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Tuesday, 16 July
Nico was sitting at his desk in his fishbowl on Tuesday morning when his phone rang. He hated his phone. Whenever it rang, it meant there was bad news. The two Lieutenant Colonels, one sitting underneath the window facing the outside world and the other opposite Nico, watched him eyeball his phone. He decided to answer it after eight rings. Irritating the other two officers was an added bonus.
Another body had been found in Weavind Park just a few streets down from the block of flats where he lived. He took down the address from the constable on the other end of the phone. Laurel and Hardy were still watching him when he put down the handset.
“Don’t you guys have your own murder cases?” Nico asked as he tore the address off the pad.
“Hey, watch your step Van Staaden. One of these days that attitude of yours is going to get you suspended,” Laurel said. His policeman’s moustache bristled below a beak of a nose.
“Well, if I do get suspended I won't have to see your ugly face every day,” Nico retorted. Hardy, who sat opposite Nico, gave him a once-over scan with his beady hazel eyes which were hidden behind chubby cheeks, grunted, and then turned his gaze back to the paperwork on his desk.
Nico walked out of the charge office and took the same Nissan Almera he had used for the last crime scene. Luckily he had remembered to empty out the Valpré bottle; otherwise, the car would have reeked of urine. He turned on the siren and flashing blue light which looked like an orphan disco light sitting on his dashboard. The siren blared all the way through the centre of Pretoria to the eastern suburbs. He loved that siren. Cars always moved out of his way, and peak-hour traffic ceased to be a problem whenever he let the siren sing. The victim’s house was the second house from the corner of Hartley and De Bruyn Street, on the way to the National Prosecuting Authority offices.
The front garden looked unkempt and was dominated by an old oak tree. Weeds had strangled what was left of the lawn and where there weren’t weeds, there was mud and sand. The walls of the house, once white, were now grey and splattered with dry mud. Deep cracks webbed the plaster, and the front door hadn’t been varnished in years.
“Well, this looks about right for our boy,” Nico mumbled to himself, as he got out of the car and walked across the road. A mangy dog, which could only be called a Pavement Special, was barking and jumping against the fence trying to defend its territory against the police. Nico watched the dog’s antics with mild amusement. The diversion developed into a question itching in the back of his mind. How did the killer get past the dog?
It took a few minutes for the police to get the dog under control and on its way to the SPCA. He hoped they found it a new home. The usual crowd of inquisitive neighbours started gathering around the property. Nico made his way through the crowd, and a sergeant with short, curly red hair opened the gate for him. Pete was talking to a young woman in a pink maid’s uniform. Nico made his way towards them. Dr Papenfuss introduced the woman as Maria. She’d found the body when she went into the bathroom to clean it. She cleaned once a week, and the only thing Maria had to say about her employer was that she was a vicious old drunk who lived like a pig and wouldn't let her put anything away. The maid had ranted on for what seemed like an age.
Nico and Pete waited for Thabiso to finish taking pictures of the house, its surrounding area and photos of the crowd. At the front door, before going in, they put on the usual rubber gloves and protective shoe covers. As they walked in through the front door, they saw something that they hadn’t seen at any of the other crime scenes.
A Görse & Kalmann piano dominated the dark, narrow passage leading into the rest of the house. The piano set off little alarm bells in Nico’s head. Past experience had taught Nico to listen to those bells. He followed his instinct and opened the piano lid exposing the black and white keys. The white keys were starting to turn yellow from age. He ran his fingers along the notes. One of them didn’t work. He pressed the black key down a few more times, but no sound escaped from the piano. Pete came close to the piano.
“That’s E sharp,” he said. “Or F natural if you want to get technical.”
“Are you sure?” Nico asked, with a raised eyebrow and a racing heart.
“Yes,” Pete said. “I’ve played a bit of piano in my time, and that's the right note.”
“I wonder,” Nico mumbled. He picked up the black-and-white framed picture on top of the piano. The man in the picture looked familiar. He handed Pete the picture and opened the top panel to expose the inner mechanics. There were what looked like baby’s bootie-shaped pieces of wood attached to thin wires. The wires glinted in the darkness. He picked up his torch, switched it on and shone the light into the dark cavern, illuminating the wires. Nico pushed down a few other keys and watched the bootie-shapes tapping against the wires, causing notes to emanate from the piano. He tapped the E sharp key. Nothing happened: the wood didn’t move. He shone the beam of the torch in the place where he guessed the E sharp wire would be. He saw the reason why no sound escaped. The wire was missing.
“So, who was this woman?” Nico asked Pete, while repeatedly pushing the E sharp key down.
“Marietta Gouws, fifty-five-years-old, divorced with one child ... a son called Louis.” He read from his well-used notebook.
“Did you say Louis Gouws?”
“Ja, why?”
“Does he work for Rent-a-cop?”
“Yes. How’d you know that?”
“I know him. He's an old friend of Janet's.”
“Well, that’s interesting. He was seen leaving here on Sunday night.”
“So Louis was seen leaving here last night?” Nico kept tapping the dead note.
“Yes, that’s what they tell me.”
“That’s quite interesting, wouldn’t you say? Mother and son ... son has a career in security. The rent-a-cop uniform looks remarkably like a standard police uniform, and I wonder how much he knows about forensics and police procedure.”
“That’s a fascinating train of thought – are you sure it’s one you want to pursue?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, for one thing, this guy’s your buddy.”
“He's not my buddy. I haven’t known him for very long: I've only had a couple of beers with the guy.”
“Okay, but your girlfriend has known him for a while. How will she feel if you go after her friend in a murder investigation?”
“Firstly, I go where the evidence leads me, she knows that and secondly, Janet doesn’t like the guy. She thinks he’s an arsehole.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“I'm not wrong. There's something about this guy. You don't normally tell me to ignore the bells going off in my head or second guess my gut instinct.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. If we’ve found our guy, we need more than your gut instinct and circumstantial evidence to put him away. ”
“Then what are you saying?”
“All I’m saying is that we should be careful. Keep an eye on him, but don’t let him know that we’re watching him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good and now that that’s settled, I believe we still have the rest of the crime scene to walk. Captain, if you’re finished playing the piano?”
“Hmm ...” Nico grunted, pulled himself away from the piano and tried to push all thoughts out of his mind so that he could concentrate on the job at hand. He took another glance at the picture on the piano. The man was obviously Louis’s father. The resemblance between father and son was uncanny. He focused on what he had to do. He would deal with telling Louis about his mother’s death first and the questions tugging at his gut, later.
In the lounge, there was a puddle of blood on the carpet and on the coffee table. Thabiso took photos from all corners of the room and from 90-degree angles. He also took pictures from directly above each piece of potential evidence as well as all the blood splatter. Nico took a sweeping glance at the rooms in the house. The thing that struck Nico the most was that there were no pictures of her son. He filed this fact along with everything else that was bugging him about this case.
As with all the other scenes, the blood trail led from the room where she was killed to the bathroom. Marietta Gouws was lying in the bathtub, much the same as the other victims before her. Deep cuts on her fingertips, from when she had tried to grip the wire to pull it away from her throat, had practically sliced off her fingerprints. The flashes from Thabiso’s camera were fraying his nerve endings. Every time he tried to seize hold of an elusive thought, the camera flash would go off, and he would lose his train of thought.
He'd seen enough. He wanted to be able to go to the other victims’ family members, tell them that the man who had killed their mothers was behind bars and would never be able to hurt anybody else ever again. He also wanted to see how Louis would react to the news of his mother’s death. Perhaps he was the murdering bastard he would end up putting away.
But first, he had something else to take care of and hopefully, by the end of the night, he would have the answers he needed.
*
NICO SAT IN HIS CAR, parked a few houses down from Marietta Gouws’ home. He'd parked under the shade of a big stinkwood tree after everybody left the scene, which took several hours to process. It was now late in the day, and he hoped that his suspect was desperate enough to show up to collect his trophy.
Something else that bugged Nico about this was why did the killer come back for the trophy. Why didn’t he take it when he killed her? Did he get an extra thrill going there after the police had been on the scene? There were too many things that didn’t make sense. The piano in Marietta Gouws’s house with a missing wire was just another part of the puzzle he didn’t like, and he wasn't sure how he felt about the direction in which it was pointing. If Louis was the killer, it could put a strain on his relationship with Janet. What if Janet didn't believe him? What if she decided to believe in Louis’s innocence, even in the face of irrefutable evidence? But he was jumping the gun. He didn't even know for sure that Louis was guilty. He would have to cross that bridge with Janet when they got there.
Nico had been sitting in the car for almost two hours. His arse was starting to go numb, he needed to relieve himself and, worst of all, he was bored. He was also beginning to think he’d made a right royal fuck-up and the killer wasn’t going to show. Another Radio Jacaranda DJ was being obnoxious and irritating him. The radio was, unfortunately, his only company. This time around he had come prepared for a long wait. He had an empty one-and-a-half litre Valpré bottle, snacks and coffee in a thermos flask. The coffee had been an inspired idea. He took a swig: it was black and sweet. When he had been a toddler, and at nursery school, the woman who ran the nursery school had left their chocolate milk out in the sun. It had gone sour, and she forced him to drink it anyway. The memory of having to drink it resurrected a horrible taste in his mouth. His mother had tried to get him to drink milk after that, but he’d clamped his mouth shut and refused to drink it. She eventually gave up. He had always been stubborn. It was this quality that made him a good detective.
The sun started to set and dropped below his line of sight. Street lights flashed on above his car. A green Toyota Tazz drove past, and Nico ducked down onto the passenger seat. The Toyota kept driving. Nico sat up straight again in his seat once the Toyota’s headlights had disappeared around the corner. The temperature dropped, and the wind picked up. He watched another car come round the corner into Hartley Street and turn left into De Bruyn Street on its way home. He wished that he was on his way home but, still had a long night ahead of him. His cell phone rang and vibrated against his thigh. He lifted up his left hip so he could get his hand into the trouser pocket. He recognised Janet’s number and realised he was going to be in trouble.
“Where are you?” she said the moment he answered. He could hear that she was trying to sound calm but worry, tinged with anger, crept into her voice.
“I’m sitting in my car outside a victim’s house.”
“What do you mean sitting in your car? You were supposed to be here over an hour ago.” She used her angry voice, with only a slight hint of worry.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I’ve got to work tonight.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Or is that asking too much?”
Now he knew he was in big trouble. A storm front was definitely on the rise. Headlights headed in his direction. He ducked. Janet’s voice shouted at him from the cell phone. The headlights didn’t drive past or turn into any other street. He peered over his steering wheel to see where the car had stopped. His heart pounded in his chest, and the adrenaline pumped through his veins. The car stopped right outside Marietta Gouws’s home.
He couldn’t believe his luck. The killer was either incredibly stupid or desperate or both. The headlights were switched off, and the same blond head from the Entabeni flats emerged from the car. It was the same white Golf.
“Nico, are you still there?” Janet’s voice interrupted his excitement.
“Have to go,” he said and hit the disconnect button before she could say anything.
Nico waited for his suspect to open the gate and walk to the front door. This time there wasn’t anywhere for him to run. Nico knew he finally had the bastard. The feeling of triumph started to rise in the pit of his stomach. But the nagging feeling this was all too easy tugged at the back of his mind.
He watched his suspect open the front door and made a mental note to find out how the suspect had obtained a set of keys for the house. Nico waited for him to go inside and then got out of his car. Closing the car door softly behind him, he removed his 9mm service pistol from his hip holster. Crouching, he ran across the road, his gun at the ready and jumped over the wire fence. Good thing it was only waist high, he thought, as he landed in the garden. All the other fences and walls in the neighbourhood were well over six feet high and sported razor wire on top. He sprinted across the garden and crouched against the wall at the front door. He decided this was as good a place as any to wait for his suspect to come out. It was dark, and the walls of the house cast a dark shadow over him.
He was down on his haunches with his pistol gripped firmly in front of him when he heard his suspect opening the front door. With heart pounding and hands sweating, he waited for his suspect to walk past him before he made his move.
“Police!” Nico shouted as he came out of the crouch. “Stop right there!”
His suspect stopped mid-stride. Nico felt as though time was standing still. The suspect hesitated and then broke into a sprint. Nico took aim and fired. The man stopped running, the warning shot had landed at his feet.
“There’s nowhere to run. You might as well cooperate, or the next bullet won’t end up in the ground.” The suspect nodded his head, and his body slumped in surrender.
“Put your hands up, slowly, above your head.” He did as he was told, a silver candlestick in need of polish in his hand. Nico strolled towards him, ready to fire his pistol if the man moved a muscle. Nico stood behind him and removed his pistol from his hip holster and then patted him down for more weapons and found a second, non-issue, revolver strapped to his ankle and removed it. Putting the nuzzle of his pistol at the base of the suspect’s skull, Nico pulled out his handcuffs and placed them in the man's hands
“Put them on,” Nico instructed.
“Can I move my hands?” the suspect asked, his voice sounded young, too young to belong to a serial killer, but age wasn't a determining factor for a monster.
“Don't try to be funny. Just put them on,” Nico said as he applied more pressure with the barrel of his pistol. He heard the handcuffs click into place.
“Now turn around. No sudden movements.”
As his suspect turned around slowly, Nico recognised the man he had been hunting. He had been under his nose the whole time. It was the bored young constable who had pissed him off at all the murder scenes.
“According to section thirty-five of the Constitution you’re under arrest, Constable, for the murders of Michelle Venter, Amanda Du Plessis, Theresa van Wyk, Erica Steenkamp ...”
“Hey! Wait a moment, I didn’t do that. I didn’t kill anybody, Captain.” The young constable looked frightened and confused.
“I suggest you shut your trap and talk to a lawyer. Now, where was I? Oh yes ... furthermore, I arrest you for the murders of Tanya McKenzie and Marietta Gouws. You have the right to remain silent.” He made sure that the handcuffs were tight enough. “You have the right to legal representation. If you cannot afford legal representation, someone will be appointed to you by the State. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?” Nico said while he marched the constable over to his car.
“I swear, Captain, I didn’t kill those women. I just had a few debts to pay so I pinched some things so that I could flog them. I’m not a killer. I’m just a thief.”
“Save it for your lawyer, fuck nut. I really don’t want to hear it,” Nico said and pushed him into the back seat of the car. Nico slid into the front seat and radioed into the station that he was bringing in a suspect for the Bathroom Strangler case. He was in for a long night of paperwork and Janet was going to put him on dry rations for at least a month for standing her up. Not to mention what she would do to him for hanging up on her.
*
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when Nico buzzed Louis’s and Natalie’s flat in Sunnyside. He could have waited until morning and given Louis a decent night’s sleep: but there was still something about Louis and the whole case which bothered him. He hoped surprising him in the middle of the night would catch him off his guard.
The paperwork and interviewing the constable had taken a few hours and taken their toll on Nico. He was exhausted. He had delegated someone to check on the cop’s alibis for all the murders. It was something he would have preferred doing himself, but he needed to confront his suspicions about Louis so he could move on with the case. He only hoped everybody at the station had respected his request and not yet informed Louis of his mother’s death. He wanted to see the expression on Louis’s face as he gave him the news.
Louis’s sleep-filled voice answered the buzzer.
“This had better be good!”
“It’s Nico.”
“What are you doing here? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I'm sorry, but it’s important.”
There was a buzzing sound, and the gate clicked open. This was usually the part of his job he hated the most. The dead bodies and the criminals he could handle. Telling a person that someone they loved was never coming home was a whole other story. But this time, it felt like a game of cat and mouse.
Louis was standing in the corridor outside his flat when Nico stepped out of the lift. The light above the door was bright, and Nico could see that Louis was still trying to adjust his drowsy eyes to the light. Louis only had his pyjama pants on, and gooseflesh had started to crawl across his chest.
“Let’s go inside,” Nico said to a confused-looking Louis.
Louis turned without saying a word and led the way back into the flat. Natalie was in the kitchen wearing a white terry-towelling gown greying with age and big, fluffy animal slippers on her feet. She yawned while filling the kettle with water.
“I thought a cup of coffee might be a good idea,” she said when they walked into the kitchen.
“So, what’s so important that you had to get us out of bed at this time of night?” Louis asked him, stifling a yawn.
“I’m sorry to do this to you, and I don’t know how to tell you this to be quite honest,” Nico said, combing his fingers through his thinning hair.
“Well, you’ve woken us up now, so you might as well just spill it,” Louis said.
Somewhere car brakes screeched to a halt and hooters blared. There was a period of silence that seemed to last forever as Nico tried to think about the best way to do this. The speech he had been preparing on his way up evaporated the instant he walked through the door. The kettle boiled and Natalie poured the boiling water into three mugs and put the mugs on the kitchen table in front of them. She sat down next to Louis and sipped her coffee in silence. Her actions were slow and deliberate, almost calculated.
“I’ve got some bad news for you and umm ... ag, shit ... the thing is ... well, it’s your mother.”
Natalie's eyebrow twitched.
“What about her?” Louis said and then took a sip of his coffee. Nico wasn’t sure how to read the expression on his face. Something flashed across his eyes, but Nico wondered if he was just looking for something that wasn't there.
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this ... but she was found dead yesterday.”
There was a long silence. He could hear cars driving past in the busy streets outside. The one thing about Sunnyside was that it never slept. There was always something going down in this part of the city. Someone was probably being murdered or robbed just a few blocks away. The murder and robbery unit were trying their hardest to crack down on the area and were, surprisingly, making headway. They had made some large drug busts in the last few months that had made front-page news. It had been excellent PR for the service.
The look on Natalie’s face surprised Nico. She just stared at Louis. There were no tears. She didn’t ask how it happened. There was no denial. Neither one of them, for that matter, said that it was impossible. Neither one displayed the first stages of grief. She just sat there and stared at Louis, dumbfounded, with a strange glint in her eyes. It was almost as if she'd expected it. He would have to ask Janet about Natalie’s history with Louis’s mother. He doubted that Louis would ever tell him what Natalie’s story was and he had a feeling that it was a fascinating one. After what seemed an inordinately long silence, Louis collected himself and cleared his throat. Nico pulled his attention away from Natalie and focused on Louis.
“So ... um ... what exactly happened?” Louis’s voice croaked.
“She was killed on Sunday night by the Bathroom Strangler. We do have a suspect in custody. I know that’s not much consolation, but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that the bastard is behind bars.”
“You’re right; it isn’t any consolation. I can’t believe it. I saw her on Sunday night.”
“Yes, I know. One of her neighbours saw you go in.”
Louis stood up, pushing his chair back as he stood and started pacing the length of the small kitchen.
“I’m ... sorry ... it’s just that ... my mother and I had an argument that night. I just stormed out of there ... and now ... If only I had stayed a little longer ... she might still be alive.”
“An argument? What was it about?” Nico asked, looking from Louis to Natalie.
“It was about Natalie.” Louis stopped pacing, looked down at Nico and crossed his arms. “We argued about her every time I went there. Why are you asking me about this?”
“I’m just trying to get a feel for everything that happened to your mother on Sunday. How often did you see her?” Nico took out his notepad and started taking notes.
“I visited her every Sunday.”
“Every Sunday?”
“Yes, every Sunday. Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?”
Natalie was still sitting in her chair, dry-eyed and drinking her coffee in silence. Nico’s warning bells were clanging and drowned out any other thoughts. Something was very wrong with this picture. He tried to tell himself that maybe she just reacted to shock differently from most people. Perhaps he had been a cop for too long, and his overly-suspicious mind was playing tricks on him. Maybe Louis was sincere in his grief, and he just wasn’t seeing it. But those bells kept clanging. The fact that he visited his mother every Sunday just made those bells clang even louder.
His mother was the catalyst. She was the trigger.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t an interrogation. I’m just getting the facts. Now back to the argument you had. Why was it about Natalie?”
“They always have arguments about me. His mother hated me.” Natalie finally found her voice.
“I told my mother that I was going to ask Natalie to marry me, which I did when I got home,” Louis said, taking a few steps forward and standing behind Natalie’s chair. He put his hands on her shoulders and started rubbing them.
“Congratulations! I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“So do we,” Louis said, looking down at Natalie’s head.
“There are still a lot of questions that I have to ask, but that can wait till tomorrow,” Nico said, getting up and walking from the kitchen into the dark entrance hall of their flat. “I’ll give you a call later in the day to work out all the details.”
“Okay. I’ll chat with you then.”
“Once again, I’m sorry for your loss,” Nico said, stepping into the hallway outside their door.
Nico turned and walked away. He heard the door close behind him and wondered what was being said. He would find out tomorrow if the right man was spending the night in jail. But he had a sneaking suspicion that he'd arrested the wrong man for murder.
*
ONCE NICO HAD LEFT, and the door was closed behind him, Natalie turned on Louis.
“So is there something you should tell me?” she asked him, her arms wrapped around her chest.
“What the fuck are you on about now, you crazy woman?”
“Oh, I don’t know ... how about ... how you knew that she wouldn’t be a problem for us ever again? Huh ... How did you know that?”
“Natalie what are you trying to imply?” he asked as he took a few steps closer to her. He was close enough for her to smell his breath. There was still a hint of minty toothpaste on it.
“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking you straight out did you or did you not have something to do with this?”
His laughter was the last thing she had expected. It was deep and guttural. It stopped just as suddenly as it had started.
“So you think I’m the Bathroom Strangler, do you?” He arched his dark, thin eyebrows.
“I didn’t say that.” Her voice had lost its conviction and wasn’t much more than a whisper. “It’s just that I wouldn’t blame you if you had killed that horrible cow and made it look like the Bathroom Strangler did it.”
“Well, I wish I had, but you heard the man. They already have someone in custody.” He wrapped his right arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. “Ding dong the witch is dead.” He kissed her hard, forcing her lips apart with his tongue.