The Soldier who Said No (34 page)

‘This letter says you have to be accompanied by a member of the South African Police Service at all times.’

‘We are,’ Henderson said. ‘Look out the window.’ He pointed behind him with his thumb.

De Villiers stood up to look through the window. There was a marked police car in the driveway.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ he said.

He found Liesl in the kitchen preparing a treat for the monkeys, some old bread, a couple of green apples and a bunch of overripe bananas. ‘Give it to me, I’ll take it out,’ De Villiers offered. He left the house via the kitchen door and crept up on the police car from behind.

An obese man in civilian clothes filled half the front of the police car. He was eating a hamburger. De Villiers slid the tray with the monkeys’ food onto the roof of the car and straightened up next to the driver’s window. The monkeys watched attentively from the wall.

‘May I see your appointment card?’ De Villiers asked when the policeman looked up from his meal.

The policeman put the half-eaten hamburger on the dash board and wiped his hands. He dug around in his shirt pocket, tugging with fat fingers at a flimsy card. He held it up for De Villiers to read, not bothering to make eye contact. De Villiers casually spread the contents of the monkeys’ food tray on the roof of the car and leaned forward to read the small print:
Superintendent GD Meyer – SAPS Diplomatic Unit.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ De Villiers asked the policeman.

‘General van den Bergh wants to see you,’ Meyer said.

De Villiers was stunned. ‘What does he have to do with this?’ he asked.

‘He wants to see you. That’s all I know and all I had to tell you.’

De Villiers pressed him for an explanation but Meyer refused to say more. ‘All you need to know is that he wants to see you.’

De Villiers turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the lounge, convinced that it had to be personal. The tea had arrived and he took his time to regain his composure as Liesl asked each of the men in turn what their preferences were with regard to milk and sugar and offered sweet and savoury eats on side plates. They made polite small talk until Liesl, sensing their unease, feigned another commitment and left.

‘What do you want from me?’ De Villiers asked a second time.

Kupenga spoke for the first time. ‘We want you back in Auckland and we’ll arrest you if we have to.’

Outside the monkeys were making a racket, but De Villiers kept a straight face. Superintendent Meyer had got out of the police car and was doing his best to shoo them away, but they paid him scant attention. Some were on the roof of the car while others were hanging in through the open windows. A large male with a blue scrotum had got into the car and was playing with a pair of sunglasses. De Villiers watched as Meyer took his jacket off and took a swipe at the leader of the pack. With nothing else to gain, the monkeys slowly retreated, looking insolently over their shoulders at the policeman at the car.

‘You can’t force me to go back and you can’t arrest me here,’ De Villiers said when Henderson and Kupenga had turned their focus back to him. The thought crossed his mind that it was unnecessary to be difficult. He was going back to New Zealand anyway.

‘We can have you extradited,’ Kupenga argued. ‘You’re no longer welcome here and your visa expires at the end of the month.’

‘Where were you on December 17 when the attempt was made to murder the Prime Minister?’ Henderson asked.

‘I was at work. You should know. That’s the day you suspended me.’

‘You were there at 11:00. The incident at the
PM
’s house was at 9:15. Where were you then? No one saw you until much later. The techs from
IT
looked at your computer. You logged on for the first time at 10:45. So where were you earlier in the day?’

De Villiers tried to remember. He had left all his files at the office and all his cases had been taken over by other detectives. He was unable to give any answer other than, ‘I don’t remember.’

‘We’re going to have to extradite you,’ Henderson affirmed.

De Villiers looked from one to the other and decided that there was nothing to gain by playing games. ‘You needn’t bother. I’ll be back in Auckland in a week.’

‘How do we know you’re not lying?’

‘Wait here,’ De Villiers said, and went to his room.

‘Here,’ he said when he returned. ‘That’s my e-ticket. I’ll be on Qantas and the plane lands in Auckland at 22:15.’

Henderson took the ticket and studied it. He reached into his pocket for a pen and made a show of writing the details down in his pocket book.

Kupenga filled the silence. ‘What have you been doing here?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been receiving medical treatment.’

Henderson stopped writing and looked up. De Villiers could see that he had caught them by surprise.

‘Yes,’ he rubbed it in. ‘I’ve been receiving medical treatment for the last seven weeks. But there’s one week to go and then I’ll be on the plane.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Kupenga said, but De Villiers could see that Henderson had been persuaded.

De Villiers tired of the skirmishing. ‘Ask Mrs Weber, if you don’t believe me. Or better still, why don’t you come with me tomorrow morning and see for yourself.’ He kept his eye on Henderson, but Henderson avoided looking at him.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ De Villiers said. ‘My next treatment is at nine fifteen tomorrow.’

He reached across the coffee table and took Henderson’s pocket book from his hand. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll write the address down for you with directions. I assume Superintendent Meyer will be able to find the place.’

They watched as he scribbled in the pocket book. He placed the pocket book on the coffee table next to !Xau’s arrow. ‘Go there tomorrow morning and speak to anyone from the receptionist in the front to the oncologist upstairs. Ask them to show you their appointment book and their records and anything else your suspicions direct you to.’ He paused before he spoke again. ‘And then leave me the hell alone.’

Henderson placed his pocket book in an inside pocket and stood up. ‘We’ll be waiting for you at the airport.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there,’ De Villiers said, still seated.

‘And you’d better get your story in order,’ Henderson suggested.

He stooped to lift the arrow from the coffee table.

‘And I’m taking this as evidence. Do you want a receipt for it?’

De Villiers shook his head. At the door he warned Henderson, ‘Be careful with that arrow. The poison can kill you.’

When the men saw Liesl snipping with garden shears at an overgrown azalea, they shook hands a second time.

De Villiers stood next to her as the police car negotiated the narrow street towards the security gate.

‘They looked quite serious,’ Liesl said.

‘Let’s go for a walk, or coffee or something,’ he suggested.

‘I nominate tea at the Beverley Hills,’ Liesl said. ‘Give me fifteen minutes. And that was quite nasty, you know. Now they’ve got monkey poo all over their car.’

De Villiers shrugged and smiled. Add that to the charges, he thought.

In the police car Henderson turned to face Kupenga in the back seat. ‘We’re also booked on Qantas. We might as well change our flight to correspond with his, don’t you think?’

‘I’ll email our travel people from the hotel,’ Kupenga said.

‘We’ll pick him up when the plane lands in Auckland,’ Henderson said.

This time it was Kupenga who put the brakes on. ‘Do we have enough to justify a charge?’ he asked.

Detective Inspector Henderson lifted the arrow so that it pointed at the rear-view mirror. ‘If this arrow matches the one we have back in Auckland, and I think it does, our friend is going to have a lot of explaining to do.’

De Villiers was no longer smiling when they arrived at the beach. ‘They were threatening you,’ Liesl remarked as they took seats on the veranda of the Beverley Hills Hotel. Below them the ocean was clear to the horizon. De Villiers struggled to focus on the present and counted seventeen ships of varying sizes waiting at anchor for berths in the port.

‘Not really,’ he said.

Liesl’s laugh brought the conversation at the next table to an abrupt halt. She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled behind it.

‘What’s so funny?’ De Villiers asked.

She responded by showing De Villiers a photo of her sons on her cellphone. ‘Johann says “not really” means “yes” and I couldn’t help remembering that the boys learnt when they were still little never to say “not really”. “Not really” lead to an immediate round of cross-examination.’

De Villiers smiled with her. Even without the use of a magnifying glass or more scientific examination, Henderson and Kupenga would soon conclude that it was an exact match for the one they had in the Exhibits Room back in Auckland, except for the arrowhead, which had been made from fencing wire.

He decided to make a clean breast of it. ‘I think I’m going to be charged in a disciplinary enquiry when I get back home.’

‘Why? Are these two behind it?’

De Villiers nodded and waited for the waiter to place their tea and scones on the table. When the waiter had left, he explained. ‘I called the Maori guy a cannibal and the other one – he’s my boss – suspended me for racism. He called me a japie first,’ De Villiers insisted. ‘It was tit-for-tat.’

Liesl shook her head. ‘Not good.’

When De Villiers didn’t respond, she added, ‘But surely they didn’t come all this way to charge you with that.’

‘No,’ De Villiers was forced to concede. ‘But the rest is highly confidential. I can only tell you the broad outline, okay?’

Liesl nodded, having taken a healthy bite of scone and jam. She wiped her lips on a napkin. ‘But I don’t keep any secrets from Johann. He sniffs them out anyway.’

‘Yes, I’m going to speak to him about it because I need help with my defence and how to handle the enquiry.’

Below the hotel’s sun terrace a heavy set of waves crashed onto the rocky shore sending spray high up into the air. It was chilly and the beach was deserted.

‘From what you’ve said, you’re going to face a raft of charges.’

‘For sure.’

Liesl smiled. ‘I have to warn you. Johann thinks all his clients are guilty.’

De Villiers went into the city early and spent the afternoon in the public library a few hundred yards from Johann Weber’s chambers. Both Dr MacDonald and the senior radiographer had told him at the oncology centre that he would grow progressively more tired as the radiation treatments accumulated, but he felt strangely invigorated as he planned each stage of his operation.

The library was as dishevelled as the streets outside the City Hall. De Villiers carefully scrutinised the sports news of each of the newspapers on display in the news section. When he had finished, he asked the librarian for the previous week’s editions. He stalked his targets through the pages of the papers, finding the details he required in the most innocuous places. And when he had gathered all he needed, he left to fetch Johann Weber from work.

At a traffic light where they were obliged to stop, De Villiers glanced at Weber’s hands, neatly folded in his lap. They were the soft hands of a lawyer, a man of books and words and principles. They were not hands that could kill.

They settled in Weber’s study to plan De Villiers’s defence and tactics for his disciplinary hearing. Liesl Weber had been right. Johann Weber summarily pronounced De Villiers guilty on all counts and then set about sketching a detailed plan for what he called an aggressive defence.

‘The defence,’ he said, ‘must be so aggressive that it knocks them back behind the advantage line.’

But De Villiers had no desire to denigrate Kupenga. They would have to work in the same squad room afterwards.

Weber must have seen the doubt in his eyes. ‘And if you can’t take the accuser out, you must pick a fight with the judge or the chairman of the enquiry and hope that they make a mistake.’

‘Can we talk about General van den Bergh?’ De Villiers asked.

Johann Weber was taken aback. ‘What does he have to do with it?’

‘He sent me a message that he wants to see me,’ De Villiers explained. ‘And I think he’s the one who directed Henderson and Kupenga here to your house.’

Weber opened the drawer of his desk and opened a cigar box. ‘Have one,’ he said. ‘Liesl’s gone to bed.’

‘What car do you drive?’ he asked Marissa as she tugged his underpants down to allow a clear field for the machine’s rays.

‘A Beetle,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

De Villiers stared at the barrel of the machine. ‘If you can drive a Beetle, you can drive a Porsche,’ he ventured.

Marissa grunted as she pushed at his legs to get him properly aligned. ‘No way. The one is a sports car and the other is a donkey. Lie still. I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said, satisfied with his positioning.

The machine started humming and the rays did their work. De Villiers could feel a slight warming of the skin in the exposed area immediately above the base of his bladder. What was left of his cancer below the skin and tissue was being cooked, he hoped, until not a single living prostate cell would be left. The thought struck him that the rays were like guided missiles released to strike at selected targets.

‘We inevitably have collateral damage,’ Dr MacDonald had warned, ‘but we can talk about that later. Our first priority is to kill as many prostate cells as possible with as little damage to healthy tissue as possible. It will take about thirty-five to forty treatments, and we’ll kill some healthy cells, but we are sure to kill the cancerous ones.’

That was almost two months ago, De Villiers remembered, and now he was on treatment thirty.

‘It’s easier to ride a horse than a donkey,’ he said when he heard Marissa’s footsteps next to the gurney.

She pulled the barrel of the machine over to the side. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well, a horse is specially designed for riding, but a donkey is just for carrying things. And I’ve ridden both donkeys and horses and I know.’

The machine started humming without warning and he realised Marissa must have retreated to her controls behind the lead-lined wall.