DAVID, MY SON
It was Monday at nine am when a hungover Detective Jackson took the call.
“Please help, please, please, I’m frightened.” Hyper-ventilating, foreign.
Detective Jackson and Inspector Masongo arrived at the stately residence at ten am.
“Take your time, Katrina.”
“I organise coffee for you, yes?”
“No, Katrina, please sit. Tell us exactly what happened.”
“As always I come upstairs before nine o’clock with breakfast tray. I knock and enter and there lies Madum on antique chaise, much dead. I drop tray. I phone you and clean up mess – mess of dropped tray. I touch nothing.”
“Katrina, on the phone you said you were frightened, you did not say shocked.”
“Oh, Sir, I am very, very shocked, yes and also much frightened. Madum lives in this large house with son David – goes to his father weekends. I fear for self; intruder in house. Madum has much jewellery, some in vault, many here.”
“How old is the son?”
“David has eighteen years, was ten when I start with Madum, after the divorce. That is all I can tell you sir.”
“I’m Detective Gus Jackson, this is Inspector Sipho Masango.” Jackson, square, fiftyish, sharp bloodshot eyes, rasping voice. Masango, thirty, compact, watchful.
“Katrina, we’ll be working this case, please tell the rest of the staff to be ready to talk with us.”
The experts got to work. No unexplained prints. Just those of the staff; the ex-husband, the son. No break-in. Nothing missing. Shot at close range, so close it could have been suicide. No gun. Someone well known to her.
Jackson and Masango questioned … No grilled … Every staff member. Friends, ex-lovers, the devastated son, the shocked ex-husband.
Surri had no known enemies. The Will revealed no greed motive. Shot before midnight on the Sunday; the staff who lived on the premises and seen and heard nothing.
Keaton Trent had never owned a gun, he had more than adequate security. David Trent remained in a state of deep shock. He and his Dad had been in their game lodge, got home late and exhausted. David as usual slept over and was dropped at Wits University by his father on Monday morning.
“You don’t have a car, David?”
“No Sir, my Dad was buying me one. I have only just got my licence. Mom and I were to have chosen it,” he choked.
Working round the clock, two weeks later Jackson and Masongo still had no suspect. Firm hunches, but no proof. They all had watertight alibis. Katrina brought in for questioning for the third time, came up with a name.
“Ooh, so sorry, I forget to talk about another employee. Mr Robert Evans, very handsome man. He is … how you say … a botanist, yes? He supervise garden, come twice, maybe three times in the year. The garden is very beautiful, no?”
Katrina left thinking “Detective look like warm-up pickle cucumber.”
Robert Evans, a tall, deeply tanned muscular man of fifty. Sandy-blonde hair, green eyes, a cleft chin and deep timbered voice. Jackson remarked, “He’s a devilishly attractive man.” Masongo looked puzzled … “Aikona, too brown.”
“Detective Jackson, I’m filled with horror; Surri Trent murdered.”
“You supervise Mrs Trent’s garden?”
“Yes, this is a shocking tragedy. I worked for the Morgans shortly after I qualified. Surri was just a schoolgirl. No posturing socialite then.”
“Did you socialise with the family?”
“No, definitely not, I did not hang out with them, but they helped me get established.” He possessed a gun and an iron-clad alibi.
Surri Morgan, the only daughter of a family known for their wealth and philanthropy. Small, slim, cute and desirable. Her marriage to darkly handsome Keaton Trent, heir to an obscenely large fortune was made in heaven. Actually it was in the garden. It kept the society columnists gushing for weeks.
At the right time a son was born. Blonde, grey-eyed, dimpled chin, bouncing good health. The parents too were bouncing with pride and joy; an heir. Resembled the Morgan side of the family. Surri and Keaton strenuously cheerful, socialising constantly and shallowly. When David was nine years old they had to admit that their marriage was on the rocks.
They tried to save it, their devotion to the boy. Went to a psychologist, then to a highly recommended marriage councillor who trained them in structured communication. Time is set aside to talk over problems, you have to follow rules. The word “I” is allowed. “YOU” is not. Turns are taken. Failure.
Keaton had his secretary, Vicky, and Surri had ardent admirers, persons not mentioned in the “I-YOU” exercise. There was an amicable divorce. David would live with his doting mother; weekends and holidays with his adored father. Surri would keep the house and an allowance for its upkeep. A new car every two years and a substantial monthly payment for the boy. David experienced less of the predictable miseries on the way to becoming an adult than most boys. The divorce was a great success.
Weeks passed, the case remained unsolved. David moved in with his father. He was not sure whether he was in a nightmare from which he would never wake. It was two weeks before the murder, he had returned from a fishing trip with his Dad, full of excitement. His pride, joy and love for his father spilling over. Surri had been drinking and exploded with jealousy. “You are worshipping the wrong god, David. Keaton is not your father.”
“You’re lying. You’re making it up to hurt me.”
“No, David, not lying, I wish I were,” and staggered out. David was left frozen, it couldn’t be.
The following Saturday, David confronted his father. Shocked, ashen, Keaton stared at the boy.
“Is it true, Dad?”
“How could she have made our entire marriage a deception, a mockery, how dared she, how could she do this to us?” Keaton gasped.
David was on the verge of collapse. He drew the boy to him.
“No one else must know of her infidelity.”
“But Dad…”
“I’ll see to it, we’ll both see to it.”
It was the following Sunday that a shot was heard at the Trent mansion.