Just a Dead Man (22 page)

Then Mike's cellphone rang, and the moment was over. He went off to chat to one of his friends, and I got to my feet and offered to make Adam another cup of coffee. He nodded his thanks, and I headed into the kitchen, which was showing signs of a visit from my mother, smelling of bleach, looking spotless and devoid of the usual odds and ends that collect on the draining board. I would probably spend the next few weeks hunting for things.

When I went back into the studio, Adam was asleep, lying on the sofa. I set the mugs down and contemplated his neat form. Even in sleep, he looked tidy, dapper. Feeling suddenly protective, I took a deep blue mohair throw that hung over the back of a chair and spread it over him as gently as I could, careful not to disturb him. I caught a faint scent of soap from him: he had showered before coming to my house.

Mike walked back in, and stopped in the doorway. I motioned to him to be quiet, determined not to wake the exhausted man. He gave me a grin, more knowing than I expected, but all he said was: “Gives a whole new meaning to sleeping policeman, doesn't it?”

Having a cop who is investigating a high-profile murder case fall asleep in your house is awkward. I sat down and looked out of the window, drinking my coffee and expecting Adam's phone to ring at any moment and wake him. But nothing happened. Slowly, shadows from the trees edged their way across the grass, dry now, and showing the brownish patches of winter. The room was getting cooler, but I felt more peaceful than I had all day, despite – or maybe because of – the sleeping policeman. Mike came in again, and looked at Adam.

“What now?” he mouthed, reasonably.

“Dunno,” I shrugged. “I don't want to wake him, but he can hardly stay here all night. If nothing else, Sergeant Dhlomo will probably come looking for him.”

Mike chortled, and I suddenly began to giggle. We struggled to keep quiet, but our spontaneous laughter was an enormous release of tension. And trying not to wake Adam made it even funnier. I began to feel as if my lungs would burst. Just as Mike headed for the kitchen to explode into loud guffaws, the phone rang.

I got up to answer it, tears running down my cheeks and battling to control my breathing. As so often in crisis moments, it was Simon. Told by Rory about yesterday, he felt it his duty to enquire if I was okay. Actually, since my telling Ms Tits to fuck off, my interactions with Simon had been friendlier than usual. I had no wish to go down that road and explore why. Anyway, he wanted to know if I was all right, and whether there was anything he could do. I'm not sure what the response would have been if I
had said yes, but I didn't. Mercifully, he didn't ask why I sounded like someone recovering from a chronic attack of asthma.

When I hung the phone up and turned round, Adam was sitting up, looking embarrassed. He apologised profusely. Looking at his watch, he realised that he had been unconscious for the best part of two hours. “My God – I'm so sorry. I'll have to go. The sergeant will be beginning to think I've been kidnapped too!” It was enough to start me laughing again, and after a surprised look, Adam joined in.

He left, assuring me he would be back to take my statement later.

I
N FICTION, MURDER STORIES
seem to end with the unmasking of the criminal. And that's not surprising, considering that in real life the aftermath is mundane, bureaucratic and short on dramatic moments, though long on a dull feeling of unease. After the excitement of the arrests, there were statements to be made, and various court appearances for Mchunu and his two hitmen. None were given bail: one Flash Funerals' man had talked and would be a state witness so was being kept inside for his own safety. Without what he was going to say, it might be hard to get a conviction. The other had no fixed address.

It seemed that Thabo Mchunu was considered a flight risk, and a threat to witnesses, though his attorney was working hard on bail appeals, and Robin informed me he thought that it would eventually be granted. After all, the trial was still months away. That gave me pause. Was I one of the people who could be vulnerable if he was a threat? I had had enough dealings with Mchunu to know what his threats felt like. I knew I would have to give evidence when he came up for trial, and that prospect was chilling enough. I would have to talk about that horrible afternoon with Mchunu and Busi Dhlamini. She was out of hospital, and, as far as I knew, had not been charged with anything, though presumably she had been interrogated. Maybe she
had
been an unwilling participant, though I couldn't help feeling she had been a lot less unwilling than I had been.

I felt myself in a curious kind of limbo. It seemed that by the time anything made it to court, all the incidents would be so long in the past that I might not even be able to remember the order of events, or what had been said. Other traumas – the fear, the humiliation, the desperate sense of being torn from my children and unable to control my life – I found harder to forget.

I saw nothing of Adam Pillay. I had been surprised, and pleased, when, about three weeks after the first bail hearings, he phoned and asked me if I would have lunch with him one Sunday. He fetched me from home, and took me to the same coffee shop I had gone to with my parents on my birthday. Maybe I was reminded of the case, the aftermath of my previous visit, or maybe the situation was inherently awkward, but lunch was not a success.

We couldn't discuss the case. After all, he was the investigating officer and I was both witness and victim: a player in the story. And although I found myself liking him more and more when I thought about him, in reality it was difficult to overcome the barrier the murders had erected: the ease I had felt with him the day we met in the plantations had dissipated, lost in the horror of it all. Conversation was stilted: too much was off limits and, under the circumstances, that exchange of information about ourselves and our likes and dislikes that forms the beginning and basis of most interactions between men and women was hardly an option. Both of us knew a smattering of intimate details about the other, and neither of us wished to probe further, but nor did we know how to circumvent them. And, although we parted as friends, it seemed that only the court case would bring us together again.

I was depressed. I followed my father's advice, and had sought out a counsellor. Maybe it helped: I couldn't be sure. I tried to concentrate on getting on with my life. Mrs Golightly had called me in for a lengthy and rather uncomfortable conversation. I told her there would be a trial, and that I would have to give evidence. She expressed sympathy, but made it clear that I was now expected to show more diligence than she felt I had been doing recently. Although she refrained from saying so, she did not expect her teachers to consort with murderers or murder suspects, or to find themselves in the witness box in high-profile cases. And to get kidnapped obviously smacked to her of a disorderly life. She irritated me, but I needed the job, so I bowed and scraped and returned diligently to my classroom.

I wondered whether, when Mike finished school and had left home, I should move away, make a fresh start somewhere else. But where to go was the problem. Johannesburg had all the disadvantages of a big city; Cape Town was home to Simon and Ms Tits, which put it off limits; my friends were here. So I didn't pursue the idea. But I was aware that my life needed some kind of shot in the arm.

“H
URRY UP
, M
A
. W
E'LL
be late.” Rory stood juggling my car keys. Both boys were standing in the hall, waiting impatiently for me to appear. “I'll drive so you can get as pissed as you like on the proceeds of your sales,” he went on.

“Fat chance of that. But okay. Off we go.”

We were headed for the opening of the exhibition. Vanessa and I had spent the previous day hanging it, and even if I have to say so myself, it was looking pretty good. Ness had put her networking skills into overdrive, and half the world seemed likely to be there. I would have been too diffident to ask many of the people she had contacted, but I had to admit I was glad she had done it.

The first people I saw when we walked in were Simon's parents. His father gave me a hug and remarked on how good the work was; his mother smiled as if it hurt her (it probably did) and cornered the boys. But I was amazed that she had actually appeared. My parents were there as well, keeping their distance from their one-time fellow in-laws. Dad whispered to me that one of my paintings already had a red sticker attached to it, pointing to the one of the china in a cupboard. At the same moment, Vanessa whirled up, hugged me and told me I had made the first sale of the night. Two of hers boasted green stickers, but mine had actually been paid for.

My father had bought most of the wine – it was significantly better than the usual chateau cardboard that all too often is dispensed at exhibition openings. I was touched that he had volunteered, and Ness had immediately taken him over, telling him what we would need, and the best place to get it. He had taken it all in good part, Ness being one of his favourites. I had a long conversation with Verne and Chantal. Verne was kind about the work, and slipping his hand into his jacket pocket, gave me an envelope.

“I was in Joburg for a meeting last week – another heritage one, with a major change of personnel as you can imagine – and I managed to slip out and see Daniel. He gave me this for you, and said he was sorry he couldn't get down for tonight. But he's got a job, working for a guy who makes water features and needs someone to paint the fake rocks, make them look real. He says it's actually quite fun, and still leaves him time for his own work.” I started to say something, but Verne held up his hand. “I know, I know. It sounds terrible. But he needs to feel that he's earning, and settling down a bit after what happened. Anyway, read his letter.” I thanked him and slipped it into my bag. Now was not the time.

The gallery director made his way over to the microphone and welcomed everyone to the exhibition, making kind remarks about Vanessa, Ben and me. Ness responded with her usual lively charm, telling everyone what a wonderful opportunity it was to buy art. We had agreed – or at least, I had – that she should be the person to speak. I'm not much on promoting myself in public, but it seems second nature to her. I had a feeling Ben had not been asked for his opinion. Verne then officially opened the show, and the party went on.

I continued to circulate, noticing people I had no
idea I had invited. Mrs Golightly's formidable bulk hove into view, looking rather pleased with me. One of her teachers seemed to be scoring a modest triumph, and she was prepared to be gracious. “This is excellent, Laura,” she said, waving a solid arm in the direction of one of Vanessa's abstracts. “I do hope it goes well for you.” The subtext was that
this
was the kind of thing she liked to see her staff doing, not getting themselves mixed up with murders. But I was, to my own surprise, enjoying myself too much to do more than smile and thank her.

I noticed that my favourite painting, the still life looking inside through the window, had a red sticker on it. I had priced it high, rather hoping I could take it home with me when the exhibition was over. I fought my way over towards the desk to find out who had bought it. It was my father. Not only had he paid for the wine, which was dwindling at an alarming rate, but had also overpaid for a painting. But when I tried to tell him he could have had it for free if only he had asked, he stopped me.

“Don't sell yourself short, Laura. I love it. We've wanted it ever since we saw it in your studio, but we wanted to pay for it. So no more nonsense. You're doing well, by the way. Look over there.”

The two hand paintings, the apple and the mango, both had red stickers too. “Good Lord! I thought they were a bit esoteric, not likely to sell. Who bought them?”

“There. That chap standing next to them, looking proprietorial. He was ahead of me at the desk.”

I looked across the crowd, and there was Adam Pillay, neat in dark jeans and a light-green open-necked shirt. He was looking at the paintings with the fixed stare I remembered from the day he had first seen the apple one; the day I had first seen him; the day Phineas Ndzoyiya's corpse had been dumped in the plantations.

I made my way slowly through the crowd to his side. “Hello, Adam. I believe you bought these two.” And then I stopped. I wasn't quite sure what to say next. I could thank him. Or tell him he shouldn't have. Or ask him why. But it all sounded silly. What I did say was that I remembered him looking at the first one, that day.

“I was fascinated by it,” he said, simply. “And then, when I saw the other one, I really felt I wanted to have them both. I love the idea, the contrast. They appeal to me, somehow.”

“The associations, the murder, don't bother you?”

“No. Why should they? They have nothing to do with it. And if they do bring things back, well … not all the memories are things I would rather forget.” He turned and looked at me. “Could I ask you … Would you come round to my flat one evening and help me to find the right place for them, so that they can be seen at their best? The way you envisaged them when you were painting them? I could even cook you my special prawn curry.”

“I can think of nothing I would like more,” I said.