Bless you Jesus!
15
LIKE DOGS, I’M SURE THEY CAN SMELL FEAR.
Something wakes me.
My eyes feel as though they have sand in them, reminding me that I haven’t had enough sleep. I look down and see that I have slept clutching my pen to my heart. My notebook is at my bent knee. I feel oddly at peace with the world. I think I’m even smiling a little.
The doorbell rings. That’s what must have woken me. I swear under my breath at whichever hawker is getting me out of bed at this hour but it fails to dampen my mood. I get ready to yell and shake my fist.
I look through the peephole and see a uniform. I rub my eyes.
Blue. SAPS blue. Then I see another. Their squad car is parked politely in my visitor’s bay.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the face.
Has something happened? Has my car been stolen? The neighbour been burgled? Has my father had a heart attack?
Have they caught me buying a fake driver’s license?
Did they catch me buying drugs? Those sneaky anti-crime cameras in the dodgy parts of the city can pick up number plates. It doesn’t help that mine is personalised. It reads ‘MERCENARY’ in honour of my first novel, when now, in retrospect, I think it should read JACKASS.
I jab the speaker button.
“Hello?” I say with all the calm I can.
“Open up please sir, this is the police.”
“The police?”
So I wasn’t imagining it.
“Yes, sir, this is the police.”
Oh my God, I know something is wrong. Maybe if I don’t let them in they will go away.
“Well, what do you want?”
They speak amongst themselves. I hear eish-ing and shushing, ambush sounds, as if they’re discussing how to break down the security gate so that they can slap cuffs on me and drag me to the car.
“We have some questions, Mr Harris,” says one.
“Just open the gate, sir,” says the other.
“Please,” adds the first one.
Oh God. Good cop, bad cop. I’m about to let them in when I remember the giant mind map on the kitchen table. I run through, scrunch it up and look for somewhere to hide it. I feel panic rising and try to keep a level head. I end up dumping it in the laundry hamper in the bathroom and cover it with a towel. Out of breath, I press the buzzer to open the gate and with shaking hands I unlock and open my front door. They both stop in their tracks when they lay eyes on me. I look down and see that I’m only wearing a pair of jocks. In my fright I hadn’t thought of what I had on.
“Come inside,” I say. “Let me just throw on some pants.”
Pants? Why did I say pants?
The Good Cop smiles. Toujours la politesse. The taller one avoids eye contact. I throw open my cupboard and reach for the first things I see: torn jeans and grubby t-shirt. I lead them to the kitchen. They decline cappuccinos. They probably hate people who drink cappuccinos. They probably despise people who sit at arty cafes and smoke Vogues while talking about literature and sipping frothy coffee drinks. They probably drink neat Ricoffy, black and scalding, or burnt, tepid filter coffee, while they find missing persons and hunt down dangerous criminals and make the world a better place.
They also decline fresh squeezed juice from my Juicerator and Francina’s favourite pecan nut rusks.
The taller one is still not meeting my gaze. I look down again and see that I’m wearing an old varsity shirt that says ‘Half Man, Half Horse’.
I’m sure they can tell I’m nervous. I’m fluttering around the kitchen like Albert Goldman in Birdcage. I plug in the cappuccino machine anyway and flick the switch. I try to calm down.
Like dogs, I’m sure they can smell fear.
“Would you like to sit down?” I ask, sure that they’ll shake their heads. They don’t have time to lounge around my kitchen. They’ve got serious cop business to attend to.
They nod and pull up a chair. I gulp and sit down with them. I read the names off their badges. Madinga and Sello. Shifty-eyed Sello. It occurs to me that I didn’t ask for any kind of identification. I don’t want to piss them off and it’s probably too late anyway, seeing as they’re sitting in my kitchen with revolvers on their hips.
“Do you mind if I… can I ask you for… some ID?” I ask, too bright by far.
They look at each other as if I’ve told them an old joke. Each suppressing a sigh, they reach for their cards and flash them at me, too fast for me to register anything but badly-lit photos and the same names glinting on their golden badges. The cards are back in the shadows of their pockets before I have time to blink. Seem all right. But what the fuck do I know? They may have ordered them from the same place I bought my fake driving license. I wouldn’t know the difference. It’s not pretty to be paranoid, but paranoid people live longer, I’ve read that somewhere. And now I have the distinct feeling that something bad has happened.
“Mister Harris?” Madinga asks, rather too late in the game.
“Present.” I say.
“We have some bad news for you.”
I knew it! I knew it! Something horrible has happened. Cops don’t just show up at your door for nothing. Madinga pronounced ‘bad’ like ‘bed’. Bed news.
“And some questions.”
“Well,” I say, “can I have the good news first?”
Madinga blinks at me. Intent, Sello looks at the magnets on my refrigerator. They don’t have time to lighten the mood. They prefer the Wham-Bam approach to police work.
“Mister Harris,” Sello says, and my face pales in anticipation. “Evelyn Shaw was found murdered this morning.”
His words take the breath from my lungs.
I realise mid-chortle that I’m chortling and stop. There are blades slicing up my brain.
“What do you mean?”
Sello takes a moment and then repeats himself. And still it takes a while for the words to make sense to me.
Eve. Dead. This morning.
When I finally grasp it I feel like the world is tumbling out of my body. I try to breathe in and out so that I don’t faint on the hard shiny floor tiles, but I’m not doing such a great job. I’m dizzy. I hold onto the kitchen countertop with one hand and scratch my head with the other. Then I put my hands behind my head, elbows akimbo, and walk around the kitchen trying to get oxygen into my lungs. The pressed ceiling above me is a blur.
“Dead?” I say, hoping that I have heard wrong.
“Eve is dead? Murdered?” Hoping for anything but what these indifferent men have just told me. I know I’m pulling a strange face and I’m sorry they are here to see it.
“What happened? How do you know it was murder?” I ask.
Sello shrugs. I feel like punching him in the face.
“A car was spotted at the bottom of the river this morning by a pedestrian crossing the bridge. A beige Land Rover. We pulled it up and she was in there. We thought it was strange that… that she didn’t try to get out – then we saw the lady had been killed – before she went in the river.”
“What river?” I demanded.
“The Vaal,” says Sello without taking his eyes off my Juicerator. I realise Sello isn’t rude; he’s just not good at dealing with delivering bed news.
I feel like laughing, smacking the guys on their backs and looking for a hidden camera because I can’t imagine this news to be true.