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signs . . .”
     
     
The frown disappeared.
     
     
“Then we came here. I have a room here because I’m staying over. I have another appointment tomorrow. With someone from another firm. He left after six. I’m not sure of the time. And that’s the last time I saw him.”
     
     
The lashes fluttered again and the mascara tracks increased.
     
     
Basie Louw cleared his throat. “What happened here? In this room?”
     
     
She cried harder.
     
     
They waited.
     
     
She got up and went into the bathroom. They heard her blowing her nose. A tap ran. Silence. Then the nose being blown again. She came back and sat down. The mascara tracks had disappeared.
     
     
“You know what happened. Here . . .”
     
     
They looked at her expectantly.
     
     
“We made love.” She cried again. “He was so gentle with me . . .”
     
     
“Miss, do you know anyone in Cape Town?” Mat Joubert asked.
     
     
She took a tissue out of the sleeve of the white blouse and blew her nose again. “I have friends here. But I haven’t seen them for ages.”
     
     
“Is there anyone who’d be . . . unhappy if you slept with other men?”
     
     
Her head jerked up. “I don’t sleep with other men . . .”
     
     
The eyebrows of the three detectives on the bed rose with military precision.
     
     
“Don’t you understand? There was a vibe. We . . . we were . . . It was beautiful.”
     
     
Joubert asked again: “Miss, we want to know if you’re involved with anyone else who would mind that you and the deceased slept together.”
     
     
“Oh, you mean . . . No. No, never. I don’t even have a permanent relationship.”
     
     
“Do you belong to a political party or group, Miss van der Merwe?”
     
     
“Yes.”
     
     
“Which one?”
     
     
“I’m a member of the Democratic Party. But what has . . .”
     
     
Griessel didn’t give her a chance. “Did you ever have any connection with the Pan African Congress?”
     
     
She shook her head.
     
     
“Or with the Azanian People’s Liberation Army?”
     
     
“APLA? No, I . . .”
     
     
“Do you know anybody who belongs to these groups?”
     
     
“No.”
     
     
“What did the deceased say when he left here? Did he have another appointment?” Griessel asked.
     
     
“He said he had to go home, to his children. He is . . . was a good man . . .” Her head drooped. “There was a vibe. So beautiful,” she said.
     
     
Mat Joubert sighed and got up.
     
     
     
    6.
H e dreamed about Yvonne Stoffberg. They were in the mountains. She ran ahead of him, her white bottom bobbing in the moonlight, her brown hair floating. She was laughing, skipping over river stones, past a rippling stream. He was also laughing, his hard-on rigid in the evening breeze. Then suddenly she screamed, a scream of terror and surprise. Her hands shot to her breasts, trying to hide them. Ahead of them on the mountain track stood Bart de Wit. Between his eyes there was a third eye, a staring, scarlet pit. But he could still speak: “Ask yourself, Captain. Are you a winner?” Over and over again like a cracked record in that high, nasal voice. He looked round, searching for Yvonne Stoffberg, but she had vanished. Suddenly, de Wit was gone, too. The dark invaded him. He felt himself dying. He closed his eyes. Long auburn hair drifted across his face. He was lying in the arms of Margaret Wallace. “You’ll be okay,” she said. He started crying.
     
     
    * * *
At the traffic lights Joubert stared at Die Burger ’s poster as he did every morning without seeing it. Then as the letters took on meaning, he was startled: CHINESE MAFIA BEHIND BRUTAL KILLING OF CRICKET FAN?
     
     
The lights changed to green and he couldn’t stop next to the newspaper seller. He drove to a café in Plattekloof, bought a newspaper, and looked for the report on the front page as he walked back to his car. He found it.
     
     
Cape Town— A murder gang of the Chinese Mafia may possibly be behind the brutal slaying of a wealthy Cape