Thirteen Hours (10 page)

'A little, Nikita. Mostly hearsay.'

'What's his story?' asked Dekker.

'Music,' said Pagel. 'And women.'

'That's what his wife says too,' said Griessel.

'As if she hasn't suffered enough,' said Pagel.

'What do you mean, Prof?' Dekker asked.

'You know she was a huge star?'

'No, really?' Stunned.

Pagel didn't look up while he spoke. His hands were deftly
handling instruments and the body. 'Barnard "discovered" her, though
I have never been very comfortable with that expression. But let me confess my
ignorance, gentlemen. As you know, my real love is the classics. I know he was
a lawyer who became involved with the pop music industry. Xandra was his first
star ...'

'Xandra?'

'That was her stage name,' said Griessel.

'She was a singer?'

'Indeed. A very good one too,' said Pagel.

'How long ago was this, Prof?'

'Fifteen, twenty years?'

'Never heard of her.' Dekker shook his head.

'She disappeared off the scene. Rather suddenly.'

'She caught him with someone else,' said Griessel. 'That's when
she started drinking.' 'That was the rumour. Gentlemen, unofficially and
unconfirmed: I estimate the time of death at ...' Pagel checked his watch. '...
between two and three this morning. As you have surely deduced, the cause of
death is two shots by a small-calibre firearm. The position of the wounds and
small amount of propellant residue indicates a shooting distance of two to four
metres ... and a reasonably good shot: the wounds are less than three
centimetres apart.'

'And he wasn't shot here,' said Dekker.

'Indeed.'

'Only two wounds?' asked Griessel.

The pathologist nodded.

'There were three rounds fired by his pistol...'

'Prof,' said Dekker, 'let's say she is an alcoholic. Say she
was drunk last night. I had blood drawn, but will it help, eight or ten hours
after the fact?'

'Ah, Fransman, nowadays we have ethyl glucuronide. It can
track the residue of alcohol levels up to thirty-six hours afterwards. With a
urine sample up to five days after intake.'

Dekker nodded, satisfied.

'How so, Prof?'

'Look at him, Fransman. He must be about one point nine
metres tall. He's a little overweight; I estimate on the wrong side of a
hundred and ten kilograms. You and I would battle to get his body up those
stairs - and we are sober.' Pagel began to pack away his apparatus. 'Let's get
him

'But I must throw my weight behind Nikita's theory. I don't
believe it was her.'

 to the mortuary; I can't do much more.'

'Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get him here,' said
Dekker.

'And therein lies the rub,' said Pagel.

'Women ...' Dekker speculated.

Pagel stood up. 'Don't write off the Afrikaans music industry
as a potential source of conflict, Fransman.'

'Prof?'

'Do you follow the popular press, Fransman?'

Dekker shrugged.

'Ah, the life of the law enforcer - all work and no time to
read the Sunday papers. There's money in the Afrikaans music industry,
Fransman. Big money. But that's just the ears of the hippo, the tip of the
iceberg. The intrigues are legion. Scandals like divorce, sexual harassment,
paedophilia ... More long knives and apparent back-stabbing than in
Julius Caesar.
They fight over everything - back
tracks, contracts, artistic credits, royalties, who is permitted to make a
musical about which historical personality, who deserves what place in musical
history ...'

'But why, Prof?' Griessel asked, deeply disappointed.

'People are people, Nikita. If there is wealth and fame at
stake ... It's the usual game: cliques and camps, big egos, artistic
temperaments, sensitive feelings, hate, jealousy, envy; there are people who
haven't spoken to each other for years, new enmities ... the list is endless.
Our Adam was in the thick of things. Would it be enough to inspire murder? As
Fransman correctly pointed out, in this country, anything is possible.'

Jimmy and Arnold from Forensics came through the door. 'Oh,
there's Prof, morning, Prof,' said Arnold, the fat one.

'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are here. Morning, gentlemen.'

'Prof, can we ask you something?'

'Of course.'

'Prof, the thing is ...' said Arnold.

'Women ...' said Jimmy.

'Why are their breasts so big, Prof?'

'I mean, look at the animals ...'

'Much smaller, Prof...'

'Jissis
,' said Fransman Dekker.

'I say it's revolution,' said Arnold.

'Evolution, you ape,' said Jimmy.

'Whatever,' said Arnold.

Pagel looked at them with the goodwill of a patient parent.
'Interesting question, colleagues. But we will have to continue this
conversation elsewhere. Come and see me in Salt River.'

'We're not mortuary kind of guys, Prof...'

Dekker's cell phone rang. He checked the screen. 'It's
Cloete,' he said.

'And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,' said Pagel on the
way to the door, because Cloete was the SAPS media liaison officer. 'Goodbye,
colleagues.'

They said goodbye and listened to Fransman Dekker give Cloete
the relevant infamous details.

Griessel shook his head. Something big was brewing. Just a
look outside would tell you that. His own phone rang. He answered: 'Griessel.'

'Benny,' said Vusi Ndabeni, 'I think you should come.'

Rachel Anderson crept down the gully. It deepened as
she progressed, the sides steep, rough, impassable. They hemmed her in, but
offered shelter enough for her to stand. They would have difficulty seeing her.
The slope became steeper, the terrain more rugged. It was just after eight, and
hot. She clambered down rocks clutching the roots of trees, her throat parched,
her knees threatening to give in. She had to find water, she had to get
something to eat, she had to keep moving.

Then she saw the path leading up to the right, and steps
carved out of the rock and earth. She stared. She had no idea what awaited her
up there.

Alexa Barnard watched them carry her husband's body past the
door and her face twisted with emotion.

Tinkie Kellerman got up and came across to sit on the couch
beside her. She put a soft hand on her arm. Alexa felt an overwhelming urge to
be held by this slender policewoman. But she just sat there, moving her arms to
grip her own shoulders in a desperate self-embrace. She hung her head and
watched the tears drip onto the white material of her dressing-gown sleeve,
disappearing as if they had never existed.

Rachel Anderson climbed to just short of the top and peered
over the edge of the gully with a thudding heart. Only the mountain. And
silence. Another step up and, suddenly realising they could see her from
behind, she turned in fright, but there was no one. The last two steps, she was
careful. To her left were the roofs of houses, the highest row on the mountain.
Ahead was a path running along the back of the houses, with trees offering
shade and cover. To the right was the steep slope of the mountain, then the
mountain itself.

She looked back once, then stepped hastily onto the path,
head down.

Griessel drove back to Long Street in much lighter traffic. Vusi
had said he should come to the Cat & Moose.

'What's going on?' he had asked.

'I'll tell you when you get here.' He had the tone of someone
speaking in the presence of others.

But Griessel wasn't thinking about that. He sat in his police
car and thought of Alexa Barnard. About her voice and her story, about the
beauty hidden beneath twenty years of alcohol abuse. He mused on how the mind
brought up the memory of the younger, lovelier image and projected it onto the
fabric of her current face so that the two were seen together - the past and
the present, so far removed and so inseparable. He thought of the intensity
with which she had drunk the gin and knew it was a dangerous thing to see,
that
healing. It had unravelled his own desire, so
that it dangled inside him like a thousand loose wires. The voice in his mind
was saying there was a bottle store right here in Kloof Street, where all the
wires could be reconnected, the current restored. The electricity of life would
flow strongly once again.

'God,' said Benny to himself and turned deliberately into
Bree Street, away from temptation.

When the tears stopped, Tinkie Kellerman said, 'Come, you'll
feel better when you've had a bath.'

Alexa agreed and got up. She was a bit unsteady on her feet,
so the policewoman guided her up the stairs, through the library and down the
passage to the bedroom door.

'I think you should wait here.'

'I can't,' said Tinkie in a voice full of compassion.

Alexa stood still for a second. Then the meaning penetrated.
They were afraid she would do something. To herself. And she knew the
possibility was real. But first she must get to the liquor, the four
centimetres of gin in the bottle underneath her underwear.

'I won't do anything.'

Tinkie Kellerman just looked at her with big, sympathetic
eyes.

Alexa walked into the bedroom. 'Just stay out of the
bathroom.'

She would take the bottle out of the cupboard along with her
clothes. Her body would screen it.

'Sit there,' she nodded towards the chair in front of the
dressing table.

The knocking wasn't going to stop. Fransman Dekker went to
open the door. Willie Mouton, the baldheaded, black-clad Zorro, stood on the
veranda along with an alter ego - an equally lean man, but with a full head of
dark hair, painstakingly combed into a side parting. He had the appearance of
an undertaker, complete with long sombre face, all-seeing eyes, charcoal suit
and tie. 'My lawyer is here. I'm ready for you now.'

'You're ready for me?' Dekker's temper flared at the way the
white man talked down to him but, out there in the street, lenses were trained
on them, spectators and the press scrummed against the fence.

'Regardt Groenewald,' the lawyer said apologetically and put
out a cautious hand. It was a peace offering, forcing Dekker to change gear.

He shook the slim, uncertain hand. 'Dekker,' he said, and
looked the lawyer up and down. He had expected a Doberman, not this basset
hound.

'He just means that we are ready to talk,' said Groenewald.

'Where is Alexa?' Mouton asked and looked past Dekker into
the house. Groenewald moved his flaccid hand to Mouton's arm, as though to
restrain him.

'She is being looked after.'

'By whom?'

'By an officer of Social Services.'

'I want to see her.' A white man's command, but once again
the lawyer defused the situation.

'Steady, Willie.'

'That is not an option now,' said Dekker.

Mouton looked reproachfully at his lawyer. 'He can't do that,
Regardt.'

Groenewald sighed. 'I'm sure they explained to Alexa what her
rights are, Willie.' He spoke apologetically, slowly and deliberately.

'But she's a sick woman.'

'Mrs Barnard chose to talk without a lawyer present.'

'But she's not compis mentos,' said Mouton.

'Compos mentis,' Groenewald corrected him patiently.

'Mrs Barnard is not a suspect in the case at this stage,'
said Dekker.

'That's not what Adam's maid said.'

'As far as I know, the domestic worker is not in police
service.'

'You see, Regardt. That's what they're like. Smartass. When
I've just lost my friend and colleague ...'

'Willie, Mr Dekker, let's all keep calm ...'

'I
am
calm, Regardt.'

'My client has information connected to the case,' said
Groenewald.

'What sort of information?'

'Relevant information. But we can't...'

'Then it is your duty to pass it on to us.'

'Not if you get smartass with me.'

'Mr Mouton, you have no choice. Withholding evidence ...'

'Please, gentlemen ...' Groenewald begged. Then very
cautiously: 'Perhaps we could talk inside?'

Dekker hesitated.

'My client has a strong suspicion of who murdered Adam
Barnard.'

'But I don't want to slander,' said Mouton.

'Willie, under the circumstances, slander doesn't enter into
it.'