'Is that the best you have?'
The operator was white, a little man, owl-like behind big round Harry Potter spectacles. He shrugged.
'Can you enlarge this?'
'Not really,' he answered in a nasal voice. 'I can fiddle with the brightness and contrast a little, but if you zoom in, you just get grain. You can't increase the pixels.'
'Could you try, please?'
The Owl worked the dials in front of him. 'Don't expect miracles.' On the screen the figures ran backwards slowly and froze. The man pecked at a keyboard and tables and histograms appeared over the image.
'Which one do you want to see better?'
'The people chasing her.'
The operator used a mouse to select two of the last five figures. They suddenly filled the screen. He tapped the keyboard again and the image brightened, the shadows lightened. 'All I can try is a high pass sharpen ...' he said. The focus sharpened slightly, but neither of the figures was recognisable.
'You can at least see they are men and that the one in front is black,' said the Owl. Vusi stared at the screen. It wasn't going to help him much.
'You can see they are young men.'
'Can you print this?'
'OK.'
'Are they only on one camera?'
'My shift finishes at eight. I'll have a look if there's something else then. They must have come from Greenmarket or Church Street, but it will take time. There are sixteen cameras in that section. But they don't all work any more.'
'Thanks,' said Vusi Ndabeni. One thing he couldn't understand. If one of the pursuers was only three strides behind her in Pepper Street, why hadn't he caught her before the church? It was five hundred metres away, maybe more. Had he slipped? Fallen? Or deliberately waited for a quieter place.
'One more thing, if you don't mind ...'
'Hey, it's my work.'
'Can you enlarge the two running in front?'
Griessel walked into the sitting room behind Dekker. It was a large room with big couches and chairs and a huge coffee table, tasteful, old and well restored. Small, delicate Tinkie Kellerman of SAPS Social Services sat upright in an easy chair that dwarfed her. She was the one they sent for when the victim or the suspect was a woman, because she had compassion and empathy, but now there was a frown of unease on her face.
'Ma'am, let me take those bags off your hands,' said Jimmy jovially to Alexandra Barnard, a hunched figure in a white dressing gown. She sat on the edge of a large four-seater couch, elbows on her knees, head hung low, and unwashed grey and blonde hair hiding her face. She held out her hands without looking up. Jimmy loosened the brown paper bags.
'I just have to press these discs on your hands. They are sticky, but that's all ...' He broke the seal on the SEM box and took out the round metal discs. Griessel saw Alexandra Barnard's hands trembling, but her face was still hidden behind her long hair.
He and Dekker each picked a chair. Dekker opened his notebook.
Jimmy worked quickly and surely, first the right hand and then the left. 'There you go, thank you, madam.' He gave the detectives a look that said 'Here's an interesting one', and then he packed away his things.
'Mrs Barnard ...' said Dekker.
Tinkie Kellerman shook her head slightly, as if to say the suspect was not communicative. Jimmy walked out rolling his eyes.
'Mrs Barnard,' said Dekker, this time louder and more businesslike.
'I didn't do it,' she said without moving, in a surprisingly deep voice.
'Mrs Barnard, you have the right to legal representation. You have the right to remain silent. But if you choose to answer our questions, anything you say may be used in court.'
'I didn't do it.'
'Do you want to contact your lawyer?'
'No,' and slowly she raised her head and pushed the hair back on either side of her face, revealing bloodshot blue eyes and skin an unhealthy hue. Griessel saw the regular features, hints of former beauty under the tracks of abuse. He knew her, he knew a version of this face, but he couldn't quite place it, not yet. She looked at Dekker, then at Griessel. Her only expression was one of total weariness. She stretched out a hand to a small table beside her and picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She struggled to open the pack and take out a cigarette.
'Mrs Barnard, I am Inspector Fransman Dekker. This is Inspector Benny Griessel. Are you ready to answer some questions?' His voice was louder than necessary, the way you would talk to someone who was a bit deaf.
She nodded slightly, with difficulty, and lit the cigarette. She inhaled the smoke deeply, as if it would give her strength.
'The deceased was your husband, Mr Adam Barnard?'
She nodded.
'What is his full name?'
'Adam Johannes.'
'Age?'
'Fifty-two.'
Dekker wrote. 'And his profession?'
She turned her tired eyes on Dekker. 'AfriSound.'
'Excuse me?'
'AfriSound. It's his.'
'AfriSound?'
'It's a record company.'
'And he owns this record company?'
She nodded.
'Your full name?'
'Alexandra.'
'Age?'
'A hundred and fifty.'
Dekker just looked at her, pen ready.
'Forty-six.'
'Profession?'
She gave an ironic snort and pushed her hair off her face again. Griessel saw confirmation of the maid's statement that she was a drinker - the trembling hands, the eyes, the characteristic colour and weathering of her face. But she reminded him of something else. He knew he had met her somewhere before.
'Excuse me?' said Dekker.
How do I know her, Griessel wondered. Where?
'I don't work.'
'Home-maker,' said Dekker and wrote that down.
She made the same little noise, loaded with meaning.
'Mrs Barnard, can you tell us about last night's events?'
She sank back slowly into her seat, put her elbow on the armrest and leaned her head on her hand. 'No.'
'Excuse me?'
'I don't know how long I can resist the temptation to say "you are excused".'
The muscles in Dekker's jaw worked as though he were grinding his teeth. Alexandra breathed in slowly and deliberately, as if steeling herself for a hard task. 'I am an alcoholic. I drink. From eleven in the morning. By six o'clock usually I am mercifully drunk. From half past eight on I don't remember much.' In that instant, perhaps because the deep, rich voice resonated somewhere in his memory, Benny Griessel remembered who she was. The word sprang to the tip of his tongue, he almost spoke it aloud, but stopped just in time: Soetwater. Sweet water.
She was the singer. Xandra. Lord, how old she looked.
Soetwater. The word activated a picture from memory, a television image of a woman in a tight-fitting black dress, just her and the microphone in the bright spotlight of a smoke-framed stage.
A small glass of sunlight,
A goblet of rain
A small sip of worship,
A mouthful of pain