Sacrifices (33 page)

But, clean-shaven, hair freshly barbered, wearing a new suit that fits his lean frame, Lane stands with his head bowed and lets the pain of the loss of his real loved ones—Tracy and the unborn Emma—inform the expression on his face and the slump of his shoulders.

He does it so successfully, that when (to the strains of a canned version of “Abide With Me”) the caskets of Beverley and Christopher disappear behind a velvet curtain, he feels the sting of tears on his cheeks.

Beverley’s sister, the boozy wife of a sugar farmer from north of
Durban—an older, fleshier version of her sibling—arrives at his side and touches his arm.

“Are you okay, Mike?” There is lipstick on her teeth and gin on her breath.

“Yes, Monica, I’m fine. Thank you.”

As he lets her lead him toward the doorway he sees Louise Solomons rise from a pew in the rear and slip out the door into the molten afternoon sunlight.

There aren’t many people in the chapel—a few friends and acquaintances, awkward as they offer their condolences, knowing enough about the end of the Lane’s marriage to be uncomfortable with the minister’s fiction. Lane mutters blandishments and shakes hands, moving toward the arched doorway.

When his sister-in-law suggests drinks at nearby hotel Lane demurs.

“I don’t think I’m quite up to it, Monica. But thank you.”

She snags his hand, saying, “Will I at least see you before I fly out tomorrow?”

“I doubt it,” he says, freeing himself from her fingers, walking across grass so green that it resembles Astroturf, the black bulk of Table Mountain rising above the dense foliage of Kirstenbosch.

There is a fire on the mountain, fuelled by the hot Southeaster that grabs at Lane’s suit pants and ruffles his hair. A helicopter hovers over the blaze, dumping water onto the flames, its blades whipping at the gray smoke.

Louise waits at his car, talking on her cell phone. Lane fingers the button on his key and the car chirps and turn signals flash as he opens the door and gets in, watching her as she speaks. Louise has been his rock these last days. Organizing the funeral. Running interference with the police and the media, quietly efficient in her role of Friend of the Family.

Lane starts the car, the ar
ctic A/C kicking in. While the BMW idles he frees himself from his jacket and tosses it on the rear seat, wrenching off his tie.

Louise slides in beside him and he catches a whiff of some very subtle scent, like vanilla. She is wearing the same outfit she wore the night they went to dinner.

“That was the police,” she says.

“What did they want?” He looks at her, feeling a twinge of worry like a half-forgotten toothache.

“They were just letting us know that they’re done with the house. It’s okay to get in the crime scene cleaners.”

“Good. I think I still have the number of the people from last year.”

“No worries, I’m on it.”

He
drives away, through Newlands, and then turns left toward the city, taking the same route they had taken five nights before, when Lane, numbed by what he had witnessed at the house, found himself on the dark streets of Sea Point without remembering how he’d got there. When he stopped outside Louise’s apartment block and turned to her and tried to speak, his words were glued to the back of his dry throat and he had to cough to dislodge them.

“Are you going to be okay?” he said.

“I’ll be fine, Michael. And you?”

“Sure.”

“You’re not having any regrets, are you?”

“No, of course not.” He coughed again. “Too late, anyway.”

“Yes,” she said, opening the door, the dome light washing her delicate features.

The interior of the car was returned to darkness as Louise closed the door and walked toward her lobby. Lane watched her unlock the glass doors and disappear inside, then he drove back along Main Raid toward the city, a straggle of listless prostitutes genuflecting as he passed.

He stowed the BMW in the car park beneath his apartment and negotiated a series of barred gates, as if he was taking himself to a prison cell. With the door to his apartment bolted, he sat a while on the couch, watching sports highlights with the sound muted.

When a rugby package came on he killed the tube.

He allowed himself to remember his amputee son as he lay dying on the sitting room floor, cradling Beverley’s bloody head. Lane knew that even if he’d chosen to intervene and called an ambulance, he would not have been able to save Christopher, his wounds were too grievous. And wasn’t it better, anyway, that his son was dead? What kind of a life would he have had without Beverley?

Lane imagined Christopher growing morbidly obese, living a twilight existence of booze and weed and DVDs. Imagined uncomfortable and depressing encounters prompted by duty rather than affection.

No, better that he was gone.

Lane, who had been certain that he wouldn’t sleep that night, was woken by the yelp of his cell phone. He sat up on the couch, gray dawn light bleeding in around the curtains, and fumbled for his blinking
Nokia.

The police. Brenda Passens had found the bodies. Michael was required to come to Newlands.

Lane shed his suit, pulling on jeans and a shirt, but he denied himself a shower and a shave, knew he would appear more convincing if he looked as if he’d rushed over.

The scene at the house was as it had been the night before, but the garden and the living room were filled with cops and crime scene technicians, the driveway cluttered with vehicles.

Lane parked in the street and walked down the driveway, thickset men with blunt haircuts watching him. He’d half expected Detective Gwen Perils to be running the show, but a beefy white man in a cheap suit detached himself from a group of uniformed cops and introduced himself—an Afrikaans name Lane promptly forgot.

The detective gave him the bullet points: an
as yet unidentified man broke in and killed Beverley. Christopher attempted to save her and killed the man and died himself.

The motive? Almost certainly robbery.

When Lane was shown his dead wife and son he shut his eyes and turned away and walked out into the garden.

The detective asked him a few questions and then he was free to drive off into the sun-bleached morning. He’d called Louise, allowing her to take over, to guide him through the next few days.

The media seized the story: HERO AMPUTEE SON KILLED WHILE TRYING TO SAVE MOM. The media machine ran even hotter when the dead intruder was identified as a convicted murderer who had been paroled only a few months before.

Embarrassing questions were asked about the criminal justice system. The police, just as they had a year ago, closed the case with almost unseemly haste, a spokesperson appearing on TV talking—in an alphabet soup of non-sequiturs—about the random nature of premeditated crime, where a family could suffer as much as the Lanes had.

No connection was made between Achmat Bruinders and his daughter, and his body lies unclaimed in the police morgue in Salt River, destined for a pauper’s grave.

Lane, driving past the ivy-covered walls of the
University of Cape Town, turns to Louise and says, “I’m going to sell the house.”

“Of course. But you know that you’re going to take a beating, selling now? Because of what happened?”

“I know and I don’t care. I just want to be rid of it.”

Money, after all, is no problem. Lane has already visited Beverley’s lawyers in hushed offices in the city, where leather-bound journals thick with printouts were opened with sepulchral ceremony, and he was confronted with the staggering scale of his wealth.

He knew that Beverley had made money, but had been unaware of the sheer vastness of their—his—fortune.

The bookstore is closed and he’ll never open it again.  What he’ll do next he doesn’t know.

The city comes into view, the little thicket of skyscrapers bound by cords of freeway, the ocean lying flat and blue, Robben Island a clot on the horizon. As the BMW swoops around Hospital Bend, Lane is blinded by the sun.

When Michael stops the car outside her apartment
building and says, “I can’t thank you enough, Lou, for everything you’ve done,” Louise knows she can’t let him go, can’t let him slip away from her now that her usefulness is nearing its end.

“Don’t you want to come up, Michael? For something to drink?”

He stares at her and she’s certain he’s going to refuse, then he smiles and says, “Sure, that’ll be nice.”

She leads him though the lobby and into the elevator. As they are drawn upward to the fifth floor, the cabin creaking and swaying, she feels a moment’s apprehension: Harpo has been locked in for hours, what if the apartment stinks of his old bowels and leaky bladder?

The elevator doors judder open and Michael follows her along the corridor, standing with his hands in his suit pockets as she unlocks the door. She went with him the day before to the Waterfront and helped him choose the suit, a more contemporary cut than his previous one, but still conservative enough for a man like him.

Beverley would have hated it.

And Tracy?

She wouldn’t have had a clue where to find a suit like that.

When Louise opens the door Harpo fires himself at her, tail wagging, nails ticking on the wooden floor. Then he sees Michael and retreats, growling softly.

“Oh, relax, Harpo. This is Mike.”

Michael crouches, sticking out a hand, and Harpo sidles up and sniffs and licks his fingers and by the time Louise has closed the door he and the old dog are buddies.

Michael stands and looks around and says, “Nice.”

“Come on Mike, you don’t have to be polite.”

“No, it is. Reminds me of a place I had when I was a student.” He shrugs. “Happy days.”

“Sit,” she says, pointing toward the kitchen counter.

Michael shifts a couple of magazines and takes a stool. The afternoon sun beats into the apartment and it’s
airless and close, but at least Harpo hasn’t messed. Louise opens the windows and the clatter of traffic rises up to them.

“I know it’s crazy on a day like this, but I feel like hot chocolate. Would you like some?”

“Why not?” He grins. “Hell, I can’t remember when last I had a cup, Lou. Must’ve been when you were a kid and I used to read to you. Remember that?”

Louise, her back to him, spooning chocolate powder into mugs, allows herself a flicker of a smile at how well her little manipulation has succeeded.

She feigns nonchalance. “Oh shit, that was ages ago.”

The kettle whistles and she fills the mugs, stirring them, the little flakes of chocolate circling like they always did.

She places one of the mugs on the counter in front of Michael and he lifts it, blows on the steaming liquid and takes a sip.

“I’ve still got the book, you know?” she says.

“
Through the Looking-Glass
?”

“Yes.”

She crosses the living room to the bookcase she has improvised out of planks and bricks, finds the Lewis Carroll and places it on the counter in front of him. Michael opens the book at his dedication, written all those years ago.

Before she can stop herself, Louise says, “Read to me, Michael, please.”

He laughs, embarrassed. “God, no.”

“Just a little. Please.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Nodding
, she sits and kicks off her shoes, curling her feet under her.

Michael shrugs and turns a page and clears his throat and starts to read: “
‘One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it—it was the black kitten's fault entirely.’ ”

Louise smiles and, as she sips her hot chocolate,
she hears a circle closing with a quietly satisfying little click.

After a few paragraphs Michael shuts the book and lays it down on the counter.

“Well, I suppose I should be going.” He stands, reaching for his jacket.

“When will I see you again, Mike?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking of getting out of Cape Town for a while, just to clear my head.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe a place where it’s snowing. You know me, Lou, I’m a cold-blooded creature.”

Yes
, you are, Michael, she thinks and as she watches him shrug on his jacket she knows she may never see him again.

“I’ll go down with you,” she says. “Harpo needs a walk.”

She puts on the old dog’s leash and he does his party trick of picking the loop up in his mouth and walking to the door, tail wagging.

Louise feels a sudden chill and realizes a front has blown in off the ocean. It’ll be cold down at the beach.

She crosses to her closet to grab a jersey, but her hand moves past the sweater and hovers over her hoodie, unused since that night a month ago.

Louise looks at Michael, sees the complacent smile on his face as he rubs a polished shoe against Harpo’s back, whistling softly through his teeth.