Thirteen Hours (11 page)

'You know who shot Adam Barnard?'

'My client has no proof, but feels it is his civil duty to
share the available information with the law.'

Fransman Dekker looked at the crowd, then at Groenewald and
Mouton. 'I think you should come in.'

Rachel Anderson walked along the footpath on the contour of
the mountain, hurrying more now as it was level ground and she had left the shelter
of the pine trees behind. There were only the houses below, large properties
with swimming pools, densely grown gardens and high walls. Beyond them lay the
city and the long sweep of Table Bay, a postcard of bright blue sea and a
cluster of high-rise buildings squatting together, as if seeking solidarity
from their closeness.

It was a lie, all this beauty, she thought. A false front.
She and Erin had allowed themselves to be misled by it.

Ahead the path curved to the right, skirting a reservoir. The
high earthen bank would conceal her for a few hundred metres.

Behind the bathroom door Alexa Barnard took off her dressing
gown and night clothes and then she reached for the bottle she had hidden under
her clean clothing. She unscrewed the cap with a trembling hand. There wasn't
much in the bottle. She brought it to her lips and drank. The movement was
echoed in the tall mirror and she watched it involuntarily. The naked body, its
femininity so wasted, her long greasy hair in strings around her face, underarm
stubble, mouth open, bottle lifted high in a desperate attempt to catch the
last drops. She was startled by this demon, the way the mirror image focused so
completely on the bottle.

Who was this person standing there?

She turned away, having drained the bottle, but found no
relief. She placed it on the floor and leaned against the wall with an
outstretched arm.

Was it really her standing there?

'Soetwater
,' the sympathetic detective with the unusual features and
unruly hair had said. 'How did you come to this?' was what he meant. She had
told him, but now, in front of this sudden reflection, the explanation was
insufficient.

She turned back and looked at the reflected woman again. The
tall body looked so defenceless. Legs, hips, belly with a small bulge, the firm
breasts, long nipples, the skin of the neck no longer smoothly taut. A face,
worn, used, drunk up.

It was her.
Her
body,
her
face.

God.

'How
did
you come to this?'
There was genuine curiosity in her own question. She spun away and stepped into
the shower. This far, but she would go no further. She could not.

Mechanically she opened the taps.

Adam was dead. What was she going to do? Tonight? Tomorrow?

The fear that welled up inside her was huge, so that she had
to press her palms against the tiles to remain standing. She stood like that a
while, the water scalding her, but she did not feel it. The pills, that's what
she must get, the sleeping pills, so she could drift away, away from that woman
in the mirror, away from the destructive process, the thirst, and the darkness
ahead.

The pills were in the room with Tinkie Kellerman.

She would have to do it with something else. Here, in the
bathroom. She stepped out of the shower with urgency, pulled open the bathroom
cabinet with shaking hands. Too hasty, she knocked bottles over, nothing of
use. She picked up her razor, looked at its uselessness, threw it away against
the door, scratched around in the cabinet. There was nothing, nothing ...

'Mrs Barnard?' called the voice from the other side of the
door.

Alexa turned and locked the door. 'Leave me alone.' It wasn't
even her voice.

'Ma'am, please ...'

She spotted the gin bottle. She grabbed the neck and struck
it against the wall. A shard of glass hit her on the forehead. She examined the
sharp glass blade that remained in her hand. She lifted her left arm and sliced
violently, deep and desperately, from the palm to the elbow. The blood was a
fountain. She sliced again.

In the sitting room Mouton and Groenewald sat side by side on
the couch. Dekker was opposite them.

'I don't have proof,' said Mouton.

'Just tell him what happened, Willie.'

They were like those two guys in the old black-and-white
films, thought Dekker.

What were their names?

'This guy burst into my office and said he was going to kill Adam
...'

'And who is this guy?'

Mouton referred to his lawyer. 'Are you sure it's not
slander, Regardt?'

'I'm sure.'

'But what if I have to give evidence?'

'Willie, slander will not be an issue.'

'It can ruin their career, Regardt. I mean, what if it isn't
him?'

'Willie, you have no choice.'

Laurel and Hardy, Dekker recalled. Two white comedians. 'Mr
Mouton, who was it?' he asked.

He drew a deep breath, Adam's apple bobbing like a cock's.
'It was Josh Geyser,' he said, and sat back as though he had unleashed the
whirlwind.

'Who?'

'The gospel singer,' said Mouton impatiently. 'Josh and
Melinda.'

'Never heard of them.'

'Josh and Melinda? Everyone knows them. Sixty thousand of the
new CD, four thousand in one day alone, when they were on the featured music
stars on radio RSG. They're big.'

'And why would Josh Geyser want to kill Adam Barnard?'

Mouton leaned forward conspiratorially and suddenly he was
speaking very quietly:

'Because Adam nailed Melinda in his office.'

'Nailed?'

'You know ... He had sex with her.'

'In Barnard's office?'

'That's right.'

'And Geyser caught them?'

'No. Melinda confessed.'

'To Josh?'

'No. Higher up. But Josh was with her when she prayed.'

Fransman Dekker snorted between laughter and disbelief. 'Mr
Mouton, you can't be serious.'

'I am!' Indignant. 'Do you think I would make jokes at a time
like this?'

Dekker shook his head.

'Yesterday afternoon Josh Geyser came rushing in at a hell of
a speed past Natasha and just about broke my office door down. He said he was
looking for Adam and I said what for and he said he was going to kill him,
because he raped Melinda. So I said, "How can you say a thing like that,
Josh?" and he said Melinda said so. So I said, "What did she
say?", and he said she'd prayed and confessed to the Big Sin in Adam's
office, on the desk, she said it was the devil, but he, Josh, knew about Adam's
ways. And he was going to beat him to death. He was crazy, he nearly grabbed
hold of me, when I said it didn't sound like rape. He's a huge
ou,
he was a Gladiator before he was saved ...'
Mouton dropped his voice again: 'The story is, he can't .. . you know ... get
it up, because of the steroids.'

'That's not relevant, Willie,' said Groenewald.

'It gives him motive,' said Mouton.

'No, no ...' said the lawyer.

'Beat him to death, you say?' asked Dekker. 'That's what he
said?'

'He also said he was going to kill him ... no, he was going
to fucking kill him, he was going to cut off his balls and hang them over the
platinum CD in his sitting room.'

'Adam's ways. What "ways" was Geyser referring to?'

'Adam is ...' Mouton hesitated. 'I can't believe Adam is
dead.' He sat back and rubbed his shaven head. 'He was my friend. My partner.
We've come a long way together ... I told him one day someone would ...'

Silence descended. Mouton wiped the back of his hand over his
eyes. 'Sorry,' he said. 'This is hard for me ...'

The lawyer reached out a long, thin hand to his client.
'That's understandable, Willie ...' 'He was this great presence ...'

Dekker heard the high and urgent voice of Tinkie Kellerman
calling: 'Fransman!'

He stood up quickly and strode towards the door.

'Fransman!'

'I'm here,' he called. He saw Kellerman at the top of the
stairs.

'Come and help,' she said. 'Hurry.'

A hundred metres beyond the reservoir the path turned left,
down the mountain, towards the city, in a wide and shallow ravine. Rachel
Anderson walked through pine trees, following the path around huge boulders.
She saw a stone wall ahead with a gap in the middle and beyond it to the right
an almost completed house behind an enormous oak tree. A cool, deep pool of
shade, a place of rest, but her first thought was for a tap to quench her
raging thirst.

She went past the garage, eyes searching, towards the street.
A sawn-up pine tree filled the doorway of the double garage, stacked in tidy
piles. She spotted the tap beside the back door of the house, prayed it was
connected, walked faster, stooped and turned it. The silvery water gushed out,
hot for a few seconds, then suddenly cool. She dropped down on one knee, turned
back the tap a bit, and drank, directly from the spout.

Fransman Dekker had forced enough doors to know you don't use
your shoulder. He took a step back and kicked. The door splintered, but stayed
shut. He kicked again, and again before it broke, swinging open only about
forty centimetres. It was enough to see the blood.

'Oh, dear heaven,' said Tinkie Kellerman behind him.

'What?' said Willie Mouton, trying to get past her.

'Sir, you can't...'

Dekker was already in the bathroom. He saw Alexa Barnard
lying on the floor. He stepped in the blood and turned her naked body over. Her
eyes were open, but unfocused.

'Ambulance,' he ordered Tinkie. 'Now.'

He bent to examine the damage. Her left wrist was deeply cut,
at least three times.

The blood still flowed from it. He grabbed a garment off the
floor and began to bind it around the wounds, as tightly as he could.

Alexa spoke, the words barely audible.

'Ma'am?' he said.

'The other arm,' she whispered.

'I'm sorry?'

'Cut the other arm, please,' and with a weary hand she held
out the broken bottle to him.

She quenched her thirst and washed the blood from her hands, arms
and face. Then she stood up, closed the tap and took a deep breath. The city
was just below her ... She walked around the corner of the house, less anxious
now, fear mellowed by the drink of water.

Then she saw them, only twenty paces away down the street.
She froze, breath caught in her throat. They were standing with their backs to
her, side by side. She knew them. She was turned to stone. Her heart beat
thunderously in her ears.

They were looking down the sloping street.

The garage. The logs. She had to get in there. It was five
paces behind her. She was too terrified to take her eyes off them. She shuffled
backwards, afraid she would step on something. They must not look around. She
reached the wall of the garage. One more step. Then one of them began to turn.
The one who had started it all. The one who had bent over Erin with the knife.

In the breakfast room of the Cat & Moose Youth Hostel and
Backpackers Inn, nineteen-year-old Oliver 'Ollie' Sands sat with his head in
his hands. A bit overweight, he had red hair and pale skin that had seen too
much sun. His angular black-rimmed glasses lay on the table in front of him.
Opposite him, close to the door, sat Inspectors Vusumuzi Ndabeni and Benny
Griessel.

'Mr Sands has identified the victim as Miss Erin Russel,'
said Vusi, with the photo of the victim and his notebook in front of him.

'Jeez,' said Sands, shaking his head behind his hands.

'He's been travelling through Africa with Miss Russel and her
friend, Rachel Anderson. He does not know where Miss Anderson is. The last time
he saw them was last night in Van Hunks, the nightclub. In Castle Street. ‘Vusi
looked to Sands for confirmation.

'Jeez,' the young man repeated, lowering his hands and
pulling his glasses closer. Griessel could see his eyes were red.

'Mr Sands, you arrived in Cape Town yesterday?'

'Yes, sir. From Namibia.' The accent was unmistakably
American, the voice quavering, emotional. Sands placed the glasses on his nose
and blinked, as if seeing Vusi for the first time.

'Just the three of you?' Griessel asked.

'No, sir. There were twenty-one of us. Twenty-three actually,
when we left Nairobi on the tour. But a guy and a girl from the Netherlands
pulled out in Dar. They ... didn't like it.'

'A tour?' Griessel asked.

'The African Adventure Tour. Overland, by truck.'