The Soldier who Said No Read online

  The Prime Minister had her left hand up, with all the fingers extended, while the arrow was being positioned on the string. The archer held the bow loosely across the handlebars. To the curious onlooker, if there had been any, it would have looked like a short stick. The eye sees what it wants to see. Who would expect a bow and arrow at the Prime Minister’s gate?

  The archer released the arrow and watched its flight.

  Who else has let me down? the Prime Minister asked herself and stopped, a move not anticipated by the archer. The arrow narrowed the gap, slowly turning on its axis. It entered the folds of the Prime Minister’s anorak an inch or two behind the soft flesh of her neck below the ear. The archer left the gate in a hurry, merging into the traffic as just another man on a bicycle, his cycle helmet pulled down low over his face, his eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses.

  It was at this point, as she was about to turn around again, that the Prime Minister saw her shadow against her front door, an odd appendage to her anorak. When she pulled on the shaft, it came away in her hand, the arrowhead stuck in the polyester fabric. She took the garment off and gingerly extracted the arrow. It was while she was testing the sharpness of the finely carved point on her finger that the thought crossed her mind that someone might have tried to kill her, but when she looked around for the culprit, the archer had disappeared.

  She went inside and called her Chief of Security at the Diplomatic Protection Unit a few houses away.

  The archer was by now a few kilometres down the road, pedalling furiously. It didn’t matter that the arrow had missed its target. He had kept his side of the bargain.

  The Prime Minister’s mood soured further as she waited for her Chief of Security to arrive. The country was in a downward spiral of despair after the national sports teams had failed so badly on the public stages of international competition. Team New Zealand had lost in the finals of the America’s Cup, its best sailors having deserted to foreign money. And then there had been that terrible day, that indescribably awful day at Cardiff Arms when she had been forced to watch the All Blacks being humiliated and beaten by an inferior French team whose members played their rugby with the passionate abandon of Legionnaires. The thought crossed her mind that the All Blacks’ early departure from the Rugby World Cup might be an ominous portent. Hadn’t her party swept into power on the back of the public dismay after the 1999 World Cup when the All Blacks had succumbed to France in the semifinals?

  And now this arrow – she turned it over and over in her hand – how was she going to explain this arrow to the public? Some may even think it’s a publicity stunt, a cheap shot to regain the voters’ sympathy, to climb back to the top of the polls.

  She sighed deeply as she listened to the approaching sirens and hard-revving engines. Damn, she thought, I should have told them to come quietly.

  Auckland

  Monday 17 December 2007 4

  De Villiers crossed at the intersection above the Civic Administration Building. He descended gingerly down the spiral path towards Aotea Square. Hundreds of shoppers were sauntering between the numerous fleamarket stalls in the square. De Villiers skirted the crowd, making his way down the covered walkway behind the Metro Cinemas to Wellesley and from there to Queen Street. He waited in front of the entrance to the Civic Theatre for the light to change. The bar across the street claimed that it had a hundred kinds of beer in stock.

  Auckland had become a wealth of immigrants. The corners of the intersection were occupied by people from all of Asia, Polynesia and the Caucasus waiting for the light to change so they could cross. When it did, white and brown and many shades between crossed the intersection, every man and woman a ship on its own voyage, many on the diagonal. The city had changed considerably since De Villiers had arrived nearly a decade earlier. In the centre of the city the Europeans were now outnumbered by the Chinese, the Japanese and Koreans and Indians and, of course, the Samoans, Tongans and Fijians, who in turn outnumbered the indigenous Maori three to one. In the ten-minute walk to the Ferry Building from his office – his former office – De Villiers could easily encounter, and regularly did, as many as ten different languages. English would be heard, spoken with various accents, American, Canadian, shades of the English Second Language taught in the ubiquitous language schools, punctuated now and then by the guttural English of an Afrikaner from Pretoria. Then, if one were to listen in on the conversations of pedestrians passing by, one would also be able to list Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, at least three Pacific Island languages, a smattering of Maori, and Afrikaans, and all of that without counting the tourists.

  De Villiers looked at the faces around him while he waited for the light to change. He wondered whether they saw the world as he did, where the first thing to notice about a person was their race.

  And it was race that had got him into trouble this morning. He thought of the altercation with Kupenga and wondered whether he should have handled the matter differently, but dismissed the idea. He had tried that before, to no avail.

  He continued his descent into the Central Business District en route to the Ferry Building in no particular hurry, as the next ferry was due to leave at 1.30 pm. When he had come to work in the morning on the first ferry leaving Half Moon Bay at 6.30 am, the sky was covered with a thin layer of cloud. Now the sun was blazing down, with high humidity adding to the discomfort. De Villiers walked past the Smith & Caughey department store and the Strand Arcade, both established over a century ago. This was old Auckland, but the modern was right next door. The glass-clad twin towers of the National Bank stood at the corner of Victoria Street. Diagonally opposite was a giant Santa Claus beckoning with his finger, inviting passers-by to visit the colonial building housing the Whitcoulls bookstore.

  He liked the city, even though he was an alien. Auckland was a city where one could lose oneself within the anonymity of the cosmopolitan population. He had been happy here, but he would always be an alien in any city, in this city doubly so.

  He remembered that he had to stop at the main branch of ANZ Bank at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets to transfer funds from his savings account to his current account to make provision for the fact that his salary would not be paid into his bank account every second week.

  The shop fronts became tackier as De Villiers progressed towards the Ferry Building. At Customs Street the light trapped De Villiers in a gaggle of schoolgirls. He took cover under a sign – Adidas All Blacks Champions of the World.

  An icon of a forgotten era, the Ferry Building was constructed of red brick and caramel-yellow plaster. The squat century-old building was the hub of Auckland’s public transport system.

  De Villiers joined other passengers queuing at the entrance to the terminal. It was not yet time for lunch, but he’d already had a full day. He sat disconsolately on one of the hard benches inside the terminal to wait for the ferry, looking across the water towards the Hilton Hotel. Shaped like an ocean liner, the apartments with the hotel at their bow jutted out into Waitemata Harbour. He had read somewhere that wai was the Maori word for water.

  The water was flat and Sea Flyte half empty. He paid little attention to the supply ship moored at the Devonport Naval Base on Stanley Bay or to the Kea ferrying passengers from Devonport to the city. Once on the ferry, he stared out at the water, the throb of the twin motors a balm of sorts, easing the pain in his groin.

  He decided to write a letter to his unit commander to explain why he had been so upset by Kupenga’s actions that he had retaliated.

  The sudden deceleration of Sea Flyte as she entered the low-speed zone in the Tamaki Estuary brought his scattered thoughts back to the present and he turned away from the rail to visit the heads. Luxury houses on the Bucklands Beach waterfront held his attention for a while and then the ferry turned around to dock.

  De Villiers went to the afterdeck and watched as the ferrymen, one a woman, expertly docked the vessel and secured the gangway. He was the first off the ferry, empty handed.
/>   At the parking area at the Half Moon Bay Marina, De Villiers unlocked his unmarked police car and set off to Howick. The weather had changed again in typical Auckland fashion, from bright sunshine to a chilly wind under scattered clouds in less than an hour, and this was summer. It will probably be raining before I get home, De Villiers thought. He drove to the medical centre in Moore Street and parked right in front. He walked past the pharmacy and headed straight for the men’s change room.

  The receptionist was kind. ‘I’ll squeeze you in before the next family, Detective,’ she whispered. ‘Please follow the passage and take a seat. I’ll tell her you’re waiting.’

  The centre was a mix of three colours, blue-grey carpets, cream walls and ceilings and burgundy chairs. He distractedly paged through a gardening magazine. It was out of date and gave advice on preparation for the onset of winter. A young mother – she could not have been more than 15 years old – came out of the room, carrying her baby. Both were crying.

  ‘Oh, Pierre, it’s you. Come in, man, good to see you.’

  ‘It’s not so good to see you,’ said De Villiers, exhausting the last grain of humour left in him.

  ‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’ teased Annette de Bruyn. She was a petite brunette in her early thirties, a graduate of the Medical School at the University of Cape Town. The degree certificate on her wall testified that she had graduated with First Class Honours, MB ChB.

  ‘Sit down here, and let me do the usual before I ask what makes you look so glum,’ she said. She started by taking his pulse and blood pressure, then his temperature. She listened to his heart and lungs, pushing him this way and that. ‘Breathe in, breathe out,’ she said. The stethoscope was cold on his skin. She put on latex gloves and, using a flat spatula, checked the colour of the back of his throat. He gagged and she removed the spatula, broke it in two and threw the pieces into a bin. She held the back of her forearm above the glove against his neck. Her touch was soft and feminine. ‘Uhm,’ she muttered, ‘you’re running a temperature.’

  De Villiers was in no mood to argue and stared at the carpet. The room was the same colour scheme as the rest of the centre. Even the waste basket was colour coded burgundy.

  The doctor stripped off her gloves and they joined the pieces of the spatula in the bin. ‘You have flu. I’ll give you a prescription for that, but you wouldn’t come to see me just for a bit of flu.’

  ‘It’s much worse than flu,’ he said. He was looking for an opening to mention his bladder problems.

  ‘In what way?’ Annette de Bruyn wanted to know.

  A good detective, De Villiers thought, putting pressure on her suspect to speak and to reveal his secrets.

  He gave up and decided to get it out of the way. ‘I have to go to the toilet every hour or so,’ he blabbed, ‘and it hurts like hell.’

  ‘Uhm,’ she muttered again, ‘that’s not good, problems with the waterworks and flu.’

  ‘For sure,’ De Villiers agreed, not sure whether she was making light of his plight.

  ‘When did you first experience this problem?’ she asked.

  ‘Last night.’

  Annette de Bruyn looked at him incredulously. ‘Last night, for the first time? That would tend to indicate a severe infection. It’s quite rare in men, but it would explain the temperature.’

  ‘No, I’ve had that for three or four days now.’

  She folded her arms. ‘Did you take any medication before this happened?’

  De Villiers dug in his jacket pocket and handed her the packet containing a blister-pack of tablets. Six had been used.

  She turned the pack over in her hand. ‘Sudafed,’ she said. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Emma got it from the pharmacy in the front yesterday.’

  ‘Your wife shouldn’t be dispensing medicine.’

  The doctor sat down in front of her laptop. She punched some keys and moved the mouse. De Villiers kept to himself that Emma had insisted that he see the doctor and had threatened to get him the necessary medication from the pharmacy herself. When he had argued, she had driven off and had come back with the Sudafed.

  ‘It’s flu, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve got some work to do,’ the doctor said, suddenly businesslike. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to pull your trousers down.’

  She walked to shut the door. ‘When last did you have your PSA checked?’ she asked with her back turned to him.

  ‘Last year.’

  ‘What was the count? Can you remember?’ She checked her screen again.

  ‘It was 2.2 or 2.5, I can’t remember exactly,’ said De Villiers.

  ‘It was 2.25,’ she said. She put on a fresh pair of latex gloves.

  ‘We’ve done this before,’ she said, ‘and neither of us enjoys it, but it has to be done.’

  ‘I know,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘Assume the position then,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a policeman’s line,’ De Villiers said, trying to hide his anxiety and discomfort in a weak effort at a joke.

  She smiled. ‘I’ve always wanted to tell a policeman that.’

  ‘You watch too many American cop shows,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘Now relax, this might hurt a little.’

  De Villiers closed his eyes. It hurt a lot.

  ‘That’s it, thanks.’

  The young doctor watched with professional detachment as De Villiers struggled with his trousers. ‘I want a blood test immediately and you need to see a urologist as soon as possible.’

  De Villiers winced. ‘Do I have to? Can’t you just give me something?’

  ‘No,’ she said, quite firmly.

  De Villiers was still standing, ready for a quick escape, but she pointed at the bed. ‘Sit down, Pierre, let me explain in detail. We’re going to be a while.’

  De Villiers sat on the bed and folded his jacket across his lap.

  ‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Please ask questions if anything’s unclear, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ De Villiers said, wondering whether she was going to give him another lecture.

  ‘Your prostate is enlarged, considerably enlarged. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed anything wrong,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘Not until last night.’

  ‘Pierre, the active ingredient in Sudafed is pseudoephedrine. That certainly is not advised for anyone with problems passing water.’

  ‘Well, that sounds like me for sure,’ De Villiers had to admit. He watched in silence as she crushed the capsules one by one and dumped their contents in the bin for medical waste against the wall.

  She spoke with her back to him. ‘We need to do a blood test, because if your PSA count has risen considerably, we are going to have to do something very quickly.’

  ‘Do you think I have cancer?’ De Villiers asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, but the timbre of her voice had changed. She leaned over her desk and wrote out a script.

  De Villiers watched her carefully. I don’t think so, she had said, keeping an escape hatch open. He had many questions, but didn’t feel confident enough to ask them. He had contemplated his own death many times before, but the likely manner of it had always been within his own sphere of experience: violent, by enemy fire in all probability.

  But cancer, what do I know of cancer? he asked himself.

  He vaguely heard her explain. ‘Most cases are benign and are treated without surgery. And even if there is a tumour, it can be treated with surgery or radiation therapy. And there are some new techniques, but you can ask the urologist about those. We must first get you to the lab for a blood sample. The sooner they take the blood, the sooner we’ll have the results.’

  De Villiers needed time to think. ‘I’ll go right now.’

  When he stood waiting in the pharmacy for the script to be dispensed, De Villiers saw that it was raining heavily, exactly as he had anticipated.

  On the way home he wondered how he wa
s going to tell his wife. And he clean forgot about the letter he was going to write to Detective Inspector Henderson.

  His wife and daughter were out when De Villiers arrived from the doctor’s rooms. He made coffee and went upstairs.

  From the veranda of his house, De Villiers stared across Macleans Reserve to the islands in the hazy distance.

  His eyes made a sweep of the canvas below. The schools had closed for the summer holidays and there was no activity at Macleans College. The weather was indifferent to the summer, but the intrepid kiwis were going about their business as if the rain was but a minor irritation, not an impediment to their recreational activities.

  At the top of the park an elderly Chinese couple were slowly going through their t’ai chi moves. Further down at Eastern Beach members of the boating fraternity were launching their dinghies and boats and children were splashing about in the shallows under the watchful eyes of their minders. In the lee of one of the islands in the distance, small triangles of sails fluttered in the light breeze, while luxury motor yachts left long tails of white wash behind them.

  De Villiers had always been a man of action, but here action had to be sought in the form of recreation: fishing, boating, skiing. Even the most hardened criminals didn’t own guns and seldom resorted to violence. There was no external threat to the country and the armed forces had long been reduced to a corps trained to serve as peacekeepers on foreign soil. And the police were desk-bound most of the time.

  He decided to brave the weather and went downstairs. He left the house, locking the front door behind him. Deep in thought, he followed the path towards the stream separating the school from the Macleans Reserve. At the small wooden bridge below the first set of classrooms, he encountered a troop of schoolchildren wearing Macleans College sports shorts. They were cleaning the stream, picking up the rubbish that had washed up on the banks or had got stuck in the vegetation: crushed cigarette packets, plastic bags, chips and chocolate wrappers, empty bottles, even a tyre. They chattered as they proceeded downstream at a pace that matched De Villiers’s. At the beach he watched as they dropped the litter bags into the bins in the picnic area.