Blindside. Wilna Adriaanse
many of her own colleagues had come. They came over in groups to speak to her. Shook her hand. Brigadier Andile Zondi, her commanding officer, put her hand on Ellie’s shoulder. Clive Barnard, her captain, hugged her briefly, clumsily. Clive turned forty last year but today the deep lines beside his mouth made him look older.
She looked around for Albert, but didn’t see him anywhere. She wasn’t too surprised. His mother’s funeral had probably been the first and last funeral he had ever attended.
When Melissa offered to fetch her some tea, she declined. She knew what she needed, and it wasn’t tea and a sandwich.
Melissa linked her arm through hers and they stood like that quietly. If anyone knew how she was trembling inside, it was Melissa.
“Are you going home tonight?”
“No, I’ll sleep at her place again.”
“Want me to come with you?”
Ellie smiled. “Maybe you should go, and I’ll sleep with Antonie and the kids.”
“Maybe I should come and sleep at your place, and we’ll send your mom to Antonie and the kids. I don’t know who I’d feel sorrier for.”
Slowly the sympathisers thinned out. Ellie had to stop herself from sighing with relief when only Father Frank remained. She kissed his cheek.
“Thank you, Father. I’m sorry you had to do this – it couldn’t have been easy, but there was nobody else I could ask.” Ellie smiled. “Not that I had a choice. He always said that it had to be you, or just a cremation without any ceremony. End of story.”
The grey-haired man took her hands in his own. “I am very sad, and even a little angry with my friend, but I would have been hurt if you hadn’t asked me. I promised him long ago that if this day came and I was still around, I would do this for him. He could have made it easier by not dying, but then again, he was never a man for making things easy.”
Ellie nodded. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He turned to her mom and took both her hands in his own. “He loved you very much.”
Rika McKenna made what sounded like a grunt and Ellie hurriedly said goodbye.
“Where are we going now?” her mother wanted to know when they were in the car.
“I’m going to drop you off at home. Aunt Vera will stay with you. I have to go, but I’ll see you a bit later.”
“I know you’re going to Joe’s. Why can’t I come?”
Please don’t bury me with tea and coffee, her father had written in a letter that he had put in a partly faded envelope along with his will. At the back of my sock drawer in my wardrobe you’ll find money – take the guys to Joe’s for a round or two on me.
The money had been there, and Ellie had wondered when he had put it there. Whether he had added to it over the years, as things became more expensive.
“It’s been a long day. You and I can go sometime, but not today.”
At home, her aunt and uncle were making tea in the kitchen, still in their funeral best.
“Come and have a cup of tea,” Aunt Vera said.
Ellie saw her mother licking her lips and knew she wasn’t going to stick to tea, but she couldn’t worry about that right now.
CHAPTER 3
Joe’s was crowded when Ellie arrived. The pub was one street from Durban Road, just before you crossed the N1 from the Bellville side. It was a popular watering hole, and many police officers stopped there on their way home from work. The voices quietened down a bit when she walked in. Those who hadn’t attended the funeral remarked on her darker hair. Ellie shrugged.
Joe came out from behind the counter and took her hands. “I’m glad to see you survived the day.”
His hands closed firmly around hers. In his mid-sixties, he was still a strong man. He had been a wrestler in his younger days and it was still evident in his build. It’s just the hair that hadn’t lasted. He was almost completely bald, except for a thin strip of grey around the back of his head.
Ellie shook her head. “The day’s not over yet.”
Someone touched her shoulder and she turned to find Brigadier Ibrahim Ahmed standing behind her.
She nodded stiffly. “Brigadier.”
“It was a fitting farewell.” When she didn’t answer, he touched her arm. “The two of us can sort out our differences another day. Now isn’t the time. Let’s say goodbye to him the way he would have wanted.”
She nodded. “I appreciate your being here.”
He cleared his throat and rapped on the bar counter. “Could we have some quiet for a moment, please?” He motioned at a few youngsters at the back of the room who had started talking again. “Shut up back there.” He turned to Ellie. “Mac, we don’t have words, and I don’t actually have the faintest idea what to say, except that it was a privilege to know him. And to work with him. With that man behind you, you never had to look over your shoulder. His death is a great loss to all of us. I suppose we could say that, given a choice, it was how he would have wanted to go, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It’s hard enough when any innocent person is taken out like that, but it’s doubly hard when it’s one of our own.” He stopped for a moment and when he spoke again his voice was thin. “To the Irishman.” He raised his glass.
There was a loud “Hear, hear!” and then one of the younger men spoke. “Everything I know about police work I learnt from John McKenna.”
“Hawu, man, he could chew your ear off if you fucked up,” a young black man said from the front of the room. “But he was straight as an arrow. You always knew where you stood with him.”
“Remember that night we were going to raid that house in Bonteheuwel?” a colleague of many years joined in. “We worked on it for months, everything was in place, and then he got a feeling that something wasn’t right. Hell, the guys were furious.”
“Yes, but we were more scared of the Irishman’s sixth sense than of the devil himself. No one fucked with it. None of the profiling textbooks come close to that man’s eye and instincts.”
Ellie let them carry on. Allowed each one to reminisce and say his piece as they stood shoulder to shoulder. When they walked out of there they would take their private fears home with them, and the knowledge that it could have been them. Her own words stuck in her throat.
She was exhausted and drank deeply from the glass Joe had put in her hand. She hadn’t eaten all day and felt the whisky drop straight into her stomach, where it burned.
“What did he always say when he had his first glass in his hand?” someone called out to her.
“May your glass be ever full, may the roof over your head be always strong, and may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead,” she called back, and everyone laughed.
She raised her glass. “Here’s to you, old man. I hope you took the devil by surprise.”
“Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,” her dad’s cousin began to sing. Before long his four old friends had joined in and were belting out the words.
When they got to the second verse, Ellie sang along.
“And if you come, when all the flowers are dying, and I am dead, as dead I well may be, you’ll come and find the place where I am lying and kneel and say an ‘Ave’ there for me.”
What a cliché, she thought. It wasn’t even one of her father’s favourite songs, yet gradually her voice petered out. When the last notes had faded away, she motioned to Joe. With her glass replenished, she made her way back to Ahmed.
“Have you