The Satanic Mechanic. Sally Andrew

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СКАЧАТЬ and Hattie came into the kitchen, her cream skirt all fresh and ironed as if she wasn’t travelling.

      ‘Good morning, Maria. Gosh, you didn’t sleep much, did you?’

      ‘Morning, Hats. Tea?’ I said, putting a third rusk on the plate for her.

      ‘I am going to make an appointment for you with Doctor Walters,’ she said.

      We went and sat on the stoep, which was painted an oxblood red, and watched the sun lighting up the Groot Swartberge. Grey cliffs cast purple shadows on slopes of green. This range of mountains linked us all the way to Ladismith and went on beyond Oudtshoorn, towards De Rust.

      ‘Jessie went to the hospital first thing,’ said Hattie. ‘She’ll come and report to us.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Any time now. They wouldn’t give her information last night, but she says a good friend of her mother’s is on duty this morning.’

      I dipped one of the rusks into my coffee and took a bite. It was better than any mosbolletjiebeskuit I could remember. Which says something, because food memories often cheat on the side of sweetness. Hattie sipped on her tea and nibbled on the edge of a rusk, and I shook my head; she knows beskuit are meant to be dipped.

      We heard a buzzing sound, and Jessie’s red scooter came zooming towards the house. Instead of driving up to the parking area behind the house, she pulled her bike to the side of the driveway and jumped off. She wore jeans and a denim jacket, and she took off her helmet and shook out her hair as she walked towards us.

      I saw her face and did not need to hear her words to know: ‘He’s dead. Slimkat’s dead.’

      I dropped my mosbolletjie rusk into my coffee.

      ‘Damnation,’ said Hattie.

      ‘Ag, no,’ I said.

      ‘It’s so wrong,’ said Jessie. ‘He was such a gentle man.’

      ‘Have they established the cause of death?’ asked Hattie.

      ‘At first they thought it might be cholera or food poisoning. They pumped him with antibiotics.’

      ‘But what about the death threats? And the sauce bottle that Piet found under the Kudu Stall table,’ Hattie said, ‘thanks to our clever cook here? Surely they needed to treat him for deliberate poisoning?’

      ‘Yes, but they didn’t know what kind of poison. He was paralysed, and it wasn’t long till he stopped breathing. Neither the hospital nor the LCRC – the Local Crime Registration Centre – were able to get test results in time.’

      ‘How did the poisoner know that Slimkat was going to eat that sauce?’ said Hattie. ‘How did they even know he’d go to the Kudu Stall?’

      ‘He just loved that kudu,’ said Jessie. ‘It’s about all he ate. Though he did have roosterkoek and scrambled ostrich egg for breakfast.’

      ‘Did Slimkat tell you this last night?’ I said.

      ‘Ja, and I checked with Reghardt, who was following him. He couldn’t get enough of that kudu, and he always put on that sauce from the yellow bottle.’

      ‘So someone else watching him would’ve learnt the same thing . . .’ said Hattie.

      ‘I don’t understand why other people didn’t get poisoned by that sauce,’ I said.

      ‘I asked at the hospital,’ said Jess, ‘and they had one other person admitted with vomiting. But he didn’t have the other symptoms; it looks like he had alcohol poisoning. The sister said he was moederloos gesuip.’ Drunk as a skunk.

      ‘What would you do if you wanted to poison one person but not others?’ said Hattie.

      ‘Maybe the woman who served him put the poison sauce on his sosatie,’ said Jessie.

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘the sauces were self-service, to speed things up.’

      Hattie answered her own question: ‘I’d get in front of him in the queue, remove the good bottle and give him the poisoned sauce. Then I’d wait till he was finished and take the poisoned bottle away from him.’

      ‘Maybe the murderer pretended to come back for more sauce,’ said Jessie, ‘and then got rid of the poisoned bottle. Threw it under the table.’

      ‘Ja,’ I said. ‘Piet found two yellow bottles under the trestle table. He let me sniff them. One smelt like the normal honey-mustard sauce. The other had that garlic smell, the same as Slimkat’s napkin.’

      ‘Surely the police would’ve seen this gadding about with sauce bottles?’ said Hattie.

      ‘The queue was busy, and they were watching Slimkat, not the sauces,’ I said.

      ‘And why the garlic in the sauce?’ said Hattie.

      ‘A strong flavour to hide the taste of the poison?’ said Jessie.

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was because the murderer didn’t know the recipe.’

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      ‘Yesterday afternoon, I asked at the Kudu Stall for the sauce recipe,’ I told Jessie and Hattie. ‘They wouldn’t give it to me, and they told me that another woman had asked for it too.’

      ‘And she could be the murderer?’ said Hattie.

      ‘Or just another tannie asking for the recipe,’ said Jessie, looking at the last beskuit on my plate.

      ‘Let’s make coffee,’ I said. Mine was lukewarm and ruined by a soggy rusk.

      We made fresh coffee, and Jessie carried the whole tin of beskuit out onto the stoep. I took off my jacket and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my arms. The Swartberge were now mostly lit up, with just a few shadows in the kloofs. Those hidden ravines always kept their secrets.

      ‘I’d agreed not to publish Slimkat’s story until the KKNK was over. To avoid panic,’ said Jessie. ‘But now that he’s dead . . . the other papers will pick up on the story.’

      ‘Hmm. And you interviewed him just before he died,’ said Hattie.

      ‘I think he knew what was coming and was giving me his last words. Some beautiful stuff.’ Jess opened a black pouch on her belt and took out her notebook. ‘Listen to this: “We are the ropes to God. When our land is beneath us and the open sky around us, we can feel the power of our ropes.” Slimkat was in training as a healer. They dance around the fire and go into a trance. He told me that when he danced, it was as if he died, and then the others brought him back to life. He said that’s why he was not afraid of death. He’d been there already.’

      ‘What are the Oudtshoorn police telling the press?’ said Hattie.

      ‘All they gave me last night was “no comment”. But let’s see what they say this morning. They can’t deny his death.’

      Jessie took off her denim jacket, under which she wore her black vest. The gecko tattoos sunned themselves on her brown arms.

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