The Disappeared (12 page)

‘Jan, have a
seat.’ It appeared Bloemfontein’s No 1 detective was in a good mood. In Linde’s
case a good mood meant he was just slightly less combative than a drunk soldier
on leave after a tough tour of duty. ‘So, I guess you wanna know. You wanna
know how Sherlock Linde did it ... again.’ As usual with Linde there was no frivolous
small talk.
How are you? How’s the wife?
Always straight to the point.
Arsehole,
thought Coetzee.

‘Ja, you and
the rest of the world. These fuck-nuts,’ he waved his hand at the entire police
station outside his door, ‘have been lining up like whores at a VD clinic to
find out how I did it. Well, lemme tell you something, they can go screw
themselves.’ He raised his middle finger and threw a collective up-yours to the
men and women of the Park Road complex. ‘Fuck you, idiots!’ he shouted at the
closed door of his office. ‘You can read about it in my memoirs.’

Coetzee knew
that despite Linde’s protestations he
was
dying to tell his story to
someone. ‘I’m not going to pretend that I’m here for your company, Piet.”
Coetzee said. ‘Not even
I
am that desperate.’ Linde chuckled. If nothing
else, he
could
take his own medicine. ‘So
ja
, I would love to
know.’ Coetzee sat back, anticipating a good story.

Linde lit a
cigarette – a Lucky Strike Filter. The smoke drifted lazily up to the
No
Smoking
sign above his head. He leaned forward and fixed Coetzee with an
intense stare. ‘Tell me, Jantjie, what did you notice when you arrived at the
Stanley place? Anything say ... peculiar?’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Anything
... out of the ordinary?’

Something
not right something something .
..

‘Mmm ...
ja
,
I felt that ... I don’t know ... everything just seemed a little too ... what’s
the word? Orchestrated?’ Coetzee didn’t tell Linde that he had sensed something
was wrong even
before
he drove up the paved driveway of the Stanley
house.

‘Ah. So you’re
not the clueless cop you sometimes pretend to be.’ Coetzee wasn’t offended. For
Linde the only way to give a compliment was to dress it up in an insult. ‘Well,
I didn’t have the pleasure of a front row seat to the performance of the
Brothers Grimm, but I can imagine they must have laid it on a bit thick, yes?’
Coetzee nodded. ‘Although I didn’t see the boys in action, I had the same
feeling. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the whole damn thing felt staged.
A little too neat and tidy. That’s all I had ... a feeling, not even a real
suspicion. That was until I saw the DVD.’ Coetzee leaned forward intrigued and
mystified. ‘
Natural Born Killers.
Hah! Very appropriate, don’t you
think?’ Linde looked triumphant. ‘Do you know it?’

‘I’ve heard of
it, but that’s about all.’

‘Typical
Hollywood
kak
. You know,
skop, skiet & dônner.
I know it
fairly well, seen it a couple of times. But even if I had never seen the movie
before, it didn’t matter. Because the DVD-player’s LED display confirmed it.’

‘Okay, you
just lost me.’

‘Patience,
Watson, patience.’ Linde pulled open the top drawer to his left. ‘Lemme see.
Aha, yes.’ He had a small notebook in his hand. He flipped a couple of pages. ‘Yes.’
He read from the notebook. ‘00:32:21.’ He looked up at Coetzee. ‘Now tell me,
how long after you received the relay did you arrive at the scene?’

Coetzee didn’t
have to think about it. He had noted the exact time when writing the report
afterwards. ‘Twelve minutes.’ His mind was spinning with thoughts and
calculations trying to understand where the detective was going.

‘Right. And I
arrived on the scene around fifteen minutes later, at about 9:30 a.m.’ For the
same reasons as Coetzee, Linde didn’t have to think about the time. ‘Okay. So,
give or take a few minutes while I was inspecting the scene ... right? What
does that tell you?’ Coetzee’s thoughts swirled and eddied and then ... he had
it.

‘You mean –’

‘Aha, the
light bulb doth indeed shineth. Yes, my friend.’ Linde leaned back, a look of
supreme satisfaction on his face. He looked like a long-suffering schoolmaster
who had finally succeeded in explaining a particularly difficult equation to a
dim-witted student.

‘So picture
this, if you will. Our two heroes wake up. They muck around the house a bit.
Rich brats. Plenty of stuff to muck around with, right? Then ... someone
discovers the parents aren’t around. Eventually they head up to the parents’
room, where ... tragic tragic tragic ... they discover their parents have
hanged themselves. Right?’

Coetzee
nodded.

‘They phone
the cops, hysterical and insane with grief. I mean, it’s Biblical right?
They’re wailing ... tearing sackcloth, that kind of thing, yes?’

‘Uh-huh.’
Coetzee had listened to the recording of the telephone call again. Biblical was
indeed accurate.

Linde leaned
forward. ‘And then, after suffering a near nervous breakdown, what do they do?
They calmly go and put on their favourite DVD.’ He flicked the cigarette
through the open window. ‘Now – I don’t know about you – but is that the
behaviour of two boys, hysterical with grief and trauma and what-have-you? Or
... does it sound like two little cold-blooded shits, calmly trying to pass the
time while they wait to implement the next stage in their little evil scheme?’

Linde was of
course right. In the many years that Coetzee had been a policeman, he had dealt
with dozens of severely traumatised people; people driven to the very edge of
sanity because of car accidents, murders, robberies – God ... the list went on.
People reacted differently. But in each case the common factor had always been
the dark mindless irrationality of humans under severe stress. Linde was right.
If the boys
had
been as hysterical as they made everyone believe – well
then honestly – their behaviour was at odds with everything experience had
taught him. The performance had been near-perfect; unfortunately the plot fell
apart under the scrutiny of the fuck-you detective from Park Road. As always
Coetzee was impressed.

‘You’re good, Piet.
The biggest
bliksem
I know. But, damn, you’re good.’

Linde beamed
with pride. ‘And you’re perceptive, my uniformed friend.’ He chuckled dragging
another cigarette from the soft pack. Then he leaned forward again, his eyes
narrowing. ‘But you know the whole scene, right? Politics, bullshit, etc. etc. I
mean, a suspicion based on
that
...  well, it’s just not enough. I
couldn’t just arrest the sons of a prominent Bloemfontein couple – a very
dead
couple, mind you, but prominent nonetheless – simply because they were watching
a DVD.’ He leaned back. ‘I needed something more, know what I mean? Or else the
Le Toit posse would have had my arse for entrées.’

 He smiled
dryly to himself. ‘So, that’s when I decided to go and have a little look-see
upstairs.’ Linde slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Jackpot!’ He lit the Lucky
Strike dangling from his mouth. Coetzee could see that he was enjoying the performance
for an audience of one. ‘What did you see when you went upstairs, Jan? You did
go upstairs, right?’ Coetzee nodded. He also admitted that he didn’t take the
time to have a proper look. He had been more concerned with keeping the boys
downstairs and ensuring the scene wasn’t disturbed for the forensics people.

‘For sure,’
Linde said, ‘that’s your job. In any case, so I went upstairs and saw it,
immediately.’ He paused. ‘You did your basics at Tempe, right?’

Linde was
talking about the six-month basic military training that was a part of the
National Party government’s conscription programme during the dark days of
Apartheid. Tempe was the army base located in Bloemfontein. ‘No, De Aar,’
Coetzee said.

‘Pah!’ Linde
snorted derisively. ‘De Aar was for
sissies,
man.’

Coetzee
smiled. How could you not love the bastard?

‘Well lemme
tell you this, if my little barracks-bunk looked anything like the dead
couple’s bed did
that
morning, old sonofawhore Corporal Gower would have
promoted me on the spot. You follow me?’

Coetzee did. ‘Too
neat.’

Something
...

‘Damn right. I
mean, if a middle-aged couple decided to hang themselves right above their bed,
you’d expect, at least, some signs of it. On the bed, right? I don’t know,
fuck, foot indentations, messy linen, duvets. You know, shit like that. I mean
Jan, you’ve been around the block. You know ... suicide is
not
a tidy
business.

‘Right.
Everything was too damn neat.’

Too
perfect.

‘Too damn neat,’
Linde agreed. ‘And you know why? Because the two little monsters wanted to hide
the impressions of two sleeping bodies. Or at the very least, the impressions
made by two young boys as they hoisted their poor loving parents to the
ceiling. And that, my friend,’ Linde said settling back in his creaky swivel
chair, ‘was all I needed to cart their spoilt little arses off to jail.’

Something’s
not right.

Fuckers.

Something’s
not right.

Nineteen years
later, Coetzee steered into the large parking lot of the Bishop police station.
As he did on that cold July morning in Bloemfontein all those years ago, he had
the nagging feeling that

(
something’s
not right oh God
) 

something was
horribly wrong.

Coetzee had
awoken in Bishop that September morning – earlier as usual. A bad dream. He couldn’t
remember what. He had remained in bed trying to understand the disquiet that
was lodged in his chest. A quick shower and a tasteless breakfast had done
nothing to dispel his unease. He wasn’t a child. How could a bad dream leave
him feeling like this? On the drive to the Bishop police station he had tried
to focus on the day’s duties. But still the bad feeling lingered. Now ... as he
smoothed the police van into a parking bay the anxiety within him boiled over. Enclosed
by walls on all sides, the parking lot always reminded him of a prison yard.
Parked along the far wall was Sergeant Vladislavic’s old shit-brown Datsun
sedan. Ancient, weather-beaten, dog-ugly, it had become a near permanent
fixture of the car lot over the last few years. Vladislavic almost never took
it home, preferring to walk or take a ride with one of the other officers. Next
to the old iron crate was Constable Jali’s green Citi Golf. He was the youngest
of the Bishop police officers and the newest addition. Vladislavic and Jali were
assigned to night duty. Bishop was a small town and except for the surrounding
farmlands there was little territory to cover. Two officers were more than
enough for the hours between 7 p.m. and 7a.m. In the corner closest to the barred
gate stood another police van. As Coetzee exited his own van, he wondered about
the location of the third police car.

He walked
towards the white-washed metal door that led to the interior of the police
station. His footsteps sounded thin and dead in the quiet air. Worry gnawed at his
insides. His unease exploded into open dread once he entered the long corridor that
led from the parking lot the station’s interior. There should have been sounds
of commotion. No matter how subdued: talking; scuffle of feet on the wooden floor;
the static shear of the communications radios. But there was nothing. Nothing
at all.

As Coetzee went
from office to office. From the interrogation room to the cells. From the
kitchen to the toilet. And finally to the main service area – newspeak for the room
where the police took complaints from the public – his worst suspicions were validated.
There was no-one there. Vladislavic and Jali were gone.

Normally
Coetzee would have exploded into rage. But not this morning. Something
suppressed his anger and thickened it into a deep worry paste.

He knew both
officers well ... especially Vladislavic. And this was not like them. Vladislavic
was the older and certainly more responsible. But even the younger Jali – who sometimes
let his desire to be a super-cop get in the way of procedure – would never abandon
his post. Without a
moer
of a good reason. It was the kind of offence
that could get you permanently discharged from the service.

So where were
they? And why did they abandon the police station during their shift? If there
was trouble they could have simply radioed the other officers for help. So why
didn’t they?

Something
...

These thoughts
– and other more disturbing ones – scratched at Coetzee’s mind as he walked
towards the only place that could give him the answers he needed – the duty logbook.
He opened the heavy tome and located the previous evening’s entries.

It was a quiet
night. At around 20:12 Mr Gibson Jones came in to complain about the large
pothole on the southbound lane of the R45 – about three kilometres outside
Bishop. This was not a police matter. And Jones knew it. But he bothered the
police any way. In the vain hope that if he bothered enough civil servants from
enough departments it would expedite the repair works. At 21:32 Bethlehem
Police had radioed through a request for information on a local who regularly
spent time in the cells – usually on charges of drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Shortly after that, Jali had done the required patrol of the quiet and deserted
streets of Bishop. He had returned at around 22:48. Coetzee turned the page.
His eyes ballooned.

At around
02:30 the town of Bishop had gone crazy.

The page was
filled with dozens of hastily scrawled reports – call-ins from residents all
over Bishop. At some points the writing was completely illegible as if the
writer was under great stress or in a frenzy of haste. Near the top of the page
Coetzee saw that Jali had taken the van to respond to one of the call-ins: the
mayor’s house. As if to confirm that the reports were rushed, most were cryptic
in nature and description.