Authors: Deon Meyer
At ten past one he knocked on Prof Pagel’s office door at the University of Stellenbosch’s Health Sciences faculty next to the Tygerberg Hospital.
‘Come in,’ called the well-modulated voice.
Prof Pagel, with his long, aristocratic face, sat behind the desk. As usual he was flamboyantly dressed. He was tanned and fit for his close to sixty years.
‘Nikita,’ said the pathologist as if he were genuinely happy to see Griessel. Pagel had been calling him ‘Nikita’ for thirteen years. He had given Griessel one look back then and said, ‘I am sure that’s what the young Khrushchev looked like.’
‘Afternoon, Prof.’
‘Come in, take a seat. And how was your evening with the rich and famous?’
He had forgotten he had asked Pagel’s advice about the cocktail party. ‘
Ai
, Prof,’ he said now. ‘Not too good.’
‘Whatever happened?’
Griessel told him. The whole truth.
Pagel threw back his big head and laughed. And Benny, burning with shame, could only smile weakly, because he knew it would have been funny, if it weren’t about himself.
‘Let me tell you,’ said Pagel once he had calmed down, ‘about my great faux pas, Nikita. You know who Luciano Pavarotti was?’
‘That fat guy, Prof? With the handkerchief?’
‘The very one, Nikita, in my opinion the best tenor in history. Phenomenal voice. I’m not talking about his later years, the more popular work, I am talking about his prime. Perfect pitch. He sang so unselfconsciously, so effortlessly. Incredible. In any case, to say I was a fan was an understatement. I had every recording, I listened to them over and over, it was my dream to hear him in real life, just once. And then, in 1987, he and Joan Sutherland held a concert at the Met in New York. Sutherland, Nikita. La Stupenda. The soprano of sopranos. And my good friend James Cabot of Johns Hopkins let me know he hadn’t just got tickets, he could get us into the dressing room afterwards. I could meet Pavarotti. To cut a long story short, Nikita, for the first time in my life I had the money and the time, and we went over, to New York. Sat and listened to the concert. Overwhelming, indescribable. The quartet from
Rigoletto
, magnificent, I shall remember it all my life. Anyway, afterwards we went backstage. Now you must know, I had been practising my little bit of opera Italian for two weeks, I wanted to express my admiration for the man in his own language. I wanted to say: “
Voi siete magnifici. Sono un grande fan
.” You are wonderful, I am a huge fan. But I went blank, Nikita, just like you did with the lovely Miss Beekman. Totally star-struck, overwhelmed by the moment, I told the man I admired so much: “
Sono magnifici
.” I am wonderful.’ And Phil Pagel laughed heartily again.
‘Genuine, Prof?’ asked Griessel in amazement.
‘Genuine, Nikita. The man gave me an astonished look, turned
away and began to talk to someone else. By the time I realised the extent of my faux pas, it was too late. For months afterwards I still blushed and regretted it and reproached myself. But all you can really do is laugh. And know your intention was true. And still enjoy the delight of his voice.’
Griessel felt the relief slowly spread through him. If something like that could happen to Phil Pagel, this man for whom he had such admiration …
‘A
vopah
, prof?’
‘Faux pas,’ Pagel spelled the word. ‘French. For making an idiot of yourself. It takes the sting out of the concept somewhat.’
‘Faux pas,’ Griessel tested it. He liked it.
‘Happens to all of us. But you’re not here to listen to embarrassing stories, Nikita …’ He pulled a thick file closer. ‘As a consequence of your call I took another look at my Sloet notes. Reminds me of our assegai case a few years back. Do you remember, Artemis, the vigilante murderer?’
‘I remember it well, Prof.’
‘That was the last time I saw similar wound pathology, Nikita. Not identical. Similar. The single stab wound in Sloet is problematic, it offers much less data. So, any conclusion by definition must be speculative. But you’re here because you want me to speculate.’
‘Please, Prof.’
‘This murder weapon has characteristics in common with an assegai blade. The diamond geometry – hence the shape, if you examine the blade from the front, it is created in the manufacture of the blade. The length: there is no bruising from a hilt or hand guard. The even angle of the stabbing point. But there are a few crucial differences. And I must reiterate, Nikita, it’s speculation, since we only have a single stab wound, directly from the front. Nevertheless: the diamond geometry seems more prominent here, the central ridge about five millimetres thicker. Width of the blade is again about a centimetre narrower than the cross section of the assegai. These are measurements that might fit a sword, but the cutting edges are too unequal, it seems as though the workmanship is hasty and amateurish. He wanted to sharpen it, but not necessarily neatly. That is why I wrote down “home-made” first. The more I looked and measured, the more
I got the idea that it was a blade made in a backyard. A metal stave that was filed and honed, from inside to outside, to get the diamond form, and the razor-sharp blades. The spectroscope analysis was not conclusive, there was too little residue, but that was my feeling, Nikita.’
‘Prof, he brought this thing along with him. So it couldn’t have been too big or too heavy.’
‘I can tell you the blade was definitely longer than twenty centimetres. But let’s look at the wound location and the stab angle. A short weapon typically produces an angle of 130 degrees or more in the chest – the up- or downward stabbing action of a knife or a dagger, for maximum momentum. The Sloet stab angle is just less than a hundred degrees. Thus from slightly above. If you take the standard deviation for human height into account, it looks like a horizontal action. Again, like a sword. Which tells me it was a longer weapon. Forty centimetres or more. Even if the weapon were sixty or seventy centimetres long, according to the breadth and width and average weight of steel, it need not have weighed more than a kilogram …’
Griessel shook his head. ‘But why, Prof? Why make such a long thing and bring it along? It’s a lot of trouble. Except if you want to frighten someone. But this
ou
didn’t want to scare. He wanted to kill.’
‘Forensically speaking it’s safe, Nikita. Clever. No ballistic trail, no physical contact with the victim …’
Griessel thought about it. Then he told Pagel about PCSI’s latest discovery this morning, and the theory that she had been holding something in her hand.
‘Mmm,’ said Pagel, and picked up his reading glasses. He opened the file, talking while he looked for something. ‘I doubt it. One of the strange things – the lack of defensive wounds, or bruises,’ he said deep in thought. ‘It was like a surprise attack. From the front. But there was one small anomaly … Ah, here it is …’ He glanced up at Griessel. ‘Pathologically there is no evidence that anything was taken out of her hand. The other possibility, something I noticed during the autopsy: she wasn’t wearing panties, Nikita. In itself that is not significant. It was a hot summer evening, the temperature in the high twenties. As I am led to understand, women sometimes find underwear uncomfortable in the heat. After all she was alone at home, slip out of the panties, the bra maybe just too much trouble to get rid of?
Now, following on from your new forensic evidence one wonders: did he perhaps remove the panties, post mortem? Or cut them off? Not unheard of, as you know.’
‘A keepsake, Prof,’ said Griessel reluctantly, because it opened up a hornets’ nest, the world of the serial killer, someone who liked to keep something from every victim.
‘Indeed, Nikita. The memento. To take off the panties, he would have to put the weapon down.’
He didn’t want to be late for his half past two appointment with the two girl friends, so he phoned the DPCI office while he drove and asked to talk to Captain Philip van Wyk of IMC. He must get the possibility of a serial killer into the system, even though the evidence was slim. But the clean crime scene and the single wound could point to an organised, experienced serial killer. As far as he knew, they weren’t investigating a similar modus operandi in the Cape.
He got van Wyk on the line at last. He could hear the Information Centre was busy, and explained hastily what he wanted.
‘We will have to ask IPS in Pretoria to look nationally,’ said van Wyk, referring to the Investigative Psychology Section. ‘We don’t believe there are locally related cases. It could take a while, but I will set the wheels in motion immediately. Listen, the people doing your graphs have come across something.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ll give the phone to Fanie Fick …’
‘Philip, just a second …’
‘Yes?’
‘You do have Sloet’s banking details?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you see who did her insurance?’
‘Short or long term?’
‘Short term.’
‘That’s an easy one.’
‘I want to know if she insured any very valuable stuff. Jewels … I don’t know, anything relatively small and worth a lot of money.’
‘Will do.’
‘Did you find anything about the Kia?’
‘A couple of possibles so far. CATS are following up now.’
‘Thanks. Philip, you can hand over to Fick now.’
‘Here he is …’
‘Benny?’ Fanie ‘Fucked’ Fick asked after a moment, his voice quiet and apologetic. His habitual tone ever since the humiliation of the Steyn case.
‘You found something?’
‘Maybe. You know about the SMS Sloet sent the night of her death, around 21.52?’
He had to think about that first. ‘Yes … To Henry van Eeden, I think.’
‘That’s right. We plotted van Eeden’s number along with all the rest. And we found two calls from him to Sloet, later that night. The first was at 22.48, the second around 23.01. She didn’t answer either of them, but I see the pathologist says the time of death was around 22.00, with two hours of play either side. So she could have been dead already …’
‘Van Eeden phoned
her
…’
‘That’s right. But now I must add, his first call registered on the Vodacom tower at Somerset West, the one at 22.48. And thirteen minutes later, at 23.01, the second call registered on the towers at Nyanga and Gugulethu. Seems he was on the N2, on the way to the city.’
‘OK,’ said Griessel, while he tried to understand it.
‘So you knew about that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘That’s the only funny thing we’ve picked up so far.’
He stopped in front of the offices of Blue Oceans Productions in Prestwich Street where he was going to interview Sloet’s two friends. He was a few minutes late, but he looked up Henry van Eeden’s number on his cellphone first, and pressed call.
It rang only three times before the man answered. Griessel identified himself, van Eeden’s voice was just as warm as it had been the day before. ‘Afternoon, Captain. I’m glad you’re phoning …’
‘How so?’
‘Yesterday … After you left here yesterday, something kept bothering
me. Something that Hanneke had said, I just couldn’t place it, it is two months ago after all. It’s relevant to what you said about a communist who might be involved.’
‘Yes?’
‘Late last night, I remembered what it was. On the twenty-second of December we had a short meeting, with representatives of all the big role players, just before Christmas. Just after we adjourned, Hanneke took a call on her phone. She seemed a little upset, so I asked her if everything was OK, and she said, yes, just an annoying Russian.’
‘An annoying Russian?’
‘That’s right. But the Russians haven’t been communists for a long time, that’s why I didn’t immediately make the connection. It might be irrelevant, but I thought I would mention it to you.’
‘You don’t know who the Russian is?’
‘No, sorry …’
‘Thank you, Mr van Eeden, we will see if we can find anything. I wonder if you could help me to understand something else.’
‘Naturally, if I can—’
‘Our records say you phoned Hanneke Sloet twice, the night of her murder.’
‘That’s right. I informed Sergeant Nxesi about it.’ Van Eeden’s tongue-clicking pronunciation of the Xhosa surname was perfect.
‘I don’t see a reference in the file. Can you tell me why you phoned her?’
‘Of course. About her SMS.’
‘But she sent the SMS before ten. You only phoned just before eleven …’
‘I only received it at about a quarter to eleven. I was a speaker at the BEE conference at the Lord Charles …’
‘In Somerset West.’
‘That’s right. You know how it is, you turn your phone off when you’re talking. I finished about half past ten, and switched my phone back on when I walked to my car. That’s when I got her SMS. And so I phoned her back.’
‘What did the SMS say?’
‘I can’t remember the exact words, but it was about the report she had sent. She wanted me to look at it urgently.’
‘Why did you phone her?’
‘I wanted to tell her I would only be able to look at it the following day.’
‘And she didn’t answer?’
‘That’s right. I thought she might be in the bath. So I phoned again, on the way home.’
‘You didn’t leave a message.’
‘I didn’t think it was necessary. She would have seen the missed calls.’
Aldri de Koker was plump and soft, with a maternal air about her. ‘Hanneke and I were roomies at varsity,’ she said.
‘We did Private Law together in second year,’ said Samantha (‘call me Sam’) Grobler, the film producer. They sat in the reception room of Blue Ocean Productions, all black leather and glass, framed film posters against the wall. Grobler was tall and very slim, with high, prominent cheekbones. The tightly fitting blouse showed a breast measurement completely out of keeping with her slimness. Griessel wondered whether she had also had a boob job.
‘It feels as though we always knew each other,’ said de Koker.
‘We miss her every day.’
‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’
‘She’s in a better place … ’
‘I know …’
‘You both talked to Hanneke on the eighteenth?’ Griessel asked.