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Pete stood in the doorway. The light from the hallway illuminated his tall crumpled figure from behind. The light gave him the appearance of having a bright yellow and white aura surrounding him, making him larger than life. Then again, Nico admitted to himself, in his present state of mind anything appeared to be bigger than life. He saw everything through a haze, and the world moved in slow motion. This must be what they call an out-of-body experience he decided. It felt surreal, as though he were watching it all through someone else’s eyes. He watched Pete walk, in slow motion, over to where he was crouched, leaning against the wall opposite the front door. The touch of Pete’s hand on his shoulder made him shudder.
“Are you all right?” Pete’s voice was low and sounded muffled to Nico’s ears. Somewhere down the road, a dog barked. Nico felt himself drift away. He didn’t want to feel the pain. He wanted Janet to stand up and get out of her bathtub and tell him that everything was okay. He could almost see her smiling at him.
“Nico, are you all right?” Pete asked again, with the patience that only someone who has seen pain and tragedy too many times in his lifetime can summon.
Nico felt Pete's hand on his shoulder apply pressure, and his voice brought him back into his own body. Janet’s smiling face faded into the darkness and was replaced by Pete’s worried face. The reality of Janet’s death hit him hard. Bile rose up from his empty stomach. He stumbled up on to his feet and staggered past Pete, out of the door and managed to get his head over the railing, where the little that had been in his stomach made its way out with full force.
“At least you remembered the integrity of the crime scene. I just hope no one was walking past downstairs.”
“Not now, Doc.” It was all Nico could manage to get out between heaves.
“I’m sorry. Bad timing,” he said while patting Nico on his back. “Are you going to be okay to answer some questions?”
Nico nodded, crouched down on his haunches and gripped on to the railing.
“I’ll answer any questions you have, but I’ll never be okay again.” His voice croaked as he struggled to utter a coherent sentence.
Heavy footsteps walked up to them. They stopped a few steps away. He glanced under his arm to see who the new arrivals were. He noticed the well-worn brown shoes first, on both pairs of feet, then one pair of skinny legs and one pair of well-rounded legs. One pair of slacks was perfectly ironed and the other he doubted had ever seen an iron. He looked up at the faces for confirmation. Laurel and Hardy stared back at him with expressions he couldn’t read. Laurel shuffled his feet, and Hardy coughed. Both dropped their eyes, unable to meet Nico’s anguished stare.
“Don’t you have a crime scene to walk?” Pete asked them.
“We’re waiting for you,” was Hardy’s response.
“I’ll be with you in a moment. So get to work while I get a statement from the Captain, or do you have a problem with that?”
“No, no problem at all. But we want the Captain to join us at the station after we’re through here.”
“What for?” Pete’s face started turning red as he asked Hardy. Nico had only seen his face go that red once before. It had been during Pete’s divorce, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife had been on the receiving end. He couldn’t remember the reason; Pete's ex-wife just had to walk into the room for him to be angry. There were only two people who could get that kind of reaction out of the doctor: Hardy and his ex-wife.
“We’re just covering all our bases. We just want to get a complete statement from the Captain at the station. That’s all, or do you have a problem with that, Doctor?”
“Me? Have a problem with the two of you? Perish the thought.”
“Look, Doctor, we know that you have a man crush on wonder boy over there, busy puking his guts out. We don’t really want to know the details of your relationship, but we would, however, appreciate some cooperation from you while we work this case. Can you do that?” Laurel said, getting his two cents in.
“Don’t get cute with me, Colonel. Now, before we turn this crime scene into a triple homicide, I suggest we all get back to work.” He turned to Nico, his voice losing the edge it had when talking to Laurel and Hardy and asked, “Do you think you can work the scene with us?”
Nico felt his stomach tighten again and his face must have betrayed his feelings.
“That's against procedure. Captain Van Staaden has been suspended,” Hardy said, his voice two octaves higher than usual.
“I’m sorry, but I need your input on this,” Pete said, ignoring Hardy. He couldn’t meet Nico's eyes, and his voice took on a pleading quality. “You knew her better than anybody else. We need you. Hell ... Janet needs you to pull yourself together and help us find the guy who did this to her.”
“You’re not playing fair, Doc,” Nico mumbled.
“Do you think this fucker is going to play fair and stick to the rules? Can you trust these two idiots to do your job for you?” Pete asked, jutting his thumb in the direction of Laurel and Hardy.
“Who are you calling idiots?” Laurel and Hardy asked in unison.
“Would you all just shut up and stop your shit. A woman, who I loved, has just been murdered,” Nico said, as he pulled himself up using the railing. “The longer we stand out here and argue, the longer her body deteriorates and the more evidence we lose. So, is it asking too much for you pathetic excuses for human beings to put your problems aside and fucking-well do your jobs?”
A slow, triumphant smile crept on to Pete’s face. “So ... does this mean you’ll work the scene with me?”
“Wipe that smile off your face and I will, but we’re missing a photographer.”
“No, you’re not,” replied a voice whose body was hidden behind Laurel and Hardy.
“Thabiso, where the hell have you been?” asked Pete as Thabiso’s head emerged from between the shoulders of Laurel and Hardy.
“I’ve been here the whole time. I didn’t want to interrupt the cockfight.”
“Well, now that everybody is present and accounted for, can we please just get this over and done with?” Nico could feel his resolve starting to crumble. He wanted to run and hide. He still wanted someone to knock him out so that when he woke up, Janet would be standing over him, alive and well.
Nico followed Thabiso into Janet’s flat. Pete instructed Laurel and Hardy to wait outside and told them that they could have the scene once he was finished. Laurel and Hardy threatened to report him to Molwedi. Nico didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the insults being flung around; all he could see was Janet’s blood on her clean carpet. Bile rose up from his now-raw gut. Thabiso’s camera flashed, illuminating the dark room. The room spun around him. A hand steadied him, and he could breathe again. The air smelt of blood, Janet’s blood. It mingled with the fragrance of her perfume. It was a strangely sweet smell which made him feel the loss of her even more keenly.
Tears flowed down his cheeks. He hadn't cried since his mother's funeral and hadn't thought he'd ever cry again. This wasn't the way things were supposed to be. He'd had a picture of his life with Janet, of what their wedding would be like, of what their children would look like. He'd imagined that they'd look like their mother.
He looked around at Janet's flat, at where she'd died, and those dreams of their future together evaporated.
There was no sign of struggle. Nothing had been overturned. All her ornaments were still perfectly displayed, just the way she always insisted on having them. Nothing was out of place.
“Looks like he caught her by surprise,” Pete said; he seemed to be reading Nico’s mind as always. “My guess is she knew the guy. What do you think van Staaden?”
Nico only managed to nod his head. He couldn’t think. The walls were closing in on him.
They walked from the lounge down the passage into her bedroom. Seeing her bed with the clean white sheets brought back painful memories of falling asleep to the sound of her breathing, her blonde hair strewn across the pillow and creamy-white eyelids fluttering as she dreamed. He remembered lying awake next to her, watching her sleep, guarding her. The failure of unspoken promises hit him hard. He felt as though he had been driven over by a bulldozer and the bulldozer was reversing for another shot at him. Each memory hit him harder than the last one. Each hit from the bulldozer sent him spiralling into another memory. He felt a hand guide him out of the bedroom and into hell.
“Overkill,” Pete muttered to himself as he leaned over Janet’s body. “Our boy was a tad frustrated and worked it out on your girl. I’d say she was already dead when he beat her face to a pulp.”
The sight of her body floating in the bathtub, suspended in time, brought him out of the whirling memories. Reality hit him with a force he hadn’t felt since he found his mother’s body. At that moment he hated Pete for making him go through that. It was cruel.
“Oh, god! I can’t do this. Not again.” Blood pounded in his ears in time with his feet as he ran out of the bathroom. The light from the corridor blinded his eyes as he emerged from the darkness of Janet’s tomb. He shielded them from the glaring brightness of the lights and the flashes from press photographers who somehow got wind of another murder.
He heard a voice calling his name; it sounded as though it was coming from afar. For all he knew it was from another world. He looked, unseeing, in the direction of the voice. Another flash from a camera distorted his vision. Through a haze of spots in front of his eyes, he could see a woman standing in the crowd trying to attract his attention. For a few seconds, he thought it might be Janet. His vision cleared and he recognised the woman. It was Helen. He had loved her almost as much as he loved Janet. He would never understand why she had betrayed him for the sake of her career. He would never have chosen his job over the person he loved.
Her suit was tailored and looked expensive. Her hair was the same blonde as Janet’s, but hers was long, straight and sleek. So unlike Janet’s short wavy hairstyle that she said made her look like a young Meg Ryan. Helen always managed to look composed and serene when everything around her was in chaos, whereas Janet was always flustered but tried so hard to control things going on around her. They looked so much alike but were so different. He tried to ignore Helen’s insistent voice. She was the last person he wanted to deal with right now. He turned his back on her and ended up facing Laurel and Hardy’s sour faces. Their eyes judged him. He changed his mind. Laurel and Hardy were the last people he wanted to deal with.
He turned around once more and tried to find somewhere to hide from Helen, as well as everybody else’s accusing eyes. Helen had moved her way forward, dragging her cameraman with her. She was now pushing against the yellow crime-scene tape and arguing with a constable who was trying to get her to stand back and pushing the camera out of his face only to find the microphone where the camera had been. She'd always been pushy. Up until now, he’d managed to avoid her and other journalists since their break up, but now he was her main target. She smelt blood and would go in for the kill. She always did. It made her good at her job, but a lousy human being.
*
THE INTERROGATION ROOM was cold and the atmosphere hostile. The overhead bulb didn’t give off much light. The shadows played like ghosts in the corners of the room. It was the first time he had been on this side of the desk. The plastic chair was uncomfortable, and he felt as though it was going to collapse beneath him at any moment. The air was heavy with the smell of bad body odour. Pete came in with two cups of coffee and placed one in front of Nico. He removed a pack of Camels from his jacket pocket and offered one to Nico. Nico took one without thinking and put it between his lips. Not noticing where the match came from, he inhaled deeply. The nicotine felt good as it entered his exhausted body.
“Have there been any new developments on the case?” Nico asked Pete, after taking a sip of his hot, black coffee.
“Not until now.”
Nico took a deep drag from his cigarette and exhaled slowly.
“I see,” he said, squinting across the dimly-lit room at Pete who had retreated into a corner on the other side of the room. “Can you please tell me why not?”
“You know I can’t, and besides you know the answer to that one already.”
“True. No leads, no case. It just ended up at the bottom of the pile, and now that he’s killed Janet, the wheels are moving again.”
Pete touched the tip of his nose with his index finger and nodded his head.
“There’s just one problem,” Nico continued. “Janet doesn’t fit the victim profile, and she wasn’t killed on a Sunday.”
“That’s correct. So you aren’t such an idiot after all.”
“And I bet no one’s looked into Louis Gouws?”
“Nope. Laurel and Hardy felt he didn’t have enough of a motive and didn’t fit the profile. Plus his girlfriend gave him an alibi for all the murders.”
“You have got to be kidding me: he fits the profile to a fucking T. And Natalie's lying. She wasn't with him those nights. I’m telling you – he’s our guy. What about the missing wire in his mother's piano? Did they just forget about that?”
“They're incompetent idiots. I don't think they even bothered to follow up.”
“I just can’t shake the feeling that he’s ...” He was interrupted by the door opening. Laurel and Hardy walked in.
They both had smug grins on their faces. If he were a betting man, he would have bet a month’s salary that they had wanted to put him through hell for quite some time and they were going to enjoy this opportunity. The thought that they were deriving pleasure from his misery made his skin crawl. He refused to let them break him. Who the hell did they think they were? Did they think they could just waltz in and take advantage of his tragedy?
“So, Van Staaden,” Hardy said as he pulled a chair out from under the desk and parked his ample rear. He pressed ‘record’ on the tape recorder in front of Nico. It was the first time Nico had noticed it was in front of him. “Do you want to tell us about your relationship with the deceased?”
“Not particularly, no. Besides, you know exactly what my relationship with her was.” Nico said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of rattling him.
“Van Staaden, there’s no need to be defensive,” Laurel said, sitting next to Hardy and picking at his fingers. He seemed to be bored by the proceedings.
“I’m not being defensive.” Then he turned to Pete and asked. “Am I being defensive?”
“I don’t think so. He asked a stupid question,” Pete replied, examining his fingernails and deciding that they needed to be cleaned; he removed his penknife from his shirt pocket and proceeded to clean his fingernails.
“Doctor, you know as well as I do that we need to establish the relationship between the deceased and Captain van Staaden for the record,” said Hardy, turning around in his chair and facing Pete, who shrugged his shoulders in reply. Hardy turned back to Nico and took a deep breath.
“Captain van Staaden, would you state, for the record, the nature of your relationship with the deceased?”
“She was my girlfriend.” The words came with difficulty and reminded him that she was gone. Antagonising Laurel and Hardy provided him with a brief respite from reality but having to talk about her, to these men who delighted in his grief, brought him back to the reason for him being in the small, dark room and he remembered that Janet was lying on a slab in the mortuary, with her throat slit.
“Van Staaden! Are you still with us?” Laurel’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Umm, sorry.” His voice sounded hollow to his own ears.
“So you and the deceased were involved intimately?” Hardy asked
“Isn’t that what I just said and her name was Janet Shaw, not the deceased or the victim. Her name was Janet Shaw. For fuck's sake, what is wrong with you people? She was a human being, not some piece of meat. She had a name.”
“Calm down, Captain.”
“I will not calm down. I lost someone very important to me, and you’re acting like she was nothing, like she was just another victim.”
His hands were shaking as he took another drag from his cigarette. Pete appeared at his side and squatted down on his haunches.
“Calm down, Nico. These arseholes want to see you lose it,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t let them get to you.”
“Hey, who the hell are you calling an arsehole?” Hardy asked, his paunch leaning against the rickety table as he leaned forward to hear what Pete was saying.
“That would be you,” Pete said. “Now drag your gut off the table before you break it.” He turned back to Nico.
“Watch your step, Doctor, or you’ll find yourself sitting outside,” Hardy said, his face turning red.
“I need you on this.” Pete ignored Hardy. “I need you to keep your head. Can you do that for me?”
Nico nodded his head and with shaky hands took his cigarette to his lips for another, long, drag.
“To you, Janet’s not just another victim, but to everybody else, she is. She also needs you to keep calm and keep cool. Okay?”
“I’m okay, Doc. You don’t need to give me another pep talk. I’ll be fine. I just want to get this over with, so I can get out there and find this bastard.”
“You won’t be getting anybody,” Hardy said with a glint in his eyes that Nico realised was pure pleasure. The bastard was really enjoying this.
“What do you mean I won’t be getting anybody?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Molwedi threw you off the case,” Laurel said and smiled. “Oh yes, I almost forgot ... you’re also suspended. And here’s the real kicker ... we don’t think your girlfriend was killed by the Bathroom Strangler.”
“What the fuck?” Nico turned to look at Pete, who was examining his shoes. “Doc?”
Pete took a deep breath before answering.
“Look, Nico, the fact is, she doesn’t fit the victim profile, which you also stated. Plus the severe beating and it wasn’t a Sunday. This could be a copycat killing.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“You see, van Staaden, this is what we think happened.” Hardy bristled with excitement. “We think you got there when she was still very much alive. You got into a fight which turned really nasty. Am I getting warm, Captain?”
“I don’t believe this.” The realisation that they thought he'd killed Janet felt like a million knives slicing into him. “Doc, please tell me you aren’t buying this load of crap?”
“You know I don’t, but it’s out of my hands. You’re not the only one off the case. I crashed this party.”
“You’re off the case?”
“Yes.”
“When did that happen?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“Sorry to interrupt your little discussion, but Doctor, you have overstayed your welcome,” Laurel said, obviously relishing the situation.
“Fine, I’ll leave.”
“No! Wait a minute, Doc,” Nico said, standing up. “Are you arresting me?” he asked, looking at Hardy.
“We’re just having a little chat, Captain.”
“Well, since you’re not arresting me I’ll be leaving too, then.” He pulled his jacket on and turned to Pete. “You coming, Doc?”
“Right behind you.”
“Van Staaden,” Hardy said as they reached the door. “Don’t leave town.”
“You know,” Nico said, smiling for the first time in hours. “You watch too much TV.”