Thirteen Hours (50 page)

'I'm going out,' said the young man and opened the
door, and shut it immediately.

'Shit,' said the uniform.

Voices inside, indecipherable words. Then only the
uniformed man's fast and shallow breathing.

'He's going to kill you,' she said to him, with hatred
in her voice.

He moved suddenly, came to her, a boot left and right
of her knees and pushed the gun into her cheek. 'Shut the fuck up,' he hissed.
'You're going with me.' Then he looked around at the door, wild-eyed.

She kicked him. She brought up her knee, her sore
right foot's knee, and struck him between the legs with everything she had
left. 'Now!' she shrieked. Her voice was a desperate command. The uniform
shouted something and fell onto her. A booming noise as the door was kicked in,
and then a single shot and the man fell away from her. She saw him standing in
the doorway, a figure with a pistol in his hand, a hole in his shirt, hair
needing a cut and strange Slavic eyes.

'Benny Griessel,' she said, with perfect
pronunciation.

He lowered the weapon, moved towards her with deep
compassion in his eyes. He grabbed her clothes off the floor and hastily
covered her, put his arms around her and held her tight.

'Yes,' he said. 'I have found you.'

Just after four, the nurse came out of the hospital
room and said to Fransman Dekker: 'Fifteen minutes.' She held the door open so
he could enter.

Alexa Barnard was sitting up against the cushions. He
saw the bandage on her forearm, then the look of dawning disappointment.

'I was expecting the other detective,' she said slowly,
words not well formed. The medication had not wholly worn off.

'Afternoon, ma'am,' he said neutrally, because he
could use her drowsiness; he must avoid conflict and win her trust. He dragged
a blue chair closer, nearly right up to the bed. He sat down with his elbows on
the thin white bedspread. She stared at him with vague interest. She looked
better than she had this morning - her hair was brushed and tied back in the
nape of her neck, so that her unobscured face appeared stronger, the faded beauty
like a fossil in a weathered rock bank.

'Captain Griessel is not on the case any more,' he
said.

She nodded slowly.

'I understand better now,' he said quietly and
sympathetically.

She lifted an eyebrow.

'He was ... not an easy man.'

She searched his face until she was convinced of his
sincerity. Then she looked past him. He saw the moisture collect gradually in
her eyes, her lower lip's involuntary tremble. With her healthy right arm she
wiped the back of her hand over her cheek in slow motion.

Better than he'd hoped. 'You loved him very much.'

She looked somewhere beyond Dekker, nodded slightly,
and wiped her cheek again.

'He hurt you so much. All those years. He kept on
hurting you over and over.'

'Yes.' Barely a whisper. He wanted
her
to talk. He waited. She said
nothing. The sound of a helicopter came through the closed curtains in front of
the window, the wap-wap increasingly loud. He waited till it subsided.

'You blamed yourself. You thought it was your fault.'

Her gaze shifted to him. Still silent.

'But it wasn't. There are men like that,' he said.
'It's a disease. An addiction.' She nodded, agreeing, as though she wanted to
hear more.

'It's a drug for the soul. I think they have an
emptiness inside here, a hole that is never filled, it might help for a little
while, then in a day or two it starts all over again. I think there's a reason,
I think they don't like themselves, it's a way of...' His command of formal
language left him stranded.

'Gaining acceptance,' she said. He waited, gave her
time. But she gazed steadily at him, expectantly, pleading almost.

'Yes. Acceptance. Maybe more than that. There's
something broken in here, they want to make it whole. A hurt that has come a
long way, that never completely goes away, it just comes back every time,
worse, but the medicine helps less and less, it's a ...' His wave of the hand
sought a word, deliberately now.

'A vicious circle.'

'Yes ...'

She would not fill the silence that he had created. At
first he wavered, then he said: 'He loved you, in his way, I think he loved you
a lot, I think the problem was that he didn't want to do it, but every time he
did he thought less of himself, because he knew he was hurting you, he knew he
was doing damage. Then that became the reason he did it again, like an animal
gnawing at itself. That can't stop. If a woman showed she wanted him, it meant
he wasn't so bad, then he didn't think any more, he just felt, it was like a
fever coming over him, you can't stop it. You want to, but you can't, however much
you love your wife ...' He stopped suddenly, aware of the fundamental shift,
and sat back slowly in his chair.

He watched her, wondering if she had caught on. He saw
that she was somewhere else. Heard her say: 'I asked him to get help.'

He hoped. She looked at the little table beside her
bed. Above the drawer was a slit where a tissue dangled. She pulled it out,
wiped her eyes one by one and crumpled the paper in her right hand. 'I think
there was a time when I tried to understand, when I thought I could see a
little boy in him, a rejected, lonely boy. I don't know, he would never talk
about it, I could never work out where it came from. But where does anything
come from? Where does my alcoholism come from? My fear, my insecurity. My
inferiority? I have looked for it in my childhood, that's the easy way out.
Your father and mother's fault. They made mistakes, they weren't perfect, but
that's not enough ... excuse. The problem is, it comes from inside me. It's
part of my atoms, the way they vibrate, their frequency, their pitch, the key
they sing in ...'

He had an idea where she was headed.

'Nobody can help ...' he encouraged her.

'Just yourself.'

'He couldn't change.'

She shook her head. No, Adam Barnard couldn't change.
He wanted to prompt her: 'So you did something about it,' but he gave her the
chance to say it herself.

She slowly sank back against the cushion, as though
she were very tired.

'I don't know ...' A deep sigh.

'What?' he asked, a whispered invitation.

'Do we have the right? To change people? So that they
suit us? So that they can protect us from ourselves? Aren't we shifting the
responsibility? My weakness against his. If I were stronger ... Or he was. Our
tragedy lay in the combination, each was the other's catalyst. We were ... an
unfortunate chemical reaction ...'

His fifteen minutes expired. 'And something had to
give,' he said. 'Someone had to do something.'

'No. It was too late to do anything. Our habits with
each other were too set, the patterns had become part of us, we couldn't live any
other way any more. Past a certain point there is nothing you can do.'

'Nothing?'

She shook her head again.

'There is always something you can do.'

'Such as what?'

'If the pain is bad enough, and the humiliation.' He
needed more than this. He took a chance, gave her something to work with: 'When
he starts cursing and threatening you. When he assaults you ...'

She turned her head slowly towards him. At first
expressionless, so that he couldn't tell if it was going to work or not. Then
the frown began, initially as though she was puzzled, but with increasing
comprehension and a certain restrained regret. Eventually she looked .down at
the tissue in her hand. 'I don't blame you.'

'What do you mean?' but he knew he had failed.

'You're just doing your job.'

He leaned forward, desperate, trying another tack. 'We
know enough, Mrs Barnard,' he said still with empathy. 'It was someone with
inside knowledge. Someone who knew where he kept his pistol. Someone who knew
about your ... condition. Someone with enough motive. You qualify. You know
that.'

She nodded thoughtfully.

'Who helped you?'

'It was Willie Mouton.'

'Willie Mouton?' He couldn't keep the astonishment out
of his voice, not sure what she meant, though a light seemed to have gone on
for her.

'That's why I asked the other detective ... Griessel
to come.'

'Oh?'

'I must have been thinking like you. About the pistol.
Only four of us knew where it was, and only Adam had the key.'

'What key?'

'To the gun safe in the top of his wardrobe. But
Willie installed that. Four, five years ago. He's good at that sort of thing,
he was always practical. In the old days he did stage work for the bands. Adam
couldn't do anything with his hands, but he didn't want to bring outside people
in, he didn't want anyone to know about the gun, he was afraid it would be
stolen.

This morning . . . Willie was here, he and the lawyer,
it was a strange conversation, I only realised once they left ...' She stopped
suddenly, having second thoughts, the hand with the tissue halfway between bed and
face.

When she stopped he couldn't stand the suspense. 'What
did you realise?'

'Willie always wanted more. A bigger share, more
money. Even though Adam was very good to him.'

'Ma'am, what are you trying to tell me?'

'Willie came and stood here at my bed. All he wanted
to know was what I could remember. I last saw Willie more than a year ago. And
then here he was this morning, as though he actually cared. He made all the
right noises, he wanted to know how I was, he said he was so sorry about Adam,
but then he wanted to know if I remembered anything. When I said I didn't know,
I was confused, I couldn't understand ... he asked again: "Can you
remember anything - anything?" Only when they left a while later ... I lay
here, the medication . . . but I heard his words again. Why was he so keen to
know? And why was his lawyer here? That's what I wanted to tell Griessel, that
. . . it was strange.'

'Ma'am, you said he helped you.'

She looked at him in surprise. 'No, I never said
that.'

'I asked you who helped you. And you said Willie
Mouton.'

The door behind Dekker opened.

'No, no,' said Alexandra Barnard, totally confused,
and Dekker wondered what was in the pills she had taken.

'Inspector,' said the nurse.

'Another five minutes,' he said.

'I'm sorry, that's not possible.'

'You misunderstood me,' said Alexa Barnard.

'Please,' said Dekker to the nurse.

'Inspector, if the doctor says fifteen minutes, that
is all I can give you.'

'Fuck the doctor,' he said involuntarily.

'Out! Or I'll call security.'

He considered his options, knew he was so close, she
was confused, he wouldn't get another chance, but the nurse was a witness to
this statement.

He stood up. 'We'll talk again,' he said and walked
out, down the passage to the lift. He pressed the button, angry, pressed it
again and again. So close.

The door whispered open, the big lift was empty. He
went in and saw the G-light on, folded his arms. Now she wanted to point at
Willie Mouton. He wasn't going to fall for that.

The lift began to descend.

He would go and talk to the maid, Sylvia Buys. He had
her address in his notebook. Athlone somewhere. He checked his watch. Nearly
twenty past four. To Athlone in this traffic. Maybe she was still in the house
in Tamboerskloof.

Willie Mouton? He recalled the chaos this morning in
the street, the militant Mouton, the black knight, shaven-headed earring-
wearer on his fucking phone. To his lawyer. Mouton, who was desperate for him
to arrest Josh and Melinda.