Whitethorn (95 page)

Sergeant Van Niekerk thought for a moment, ‘
Ja
, I know someone, maybe their bitch is having pups.' He looked at me. ‘You know, Tom, you weren't born yesterday, hey?'

The next stop on the witness trail was Pissy Vermaak who had recently opened for business in Fordsburg, an inner-city suburb with a high proportion of Cape Coloured and Indian people. It was the centre of an alternative city culture rapidly growing up in Johannesburg. I'd been with Bobby from the basement at Polliack's to Uncle Joe's Café, an establishment that featured African and coloured jazz groups and singers such as Dollar Brand and Kippie Moeketsi. I'd also been with Pirrou for the same reason and, as well, to eat at an Indian restaurant, The Bombay Bus, nearly as famous for its curry as the renowned Turkeys in the centre of the city.

The Lonely Hunter, Pissy's new bathhouse and members-only club, was only one street back from Uncle Joe's Café and sported its name on a small blue neon sign, at the time considered pretty posh signage. But my visit was at eleven in the morning when the club was shut; it only opened in the mid-afternoon. I'd called previously, asking Pissy if he'd visit me in my office. He'd insisted that he dearly wanted me to see his club and it seemed churlish to refuse. Pissy agreed to wait for me in the reception area. I'd braced myself at the prospect of meeting the odious Meneer Prinsloo, telling myself it was all in a day's work. But childhood fears never go away and as I entered the premises I could feel my heart pounding and my mouth going dry. Pissy, true to his word, was waiting – seated prim and cross-legged on a bright purple lounge in the reception area, all very modern in the latest Danish-style light-coloured pinewood.

‘Howsit, Tom!' he called, rising to greet me as I entered. ‘Welcome to the Lonely Hunter, let me show you around, man.'

‘Kobus, we've got quite a bit to get through,' I replied hesitantly.

‘Not Kobus, Tom. Now it's Pissy for keeps. Maybe I'll change it by deed poll, hey. In the club business Pissy is a good name.' He took me by the elbow. ‘
Ag
, come, it won't take long, you must see where my copper bonus went, hey. To make a place like this, it swallows money,' he declared proudly.

Pissy's club was surprisingly well done, all in much the same taste as the reception area. It comprised a bar where patrons could be seated, an area extending from the bar with a dozen tables where drinkers could sit or order
à la carte
from the modern professional kitchen, a small gymnasium, men's locker room, toilets and a not very large steam room.

‘The private one is much larger and is at the back, like that one in Pretoria, it's got a side entrance and you must announce yourself and your club number. All very hush-hush, you understand? We don't want rubbish.'

After the inspection tour he ushered me into a small private sitting room. Upon entering I received the shock of my life. To a small child grown-ups always look big. Meneer Prinsloo was a huge and vastly obese man whose looming, stomach-propelled presence had been the stuff of nightmares when I'd been a small boy. Seated on a small lounge sat what was certainly once a tall man, huddled, pencil-thin, clothed only in some sort of hastily fashioned nappy. Flaps of semitranslucent excess skin fell in scallops from his exposed body and limbs. His head was completely bald but for a few nascent tufts of downy hair and his face was beardless and the colour of putty, but had two great jowls hanging from his near-skeletal skull. His sharp fleshless nose assumed the appearance of a beak and his tiny agate eyes darted around the room, not able to focus for a moment on anything. They seemed to be the only objects in his pale, inert frame that possessed life. What was once his gargantuan, braces-busting stomach was now reduced to a large apron of skin resting on, and almost concealing, the dirty towelling nappy. The bones of his legs traced down to large, splayed feet with curved, yellowed untrimmed toenails extending beyond his toes. In fact, that was exactly it! Meneer Prinsloo had turned into a scrawny giant rooster, plucked and ready to be dropped into a steaming cauldron in hell, chicken soup for demons and devils.

‘Cancer and then a stroke on the right side, then later two more,' Pissy said nonchalantly. ‘Nice retirement present, hey?'

I turned to Pissy and spoke in a half-whisper. ‘Can he hear us?'

‘I dunno, man. Maybe yes, maybe no.'

‘Does he understand what's going on?'

Pissy shrugged, indifferent. ‘Who knows, man.'

‘Pissy, shouldn't he be in hospital?'

Pissy thought for a moment. ‘He'll be dead in a month, the doctor says so, it's cancer of everything, man.'

‘And you
want
to take care of him?'

Pissy shrugged. ‘He's dying, man, what can a person do?'

The room reeked of the pungent smell of urine and the pervasive smell of excrement. I sniffed. ‘And you keep him here in this little room?'

‘
Ag
, it's the cancer, it smells like that,' Pissy explained, then added, ‘He lives in a shed in the backyard. I've got a
kaffir
girl. She changes his nappy and feeds him. Sometimes she washes him, but I think it hurts him when you touch his skin.' Pissy looked at me with a pained expression. ‘I do the best by him that I can.'

‘Pissy, why?'

‘Why what?'

‘Well, why have you shown him to me?'

Pissy looked momentarily confused. ‘I thought you'd like to see what happened to him, Tom. Like it's your sweet revenge, man.'

I shook my head. ‘Bullshit! Pissy, you're lying to me again.'

‘No, Tom, I swear it! You not the first one.'

‘Pissy, what the fuck are you trying to say?'

Pissy grinned. ‘It's like, you know, my publicity campaign.' Then he added, ‘It happened clean by mistake.'

‘Your publicity campaign? Who is? Meneer Prinsloo?'

‘Tom, you right, this room smells of shit. Come, we go sit at the bar, hey? Maybe a drink, a beer, Scotch, brandy, we got anything you want. I can make you an American cocktail, a Manhattan or a martini?'

Seated at the bar, Pissy poured me a beer and a Scotch for himself, then came from behind the bar and took the stool beside me. ‘
Geluk
! Luck!' he said as we touched glasses. He took a small sip from his Scotch and placed it down on the bar. ‘Now let me tell you a story, Tom. About six months ago, one night sitting here at the bar is a lone stranger, that is what we call our private members from the big bathhouse at the back. They say it only to each other. It's not for public consumption, you understand? He's a bit drunk and he wants to talk, it's a Monday night so I'm not so busy at the bar. Then in the conversation he mentions Duiwelskrans where he grew up. I tell him me also, I once lived in that
dorp
. Then it comes out he was at The Boys Farm about five years before us. “I wonder what happened to that bastard, Prinsloo?” he says. I don't tell him I know. Then moments later, right in front of my eyes he starts to cry. I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder. “You okay?” I ask. “
Ja
,” he sniffs, but then it's on again, he can't help himself. “I was only ten when he fucked me!” he said, then he cries and cries and it was just lucky the bar was empty. When, after a long time, he stopped, I say to him, “Me also,
ou maat
! Prinsloo did it to me also.” ' Pissy looked at me. ‘Then we got
really
drunk, him and me. So I say to him, “Come, let me show you what happened to Meneer Prinsloo.” It's late, the club is closed. I take a torch and I take him into the backyard and show him what's in the shed.'

‘Jesus! So you decided to do the same with me. Meneer Prinsloo didn't rape me! I'm not a victim.' But, of course, that wasn't strictly true, I was simply a different kind of victim.

‘No, listen a moment, Tom. I know that. But there's more. You haven't heard the end of the story.' He took a fairly hefty slug of Scotch. ‘A week maybe goes past and the lone stranger comes back with a friend who he says wants to be a member. Then he tells me it's happened to him also at The Boys Farm and can he see Meneer Prinsloo. It's been six months, now there's ten already. It's on the grapevine and then there's others, not from The Boys Farm, but lone strangers who had the same thing happen to them, only at other institutions, and they also want to see what happens, what God does to a paedophile, they
also
want revenge.'

I was shocked. ‘What? You've got him on exhibition?' I pointed in the direction of the private sitting room. ‘In that miserable little room. He sits all day in that room on display?'

‘No, normally we only bring him out at night. The
kaffir
girl brings him to the back door in a wheelbarrow, then her and me, we carry him in.' Pissy gave a bitter laugh. ‘I told you in the hospital in Bulawayo, he's someone who knows how to run front of house, a very respectable old man and a good Afrikaner!'

‘Pissy, that's unconscionable behaviour, it . . . it isn't decent!' I exclaimed, unable to think of a more reprehensible word.

‘
Ja
, maybe, but who said I was decent? Now I got maybe fifty more members, lone strangers, all because Meneer Prinsloo is sitting in there dying for everyone to see. In the end his front of house paid off big-time, man!'

‘You can't mean that?'

‘No, you wrong, Tom, I do! If ten lone strangers have come from The Boys Farm, how many more, hey? How many more little kids like me has he buggered? Tell me, man, do you really think he deserves to die peacefully with clean sheets in a hospital? You know why I
really
brought him out for you this morning?'

‘Yes, you told me, revenge.'

‘
Ja
, that, but also something else.'

‘What, Pissy?'

‘Tom, I've got a life now. People know me. They like me, man. This is
my
club. To some people I'm an important man. Pissy Vermaak, club owner. It's only a few more days, then he's dead and gone, it's finish and
klaar
. I've been a lone stranger all my life, now when he's dead, who knows, maybe I can forget. But first can you do me a big favour? I dunno if he understands, but I think so. I hope so.' He pointed towards the room. ‘The main reason why I have him in there is because the doctor said sometimes they have these strokes but they can still know what's going on around them. Inside their brain there's nothing wrong. I want the dirty bastard to see his victims and to suffer.'

‘So, what's the favour?' I asked, curious despite my extreme disquiet at what he was telling me.

‘Will you tell him you going to have a murder trial for the pig boy? It's all going to come out about him! The whole world is going to know what he did to helpless little boys. If you do this for me then I promise I won't put him on exhibition anymore and he can die in a hospital in peace.' Pissy gave me a wan smile. He sounded tired and looked a lot older than his thirty-one years on this earth.

I shook my head. ‘I can't do that, he wasn't directly involved in the murder.'

‘Oh, yes he was!' Pissy suddenly protested. ‘It was
him
who also encouraged Mevrou and her brothers to do it. He was afraid people would find out about what he was doing to me! He told me himself, only two years ago, before he got sick and got the strokes. He said he loved me, he couldn't live without me, he couldn't take the risk people would find out!'

‘And you will testify to this under oath in court?'

‘
Ja
, of course.'

‘But remember in Bulawayo you said you wouldn't cooperate.'

‘Tom, I didn't know then what I know now. You know, I
really
thought that old man loved me. How can a man be so stupid, hey?'

‘Pissy, in affairs of the heart there's no such thing as stupid, the need to be loved paralyses every sense except our emotional reactions. We will do almost anything and believe almost anything to be loved,' I said, trying to comfort him.

‘Tom, you got your willing witness, I'll say anything you want.'

I laughed, partly to dispel the sombre atmosphere. ‘No, Pissy, for once in your life just tell the truth. That's all we're going to need.' I glanced towards the door of the private sitting room. ‘Now, do you want me to go and do what you asked?'

He shook his head. ‘No, Tom, already I'm feeling a lot better.'

‘And you'll take him to a hospice?'

‘Hospice?'

‘A place, a hospital, where he can die in peace.'

‘
Ja
, I promise.'

C
HAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Love Comes Full Circle

WITH PISSY VERMAAK a willing and cooperative witness, Exhibit A in our possession, Frikkie's notes transcribed and carefully cross-referenced and annotated, together with the original scraps of notepaper all signed and, a month before his death, formulated into a sworn affidavit, I felt we had sufficient evidence to proceed. This information, together with the police files compiled at the time of the murder, was about as good as it was ever likely to be.