LITMIR.BIZ

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and opened up the chicken hok. I checked all five hens were in there, and listened to their sleepy chicken noises. I always close the hokkie door at night, because you never know when a jackal or rooikat is in the area. I threw some crushed mielie corn on the lawn and called kik kik kik and they woke up fast.

      The flashbacks were gone with the morning light, but the worries were still there, and my mind wouldn’t settle. So I made my farm bread with oats, sunflower seeds and molasses.

      I put the dough into a cast-iron pot and took it outside onto my stoep where the sun was now shining.

      I phoned the Gazette but there was no reply. When the dough had risen, I divided it into two bread pans and put them in the oven. While they baked I got dressed, but stayed barefoot. Then I brushed the loaves with butter and wrapped each one in its own cloth.

      I ate the soft warm bread, with butter and apricot jam on one slice and cheese on the other. I am not sure how settled my mind was, but the food settled very nicely in my belly.

      While I cleaned up I listened to a cicada’s buzzing song. I wondered if he was screaming for rain – the days were just getting hotter. But I suppose he was shouting for a mate. Cicadas aren’t shy to call and call. After years of living underground he comes out for just a short while and makes his mad music. But it seems he only plays one note, which goes on and on. I suppose his life in the sunshine is too short to be fussy. Maybe what sounds like a desperate racket to me is beautiful music to a lady cicada.

      I filled a tin with muesli buttermilk beskuit for the Gazette. I didn’t want to go in to the office; I couldn’t say why. But I brushed my hair and put on lipstick and my khaki veldskoene and headed for the car.

      Lying near the front tyre of the car was a small feathered thing. It was a dead bird. A dove. I wondered if I had hit it, but it didn’t look run over. It was all in one piece, just soft and dead. I put the rusks down on the passenger seat, and picked up the bird. It was so light in my hands, but it gave me a heavy feeling in my heart. I laid it under a bread-flower bush on the edge of my driveway. The bush had little red flowers.

      My sky-blue bakkie was not too hot, thanks to the morning shade of the eucalyptus trees. I wound down my windows as I drove and the warm wind unbrushed my hair and dried my lipstick.

      At the Gazette, I pulled in some distance behind Hattie’s Etios, which was parked very skew. As I walked up the path to the office, I could hear Hattie talking loudly.

      ‘Golly, Jess,’ she was saying. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you an ambulance chaser.’

      Jessie’s voice: ‘Aw, Hattie— ’

      ‘And privacy for the poor chap? The bereaved?’

      ‘I used a telephoto lens, he didn’t even see me.’

      ‘Were you invited there? Or did you really just follow the ambulance?’

      ‘C’mon . . . Its siren was on; it was right in front of me. I’m an investigative journalist.’

      ‘Pish posh.’

      The door was open and they were at Jessie’s desk. Hattie was frowning but she tried to rearrange her face when she saw me.

      ‘Maria . . . ’ she said.

      ‘Hello, Tannie,’ Jessie grinned.

      Hattie was too polite to carry on skelling Jessie out in front of me. But Jessie wasn’t going to let it go.

      ‘Just have a look at the photos,’ she said to us both.

      I looked at the pictures on her computer.

      The first photograph was from a bit of a distance: a farm, an ambulance, and paramedics.

      She clicked slowly through a few pictures:

      Men in white. A stretcher, a woman’s body, her arm in a plaster cast. Pretty nose and mouth, brown hair loose across her shoulder. Pale skin, eyes closed. Maybe in her forties. A man in his fifties, standing, hands hanging useless at his sides, the ambulance driving off. His hair wiry with scraggly sideburns, his mouth a little open. His face full and empty at the same time.

      A photo of the same man, squatting on the ground, in front of a pond surrounded by reeds, his face buried in his hands.

      ‘Is she dead?’ I asked, although my bones already knew the answer.

      Jessie nodded.

      ‘I spoke to my ma, at the hospital,’ she said. ‘Her name is Martine van Schalkwyk. The husband is Dirk.’

      ‘Can you do a close-up on that picture?’ I said. ‘No, not his face, the pond.’

      At the edge of the water, caught in the base of the reeds, were a few feathers. Small and white.

      I felt strange and had to sit down. I managed to get to my desk chair.

      ‘Maria, you’re pale as a ghost,’ said Hattie.

      Jessie put the kettle on while Hattie fanned me with a piece of paper.

      They pulled up their chairs and sat down on either side of me. Jessie handed me a cup of coffee and I took a big sip. It was sweet and strong.

      ‘The ducks,’ I said. ‘It was the lady with the ducks.’

      ‘Oh, heavens, yes, the one who wrote to you,’ said Hattie.

      ‘The bastard,’ said Jessie. ‘He killed her.’

      ‘Oh, if only . . . ’ I said, but the list of the things I wished was too long to say.

      ‘Have some beskuit,’ Hattie said, opening my tin and offering a rusk to me.

      ‘Let me investigate,’ said Jessie, standing up. ‘Please, Hattie.’

      Hattie sighed.

      ‘Talk to the police and the hospital,’ she said. ‘But you leave that husband alone.’

      Jessie opened her mouth like she was going to speak but then closed it again. She grabbed her notebook, helmet and jacket and headed off.

      Hattie shook her head.

      ‘That girl.’

      ‘I think she’ll go far,’ I said.

      ‘Maybe too far,’ said Hattie.

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      We heard the buzz of Jessie’s scooter fading away and then the rattling of a big car arriving, its brakes screeching as it stopped; a door slamming, boots stomping up the pathway.

      Hattie peeped outside. Her eyebrows shot up and she scooted backwards, her hand on the door, like she might close it.

      ‘Haai!’ a woman shouted. ‘Ek soek Tannie Maria!’

      She was looking for me. Her voice was rough but had some sweet flavour, like Christmas cake with stones in it.

      ‘I’m afraid she’s not currently available,’ said Hattie.

      ‘Where’s she? Who’re you?’

      ‘Would you like me to take a message?’

      Hattie was blocking the door but the woman pushed past her.

      ‘Blikemmer,’ she swore. Tin bucket. ‘I must see her.’

      She was wearing a man’s overall and no make-up. Her hair was short but deurmekaar, like she’d been running her hands through it. But you could still see she was a good-looking woman in her thirties, her eyes brown with dark eyelashes.

      ‘And you?’ she said when she saw me.

      She looked like she was going to klap one of us. Who was she going to smack first? She wasn’t as tall as Hattie, but she looked strong enough to take us both on.

      I was going to tell this rude woman that I was the cleaning lady and she was messing

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