The First Rule Of Survival (17 page)

He stands, back to the chalky stone wall, sees no windows on this far end, begins to edge around to the rear of the building, his back scraping against the crude bulging building blocks. He glances around the corner: nothing. He scans the ground behind the building, which drops down to a shallow river valley lined by skinny trees with a diagonal gait, before rising up into a large tor of heavy dark rocks. He is out of range should a sniper be hidden there.

He twitches around the corner again, neither sees nor hears any sign of life, and sharply twists his body around so that his back is now hard against the rear wall of the building, his gun pointing down the length of it. This wall contains a door almost at the far end, but no windows that he can see. He edges along the wall, suddenly crouches low. In the far distance, there is gunfire: the MPLA men are close. His heart starts to pump, his palms sweat. The wind propels harsh cries, another burst of fire. It is so hot that it is sucking the spit from his panting mouth, yet suddenly he freezes. To his right, he senses movement. He turns to see the wooden door of the building open outwards, the door shielding whoever might emerge. He raises his weapon.

The man steps out, the wind slams the door, and he suddenly twists, gun pointing. De Vries’ swollen, dehydrated fingers struggle to prime the weapon. He achieves it, faces the man, aware that they are mirroring each other: weapon under the right arm, left hand at his side, palm up, eyes bulging, breathing hard. Time stops. De Vries meets the eyes of the tall, thin, black man, sees the blood pumping in his exposed veins, his arm straining, shaking. The man’s left leg collapses suddenly and he grimaces, eyes never leaving de Vries’. The MPLA fighter is topless, the left leg of his combat fatigue trousers ripped and shredded, a makeshift bandage over his left kneecap, a shining slick of dark oily blood running down his bare leg to his dusty boot.

They stare at each other. De Vries realizes that the man is downwind of him, must be able to smell his sweating fear. But the fighter is injured and his weapon begins to tilt towards the ground. De Vries finds that, almost subconsciously, he is allowing his weapon to fall too. The fighter nods at de Vries very slowly and de Vries echoes him. The fighter takes a wobbly step backwards; de Vries also, his mind racing, knowing that prisoners are not welcome, slows down the move forward, and he has neither will, nor heart, to kill this emaciated, wounded man. They both back off further, eyes locked, until the man reaches the end of the wall. He jerks his head upwards; de Vries sees only white discs flashing, and then he disappears around the corner of the building.

De Vries edges to cover at his corner and then he exhales; a breath that seems to last minutes. The utter futility of their action overwhelms him; exhaustion hits his brain and he hunches up and dry-retches over the shifting dust of the ground beneath him. He draws himself up, shaking and dizzy, takes a swig of water, does not regret the stand-off, believes it to have been the logical stratagem, knows that he has no choice but to back his judgement, to store it away, never to reveal it to anyone.

He stows his flask, begins to edge back to the rear wall, prepares to push on to their goal. He surveys the territory once more, seeking the next point where they can find cover, remembers Rikhardts, turns around the corner once more and sees him, his back to the far building, moving towards the end of it. Rikhardts looks up, sees de Vries, tilts his weapon upwards and continues his move. De Vries takes a deep breath, then rounds the corner and begins to slide along the rear wall again. Rikhardts reaches the corner of his building and steps out to cross the twenty-metre space between the buildings. De Vries looks behind him and then, at the sound of two jarring, ear-piercing shots, sees Rikhardts fall, watches blood rise like a fish-pond fountain, be whipped low by the wind.

De Vries hears his heart thump three times, suddenly grits his teeth and charges along the back wall of the building, reaches the corner and runs straight out, weapon primed. He sees nothing, runs to the front corner, looks right, then left, sees the same MPLA fighter sprinting, bow-legged but agile, away across country towards the koppie they have climbed and then hard left towards the river and the giant rocky outcrop of the tor. He is already beyond range. De Vries contemplates giving chase, the anger in his stomach cramping him, leaving him breathless, but he knows that he wants Rikhardts to live more than he wants the fighters dead.

He sees breath in Rikhardts’ body as he kneels over him, takes his head in his hands, tilts his upper body towards him gently, tenderly. He looks at Rikhardts’ milky eyes, feels him convulse, watches his final breath and feels nothing but stillness and a hot, sticky damp as the blood oozes over his right arm.

De Vries lowers the body and crouches over him, eyes shut. He does not pray; does not meditate. He knows that this moment will never leave him, understands in a way he has never done before that every decision he makes will have a consequence, questions himself over and over as to whether what he perceived to be self-preserving logic was nothing more than selfish, unadorned cowardice.

2014

At 4.30 a.m., de Vries wakes, mind full of youthful memories, uncertainty, confusion. Marantz is smoking a joint, bare feet up on the coffee table; still running through hands played, pots surrendered, wondering how his luck can run so badly for so long, slowly accepting that whatever luck he has had has gone – that it is now a negative vacuum into which every moment of chance is sucked.

Outside, it is silent.

‘What are you doing here?’ de Vries mumbles.

Marantz smiles at him. ‘I live here.’

De Vries looks up at the tall ceiling, the empty minimalism.

‘What do you want?’

‘That’s my line.’

De Vries struggles up, notices the wine, murmurs, ‘I need to piss.’

He stumbles on the stone steps, turns on several lights before he finds the one to the guest bathroom. When he returns, he tops up his still-filled wine glass, takes a long sip, and then gets up. He gropes his way to the kitchen, spits out the wine in the sink.

‘I need water.’ He pours himself a full glass and downs it. Then he refills it and comes back to the fire, almost falling over as he sits back down.

‘No home to go to,Vaughn?’

‘You know,’ de Vries says, stretching his legs and grimacing at his stiffness, ‘that’s the one thing I don’t like. Not being alone in a house, not the absence of a woman in my bed, not even that I have to do everything myself – it’s just that house. It’s the family house, and that part of my life is in the past. I’ve done that, and now I have twenty years to do what I want to do.’

‘And then retire?’

‘Who wants to fucking retire? What the fuck will I do then? Twenty years before the cigarettes and booze get me.’

‘You’re not a normal man.’

De Vries chuckles. ‘Not right now, anyway.’

‘Your case – is that why you’re pissed in my driveway?’

‘Fucking suspect went and threw himself over a cliff right in front of me. That’s two abused, tortured, teenage corpses and my number one suspect, jumping to his death. And there’s one more boy – just maybe, please fucking God maybe, still alive – and the whole fucking thing is going dead again.’

‘This the guy I researched for you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What else do you want me to do?’

‘Nothing, man.’

‘So why come here,Vaughn?’

‘I can’t sleep in my office every night. Where the fuck else is there for me to go?’

The sun, still hidden on the far side of the Hottentots Holland Mountains, lights up the morning sky, bleaching out stars and extinguishing the freeway streetlights. They have been talking for two hours – mainly de Vries: everything he can think of. Marantz pushes him into the bathroom, finds him a towel, lends him his shaver, then calls him up to his car.

De Vries, bleary, says, ‘I can call a cab.’

‘No, man.’

‘You’ve been up all night . . .’

‘I can sleep all day.’

The old motor roars, silencing the dawn chorus, echoing back from the mountain face. Marantz backs out, watches his garage doors slide closed, the wasps following their moving nest precariously stuck there like honeycomb, before accelerating up the little hill to the apex of Vineyard Heights, then he freewheels down the long, steep street and turns hard left onto Rhodes Drive and left again at the traffic lights onto the freeway, past the University campus, towards the city bowl.

De Vries is silent, eyes half closed.

‘Two observations,’ Marantz starts. He glances over at de Vries, who nods without stirring. ‘Abuse cases always lead back to family – father, uncles, grandparents maybe? Do you know anything about Steinhauer’s family?’

‘Not yet. What you gave me on Marc Steinhauer’s private background – you gave me more in a couple of hours than we could ever have found. How did you get that?’

Marantz overtakes a smoking Toyota Corolla and swings around the uphill corner until the whole panorama of the docks, the Waterfront and beyond, the sparkling steel-grey water of Table Bay is laid out ahead of them.

‘Favour from a mate of an old colleague. Can’t make a habit of it, I’m afraid.’

‘Shame. Hard information is what we never have here. Feels like I’ve been conducting this investigation with my hands tied behind my back. No breaks; no cooperation; no knowledge. What else do you think?’

‘Just, it strikes me, three abductions, maintaining those kids all this time, never being noticed. Definitely sounds like work for more than one man, don’t you think?’

Julius Mngomezulu still marvels at the audacity that has brought about the eighth floor of the SAPS Operations centre; the floor which houses Brigadier Director du Toit’s department: four incident rooms for serious crimes within Cape Town and its environs: overarching, overreaching. Murder, kidnap and abduction, rape, robbery: all of it high-profile, all of it press sensitive for the reputation of the SAPS in general. Most of it, white crime.

He snorts to himself when he thinks that people might imagine the racial make-up of South Africa like a chessboard: black and white, black and white, each living next to the other. If it were like that, there would be sixty-three black squares and one white – on the edge, probably, he thinks, with a gap between it and the other squares. After 1994, it was never supposed to be like this any more: no innate privilege, no special treatment.

He closes Colonel de Vries’ office door, locks it, and pockets the key. He checks that there is no one in the squad room and then walks confidently to the stairs and up two floors to the administration level. He has the materials to hand now; he has a boss who will act. Soon, there will be no special cases, no priority for the rich and newsworthy. He feels a long way from where he was born in Khayelitsha. His studio apartment which, from afar, overlooks the harbour, his education, clothes, even the branded watch on his wrist – all tell him that. But he knows that, until every crime against every person in South Africa is treated just the same, until every victim is equally important, he will never forget where he comes from.

‘You look like shit,Vaughn.’

De Vries looks at du Toit’s dress uniform.

‘I don’t have to look good on television,’ he shrugs.

‘So you haven’t slept? Big deal. Neither have I and neither, I imagine, has Warrant Officer February.’

Du Toit looks out into his anteroom, sees Don standing by his secretary’s desk, beckons him in, points at a chair in front of his desk.

‘Firstly, this.’ Du Toit gestures at the newspaper on his desk. ‘Someone has gone to the papers. I don’t know who it is, but this ramps up the pressure.’

De Vries murmurs, ‘Probably Hopkins.’

‘Whoever it was, it seems we have their support as of now. They could have gone down a very different route. Now, you two have to put everything together and prove that we were right.’

‘I’m restructuring the investigation.’

Du Toit stares at Vaughn, says quietly, ‘What?’

De Vries stands up.

‘I’m sick and tired of guessing in the dark. I’m taking Don off what he was doing with Steinhauer’s homes and Fineberg Farm. I want him to revisit the original case with objective eyes and see how Steinhauer – or known associates, whoever they may be – could fit in. I want to look into Steinhauer’s background, his family in the past, and his family now.’ He turns to his Warrant Officer. ‘Who do you rate, Don? Who can you trust with what you’ve been working on?’

Don tries not to glance at du Toit, tries to stay focused on de Vries.

‘Sergeant Thambo – Ben Thambo. He is an efficient officer, a good organizer and he is capable of collating all the information.’

Vaughn looks at du Toit, then back at Don.

‘Thambo? Can he handle it?’

Don makes a point of turning in his chair, meeting de Vries’ eye.

‘Yes, sir.’

There is silence for a moment, before du Toit says, ‘All right, Vaughn. If February here has faith in this officer, that’s good enough for me. Get to the point.’

‘The point,’ de Vries tells him, ‘is that once Don is fully up-to-date on the original case, we have a lot of people to interview – Steinhauer’s brother, Dr Nicholas Steinhauer, for a start. I want to revisit the psychological profiling we were given at the time.’

‘Nicholas Steinhauer?’

‘He made a point of commenting at the time of the original abductions, as you’ll remember, sir. Criticized our investigation on television, in print. He claimed to be an expert in child psychology. That strikes me as too much of a coincidence.’

Don clears his throat, receives a nod from du Toit.

‘After we gave her the news about her husband, I asked Marc Steinhauer’s wife about his family. She said that she would try to contact his older brother, but that he was abroad.’

‘Where?’ de Vries asks.

‘She did not say. I can find that out.’

De Vries says: ‘Where is she now?’

‘With her father, in Rooiels.’

‘Get her in.’

Du Toit announces, ‘Be careful,Vaughn. We need people’s co-operation. Leave Mary Steinhauer for a day or two. It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake. Whatever Marc Steinhauer may have done, we must respect his family’s right to grieve. This is an influential family, known to the media.’