Dead at Daybreak Read online

  Also by Deon Meyer

  Heart of the Hunter

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2000 by Deon Meyer

  Translation copyright © 2000 by Madeleine van Biljon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-02789-2

  Contents

  Also by Deon Meyer

  Copyright

  DAY 7: THURSDAY, JULY 6

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  DAY 6: FRIDAY, JULY 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  DAY 5: SATURDAY, JULY 8

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  DAY 4: SUNDAY, JULY 9

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  DAY 3: MONDAY, JULY 10

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  DAY 2: TUESDAY, JULY 11

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  DAY 1: WEDNESDAY, JULY 12

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  D-DAY: THURSDAY, JULY 13

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  About The Author

  DAY 7

  THURSDAY, JULY 6

  1.

  He awoke abruptly out of an alcohol-sodden sleep, the pain in his ribs his first conscious sensation. Then the swollen eye and upper lip, the antiseptic, musty smell of the cell, the sour odor of his body, the salty taste of blood and old beer in his mouth.

  And the relief.

  Jigsaw pieces of the previous evening floated into his mind. The provocation, the annoyed faces, the anger—such normal, predictable motherfuckers, such decent, conventional pillars of the community.

  He remained motionless, on the side that wasn’t painful, the hangover throbbing like a disease through his body.

  Footsteps in the corridor outside, a key turning in the lock of the gray steel door, the grating of metal slicing through his head. Then the uniform stood there.

  “Your attorney’s here,” the policeman said.

  Slowly he turned on the bed. Opened one eye.

  “Come.” A voice devoid of respect.

  “I don’t have an attorney.” His voice sounded far away.

  The policeman took a step, hooked a hand into the back of his collar, pulled him upright. “Come on.”

  The pain in his ribs. He stumbled through the cell door, down the paved passage to the charge office.

  The uniform walked ahead, used a key to indicate the way to the small parade room. He entered with difficulty, hurting. Kemp sat there, his briefcase next to him, a frown on his face. He sat down in a dark blue chair, his head in his hands. He heard the policeman close the door behind him and walk away.

  “You’re trash, Van Heerden,” said Kemp.

  He didn’t respond.

  “What are you doing with your life?”

  “What does it matter?” His swollen lip lisped the s.

  Kemp’s frown deepened. He shook his head. “They didn’t even bother to lay a charge.”

  He wanted to indulge in the relief, the lessening of the pressure, but it eluded him. Kemp. Where the fuck did Kemp come from?

  “Even dentists know shit when they see it. Jesus, Van Heerden, what’s with you? You’re pissing your life away. Dentists? How drunk do you have to be to take on five dentists?”

  “Two were GPs.”

  Kemp took in Van Heerden’s appearance. Then the attorney got up, a big man, clean and neat in a sports jacket and gray slacks, the neutral colors of the tie a perfect match. “Where’s your car?”

  He rose to his feet slowly, the world tilting slightly. “At the bar.”

  Kemp opened the door and walked out. “Come on, then.”

  Van Heerden followed him into the charge office. A sergeant pushed his possessions over the counter, a plastic bag containing his slender wallet and his keys. He took it without making eye contact.

  “I’m taking him away,” said Kemp.

  “He’ll be back.”

  The day was cold. The wind knifed through his thin jacket and he resisted the impulse to pull it closer around his body.

  Kemp climbed into his large 4x4, leaned across, and unlocked the passenger door. Slowly Van Heerden walked around the vehicle, climbed in, closed the door, and leaned his head against it. Kemp pulled off.

  “Which bar?”

  “The Sports Pub, opposite Panarotti’s.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why did you fetch me?”

  “Because you told the entire Table View police station that I would sue them and the dentists for everything ranging from assault to brutality.”

  He vaguely remembered his charge-office tirade. “My attorney.” Mockingly.

  “I’m not your attorney, Van Heerden.”

  The ache in the swollen eye killed his laughter. “Why did you fetch me?”

  Aggressively Kemp changed gears. “Fuck alone knows.”

  Van Heerden turned his head and looked at the man behind the steering wheel. “You want something.”

  “You owe me.”

  “I owe you nothing.”

  Kemp drove, looking for the pub. “Which car is yours?”

  He pointed to the Corolla.

  “I’ll follow you. I have to get you clean and respectable.”

  “What for?”

  “Later.”

  He got out, walked across the road, and got into the Toyota. He found it difficult to unlock the door, his hand shaking. The engine stuttered, wheezed, and eventually fired. He drove to Koeberg Road, left past Killarney, onto the N7, wind suddenly sweeping rain across the road. Left to Morning Star and left again to the entrance to the smallholding, Kemp’s imported American Ford behind him. He looked at the big house among the trees but turned off to the small whitewashed building and stopped.

  Kemp stopped next to him, opening his window just a crack against the rain. “I’ll w
ait for you.”

  First of all he showered, without pleasure, letting the hot water sluice over his body, his hands automatically soaping the narrow space between shoulder and chest and belly—just the soap, no washcloth, careful over the injured part of the ribs. Then, methodically, he washed the rest of himself, leaning his head against the wall for balance as he did first one foot, then the other, eventually turning off the taps and pulling the thin, overlaundered white towel from the rail. Sooner or later he would have to buy a new towel. He let the hot tap of the washbasin run, cupped his hands under the slow stream, and threw the water over the mirror to wash away the steam. He squeezed a dollop of shaving cream into his left hand, dipped the shaving brush into it, made it foam. He lathered his face.

  The eye looked bad, red and puffy. Later it would be purplish blue. Most of the scab on his lip had been washed off. Only a thin line of dried blood remained.

  He pulled the razor from the left ear downward, all the way across the skin, over the jawline into the neck, then started at the top again, without looking at himself. Pulled the skin of his jaw to tighten it around the mouth, then did the right side, rinsed the razor, cleaned the basin with hot water, dried off again. Brushed his hair. Had to clean the brush: it was clogged with black hair.

  Had to buy new underpants. Had to buy new shirts. Had to buy new socks. Trousers and jacket still reasonable. Fuck the tie. The room was dark and cold. Rain against the windows at ten past eleven in the morning.

  He walked out. Kemp opened the door of the 4x4.

  There was a long silence that lasted as far as Milnerton.

  “Where to?”

  “City.”

  “You want something.”

  “One of our assistants has started her own practice. She needs help.”

  “You owe her.”

  Kemp merely snorted. “What happened last night?”

  “I was drunk.”

  “What happened last night that was different?”

  There were pelicans on the lagoon opposite the golf course. They were feeding, undisturbed by the rain.

  “They were so full of their fucking four-by-fours.”

  “So you assaulted them?”

  “The fat one hit me first.”

  “Why?”

  He turned his head away.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  He made a noise in his throat.

  “You can make a living. But you have such a shitty opinion of yourself…”

  Paarden Island’s industries moved past.

  “What happened?”

  Van Heerden looked at the rain, fine drops scurrying across the windshield. He took a deep breath, a sigh for the uselessness of it all. “You can tell a man his four-by-four isn’t going to make his prick any larger and he pretends to be deaf. But drag in his wife…”

  “Jesus.”

  For a brief moment he felt the hate again, the relief, the moment of release of the previous evening: the five middle-aged men, their faces contorted with rage, the blows, the kicks that rained down on him until the three bartenders managed to separate them.

  They didn’t speak again until Kemp stopped in front of a building on the Foreshore.

  “Third floor. Beneke, Olivier, and Partners. Tell Beneke I sent you.”

  He nodded and opened the door, got out. Kemp looked thoughtfully at him.

  Then he closed the door and walked into the building.

  He slumped in the chair, lack of respect evident in his posture. She had asked him to sit down. “Kemp sent me,” was all he had said. She had nodded, glanced at the injured eye and lip, and ignored them.

  “I believe that you and I can help each other, Mr. van Heerden.” She tucked her skirt under her as she sat down.

  Mister. And the attempt at common ground. He knew this approach. But he said nothing. He looked at her. Wondered from whom she had inherited the nose and the mouth. The large eyes and the small ears. The genetic dice had fallen in strange places for her, leaving her on the edge of beauty.

  She had folded her hands on the desk, the fingers neatly interlaced. “Mr. Kemp told me you have experience of investigative work but are not in permanent employ at the moment. I need the help of a good investigator.” Norman Vincent Peale. She spoke smoothly and easily. He suspected that she was clever. He suspected she would take longer to unnerve than the average female.

  She opened a drawer, took out a file.

  “Did Kemp tell you I was trash?”

  Her hands hesitated briefly. She gave him a stiff smile. “Mr. van Heerden, your personality doesn’t interest me. Your personal life doesn’t interest me. This is a business proposition. I’m offering you a temporary job opportunity for a professional fee.”

  So fucking controlled. As if she knew everything. As if her cell phone and her degree were the only defense she needed.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty,” she said without hesitation.

  He looked at her third finger, left hand. It was bare.

  “Are you available, Mr. van Heerden?”

  “It depends on what you want.”

  2.

  My mother was an artist. My father was a miner.

  She saw him for the first time on a cold winter’s day on Oliën Park’s frost-covered rugby field, his striped Vaal Reef’s jersey almost torn off his body. He was walking slowly to the touchline to fetch a new shirt, his sweaty litheness, the definition of shoulders and stomach and ribs, gleaming dully in the weak late-afternoon sun.

  She had told the story accurately, every time: the pale blue of the sky, the bleached gray white of the stadium’s grass, the smallish group of students loudly supporting their team against the miners, the purple of their scarves bright splashes of color against the dull gray of the wooden benches. Every time I heard the story I added more detail: her slender figure taken from a black-and-white photograph of that time, cigarette in her hand, dark hair, dark eyes, a certain brooding beauty. How she saw him, how all the lines of his face and his body were so irresistibly right, as if, through all that, she could see everything.

  “Into his heart,” she said.

  She knew two things with absolute certainty at that moment. One was that she wanted to paint him.

  After the game she waited for him outside, among the officials and second-team players, until he came out wearing a jacket and tie, his hair wet from the showers. And he saw her in the dusk, felt her intensity, and blushed and walked to her as if he knew that she wanted him.

  She had the piece of paper in her hand.

  “Call me,” she said when he stood in front of her.

  His mates surrounded him, so she simply gave him the folded paper with her name and telephone number and left, back to the house on Thom Street where she was boarding.

  He phoned late at night.

  “My name is Emile.”

  “I’m an artist,” she said. “I want to paint you.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment in his voice. “What kind of painting?”

  “One of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a handsome man.”

  He laughed, disbelieving and uncomfortable. (Later he had told her that it was news to him, that he’d always had trouble getting girls. She’d replied that that was because he was stupid with women.)

  “I don’t know,” he eventually stammered.

  “As payment you can take me out for dinner.”

  My father only laughed again. And just over a week later, on a cold winter’s Sunday morning, he drove in his Morris Minor from the single quarters in Stilfontein to Potchefstroom. She, with easel and painting kit, got into the car and directed him—out on the Carletonville road, close to Boskop Dam.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Into the veld.”

  “The veld?”

  She nodded.

  “Doesn’t one do it in a… an art room?”

  “A studio.”

  “Yes.”

&nb
sp; “Sometimes.”

  “Oh?”

  They had turned off onto a farm road and stopped at a small ridge. He helped her carry her equipment, watched as she stretched the canvas on the easel, opened the case, and tidied the brushes.

  “You can undress now.”

  “I’m not going to take everything off.”

  She merely looked at him in silence.

  “I don’t even know your surname.”

  “Joan Kilian. Undress.”

  He took off his shirt, then his shoes.

  “That’s enough.” He resisted.

  She nodded.

  “What must I do now?”

  “Stand on the rock.”

  He climbed onto a large rock.

  “Don’t stand so stiffly. Relax. Drop your hands. Look over there, toward the dam.”

  And then she began painting. He asked her questions but she didn’t reply, only warned him a few times to stand still, looked from him to the canvas, mixed and applied paint until he gave up trying to talk. After an hour or more she allowed him to rest. He asked his questions again, discovered that she was the only daughter of an actress and a drama lecturer in Pretoria. He vaguely remembered their names from Afrikaans films of the forties.

  Eventually she lit a cigarette and started packing her painting equipment.

  He dressed. “Can I see what you’ve drawn?”

  “Painted. No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can see it when it’s finished.”

  They drove back to Potchefstroom and drank hot chocolate in a café. He asked about her art; she asked him about his work. And sometime during the late afternoon of a Western Transvaal winter he looked at her for a long time and then said: “I’m going to marry you.” She nodded because that was the second thing she had known with certainty when she saw him for the first time.

  3.

  The female attorney looked down at the folder and slowly drew in her breath. “Johannes Jacobus Smit was fatally wounded with a large-caliber gun on September thirtieth last year during a burglary at his home on Moreletta Street, Durbanville. The entire contents of a walk-in safe are missing, including a will in which, it is alleged, he left all his possessions to his friend, Wilhelmina Johanna van As. If the will cannot be found, the late Mr. Smit will have died intestate and his assets will eventually go to the state.”