Dead Before Dying: A Novel Page 4

  “Was your husband involved in politics?”

  “Politics?” Margaret Wallace said, wholly uncomprehending.

  “Was Mr. Wallace a member of a political party?” Griessel asked.

  “No, he . . .” Her voice cracked. They waited.

  “He was . . . apolitical. He didn’t even vote. He says all politicians are the same. They only want power. They don’t really care about people.” The frown on her forehead deepened.

  “Was he involved in the townships? Welfare work?”

  “No.”

  “His company?”

  “No.”

  Joubert tried another tack. “Were you aware of any tension at work recently?”

  She shook her head slightly and the auburn hair moved. “No.”

  The unmatched pair of eyes blinked. She was fighting for control, Joubert knew. He helped her: “We’re sure there must be a logical explanation for this terrible thing, Mrs. Wallace.”

  “Who could’ve done such a thing? Haven’t we had enough death and destruction in this country already? James wasn’t perfect but . . .”

  “It could’ve been an accident, Mrs. Wallace. Or a robbery. The motive for this sort of thing is usually money,” Griessel said.

  Or sex, Joubert thought. But that would have to wait.

  “Do you know if anyone owed your husband money? Any other business ventures, transactions . . .”

  She shook her head again. “James was so responsible with money. He didn’t even gamble. We went to Sun City last year, with the people from Promail. He took along five thousand rand and said that when that was gone, he would stop. And he did. The house doesn’t have a mortgage, thank the good Lord . . .”

  Griessel cleared his throat. “You were happily married.” A statement.

  Margaret Wallace looked at Griessel and frowned. “Yes, I would like to think so. We had the usual little squabbles. James loves cricket. And sometimes he comes home a bit tipsy after a night out with the boys. And sometimes I’m too sensitive about it. I can be moody, I suppose. But our marriage works, in its strange way. The kids . . . our existence revolves around the kids these days.” She looked in the direction of the bedroom, where her mother had to be the comforter now.

  The silence grew. Then Joubert spoke. He thought his voice sounded artificial and overly sympathetic. “Mrs. Wallace, according to law you have to identify your husband at the morgue . . .”

  “I can’t do it.” Her voice was muffled, and the tears were about to fall.

  “Is there someone else who could?”

  “Someone at work will have to. Walter Schutte. The managing director.” She gave a telephone number, and Joubert wrote it down.

  “I’ll give him a call.”

  They got up. She did, too, but reluctantly, because she knew the night lay ahead.

  “If there’s anything we can do . . .” Griessel said and he sounded sincere.

  “We’ll be fine,” said Margaret Wallace and started crying bitterly again.

  The blonde sat on one of the hotel’s bedroom chairs. Her name was Elizabeth Daphne van der Merwe.

  Joubert sat in the other chair. Griessel, Louw, and O’Grady were perched on the edge of the big double bed, arms folded, like judges.

  Her hair was straw-colored out of a bottle. Her face was long and thin, the eyes big and brown with long lashes, the nose small and delicate. Tears had drawn mascara tracks down her cheeks. But Lizzie van der Merwe had missed true beauty with a mouth that didn’t match. Her front teeth were a bit rabbity, the bottom lip was small, too near the weakness of her jaw. Her body was tall and slender with small, high breasts under the white blouse. She had angular hip bones and wore a black skirt that showed too much of her legs in cream-colored stockings ending in elegant high heels.

  “Where did you meet the deceased?” Joubert’s voice was wholly without sympathy now, his choice of words deliberate.

  “I met him this afternoon.” She hesitated, looked up. The detectives all stared at her, their faces impassive. The long lashes danced across her cheeks. But no one reacted.

  “I work for Zeus Computers. In Johannesburg. I phoned last week. We have new products . . . James . . . er . . . Mr. Wallace . . . They referred me to him. He is their consultant on computers. And so I flew down this morning. I had an eleven o’clock appointment. Then he took me to lunch . . .” Her eyes moved from face to face, looking for one that showed sympathy.

  They waited in silence. Her lashes danced again. The lower lip quivered and placed more emphasis on the two front teeth she tried to hide. Joubert felt sorry for her.

  “And then?” he asked softly. She embraced his tone of voice and focused the big eyes on him.

  “He . . . We had wine. A great deal of wine. And we talked. He said he was very unhappy in his marriage . . . His wife doesn’t understand him. There was something between us. He understood me so well. He’s a Ram. I’m Virgo.”

  Joubert frowned.

  “Star signs . . .”

  The frown disappeared.

  “Then we came here. I have a room here because I’m staying over. I have another appointment tomorrow. With someone from another firm. He left after six. I’m not sure of the time. And that’s the last time I saw him.”

  The lashes fluttered again and the mascara tracks increased.

  Basie Louw cleared his throat. “What happened here? In this room?”

  She cried harder.

  They waited.

  She got up and went into the bathroom. They heard her blowing her nose. A tap ran. Silence. Then the nose being blown again. She came back and sat down. The mascara tracks had disappeared.

  “You know what happened. Here . . .”

  They looked at her expectantly.

  “We made love.” She cried again. “He was so gentle with me . . .”

  “Miss, do you know anyone in Cape Town?” Mat Joubert asked.

  She took a tissue out of the sleeve of the white blouse and blew her nose again. “I have friends here. But I haven’t seen them for ages.”

  “Is there anyone who’d be . . . unhappy if you slept with other men?”

  Her head jerked up. “I don’t sleep with other men . . .”

  The eyebrows of the three detectives on the bed rose with military precision.

  “Don’t you understand? There was a vibe. We . . . we were . . . It was beautiful.”

  Joubert asked again: “Miss, we want to know if you’re involved with anyone else who would mind that you and the deceased slept together.”

  “Oh, you mean . . . No. No, never. I don’t even have a permanent relationship.”

  “Do you belong to a political party or group, Miss van der Merwe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’m a member of the Democratic Party. But what has . . .”

  Griessel didn’t give her a chance. “Did you ever have any connection with the Pan African Congress?”

  She shook her head.

  “Or with the Azanian People’s Liberation Army?”

  “APLA? No, I . . .”

  “Do you know anybody who belongs to these groups?”

  “No.”

  “What did the deceased say when he left here? Did he have another appointment?” Griessel asked.

  “He said he had to go home, to his children. He is . . . was a good man . . .” Her head drooped. “There was a vibe. So beautiful,” she said.

  Mat Joubert sighed and got up.

  6.

  He dreamed about Yvonne Stoffberg. They were in the mountains. She ran ahead of him, her white bottom bobbing in the moonlight, her brown hair floating. She was laughing, skipping over river stones, past a rippling stream. He was also laughing, his hard-on rigid in the evening breeze. Then suddenly she screamed, a scream of terror and surprise. Her hands shot to her breasts, trying to hide them. Ahead of them on the mountain track stood Bart de Wit. Between his eyes there was a third eye, a staring, scarlet pit. But he could still spea
k: “Ask yourself, Captain. Are you a winner?” Over and over again like a cracked record in that high, nasal voice. He looked round, searching for Yvonne Stoffberg, but she had vanished. Suddenly, de Wit was gone, too. The dark invaded him. He felt himself dying. He closed his eyes. Long auburn hair drifted across his face. He was lying in the arms of Margaret Wallace. “You’ll be okay,” she said. He started crying.

  At the traffic lights Joubert stared at Die Burger’s poster as he did every morning without seeing it. Then as the letters took on meaning, he was startled: CHINESE MAFIA BEHIND BRUTAL KILLING OF CRICKET FAN?

  The lights changed to green and he couldn’t stop next to the newspaper seller. He drove to a café in Plattekloof, bought a newspaper, and looked for the report on the front page as he walked back to his car. He found it.

  Cape Town—A murder gang of the Chinese Mafia may possibly be behind the brutal slaying of a wealthy Cape Town businessman who was shot with a Tokarev pistol at a Newlands hotel last night.

  According to Col. Bart de Wit . . .

  Joubert leaned against the car and looked up at Table Mountain. He sighed, not seeing how clearly the mountain was visible this morning or how the morning sun made a bright splash in the bay. Then he folded his newspaper, got into the car, and drove off.

  “What’s beyond me is why he had a bit on the side with a horse-faced blonde when he had a film star at home,” Griessel said.

  Joubert wasn’t listening. “Have you seen the paper?”

  “No.”

  Then de Wit came in, ramrod straight, self-satisfied. The detectives fell silent.

  “Good morning, colleagues. Beautiful morning, isn’t it. Makes one grateful for the privilege of being alive. But there it is, we have to get on with the job. Before we discuss yesterday’s cases . . . I’ve now met all the officers personally and we had productive discussions. Today I’m starting with the noncommissioned officers. I want to get to know you all as soon as possible. Mavis has a list. All the adjutants must check the time of their appointments. Right, let’s discuss yesterday’s cases. Captain Mat Joubert called me for assistance with a murder in Newlands . . .”

  He looked at Mat and gave him a friendly smile. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Captain. Can you give us a progress report?”

  Joubert was somewhat taken aback. He’d asked de Wit to come to the scene because it was standard procedure with all murders that had a high publicity potential. Now the man was giving it a different interpretation.

  “Uh . . . It’s pretty thin, Colonel. The deceased certainly had extramarital relationships. Today we’ll check whether there’s a jealous husband in the picture somewhere. Perhaps someone at his office . . .”

  “You can drop that,” de Wit interrupted him. “As I told the press last night, this is the work of a Chinese drug ring . . . Good piece in Die Burger this morning. If you dig deeply enough into the deceased’s background you’ll find the connection. I think the investigation can only benefit if you involve the narcotics bureau as well, Captain. Drop that jealous husband theory of yours. Interestingly enough, last year at the Yard we had two similar murders . . .”

  De Wit broke eye contact with Joubert. Joubert stopped listening. There was an uncomfortable feeling in his belly, as if an insect were scrabbling through his entrails.

  Reluctantly he phoned the officer commanding SANAB—the South African Narcotics Bureau—after the morning assembly.

  “What have you appointed there this time, Joubert?” the voice at the other end asked. “A clown? Cloete of public relations has just phoned me, asked whether de Wit had spoken to me. Cloete is mad as hell because your new boss chats to the newspapers himself. Cloete wants to know whether he can retire now and fish full-time. and what’s this crap about the Chinese mafia?”

  “It’s based on the previous experience of my commanding officer, colonel. at this stage we have to investigate all possibilities.”

  “Don’t give me that official smokescreen, Joubert. you’re just shielding de Wit.”

  “Colonel, I would appreciate it very much if you and your staff would provide murder and robbery with any information which could cast more light on the possibility.”

  “Ah, now i’ve got it. You’re under orders. Awright, you have my sympathy, Joubert. If we uncover a Chinese smuggling ring in the next two hundred years, you’ll be the first to know.”

  The investigating officer had to be present during the postmortem. That was the rule, the tradition—no matter what the state of the remains.

  Joubert had never enjoyed it, not even in the good old days. But he could erect barriers between himself and the unsettling process that repeated itself time after time on a marble slab in a white-tiled room in Salt River, where the dead lost the last remnants of dignity.

  Not that Professor Pagel forced his scalpel and clamps and saws and forceps through skin and tissue and bone without respect. On the contrary, the state pathologist and his staff approached their work with the seriousness and professionalism that it deserved.

  It was Lara’s death which had destroyed his barriers. Because he knew she had also lain there. Images recalled from past experience had helped to reconstruct the scene. Naked, on her back, clean and sterile, her lithe body exposed to the world, to no effect. The blood washed from her face, only the small star-shaped bullet wound visible between the hairline and the eyebrows. And a pathologist explaining to a detective that it was characteristic of a contact shot, the point-blank killing. Because the compressed gases in the gun’s barrel landed under the skin and suddenly expanded, like a balloon bursting, the Star of Death was awarded, so often seen in suicide cases . . . But not in Lara’s. Somebody else gave her the star.

  Every time he walked down the cold, tiled passages of the mortuary in Salt River, his mind screened him the scene, a macabre replay he couldn’t switch off.

  Pagel was waiting in the little office with Walter Schutte, managing director of Quickmail. Joubert introduced himself. Schutte was of medium height with a deep voice and hair that protruded from every possible opening—his shirt collar, the cuffs, his ears. They walked to the theater where James J. Wallace lay under a green sheet.

  Pagel stripped off the covering.

  “Jeez,” said Walter Schutte and turned his face away.

  “Is this James J. Wallace?” Joubert asked.

  “Yes,” said Schutte. He was pale and the line of shaven beard showed clearly on his skin. Joubert was astonished by the hairiness of the man. He took him by the shoulder and led him back to Pagel’s office, where Schutte signed a form.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions in your office later on.”

  “What about?” Schutte’s self-confidence was slowly reasserting itself.

  “Routine.”

  “Of course,” Schutte said. “Anytime.”

  When Joubert walked back, Pagel switched on the bright lights, thrust his short, strong fingers into the transparent plastic gloves, took off the cloth covering the late James J., drew the arm of the large mounted magnifying glass toward him, and picked up a small scalpel.

  The pathologist began his systematic procedure. Joubert knew all the mmm sounds the man made, the unintelligible mutter when he found something important. But Pagel only shared his discoveries when he was quite certain about his conclusions. That’s why Joubert waited. That’s why he stared at the sterile washbasin against the wall, where a drop of water pinged against the metal container every fourteen seconds.

  “Head shot could’ve caused death. Entry through the left frontal sinus, exit two centimeters above the fontanel. The exit wound is very big. Soft-nosed bullet? Could be . . . could be. Must have a look at the trajectory.”

  He looked at Joubert. “Difficult to judge the caliber. Entry wound in the wrong place.” Joubert nodded as if he understood.

  “Relatively close shot, the head shot. Two, three meters. The thorax shot probably equally close. Could also have caused death. Wound is typical. Additional signs less ob
vious. The clothes, of course. Heat absorbed. Powder particles. Smoke. Through the sternum. Bleeding absent.”

  He looked up again. “Your man was already dead, Captain. After the first shot. Doesn’t matter which one it was. Dead before he hit the ground. The second one was unnecessary.”

  Fuel for de Wit’s Mafia mania, Joubert thought. But he remained silent.

  “Let’s go in,” Pagel said and picked up a larger scalpel.

  Walter Schutte didn’t get up when Joubert and Griessel were escorted in by the secretary. “Sit down, gentlemen.” He swung a jovial arm at the modern leather and chrome chairs in front of the big desk with its sheet of glass. “Tea or coffee? I’m having something so please don’t hesitate.” The pale uncertainty in the mortuary had disappeared.

  They both chose tea and sat down. The secretary closed the door behind her.

  The morning wasn’t far advanced but Schutte’s beard already cast a shadow over his cheeks. His teeth flashed white when he gave a quick, bright smile. “Well, in what way can I assist you?” Then the smile disappeared like a light that had been switched off.

  “We’d like to know more about James Wallace, Mr. Schutte. You must’ve known him well?” Joubert asked.

  “I met James for the first time two years ago, when Promail appointed me here. He was a wonderful man.” Schutte’s voice was loaded with veneration.

  “Is that what you called him? James?”

  “Most of us called him Jimmy. But now it sounds so . . .” Schutte flashed a gesture and a smile.

  “What were his relations with the people at work?”

  “We all liked him. Oh, hang on, I see what you’re driving at. No, Captain, you won’t find his murderer here.” Schutte waved both hands in front of him as if warding off an evil spirit. “We’re like one big family, I always say. And James was a part of the family. A much loved part. No, Captain, look for your murderer somewhere else.”

  “Do you know whether the deceased had any other business interests?”