Devil's Peak Read Online Free PDF Page B

Superintendent Matt Joubert. His boss.

“It’s the same MO,” he said.

“Any good news?”

“Not so far. He’s clever, the fucker.”

“Keep me informed.”

“I will.”

“Benny?”

“Yes, Matt?”

“Are you okay?”

Silence. He could not lie to Joubert—they had too much history.

“Come and talk to me, Benny.”

“Later. Let me finish up here first.”

It dawned on him that Joubert knew something. Had Anna . . .

She was serious. This time she had even phoned Matt Joubert.
    * * *
    He rode the motorbike to Alice, to see the man who made weapons by hand. Like their ancestors used to.

The interior of the little building was gloomy; when his eyes had adjusted to the poor light, he looked through the assegais that were bundled in tins, shafts down, shiny blades pointing up.

“What do you do with all of these?”

“They are for the people with tradition,” said the graybeard, his hands busy shaping a shaft from a long sapling. The sandpaper rasped rhythmically up and down, up and down.

“Tradition,” he echoed.

“They are not many now. Not many.”

“Why do you make the long spears too?”

“They are also part of our history.”

He turned to the bundle with shorter shafts. His finger stroked the blades—he was looking for a certain form, a specific balance. He drew one out, tested it, replaced it and took another.

“What do you want to do with an assegai?” asked the old man.

He did not immediately reply, because his fingers had found the right one. It lay comfortable in his palm.

“I am going hunting,” he said. When he looked up there was great satisfaction in the eyes of the graybeard.
    * * *
    “When I was nine, my mother gave me a set of records for my birthday. A box of ten seven-inch singles and a book with pictures of princesses and good fairies. There were stories on them and every story had more than one ending—three or four each. I don’t know exactly how it worked, but every time you listened to them, the needle would jump to one of the endings. A woman told the stories. In English. If the ending was unhappy I would play it again until it ended right.”

She wasn’t sure why she had brought this up and the minister said: “But life doesn’t work that way?”

“No,” she said, “life doesn’t.”

He stirred his tea. She sat with her cup on her lap, both feet on the floor now, and the scene was like a play she was watching: the woman and the clergyman in his study, drinking tea out of fine white porcelain. So normal. She could have been one of his congregation: innocent, seeking guidance for her life. About a relationship perhaps? With some young farmer? He looked at her in a paternal way and she knew: he likes me, he thinks I’m okay.

“My father was in the army,” she said.

He sipped his tea to gauge the temperature.

“He was an officer. I was born in Upington; he was a captain then. My mother was a housewife at first. Later on she worked at the attorneys’ office. Sometimes he was away on the Border for long stretches, but I only remember that vaguely, because I was still small. I am the oldest; my brother was born two years after me. Gerhard. Christine and Gerhard van Rooyen, the children of Captain Rooies and Mrs. Martie van Rooyen of Upington. The Rooies was just because of his surname. It’s an army thing; every other guy had a nickname. My father was good looking, with black hair and green eyes—I got my eyes from him. And my hair from my mother, so I expect to go gray early—blonde hair does that. There are photos from when they were married, when she also wore her hair long. But later she cut it in a bob. She said it was because of the heat, but I think it was because of my father.”

His eyes were on her face, her mouth. Was he listening, really hearing her? Did he see her as she was? Would he remember later, when she revealed her great fraud? She was quiet for a moment, lifting the cup to her lips, sipping, saying self-consciously: “It will take a long time to tell you everything.”

“That is