Recipes for Love and Murder (13 page)

I could hear the soft rain again, falling on the tin roof.

‘Jammer, Meneer.'

His voice got louder still, as if he'd stepped inside.

‘I didn't mean to get you in trouble, Meneer. That day.'

Lawrence coughed.

‘Meneer?'

Footsteps rustled out of the study; we saw a flash of bright light across our strip of view.

‘Meneer? . . . Hey, the light.'

Was he shining his torch in Lawrence's face?

Boom. Boom.
Gunshots.

The sound of something falling.

‘Jesus,' said Jessie, under her breath.

I pulled the pantry door closed.

My hands were shaking but they somehow managed to lock the door. I saw a dim light in Jessie's hand, as she pressed buttons on her phone. Her fingers were shaking and it looked like she wasn't getting the numbers right.

The footsteps came right up to the pantry and turned the doorknob. When it didn't open, a fist thumped the door. Luckily it was one of those old solid doors. Teak, I hoped. We moved away, pressing ourselves against the far shelves.

Ka-ting!
A shot.

A metallic ringing sound in my ears.

He tried the door again, but it didn't give. The sound of my drumming heart filled the whole pantry.

I heard a kind of wailing. At first I thought it was Jessie's phone ringing, then I realised it was a police siren. How could they have come so fast? Jess hadn't even made the call.

There were two more gunshots: so loud and close I felt sure they must have hit us. I checked my stomach and chest, but found no holes. The footsteps rustled away. The siren was still going, but I wasn't sure if it was getting any closer.

Something soft settled on my skin. Maybe goosebumps. I reached out for Jessie and found her hand. Even through my gloves, I could feel there was something sticky all over her fingers.

‘Oh, no,' I whispered. ‘Jessie?'

Her fingers moved weakly.

‘Are you okay, Jessie?'

‘I'm not sure,' she said. ‘I feel a bit weird and there's stuff leaking on my arm. Has he gone?'

‘Listen.'

The siren noise stopped and we heard what sounded like a 4×4 revving and racing away.

‘How does the switch work on this headtorch again?' I said. ‘Wait, here it is.'

I managed to turn it on and shone on us both. We were covered in white powder, and Jessie had sticky orange stuff all over her arm and hand.

‘Apricot jam,' I said, putting my fingers to my mouth. ‘And cake flour.'

The shot jam tin and the exploded bag of flour were on the shelf above us. Flour was all over the tins and the recipe books. Jessie licked some jam off her fingers, and the sugar did its job. She took off a glove and managed to make that phone call.

‘Reghardt,' she said. ‘It's me.'

‘Are they close by?' I said when she hung up. ‘The siren's stopped.'

‘No,' she said. ‘There was no siren. It was a ringtone I played on my phone.'

We unlocked the pantry door and looked out. A black man lay still on the floor, a red hole in his forehead and a dark stain spreading across his chest.

‘Lawrence?' said Jessie.

He wore a faded blue shirt that was frayed at the sleeves and collar. On his khaki pants you could see dark lines where raindrops had fallen. Jessie knelt beside him.

His eyes were open, like he was staring at the ceiling. I wanted to close them for him, but instead I turned on the light. As if that could make things normal again.

His right arm lay above his head, his left by his side. Resting in his left palm was a half-smoked cigarette. He had pinched the tip of it closed, so he could smoke the rest of it another time.

Jessie checked his pulse. She looked up at me and shook her head. There would be no other time for Lawrence. She got up, opened the back door and stood staring out into the darkness. A cold breeze moved through the house, in the front door and out the back.

I had seen two dead bodies before this one. In coffins. My mother's and my husband's. At the sight of each of them, strong feelings had swum up from deep inside me and taken the air from my mouth.

But I did not know this man, Lawrence, at all, so I was surprised to find such feelings coming up in me again.

He was not in a coffin. His blood was still fresh. Just now he'd been walking in the rain, smoking, talking. He was alive. Then someone shot that out of him.
Boom. Boom.
Stole it from him for ever. Murder is the worst kind of stealing.

Martine's life had been stolen. And now Lawrence's.

‘Tannie Maria!' said Jessie. ‘Our shoes. They're gone.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The thunderstorm had moved on to the south, but it was still raining softly as we sat waiting on the stoep. There were flashes of lightning over the Langeberge as the police sirens got closer.

‘What're we going to tell them?' I asked Jessie. ‘We shouldn't be here.'

‘Jislaaik. There are two murders now. I think we should come clean.'

‘Too late,' I said, looking down at our messy clothes. ‘Where are those napkins?'

We were dusting the flour off our pants when the police arrived, their headlights shining straight on us. When they turned them off, I could see the men by the stoep light. Piet and Kannemeyer got out of the van, and a young man stepped from a car. The man was tall and thin. Next to Piet he looked very long, but he was not as tall as Kannemeyer.

My feet wanted to run to Kannemeyer, which is strange because as I've said, I don't believe in running, and anyway I was wearing socks.

When the men got closer, Jessie looked like she wanted to run too, but we both stayed standing on the stoep. Piet was leading the way with a torch, pointing here and there to the ground. He wore his khaki shorts and leather sandals.

‘It's all messed up with the rain,' said the young man.

He had a pale face and his soft dark hair fell across his forehead like a teenager's.

Piet shone the torch low down, and spoke quietly: ‘Look, these come from there.' He pointed towards the cottage. ‘And these are different. Look there. The heel.'

‘Ja,' said Kannemeyer, ‘it's wider.'

Piet showed them where to walk, so they did not interfere with the tracks.

‘What are you doing here?' said Henk Kannemeyer, frowning as he stepped onto the stoep. ‘Are you all right?'

He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt. The top few buttons of his shirt were open and the hair on his chest was that chestnut colour.

‘The man is dead,' I said, pointing towards the front door.

Kannemeyer went in and bent over the body. The young man stood close to Jessie. Next to her he looked very tall.

‘Jessie,' he said.

His eyes were black and soft, like the centre of a black-eyed Suzy. He had thick eyelashes and eyebrows.

‘Reghardt,' she said, looking up at him with bright eyes.

‘Are you hurt?' he said, touching her arm gently.

‘It's just jam.'

Piet and Reghardt went to the doorway as Kannemeyer put his fingers to the man's neck. The three of them just stood there a while, looking down at the dead man as the rain fell softly on the tin roof.

‘Warrant Officer Snyman,' Kannemeyer said to Reghardt. ‘Make the calls. But wait a few minutes before phoning EMS. They can't help him now, and I want a good look around before they come trampling all over the place.'

‘Emergency Medical Services,' Jessie whispered to me.

Reghardt walked to the edge of the stoep and spoke quietly into his cell phone. Kannemeyer signalled to Piet, who stepped inside – his eyes, nose and hands doing tiny movements as if he could sense things that we could not. He was tasting and testing the air, like a wild animal arriving in a new place.

Kannemeyer came out and stared at me. He looked like he wanted to shout, but instead he spoke very quietly, which somehow made it worse.

‘You could have been killed,' he said.

His moustache looked a bit rough. He had probably been fast asleep twenty minutes before. There were raindrops on his shoulders.

‘What happened?' he said.

‘Um, we came to see— ' I said, losing my sentence as I looked up at Kannemeyer. He was so much bigger than me. ‘We— '

‘Who did this?'

‘Ah— ' I said. Somehow the words were getting stuck under my tongue. ‘Um . . . '

‘We came to investigate a story,' said Jessie. ‘A white 4×4 arrived. Around ten past eleven. We couldn't see the registration. A man got out with a torch and a gun. We saw his silhouette in the lightning. Medium height and build. Wearing a raincoat and hood. We hid in the pantry, and he came into the house. We didn't see him. He made an odd sound as he walked, kind of a rustling, and he went into the study.'

Piet and Reghardt also came to listen to Jessie, the reporter. Piet's eyes moved over her too, looking for clues.

‘After a short while, Lawrence, that man there, came up to the house. I think he's the worker who lives in the cottage down there. We were in the pantry, so we couldn't see. But we heard him at the door calling to the man. He called him “Meneer”. He said the police had asked him to watch the house.'

Reghardt nodded. Maybe he knew about Lawrence, or maybe he was just encouraging Jessie. Piet was studying the stoep now, his eyes moving about like dragonflies. Shooting from there to here, then hovering in one place.

‘I should arrest you both for trespassing,' Kannemeyer said, glaring at Jessie and me.

Jessie continued as if he hadn't spoken: ‘He also said that he was sorry, that he didn't mean to get Meneer in trouble.'

‘So he knew the murderer?' asked Kannemeyer.

I shook my head, and Jessie explained.

‘Maybe not. He might have thought he knew him. But the man was out of his sight while he spoke. He might have seen his car, or been expecting someone. Lawrence couldn't see him when he was calling to him. He probably thought it was Meneer Dirk. Then we heard footsteps, and saw the torch, and Lawrence said, “Hey, the light.” I think the murderer shone a bright torch in Lawrence's eyes.' Jessie looked at me, and I nodded. ‘Then we heard a shot. Two shots. We locked the door of the pantry and the murderer realised we were there and when he couldn't open the door, he shot at it. I played a ringtone on my phone that sounds like a police siren.' Reghardt smiled at Jessie's cleverness, but Kannemeyer did not look impressed. ‘He shot twice more, the bullets came right through the door, and then he drove off. We came out and we found Lawrence.'

Kannemeyer's lips were pinched tightly together under his moustache. Piet walked around Jessie and me so he could see us from all sides.

‘You should not have been here,' Kannemeyer said, running his hand over his short thick hair. ‘You could both be dead.'

I looked down at my socks. I could hear the wind in the branches of the gum tree.

‘He took our shoes,' I said.

Kannemeyer blinked.

‘We'd left them outside,' Jessie said. ‘My boots and Tannie Maria's veldskoene.'

Kannemeyer frowned at us, and took a breath like he was about to say something, then shook his head. He turned away from us and towards Reghardt.

‘Warrant Officer Snyman, where's the police photographer?' he asked.

‘Not answering his phone,' said Reghardt. ‘But the LCRC will send out a forensics team first thing in the morning.'

Kannemeyer said, ‘I want crime-scene pictures before the coroner and EMS get here.'

‘Maybe,' said Reghardt, looking sideways at Jessie then back at Kannemeyer, ‘Jessie here can take the photographs.'

Jessie pulled out her camera. Kannemeyer frowned at us both again. Then he gestured for her to go inside.

‘Do only as we say. No walking about.'

He followed them in. At the doorstep he said to me: ‘You. Stay right here. Don't— '

Then he sighed and turned away. I watched from the doorway as Piet showed the others the story of what happened. Jessie photographed whatever he or Kannemeyer pointed to.

Piet acted out pieces of the story. Reghardt did the lighting effects with a bright torch. Piet showed how Lawrence had walked into the room, wiped his feet on the doormat, but still left small tracks on the floor. He pointed out the little patch of smudged mud where his right foot had kicked forward when he lifted his right arm to protect his eyes from the torchlight. And the bigger smudge of slipping heels as he was shot and fell onto his back.

‘Look here, at these marks in the dust,' Piet said, ‘the killer had plastic bags over his shoes.'

Reghardt held the torch low on the ground, and Jessie took pictures from all angles.

‘His feet were so big,' Piet said, holding his hands apart.

‘About a size ten,' said Kannemeyer and Reghardt nodded.

‘His steps were like this,' said Piet. ‘Legs longer than mine, but not so long as yours.' He held his hand up to Kannemeyer's shoulder. ‘He was maybe this tall.'

Piet carried on showing the movements of the murderer. ‘He stepped forward, like this, when he shot the gun.'

‘Here,' he said, crouching beside Lawrence, ‘is where she touched him.'

Jessie photographed the traces of jam on Lawrence's wrist, then Piet led them towards the pantry to continue the story and the photographs.

‘Bullets,' said Piet, ‘here, and there, and there through that tin of jam, into the wall.'

‘How many shots altogether?' asked Kannemeyer.

‘Five,' said Jessie and Piet together.

‘Ja. A .38 Special,' said Reghardt.

‘Get those sock prints in the flour,' Kannemeyer told Jessie, ‘before we go in.'

When they'd finished in the pantry, they went into the study, where I couldn't see them, but I heard some pieces of what they said.

Kannemeyer's voice: ‘Dust the filing cabinet and desk for prints.'