Episode 1
Special Agent Jospeh Mafu couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He gaped like a five-year-old as he stared ahead through the one-way window, into the interrogation room. Surely this must be a joke, right? Maybe Leon Schuster was going to jump out and call:
“Gotcha!”
Agent Mafu shut his eyes, shook his head and then pursed his lips to let out a soft whistle. Agent Ria Davis stood next to him, also looking baffled. “Ja neh,” was all she could say after having sighed heavily.
The two law enforcement agents were on the other side of an interrogation room, staring through the one-way mirror. Before them was an alluring young woman in a zombie-like state, slouching in her chair, her twitching hands helpless on the metal table.
Twenty-nine-year-old Pearl Mayeza sat quite still in the interrogation room, gazing at her reflection in the mirrored window, oblivious to the two officers of the law who gawked back at her, trying to stop themselves from pitying her. The sight of Pearl was really the most bizarre thing both agents had ever witnessed. Here was an alluring, copper-skinned young woman, hair extensions shrivelled, makeup stained…blood clinging to her off-white weddings dress. Wedding dress? Really? The journalists hovering outside the scene of the murder were already tweeting about the “bloody bride.”
Agent Mafu stepped into the interrogation room. Pearl startled out of her hypnotised state when she heard the almost indistinct sound of a shutting door. Her eyes widened, her purplish lips parted. The agent’s gentle smile failed to invite her own.
She watched him try to fight but fail in showing a frown. After some hesitation, he dragged the chair away from the table and sat down opposite to her.
“Pearl,” his baritone voice said. “I’m Special Agent Joseph Mafu.”
Pearl nodded.
“Okay?” It sounded more like a question, as if he needed assurance that “Joseph Mafu” was still his name.
“I am the advisor to the director of the South African Bureau of Crime Agency. But I’m sure you already know that, right?”
Pearl was silent.
“So, I am sure you know that if the Bureau was called out for this one, this is kind of a big deal.” She watched him wrinkle his nose and then nodded encouragingly, as if he was a father nudging his little girl to “tell daddy the truth.”
He opened the thin, cardboard covered file that lay between them on the metal table. She had only just noticed it. His brow furrowed as he paged through. “I’m sure you must know all about the Bureau because it says here you’re a junior associate at a labour law firm,” he continued. He raised his head and his amber coloured eyes pierced through her. “And I’m sure you know about us because you’re accused of killing a man who was recently added to our most wanted list.”
Pearl couldn’t stop her manicured, soft hands from shaking. The nail extensions knocking the metal table surface brought an unfamiliar sound to her. Agent Mafu glanced at them. Pearl stopped quivering when she noticed drops of dry blood on the back of her hands. How did she get into this mess?
“Pearl,” Agent Mafu continued. She didn’t dare look up at him again. “Tell me your side of the story? What happened? Our agents found you standing over a dead Thabo Malipe with a revolver in your hands. We got an anonymous tip that we would find Thabo at suite number 8 of the Rawlinson Hotel. And guess who we find? You, with a gun in your hands and his corpse at your feet. How does a respectable young woman like you know a thug like Thabo?”
Pearl shut her eyes. Her chest tightened. Her head pounded. She felt nauseous.
“And all of this,” the agent continued, “on the day you were supposed to be getting married!”
Pearl gasped at hearing any word linked to matrimony.
“I mean, where is your groom? Can we call him? Who is he?”
Pearl hesitated. She shook her head.
Agent Mafu sighed and sat back. “Were you and Thabo lovers and he wanted to see you one last time before he lost you for good?”
“No!”
Agent Mafu straightened his back, raising his eyebrows at hearing this young woman’s youthful voice for the first time. He cleared his throat. “No need to be ashamed if that was the case, my dear,” he said. “We want to get to the truth, okay? Thabo’s death wasn’t just an “ordinary” murder—if there is such a thing—but he’s an infamous gang leader who also defrauded the government out a lot of money; a lot. Okay? So, what happened between you and him?”
Pearl’s thin lips parted. “Can I please have some water?”
Again, Mafu sighed. “Of course, my child, Of course.”
Pearl was left alone in the room once more. She stared ahead again at her reflection in that big mirror – but she was still looking passed herself.
What happened? The bit she could see in her mind’s eye began skipping about…
Okay…okay… Trace your steps back, Pearl…
There was the dead guy on the floor at the hotel. Yes, she knew him…well, kind of. But she recalled she didn’t like him. Something about him made her hate him. But what was it? She remembered she had been on the floor and had crawled on all fours towards him. She knew nothing about the workings of a human body, but she placed her index and middle fingers on his neck. There was no pulse. She stumbled back. Then she saw the weapon. It was just lying there. It took both hands to lift it up. Pearl stumbled to her feet, her chubby knees wabbling, the weapon she was holding in one hand now shaking. She gasped and gasped. She stared at the corpse. There was nothing else left to do. She placed the muzzle against her temple…
Then she heard the door being kicked down.
“Hands in the air! On the floor now!”
Thank God the commotion hadn’t startled her into pulling the trigger…
She was brought back into the present when the door to the interrogation room swung open again. In stumbled Ramola Harper, a friend and university classmate. Ramola had studied criminal law and carried the meanest face Pearl had ever seen on a young woman. But not even the sight of a competent Ramola could make Pearl feel any relief. In fact, she couldn’t feel a thing. Where was the one person she so desperately needed to see?
“Pearl?” Ramola began. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Pearl nodded. She only then noticed Ramola’s attire. Her learned friend loathed the sight of a dress, but there she was, having thrown a purple frock over her skinny physique for Pearl’s wedding. She watched Ramola quickly glance over her shoulder toward the open door. She brought her attention back to Pearl. “Listen. Agent Mafu seems to have a bit of a soft spot for your situation. So, he’s giving us ten minutes. The room is clean. No recorder. Reece is downstairs in the foyer.”
A dazed Pearl just stared back at her representative at the mentioning of her fiancé’s name. She saw Ramola frown at her for her reaction: Pearl didn’t care where Reece was.
“Fine,” Pearl’s shaking voice replied. “But where’s CC?”
Ramola’s bony chest heaved, and her nostrils flared. “Exactly! Where the hell is CC?”
Ramola reiterated that everyone had been waiting for Pearl and her bridesmaid, CC, at the Methodist Church when they got the call that the bride had been arrested for shooting CC’s boyfriend.
“Boyfriend?” Pearl whispered. So, that’s who this Thabo was. Her head pounded as the pieces of the muddy puzzle were trying to fit themselves into the empty spaces in her head. Where’s CC? Where’s CC? Where’s CC?
Ramola banged her hand on the table when it was clear Pearl was leaving the present again. She always left the present and behaved as if she didn’t possess the brilliant brain she did when it came to CC.
Pearl knew that this mess had something to do with CC. Everything wrong in her life had something to do with CC. Ramola knew that too.
Everyone knew that.
“Pearl,” Ramola began. “Whenever you need Cecilia, she’s never there for you. What happened? Where is she? How did her boyfriend end up in your hotel room, shot?”
“I shot him.”
Ramola’s eyes widened. Quickly, she put her finger to her lips.
Pearl prepared to lower her voice. “I shot him,” she repeated.
Ramola’s brow furrowed. Pearl didn’t blame her. She couldn’t believe it either.
“You’re sure?” Ramola whispered.
Pearl nodded. She was lying. She wasn’t sure. But she had gone into flight or fight mode. She had to protect Cecilia wherever the missing bridesmaid was. As long as the events were still fuzzy and as long as she didn’t know where her best friend was, for the time being she had killed Thabo.
Pearl’s lips barely moved when she whispered to herself: “You have to let me tell you about CC…”
Juliette Manitshana-Mnqeta matriculated from Westerford High School in 2005. She is currently based in Plettenberg Bay and works as a freelance Labour Court transcriber and isiXhosa translator. The crime novel she will be working on has the working title If The Dead Could Talk.
