Читать книгу The Skinner's Revenge - Chris Karsten - Страница 12

Lt. Fred Lange was a veteran with twenty-six years in the police. When he’d started out, the unit he’d worked for had been called Murder and Robbery. It had become the Unit for Serious and Violent Crime when the new rulers took over; they’d also introduced an experiment with demilitarised ranks, which was quickly aborted. Fred hated that: lieutenant, that was what he was, not inspector. Not a meat inspector, building inspector, livestock inspector or shithouse inspector. Lieutenant. The word commanded respect. And a promotion could be in the cards. He like the sound of Captain Fred Lange. He also liked the sounds coming out of the commissioner’s office: war had been declared against criminals, shoot first, ask questions later. It was a language Fred understood.

At the corner café in Brixton, Fred stopped at the Coca-Cola signboard: Frank’s Deli. He liked that corner café. He liked all cafés not yet supplanted by supermarkets where nobody knew your name. He’d left the exhumation site in Dorado Park late, and he’d promised his wife he’d buy bread and milk on his way home.

All the damn faffing around Ella Neser. What made her so special? If she wanted to be a homicide detective, she’d have to grow some hair on her chest. Not much of a chest though; little oranges, tucked under Col. Sauls’s big armpit.

He wouldn’t be surprised if she was recommended for a promotion, as if she’d solved the Nightstalker case. She hadn’t: the killer was still on the loose. God knew where, but in the meantime she was the new poster girl. As if Abel Lotz was already in C-Max, keys thrown away, docket buried in the archives.

The radio was crackling as he got back into the car. Constable Stallie Stalmeester from Dispatch. Stallie was a good boy. Knew his place, respected the old hands. A body in Hillbrow, Stallie said, his voice giving nothing away. A patrol vehicle was already at the scene, didn’t appear to be natural causes.

Natural causes in that hellhole? C’mon, Stallie.

Fred said he was in Brixton, would proceed to the scene. But first he’d swing by his house with the bread and milk. Ans was used to eating a lonely TV supper from a tray on her lap. She’d understand. A good woman, she’d put up with his moods and irregular working hours for far too long, yet she stayed. Now that the kids had left, there were only the two of them. If he made captain, he’d take her to fancy restaurants more often – not just on their wedding anniversary or her birthday.

He turned right into Catherine and spotted the two patrol vehicles, blue lights flashing, saw the crowd that had gathered at the corner of Soper. The body might have been mistaken for part of the pavement debris. An old mattress, a chair with no seat and only two legs, boxes, part of an old hotplate, red KFC cartons with chicken bones covered with ants, plastic bags, beer bottles – the wreckage of Hillbrow’s putrid streets.

Pushing his hands into latex gloves, Fred crouched next to the body, noticed the wound on the forehead. Fred was the kind of cop who carried a pocketknife. He felt around in his pocket and took out the Rodgers, the blade only four centimetres long but razor-sharp and worn thin on the fine carborundum whetstone in his garage. He used the knife to carve biltong and clean his nails. Now he inserted the blade under the sleeve of the dead man’s shirt and lifted it to inspect the gold bracelet round the wrist.

Fred was hungry. His dinner of lamb chops, roast potatoes and sweet pumpkin would be waiting in the warming oven at home. And Ans in front of the TV. She refused to go to bed when he worked late. Said getting into bed alone was bad karma for a marriage. Karma, for crying out loud! She watched too much TV.

Ella Neser would also be alone right now. He wondered what her favourite TV programme was. Young and fit, he could imagine her karma, hers and Zack’s … before that unfortunate thing happened to the rugby player. Karma gone wrong. Miss Prissy with her willowy figure and uptight little arse. Never joining the rest of the squad for a couple of beers to celebrate the end of a difficult case. Which was fine, actually, because Ella Neser wasn’t ready for a beer with the boys. Her case was still unsolved. The suspect had been identified, but not apprehended.

As Fred had told Ans a few nights ago in front of the TV, Ella Neser had a lesson or two to learn. Could Ella Neser determine cause of death and motive for murder at a glance, as she crouched beside a body on a Hillbrow pavement? No. But she was pampered and put on sick leave, sent for trauma counselling. Not how the old hands had to deal with their woes: you just got up, shook out the dust, washed off the blood, took an aspirin, and rushed out for the next criminal. Old-fashioned gumshoes pounded the pavements – without the need for intuition or sixth sense or the hocus pocus of the shrinks.

Trauma counselling. Blah!

* * *

Though she’d been expecting it – everyone had been expecting it – it was still a shock. When you exhume a coffin and open the lid, you expect to see human remains. It’s a normal expectation. It’s the reason a coffin is placed in a grave: to lay the deceased to rest. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that sort of thing.

“Come have a look,” invited Dr Koster. “Just as we thought.”

Ella stepped closer to inspect the contents of the mouldy pine coffin: chunks of moss-clad concrete, rusty scrap metal, two coils and the connecting rod of an old car, a few lengths of metal pipe, a brass garden tap. All embedded in a layer of soil, presumably to suppress the noise so there’d be no rattling when the coffin was transported or lowered into the grave.

Dr Koster took photos, the coffin now an addendum to his forensic report on Dorcas Lotz and to Ella’s murder docket. New charges would be added: it was an offence to remove a body without a permit, to commit fraud with the contents of a coffin.

“Do you want to keep all this as evidence?” asked Dr Koster.

Silas looked at Ella. “What do you think?”

Col. Sauls was under no obligation to ask her, but she appreciated the fact that he did. That was how she knew the colonel. Not by what he said, but by what he sometimes didn’t say. And that was that despite the sick leave, she was still the investigating officer.

“The photos will do, along with a statement,” Ella replied.

“And Dorcas?” asked Dr Koster. “Do you need to keep her body in the archives as evidence?”

Ella shook her head. “I’ll get a warrant or something … a permit, a legal document to have her reburied in the same grave.”

“Buried,” said Dr Koster, “not reburied. She was never buried in the first place. Only her coffin was committed to the grave.”

“Have you completed your autopsy, Doctor?”

“There was no need for an autopsy. Her medical records were in the hospital archives. A death certificate was issued in 2005. She died of natural causes a few months after suffering a severe stroke. Apoplexy due to a haemorrhage of the brain. Shortly before her seventy-fifth birthday.”

“Then her son had her embalmed,” said Silas.

“To preserve her for all eternity,” said Ella.

“The embalmer did an excellent job,” said Dr Koster.

“Mr Poppe Junior,” Ella nodded. “They still think she’s in the coffin. They don’t know Abel removed her during his night-long vigil.”

Dr Koster motioned to his assistant to remove the coffin from the autopsy room. “Dump that with the refuse for the municipal truck to pick up.” He turned to Silas and Ella. “Do you want to see her, Ella?”

She nodded. She was relatively new at the job, slowly getting used to dead bodies. She wondered if it ever got easier. And this one had been embalmed for years. A mummy. She drew a deep breath, stepped nearer as Dr Koster opened a fridge door and pulled out a steel drawer.

“I saw her on her bed in Abel Lotz’s house,” said Silas. “He took a lot of trouble with her, special air conditioner and humidifier in her room, even a marble slab for her to lie on.”

“Yes, he took good care of his mother. She would have lasted a long time.” Dr Koster pulled the sheet away from Dorcas Lotz’s face.

Ella stared at the old woman, at the two deep lines between her eyes, carved into her forehead, the muscles fossilised after decades of frowning, fixed in place by habit, rigor mortis and embalming fluids. The grim, severe face of a mother who had produced a monster. Just visible under the sheet was the neckline of an old-fashioned nightgown, once white, now sepia, the starched lace bib stiff against the wrinkled parchment of her neck.

“Should I let Poppe & Son know to fetch her for the reburial? Ella?”

She looked up at Dr Koster, her fingers stroking her stomach. He, too, presumed that the case was still hers.

She nodded. “I’ll arrange for the documentation. Phone the undertakers.”

“Actually, Ella’s still on sick leave,” said Silas, “not officially back on the job.”

“Then let her arrange for the documentation unofficially.” Dr Koster’s glasses had slipped down his nose as he’d lowered his head to study Dorcas’s face. Now his eyes flashed over the frame. “Or are you going to give Ella’s case to someone else, Silas? And mess up our entire investigation?”

Our investigation. Ella avoided looking at the colonel, waited for his reaction. The forensic pathologist and he had come a long way. They hadn’t always got on, as might be expected of two grumpy old men. And now she was part of their team. By default, having stepped into her father’s shoes.

“As long as she doesn’t come to the office before the counsellor has signed her off. General Pitso –”

“Bloody bean counter,” muttered Dr Koster. He pulled the sheet back over Dorcas’s face, shoved her back into the fridge.

“It’s my case,” said Ella. “And I won’t give up until I’ve caught him. I’ll arrange with Poppe & Sons. I’ll be at the graveside – unofficially – to witness her burial. I’ll make quite sure that she’s lowered into the grave this time and covered with soil.”

“Well, we’re done here for now,” said Silas. “Let’s go home. It’s pitch-dark outside.”

As he headed for his office, Dr Koster stopped and called, “Ella!”

Ella turned. Silas sighed.

Dr Koster beckoned with a crooked finger. “Come.”

“See what he wants,” said Silas. “I’ll wait in the car.”

She followed the pathologist into his office, where she found him in front of a large safe. He handed her a mask.

“This was on Dorcas’s face when they discovered her body in that house. Must be symbolic or something. You might want it as evidence.”

“I saw the police photos of her with the mask on her face.”

“Authentic, I think. Perhaps you should have it analysed, trace its origin. Might give you new insight into Abel Lotz’s psyche.”

She knew about Abel’s passion for masks; she’d visited his gallery. He’d even left one of his masks on a victim’s face after stripping off the skin. He seemed obsessed with faces.

Following her near-fatal confrontation with Abel, she’d been given no choice: it was mandatory sick leave and counselling. The stomach wound had healed, but not the scars, nor the psychological wound. That was Fred Lange’s diagnosis: a wound to her psyche. Ella suspected he’d heard or read it somewhere. Dr Landsberg called it psychological trauma.

Standing orders – and there was no leeway. Every member of the force who’d been involved in a violent situation had to undergo trauma counselling, she knew that. It was not negotiable. Stress levels in the police were high, and there was reason for worry. Every time a member was buried, the commissioner was in attendance, embracing and consoling grieving relatives. At every funeral the battle cries rang out. The commissioner had had a large bouquet of red gladioli delivered to her hospital bed, accompanied by a get-well card, incorrectly addressed to a Warrant Officer Anna Nasser.

She’d wanted to get back to the office, back onto the trail of the Nightstalker, but she’d been stopped.

“Not a good idea, Ella,” Silas had come to tell her at home. “Take a proper break. Your thoughts and feelings are in turmoil. You’ve had a brush with death, remember? Let Dr Landsberg help you.”

“Please, not Dr Mimi Landsberg,” she’d sighed.

Mara Alkaster, who’d come along, had placed her hand on Ella’s. “You’re like a daughter to us, Ella. Listen to Silas.”

Silas and his merry widow, who couldn’t get round to tying the knot.

He had personally made her first appointment with Dr Landsberg, a clinical psychologist and trauma counsellor consulted by the police. And then the Murder and Robbery team had called on Ella in a steady stream. Fred Lange had brought beer – that was how old hands dealt with trauma, he’d said. Jimmy Julies from Forensics had brought milk tart – his wife baked the best milk tart in the universe, he’d said. Tabs Makgaleng from Fingerprints had brought Midnight Velvet – chocolate soothed the emotional centre of the brain, he’d said. Young Stallie Stalmeester from Dispatch had brought a sheaf of white chinkerinchees and blue forget-me-nots, kissed her cheek and said he missed her. Even Gen. Pitso had arrived at her humble home – with bath oil from Pick ’n Pay, forms in triplicate (for mandatory sick leave), which she had to sign for his IN basket (the one next to his OUT basket) and the standing orders about cutting expenditure.

* * *

The trauma counsellor’s consultation room had been cosy and comfortable, the wooden furniture radiating warmth; fresh flowers in large vases, framed family photographs, magazines, inspirational books, bright, fluffy cushions, landscapes painted with flowing, confident brush strokes, and the subtle scent of potpourri. The décor had been carefully assembled to put someone with a wound to the psyche at ease.

“Tea?” asked Dr Landsberg.

“Coffee: black, no sugar,” said Ella. Like the pathologist, the trauma counsellor would soon learn about her coffee.

“You’re angry. I’m getting a sense of suppressed rage … ”

“Of course I’m angry. After everything that has happened, wouldn’t you be angry, Doctor?”

“My feelings are irrelevant, Ella.”

“But your signature isn’t. On the official report. You can sign me off. I’m fit, ready to return to work.”

“I’m sure it won’t be long. Only a few sessions. It’s important that we access your emotions. How’s the wound?”

Sessions. Feelings. Emotions.

“Would you like to see it?”

“There’s no need.”

She pulled up her T-shirt anyway, tugged at her jeans, exposed the purple welts, the mutilated, puckered skin of her stomach.

“I’m twenty-seven and I’ll never wear a bikini again.”

“They do wonders with cosmetic surgery nowadays.”

“One scalpel was enough, thank you very much.”

“Be positive, Ella. See the glass as half full. A healthy outlook is the first step on the road to recovery.”

“I could have been dead. Another ten minutes and they would have buried me, played the last post. What’s positive about that?”

“It’s positive that you’re alive.”

“I’m alive, but four others are dead, and I could have prevented their deaths.”

“Blaming yourself is never good. We’ll have to work on your self-reproach. You couldn’t have prevented it. It’s not your fault.”

“I could have prevented the last murder if I hadn’t been so stubborn.”

“Would you like to talk about the last one?”

“No.”

“Tell me about the others?”

“No.”

Why this skirting of the issue? wondered Ella. Why not get to the point, the crux of the matter?

“Would you like to talk about him?”

Abel. Where are you, Abel?

“Why didn’t he kill me too? I was delivered into his hands, and I was helpless. He could have done it, despite being interrupted. There was enough time before he fled.”

“Why do you think he spared your life?”

She held the cup in both hands and raised it to her lips. Tasted chicory. Instant coffee. She wanted the taste of proper beans, the aroma of a strong Java.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“I understand, Ella. Your head is spinning. We’ll take it slowly. But it’s got to come out; everything has to come out before recovery can begin.”

Recovery. Self-reproach.

“Trauma,” continued Dr Landsberg, “is serious emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely disturbing event. Divorce, job loss, death, crime, a car accident, sickness – anything you see as negative that changes your view of yourself and your world. Everyone experiences that kind of shock at least once in his or her life. You’re no exception. I looked into your background, read about your father.”

“A policeman. Shot in the line of duty.”

“Who’s been in a coma ever since, with no hope of recovery. Is that why you joined the police force? For your father’s sake?”

“I can deal with my father’s situation.”

“Yes, but now this incident. You never had counselling, after what happened to your father?”

“No.”

“Strong emotions tend to accumulate over time. You feel guilty, you feel angry, you’re anxious to arrest the killer. Not only do these emotions exhaust your spirit, they’re also detrimental to your physical well-being.”

“My body? I’m back at the gym, I work out again, I jog. I’m fit.”

“Allow me to explain it to you right from the start: when a bad shock like this occurs, your adrenal glands release a large quantity of adrenalin into your bloodstream. Your body, as you’re sitting here, is pumped with energy that has no outlet elsewhere.”

“It does find an outlet: I work out.”

“Exercising helps, but we have to treat the cause, not the symptoms. Those can be headaches, pain in the shoulders, arms, back and stomach, nausea, forgetfulness, tearfulness. Your sleeping pattern may be disrupted; you may be moody and aggressive.”

Yes, she’d caught herself cursing silently, or even aloud.

“Is that how you want to feel while you’re hunting a serial killer? To sum up: these emotions must be aired, approached from all angles. Are you ready?”

She nodded. She had suffered from headaches, muscle pain, sleeplessness, tearfulness …

“Your family, your colleagues, everyone cares about you. Embrace them – don’t push them away. You can’t deal with this thing alone.”

“This ‘thing’?”

“The thing in your head. All the conflicting emotions.”

She’d been to Bela-Bela to see her parents. Her mother had hugged her; she’d cried on her mother’s comforting shoulder. Let everything out unreservedly, without shame. Her mother had wiped her tears, and through her warm hands Ella had felt a transfusion of strength. Her mother was gentle yet strong. She had to be to have survived all these years with her father and the bullet in his head.

Her father, in his vegetative state, could not embrace her, so Ella had embraced him. His eyes had been closed, his chest rising and falling rhythmically every time the machine at his bedside inflated his lungs. But his skin was warm and the stubble on his chin was comforting against her cheek.

“It’s like a virus,” said Dr Landsberg.

“I manage,” said Ella.

“You have a virus in your hard drive,” said Dr Landsberg. “You can try to isolate it, put it in quarantine. But you’re not going to get rid of it. It’s going to multiply and erode your –”

“I do have a safety net of family and colleagues who care.”

“That’s good. It’ll help. But we have to clean the hard drive, reformat it. Reboot it, if you will.”

Silas and Mara cared, and Jimmy Julies and Tabs and Stallie. Not Fred Lange. Fred was like a virus. She’d never done anything to offend him, never given him reason to contaminate her hard drive. Fred was just Fred: old school, set in his ways. To Fred, change was a threat.

And Fred didn’t like her. She suspected it wasn’t just because she was a woman or that she belonged to a younger generation with newer insights and methods. She suspected his reasons were more personal. Could his animosity be traced back to her father? Her father had enjoyed regular promotions and, even while comatose, had been awarded a certificate for bravery. Fred had lagged behind. Then she’d come along, a pipsqueak, once again trying to steal his thunder. An upstart, his own children’s age. Sucking at the front tit, she could imagine him saying.

“Do you like music, Ella?”

Of course she liked music. Who didn’t? Even Abel Lotz was keen on music: the violin by Paganini.

“Do you play? The guitar, the piano maybe?”

“No.”

She did play. But not the guitar, nor the piano. There had never been money for a piano. What policeman could afford a piano? Except the commissioner, perhaps. When she was ten, her father had bought her a second-hand lyre. She still had it. Sometimes she took it from the top shelf of her wardrobe. After her father had been shot, she’d taken it out. Sometimes for Zack, and when she’d come out of hospital.

“Music is therapeutic, Ella. Especially if you can play music yourself. If not, listen to Bach. Bach’s music calms the brain.”

Yes, yes, she knew that.

As a child, gently strumming the small child’s harp – a seven-string Hermes – she’d begun to experiment with melody, harmony, rhythm. The tunes were still in her head now. Oh, how she’d practised “Yankee Doodle” and “My Darling Clementine”.

Later she’d hoped that the calming influence of harp music might help her father recover. With him lying in his bed, she’d made him listen to a recording of Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Garden of Joy and Sorrow” for harp, flute and viola. To Marjan Mozetich’s “The Passion of Angels” for two harps and orchestra. To Carlos Salzedo’s harp concertos.

It was no good.

Her father had been young in the Sixties, at the time of the Beatles. Perhaps, she’d thought, he would identify with the harp section in “She’s Leaving Home” on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

That was no good either.

The lyre, her father had told her at bedtime when she was small, was played by angels, nymphs and fairies. But the most famous lyre player was Orpheus. When Orpheus had played on his lyre, all the animals, tame and wild, had gathered around him, and the birds had perched in the trees, mesmerised by the beautiful sounds. The lyre was an instrument of peace, her father had told her, the rich, elegant notes hanging in the air long after she’d coaxed them from the strings.

“Play ‘Danny Boy’ again,” he’d asked. “Uncle Silas also wants to hear it.”

And she’d played it for them.

“And ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’,” Uncle Silas had prodded.

No, she didn’t have a piano but, encouraged by her father, she had learned about harmony and solfeggio. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to take it up again. Not the lyre, but the harp. Perhaps Dr Landsberg was right.

“I would like to take harp lessons.”

“Harp lessons?” Dr Landsberg seemed surprised.

“Yes. I want to learn to play the harp.”

Dr Landsberg seemed to consider that for a moment. “Yes, good. Good, try the harp. I’ll phone Suki. Suki is a wonderful harp teacher. The harp will distract you. Anything to get your mind off these terrible events.”