Текст книги "Thirteen Hours"

Автор книги: Deon Meyer

Соавторы: Deon Meyer
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Thirteen Hours

Deon Meyer

Table of Contents

05:36-07:00

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

07:02-08:13

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

08:13-09:03

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

09:04-10:09

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

10:10-11:02

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

11:03-12:00

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

12:00-12:56

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

12:57-14:01

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

14:02-15:10

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

15:12-16:14

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

16:41-17:46

Chapter 47

17:47-18:36

Chapter 48

18:37-19:51

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

05:36-07:00

Chapter 1

05:36: a girl runs up the steep slope of Lion's Head. The sound of her running shoes urgent on the broad footpath's gravel.

At this moment, as the sun's rays pick her out like a searchlight against the mountain, she is the image of carefree grace. Seen from behind, her dark plait bounces against the little rucksack. Her neck is deeply tanned against the powder blue of her T-shirt. There is energy in the rhythmic stride of her long legs in denim shorts. She personifies athletic youth – vigorous, healthy, focused.

Until she stops and looks back over her left shoulder. Then the illusion disintegrates. There is anxiety in her face. And utter exhaustion.

She does not see the impressive beauty of the city in the rising sun's soft light. Her frightened eyes search wildly for movement in the tall fynbos shrubbery behind her. She knows they are there, but not how near. Her breath races – from exertion, shock and fear. It is adrenaline, the fearsome urge to live, that drives her to run again, to keep going, despite her aching legs, the burning in her chest, the fatigue of a night without sleep and the disorientation of a strange city, a foreign country and an impenetrable continent.

Ahead of her the path forks. Instinct spurs her to the right, higher, closer to the Lion's rocky dome. She doesn't think, there is no plan. She runs blindly, her arms the pistons of a machine, driving her on.

Detective Inspector Benny Griessel was asleep.

He dreamed he was driving a huge tanker on a downhill stretch of the N1 between Parow and Plattekloof. Too fast and not quite in control. When his cell phone rang, the first shrill note was enough to draw him back to reality with a fleeting feeling of relief. He opened his eyes and checked the radio clock. It was 05:37.

He swung his feet off the single bed, dream forgotten. For an instant he perched motionless on the edge, like a man hovering on a cliff. Then he stood up and stumbled to the door, down the wooden stairs to the living room below, to where he had left his phone last night. His hair was unkempt, too long between trims. He wore only a pair of faded rugby shorts. His single thought was that a call at this time of the morning could only be bad news.

He didn't recognise the number on the phone's small screen.

'Griessel,' his voice betrayed him, hoarse with the first word of the day.

'Hey, Benny, it's Vusi. Sorry to wake you.'

He struggled to focus, his mind fuzzy. 'That's OK.'

'We've got a ... body.'

'Where?'

'St Martini, the Lutheran church up in Long Street.'

'In the church?'

'No, she's lying outside.'

'I'll be there now.'

He ended the call and ran a hand through his hair.

She, Inspector Vusumuzi Ndabeni had said.

Probably just a bergie. Another tramp who had drunk too much of something or other. He put the phone down beside his brand new second-hand laptop.

He turned, still half asleep, and bashed his shin against the front wheel of the bicycle leaning against his pawnshop sofa. He grabbed it before it toppled. Then he went back upstairs. The bicycle was a vague reminder of his financial difficulties, but he didn't want to dwell on that now.

In the bedroom he took off his shorts and the musky scent of sex drifted up from his midriff.

Fuck.

The knowledge of good and evil suddenly weighed heavily on him. Along with the events of the previous night, it squeezed the last remaining drowsiness from his brain. Whatever had possessed him?

He tossed the shorts in an accusatory arc onto the bed and walked through to the bathroom.

Griessel lifted the toilet lid angrily, aimed and peed.

Suddenly she was on the tar of Signal Hill Road and spotted the woman and dog a hundred metres to the left. Her mouth shaped a cry, two words, but her voice was lost in the rasping of her breath.

She ran towards the woman and her dog. It was big, a Ridgeback. The woman looked about sixty, white, with a large pink sun hat, a walking stick and a small bag on her back.

The dog was unsettled now. Maybe it smelled her fear, sensed the panic inside her. Her soles slapped on the tar as she slowed. She stopped three metres from them.

'Help me,' said the girl. Her accent was strong.

'What's wrong?' There was concern in the woman's eyes. She stepped back. The dog growled and strained on the lead, to get closer to the girl.

'They're going to kill me.'

The woman looked around in fear. 'But there's nobody.'

The girl looked over her shoulder. 'They're coming.'

Then she took the measure of the woman and dog and knew they wouldn't make any difference. Not here on the open slope of the mountain. Not against them. She would put them all in danger.

'Call the police. Please. Just call the police,' she said and ran again, slowly at first, her body reluctant. The dog lunged forward and barked once. The woman pulled back on the lead.

'But why?'

'Please,' she said and jogged, feet dragging, down the tar road towards Table Mountain. 'Just call the police.'

She looked back once, about seventy paces on. The woman was still standing there bewildered, frozen to the spot.

Benny Griessel flushed the toilet and wondered why he hadn't seen last night coming. He hadn't gone looking for it, it had just happened. Jissis, he shouldn't feel so guilty, he was only human after all.

But he was married.

If you could call it a marriage. Separate beds, separate tables and separate homes. Damn it all, Anna couldn't have everything. She couldn't throw him out of his own house and expect him to support two households, expect him to be sober for six fucking months, and celibate on top of that.

At least he was sober. One hundred and fifty-six days now. More than five months of struggling against the bottle, day after day, hour after hour, till now.

God, Anna must never hear about last night. Not now. Less than a month before his term of exile was served, the punishment for his drinking. If Anna found out, he was fucked, all the struggle and suffering for nothing.

He sighed and stood in front of the mirrored cabinet to brush his teeth. Had a good look at himself. Greying at the temples, wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, the Slavic features. He had never been much of an oil painting.

He opened the cabinet and took out toothbrush and toothpaste.

Whatever had she seen in him, that Bella? There had been a moment last night when he wondered if she was sleeping with him because she felt sorry for him, but he had been too aroused, too bloody grateful for her soft voice and big breasts and her mouth, jissis, that mouth, he had a thing about mouths, that's where the trouble had started. No. It had begun with Lize Beekman, but like Anna would believe that?

Jissis.

Benny Griessel brushed his teeth hurriedly and urgently. Then he jumped under the shower and opened the taps on full, so he could wash all the accusing scents from his body.

It wasn't a bergie. Griessel's heart skipped a beat as he climbed over the spiked railings of the church wall and saw the girl lying there. The running shoes, khaki shorts, orange camisole and the shape of her arms and legs told him she was young. She reminded him of his daughter.

He walked down the narrow tarmac path, past tall palms and pine trees and a yellow notice board: STRICTLY AUTHORISED. CARS ONLY. AT OWNER'S OWN RISK, to the spot just left of the pretty grey church where, on the same tar, she lay stretched out.

He looked up at the perfect morning. Bright, with hardly any wind, just a faint breeze bearing fresh sea scents up the mountain. It was not a time to die.

Vusi stood beside her with Thick and Thin from Forensics, a police photographer and three men in SAPS uniform. Behind Griessel's back on the Long Street pavement there were more uniforms, at least four in the white shirts and black epaulettes of the Metro Police, all very self-important. Together with a group of bystanders they leaned their arms on the railings and stared at the motionless figure.

'Morning, Benny,' said Vusi Ndabeni in his quiet manner. He was of the same average height as Griessel, but seemed smaller. Lean and neat, the seams of his trousers sharply pressed, snow– white shirt with tie, shoes shined. His peppercorn hair was cut short and shaved in sharp angles, goatee impeccably clipped. He wore surgical rubber gloves. Griessel had been introduced to him for the first time last Thursday, along with the other five detectives he had been asked to 'mentor' throughout the coming year. That was the word that John Africa, Regional Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, had used. But when Griessel was alone in Africa's office it was 'We're in the shit, Benny. We fucked up the Van der Vyver case, and now the brass say it's because we've just been having too much of a good time in the Cape and it's time to pull finger, but what can I do? I'm losing my best people and the new ones are clueless, totally green. Benny, can I count on you?'

An hour later he was in the Commissioner's large conference room, along with six of the best 'new' people looking singularly unimpressed, all seated in a row on grey government-issue chairs. This time John Africa toned down his message: 'Benny will be your mentor. He's been on the Force for twenty-five years; he was part of the old Murder and Robbery when most of you were still in primary school. What he's forgotten, you still have to learn. But understand this: he's not here to do your work for you. He's your advisor, your sounding board. And your mentor. According to the dictionary that is,' the Commissioner glanced at his notes,'... a wise and trusted counsellor or teacher. That's why I transferred him to the Provincial Task Force. Because Benny is wise and you can trust him, because I trust him. Too much knowledge is being lost, there are too many new people and we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. Learn from him. You have been hand picked – not many will get this opportunity.' Griessel watched their faces. Four lean black men, one fat black woman, and one broad– shouldered coloured detective, all in their early thirties. There was not much ungrudging gratitude, with the exception of Vusumuzi ('but everyone calls me Vusi') Ndabeni. The coloured detective, Fransman Dekker, was openly antagonistic. But Griessel was already accustomed to the undercurrents in the new SAPS. He stood beside John Africa and told himself he ought to be grateful he still had a job after the dissolution of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit. Grateful that he and his former commanding officer, Mat Joubert, hadn't been posted to a station like most of their colleagues. The new structures that were not new, it was like it was thirty years back, detectives at stations, because that was the way it was now done overseas, and the SAPS must copy them. At least he still had work and Joubert had put him up for promotion. If his luck held, if they could look past his history of drinking, and affirmative action and all the politics and shit, he would hear today whether he had made Captain.

Captain Benny Griessel. It sounded right to him. He needed the raise too.

Badly.

'Morning, Vusi,' he said.

'Hey, Benny,' Jimmy, the tall, skinny white coat from Forensics, greeted him. 'I hear they call you "The Oracle" now.'

'Like that aunty in Lord of the Rings,' said Arnold, the short, fat one. Collectively they were known in Cape police circles as Thick and Thin, usually in the tired crack 'Forensics will stand by you through Thick and Thin.'

' The Matrix, you ape,' said Jimmy.

'Whatever,' said Arnold.

'Morning,' said Griessel. He turned to the uniforms under the tree and took a deep breath, ready to tell them, 'This is a crime scene, get your butts to the other side of the wall,' and then he remembered that this was Vusi's case, he should shut up and mentor. He gave the uniforms a dirty look, with zero effect, and hunkered down to look at the body.

The girl lay on her belly with her head turned away from the , street. Her blonde hair was very short. Across her back were two short horizontal cuts, matching left and right on her shoulder blades. But these were not the cause of death. That was the huge gash across her throat, deep enough to expose the oesophagus. Her face, chest and shoulders lay in the wide pool of blood. The smell of death was already there, as bitter as copper.

'Jissis,' said Griessel, all his fear and revulsion welling up in him and he had to breathe, slow and easy, as Doc Barkhuizen had taught him. He had to distance himself, he must not internalise this.

He shut his eyes for a second. Then he looked up at the trees. He was searching for objectivity, but this was a dreadful way to die. And his mind wanted to spool through the event as it had happened, the knife flashing and slicing, sliding deep through her tissues.

He got up quickly, pretending to look around. Thick and Thin were bickering over something, as usual. He tried to listen.

Lord, she looked so young. Eighteen, nineteen?

What kind of madness did it take to cut the throat of a child like this? What kind of perversion?

He forced the images out of his mind, thought of the facts, the implications. She was white. That spelled trouble. That meant media attention and the whole cycle of crime-getting-out-of– control criticism starting all over again. It meant huge pressure and long hours, too many people with a finger in the pie and everyone trying to cover their ass and he didn't have the heart for all that any more.

'Trouble,' he said quietly to Vusi.

'I know.'

'It would be better if the uniforms stayed behind the wall.'

Ndabeni nodded and went over to the uniformed policemen. He asked them to go out another way, around the back of the church. They were reluctant, wanting to be part of the action. But they went.

Vusi came to stand beside him, notebook and pen in hand. 'All the gates are locked. There's a gate for cars over there near the church office, and the main gate in front of the building here. She must have jumped over the railings – it's the only way in here.' Vusi spoke too fast. He pointed at a coloured man standing on the pavement on the other side of the wall. 'That ou there ... James Dylan Fredericks, he found her. He's the day manager of Kauai Health Foods in Kloof Street. He says he comes in on the Golden Arrow bus from Mitchell's Plain and then he walks from the terminal. He went past here and something caught his eye. So he climbed over the wall, but when he saw the blood he went back and phoned the Caledon Square station because that's the number he has on speed dial for the shop.'

Griessel nodded. He suspected Ndabeni was nervous about his presence, as though he were here to evaluate the black man. He would have to put that right.

'I'm going to tell Fredericks he can go, we know where to find him.'

'That's fine, Vusi. You don't have to ... I appreciate you giving me the details, but I don't want you to . .. you know ...'

Ndabeni touched Griessel's arm as though to reassure him. 'It's OK, Benny. I want to learn ...'

Vusi was silent for a while. Then he added: 'I don't want to blow this, Benny. I was in Khayelitsha for four years and I don't want to go back. But this is my first... white,' he said that carefully as if it might be a racist statement. 'This is another world ...'

'It is.' Griessel was no good at this sort of thing, never knowing what the proper, politically correct words were.

Vusi came to his rescue. 'I tried to check if there was anything in her shorts pockets. For ID. There isn't anything. We're just waiting for the pathologist now.'

A bird twittered shrilly in the trees. Two pigeons landed near them and began peck-pecking. Griessel looked around him. There was one vehicle in the church grounds, a white Toyota Microbus standing on the south side against a two-metre brick wall. 'Adventure' was spelled in big red letters along the side of the vehicle.

Ndabeni followed his gaze. 'They probably park here for security,' and he indicated the high wall and locked gates. 'I think they have an office down in Long Street.'

'Could be.' Long Street was the hub of backpacker tourism in the Cape – young people, students from Europe, Australia and America looking for cheap lodgings and adventure.

Griessel squatted down beside the body again, but this time so that her face was turned away from him. He did not want to look at the dreadful wound, or her delicate features.

Please, don't let her be a foreign kid, he thought.

Things would really get out of hand then.

Chapter 2

She ran over Kloofnek Road and stopped for a second, indecisive. She wanted to rest, she wanted to catch her breath and try to control her terror. She had to decide: right, away from the city, where the road sign said 'Camps Bay' and whatever lay that side of the mountain, or left, more or less back the way she had come. Her instinct was to go right, away, further from her pursuers, from the terrible events of the night.

But that was what they would expect, and it would take her deeper into the unknown, further away from Erin. She turned left without further thought, her running shoes loud on the tarred downhill gradient. She kept to the left of the double lane road for 400 metres and then swung right, scrambled down a stony slope, over a bit of veld to the normality of Higgo Road, a residential area high against the mountain, with large, expensive homes in dense gardens behind high walls. Hope flared that here she would find someone to help her, someone to offer shelter and protection.

All the gates were locked. Every house was a fort, the streets deserted this early in the morning. The road wound steeply up the mountain and her legs just wouldn't, couldn't work any more. She saw the open gate of the house to her right and her whole being ached for rest. She glanced over her shoulder and saw nobody. She ducked through the gateway. There was a short steep driveway, a garage and car port. To the right there were dense shrubs against the high wall, to the left was the house behind high metal railings and a locked gate. She crept deep into the shrubbery, right up to the plastered wall, to where she couldn't be seen from the street.

She dropped to her knees, the backpack against the wall. Her head drooped in utter weariness, her eyes closed. Then she slid down further until she was seated flat on the ground. She knew the damp in the bricks and the decaying leaf mould would stain her blue denim shorts, but she didn't care. She just wanted to rest.

The scene imprinted on her brain more than six hours ago suddenly played unbidden through her mind. Her body trembled with shock and her eyes flew open. She dared not think of that now. It was too ... just too much. Through the curtain of dark green foliage and big bright red flowers she could see a car in the car port. She focused on that. It had an unusual shape, sleek and elegant and not new. What make was it? She tried to distract herself from the terror in her head with this thought. Her breathing calmed, but not her heart. Exhaustion was a great weight pressing on her, but she resisted; it was a luxury she could not afford.

At 06:27 she heard running steps in the street: more than one person, from the same direction she had come, and her heart raced again.

She heard them calling to each other in the street, in a language she did not understand. The footsteps slowed, went quiet. She shifted slightly forward, looking for a gap in the foliage, and stared at the open gate. One of them was standing there, barely visible, the pieces of the mosaic showing he was black.

She kept dead still.

The mosaic moved. He walked in through the gate, silent on his rubber soles. She knew he would look for hiding places, the house, the car in the car port.

The vague shape halved. Was he bending down? To look under the car?

The pieces of him doubled, the outline enlarged. He was approaching. Could he see her, right at the back?

'Hey!'

She was shocked by the voice, a hammer blow to her chest. She could not tell if she moved in that second.

The dark figure moved away, but without haste.

'What do you want?' The voice came from the house, up above. Someone was talking to the black man.

'Nothing.'

'Get the fuck off my property.'

No answer. He stood still, then moved, slowly, reluctantly, until his broken shape disappeared through the leaves.

The two detectives searched the church grounds from the southern side. Vusi began at the front, along the Long Street border with the spiked baroque railings. Griessel began at the back, along the high brick wall. He walked slowly, one step at a time, his head down and eyes moving back and forth. He battled to concentrate, there was a sense of discomfort in him, an elusive feeling, vague and formless. He had to focus here now, on the bare ground, the grass tufts around the base of the trees, the stretches of tarred pathway. He bent every now and then to pick up something and hold it in his fingers – the top of a beer bottle, two rings from cold drink cans, a rusty metal washer, an empty white plastic bag.

He worked his way around behind the church, where the street noise was suddenly muted. He glanced up at the steeple. There was a cross at the top. How many times had he driven past and never really looked? The church building was lovely, an architectural style he could not name. The garden was well cared for, with big palms, pines and oleanders, planted who knows how many years ago? He went around behind the small office building, where the sounds of the street returned. In the northern corner of the grounds he stopped and stood looking up and down Long Street. This was still the old Cape here, the buildings semi-Victorian, most only two storeys high, some painted now in bright colours, probably to appeal to the young. What was this vague unease he felt in him? It had nothing to do with last night. Nor was it the other issue that he had been avoiding for two, three weeks – about Anna and moving back in and whether it would ever work.

Was it the mentoring? To be at the scene of a murder, able to look but not touch? He would find it hard, he knew that now.

Maybe he should just get something to eat.

He looked south, towards the Orange Street crossing. Just before seven on a Tuesday morning and the street was busy – cars, buses, taxis, scooters, pedestrians. The energetic bustle of mid-January, schools reopening, holidays over, forgotten. On the pavement the murder audience had grown to a small crowd. Two press photographers had also arrived, camera bags over shoulders, long lenses held like weapons in front of them. He knew one of them, a bar-room buddy from his drinking days who had worked for the Cape Times for years and was now chasing sensation for a tabloid. One night in the Fireman's Arms he had said that if you were to lock up the press and the police on Robben Island for a week, the liquor industry in Cape Town would collapse.

He saw a cyclist weaving skilfully through the traffic on a racing bike, those incredibly thin wheels, the rider in tight black shorts, vivid shirt, shoes, crash helmet, the fucker was even wearing gloves. His gaze followed the cycle to the Orange Street traffic lights, knowing that he never wanted to look that silly. He felt stupid enough with the piss-pot helmet on his head. He wouldn't even have worn it if he hadn't got it for free, with the bicycle.

Doc Barkhuizen, his sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous, had started the whole thing. Frustrated, Griessel had told Doc that the pull of the bottle was not diminishing. The first three months were long over, the so-called crisis period, and yet his desire was as great as it was on the first day. Doc had recited the 'one day at a time' rhyme, but Griessel said he needed more than that. Doc said 'You need a distraction, what do you do in the evenings?'

Evenings? Policemen had no 'evenings'. When he did get home early, wonder of wonders, he would write to his daughter Carla, or play one of his four CDs on the computer and pick up the bass guitar to play along.

Tm busy in the evenings, Doc.'

'And mornings?'

'Sometimes I walk in the park. Up near the reservoir.'

'How often?'

'1 don't know. Now and then. Once a week, perhaps less ...'

The trouble with Doc was that he was eloquent. And enthusiastic. About everything. One of those 'the glass is half full' positive guys who would not rest until he had inspired you. 'About five years ugo I started cycling, Benny. My knees can't take jogging, but the bicycle is soft on an old man's limbs. I started slowly, five or six kilos a day. Then the bug began to bite, because it's fun. The fresh air, the scents, the sun. You feel the heat and the cold, you see things from a new perspective, because you move at your own tempo, it feels as though your world is at peace. You have time to think ...'

After Doc's third speech he was swept up by his enthusiasm and at the end of October he went looking for a bicycle, in his usual way – Benny Griessel, Bargain Hunter, as his son Fritz gently teased him. First he researched the price of new ones at the shops and realised two things – they were ridiculously expensive, and he preferred the chunky mountain bikes to the skinny, sissyboy racing ones. He did the rounds of the pawnshops, but all their stock was worn out, cheap Makro stuff, junk even when they were new. Then he studied the Cape Ads and found the fucking advert – a flowery description of a Giant Alias, twenty-seven gear, super– light aluminium frame, Shimano shifter and disc brakes, a free saddlebag with tools, free helmet and 'just one month old, original price R7,500, upgrading to DH', which the owner later explained to him meant 'Downhill', as though he would understand what that meant. But he thought, what the fuck, R3,500 was one hell of a bargain, and what had he bought for himself in the past six months since his wife kicked him out of the house? Not a thing. Just the lounge suite from Mohammed 'Love Lips' Faizal's pawnshop in Maitland. And the fridge. And the bass guitar he meant to give Fritz for Christmas, another Faizal bargain that he had stumbled on in September. That was all. Essential items. You couldn't count the laptop. How else would he keep in touch with Carla?

Then he thought about Christmas and all the expenses still to come. He argued the bicycle owner down another two hundred and then he went and drew the money and bought the thing and began riding every morning. He would wear his old rugby shorts, T-shirt and sandals and that ridiculous little helmet.

He soon realised that he did not live in the ideal neighbourhood for cycling. His flat was a quarter of the way up the slopes of Table Mountain. If you went down towards the sea, you had to ride back up the mountain eventually. You could head uphill first, towards Kloof Nek, in order to enjoy the ride home, but you would suffer going up. He almost gave up after a week. But then Doc Barkhuizen gave him the 'five-minute' tip.

'This is what I do, Benny. If I'm not in the mood, I tell myself "just five minutes, and if I don't feel like going on, I'll turn around and go home".'

He tried it – and never once did he turn around. Once you were going, you went on. Towards the end of November, it suddenly became a pleasure. He found a route that he enjoyed. Just after six in the morning he would ride down St John's Street, illegally cutting through the Company Gardens before the zealous security guards were on duty. Then he would turn into Adderley and wave at the flower sellers offloading stock from the bakkies at the Golden Acre and then to the bottom of Duncan Street to the harbour, see what ships had docked today. Then he would ride down the Waterkant, to Green Point – and all along the sea as far as the Sea Point swimming pool. He would look at the mountain and out over the sea and at the people, the pretty young women out jogging with long, tanned legs and bobbing breasts, pensioners walking with purpose, mothers with babies in pushchairs, other cyclists greeting him despite his primitive apparel. Then he would turn and ride back, sixteen kilometres in total and it made him feel good. About himself. And about the city – whose underbelly was all that he had seen for a very long time.

And about his smart purchase. Until his son came around two weeks before Christmas and said he'd decided bass was not for him any more. 'Lead guitar, Dad, jissie, Dad, we saw Zinkplaat on Friday and there's this lead, Basson Laubscher, awesome, Dad. Effortless. Genius. That's my dream.'

Zinkplaat.

He hadn't even known such a band existed.

Griessel had been hiding the bass guitar from Fritz for nearly two months. It was his Christmas present. So he had to go and see Hot Lips Faizal again and at such short notice he only had one guitar available, a fucking Fender, practically new and horribly expensive. Plus, what he gave to Fritz had to be matched by a gift to Carla in London. So he was financially stuffed, because Anna made him pay maintenance as though they were divorced. The way she made her calculations was a mystery to him and he had a strong feeling he was being milked, he was being sucked dry while she was earning good money as an assistant to the attorneys. But when he had something to say she would reply, 'You had money for booze, Benny, that was never a problem ...'