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,
