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Blue Sunday. Irma Venter
Читать онлайн.Название Blue Sunday
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780798178310
Автор произведения Irma Venter
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Издательство Ingram
Her hands rest neatly on her blue trousers. She stares at the rain pounding into the pool on the other side of the shrubbery. The sound of the pump brings to mind a family pool, not something like this, which looks like a diving tank. The swimming pool’s water is less blue than it should be, but it’s clear that someone is still keeping an eye on the property.
“You can wait inside with Farr. I’m just checking some e-mails,” AJ says, gesturing towards the phone lying by the gear lever.
“Can’t we …”
Again, the slight start at a flash of lightning, the thin grimace.
Ah. A car is one of the safest places in a heavy Highveld thunderstorm.
“Okay, I’ll wait inside.” I open the door.
“And remember …”
“I know. Shoe covers and gloves. Or Sergeant Faradien Josephs will kill me.”
AJ
1
Thursday, 8 February, 15:05
When Alex Derksen opens the front door, a curtain is drawn to one side in the living-room window. Farr is standing with her hands on her hips. Shakes her head, gestures: what now?
She doesn’t want to talk to him.
Wait. She can’t talk to him. She might say something she shouldn’t.
I hate lightning.
I take a deep breath. Hold it. Wait for the next thunderclap. Wait … wait … count. One …
Dammit. This storm is just above my head.
Don’t think …
I push open the Merc’s door, slam it behind me, run past the fountain, over the paving stones, up the steps and in the front door.
The next lightning flash tears through the sky, barely missing the house.
I breathe a sigh of relief, water dripping from my jacket. Farr stares at me with a dissatisfied frown. She and Alex are both wearing shoe covers and gloves. I look out the window to the stoep. The box with the protective gear is lying on the twelve-seater table.
Outside.
Crap.
2
Thursday, 8 February, 15:16
I wave Alex over. Kudos to him for not saying anything about the storm. He knows to keep his sources happy.
He takes a notebook, pen and recorder out of his jacket pockets, and opens the notebook. There’s a weathered leather bracelet around his right wrist.
Goodness, his handwriting is terrible. Probably has two left hands. Nice, strong boerseun face, though, just like I remember, in spite of the dogleg scar under his eye. There’s still dampness from the rain in the brown hair curling in his neck.
“Aikona.” I gesture to him to pack it all away again. “First we show you what’s what and then we decide what we’re going to say. That’s the deal. And let’s just get this straight from the outset: you don’t quote me. You say ‘a reliable police source’, that’s it.”
He considers for a moment, then puts away the notebook and recorder, hooks the pen into the pocket of his green shirt. “Okay. Deal.”
I wonder whether he hesitated for my sake, to show me he’s not automatically going to obey my every word.
I wonder whether he’s a good poker player.
I am.
In the car, I could see he was surprised about the colour of my eyes, but he hid it quickly.
“If you write anything that’s off the record, anything, neither Colonel Ndlovu nor I nor anyone in the entire police service will ever talk to you again.”
He nods. “Got it.”
“Do you understand?”
“One hundred per cent.”
“Well, now that that’s out of the way …” Farr, who’s been watching the conversation like a spectator at a tennis match, motions us through the open-plan living and dining room towards the kitchen.
The room is big enough for a wedding reception. The style is French country: creamy white, blue and terracotta. An eight-seater dining table with a rich dark stinkwood grain is laid for a breakfast for five people, cereal bowls and silver cereal spoons at the ready.
“Let’s start at the beginning.” Farr looks at me. I nod. She points at the back door. “The men came in here.”
Alex turns to take in the room. “How did they get over the boundary wall?”
“There’s nothing to show how they got into the estate.” Farr stands in the middle of the kitchen, between bloodstains like rusted paint, which she’s outlined because I asked her to. No one must step on them. I want to keep everything as it is for as long as possible.
“Nothing?” Alex seems unconvinced.
Farr nods. “There were no marks on the wall. No alarms went off. The electric fencing wasn’t damaged, and it was never switched off. There weren’t any suspicious people or deliveries at the Stables that day. Everyone who went in, went out again, according to the security guards, the access records and the CCTV cameras.”
“Are there CCTV cameras everywhere?” he asks.
“No,” I jump in, “just at the gate and on the boundary walls. People here like their privacy. You could trick the cameras if you really wanted to.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “A place like this … did the security patrols not see anything?”
“Uh-uh.” I shake my head. “Two armed guards walk past every hour, patrolling inside the estate and along the outer perimeter. Captain Mthembu grilled them, but none of them seems guilty.”
“Every hour, including the Sunday of the attack? The night of the 24th of December?”
“Well, no,” I concede. “Because it was Christmas Eve and there were literally only three or four families home, the guards came by every two hours. They were working on two-thirds of their staff.”
He frowns. “That’s not good.”
Precisely. But I don’t say so.
He motions towards the back door. “Could the CCTV on the boundary wall not even catch a glimpse of the guys going in the back door?”
“No.” Farr is getting impatient. “We told you. The camera is trained on the exterior of the wall. You don’t see even a centimetre of the property.”
“Okay.” Alex wipes a stray raindrop off his neck.
Farr opens the back door. I remain in the middle of the kitchen, where the lightning won’t reach.
“We think the gang used the back door because the family sometimes left it open for their dog while they watched TV,” I say. “That’s according to Katerien van Zyl’s sister, Annabel Kirkpatrick.”
Alex turns towards me. “Do you know how many of them there were?”
“We suspect there were three. We found three blood samples that don’t belong to the Van Zyls.”
“This blood?” He points at the stains on the floor.
“Among others. Lafras van Zyl fought … and I mean fought.” I look Alex up and down. “He’s taller than you. And very fit, even though he is 45. You probably know he used to do all kind of strange expeditions, even with his father when he was alive. Walked to the South Pole, climbed Kilimanjaro, rode a bike around Africa, all kinds of mad things.