Thirteen Hours (7 page)

'Everything, Benny. I wondered if we could talk tonight.'

About everything? He couldn't gauge her tone of voice.

'We could. Do you want me to come home?'

'No, I thought we could rather ... go out to eat somewhere.'

Jissis.
What did that mean?

'That's fine. Where?'

'I don't know. Canal Walk is sort of halfway. There's a
Primi...'

'What time would suit you?'

'Seven?'

'Thanks, Anna, that would be nice.'

'Goodbye, Benny.' Just like that, as though he had said the
wrong thing.

He sat with the phone in his hand. Behind him a motorist
hooted. He realised he should move forward. He released the clutch and closed
the gap ahead of him.
About everything, Benny.
What
did that mean? Why not at their house? Maybe she felt like going out. Like a
kind of date. But when he said: 'That would be nice,' she said goodbye as if
she was angry with him.

Could she know about last night? What if she had been there, at
his flat, at his door. She would have seen nothing, but she would have been
able to hear - Bella who had made such soft, contented noises at one stage.
God, he had liked that then, but if Anna had heard...

But she had never been to his flat. Why would she have come
last night? To talk? Not entirely impossible. And she might have heard
something and waited and seen Bella leave, and...

But if she had, would she want to go out to eat with him?

No. Maybe.

If she knew ... He was fucked. He knew that now. But she
couldn't know.

Brownlow Street was a surprise to Griessel because
Tamboerskloof was supposed to be a rich neighbourhood. But here the old
Victorian houses covered the whole spectrum from recently restored to badly
dilapidated. Some were semi-detached, others crouched on the slopes as
free-standing colossi. Number forty- seven was large and impressive, with two
storeys, verandas and balconies with curlicued ironwork railings, cream walls,
and windows with green wooden shutters. It had been restored some time in the
past ten years, but now it was in need of more attention.

There was no garage. Griessel parked in the street behind a
black Mercedes SLK 200 convertible, two police vehicles and a white Nissan with
the SAPS emblem on the door and
Social Services
under it in black type. Forensics' minibus was parked across the road. Thick
and Thin. They must have come direct from Long Street.

A uniformed policeman stopped him at the big wooden front door.
He showed his identification. 'You will have to go around the back, Inspector;
the sitting room is a crime scene,' he said. Griessel nodded in satisfaction.

'I think they are still in the kitchen, sir. You can go right
here and then around the house.'

'Thank you.'

He walked around. There was not much garden between the wall
and the house. The trees and shrubs were old, large and somewhat overgrown.
Behind the house there was a view of Lion's Head. Another policeman was on duty
at the back door. He took his SAPS ID out of his wallet again and showed it to
the Constable.

'The Inspector is expecting you.'

'Thank you,' he said, and went in through a laundry room and
opened the inner door. Dekker sat at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in his
hands and a pen and notebook in front of him. He was totally focused on the
coloured woman opposite him. She wore a pink and white domestic uniform and
held a handkerchief in her hands, her eyes red from crying. She was plump, her
age difficult to judge.

'Fransman ...' said Griessel.

Dekker looked up irritably. 'Benny.' As an afterthought, he
said: 'Come in.' He was a tall, athletic, coloured man, broad-shouldered and
strong, with a face from a cigarette advert, handsome in a rugged way.

Griessel went up to the table and shook Dekker's hand.

'This is Mrs Sylvia Buys. She's the domestic worker here.'

'Good morning,' said Sylvia Buys solemnly.

'Morning, Mrs Buys.'

Dekker pushed his mug of coffee away as if to distance
himself from it, and pulled his notebook closer with a hint of reluctance. 'Mrs
Buys arrived at work ...' he consulted the notebook,'... at six forty-five and
tidied up and made coffee in the kitchen before moving to inspect the living
area a
t...
seven o'clock ...'

'Damage assessment,' said Sylvia Buys spitefully. 'That woman
can make a mess.'

'...where she discovered the deceased, Mr Adam Barnard, and
the suspect, Mrs Sandra Barnard ...'

'She's really Alexandra .. .'With distaste.

Dekker made a note and said: 'Mrs Alexandra Barnard. Mrs Buys
found them in the library on the first floor. At seven o'clock. The firearm was
on the carpet next to Mrs Barnard ...'

'Not to mention the booze. She's an alky, drinking like a
fish every night and Mr Adam ...' Sylvia lifted the handkerchief, and
dab-dabbed at her nose. Her voice grew thinner, shriller.

'Was she under the influence last night?' Griessel asked.

'She's as drunk as a lord every night. I went home at half
past four and she was well on her way - by that time of the afternoon she's
talking to herself already.'

'Mrs Buys says when she left the house yesterday the suspect
was alone. She does not know what time the deceased came home.'

'He was a good man. Always a kind word. I don't understand
it. Why did she shoot him? What for? He did her no wrong, he took all of her
milly, all her drinking, he just took it, every night he would put her in bed
and what did she go and shoot him for?' She wept, shaking her head.

'Sister, you're traumatised. We'll get you some counselling.'

'I don't want counselling,' sobbed Sylvia Buys. 'Where will I
get another job at my age?'

'It's not as simple as that,' said Dekker as he climbed the
yellowwood stairs to the library. 'You'll see.'

Griessel could sense the tension in the man. He knew his
colleagues called Dekker 'Fronsman' behind his back, a reference to his
frowning lack of humour and consuming ambition. He had heard the stories,
because in the corridors of the Provincial Task Force, they liked to gossip
about up-and-coming stars. Dekker was the son of a French rugby player. His mother,
a coloured woman from the poverty of Atlantis township, was young and buxom in
the Seventies when she worked as a cleaner at the Koeberg nuclear power
station. Apparently the rugby player was older, long past his glory days, by
then a liaison officer for the French consortium that built and maintained
Koeberg. There had been just one encounter and shortly afterwards the rugby
player returned to France, without knowing of his offspring. Dekker's mother
could not remember his name, so she simply christened her son Fransman, the
Afrikaans for Frenchman.

How much of this was true, Griessel could not say. But the
child had apparently inherited his father's Gallic nose, build and straight
black hair - now trimmed in a brush cut - and his mother's coffee-coloured
complexion.

I le followed Dekker into the library. Thick and Thin were at
work in the room. They looked up as the detectives entered. 'We can't go on
meeting like this, Benny, people will talk,' said Jimmy.

An old joke, but Benny grinned, then looked at the victim
lying on the left side of the room. Black trousers, white shirt with no tie,
one shoe missing, and two gunshot wounds to the chest. Adam Barnard had been
tall and strong. His black hair was cut in a Seventies style, over the ears and
collar, with elegant grey wings at the temples. In death his eyes were open,
making him seem mildly surprised.

Dekker folded his arms expectantly. Thick and Thin stood
watching him.

Griessel approached carefully, taking in the book shelves,
the Persian carpet, the paintings, the liquor bottle and glass beside the chair
on the right side of the room. The firearm was in a transparent plastic
evidence bag on the ground, where Forensics had circled it with white chalk.
'She was on this side?' he asked Dekker.

'She was.'

'The Oracle at work,' said Thick.

'Fuck off, Arnold,' said Griessel. 'Had the pistol been
fired?'

'Quite recently,' said Arnold.

'But not here.'

'Bingo,' said Arnold.

'I told you he would get it straight away,' said Jimmy.

'Yes,' said Dekker. He sounded disappointed. 'It's an
automatic pistol, three rounds are missing from the magazine, but there are no
casings here. No blood on the floor, no bullet holes in the walls or book
shelves and the shoe is missing. I have gone through the whole house. Jimmy and
Co have searched the garden. She didn't
klap
him here. We have to search the car in the street...'

'Where is she?'

'In the sitting room with Social Services. Tinkie Kellerman.'

'Knock, knock,' said someone from the door. The long-haired
photographer.

'Come in,' said Dekker. 'You're late.'

'Because I had to make bloody prints first ...' He spotted
Griessel. His manner quickly changed. 'Vusi has his photos, Benny.'

'Thanks.'

'Jimmy, did you test her for GSR?' asked Dekker.

'Not yet. But I did put her hands in paper. She didn't like
that.'

'Can you do it now? I can't talk to her with paper bags over
her hands.'

'If she touched the pistol she will have GSR. I don't know if
you can do anything with that.'

'Let me worry about that, Jimmy.'

'I'm just saying. Gunshot residue isn't what it used to be.
The lawyers are getting too clever.' Jimmy took a box out of his case. It was
marked 'SEM Examination'. He went to the stairs with both detectives in tow.

'Fransman, you've done a good job,' said Griessel.

'I know,' said Dekker.

The CCTV control room of the Metro Police was an impressive
space. It had twenty flickering TV screens, a whole bank of video recorders and
a control panel that looked as though it belonged to the space shuttle.
Inspector Vusi Ndabeni stood looking at a screen, watching the grainy image of
a small figure running under the street lights of Long Street. Nine seconds of
material, now in slow motion: seven shadowy people in a desperate race from
left to right across the screen. The girl was in front, only recognisable
thanks to the dark hump of the rucksack. Here, between Leeuwen and Pepper
Street, she was only three steps ahead of the nearest assailant, her arms and
legs pumping high in flight. Another five people were sixteen to seventeen
metres behind. In the last frame just before she disappeared off the screen,
Ndabeni could see her turn her head as if to see how close they were.

'Is that the best you have?'

The operator was white, a little man, owl-like behind big
round Harry Potter spectacles. He shrugged.

'Can you enlarge this?'

'Not really,' he answered in a nasal voice. 'I can fiddle
with the brightness and contrast a little, but if you zoom in, you just get
grain. You can't increase the pixels.'

'Could you try, please?'

The Owl worked the dials in front of him. 'Don't expect
miracles.' On the screen the figures ran backwards slowly and froze. The man
pecked at a keyboard and tables and histograms appeared over the image.

'Which one do you want to see better?'

'The people chasing her.'

The operator used a mouse to select two of the last five
figures. They suddenly filled the screen. He tapped the keyboard again and the
image brightened, the shadows lightened. 'All I can try is a high pass sharpen
...' he said. The focus sharpened slightly, but neither of the figures was
recognisable.

'You can at least see they are men and that the one in front
is black,' said the Owl. Vusi stared at the screen. It wasn't going to help him
much.

'You can see they are young men.'

'Can you print this?'

'OK.'

'Are they only on one camera?'

'My shift finishes at eight. I'll have a look if there's
something else then. They must have come from Greenmarket or Church Street, but
it will take time. There are sixteen cameras in that section. But they don't
all work any more.'

'Thanks,' said Vusi Ndabeni. One thing he couldn't
understand. If one of the pursuers was only three strides behind her in Pepper
Street, why hadn't he caught her before the church? It was five hundred metres
away, maybe more. Had he slipped? Fallen? Or deliberately waited for a quieter
place.

'One more thing, if you don't mind ...'

'Hey, it's my work.'

'Can you enlarge the two running in front?'

Griessel walked into the sitting room behind Dekker. It was a
large room with big couches and chairs and a huge coffee table, tasteful, old
and well restored. Small, delicate Tinkie Kellerman of SAPS Social Services sat
upright in an easy chair that dwarfed her. She was the one they sent for when
the victim
or
the suspect was a woman, because she had compassion and empathy, but now there
was a frown of unease on her face.