It had cost him R500 to get the laptop connected to the Internet. He had to buy a damn modem and get an Internet service provider. Then he spent three hours on the phone with a computer guy getting the fucking connection to work and then Microsoft Outlook Express was a nightmare to configure. That took another hour on the phone to sort out before he could send an email to Carla saying:
Here I am, how are you? I miss you and worry about you. There was an article in the Burger that said South African kids in London drink a lot and cause trouble. Don't let anyone put pressure on you...
Writing this, he discovered that putting in the Afrikaans punctuation symbols was just about impossible on these computer programmes.
Dear Daddy
I have a job at the Gloucester Terrace Hotel near Marble Arch. It is a lovely part of London, near Hyde Park. I'm a cleaner. I work from ten in the morning to ten at night, six days a week, Mondays off. I don't know how long I will be able to do this, it's not very pleasant and the pay's not much, but at least it's something. The other girls are all Polish. The first thing they said when I told them I was South African was 'but you're white'.
Daddy, you know I will never drink...
When he read those words they burned right through him. A sharp reminder of the damage he had caused. Carla would never drink because her father was an alcoholic who had fucked up his whole family. He might have been sober for one hundred and fifty-six days, but he could never erase the past.
He hadn't known how to respond, his words dried up by his insensitive blunder. It took two days before he answered her, told her about his bicycle and his transfer to the Provincial Task Force. She encouraged him:
It's nice to know what you're doing, Daddy. Much more interesting things than I am. I work and sleep and eat. At least I was at Buckingham Palace on Monday...
Their correspondence found a level both were comfortable with: a rhythm of two emails a week, four or five simple paragraphs. He looked forward to them more and more - both the receiving and the sending. He mapped out replies in his head during the day - he must tell Carla this or that. The words gave his small life a certain weight.
But a week ago his Internet connection stopped working. Mysteriously, suddenly, the computer geek on the phone, who made him do things to the laptop that he hadn't known were possible, was also at a loss. 'You'll have to take it to your dealer,' was the final diagnosis. But he didn't have a fucking dealer: ultimately, it was stolen goods. On Friday afternoon after work he bumped into Charmaine Watson-Smith on the way to his door. Charmaine was deep in her seventies and lived at number 106. Everyone's grandma, with her grey hair in a bun. Devious, generous, full of the joys of living, she knew everyone in the block of flats, and their business.
'How's your daughter?' Charmaine asked.
He told her about his computer troubles.
'Oh, I might just know someone who can help.'
'Who?'
'Just give me a day or so.'
Yesterday, Monday evening at half past six he was ironing clothes in his kitchen when Bella knocked on his door.
'Aunty Charmaine said I should take a look at your PC.'
He had seen her before, a young woman in an unattractive chunky grey uniform who went home to her flat on the other side of the building every evening. She had short blonde hair, glasses and always looked tired at the end of the day, carrying a briefcase in her hand.
He had hardly recognised her at his door: she looked pretty. Only the briefcase alerted him, because she had it at her side.
'Oh ... come in.' He put down the iron.
'Bella van Breda. I'm from number sixty-four.' Just as uncomfortable as he was.
He shook her hand quickly. It was small and soft. 'Benny Griessel.' She was wearing jeans and a red blouse and red lipstick. Her eyes were shy behind the glasses, but from the first he was aware of her wide, full mouth.
'Aunty Charmaine is ...' He searched for the right word. '... busy.'
'I know. But she's great.' Bella had spotted the laptop that he kept in the open-plan kitchen, his only worktop. 'Is this it?'
'Oh ... yes.' He switched it on. 'My Internet connection won't ... it just stopped working. Do you know computers?'
They stood close together watching the screen as it got going.
'I'm a PC technician,' she answered and put her briefcase to one side. 'Oh.'
'I know, most people think it's a man's job.' 'No, no, I... um, anyone who understands computers ...' 'That's about all I understand. Can I .. . ?' She gestured at his machine.
'Please. He pulled up one of his bar stools for her. She sat down in front of the tin brain.
He realised she was slimmer than he had previously thought. Perhaps it was her two-piece uniform that had given him the wrong impression. Or perhaps it was her face. It was round, like that of a plumper woman.
She was in her late twenties. He could be her father. 'Is this your connection?' She had a menu open and the mouse pointer on an icon. 'Yes.'
'Can I put a shortcut on your desktop?' It took him a while to work that one out. 'Yes, please.'
She clicked and looked and thought and said: 'It looks like you accidentally changed the dial-up number. There's one figure short here.' 'Oh.'
'Do you have the number somewhere?'
'I think so ...' He took the pack of documents and manuals out of the cupboard where he kept them all together in a plastic bag and began to sort through them.
'Here ...' He indicated it with his finger. 'OK. See, the eight is gone, you must have deleted it, it happens quite easily ...' She typed the number in and clicked and suddenly the modem dialled up, making its complaining noises.
'Well, fuck me,' he said in genuine amazement. She laughed. With that mouth. So he asked her if she would like a cup of coffee. Or rooibos tea, like Carla always drank. 'That's all I have.'
'Coffee would be nice, thank you.'
He put on the kettle and she said, 'You're a detective,' and he said, 'What didn't Aunty Charmaine tell you?' and so they fell into conversation. Maybe it was purely because they each had a lonely Monday evening ahead. He had no intentions, God knows, he had taken the coffee to the sitting room knowing that in theory he could be her father, despite the mouth, even though by then he had become aware of her pale faultless skin and her breasts that, like her face, belonged to a fuller woman.
It was polite, slightly stilted conversation, strangers with a need to talk on a Monday night.
Two cups of coffee with sugar and Cremora later, he made his big mistake. Without thinking he picked up the top CD from his stack of four and pushed it into his laptop's CD player, because that was all he had apart from the portable Sony that only worked with earphones.
She said in surprise: 'You like Lize Beekman?' and he said in a moment of honesty: 'Very much.' Something changed in her eyes, as though it made her see him differently.
He had bought the CD after he had heard a Lize Beekman song on the car radio, 'My Suikerbos'. There was something about the singer's voice - compassion, no, vulnerability, or was it the melancholy of the music? He didn't know, but he liked the arrangement, the delicate instrumentation, and he sought out the CD. He listened to it on the Sony, meaning to play through the bass notes in his mind. But the lyrics captured him. Not only the words, the combination of words and music with that voice made him happy, and made him sad. He couldn't remember when last music had made him feel this way, such a yearning for unknown things. And when Bella van Breda asked him if he liked Lize Beekman, it was the first time he could express this to someone. That's why it came out: 'Very much.' With feeling.
Bella said, 'I wish I could sing like that,' and surprisingly, he understood what she meant. He had felt the same yearning, to sing of all the facets of life with the same depth of wisdom and insight and ... acceptance. To sing of the good and the bad, in such lovely melodies. He had never felt that kind of acceptance. Disgust, yes, that had been with him all his life. He could never explain why he felt this constant, low-grade disgust for everything and, above all, for himself.
He said: 'Me too,' and after a long silence, the conversation blossomed. They talked of many things. She told him the story of her life. He talked about his work, the reliable old stories of peculiar arrests, preposterous witnesses and eccentric colleagues. Bella said she would like to open her own business one day and the light of passion, enthusiasm, shone in her eyes. He listened with admiration. She had a dream. He had nothing. Just a fantasy or two. The kind you kept to yourself, the kind he dreamed up while strumming his guitar in the evenings. Like handcuffing Theuns Jordaan to a microphone and telling him 'Now you sing "Hex-vallei", and not a part or a medley, sing the whole fucking song.' With Anton L'Amour on lead guitar and Benny himself on bass, and they were gonna rock 'n' roll, really kick butt. Or to be able to ask Schalk Joubert just once: 'How the fuck do you play bass guitar like that, like it was plugged into your brain?'
Or maybe to have his own four-piece band again. Singing the old blues, Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker, or the real old rock 'n' roll - Berry, Domino, Ricky Nelson, early Elvis...
But he said none of this, just listened to her. Round about ten o'clock she got up to go to the bathroom and when she came back he was on his way back from the sink to the sofa and he said: 'More coffee?'
They were so close and her eyes looked away and her mouth had a small, furtive smile that showed she had an idea what was going to happen next, and she didn't mind.
So he kissed her.
And as Benny sat in the bright summer sun in the Tuesday morning traffic, he remembered that it had been without lust at first, more an extension of their conversation. It was full of consolation, longing, a gentle coming together, just like Lize Beekman's music. Two people who needed to be touched.
They kissed for a long time and then they stood and held each other tight. He was again aware that her body was slimmer than he had expected. She stepped back and sat down on the sofa. He thought she was saying it was enough. But she took off her glasses and carefully put them on the floor to one side. Her eyes looked suddenly deep brown, and defenceless. He sat down next to her and kissed her again and the next thing he could remember she was sitting up, taking off her bra and offering him her lovely breasts with shy pride. He sat in the police car remembering how her body felt - soft, warm and welcoming. He remembered the slow intensity. How he was in her, there on the sofa and lifting himself up to look at her and seeing in her eyes the same immense gratitude that he felt in his own heart. Gratitude that she was there, that this had happened, and it was all lovely and gentle and slow.
Fuck it, he thought, how could that be wrong?
His cell phone rang and brought him back to the present: it must be Dekker asking where he was. But the screen read ANNA and his heart lurched.
It was the fall that saved her.
Instinctively, she had sprinted up the steep row of steps that led up out of the street, up the slope of the mountain between two high ivy-covered walls, and then up a narrow twisting footpath. Table Mountain was suddenly a colossus looming over her, steep slopes of rock and fynbos and open stretches. She felt sure she had made a mistake. They would spot her and catch her on the slope. They would grab her and hold her to the ground and slit her throat, like Erin's.
She drove herself up the mountain. She did not look back. The gradient sapped the strength from her thighs, her knees, a slow poison that would paralyse her. Above, to the right, she saw the cable car station, sun glinting off car windscreens, tiny, tiny figures of people, so close, yet so terribly far. If only she could reach them. No, it was too steep, too far, she would never make it.
She saw the fork in the footpath, chose the left one and ran. Forty paces and then a sudden drop, the path unexpectedly falling to a rocky gully that sliced down from high up the mountain. She wasn't prepared for it, her foot landed badly on round pebbles and she fell to the left, downhill. Trying to brake herself with her hands, she banged her shoulder hard and was winded. She rolled over once and lay still, aware that her hands were grazed, that something had struck her chin, but her greatest need was for air, she needed to force it back into her lungs with great, ragged breaths. Her first attempt was a bellowing croak like an animal and she needed to be quiet, they must not hear her. Twice she inhaled hoarsely, then in smaller, quieter breaths. The bank of the stream came into focus and she saw the crevice carved out under the giant rock by centuries of water. Just big enough for her to creep into.
She moved like a snake, over the round river rocks, her bleeding hands held out in front of her, towards the opening. She heard the urgent running steps of her pursuers. How close were they? She realised her rucksack would not fit in. She was running out of time; they would see her. She rose to her knees to tear the rucksack off, but had to stop to loosen the buckle around her belly. She pulled the right then left shoulder straps off, wriggled her body into the hollow and dragged the rucksack after her. Three of them jumped over the dry stream bed three metres away from her, agile, athletic and silent, and she held her burning breath, saw how the blood from her chin dripped on the stones. She lay still, and shut her eyes, as if that would make her invisible to them.
He sat in the traffic with his phone to his ear and said: 'Hello, Anna.' His heart beating in his throat as he thought of last night.
'Benny, we need to talk.'
It was fucking impossible. There was no way his wife could have found out.
'About what?'
'Everything, Benny. I wondered if we could talk tonight.'
About everything? He couldn't gauge her tone of voice.
'We could. Do you want me to come home?'
'No, I thought we could rather ... go out to eat somewhere.'
Jissis. What did that mean?
'That's fine. Where?'
'I don't know. Canal Walk is sort of halfway. There's a Primi...'
'What time would suit you?'
'Seven?'
'Thanks, Anna, that would be nice.'
'Goodbye, Benny.' Just like that, as though he had said the wrong thing.
He sat with the phone in his hand. Behind him a motorist hooted. He realised he should move forward. He released the clutch and closed the gap ahead of him. About everything, Benny. What did that mean? Why not at their house? Maybe she felt like going out. Like a kind of date. But when he said: 'That would be nice,' she said goodbye as if she was angry with him.
Could she know about last night? What if she had been there, at his flat, at his door. She would have seen nothing, but she would have been able to hear - Bella who had made such soft, contented noises at one stage. God, he had liked that then, but if Anna had heard...
But she had never been to his flat. Why would she have come last night? To talk? Not entirely impossible. And she might have heard something and waited and seen Bella leave, and...
But if she had, would she want to go out to eat with him?
No. Maybe.
If she knew ... He was fucked. He knew that now. But she couldn't know.