On the way home, I stopped at the police station and gave my statement to the young paperwork woman. She seemed bored by what I told her. Maybe she had heard it all before. There was no sign of Reghardt or Piet or Kannemeyer. She told me Kannemeyer was at the hospital. She was a slow writer and the air conditioner hummed and rattled. It seemed to take for ever just to get my name and address, so I made the story I told her very simple.
‘We will contact you if we have any questions,’ she said once I had signed the statement.
I was tired when I got to my house late that afternoon. I sat on my stoep with some beskuit and a cup of tea. I looked up at the sky and yawned. But I was not going to lie down.
‘I don’t believe in sleeping in the day,’ I said to my tea. ‘It’s confusing. When I wake up I don’t know whether to have breakfast, lunch or supper.’ I dipped my muesli rusk into the tea. ‘I suppose I could just eat beskuit. Any time of day.’
I looked up at the clouds that were gathering in the north. They looked nice and fat and I hoped it would rain. A cool breeze was blowing and the leaves on my lemon tree were stirring.
Here in the Klein Karoo, the sky is so big. Usually it is blue and empty, but now it was putting on a fancy show. I sat watching the movement of the clouds. I wasn’t thinking on purpose, but after a while ideas started gathering at the back of my head. Thought clouds. In the sky-clouds I could see shapes. A duck. A woman. Martine, dissolving. Anna and Dirk puffing up, dark and fat. A long poker, like a cut across the sky.
It didn’t make sense that Anna would wipe the poker clean before using it on Martine. But if the poker was wiped, then the murderer wasn’t wearing gloves. There might be other prints. Did the murderer wipe those too?
I rested my eyes and allowed my mind to think.
When I opened my eyes again my tea was cold and the clouds had come closer; they were big and inky-blue. The plants and trees were all looking up, hoping for rain. But not expecting anything. Karoo plants are very patient. They wait for months and months without a taste of water. But they don’t get bitter, or shrivel up and die. They just hold onto the little moisture they’ve got and keep on waiting.
I don’t think I could manage that myself.