The Monster's Daughter (50 page)

“
Ja
. Sure.”

Alet grabbed the pile of paper from the printer. She turned to find Theo's brown eyes fixed on her, a strange expression on his face. She suddenly felt self-conscious about her greasy hair and baggy clothes. “Thanks, hey. I'd still be at square one if it wasn't for this.”

Theo nodded, his lips pinched together.

“How were things with Lana?” Alet wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

Theo clasped his hands together in his lap and leaned back. Alet knew the gesture. It was the same one he had made when he first told her about the brass finding out about their relationship. That had been one of the hardest nights of her life, knowing what she'd have to face in the morning, judgment on the faces of the officers, and later, inevitably, her peers. She had fought tooth and nail to get into STF, worked twice as hard as the blokes, had to prove every second of every day that she wasn't a liability, and it had all been for nothing. Theo had informed her of what would happen, plain and simple, as if he was reciting a grocery list, his manner detached, void of emotion. She had felt utterly alone and she had hated him for it.

“I don't think we should see each other anymore,” Theo said.

“For a new
stukkie
, that Lana is kind of bossy, hey. Better watch out.” Alet kept her tone light, hoping to sidestep whatever was coming.

“It's not her.” Theo looked up, meeting her gaze. “You barge into my life after how long, show up in the middle of the night …” He sighed, running his hand over his face. “It's no good, Alet.”

“You said we were okay.”

“All I've done since you've turned up is think maybe we could try again.”

“Can't we?” Alet felt vulnerable, the seconds ticking by in slow motion as she waited for his reply. The expression on Theo's face changed, his eyes accusing as he shook his head. Alet felt a tugging at her insides. She faked a smile, failing at being nonchalant. “I know our track record isn't great, but …”

“Look at you. Did you even eat today?”

Alet's vulnerability morphed into rash defensiveness, burning hot in her throat. “What's that got to do with anything? Sorry I don't prance around in cocktail dresses and makeup all the time but—”

Theo held his hand up. “It's not that. I just don't want to be part of the carnage again when things fall apart.”

“Fine.” Alet dug her keys out of her pocket, avoiding his gaze. She wanted to shake him, wipe the self-righteous expression off his face. She bit back her anger. “I don't see how trying to find a killer makes me the bad guy here.”

“It doesn't.”

“What, then?”

“I can't do this. The way things are going … I don't believe you've changed at all.”

“
Fok jou
, Theo.” Alet walked out before he had a chance to reply.

On the mountain pass, just before the descent into Unie, Alet pulled over to the side of the road. She stared down at the town, a spit stain in the dirt, the sun leaving only a thin orange strip along the ridge of the mountain. Street lamps sputtered to life. Trudie had left her home in the dark and ended up on a mountaintop many kilometers away, stars looking down as her killer doused her body in petrol and set it on fire.

“What the fuck happened?” Alet said to no one. The anger in her voice was amplified in the stillness of the evening. She hadn't realized how much all of this was wearing on her, on the people around
her. Emotion welled out of her exhaustion. “Never let a man see you cry,” her mother used to say. “He'll know you're weak and punish you for it.”

Alet understood that her mother could only have been talking about her father. Alet's grandmother hadn't seemed surprised when she and her mother showed up on her doorstep. She poured them Rooibos tea from the pot she always kept brewing on the stove and made up the spare bedroom. Adriaan showed up the next morning. He had just come off shift and was in a fervid rage. Gerda refused to let him in. When he threatened to break the door down, she called the police. Nothing came of that, of course, but at least the other policemen had calmed him down. He disappeared from their lives for a long time after that. Alet had thought he had abandoned her forever. A part of her now wished he had.

When Alet walked into the station an hour later for her shift, she knew that something was up. April greeted her without enthusiasm, his shoulders tense, his answers to her questions short. Mynhardt wanted her in his office right away, April said. No, he didn't know what it was about. Strijdom glared at her as she passed his desk. He had the air of a man prepared for battle, waiting for the signal to storm into the fray. Alet's pulse sped up as she knocked on Mynhardt's door, waiting for the irritated, “
Ja?
” on the other side. As she stepped into the office, a cold rush numbed her limbs. Mynhardt stood in the middle of the room, wearing the look of a beaten dog. There was panic in his eyes, fear rank enough to smell.

“Alet.”

Alet focused on the figure behind the desk. “Pa?”

Adriaan's skin was a sun-kissed caramel, a faint white tan line on his temple from his glasses. Tension tightened his full mouth, belying the fact that he had just spent a week honeymooning on an island.

“I'll leave you.” Mynhardt backed out of the room, flustered, closing the door behind him.

“How was Mauritius? I thought you're only back on Tues—”

Adriaan waved the question away. “What do you think you're doing?”

Alet felt like she was four again, lining up for inspection. “I don't understand.”

“Don't lie to me. I won't tolerate it. Tokkie told me what's been going on here. So now you answer my question. What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“What did Mynhardt tell you?”

“Captain Mynhardt.”

“
Ja
.”

“I told you to keep your nose clean. Now your superior calls me to tell me that you're withholding evidence, accusing people left and right.”

“Did he also tell you that he is up to his
fokken
eyebrows in the muck?”

“Alet.” Adriaan's voice cautioned, but she didn't care.

“It's true. He's selling children to the highest bidder.”

Adriaan narrowed his eyes. “Do you have proof?” He crossed his arms, his eyebrows raised.

“He took care of it.”

“Really?”

“Check his bank accounts.”

“Captain Mynhardt did me a favor, letting you come here. The only reason you still have a job is because of him.”

“I wouldn't make something like that up,
Pa
.”

“And what's this about you being under investigation?”

“I did my job. Read the file.”

“Captain Mynhardt told me about you and that married man.” Adriaan studied her for a moment, eyes boring into her. “I really thought you could turn things around. You've been a disappointment.” He turned his head away. “It won't be easy getting a transfer once this gets around, but maybe I can—”

“I'm not leaving Unie until this case is solved.” Alet clenched her fists, bracing against the blow.

“I don't think you heard me, Alet. You are out of options. You'll do as I say.”

Alet's heart beat in her throat. “I'll go to the Hawks if you try to force me.”

“Have you learned nothing? On the job you shit with one hole. You go fling stories around about other officers, run to ICD, and you're done.”

“I don't care,
Pa
. I'm not running away from this. You wouldn't have either.”

Conflicting emotions seemed to take hold of her dad's expression at that moment. There was a pride she hadn't seen in his eyes in a long time, but also an almost imperceptible hint of hate. It knocked the wind out of her, and for a moment she wanted to acquiesce, just to make it go away.

Adriaan got up from the chair. He stood close, his voice low. “Don't assume that I'll always be there to protect you, Alet,” he said. “There are rules. And there are consequences when they're broken.”

Alet looked straight ahead, not trusting herself to reply. She waited until her dad left the office before she moved again. Outside the door, the station fell silent. April quickly busied himself with a docket when he saw her.

Strijdom leaned against the service desk, a wry smile on his face. “You've got a nerve,” he said. “
Chot
whores like you don't belong in uniform.” Alet bit her lip, determined not to give him the satisfaction of a response. Strijdom sniggered. He took his cap off the desk and sauntered out of the station, a self-satisfied grin on his cracked lips.

“What a
doos
,” Alet said once he was out of earshot. She took a deep breath to get her emotions under control. “April, I …”

April briefly looked up before getting back to the book in front of him. “Don't. Okay, Letta?”

“Why are you being like this, man?”

April dropped his pen. “I'm getting married next month, you know that. My girl wants a family. A house. Nothing
kiev
, just the basics, but I can't …”

Alet nodded. “I'm not doing what they're saying, okay? There's something very wrong going on here, April. I only want to do the right thing.”

“
Ja?
Then don't rock the boat, see?”

“I can't promise that.”

“Maybe if you had something to lose, like the rest of us.”

“I'm sorry, okay?”

“Right. Well, I'm knocking off.” April slid the docket book across the desk. “You're on your own.”

It was close to midnight, the station eerily quiet, all the desks empty, computers turned off. A cool breeze snaked its way through the open doorway. Alet rang Theo and wasn't surprised when her call went straight to voice mail. She went to the canteen to make coffee. There was a long night ahead and she could hardly keep her eyes open. She decided to go through the stack of paper that Theo had printed out for her. The information on Theresa Morgan seemed random—vaccination records, piano-exam certificates, a single hospitalization for a ruptured appendix. If it was the same Theresa Morgan, she would have been in her late forties by the time she matriculated. Alet considered this for a moment. School records weren't digitized back then. It would have been simple for her to claim she was in a certain grade if she looked the part, no one would have thought to look further than a falsified report card. Was it possible that Theresa had the same gene mutation as Trudie? Or that she could possibly be—

Alet felt her pulse quicken as she wrote Theresa Morgan's name at the top of her timeline. She added Lilly Maartens's name and birth date. If Theresa Morgan became Lilly Maartens, it would mean that Theresa could be Trudie, that there was a link between her and the man who was going to testify against Alet's dad. She thought about calling Mathebe, but it was late already. Tomorrow, she thought, when she'd had some sleep and could organize her thoughts.

Alet looked at the picture of Trudie again. The woman had moved around, changed her identity, hid from the world because she wasn't aging, because she was different. Perhaps she'd found solace in the fact that she could start over. Alet understood it intrinsically, the hope that going where nobody knew you would somehow change who you were, give you a do-over. But it was a sweet delusion. You could never truly get away from the past. Or what it had done to you.

“I can no longer explain to our people why we continue to talk to a government, to a regime, that is murdering our people.”

On the small TV screen in the rec room, Nelson Mandela addressed thousands of ANC supporters. It had been two years since a new prime minister, F. W. de Klerk, had taken over the National Party government. He started his term strong, legalizing the ANC and other opposing parties and securing Mandela's unconditional release. Racial distinctions were stricken from the laws. A whites-only referendum followed, indicating that they too were ready for reform, but then the government stalled.

“What's that
kaffir kak
?” Tokkie Mynhardt planted himself at the bar, a deep scowl between his thick red eyebrows.

“
Ag
, nothing,
Baas
. Just news.” Jakob switched the TV off. “Coming right up. Klippies and Coke.
Lekker
, man.” He poured the brandy and slid it over to Berg's right-hand man.

“You still have that bottle of Chivas here?” Mynhardt's question had a hint of desperation, as if a lot more than the right kind of alcohol was at stake.

Jakob checked under the bar. “
Ja, Baas
, he's here. Is only half.” If Mynhardt was asking about the Chivas, it meant that Berg was coming. Mynhardt mostly ran things, giving them orders for whom to target and eliminate, but Jakob knew he wasn't smart enough to plan the missions they were given. Mynhardt was a yes-man, quick to anger, disciplining with a fist, blindly rushing to action, but he was slow when it came to anything more than boozing and following orders.

“Okay, get. You make sure you're here when he comes.”

“Is right,
Baas
.” Jakob grabbed a six-pack of beer from the fridge.

“Tell the others to stay put.”

Jakob raised his hand in acknowledgment, closing the door behind him. When the bigwigs came, they usually ended up in an orgy of boozing and wild antics. The
askaris
made themselves scarce on those weekends, lying low and going into town until the hangovers subsided and nobody thought it would be good sport to chase a black through the sand dunes with a
sjambok
anymore.

“You sharing?” Trivedi stood in the dark outside the house, the embers of his cigarette glowing. He stepped into the light cast through the window of one of the bedrooms, an attractive Indian with streamlined features and large dark eyes. He was shorter than Jakob, but a lot more muscular, with a funny bowlegged walk, as if his nuts might chafe if he brought his legs any closer together. They weren't friends, exactly. None of the
askaris
really were. Everybody was too busy watching their own backs, a constant wariness making it difficult to think of anything more than survival.