'Get more people, Sarge,' said Griessel over the phone. 'I'm coming.'

Griessel looked back at Joubert, the familiar, spark-shooting fire in his eyes. 'About ten minutes ago someone dropped off a young white guy at City Park Casualties, and then left. In haste. Victim was stabbed in the throat with a blade; they might be able to save him. I'm off, Mat...' Griessel began to run.

'I'll do the scene,' shouted Joubert after him.

'Thanks, Mat.' Benny's words were blown away on the wind.

'Get her, Benny,' shouted Joubert, but he couldn't tell if Benny had heard him. He watched his colleague's running figure, so determined, so urgent, and again he felt that emotion, nostalgia, sadness, as though it were the last time he would see Benny Griessel.

Chapter 38

It was Jess Anderson who broke the silence in the study and put words to their anxiety. 'Why doesn't he call?'

Bill Anderson did not want to sit, he wanted to walk up and down to vent some of his tension. But he couldn't, because he knew that would upset his wife even more. So he sat beside her on the brown leather couch. His lawyer friend, Connelly, and the Police Chief, Dombkowski, had insisted he stay, so he could be here when the South African policeman phoned. Now he was sorry he hadn't gone along to Erin's parents. It was his duty. But he couldn't leave Jess alone in these circumstances.

'It's almost forty minutes,' she said.

'We don't know how far he had to travel,' said Anderson.

'We could call him ...'

'Let's give it a little more time.'

They held her down on the concrete floor, four of them. A fifth put a blade under her T-shirt and cut it away, then her shorts, then her underwear. The same knife that had cut Erin's throat, the same hand, stripped her naked, effortlessly. They pulled her up and pushed her against the narrow steel pillar, her arms bent backwards and tied with something around the pole. Then they stood back and all she could do was sink down as far as her bonds allowed, to hide her shame, so that her gaze fixed on her running shoes.

'Where is it?'

She didn't answer. She heard him coming, footfalls on the floor, two steps only. He grabbed her hair and jerked her head up so that it banged against the metal of the pillar. He knelt in front of her.

'Where is it?' the question was repeated.

Her left eye was swollen shut and painful. She focused the other on him. His handsome face was against hers, calm. As ever. His voice carried only authority, control.

Her revulsion for him was greater than her fear of death. This knowledge came in a rush; it liberated her and brought with it the impulse to do something, to kick, to spit, and she began to collect saliva in her mouth. For everything he had done, everything, she wanted to cast scorn and hatred on him, but she reconsidered. She was not powerless. They could not kill her. Not now. Not yet. She could buy time. She was not alone. I'm on my way, don't open the door for anybody, I will call when I get there, please, Miss Anderson, the policeman's voice, the caring, the will to make her safe, to rescue her. He was somewhere now, looking for her, he would find her; somehow or other he would find out who was hunting her. It was so obvious, he would find out, he would find her.

She answered the man by shaking her head slowly from side to side.

He took her hair in an iron grip. 'I'm going to hurt you,' he said. In his practical way.

'Go ahead.' She tried to keep her voice as even as his.

He laughed, right in her face. 'You have no idea ...'

It didn't matter, she thought. Let him laugh.

He let her hair go suddenly and stood up. 'Their luggage is still at the Cat & Moose ...'

'We should have taken that long ago.'

'We didn't know, Steve. You know what she said in the club ... Where the fuck is Barry? Call him, go get their stuff.'

'They're not going to just give it to us, Jay.'

She lifted her head and saw them looking at each other. There was tension between them.

Steve, the black guy, eventually nodded, turned and left. Jay spoke to another one, one she didn't know: 'There's a hardware shop one block up, right-hand corner ...'

She saw his hand dip into his pocket, take out a few notes and hand them over.

'I want pruning shears. We'll cut off her toes. Then her fingers. Then her nipples. Pity though. Great tits.'

It took a while before Fransman Dekker asked Michele Malherbe if she and Adam had slept together. Her dignity overwhelmed him when she came through the office door, so it was only later that he realised she was smaller than he thought. Her hair was blonde, cut short and her face attractive. Her age hard to pin down until he looked at her hands later and realised she must be in her late fifties or early sixties. She introduced herself, listened attentively to his rank and name and sat down in one of the guest chairs with an aura of controlled loss. Dekker could not sit at Barnard's desk, it felt wrong at that moment. He took the other guest chair.

'It's a great loss, Inspector,' she said with her elbows on the arms of the chair and her hands held together in her lap. He could see she had been crying. He wondered, immediately, how a woman like her could fall for Adam Barnard.

'It is,' he said. 'You knew him well?'

'Nearly twenty-five years.'

'Ah ... uh ... madam, I understand you know the industry very well, the circumstances ...'

She nodded, her face serious and focused.

'Why would someone want to ...' He searched for a euphemism. '.. . do away with him?'

'I don't think Adam's death has anything to do with the industry, Inspector.'

'Oh?'

She lifted her right hand in a small gesture. There was a single, elegant ring on her middle finger. 'We may be an emotional lot, by definition. Music is emotion, after all, is it not? But in essence there is no great difference between the music industry and any other. We fight, we argue, we compete with each other, we say and do things that were better not said or done, but it's like that everywhere. The only big difference is that the media ... tends to wash our dirty laundry in public.'

'I'm not sure I understand.'

'I'm trying to say that I can't think of a single reason why anyone in Adam's world would want to murder him. I can't think of anyone who would be capable of that.' He drew in a breath to respond, but she made the same gesture and said: 'I'm not naive. I have learned that our nature allows for anything. But after a quarter-century working with people, you see all sides, and you pick up a fair amount of wisdom along the way from which you can draw in circumstances like this.'

'Madam, the way this happened ... points to someone who had information about Adam's domestic situation.'

She didn't look away. Her eyes were light brown. Her sensuality was subtle, he thought, maybe in the blend of what he knew about her and her refinement. 'I'm not sure I know what you are referring to.'

'They knew about his wife, for example ...'

Her smile was sympathetic. 'Inspector, unfortunately dear Alexandra's situation is general knowledge. Especially in the industry.'

'Did Barnard talk about it?'

Muted indignation. 'Adam would never dream of doing that.'

He waited.

'I can understand if the press makes this seem like an environment where nobody cares, Inspector, but that is a false impression. There are many of us who still have contact with Alexa, who regularly try to communicate in the hope that she will ... recover. She is a wonderful person.'

'Are you one of them?'

She nodded.

'But I understand you were more than just friends with Adam Barnard?' It was deliberate.

She looked at him in disappointment. 'I will leave my lawyer's number with Natasha,' she said and walked slowly, with dignity, to the door, opened it and closed it quietly behind her.