The Serpentine Road (28 page)

Because he booked his stay late, the guesthouses in Greyton itself are full, so De Vries has opted for a country motel a couple of kilometres out of town. The deal includes a minivan to shuttle guests to and from the beer festival; an old colleague of De Vries’s is staying there also.

The boy waits, engine running, as De Vries stands on the road and presses the intercom button. The outside of the Travellers’ Haven is unprepossessing: a high wall painted caramel; an archway guarded by two heavy metal gates. After a moment, the gates open slowly, De Vries waves at his driver, and the boy speeds away.

The motel is set up in a rectangle, a closed courtyard of peach-coloured terraced chalets around a tarmacked central car park. The only break from the construction are three unhappy-looking pine trees growing in a line down the middle of the car park. Although there are plenty of cars, there seems to be nobody around. At almost 5.45 p.m., De Vries assumes that they are all up at the town, already drinking their way through the bars, hotels and street stalls. He hears the heavy gates clank as they shut behind him.

To his left, a small red-neon arrow flashes intermittently, advertising the reception. He trots over to the door, finds himself in a small office with a desk, some brochures on the counter, a television audible from the space behind. There is no sign of a bell. He clears his throat, hears shuffling from within, and watches as a short, stocky man with bow legs appears. He studies De Vries momentarily, smiles.

‘You’re Richard’s friend, from Cape Town,
ja
?’

De Vries nods.

‘He booked for you. I put you in adjoining rooms.’ He pushes a clipboard across the counter, reaches behind him to fetch a key from the board of hooks on the wall.

De Vries signs the form, looks up to see a hand on the end of a thick arm held up at a diagonal. He shakes it.

‘I’m Benny Louw.’ He pushes the key across the counter at De Vries. ‘You want to settle up now? Save time tomorrow when we’re busy checking everyone out?’

De Vries pays cash.

‘Richard say where he’d meet me?’

‘
Ja
, man. Told me to tell you he’ll be around the Devil’s Peak stall between 6 and 7 p.m. I have a guy dropping off and collecting. You want to go up straightaway?’

De Vries looks at his watch. It is now 5.57 p.m. Why not?

‘Maybe give me ten minutes?’

‘Sure. No hurry, man. Almost everyone’s there already. Few business people coming later. Look out for the white minibus by the front gate.’

De Vries thanks him, opens the door onto the car park and steps down.

Tracing his room from the other numbers, he walks to the furthest side of the rectangle, opens the door to his chalet. As he turns, he sees Benny Louw at the door to reception, watching the car park. De Vries ducks inside, walks through thick, stale air to examine the bathroom, peers through the small window at the rear and observes, close up, the caramel-coloured concrete wall. He sighs, runs his hand hard over his forehead, up through sweaty hair. He takes a shower in cool, brown, brackish water, puts on jeans and a polo shirt, checks that he has his wallet with him. On the back of the door, there is a big plastic sign in red letters: ‘No Smoking’. He curses, re-packs his rucksack with the clothes he has taken off, scoops up his key and trots across the tarmac towards the reception. In the office, Benny Louw has been replaced by a short Cape Coloured woman. As he enters, he sees her duck around the doorway, emerge again, eyes guilty.

‘Good evening.’

De Vries studies her, smells smoke on her breath, sees tar stains on her yellow-brown fingers.

‘I want to do that,’ he says, winking through the door behind her. ‘In my room.’

He flashes the room number on the key fob.

She opens a large format binder, deliberately thumbs the pages, runs her tarred finger down the page, turns and snaps a new key on the desk.

‘If you can’t smoke in bed, it isn’t a holiday . . .’

‘No.’ She winks at him. He recoils from the overt sexuality with which she instils this gesture.

He turns, steps back down into the courtyard, crosses it to his new room, throws down his rucksack, steps back out and into the door of the waiting minibus, its engine running, just outside the main gates.

Don February takes supper on a tray into the bedroom. His wife, propped up on all their pillows, gestures for it to be placed on her lap. He lays it there, checks that she has all she wants, then retreats to the kitchen to eat on his own. He is only halfway through his meal when he hears her call him. He gets up, walks down the hall and into their room. Her plate is empty.

‘Is there any ice cream in the freezer? The chocolate ice cream from Pick n Pay?’

He takes her plate, serves up two large scoops of ice cream in a bowl and carries it back to her together with a spoon.

She touches his arm.

‘I have had such a nice day,’ she tells him. ‘Having you at home. This boss of yours, maybe he is not so bad?’

Don thinks: he is an angry man; impatient, intolerant, inherently racist, with no respect for rank, or women, or the Lord.

He says, ‘No, he is not so bad.’

De Vries is dropped by the Post House in town. As he exits, the air seems warmer, heavy with moisture. Over the sound of a German-style band, he hears a low rumble of thunder. He looks up at the mountains above Greyton, expecting them to be silhouettes now, but they are light grey against a background of an almost black sky, fit to burst.

Main Road runs up the centre of the nineteenth-century country town, bordered by lei-water channels from which the dwellings take a turn each week, diverting water onto their properties for irrigation, refilling swimming pools and replenishing duck ponds. The homes and businesses which line the main drag are a mixture of colloquial Cape Dutch architecture with gabled ends, simple thatched properties and modern white-painted country buildings with corrugated iron roofs and covered verandas. Well used to weekly markets and the attentions of visitors, restaurants, bars, hotels and guest houses are all offering beer-related tastings and meals. Between them, there are stalls set up under awnings from perhaps twenty-five different artisanal brewing companies: some newly formed, some a decade old – stalwarts of the craft-brewing scene in the Cape. Sun-faded bunting hangs above the street, a man dressed as a black bear dances to a three-piece brass band at the corner of Main Road and Grey Street. De Vries just makes out the smell of frankfurters and sauerkraut above the ambient aroma of freshly drawn beer.

He finds Richard Wessels, his arm around a well-built, jolly woman, a few metres down the street from the Devil’s Peak Brewing Company stall. Wessels is already merry. De Vries is immediately wary; his former colleague is a notoriously boring drunk, and it is barely six thirty in the evening.

‘Come with us, old friend, ‘Wessels says. ‘Marion is going to let me taste her Flamkuchen.’

De Vries demurs, watches them walk away down the road towards the tree-lined DS Botha Street, running diagonally from the main drag, and to the stand selling the Flamkuchen. As he turns back to the Devil’s Peak stall, there is a clap of thunder so strident that it halts the brass band mid-song. Then there is laughter, people toast one another, music starts again. De Vries squeezes through the line of people at the bar, waits to be served.

‘I want,’ he tells the barman, ‘a large Silvertree but, before that, I want to taste your ‘First Light’ Amber Ale.’

He is handed a tot of the ale and a large plastic glass of Silvertree, and hands over his cash. He turns to push his way out into the open, catches the eye of a man standing across the street, watches him look away. He tastes the ale, immediately feels thirsty. Silvertree has been his favourite for a while and he lays into the cold beer, malty and fruity. Halfway through, he slowly turns to where the man had been standing. He is no longer there. Something from his years of experience troubles him; the man’s reaction bothered him. He tries to picture what he looked like, then thinks that he could easily have been looking for a friend, seen his face and realized that De Vries was not him. He drains the glass, walks further up the street to where the buildings become private homes: cottages in perfect gardens, artists’ residences and country hideaways for rich townsfolk. The old trees which line the street are shedding leaf. He has always loved this walk up towards the edge of the mountain that stands over the little town, and he walks away from the crowds into the shady peace of the upper reaches of Main Road. He turns, looks back down, drinks in the view of the strings of coloured lights bright in the night, the smoke from
braais
and grills, music, laughter. In the dappled shadows from the flickering street light on this balmy evening, he stands on the spot, wonders whether he would be happier if he was with someone. He does not miss his wife at home – he revels in his independence, does not lack sexual activity – but, he admits to himself, he sometimes misses companionship, at times such as now, at this precise moment: a warm shoulder to pull against him, a shared glance of contentment.

The street scene is illuminated by four quick flashes of lightning, raucous thunder following. He walks briskly back down to the main drag, finds another of his favourites, buys a tall glass of East Coast Ale, saunters to a grill of home-made
boerewors
, orders a coil in a huge soft bun. The hot sausage and cold beer make for a perfect combination. He struggles to eject some Mrs Ball’s Chutney onto his plate from the sticky bottle on the trestle table and settles for a dab. He stands amongst a group listening to an accordion player. He looks beyond the musician, sees the same man as before, still staring in his direction. He understands what is bothering him: on each occasion he has seen him, he has not had a drink in his hand. He swallows hard, fights for a breath as he feels food stuck in his gullet, thumps the centre of his chest with his fist; De Vries places his food and beer glass on a low wall, trots around the crowd towards the man. When he reaches where he thought he had been, he sees no one like him. He stands on a plastic chair, looking over the revelry, sees no one walking away, no one suspicious. As he stands there, he hears a noise like a wave washing onto a beach, its volume increasing until the first huge drops hit him. He steps down, walks determinedly back towards his food and drink, already feeling water dripping down the back of his neck. The music has stopped and people are beginning to hunt for shelter. Within one minute, the drops have turned into a deluge. The storm rolls down the slopes of the mountains and onto the main street, pushing ahead of it the scent of steaming tarmac. He reaches his drink, feels the bread soggy on top of his
boerewors
, discards the top of the bun in the street, munches at what remains, ambling towards one of the side-street cafes with a deep awning, and joins the crowd pressed under it. He continues to eat and drink, to shelter with everyone else, his contentment stolen from him by the feeling that he is being watched, being stalked.

Just after 11 p.m., De Vries finds the white minibus where he was dropped off and, along with half a dozen others, is driven back to the Travellers’ Haven. The bus smells of damp dog and belched beer, but his fellow passengers are happy despite the rain, warmed by much ale. They wait in the road, engine idling, for the gates to open, the remote control in the van failing to shift them. The driver stands hunched over the intercom, the rain falling like a heavy curtain over him and everything around. Finally, they draw inside and disembark. As Vaughn reaches the shelter of his room, he looks around the quadrangle, sees the flicker of televisions behind net curtains, wonders who would be watching television after a night of drinking and eating. He checks the window fastening, dead bolts his door, and then showers and gets into bed. He is not drunk; he is happy but for his watcher, tired yet grateful for a half day’s respite from the stresses of his work. Just as he has dismissed the threat, his mind starts whirring again and he lies staring at the ceiling, resolutely awake, listening to the sound of the rain on the tin roof, cacophonous and unrelenting.

De Vries dozes sporadically, his room still sultry. He smiles to himself that he has transformed this visit into a part of his necessarily clandestine investigation. Anyone scrutinizing him must believe that the case is virtually closed. He gets out of bed, uses the toilet, switches off the rasping air-conditioning, so loud that it dominates even the sound of the rain.

As he finally loses consciousness, he hears the sound of the minibus with its rattling engine, delivering the last of the revellers back to their quarters. He hears the clang of the main gates as they close, then nothing but what, to him, now seems to be the soothing rhythm of the rain, lighter but insistent, for so long hungered after.

The minibus driver visits the reception, returns to his vehicle, drives it away. As the gates close behind him, three men jog into the quadrangle. Two wait in shadow by the main gate, the third runs to the reception area. A minute later, he rejoins the others, exchanges information and signals the direction they should travel. In a compact triangle, they trot across the centre of the car park between the two lines of parked cars, past the three pine trees. Each man wears a balaclava, dark clothes, gloves. They move in synch with one another, say nothing. They are almost invisible.

De Vries finally finds a depth of sleep which often eludes him at home. He dreams of climbing a tall wooden ladder to sever the tops of hop vines, watching them fall, heavy with warm, scented flowers. It is sunny, he is in the English countryside and, in the evening, he drinks dark, thick beer in the tiny saloons of ancient public houses; the image segues – goes home to a glamorous apartment overlooking Clifton Beaches, a tall and slender black African woman waits in the bedroom. The bed is big and soft, and he feels as if he is swimming in cool, clear water, until he pulls her towards him, feels the warmth that emanates from her, holds her in his embrace.

* * *

They collect at the doorway, eyes alert, bodies stiff, primed. One positions himself with his back to the chalet, pistol at his side: a lookout. The second man prepares to insert a short, stout crowbar level with the lock; the third waits, knife drawn, back to the left of the door, ready to spin inside. The lookout meets the eyes of both the men, signals; the crowbar rises to horizontal, gouges into the softwood door-frame, cracks open the door with ease. The knife man spins into the dark, humid room.