The Serpentine Road (14 page)

‘The matter,’ Thulani begins, ‘concerns the death of a friend of your son’s – Trevor – in Cape Town two days ago.’

De Vries notices Bhekifa indicates no surprise.

‘Colonel de Vries is leading the enquiry, and Trevor made himself available for questioning as it appears that the victim was a lady friend of his. The victim was the daughter of Graeme Holt, the late businessman. Her name was Taryn Holt.’

‘I remember Holt. He was a friend of Botha’s. My son was involved with his daughter?’

‘His cell-phone number was identified by us, and we contacted him. He immediately volunteered to be interviewed and that process is now complete.’

De Vries continues to study Bhekifa; he remains silent at Thulani’s statement that the process is complete, accepts that Thulani is misrepresenting him.

‘What happened to this Holt woman?’

Thulani looks at De Vries, who says: ‘She was shot in her home, sir, in the middle of the night between last Thursday and Friday.’

‘It was a robbery?’

De Vries hesitates.

‘It is too early to say, sir. The investigation is only beginning.’

Bhekifa shifts in his chair, angling himself towards Thulani.

‘While so much inequality is permitted to remain in our country, it is inevitable that there will be property crimes against the wealthy and privileged. As the gap between rich and poor grows wider every day, so your job, Sempiwe, will become more difficult. The solution, as I have always said, must lie with us, the politicians.’ He struggles forward, his voice stronger.

‘I do not believe that people in South Africa, even the wider world, realize how lucky they have been to have had a stable ANC government for the last twenty-one years. Of course, we have made mistakes. We were not a political party . . .’ He looks at De Vries. ‘. . . We were not permitted to be . . .’ He returns his gaze to Thulani. ‘We had to learn that we must sell our ideas to the people, to help them to understand. But, at least now there is hope and change all around us: better schools, better homes, more university places, workers’ rights, a respect for what we do . . .’

De Vries doubts that any man in this room truly believes these words.

‘I am afraid that Trevor has embraced another, more Western attitude to life, with his white girlfriends and his love of cars and celebrity. He will lose the support of his own people if they discover secrets about his life but, maybe, that is what should happen. Let them see him for what he is and, perhaps, it will help him to see himself.’

De Vries listens to the man’s words and glances around the room. It is styled like an English country house, filled with antiques and oil paintings of black Africans. It is, he reflects, just as much a Western attitude to life as that of his son, about whose world he is so dismissive.

‘Everything is being handled very discreetly,’ Thulani says. ‘I am certain that there will be the minimum of publicity.’

Bhekifa sits back, shrugs.

‘It is the price of democracy. We are all prisoners of our so-called free press.’

‘You have managed it well,’ Thulani says, rising. ‘In the unlikely event that Trevor is involved further in our investigation I will, of course, inform you personally.’

Bhekifa smiles at him, opens his palms at him. ‘Thank you, my friend.’

De Vries says: ‘Goodbye, sir.’

Thulani struggles in his pocket.

‘Before we go, may I impose upon you?’ He produces a pocket camera. ‘For my family?’

‘Of course, of course,’ Bhekifa tells him, sitting erect on the front edge of his chair. Thulani passes the camera to De Vries, squats with shaking knees next to the old man, puts his arm around his shoulders and draws him in. Bhekifa grimaces momentarily, then smiles wanly into the lens.

Thulani says: ‘The button on the top right, Colonel.’

‘Is this to become a routine?’ John Marantz asks, as he takes the final steps of the long staircase. ‘I thought you liked drinking alone?’

De Vries walks into the kitchen, opens the fridge, selects a bottle and opens it.

‘Being here with you,’ he says quietly, ‘it’s like being alone.’

He looks up. Marantz stares at him. De Vries smiles.

‘Well, technically, I am the only one drinking.’

They walk into the huge living area.

‘I met Bheka Bhekifa this afternoon.’

Marantz raises his eyebrows.

‘Well, well. You are mixing in exalted circles. Why was that?’

De Vries stops, turns to Marantz.

‘You got nuts?’

‘No. Tell me about Bhekifa.’

They walk through the tall doors into the garden, sit by the pool in the evening shade. De Vries takes a swig from the bottle, lights a cigarette.

‘Taryn Holt was seeing Trevor Bhekifa. Our esteemed General Thulani, apparently a friend of the father, decided this warranted visiting old man Bhekifa immediately, and I was brought along as the investigating officer.’

‘How does the hero seem?’

‘Older than I would have expected, but very comfortable in his Bishopscourt mansion, sounding off about the inequality in our society.’

Marantz chuckles.

‘You are so naïve here, thinking that politicians should be honest and true. Yours are no more hypocritical and corrupt than anywhere else. I mean, our lot wrote the rulebook: think about Blair, Bush, Cameron, even Murdoch. Your guys are amateurs.’

‘You think Bhekifa is still important?’

‘From what I read, yes. The ANC are under threat from splinter groups and new political parties. He seems to be working to keep them together. So, I suppose, he remains relevant for as long as you have, in effect, one-party politics. Is Trevor Bhekifa implicated?’

De Vries hesitates. He has involved Marantz before, enjoys hearing a fresh perspective but, at the back of his mind, Marantz’s old profession – an Intelligence Officer and Interrogator for the British Government, the consequences for his family, the connections he seems to maintain – still bothers him.

‘Yes and no. He was there, at her house, just on the edge of the time-frame estimated for time of death, but he claims he went home. There’s a little doubt about timings.’

‘So, he’s a suspect.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You did . . . In effect. That’s interesting.’

‘Perhaps . . .’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I don’t know, Johnnie. It doesn’t feel right. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no motivation for it, and this looks planned in advance, not a crime of passion or opportunity.’

‘Very little in the papers about it. That deliberate?’

‘Taryn Holt wasn’t a celebrity. It has to be pretty special for murder to warrant a front page. You know how it is.’

‘But the Bhekifa angle . . . ?’

‘Total blackout. Not a word, John.’

‘I have no contact with the press. Don’t want it. I live here quietly, on my own. That’s the way I intend to keep it.’

‘Privately, yes. On your own, I hope not.’

‘I have Flynn.’

They look up at the Irish terrier, who sits on the edge of the pool. He sees them staring and looks down, bashful.

De Vries lies in bed, head numb, mind racing. He pushes his tongue into the top of his mouth to try to loosen his jaw. It does not work. Bheka Bhekifa is not a man he had dreamed he might respect, yet something about the small man’s dignity, the conviction in his people’s achievements; it impresses him. He feels exhaustion overcome him, feels himself losing consciousness.

1987

He wears jeans, a Springbok rugby shirt and reflective aviator sunglasses, a pair of rip-off Ray-Bans from the Greenpoint flea market. He pushes through the double doors of the Heidelberg Tavern, spots his friends, greets them, buys a beer, sits down with them.

‘Howzit?’

‘Well . . .’ De Vries says. ‘From next week I’ll be keeping my eye on you all from a patrol car from here to bloody Pinelands.’

He accepts their acclamations, but knows that several of them question his decision to join the police force. There is a sense of change in their country, as yet unquantifiable, and it will bring either violence and civil war, or a slow, painful dismantling of the system. But, from the moment he gained responsibility in the army, he knew what he would do: he knew that he was disgusted and incensed by injustice; knew that he was prepared to fight to avoid it, to speak for those whose voices had been made silent.

Already, he wishes away his period of probation, longs for the years to pass before he can transfer to plain clothes. His time in the army has tired him of undue physical exertion and use of force, but has revealed to him the benefits of using his brain to deduce and infer, to plot his way to his goal, however convoluted. He knows that he is already good at it, and will be better.

He turns back to his mates, already discussing something else, seemingly unwilling to discuss his career in public. Soon, he knows, he will drink with his new colleagues in a bar which they favour; he knows that these student friendships, born of the shared misery of National Service, will fade and decay, that everything about his life will change.

He sits back on the dirty plastic-upholstered bench, letting the hubbub of the neighbourhood beer hall retreat to the back of his mind. His thoughts turn to Suzanne Basler, his girlfriend, the woman who has supported him through his training, who speaks of making a home and building a life, and he thinks that maybe this is the moment to do it all: the career, the wife, the family.

He smiles to himself, knows that Suzanne will not hurry her own decisions. She is studying television journalism, will plan her career far more carefully than he, will live at home until the time is right – for her – to move away. For now, she visits him in his shared house in Observatory – a suburb which has always subverted apartheid and seems to welcome everyone: students and artists, the homeless, the criminal. And those hours together, in the first double bed of his life, looking out from the tall window across the narrow balcony with its wrought-iron decoration, up to Devil’s Peak, they have been the making of him. They have healed his misery from his enforced time in the army, have educated him, have inspired him to take control of his life.

‘Hey . . . Vaughn.’

De Vries looks up, shakes his head free of his own thoughts.

‘What?’

‘Constable de Vries . . .’ they jeer. ‘Suzie like it when you dress up in your uniform?’

‘When I get out of it.’

They catcall. He feels his heart sink, knows now that everything will change . . .

2015

At the traffic lights on the crossroads between Campground Road and Rondebosch Common, even early on a Sunday, there is an array of hawkers:
Big Issue
and
Funny Money
sellers, collaged scenes of Cape Town made from tin cans, cases of fruit, beaded gifts. De Vries ignores them, shakes his head as the newspaper seller approaches. The man scowls. As he passes, De Vries sees one word on the cover of the
Cape Herald
, bold and black: Bhekifa.

He winds down his window and summons the man, pays for the paper and slaps it, face up, on the passenger seat.

The lights, at last, change to green. The car behind him honks immediately.

De Vries jams his foot on the accelerator, sticks his middle finger out of the window and shouts: ‘Fuck the fuck off.’

Access from the underground car park to the floors above is only by staircase to the main foyer and then by elevator, or fire escape stairs. De Vries sees a small group of reporters gathered outside the street entrance but, inside, it is quiet. He travels up to his floor alone, walks through the sparsely filled squad room to his office, where he finds Don February waiting for him.

‘Calm before the storm?’

Don nods: ‘General Thulani is in his office. He told me to tell you to report to him the moment you arrived.’

‘Let’s get it out of the way then, Don . . . No way you could have let the information about Bhekifa out?’

‘No. I was thinking about it while I was waiting for you. I did not discuss it outside the team. I do not believe that they would let it out.’

‘I hope not.’

‘How does this affect the enquiry?’

‘It doesn’t, but Thulani may not see it that way.’

De Vries is not offered a seat. He stands in front of Thulani’s desk.

‘How many hours is it, Colonel, since I told you that I was putting my trust in you, that you had an opportunity to show me that you could control a delicate case?’

‘I have checked . . .’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Thulani interrupts. ‘Obviously, I did not leak this information. There is no reason on earth why Trevor Bhekifa would speak to the press, so the leak comes from your department. Identify the leak in the next twenty-four hours, or I send in Colonel Wertner and his Internal Investigation Department, and I don’t care how much it screws with your investigation because it cannot go on like this. Every case your department handles is sensitive: your teams must be watertight. I have informed Brigadier du Toit and, of course, he agrees with me. His absence is proving detrimental to his unit. Clearly, it is not safe in your hands.’

De Vries feels the blood pumping in his hands at his side, Thulani’s voice reverberating in his aching head. He does not even register that he has stopped speaking.