The Serpentine Road (5 page)

‘Who threatened Ms Holt?’

‘You know what happened here? We always hire extra security for a private view, because there are wealthy people who come here, park their expensive vehicles outside. On Wednesday, we knew there might be problems. We’d had the pictures up for two days and there were advertisements in the arts press. There’d been phone calls and discussions . . .’

‘Who with?’

‘I don’t know. Taryn spoke to most of them. There were some people from the church in St Jerome Street, some feminists. They saw the pictures, didn’t understand them, thought they were attacking women, demeaning them.’

De Vries stands.

‘We’ve only seen the one in the window.’

He walks away from the desk towards the nearest canvas. It is a domestic scene: a woman in a simple, old-fashioned kitchen, standing in front of a sink. She is naked; her black skin glows. On her ankle, there is a strange little box, a red light; De Vries thinks it looks like a control tag. Her ankles and her left wrist also bear signs of having been tied with rope or wire. There is something about her posture which is incredibly evocative: she is a prisoner.

He moves to the next painting. A large black African woman, her head bowed, is tied to a wooden chair, her arms behind her back, ankles tied to the legs. Her nose is bloodied. In the foreground are the backs and buttocks of several broad black men, their skin stained and dusty. Once again, the artist has somehow achieved expression from within the static pose of the woman; she seems empty, almost dead.

De Vries turns back towards the long black desk, but Van der Merwe is standing a few paces behind him.

‘Who painted this work?’

‘A Mozambican artist: Dazuluka Cele. She paints the exploitation of women in Africa.’

‘Exploitation by who?’

Van der Merwe sniffs.

‘Men, obviously. Whether it is centuries of tribal bigotry or the murder of Reeva Steenkamp. It makes no difference. Black or white or coloured. It is the plague of Africa.’

And, De Vries thinks, a rehearsed pitch.

‘But other people saw the art differently?’

‘They judged without knowing the story. I doubt any of them even know the artist is a woman.’

‘Does that make any difference?’

Van der Merwe looks at De Vries, uncomprehending.

‘Of course. If these pictures were painted by a man, they would mean something completely different.’

De Vries frowns.

‘You think so?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell me about Miss Holt’s role in this gallery. She was the owner, but was she involved in the art?’

‘Of course, yes . . .’Van der Merwe beckons De Vries to a giant spot-lit photograph of Taryn Holt, positioned in an alcove close to the gallery entrance.

‘You don’t know? Taryn was one of the biggest private benefactors of art and artists in the country. It was her passion.’

De Vries studies the photograph. Taryn Holt is standing beside a brightly coloured canvas. She is wearing a plain full-length white linen dress, her long dark hair swept back from her forehead. She looks very beautiful; the lens loves her. She is smiling, yet there is a disconnect between the expression on her lips and that in her eyes. De Vries stares at her for a long while, discerns that it is the public smile of someone not happy. He wonders whether this is the emotion of the moment, or an enduring truth, poorly hidden.

Van der Merwe says: ‘The ability of art to disseminate a message through the canvas. It is powerful. You can see . . .’

For a moment De Vries thinks he is talking about the photograph of Taryn Holt; then he realizes that Van der Merwe is looking at the painting adjoining it. He turns to the man.

‘Can you identify any of the protesters on Wednesday night?’

‘Only what I told the police officers at the time. A few of the women we had spoken with during the day, the priest from that church.’

‘And, before this, had Miss Holt been threatened?’

‘No.’

‘Was there anyone who Miss Holt considered an enemy; anyone who might wish to harm her?’

Van der Merwe stares at the ground for a moment.

‘No, I don’t think so, but then I knew her here, at work, not in her private life. Taryn was outspoken. She wanted art to make a difference. She believed that it could. She was political and opinionated. Some people did not like that.’

‘What people?’

Dominic van der Merwe shrugs.

‘I didn’t mean anyone in particular.’

De Vries turns away, looks towards the back of the gallery for Don February, but he is not there. Instead, he sees him midway down the far wall, staring up at another huge canvas.

‘Sir?’

The tone of the single word carries weight. De Vries strides over to him, follows his gaze up to the painting.

The white woman is face up on a wide bed, her body riven with bullet holes. The blood has turned the surface of the mattress deep red. In her mouth, there is a big black phallus. The phallus is over-scaled and the impression of penetration is brutal. De Vries swallows, stands back from the canvas and looks back up at it. On the walls of the bedroom are pictures of young black men; each seems to look down on the victim, their mouths blank, but their eyes full of lust. Again, De Vries is struck by how the tiniest line of paint can convey so much.

‘Photograph this,’ he tells Don February in a whisper. He turns to Van der Merwe:

‘Has this been here all week?’

‘Yes. Everything was hung last weekend, with the artist. It is also in the catalogue.’

‘I need a catalogue, then.’

He fetches a thick glossy brochure, hands it to De Vries.

‘I need you to give Warrant Officer February contact details for the artist . . .’

‘Dazuluka Cele . . .’

‘Yes, her. And yours, Mr van der Merwe. Where were you yesterday evening?’

‘In the Waterkant. Drinks with some friends. We ate at Anatoli’s. After that, we went back to a friend’s place, Jarvis Street. I stayed over. You want his name as well?’

‘For the record . . .’ De Vries begins to walk towards the front door. ‘Will you re-open the exhibition?’

‘I’ve been thinking. These pictures are about violence against women in South Africa, and that is exactly what Taryn has become. So I think so, yes.’

‘And you could still sell some paintings . . .’

Dominic van der Merwe smiles sadly.

‘I don’t need to. They all sold within an hour. They fought about them out there, and they fought about them in here.’

De Vries stands at the broad table in his incident room, behind him a white board bearing photographs and printed details on the victim. Soon, there will be connections to suspects and other evidence but, for now, it remains predominantly white and empty. Don February is at his side; a further half-dozen officers stand around the table, notepads in front of them.

‘To start,’ De Vries says. ‘We are likely to be without Brigadier du Toit for the duration of this case. So, I’m where the buck stops. If you want to go higher, you can go see General Thulani, but let’s try to keep this in-house.’

De Vries knows that it is unlikely anyone would dare risk an audience with Assistant Deputy Provincial Commissioner Thulani, his reputation for disliking the Special Crime Unit hardly a secret, his office kept ice-cold to ensure the brevity of unwanted meetings. He looks up.

‘What have we got?’ He nods at Ben Thwala, a tall, broad black African officer, who has headed up the house-to-house enquiries.

‘The neighbours did not see much of Miss Holt,’ Thwala says. ‘And only two remember seeing any visitors at any time. If she socialized, she did not invite any of them. The elderly gentleman at number twelve, across from the victim’s house diagonally, says that he saw her occasionally leaving in her car, and that she was with a younger Caucasian man on several occasions. He could not give me a description. At number fourteen, there is a family with a teenaged daughter. She was not available, but her mother said that she had seen Miss Holt and that they regularly waved to one another. Otherwise, nothing specific, and nothing at all for the evening and night of Thursday second.’

Don February says: ‘According to the gallery manager, Dominic van der Merwe, Miss Holt left the gallery on Thursday at approximately 7 p.m. and told him that she was tired and that she was going straight home.’

De Vries looks around the table.

‘So, what we have so far places her at home that evening from, say, 7.15, 7.30 p.m.’ He looks over to the one woman in the room. ‘Sally?’

‘Taryn Holt has a boyfriend of several years: a man called Lee Martin. He’s English, a musician, aged thirty-three, been here for the last ten years and lives in a shared house in Woodstock. According to Taryn Holt’s supposedly best friend, a Jessica Templeman, they never lived together. Taryn Holt liked being a free agent.’

‘Were there other men?’

‘I don’t know. Miss Templeman claimed that she was Taryn Holt’s confidant and that she didn’t mention anyone else . . .’

‘Any talk of personal or business problems, other threats?’

‘None.’

‘Any relatives?’

‘Both parents deceased. No siblings. As far as I could make out, she didn’t have any contact with family. There are no photographs at the house, no correspondence and, although we’ve only just begun on her cell-phone, no one who seems directly related.’

De Vries nods.

‘All right. What do we know about the private view and party on Wednesday night?’

When no one answers, he turns to Don.

‘Put someone on that. I want to know who in Metro dealt with it, whether Central Station sent men, and what they knew about the situation. We know about this women’s group and the church in St Jerome Street, but we need to know who else was there and whether the subject matter of the art was the only reason there was a disturbance.’

He looks back around the table.

‘Anything else? Okay, Don, do your thing. I’m in my office.’ He looks back up at Sally Frazer. ‘Sally . . . I want to ask you something.’ He turns, walks to his glass-walled office and holds the door for her, closes it behind her. He slumps in his chair behind his desk.

‘Jessica Templeman. What didn’t you like about her?’

Frazer shakes her head, laughs.

‘Who told you that?’

‘You did. You said she was “supposedly” Taryn Holt’s best friend, and that she “claimed” to be her confidant.’

Frazer tilts her head.

‘She’s not what you would call a sympathetic witness. I mean, I got the impression that she felt I was there to talk about her. I don’t know what her relationship with Taryn Holt actually was. I think she bought art off her. Her cell-phone number was the third speed-dial after this Lee Martin and Dominic van der Merwe – who I knew you were talking to – so I went after Templeman. I said what I said because it was what she said, and it just seemed odd, like she was eager to establish her credentials.’

She laughs. ‘I’ll be more careful what I say in future.’

De Vries sits up.

‘No. What you’ve told me is what I want to know. I need officers who can form an impression and pass that on to me.’

‘Then, good. You’ll talk to her too?’

‘Maybe. If she wants the attention, we’ll give it to her.’

As Frazer leaves his office, a smartly suited man strides quickly across the squad-room towards De Vries’s office. He greets De Vries with a firm handshake and nods at Don February, who has followed him into the office. He stands to the side of the desk, his hands placed on the surface.

‘The boyfriend, a man called . . .’ He looks down at a leather bound folder.

‘. . . Lee Martin. He gets a good proportion of the estate. The house plus, ball-park figure, maybe seventy to eighty million cash.’ Norman Classon looks up at De Vries and Don February. ‘If the motive is money then this Lee Martin is your man.’

Classon is the Senior Attorney attached to the Special Crimes Unit, advising the department on legal matters. Usually, he joins an enquiry as charges are being prepared; De Vries wonders how he has become involved within hours of the start of the investigation.

‘. . . English guy, been seeing each other for the last five years. Eighteen months ago, Taryn Holt changes her will to make him the biggest private beneficiary.’

‘Does she?’

‘Makes him interesting, I would say.’

‘We’re about to talk to Mr Martin,’ De Vries says, glancing at Don February. ‘Anything else?’

‘The gallery is left to Dominic van der Merwe. She owned the freehold so it is not an insubstantial gift. Some pretty hefty bequests to art institutions. But, that’s not really the interesting part.’ Classon removes his glasses, studies the lenses, produces a silk handkerchief to wipe them.

‘As I think you know, Taryn Holt inherited her father’s company, Holt Industries, in 2009. His instructions were quite clear. His daughter was to have no involvement in the running of the company, and was prohibited from selling more than twenty-four per cent of the total company stock. That stock now passes to a trust held by those members of the board indicated within Graeme Holt’s will. Taryn Holt’s heirs do not get their hands on any part of the actual company.’

Don February asks:

‘What is the significance of twenty-four per cent?’

Classon nods.

‘Indeed, Warrant February. If Taryn Holt had realised the full twenty-four per cent of stock in Holt Industries, it would still have left her fifty-one per cent of the company. In other words, control remains within the Holt family, or with those who Graeme Holt specified. She was prevented from ever realizing the value of the remainder of her father’s company.’

‘Did she ever sell any stock?’ Don asks.

‘Another apposite question. No, she did not. But, apparently, she had made enquiries approximately three months ago about how she would go about the sale of stock if she wished to raise a capital sum.’

‘And how much would that have been?’

Classon smiles down at Don.

‘Something in the region of five hundred million rand.’

For several seconds, the enormity of the figure silences them.

‘Why would she want a sum like that?’ De Vries asks. ‘What could she spend it on?’