She put the glass down slowly, the tremor almost gone, and offered him the pack of cigarettes.

'No, thank you,' he said.

'An alcoholic who doesn't smoke?'

'I'm trying to cut down.'

She lit one for herself. The ashtray beside her was full.

'My AA sponsor is a doctor,' he said by way of explanation.

'Get another sponsor,' she said in an attempt at humour, but it didn't work; her mouth pulled in the wrong direction and then Alexandra Barnard began to weep silently, just a painful grimace, tears rolling from her eyes. She put the cigarette down and held the palms of her hands over her face. Griessel reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief. He held it out but she didn't see it. Her shoulders shook, her head drooped and the long hair fell over her face again like a curtain. Griessel saw it was blonde and silver, a rare combination; most women dyed their hair. He wondered why she no longer cared. She had been a star, a major one. What had dragged her down to this?

He waited until her sobs subsided. 'My sponsor's name is Doctor Barkhuizen. He's seventy years old and he's an alcoholic with long hair in a plait. He said his children asked him why he smoked and he had all sorts of reasons - to help him with stress, because he enjoyed it. . .' He kept his tone of voice easy, he knew the story was unimportant, but that didn't matter, he just wanted to get a dialogue going. 'Then his daughter said in that case he wouldn't mind if she started smoking too. Then he knew he was lying to himself about the cigarettes. He stopped. So he's trying to get me to quit. I'm down to about three or four a day ...'

Eventually she looked up and saw the handkerchief. She took it from him. 'Was it hard?' Her voice was deeper than ever. She wiped her face and blew her nose.

'The drink was. Is. Still. The smoking too.'

'I couldn't.' She crumpled the hanky and picked up the glass again and drank from it. He didn't answer. He had to give her room to talk. He knew she would.

'Your hanky's ...'

'Keep it.'

'I'll have it washed.' She put the glass down. 'It wasn't me.'

Griessel nodded.

'We didn't talk any more,' she said and looked elsewhere in the room.

Griessel sat still.

'He comes home from the office at half past six. Then he comes to the library and stands and looks at me. To see how drunk I am. If I don't say anything then he goes and eats alone in the kitchen or he goes to his study. Or out again. Every night he puts me in bed. Every night. I have wondered, in the afternoon when I can still think, if that is why I drink. So that he would still do that one thing for me. Isn't that tragic? Doesn't it break your heart?' The tears began to fall again. They interfered with the rhythm of her speech, but she kept on. 'Sometimes, when he comes in, I try to provoke him. I was good at it ... Last night I ... I asked him whose turn it was now. You must understand ...We had ... it's a long story ...' and for the first time her sobs were audible, as if the full weight of her history had come to bear on her. Pity welled up in Benny Griessel, because he saw again the ghost of the singer she had once been.

Eventually she stubbed out the cigarette. 'He just said "Fuck you" - that's all he ever said - and he left again. I screamed after him, "Yes, leave me here", I don't think he heard me, I was drunk ...'

She blew her nose into the hanky again. 'That's all. That's all I know. He didn't put me to bed, he left me there and this morning, he was lying there ...' She picked up the glass.

'The last words he said to me. "Fuck you".' More tears.

She drained the last bit of alcohol from the glass and looked at Griessel with intense focus. 'Do you think it could have been me that shot him?'

The plump girl behind the reception desk of the Cat & Moose Youth Hostel and Backpackers Inn looked at the photograph the constable was holding out and asked:

'Why does she look so funny?'

'Because she's dead.'

'Oh, my God.' She put two and two together and asked: 'Was she the one this morning at the church here?'

'Yes. Do you recognise her?'

'Oh, my God, yes. They came in yesterday, two American girls. Wait ...' The plump girl opened the register and ran her finger down the column. 'Here they are, Rachel Anderson and Erin Russel, they are from ...' she bent down to read the small writing of the addresses. 'West Lafayette, Indiana. Oh, my God. Who killed her?'

'We don't know yet. Is this one Anderson?'

'I don't know.'

'And the other one, do you know where she is?'

'No, I work days, I ... Let's see, they are in room sixteen.' She shut the register and went ahead down the passage saying: 'Oh, my God.'

Through careful questioning he got information about the firearm from her. It was her husband's.

Adam Barnard kept it locked up in a safe in the room. He kept the key with him, probably afraid she would do something foolish with it in her drunken state. She said she had no idea how it landed up on the floor beside her. Maybe she did shoot him, she said; she had reason enough, enough anger and self-pity and hate. There were times she had wished him dead, but her true fantasy was to kill herself and then watch him. Watch him coming home at half past six, climbing the stairs and finding her dead. Watch him kneeling beside her body and begging forgiveness, weeping and broken. But, she said with irony, the two parts would never gel. You can't watch anything when you're dead.

Then she just sat there. Eventually he whispered 'Soetwater' but she didn't respond; she hid behind her hair for an eternity until she slowly held out the glass to him and he knew he would have to pour another if he wanted to hear the whole story.

08:13-09:03

Chapter 8

Benny Griessel listened to Alexandra Barnard's story.

'Alexa. Nobody calls me Alexandra or Xandra.'

Now, just as he was about to open the front door of Number 47 Brownlow Street to go and find Dekker, he felt a peculiar emotion pressing on his heart, a weightlessness in his head, a sort of separation from reality, as though he stood back a few millimetres from everything, a second or two out of step with the world.

So it took him a while to register that outside was chaos. The street, so peaceful when he arrived, was a mass of journalists and the inquisitive: a flock of photographers, a herd of reporters, a camera team from e.tv and the growing crowd of spectators their presence had attracted. The noise washed over Griessel, loud waves of sound that he could feel in his body, along with the knowledge that he had listened so acutely to Alexa's story that he had been oblivious to all this.

On the veranda a tense Dekker was exchanging fiery words with a bald man, both their voices raised in argument.

'Not before I've seen her,' said the man with a superior attitude and aggressive body language. His head was completely shaven, he was tall and sinewy, with large fleshy ears and one round silver earring. Black shirt, black trousers and the black basketball shoes that teenagers wear, although he seemed to be in his late forties. A middle-aged Zorro. His prominent Adam's apple bobbed up and down in time with his words. Dekker spotted Griessel. 'He insists on seeing her,' said Dekker, still tense. The man ignored Griessel. He snapped open a black leather holder at his belt and brought out a small black cell phone. 'I'm calling my lawyer; this behaviour is totally unacceptable.' He began to press keys on the phone. 'She's not a well woman.'

'He's the partner of the deceased. Willie Mouton,' said Dekker.

'Mr Mouton,' said Griessel reasonably. His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ear.