The First Rule Of Survival (2 page)

When de Vries reaches the skip, he is aware that his senses are at their peak, attuned to anything that might correspond with his training, research and twenty years as a detective.

He knows immediately that it will be almost impossible to find anything of use in the surroundings of the skip. It is an area of heavy traffic: delivery and refuse vehicles, and people running from the kitchen to the four different coloured recycling bins. The skip itself, however, might yield something. He approaches it carefully, climbs the grassy bank at its far side and, holding his breath, he peers in. Amidst the piles of plastic packaging and cardboard the two naked bodies lie twisted, wrapped in thin layers of polythene. Aside from blotches of blood red, the bodies seem very white, very thin. De Vries shudders. One is clearly male, but it is impossible to tell much about the other, and he wonders how Don February knew that he was also a teenage boy.

He turns his back on the skip, lets out his breath, and walks smartly away. He begins to breathe again, but the smell of decay is lodged in his nostrils; it both stimulates and repels him.

The Scene of Crime team arrive and he beckons them through the tape. As they hurry past him, he notes that the team-leader is a man he knows and trusts to do a thorough job. They nod at each other wordlessly; each is moving along his own path and neither hesitates.

De Vries walks slowly from the yard behind the buildings, around the corner to the car park; beyond it, the vista of endless fruit trees, straight lines leading to dark rolling mountains. He imagines a process in reverse: the bodies brought up onto the mountain plain via one of the passes at either end, the drive through thick forest and verdant farmland, and turning into the farm-stall, down the approach track and through the car park; the car driving from a previous point to this place . . . what might have happened there; what led to their deaths. He knows that it is a journey that he will take until he reaches the source.

He walks briskly around the end of the low thatched building to the entrance of the farm-stall, climbs the wide brick steps. There is still a crowd of people, but there is a semblance of order; a cooler, shaded calm. He finds Don February, turns him away from the people, says quietly, ‘Good work, Don. I think it’s worthless ’cos those bodies have been in there for hours, at least. Looks like condensation inside the wrapping, so that suggests overnight.’

‘We are trying to keep it brief.’

‘Good. Next, who told you that the two bodies were both boys?’

Don is concerned. ‘The owner. Is he wrong?’

‘Probably not, but he would have had to move stuff to know. Did he tell you he’d touched them?’

‘No. But I was waiting for an official interview. I did not ask much. He is in his office back there.’

De Vries nods quickly and trots towards the door at the end of the food counter. He knocks, enters immediately.

A broad, ginger-haired man is on his cellphone. The moment he sees de Vries he hangs up, stands, wipes his hands on his check shirt and offers his right hand.

‘Tom MacNeil. It’s my place.’

Vaughn introduces himself, asks: ‘Did you touch the bodies, or get into the skip to identify them?’

MacNeil hesitates.

De Vries says: ‘Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter. I just have to know.’

MacNeil sits back down and looks up at de Vries.

‘I was an idiot. I saw them. I know I should just have called you guys – but I thought, If I’m wrong, if this isn’t what it seems . . . Anyway, one of them was at the top, almost clear of all that shit, and the other was half in. So I pulled him out by his arm, and then . . . then I could see. I knew . . .’

De Vries can’t imagine why anyone would do this, but he’s satisfied that MacNeil is telling him the truth – that he’s stupid, not involved.

‘Why did you look in the skip this morning, Mr MacNeil?’

The owner seems relieved that he has not been chastised; uncrosses his arms, his legs.

‘My dog just went mad. She was in there, and she just barked and barked. I had to go and see what it was about.’

‘So your dog was in the skip?’

He swallows. ‘Yes, in the skip. I called her out immediately though.’

De Vries is trying to stay calm. There is a knock at the door. He spins around and opens it. It is one of his men.

‘Sir, the lab guys want to move the bodies. They’re checking in with you.’

‘All right, tell them to wait until I’m there just now.’

The officer leaves and de Vries turns to MacNeil. ‘How busy is that yard during the day?’

‘Not very.’ MacNeil shrugs. ‘When we’ve unpacked stock we might go out there to the recycling, cardboard and stuff . . . and mid-afternoon, when we’re emptying the kitchen bins after lunch, but we’re not back and forth.’

‘What about the door to the kitchen. Is it ever left open?’

‘Nah. There’d be flies everywhere, and it’s a matter of security too.’

‘Locked?’

‘From the outside, yes. It’s a fire exit – with a bar, you know? You push to release it.’

‘And the gas cylinders. How often are they changed?’

‘I dunno.’ He thinks about it. ‘Probably one each week. We have three cooking areas here. Something like that.’

‘So, it’s quiet out there. Anybody ever park there?’

‘Maybe a few delivery vans, but they’d be early in the morning. People use it to turn round if the car park’s busy. Otherwise, no.’

‘One more thing. When you close, is your car park still open?’

‘The gate should be closed. I usually do it myself. First in, last out. You know how it is.’

‘You lock it last night?’

MacNeil takes a breath, squeezes his eyes shut. De Vries looks at the wide freckled face on a thick neck, knows that these gestures are only for show.

‘Ja. I think so.’

‘How often don’t you lock it, Mr MacNeil? Let’s be quite clear here.’

MacNeil avoids de Vries’ eye.

‘I locked up last night,’ he mutters. ‘For sure.’

De Vries stares at him. The expression on MacNeil’s face is open: the man apparently believes what he has just said. Everything sounds right; nothing is helping.

‘Stay here. My Warrant Officer will be with you now.’

MacNeil asks him plaintively, ‘My business. When will I be able to open again?’

Two dead kids.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ de Vries answers bitterly.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Maybe.’

London is dark and grey, the Thames cow-dung dirty. The entire city is blurred through the dense misty rain. John Marantz turns away from the porthole; the view makes him feel depressed. He has been airborne for eleven hours and has another six hours to wait before the next half of his journey. It will be the first time he has been back on native soil for five years.

In the airport lounge, his cellphone rings and a number he has almost forgotten appears on the screen. On answering, the voice is just as he remembers it.

‘You don’t look well.’

‘See me on the cameras?’

‘Saw you in Vegas. We can see anyone, any time. Are you drinking?’

‘Not for three years.’

‘What are you on?’

‘Seroxat and cannabis. What about you: claret and Prozac?’

A momentary pause, then: ‘Who are you seeing?’

‘Sexually or psychologically?’

‘Either.’

‘Neither.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘You’re an asset. I know where you are all the time.’

John Marantz likes no part of that sentence.

‘I need to know you are all right, John.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of what happened. Because of what we did.’

‘For that,’ Marantz says slowly, ‘you deserve nothing.’

De Vries walks back to his car with the Scene of Crime team-leader. Most of the vehicles have left the car park now, and there is an officer at the driveway entrance, turning away disappointed customers. MacNeil’s farm-stall seems to be a thriving business, and de Vries knows this will mean that with a steady through-flow of customers, staff will be unlikely to identify anyone who might normally have stood out.

‘One night outside? That your view too?’ de Vries says, lighting a cigarette carefully, shielding his lighter from the breeze, not looking at his colleague.

‘Until the coroner confirms time of death, yes. But based on what I’ve seen, I’d think twenty-four hours tops since they were dumped. Preliminary observations only, Vaughn, but there’s no spatter, almost no blood. I’d say you’re looking at an alternate crime scene.’

‘No IDs?’

‘Not on them, obviously. And nothing that we’ve found so far in the skip or around the site. I’m guessing we won’t find anything. Whoever killed them stripped them. He knew that would make identification harder.’

‘Time of death?’

‘I’ll give you my guess: forty-eight, seventy-two hours perhaps. I want the coroner to open the wrapping. Until then, you can’t see much.’

‘How stacked up are they at the labs?’

‘Same old. You’ll get prioritized, but I can’t promise you anything from my guys for at least forty-eight hours.’

De Vries shakes his head. ‘That’s why they haven’t made
CSI: Cape Town
,’ he says. ‘They wouldn’t have the lab results from the first crime till the series ended.’

Dryly: ‘Nice one.’

‘How long will you be here?’

‘Should finish up before it gets dark. If the bodies were just dumped, there’ll not be much outside the immediate scene – though we’ll look, of course. After that, as far as I’m concerned, we can reopen everything. Unless you have any objection?’

‘Your call now. I’m done here.’

The coroner’s van passes them, heading back towards Cape Town.

‘I’ll have the preliminaries for you by first thing tomorrow.’

‘Good.’

De Vries stands by his car, lost in thought. Something at the corner of his brain, his memory, is plaguing him.

‘Vaughn?’

He exhales two lungfuls of smoke, sputters: ‘Sorry. Was on another planet . . .’

‘I was just asking: this scene – are you a policeman who rejoices because this is what you do and it is all about to begin under your charge, or do you despair because there’s so much death in our country?’

De Vries hadn’t taken his colleague to be a philosopher, not when all he does, week in, week out, is study the detritus of death. He looks over to him, his face blank.

‘Neither.’ He shrugs. ‘Or both?’

The pathology suite is not lit by recessed LEDs, a soothing blue mist of light; nor are the benches gleaming and new – but even if they were, you would not be able to see them for the bodies. There are no banks of slim wide-screen computer monitors. You do not enter through swishing, automatic sliding doors . . .

At 6 p.m., Vaughn de Vries and Don February push through the slatted, grey-blue plastic curtain into the large, white-tiled mortuary. Five fluorescent tubes hang on chains from the grey ceiling. The only moderately blue light comes from the ultraviolet fly traps on the wall. Their zapping punctuates the stench of death as it lodges in the men’s sinuses.

At the far end of the room, a burly, thick-set man in protective, spatter-resistant clothing is hunched over a table. As they walk past the other benches, de Vries looks at each body. They are all young black men. At the final table, the skinny body in the sickly light is very white.

De Vries, his voice loud in the hush, asks: ‘Where’s the other one?’

The pathologist looks up at de Vries. ‘Good evening, Harry. Thanks for jumping the queue for me. I owe you a beer—’

De Vries baulks. ‘Sorry, Harry. Thank you – and, yes . . . Beer.’ Vaughn grimaces. ‘I’m dog-tired and the adrenalin just kicked in again. I want to get this going. Sorry.’

‘Body A has already been processed and is now back in storage. As you can see, we have a backlog.’ Harry Kleinman glances back up the room. ‘These all need attending to before I go home.’ He sighs, looks back at the body on his table, and then back at De Vries. ‘I’m finished here. You want what I have?’

‘Ja. Any clue to identities?’

Kleinman peels off thick gloves and disposes of them.

‘Assuming no one is claiming them, no, not unless we have records on characteristics for missing persons.’ He reaches for two clipboards proffered by an assistant, switches spectacles, balances the bottom of the boards on the top of his small, round beer belly. He glances at the first one.

‘Body A is a Caucasian male, aged between fourteen and sixteen. Shot once through the chest. Clean through and through – that is to say, the heart exploded but the bullet continued on its way. No traces of munition found, but the wound is consistent with that of a high-powered rifle – a hunting rifle, perhaps. I estimate time of death as between noon and six p.m. on Sunday.’

‘That wide?’

‘Impossible to judge accurately. Ambient temperatures are all over the place – the wrapping distorts any normal measures. But,’ Kleinman adds, ‘the wrapping was not done straight after the boys were shot.’

De Vries counts back: the boy died about forty-eight hours ago. The bodies must have been kept for a night, then wrapped in polythene and transported to the farm-stall the following day. They then spent one night out of doors in the skip.

‘Anything on the wrapping?’

‘Nothing yet, but it’s at the lab.’ He looks up at de Vries over his glasses. ‘Heard the
CSI Cape Town
gag. Very droll,Vaughn.’

‘How long were they wrapped for?’ de Vries asks, ignoring Kleinman’s comment.

‘I would say,’ the pathologist begins, looking down to open a chocolate bar, ‘that both boys would have been dead for at least twelve hours before wrapping. I’ve already heard the theory that they spent one night in the open whilst wrapped, and I’m inclined to concur. But I can’t be definite on that. There are some small areas of post-mortem bruising, possibly from being transported from the original crime scene.’

‘Pre-mortem? Signs of struggle?’

‘No. I wouldn’t expect signs of struggle in a shooting case. However, the wounds indicate that the shooter was standing no more than twenty metres from his targets, and this second boy has classic defensive wounds. He was probably also shot only once, but this bullet made more of a mess. Firstly, it looks like it took the fourth finger of his left hand off. It’s possible that this is a separate shot, but I’m inclined towards the theory that it is the same one. Then it punctures his left lung, before ricocheting through him. If the first boy took twenty seconds to die, this one, it was about as instantaneous as it gets.’