Zulu (20 page)

Raymond had an impressive ginger moustache, thin nicotine-stained hands, and a strong French accent. He opened the metal filing cabinet in his office and took out the relevant file.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, “I did treat the boy, twenty months ago. We took advantage of his coming here to do a check-up, but Simon wasn't carrying the virus at that time. The test was negative.”

“According to the postmortem,” Neuman said, “the virus he contracted mutated with unusual speed.”

“That may happen, if the subject has a weak constitution.”

“But Simon was in good health when you examined him, is that right?”

“Twenty months is a long time when you're living on the streets,” the doctor replied. “Infected syringes, prostitution, rape. Street kids are drugging themselves earlier and earlier, and with the thousands of people who imagine they can beat AIDS by deflowering virgins, they're often the first victims.”

Neuman knew the figures for child murders—the numbers were soaring. “Beliefs encouraged by the township
sangomas
,” he said.

“Pooh,” the doctor said without much conviction. “They're not all backward. There's good traditional medicine. The problem is that anyone can claim to be a healer, and then it's just a question of persuasion, credulity, and ignorance. As AIDS patients are viewed as pariahs, most are ready to believe anything for a cure. The microbicides haven't lived up to their promise.” He paused, then added bitterly, “And as for our campaign to promote the wearing of condoms, we're preaching in the desert.”

But Neuman was thinking of something else. “What's the incubation period—two weeks?”

“For AIDS? Yes, more or less. Why?”

Simon had contracted the virus in the past few months. He had become hooked on the same drug that was circulating on the coast. Nicole Wiese, Stan Ramphele, the
tsotsis
in the cellar—they had all succumbed to the cocktail as soon as they took it. All except De Villiers, the surfer shot down by the police. Neuman was suddenly gripped by doubt. He thanked the doctor without answering his question, walked past the line of patients waiting in the corridor, and left the dispensary.

Miriam was sitting on the steps, her hands folded over her knees, smoking and pretending that she wasn't waiting for him.

“Hello!” she said, with a gleam in her eye.

“Hello.”

But he passed her by, almost without seeing her, and called Tembo.

 

 *

 

Brian had left his cell phone switched on in his pants, which like the rest of his clothes lay on the wooden floor of the bedroom. It vibrated three times before it started ringing. The cracked alarm clock at the foot of the bed said 7:30 a.m. Brian groped in the darkness, found the phone, saw the name on the display, and took the call, whispering so as not to wake the Pegasus sleeping beside him.

“Did I wake you?” Janet Helms said.

“Pretend I'm listening.”

“I carried on looking into the house on the beach,” she announced. “Still no way of contacting the owner, but I did find out a few things. First of all, the land. Three and a half acres on the edge of Pelikan Park, bought just over a year ago. There don't seem to be any plans to renovate the house, but negotiations are under way for an extension of the neighboring reserve. If that goes ahead, the land could end up as part of a protected site, which would treble the price. Hard to say if it's insider dealing or just speculation. In any case, whoever bought the land did everything they could to cover their tracks. There's no way of finding out the name of the owner or the purchasing company. But, with a little bit of work, I did manage to trace a bank-account number in the Bahamas. Strictly confidential, as you can imagine. You can talk to the attorney but I don't think you'll get anywhere.”

Brian cleared away the morning cobwebs from his head and started thinking. To open a case with so little to back it up would indeed lead nowhere, except to months of paperwork as complicated as it was useless—the account could be transferred to another tax haven with a single click.

“The banking world really makes you want to throw up,” he said.

“If it's any consolation, so does the intelligence world.”

“You reckon?”

The winged animal shifted beneath the sheets.

“I've drawn up a list of the Pinzgauer Steyr Puch four-by-fours registered in the province,” Janet Helms went on. “There are thirty of them, but only a quarter, in other words, eight vehicles, are dark. I've also drawn up a list of people who rented a similar vehicle in the last few weeks. Maybe you want to take a look at it.”

“O.K.,” he sighed.

Brian threw his laptop on top of the untidy pile of books on his night table, and laid his head on the pillow.

“Hey,” a voice beside him said, “the kind of things you talk about in the morning.”

Tara must be feeling hot under the sheets, but, with her arm coiled around the quilt like a ribbon, she didn't seem eager to move.

Brian had kept the appointment at the bar on Greenmarket where they had arranged to meet. She had bewitched him with her outspokenness, her sense of humor, and the way her ass arched as if trying to take the air by storm. Tara was thirty-six, had a horse in stables that she rode whenever she got the chance, and worked as a freelance for a big architectural practice. She didn't tell him anything about her private life, her tastes, her loves, except that she liked Radiohead and men with sea-green eyes like him.

The dream had reached its climax in his house, in the upstairs bedroom, where they had made love with an abandon that made them feel quite relaxed with each other the morning after.

“Epkeen,” she said, emerging from the sheets. “That's not an Afrikaner name.”

“My father was a prosecutor during apartheid,” he said. “When I came of age, I took my mother's name.”

Tara came from a liberal British family that had fought the Boers during the war of the same name. She took hold of the end of his nose. “You're a crafty one, you.”

He was crazy about her, in other words, completely done for. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Her sharp-cornered smile got him out of bed. He stood up, wondering how women managed to be so beautiful when they woke up. Tara ogled his buttocks as he wandered about the room, looking for his scattered clothes.

“You know something?” she said. “For an old horse, you're holding up pretty well.”

“Actually, this isn't my real body.”

“That's not the impression I got last night.”

Brian dashed to the kitchen, seized with the kind of dizziness he'd been searching for ever since he was a teenager. He didn't know if he'd come up to scratch last night, if he ever would, or if he was still dreaming. He prepared a copious, varied breakfast, and took it into the bedroom piping hot. Tara was in the bathroom. He placed the overloaded tray on the bed, spilling tea on the scrambled eggs, and put on a T-shirt. Her scent hung in the room, a slight breeze ruffled the curtains. After a while, Tara came out of the bathroom, fully dressed and looking as spruce as she had the previous day.

She barely glanced at the breakfast. “I'm late,” she said. “I have to run.” Her isosceles smile seemed suddenly frozen.

“Now?” he said, ingratiatingly.

Tara looked at her watch. “Yes, I know, it's a bit rushed as a goodbye, but I completely forgot I'm the one who has to take the kids to the child minder this morning.”

Goodbye.

Child minder.

Fairground fantasies.

“I didn't know you had children.”

“I don't,” she said, “but my boyfriend does.”

Tara took out a little bottle of French perfume, sprayed two discreet bursts, and put it away just as swiftly in her overnight bag. “Do I smell O.K.?”

She stretched out her neck to him, slender and white—he felt like biting it.

“Like oats,” he said.

Tara gave a little laugh that did not hide her embarrassment. “Right, I'm off.”

“You'd better hurry if you want to be there on time,” he said, barely concealing his bitterness.

“Hmm,” she said, as if she understood. “Anyway, yesterday was great.”

Great.

Brian wanted to tell her that half the pleasure had been his, but Tara planted a melancholy kiss on his lips, before disappearing like a city under bombardment.

A door slamming, then nothing.

That was it, no riding together, no races against the ocean. All that was left was the soft breeze in the curtains, the coffee steaming on the sheets, and the impression that he was just like those sheets, rumpled by life.

The cell phone vibrated from the pile of books. Brian would have liked to throw it to the other side of the Atlantic, but it was Neuman.

“Get over here,” he said.

 

 *

 

Brian passed through the line of journalists and onlookers who had gathered behind the two-colored police tape. Big waves were breaking on the beach of Llandudno, and moving out again, covering the sea with wild spray. The art of falling, that was what his life was all about.

Neuman watched him as he approached, looking glum and disheveled.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

Brian was still thinking about Tara, plans that had led nowhere, all that love suddenly vanishing into thin air. He peered down at the sand.

The girl was lying a few feet away, arms outstretched, as if she had just fallen from the sky. A gruesome flight—Brian turned his head away from the girl's face. He hadn't had breakfast, and was still queasy from Tara's departure.

“A jogger found her this morning,” Neuman said. “At about seven.”

A disfigured girl, resting on her back. Her hands, too, were in a filthy state. Brian lit a cigarette, a mantle of depression over his shoulders.

“You couldn't introduce me to a living girl?” he said, to save face.

Neuman did not reply. The wind was lifting the ends of her skirt and throwing up sand. Tembo was bustling about the body, visibly concerned. The forensics team was combing the beach. A white girl, thirty at the most, sticky bleached-blonde hair, a face without a mouth, a nose, or anything. Black clouds were massing in the sky. Neuman stared at the seething sea. A seagull hopped toward the body and dipped its beak. Brian shooed it away with a nasty look.

“Do we know who she is?” he asked at last.

“Kate Montgomery. She lives in one of the houses above here, with her father Tony.”

“The singer?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tony Montgomery had had his hour of glory in the mid-nineties, a symbol of national reconciliation—that was why there were so many journalists here.

“We haven't been able to get hold of him yet,” Neuman said. “Kate was working as a designer on a music video. We just had the crew on the phone, they were waiting for her. Her car was found about a mile from here, a little way up on the coast road. We haven't found her purse.”

Tembo came toward them, trying to stop his felt hat from flying away. He looked gray. He gave them his first conclusions in a mechanical voice. All the blows had been to the face and head, the weapon a hammer, iron bar, or club. It hadn't been found yet, but the similarities with the Nicole Wiese murder were obvious. Same savagery, same kind of blunt weapon. Death had occurred about ten the previous evening. The absence of traces of blood on the sand suggested that the body had been moved to the beach. This time, there had definitely been a rape.

Brian put out his cigarette in the sand, but kept the butt.

“Any signs of a struggle?” Neuman asked.

“No,” Tembo replied, “but there are cuts on the waist. The most recent date from a few days ago, the others are a few weeks old.”

“Straight cuts?”

Neuman was thinking of the strange marks found on the body of the first victim.

Tembo shook his head slightly. “No. These cuts are deeper, probably done with a Stanley knife. Oh, and the nails have been removed. Clearly with a knife. Come and see.”

They kneeled by the body. The fingertips had been crudely mutilated. Tembo pointed to the top of the skull.

“A lock of hair was also cut,” he said.

Neuman cursed. A lock of hair, nail clippings—any
sangoma
could have gotten hold of these ingredients more cheaply. He saw the girl's torn blouse, where the blood had dried. The shoulder straps of the bra had been cut, the torso lacerated.

“Scarifications?”

“More like letters, I'd say,” Tembo said. With a pencil, he lifted the blouse. “Or numbers, cut into the skin. Do you see the three 0's?”

The blood had congealed on her chest, but the cuts, being darker, were quite visible.

Neuman deciphered the marks. “O . . . lo . . . lo . . .”

“What is that?” Brian asked. “Xhosa?”

“No. Zulu.”

We will kill you
: the ancestral war cry, a cry taken up by the hardliners in Inkatha.

 

 

 

A
tropical storm broke over Klook Nef. Brian Epkeen set the windshield wipers of the Mercedes in motion. Tara bursting like a bubble in his hands, the murdered girl on the beach, the popular press baying for the killer, the crap they were going to print—he was having a shitty morning. The situation had a tendency to repeat itself lately. A consequence of Dan's death? He suddenly felt a great desire to take a vacation, a long one, to get far away from this country that was pissing blood, from a world under siege from bankers and shareholders and reactionaries, and die of love with the last woman he'd met, getting drunk in one of their stupid grand hotels, like characters in a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Instead of which, he climbed the winding road up Table Mountain to the cable car, and found a place in the line of cars parked along the road.

The rain was drumming on the asphalt at the foot of Table Mountain. It was so misty, you could barely see the summit. He cut off the Girls Against Boys song that was abusing the insides of the car radio, gave a coin to the boy with the numbered shirt in charge of parking, and ran to the souvenir shops, where the rain-drenched tourists were waiting for the cable car.

You could climb the steep slope all the way to the top, but the rain and the increasing number of attacks in the past few months had ended up deterring even the most foolhardy. The people who flocked here all seemed to be fat, red-faced, and dressed like farmers at a wedding. But then, everything looked black to Brian this morning, although a patch of blue sky was appearing through the murk. At last the cable car set off. The cabin grazed the sheer sides of the mountain as it climbed half a mile and the digital cameras clicked. The clouds that obscured the summit were still scurrying before the wind when they reached the top. Brian left the tourists to their unrestricted view of the city and, without a glance at the crashing ocean, took the trail leading to Gorge Views.

Tony Montgomery had sung about national reconciliation, and several of his records had been worldwide hits. “Loving Together,” “A New World,” “Rainbow of Tears,” sung in several languages—like the new South African anthem—had made him a star. Brian found the lyrics of his songs incredibly syrupy, and the music pure crap, but his praiseworthy intentions had made him popular. Montgomery had an only daughter, Kate, whom he kept out of the public eye.

Kate Montgomery was twenty-two. She lived in Llandudno, on the east coast of the peninsula, and was working as a designer on a music video—for Motherfucker, a local death-metal group—being shot at the top of Table Mountain.

There was a stretch of flat, verdant heath land surrounded by rushes. Brian passed a gray squirrel as he walked along the path, surrounded by swarms of butterflies. The location for the shoot, marked off by metal barriers, was a mile or so after the rocks. Two black security men stood there with their hands over their crotches. They wore streamlined glasses and bored expressions, which barely changed when they saw his badge.

Contrary to what he had assumed, neither the storm nor the murder of their designer had stopped the shoot. A dozen people were bustling around the ruined tents and overturned sets—including a baroque zebu with devil's horns, made out of papier-mâché, lying upside down. Equipment and billycans were being hurriedly taken out from under tarps. He weaved his way between the puddles. Some yards away was a group of long-haired guys, looking like demented Batgirls in their Goth-metal makeup. One of them was grumbling that his guitar was full of water, that it would electrocute him. The others seemed to find that screamingly funny.

“Who's in charge here?” Brian asked the first person he met, a plump girl in a fluorescent yellow windbreaker.

“Mr. Hains? He must be in production, but his assistant should be around somewhere. Look, there she is,” she said, pointing to an auburn blonde who was talking to the head grip.

Ruby.

Ruby in a tight-fitting dress, splashing about in the mud. She turned, sensing his presence, stood there in astonishment for a moment, then glared at him with her green eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“What about you?”

“I'm working, believe it or not!”

They hadn't seen each other for ten months. She had dyed her hair and let it grow, but nothing about her—her too-neat dress, her makeup, or her mud-caked pumps—would ever make her look anything other than a tomboy at war with the world.

“I already have four jerks stinking of beer to deal with,” Ruby said impatiently. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you about Kate Montgomery,” he said. “I've been put in charge of the investigation.”

“Shit.”

“I agree. No one told me you'd be involved in this, but just forget I'm the love of your life, think of me as a detective, and answer my questions, O.K.?”

The sun had returned, lighting up her sandy skin.

“O.K.?” he insisted, pulling her aside.

“O.K.! No need to shout!”

“Anyone would think you're doing this on purpose. Look, the quicker we start, we quicker we finish.”

Ruby agreed.

“Are you in charge of this shoot?”

“Yes.”

“Assistant director?”

“Production assistant.”

“Same thing, isn't it?”

“Are you here to quibble about my job or to investigate a murder?”

“How well did you know Kate?”

“I knew her a bit.”

“Had you worked together before?”

“No, this was the first time.”

“But you knew her socially?”

“Kate sometimes came to dinner at the house, with other friends. That's all.”

“What kind of friends?”

“Halfway between the opposite and the reverse of you.”

“Showbiz people, I assume.”

“Good people,” she said.

“What time did you finish filming yesterday?”

“Around seven. The sun was going down.”

“When did you last see Kate?”

“Around seven, as it happens. We went down together on the cable car.”

“Was she meeting someone?”

Ruby pushed back her hair ruffled by the wind. “I have no idea. Kate didn't say.” Then something occurred to her. “She did say she was going to have an early night. We had a heavy day's filming the next day.”

“Was it your company that hired her as a designer?”

“Yes. Kate started on the shoot yesterday, like everyone.”

Ruby, who had quit smoking, had been methodically crushing a match she had taken from a box.

“Did she have a close relationship with any members of the crew?” Brian asked.

“No.”

“Did she take drugs?”

“How should I know?”

“People in showbiz are heavily into coke, don't tell me you don't know that.”

“I don't work in showbiz,” Ruby said, irritably.

“But you live with the dentist to the stars. You must have all kinds of fascinating guests to dinner, TV presenters, models, even PR people.”

Ruby claimed to find money and most of the people who had it vulgar. “What are you getting at, Inspector Gadget?” Her eyes flashed wickedly.

“Had Kate seemed different lately?” he went on.

“No.”

“Irritable? Impatient?”

“No.”

“Do you know if she had a boyfriend?”

“No one special.”

“What does that mean, that she often changed men?”

“Like any girl of twenty-two who doesn't fall in love with the first man that comes along.”

Twenty-two. Ruby's age when he had met her at the Nine Inch Nails concert. Another life.

“Did Kate go for a particular type?”

“I don't know.”

“Black men?”

“I told you I have no idea.”

“Do you often have dinner with people you don't know?”

Ruby lifted a finely penciled eyebrow. That was her only reaction.

“Well?”

“Kate was twenty years younger than me,” she said, becoming heated, “and she was a nervous girl who didn't give much away. Does everything have to be repeated ten times before you understand?”

“Eighteen times,” he replied. “That's John Cage's theory.”

“Are you taking an interest in conceptual art now?”

They exchanged caustic smiles.

“Did anyone phone Kate yesterday?” Brian resumed.

“Not as far as I know.”

“Did she ever talk to you about an ex-boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Or that she was meeting someone?”

“No,” Ruby breathed. “I already told you, we had a hard day's filming coming up. We said goodbye in the parking lot, I left to get the halters from the riding club, and that was the last I saw of her.”

Brian shivered, even though the sun had come out. “Halters?”

“You know, those big leads they put on horses to stop them from getting too excited,” she said, ironically.

“Why?”

“It's in the script. ‘The four demons of the night are attacked by furies, who put halters around their necks and whip them to make them pull the queen's carriage.' Don't you like death-metal imagery, lieutenant? But you like riding, don't you?”

A suspicion seized him. A huge one.

Tara.

Their unexpected encounter on the beach.

Their wild night.

Brian knew his devil well. That two-faced smile Ruby was wearing was too beautiful to be honest. She had hired Tara to seduce him, she'd bought a call girl to turn his head and then abandon him, like a sperm stain on the sheets.

“Something wrong, lieutenant?” Ruby was still smiling, with the criminal indifference of a cat playing with a mouse.

“Which riding club?”

“Noordhoek.”

Brian dismissed his hot sweats. Noordhoek—a long way from Muizenberg beach, where he had met Tara. Good God, this business was making him paranoid.

“What car did Kate leave in?” he asked.

“A Porsche coupé.”

They had found the car on the coast road, a mile from her house. Standing in the wind, Ruby was looking at him with a stubborn air.

“Is that all you can tell me?”

“I'm doing the best I can,” she retorted.

“It's not very much, miss.”

“Madam,” she corrected.

“Really? Since when?”

“You didn't think I was going to invite you to my wedding, did you?” she said with relish.

“I'd have brought you flowers,” he said, with an evasive look in his eyes. “Metal ones.”

“You always did know how to treat a woman. Now, if you have an intelligent question to ask, ask it quickly, because I have four other specimens just like you to deal with, the rain has ruined the sets, and we're behind schedule.”

“The show must go on.”

“What do you mean, ‘The show must go on?'” she repeated, imitating his voice badly.

“You don't seem all that upset about Kate's death.”

“I've lost a lot of things in my life.”

A pearl of tenderness ran aground amid the breakers.

“I'll probably be back to ask you some more questions,” he said.

The crew was setting up. Ruby shrugged. “If that's what grabs you.”

A gust of wind made them both sway. Brian shook his head. “Things still aren't working out, are they?”

 

 *

 

Sixty thousand
sanghomas
plied their trade in South Africa, including several thousand in Cape Province alone. Sacrifices, emasculations, kidnappings, and torture of children and the most abominable murders were regularly committed under the pretext that they would provide miracle cures, and it was usually these ignorant, barbaric incense burners who were behind it.

The lock of hair and the nail clippings suggested that the killer had been trying to make a
muti
, a cure, or some kind of magic potion. A
muti
. To treat what? After the Minister of Health's unfortunate statements about AIDS, this kind of story gave the whole of Africa a bad reputation.

Neuman had searched in the Criminal Record Center, with a particular emphasis on ritual crimes. Several hundred officially, over the past ten years. In reality, thousands. Children mutilated, arms, sexual organs, heart torn out, sometimes when they were still alive to increase the effectiveness, testicles and vertebrae sold at exorbitant prices on the market for superstitions—the museum of horrors was in full swing, with a host of anonymous dupes as killers by proxy and the statistics constantly rising. He had found nothing.

The forensics team had searched the Montgomery mansion without finding any evidence of a break-in. The security system was working, and nothing had been stolen. So Kate hadn't had time to go home after the day's filming, or else she had brought the killer home with her, which was highly unlikely—they would have been caught on the surveillance camera at the entrance, and there was nothing on the tapes. Her Porsche coupé had been found at the side of the road, barely a mile from the house. As with Nicole, the killer had chosen an isolated spot, where nobody was likely to see anything. The coast road left Chapman's Peak and wound amid vegetation before reaching the trendy village of Llandudno. The only prints in the car were the victim's. The killer had stopped her on the road. Or Kate had stopped of her own free will and hadn't suspected anything, like Nicole Wiese. According to the information gathered by Brian, Kate should have reached Llandudno around seven-thirty in the evening. She had been killed about ten. What had she been doing for all that time? Had the killer drugged her, to stop her from resisting? Two hours during which he had imprisoned her, in order to prepare his
ololo
, his sacrifice, we will kill you, “we” meaning the Zulus.

Zaziwe
: hope.

Association of ideas, chance, coincidence? Neuman sensed a trap. There it was, in front of his eyes. A divine temptation, a call, whose echo seemed to have been resonating forever. A trap into which he was falling.