'Not if you get smartass with me.'

'Mr Mouton, you have no choice. Withholding evidence ...'

'Please, gentlemen ...' Groenewald begged. Then very cautiously: 'Perhaps we could talk inside?'

Dekker hesitated.

'My client has a strong suspicion of who murdered Adam Barnard.'

'But I don't want to slander,' said Mouton.

'Willie, under the circumstances, slander doesn't enter into it.'

'You know who shot Adam Barnard?'

'My client has no proof, but feels it is his civil duty to share the available information with the law.'

Fransman Dekker looked at the crowd, then at Groenewald and Mouton. 'I think you should come in.'

Rachel Anderson walked along the footpath on the contour of the mountain, hurrying more now as it was level ground and she had left the shelter of the pine trees behind. There were only the houses below, large properties with swimming pools, densely grown gardens and high walls. Beyond them lay the city and the long sweep of Table Bay, a postcard of bright blue sea and a cluster of high-rise buildings squatting together, as if seeking solidarity from their closeness.

It was a lie, all this beauty, she thought. A false front. She and Erin had allowed themselves to be misled by it.

Ahead the path curved to the right, skirting a reservoir. The high earthen bank would conceal her for a few hundred metres.

Behind the bathroom door Alexa Barnard took off her dressing gown and night clothes and then she reached for the bottle she had hidden under her clean clothing. She unscrewed the cap with a trembling hand. There wasn't much in the bottle. She brought it to her lips and drank. The movement was echoed in the tall mirror and she watched it involuntarily. The naked body, its femininity so wasted, her long greasy hair in strings around her face, underarm stubble, mouth open, bottle lifted high in a desperate attempt to catch the last drops. She was startled by this demon, the way the mirror image focused so completely on the bottle.

Who was this person standing there?

She turned away, having drained the bottle, but found no relief. She placed it on the floor and leaned against the wall with an outstretched arm.

Was it really her standing there?

'Soetwater,' the sympathetic detective with the unusual features and unruly hair had said. 'How did you come to this?' was what he meant. She had told him, but now, in front of this sudden reflection, the explanation was insufficient.

She turned back and looked at the reflected woman again. The tall body looked so defenceless. Legs, hips, belly with a small bulge, the firm breasts, long nipples, the skin of the neck no longer smoothly taut. A face, worn, used, drunk up.

It was her. Her body, her face.

God.

'How did you come to this?' There was genuine curiosity in her own question. She spun away and stepped into the shower. This far, but she would go no further. She could not.

Mechanically she opened the taps.

Adam was dead. What was she going to do? Tonight? Tomorrow?

The fear that welled up inside her was huge, so that she had to press her palms against the tiles to remain standing. She stood like that a while, the water scalding her, but she did not feel it. The pills, that's what she must get, the sleeping pills, so she could drift away, away from that woman in the mirror, away from the destructive process, the thirst, and the darkness ahead.

The pills were in the room with Tinkie Kellerman.

She would have to do it with something else. Here, in the bathroom. She stepped out of the shower with urgency, pulled open the bathroom cabinet with shaking hands. Too hasty, she knocked bottles over, nothing of use. She picked up her razor, looked at its uselessness, threw it away against the door, scratched around in the cabinet. There was nothing, nothing ...

'Mrs Barnard?' called the voice from the other side of the door.

Alexa turned and locked the door. 'Leave me alone.' It wasn't even her voice.

'Ma'am, please ...'

She spotted the gin bottle. She grabbed the neck and struck it against the wall. A shard of glass hit her on the forehead. She examined the sharp glass blade that remained in her hand. She lifted her left arm and sliced violently, deep and desperately, from the palm to the elbow. The blood was a fountain. She sliced again.

In the sitting room Mouton and Groenewald sat side by side on the couch. Dekker was opposite them.

'I don't have proof,' said Mouton.

'Just tell him what happened, Willie.'

They were like those two guys in the old black-and-white films, thought Dekker.

What were their names?

'This guy burst into my office and said he was going to kill Adam ...'

'And who is this guy?'

Mouton referred to his lawyer. 'Are you sure it's not slander, Regardt?'

'I'm sure.'

'But what if I have to give evidence?'

'Willie, slander will not be an issue.'

'It can ruin their career, Regardt. I mean, what if it isn't him?'

'Willie, you have no choice.'

Laurel and Hardy, Dekker recalled. Two white comedians. 'Mr Mouton, who was it?' he asked.

He drew a deep breath, Adam's apple bobbing like a cock's. 'It was Josh Geyser,' he said, and sat back as though he had unleashed the whirlwind.

'Who?'

'The gospel singer,' said Mouton impatiently. 'Josh and Melinda.'

'Never heard of them.'

'Josh and Melinda? Everyone knows them. Sixty thousand of the new CD, four thousand in one day alone, when they were on the featured music stars on radio RSG. They're big.'

'And why would Josh Geyser want to kill Adam Barnard?'

Mouton leaned forward conspiratorially and suddenly he was speaking very quietly:

'Because Adam nailed Melinda in his office.'

'Nailed?'

'You know ... He had sex with her.'

'In Barnard's office?'

'That's right.'

'And Geyser caught them?'

'No. Melinda confessed.'

'To Josh?'

'No. Higher up. But Josh was with her when she prayed.'

Fransman Dekker snorted between laughter and disbelief. 'Mr Mouton, you can't be serious.'

'I am!' Indignant. 'Do you think I would make jokes at a time like this?'

Dekker shook his head.

'Yesterday afternoon Josh Geyser came rushing in at a hell of a speed past Natasha and just about broke my office door down. He said he was looking for Adam and I said what for and he said he was going to kill him, because he raped Melinda. So I said, "How can you say a thing like that, Josh?" and he said Melinda said so. So I said, "What did she say?", and he said she'd prayed and confessed to the Big Sin in Adam's office, on the desk, she said it was the devil, but he, Josh, knew about Adam's ways. And he was going to beat him to death. He was crazy, he nearly grabbed hold of me, when I said it didn't sound like rape. He's a huge ou, he was a Gladiator before he was saved ...' Mouton dropped his voice again: 'The story is, he can't .. . you know ... get it up, because of the steroids.'

'That's not relevant, Willie,' said Groenewald.

'It gives him motive,' said Mouton.

'No, no ...' said the lawyer.

'Beat him to death, you say?' asked Dekker. 'That's what he said?'

'He also said he was going to kill him ... no, he was going to fucking kill him, he was going to cut off his balls and hang them over the platinum CD in his sitting room.'

'Adam's ways. What "ways" was Geyser referring to?'

'Adam is ...' Mouton hesitated. 'I can't believe Adam is dead.' He sat back and rubbed his shaven head. 'He was my friend. My partner. We've come a long way together ... I told him one day someone would ...'

Silence descended. Mouton wiped the back of his hand over his eyes. 'Sorry,' he said. 'This is hard for me ...'