The Serpentine Road (8 page)

‘So,’ Don February says. ‘It seems that the killer was a good shot with his first bullet, not so good with the next three, and tried to kill his victim a second time with his last. That does not make sense.’

De Vries smiles at them both.

‘No. And that’s the first good news we’ve had.’

The woman sits. When she first saw them, she spoke curtly and continued laying out the seats in neat rows, adjusting them minutely, unnecessarily. Now, she looks at the white officer, fixes him with her eyes, knows what effect she will have.

De Vries hopes that the women’s group is more welcoming to women.

‘My name is Brenda Botes,’ she tells them. ‘I am one of the organizers here. Father Jacobus told me that you would be coming back.’

‘We need to talk to you about the art exhibition, about what happened to Taryn Holt.’

‘I am sorry about Taryn Holt. I am not sorry that the door is closed on her vile display.’

‘The exhibition?’

‘When you have been raped and abused,’ she says, ‘imprisoned as a slave in your own home, you do not need art to tell you that men can be cruel, can be evil even to their own wives.’

‘You thought the pictures were art?’

‘I thought they were exploitation.’

She pushes herself back into the orange plastic chair and tries to cross her legs. When this manoeuvre fails, she sits upright and plants her feet flat on the floor.

De Vries continues: ‘Did you speak personally to Taryn Holt?’

‘I went with the other ladies. When you join us here, you become part of our group. The strength is within the group; we fight for each other.’

‘You approached her before the demonstration?’

‘We went with Father Jacobus. We were there for different reasons but with the same aim.’

‘To prevent the exhibition from opening?’

‘To warn her.’

‘Warn her?’

She pats her tight bun of brown hair; it is immovable.

‘To explain . . . That the group would fight her; that we would not allow her to demean us.’

‘How would the exhibition do that?’

‘Have you seen it? Have you seen those pictures?’

De Vries speaks quietly, hoping that it will calm her.

‘The painting in the window is striking, but not overtly graphic. You would have to enter the gallery to see the more . . . controversial images.’

‘That is what I am saying. Our group was afraid that people would see those awful paintings and be offended, that it would reawaken memories that they are fighting to forget.’

‘But you don’t have to look at them . . .’

‘But they can be seen. You could walk in and be confronted by them.’

De Vries opens his mouth and closes it again. He takes a breath.

‘Your group; it consists of the women who meet here?’

‘Yes, but we have affiliates all over the Cape. We have influential backers: professional women. We have attorneys and doctors, journalists and councillors. We have to make our voice heard.’

‘And how many of you visited the gallery on the night the exhibition opened?’

Brenda Botes posits a thoughtful expression.

‘Maybe eight of us.’

De Vries shakes his head; eight scandalized women.

‘But there were others there?’

‘A few people. I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t care. I was glad to see them with us.’

‘Did you hear anyone threaten Taryn Holt?’

‘At the demonstration, we were angry. Her rich, protected guests would not even look at us. This is how it is in our country now: you do not like something, you pretend not to see it; you will it not to exist. None of them spoke with us, and Taryn would not come out to speak with us. Instead, she sent out men to frighten us away.’

‘Who called the police?’

‘They were there already. When her security guards came out, they appeared from their cars across the way. A tall black officer and about six or seven other officers. Like they were waiting for trouble.’

De Vries frowns.

‘What did they do?’

‘They told us that we were causing a disturbance, blocking the highway, and that we had to disperse. It was nonsense. We were on the pavement and we were obstructing nobody.’

‘Did you visit Taryn Holt’s home?’

‘No.’

‘Before or after that night?’

‘No. The group decided that she should be confronted at the gallery.’

De Vries uncrosses his legs, hesitates.

‘I thought those pictures were supposed to highlight crime against women in Africa. Wouldn’t you sympathize with that aim?’

She snorts.

‘The artist who painted those pictures painted them to sell. She painted blood and penetration, naked men and women. She might want you to believe that they contain a message, but they don’t. She and Taryn Holt knew what would sell for big bucks and that’s what she went away and painted.’ She looks scornfully at De Vries. ‘Our group know about the art scene in Cape Town and we know that Taryn Holt was not liked. She may have given some money in grants and sponsorships, but she made damn sure she made it back again with interest. She had those artists tied to her for as long as she wanted.’

‘You have had dealings with her before?’

‘I had my opinion of her.’

‘You didn’t like her?’

‘Not very much, no.’

De Vries gets up, glances at Don.

Don February gets out of his chair and squats down next to her.

‘Can I ask you? Miss Holt: had she visited you here?’

Brenda Botes leans away from him, squeezes the word from her lips.

‘Yes.’

‘She was a member of your group?’

‘She would not abide by the wishes of the majority.’

Don nods. He squats lower, so that she is looking down at him, even from her sitting position.

‘But she joined you? Why did she come?’

Brenda Botes drops her head.

‘I cannot tell you that.’

‘But, Miss Holt is dead. Was she a victim?’

‘She said she could not trust men, that they exploited her. But, when we got to know her, the group agreed: she was no victim.’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘She did what she wanted.’

‘And you do not?’

‘Do not? Can not. This is the fate of many women.’

‘So she left?’

She folds her arms.

‘She was asked to leave.’

‘Was there bad feeling between her and your group?’

‘She had promised money for the group. She withdrew it. Taryn Holt was never really part of our group; she was only interested in herself.’

Don nods at her, smiles, turns to De Vries, whose gaze seems out of focus.

‘Then,’ he says quietly, ‘we will leave you.’

‘How,’ De Vries says as he opens the car door, ‘did you know that Taryn Holt had been part of that set-up?’

They both get in.

‘I did not know, but Miss Botes referred to her as Taryn. It was familiar in a way that she was not otherwise.’

‘Very good.’

‘You think that they could pose a threat? That group?’

‘No. I think it is a few women who are afraid and they come together to hold each other’s hands.’

De Vries nods, pulls out from the parking space, smirking.

‘Even so, it seems you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the group?’

Don smiles.

‘No, sir.’

De Vries drives up Vineyard Street, which climbs the mountain close to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. It is 4.30 p.m., and he steers between the steady trickle of descending domestic workers: broad-hipped black housemaids in bright colours, leaning back to balance on the gradient; skinny coloured handymen in tight scruffy suits smoking roll-ups; and blue-boilersuited garden workers, encrusted with lawn clippings. All retrace this morning’s climb, descend to the short stretch of Rhodes Drive, trudge up the main freeway towards the university and wait in a lay-by for a taxi-van to take them home to their township of Langa or Khayelitsha or Mfuleni.

He changes down a gear to take the sharp left turn and makes the vertiginous climb onto Vineyard Heights, locking eyes with a haughty ginger cat, which freezes with its paw raised to its mouth on the bonnet of a parked car, freewheels down to the end of the cul-de-sac, parks by the plain white wall of John Marantz’s house.

John Marantz and he have been friends for almost ten years. Marantz worked for the British government until someone kidnapped his wife and daughter. He has never seen them since. De Vries and Marantz have drunk together, seeking salvation in oblivion. De Vries came to this house to avoid his own – his driven, demanding wife and ambitious daughters; now he is here because he is alone.

He pats Marantz’s Irish terrier, Flynn, and hears his quadraphonic footsteps behind him as the lithe dog overtakes them both on the inside down the long staircase.

‘What,’ De Vries says at the bottom landing, ‘do you know about Holt Industries?’

John Marantz gestures into his kitchen, to a perfectly straight line of six bottled beers on the marble counter.

‘Nothing until I read Taryn Holt had been killed. You got that case?’

‘
Ja
.’

Marantz smiles to himself.

‘You get where the action is, don’t you?’

‘Nowhere else to go . . .’

‘Holt Industries was a product of the old South Africa. Graeme Holt built his companies on the back of the Apartheid regime and the cheap labour market, expanded it throughout Southern Africa. The Nationalist government backed him and he supported them: as a growing business in an otherwise shrinking economy, and personally . . .’

‘I thought you said you knew nothing about this . . . ?’

‘It’s what I was trained to do.’

De Vries levers open a bottle of East Coast Ale, tips it gently into the waiting glass. Marantz watches him. When his family was taken, and the service in London prohibited him from seeking them, he exiled himself to Cape Town to build a house and drink. He drank with De Vries for four long years, marvelled at how De Vries would be at work early the next morning, functionally sober, while he would stay in bed until mid-afternoon, when he would begin again. Now, he sips Dry Lemon and pale, weak cordials, smokes ganja, sleeps when he is not playing poker or following De Vries’s cases, happy to fight battles at the green baize and involve himself in De Vries’s mysteries.

‘I’m still not used to you being a beer drinker.’

De Vries says: ‘My life in alcohol: brandy and coke is an emotional drink; you end up angry, or you end up crying. White wine is basically piss and the red was killing me. You know I have an internal gauge that gets me to work in the morning? The Cabernets were fucking it up. Besides, as I get older, I get thirstier: this works better.’

They walk from the kitchen into the huge triple-height living space looking out over what are usually lush green suburbs close to the Mountain, beyond to the poor suburbs, townships and squatter camps on the Cape Flats and, in the far distance, the Hottentots Holland Mountains and the thin sliver of silver sea at Strand and Gordon’s Bay. The fires have been burning on those mountains on and off since the beginning of the year.

‘What else do you know?’

‘About Holt?’

‘
Ja
.’

‘He was very vocal about what he called “De Klerk’s capitulation”: the decision to release Mandela, to dismantle Apartheid and hold elections. After the ANC came to power, he spent more time outside South Africa, rarely came back. Married once, one daughter – Taryn Holt. Now, they’re all dead: the mother, the father and the daughter. Mother had leukemia, but Graeme Holt’s death was suspicious: a collision, but the other car was never identified. And now, Taryn Holt . . . Murdered, I assume?’

De Vries snorts.

‘How did you know this?’

‘I told you: a news story online, some research. You know I dealt in information.’ He looks down. He knows his wife and daughter must be dead, yet questions this every moment he thinks of them. There has never been confirmation, never closure. He feels the blood draining from his head. He ducks it between his legs. ‘That’s why, to have none for myself, it’s still agony.’

‘You need to get out . . . And, I don’t mean those illegal fucking poker games. I mean out-out. Meet some girls, think about the next part of your life.’

‘That what you’re doing?’

‘Never was a time when I didn’t, Johnnie. Life is short. Take pleasure where you can.’

Marantz takes a sip of Dry Lemon, looks up.

‘Taryn Holt: love or money?’

‘I don’t know . . . But I hope to God it’s one of them.’

Don February rings the bell at the gate to 14 Park Terrace, opposite Taryn Holt’s house. It buzzes open, and Don walks up the narrow path to the front door. The small garden is immaculate, lawn green and mown, bright bedding planted in neat rows. The front door opens as he reaches the little covered porch. He holds up his ID, and the short black woman in an apron squints to study first it and then him.

‘You want to talk to my mistress?’

The words ‘master’ and ‘mistress’ make Don uncomfortable, remind him of how his mother would talk about her employers; he longs for those times to be nothing more than history. He is over ten years short of being a ‘born-free’ – an African born free of Apartheid – but in his adult life, however he chooses to present himself, he has always believed that he is the equal of the next man in the Cape Town street.

‘Yes, please.’

‘You wait here.’

When she closes the door, he can hear her footsteps scurry over the wooden floor, a muted exchange, and then a slim, white, middle-aged women pulls open the door, looks down at him.

‘We have already spoken with you.’

‘You have, madam. But when my colleague talked with you, your daughter was not available.’ He looks at his notebook. ‘You said that she knew your neighbour, Miss Holt.’

The woman frowns.

‘Lorna does not know her. She may have seen her from her window . . . You may come in, but she is doing her homework. You must be quick.’

Don wipes his feet on the mat, steps up over the threshold into the dark hallway. The house smells both damp and clean, cool and somehow musty. The woman leads him to the back of the house, through an old fashioned kitchen and into a dining room. Three small windows overlook a tiny yard at the back, a grandfather clock ticks against the side wall, a teenaged girl sits bent over the long, dark dining table, sheets of paper lined up across the width of the surface in front of her. She is writing and does not look up when they enter the room. Her mother says nothing, waits for her to finish. When she does, she looks first at her mother and then at Don.