They looked at the door. 'Vusi, if he moves,' Griessel said, and strode towards the door.
'Look out,' said the man. 'Oerson is with her.'
She was aware of the gun pointed at her, of the man in his magnificent uniform towering above her. He spoke her name. Did he know her? She raised her eyes, trying to focus, why was the other one still standing here, the young one, one of those who had held her legs?
A shot cracked. Her eyes shut in reflex, she expected to feel it, coming from the weapon pointed at her.
But her eyes opened as the man in uniform swore. He hadturned away from her and pointed his pistol at the door. The other man ducked and crept towards the wall.
Someone shot again in there, a softer bang.
'What the fuck?' the uniformed man whispered.
Another shot, deafening. He moved quickly to beside the door, and again it boomed in there, three times.
Then it struck her: the policeman. Griessel. He had found her. She wanted to sit up. She moved her legs and the pain in her foot was incredible, but she didn't care, she drew her heels back, found a grip. Another shot, one more. He was shooting them, Benny Griessel, he must kill them all. She braced herself against the cold pillar. If only she could stand up. The uniform and the young man were frozen, petrified. Another two shots. Silence.
'I'm going out,' said the young man and opened the door, and shut it immediately.
'Shit,' said the uniform.
Voices inside, indecipherable words. Then only the uniformed man's fast and shallow breathing.
'He's going to kill you,' she said to him, with hatred in her voice.
He moved suddenly, came to her, a boot left and right of her knees and pushed the gun into her cheek. 'Shut the fuck up,' he hissed. 'You're going with me.' Then he looked around at the door, wild-eyed.
She kicked him. She brought up her knee, her sore right foot's knee, and struck him between the legs with everything she had left. 'Now!' she shrieked. Her voice was a desperate command. The uniform shouted something and fell onto her. A booming noise as the door was kicked in, and then a single shot and the man fell away from her. She saw him standing in the doorway, a figure with a pistol in his hand, a hole in his shirt, hair needing a cut and strange Slavic eyes.
'Benny Griessel,' she said, with perfect pronunciation.
He lowered the weapon, moved towards her with deep compassion in his eyes. He grabbed her clothes off the floor and hastily covered her, put his arms around her and held her tight.
'Yes,' he said. 'I have found you.'
Chapter 45
Just after four, the nurse came out of the hospital room and said to Fransman Dekker: 'Fifteen minutes.' She held the door open so he could enter.
Alexa Barnard was sitting up against the cushions. He saw the bandage on her forearm, then the look of dawning disappointment.
'I was expecting the other detective,' she said slowly, words not well formed. The medication had not wholly worn off.
'Afternoon, ma'am,' he said neutrally, because he could use her drowsiness; he must avoid conflict and win her trust. He dragged a blue chair closer, nearly right up to the bed. He sat down with his elbows on the thin white bedspread. She stared at him with vague interest. She looked better than she had this morning - her hair was brushed and tied back in the nape of her neck, so that her unobscured face appeared stronger, the faded beauty like a fossil in a weathered rock bank.
'Captain Griessel is not on the case any more,' he said.
She nodded slowly.
'I understand better now,' he said quietly and sympathetically.
She lifted an eyebrow.
'He was ... not an easy man.'
She searched his face until she was convinced of his sincerity. Then she looked past him. He saw the moisture collect gradually in her eyes, her lower lip's involuntary tremble. With her healthy right arm she wiped the back of her hand over her cheek in slow motion.
Better than he'd hoped. 'You loved him very much.'
She looked somewhere beyond Dekker, nodded slightly, and wiped her cheek again.
'He hurt you so much. All those years. He kept on hurting you over and over.'
'Yes.' Barely a whisper. He wanted her to talk. He waited. She said nothing. The sound of a helicopter came through the closed curtains in front of the window, the wap-wap increasingly loud. He waited till it subsided.
'You blamed yourself. You thought it was your fault.'
Her gaze shifted to him. Still silent.
'But it wasn't. There are men like that,' he said. 'It's a disease. An addiction.' She nodded, agreeing, as though she wanted to hear more.
'It's a drug for the soul. I think they have an emptiness inside here, a hole that is never filled, it might help for a little while, then in a day or two it starts all over again. I think there's a reason, I think they don't like themselves, it's a way of...' His command of formal language left him stranded.
'Gaining acceptance,' she said. He waited, gave her time. But she gazed steadily at him, expectantly, pleading almost.
'Yes. Acceptance. Maybe more than that. There's something broken in here, they want to make it whole. A hurt that has come a long way, that never completely goes away, it just comes back every time, worse, but the medicine helps less and less, it's a ...' His wave of the hand sought a word, deliberately now.
'A vicious circle.'
'Yes ...'
She would not fill the silence that he had created. At first he wavered, then he said: 'He loved you, in his way, I think he loved you a lot, I think the problem was that he didn't want to do it, but every time he did he thought less of himself, because he knew he was hurting you, he knew he was doing damage. Then that became the reason he did it again, like an animal gnawing at itself. That can't stop. If a woman showed she wanted him, it meant he wasn't so bad, then he didn't think any more, he just felt, it was like a fever coming over him, you can't stop it. You want to, but you can't, however much you love your wife ...' He stopped suddenly, aware of the fundamental shift, and sat back slowly in his chair.
He watched her, wondering if she had caught on. He saw that she was somewhere else. Heard her say: 'I asked him to get help.'
He hoped. She looked at the little table beside her bed. Above the drawer was a slit where a tissue dangled. She pulled it out, wiped her eyes one by one and crumpled the paper in her right hand. 'I think there was a time when I tried to understand, when I thought I could see a little boy in him, a rejected, lonely boy. I don't know, he would never talk about it, I could never work out where it came from. But where does anything come from? Where does my alcoholism come from? My fear, my insecurity. My inferiority? I have looked for it in my childhood, that's the easy way out. Your father and mother's fault. They made mistakes, they weren't perfect, but that's not enough ... excuse. The problem is, it comes from inside me. It's part of my atoms, the way they vibrate, their frequency, their pitch, the key they sing in ...'
He had an idea where she was headed.
'Nobody can help ...' he encouraged her.
'Just yourself.'
'He couldn't change.'
She shook her head. No, Adam Barnard couldn't change. He wanted to prompt her: 'So you did something about it,' but he gave her the chance to say it herself.
She slowly sank back against the cushion, as though she were very tired.
'I don't know ...' A deep sigh.
'What?' he asked, a whispered invitation.
'Do we have the right? To change people? So that they suit us? So that they can protect us from ourselves? Aren't we shifting the responsibility? My weakness against his. If I were stronger ... Or he was. Our tragedy lay in the combination, each was the other's catalyst. We were ... an unfortunate chemical reaction ...'