Stella’s boyfriend, who looked like a rabbit and circulated lame jokes on email. Schalk didn’t have the heart to tell Stella to make him stop. It irritated him that she took advice from someone so colourless; and he was still needled about the security van. He said, ‘How many times must I tell you to park inside the gates? You have to park in the yard and lock the gate behind you. You park in the street, your car’s wide open, you’re exposed when you go in and out. You know the area.’
Elsa weighed in. ‘Ja. They wait for you to come home and if you leave the gate open then they’re in flick-flack and before you know it you’re dead.’ She was warming up. ‘And this afternoon, they were talking on the radio about those home invasions in Vredehoek, they’re breaking in everywhere and you people can’t catch them…’
Stella had had enough. ‘It’s perfectly safe, Ma. I lock my doors every time I get in. And if I didn’t drive at night, you’d hardly ever see me.’ She turned to Schalk. ‘Ma’s put your supper in the fridge, on the second shelf.’
Schalk lay in Stella’s single bed, in the bright pink room he’d painted for her when she was a teenager. He was tired but couldn’t sleep. Nothing unusual there. He reached for his phone, then changed his mind. They said the blue light woke you up even more. Thought of taking a pill but decided things weren’t bad enough yet. So he turned his radio on, CapeTalk, listened to callers discussing how to live a full life. Stared at the ceiling fan. Then he gave up, put on shorts and a T- shirt and scrabbled for his running shoes. He saw he needed a new pair, his had holes in the toes. He left the house quietly, walked up Balaclava and across Koeberg, ignoring his complaining rugby knee. He decided on a loop, to Sunset Beach and back. He did this often, had long ago stopped looking into shadows. After all, he was a big boy and they could see he wasn’t carrying anything.
He got into a rhythm, let his mind have its way. It went straight to Pieterse.
The first time he saw Pieterse, it was 1985 and Schalk was brand new. They needed good men and he was one, plucked straight from college. The report said smart but could be obstinate, a temper. A brilliant fullback though, outstanding on the field. It was the rugby more than anything else that got him to Caledon Square. There he learned his trade from Sergeant Venter. Venter was old school, forefingers yellow from decades of palmed cigarettes.
It was a hell of a time. Apartheid was in its death-throes and the country practically at war. Outside, on the borders of South West Africa and Angola, they faced insurgents. At home too, the blacks were up in arms, rioting. Police were expected to fight side by side with soldiers, this in addition to the usual murders and robberies and things that went on in people’s kitchens every day.
The government struck back in public and secret ways. They had spies everywhere. Dissenters were rounded up and imprisoned without trial.
That, Schalk remembered, was how he and Joepie met. A month after he started, on a warm night like this, Schalk was alone at his desk when the doors opened and two constables appeared, one white, one coloured. Both of them came through the whites-only entrance. The young coloured cop, trouser pleats sharp, chatted to Schalk like he was a friend.
‘Got a van-full outside,’ he said. ‘Roeland Street’s chockablock. You must make room for them here.’
‘Why?’ The constable grinned at Schalk, leaned over the desk and pushed forward his hand. ‘Fortune. Joseph, by the way. Joepie.’ The guy was out of line – coloureds didn’t ask white men to shake hands – but the grin was infectious. Schalk shook.
‘Too many detentions. Political. The government, they shit-scared about something big, something terrorist, ANC. I feel sorry for these okes.’ Joepie waved in the van’s direction. ‘They going to get a hard time.’
A hard time was right. It arrived in the form of Brian de Jager, a shadowy figure from Pretoria, Special Branch; and a new Captain, Petrus Pieterse. Schalk reached the sand. He was alone. Ahead, the dark flanks of Table Mountain encircled the twinkling city. Between him and it the Atlantic, Table Bay. The tide was in and he stood, hands on hips, breathing the sea and thinking about the past. Pieterse brought trouble with him then and he had a bad feeling about what Pieterse’s death would bring now.
2: TUESDAY
The sign outside read Cape Town Central Police Station but to Schalk it would always be Caledon Square. He remembered the first time he stood under its arched colonial bulk, marvelling at the size. It took up a whole block. It was summer then, the air still and heavy with history.
He’d presented himself at the front office with its cracked tile floors and red-brick walls and hopeless crowd waiting for the duty constable. Later, he was that constable, Sergeant Venter peering over his shoulder. Venter hated paperwork. Rumour had it Venter couldn’t read or write.
Today there were chairs for people to wait in, numbers to take, cops sitting in boxes like bank tellers. According to signs in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa, this was a Community Service Centre, a Victim- Friendly Facility. If you needed it you could use the Victim Support Room Sponsored By Spar. Posters announced community events and a separate noticeboard informed people of their rights.
All this to force the pendulum as far away from apartheid as possible. Then, the police force had been a government weapon, blunt and terrifying. Now it was SAPS, the South African Police Service, emphasis on service. And Caledon Square, in the interests of forgetting, found itself renamed Cape Town Central.
Too bad the building hadn’t received similar treatment. Apart from a poorly judged annexe, some cosmetics and late-onset electricity, it hadn’t been touched for 200 years. Its corridors were dark and gloomy. Its walls sweated damp. The outcome was a mixture of dungeon and decrepitude.
Schalk got in at eight but even so Colonel Zangwa beat him to it. There she was, sitting tight behind her desk, feet on a wooden box because they didn’t reach the floor. A line of clips corrugated her hair from her ears to her bun.
‘Captain Lourens.’ She preferred formality. They’d worked together long enough for Schalk to know she wasn’t happy.
He asked, ‘You heard from Nkosi?’
Zangwa squared an already square book titled Ten Best Management Strategies from Ten Best Managers. Other than that, a mugful of pencils and a phone, her desk was clear. ‘I have been briefed by General Nkosi, yes.’
‘What did he say? He tell you I have to report to him?’
She pursed her lips. ‘I expect you to keep me up to date as well.’
‘The General stressed confidentiality.’ Before Zangwa could reply, he seized an opportunity. ‘I’ll work with Captain Fortune.’
Zangwa looked sour. ‘We have priorities, you know. Captain Fortune is required here. And you need someone else, a black face. Sergeant Mbotho. Now come, time for the meeting.’
Zangwa was right about needing a black face, a darker one than Joepie Fortune’s Cape coffee, but Sergeant Winsome Mbotho was a problem for all sorts of reasons. In her 30’s and in your face. They said she was Colonel Zangwa’s protégée – some said her lover – and if any of that were true then yes of course Zangwa would want her involved, to pass on anything she needed to know. Schalk was definitely not going to let himself become a pawn in a battle between Nkosi and Zangwa.
He opened his mouth to argue but she was already on her way out, looking like a school prefect in her black
