stone border of a
palm tree bed. Vusi Ndabeni was on his cell phone talking to the station
commander. 'I need at least four, Sup, for leg work ... I understand, but it's
an American tourist ... Yes, we're pretty sure ... I know ... I know. No,
nothing yet.. .Thanks, Sup, I'll wait for them.'

He came over to Benny. 'The SC says there's a protest of some
or other labour union at Parliament and he can only send me two people.'

'There's always a fucking protest of some other union,' said
Griessel and stood up. 'I'll help with the footwork, Vusi, until the photos
arrive.' He couldn't sit around like this.

'Thanks, Benny. Would you like some coffee?'

'Are you going to send someone?'

'There's a place down the street. I'll go quickly.'

'Let me go.'

They filled the Caledon Square charge office, complainants,
victims, witnesses and their hangers-on with stories of the night past. Over
the sea of protesting and accusatory voices a telephone rang monotonously, on
and on. A female Sergeant, weary after nine hours on her feet, ignored the
scowling face across the counter and grabbed the receiver. 'Caledon Square,
Sergeant Thanduxolo Nyathi speaking, how may I help you?'

It was a woman's voice, barely audible.

'You'll have to speak up, madam, I can't hear you.'

'I want to report something.'

'Yes, madam?'

'There was this girl...'

'Yes, madam?'

'This morning, at about six o'clock, on Signal Hill. She
asked me to call the police because someone wanted to kill her.'

'One moment, madam.' She reached for a SAPS form and took a
pen from her breast pocket. 'May I have your name?'

'Well, I just want to report it...'

'I know, madam, but I need a name.'

Silence.

'Madam?'

'My name is Sybil Gravett.'

'And your address?'

'I really can't see how this is pertinent. I saw the girl on
Signal Hill. I was walking my dog.'

The Sergeant suppressed a sigh. 'And then what happened, madam?'

'Well, she came running up to me and she said I must call the
police, someone was trying to kill her, and then she ran off again.'

'Did you see anybody following her?'

'I did. A few minutes later, they came running.'

'How many, ma'am?'

'Well, I didn't count them, but there must have been five or
six.'

'Can you describe them?'

'They were, well, some were white and some were black. And
they were quite young ... I found that very disturbing, these young men,
running with such intent...'

She was woken with a start by someone shouting at her. She
tried to stand up in her panic, but her legs betrayed her and she stumbled and
fell with her shoulder against the wall.

'You fucking druggie!' He stood on the other side of the
shrubbery with his hands on his hips, the same voice that had shouted from the
house earlier.

'Please,' she sobbed, and stood upright.

'Just get off my property,' he said pointing to the gate.
'What is it with you people? Snoring in my shrubs.'

She made her way through the plants. She saw he was wearing a
dark suit, a businessman, middle-aged, furious. 'Please, I need your help ...'

'No. You need to shoot up somewhere else. I'm sick and tired
of this. Get out.'

She began to cry. She approached him. 'It's not what you
think, please, I'm from the United—'

The man grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the gate.
'I don't give a fuck where you come from.' He pulled her roughly. 'All I want
is for you people to stop using my property for your filthy habits.' At the
gate he shoved her towards the road. 'Now fuck off, before I call the police,'
he said and turned and walked back to his house.

'Please, call them,' she said through sobs, shoulders
jerking, her whole body trembling. He kept on walking, opened a metal gate,
slammed it shut and disappeared. 'Oh, God.' She stood crying on the pavement,
shivering. 'Oh, God.' Through the tears she looked instinctively up and down
the street, first left, then right. Far off, just where the road curled over
the flank of the mountain, stood two of them. Small, watchful figures, one with
a cell phone to his ear. Frightened, she began walking in the opposite
direction, the way she had come earlier. She didn't know whether they had seen
her. She kept to the left, against the walls of the houses, looking back over
her shoulder. They were no longer standing. They were running, towards her.

Despair dragged at her. One solution would be to stop, so
that it could all be over, the inevitable could happen. She couldn't keep this
up, her strength was gone. For a second that option seemed irresistible, the
perfect way out, and it slowed her down. But in her mind she replayed the scene
with Erin in the night, and the adrenaline gushed and she carried on, weeping
as she ran.

The ambulance men were lifting the body over the wall on a
stretcher as Griessel arrived with the coffee. The spectators crowded closer,
up to the yellow crime scene tape that now cordoned off the pavement. Griessel
had long ceased to wonder about humanity's macabre fascination with death. He
passed one of the polystyrene cups to his colleague.

'Thanks, Benny.'

The aroma of coffee reminded Griessel that he hadn't had
breakfast yet. Perhaps he could get back to the flat for a quick bowl of Weet-Bix
before the photos arrived, it was only a kilometre away. He could check whether
Carla had written to him. Because last night...

No, he wasn't going to think about last night.

Vusi said something in Xhosa that he couldn't understand,
some exclamation of surprise. He followed the detective's gaze and saw three of
the Metro policemen climbing the wall. Oerson, the one Griessel had argued with
earlier, was carrying a blue rucksack. They marched up, full of bravado.

'uNkulunkulu,
Vusi said
.

'Jesus,' said Benny Griessel.

'We found it,' said the self-satisfied Field Marshal and held
out the rucksack to Vusi. The Xhosa man just shook his head and pulled his
rubber gloves from his pocket.

'What?' said Oerson.

'Next time,' said Griessel in a reasonable voice, 'it would
be better if you let us know you found it. Then we would bring in the forensic
guys and cordon off the area before anyone touched it.'

'It was lying in a fucking doorway in Bloem Street. A
thousand people could have touched it already. There's not much in it anyway.'

'You opened it?' asked Vusi, reaching for the bag. The two
straps were cut, just as the pathologist had predicted.

'There might have been a bomb inside,' said Oerson
defensively.

'Did you handle these items?' asked Vusi, taking out a
make-up bag. He crouched down to put the contents on the tarred path.

'No,' said Oerson, but Griessel could tell he was lying.

Vusi took a Steers serviette out of the backpack. Next, a
small wooden carving of a hippopotamus in dark wood, a white plastic spoon and
a Petzl headlamp. 'That's all?'

'That's all,' said Oerson.

'Do me a favour, please?'

They didn't respond.

'Would you go back and see if there is anything else?
Something that might have been thrown away. Anything. What I need most is some form
of identification. A passport, a driver's licence, anything ...'

Oerson was not keen. 'We can't help you all day.'

'I know,' said Vusi, quietly and patiently. 'But if you could
just do that for me, please.'

'OK. I'll get some more people,' said Oerson. He turned away
and went back over the wall.

Vusi's fingers explored the few small pockets on the sides of
the backpack. The first one was empty. He pulled out something from the bottom
of the second - a green cardboard card with a black and yellow logo:
Hodson's Bay Company.
In smaller type:
Bicycles, fitness, backpacking, camping, climbing gear,
and technical clothing for all ages and abilities.
There was an address:
360 Brown Street, Levee Plaza, West Lafayette, IN 47906. There were two
telephone numbers as well. The Xhosa man studied it and then passed it to
Griessel. 'I think the IN stands for Indiana.'

'West Lafayette,' said Griessel dubiously.

'Probably a small place,' said Vusi. 'I've never heard of
it.'

'Fax them a photo, Vusi. They might be able to identify her.'

'Great idea.'

Griessel's cell phone rang shrilly in his pocket. He took it
out and answered.

'Griessel.'

'Benny, it's Mavis. An Inspector Fransman Dekker called. He
said to tell you he has a murder at Forty-seven Brownlow Street in Tamboerskloof,
if you want to mentor him.'

'If I want to?'

'That's what he said. Wound-up guy, bit of a
windgat.'

'Thanks, Mavis. Forty-seven Brownlow?'

'That's right.'

'I'm on my way.' He ended the call and told Vusi, 'Another
murder. Up in Tamboerskloof. Sorry, Vusi...'

'No problem. I'll call you when we find something.'

Griessel began to walk away. Ndabeni called after him: 'Benny
.,.'

Griessel turned. Vusi came up to him. 'I just wanted to ask
you
... I...
uh
...

'Ask me, Vusi.'

'The pathologist... She ... Do you think .. .Would a coloured
doctor go out with a darkie cop?'

It took him a few seconds to make the leap. 'Er ... you
asking the wrong guy, Vusi... but yes, why not? A man can only try ...'

'Thanks, Benny.'

Griessel climbed over the wall. At the churchyard gate he saw
a tall, sombre man unlocking it with an extremely worried frown. The
priest
had arrived, he thought, or did the
Lutherans call their ministers something else?

The traffic was impossible now. It took fifteen
minutes just to get from Long Street to Buitengracht. They were bumper to
bumper up Buitesingel's hill. He drained the dregs of the sweet coffee. It
would last him until he could get something to eat. But his plan to quickly
download Carla's email was stuffed. It would just have to wait until tonight.
He had been offline for a week already with that damn laptop - he could wait a
few more hours. Carla would understand - he'd had problems with the stupid
machine from the start. How was he to know there were laptops without internal
modems? He had bought his for a knock-down price at a police auction of
unclaimed stolen goods. Once Carla left for London, he needed to know how she
was - his Carla who needed to 'sort her head out overseas' before she decided
what to do with the rest of her life.

So how did vacuuming floors in a hotel in London sort out
your head?

It had cost him R500 to get the laptop connected to the
Internet. He had to buy a damn modem and get an Internet service provider. Then
he spent three hours on the phone with a computer guy getting the fucking
connection to work and then Microsoft Outlook Express was a nightmare to
configure. That took another hour on the phone to sort out before he could send
an email to Carla saying:

Here I am, how are you? I miss you and worry about you. There
was an article in the
Burger
that said South
African kids in London drink a lot and cause trouble. Don't let anyone put
pressure on you
...

Writing this, he discovered that putting in the Afrikaans punctuation
symbols was just about impossible on these computer programmes.

Dear Daddy

I have a job at the Gloucester Terrace Hotel near Marble
Arch. It is a lovely part of London, near Hyde Park. I'm a cleaner. I work from
ten in the morning to ten at night, six days a week, Mondays off. I don't know
how long I will be able to do this, it's not very pleasant and the pay's not
much, but at least it's something. The other girls are all Polish. The first
thing they said when I told them I was South African was 'but you're white'.