Recipes for Love and Murder by Sally Andrew

police station and gave my statement to the young paperwork woman. She seemed bored by what I told her. Maybe she had heard it all before. There was no sign of Reghardt or Piet or Kannemeyer. She told me Kannemeyer was at the hospital. She was a slow writer and the air conditioner hummed and rattled. It seemed to take for ever just to get my name and address, so I made the story I told her very simple.
    ‘We will contact you if we have any questions,’ she said once I had signed the statement.
    I was tired when I got to my house late that afternoon. I sat on my stoep with some beskuit and a cup of tea. I looked up at the sky and yawned. But I was not going to lie down.
    ‘I don’t believe in sleeping in the day,’ I said to my tea. ‘It’s confusing. When I wake up I don’t know whether to have breakfast, lunch or supper.’ I dipped my muesli rusk into the tea. ‘I suppose I could just eat beskuit. Any time of day.’
    I looked up at the clouds that were gathering in the north. They looked nice and fat and I hoped it would rain. A cool breeze was blowing and the leaves on my lemon tree were stirring.
    Here in the Klein Karoo, the sky is so big. Usually it is blue and empty, but now it was putting on a fancy show. I sat watching the movement of the clouds. I wasn’t thinking on purpose, but after a while ideas started gathering at the back of my head. Thought clouds. In the sky-clouds I could see shapes. A duck. A woman. Martine, dissolving. Anna and Dirk puffing up, dark and fat. A long poker, like a cut across the sky.
    It didn’t make sense that Anna would wipe the poker clean before using it on Martine. But if the poker was wiped, then the murderer wasn’t wearing gloves. There might be other prints. Did the murderer wipe those too?
    I rested my eyes and allowed my mind to think.
    When I opened my eyes again my tea was cold and the clouds had come closer; they were big and inky-blue. The plants and trees were all looking up, hoping for rain. But not expecting anything. Karoo plants are very patient. They wait for months and months without a taste of water. But they don’t get bitter, or shrivel up and die. They just hold onto the little moisture they’ve got and keep on waiting.
    I don’t think I could manage that myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
    I fried bacon and made toast with my farm bread, then prepared bacon- and-marmalade sandwiches. I put them in a Tupperware for Jessie and me to eat later that night. Then I made an extra one, which I ate on the stoep, watching the fat underbellies of the clouds turn pink then blood-red. Then they were grey, and growing closer, bigger, darker. I knew I should be pleased, because they held rain somewhere in there, but they looked so black and heavy, and in their shapes I saw the faces of men with bad thoughts inside puffy foreheads and dark beards. My husband, Fanie, was dead and gone, but sometimes it felt like he was with me again, like a bad taste in my mouth. Suddenly I could see the expression on his face just before he would hit me. My forehead was sweating and my heart beating fast. It was like I was having a bad dream, but I was wide awake.
    I was pleased to hear the sound of Jessie’s scooter heading my way. I rinsed my mouth, washed my face and put on my khaki veldskoene.
    Jessie came into the kitchen carrying two helmets and a small backpack. She was wearing jeans and black boots and her jacket, as well as the usual pouches and stuff around her belt.
    ‘Are you sure there’s no one at Dirk’s house?’ I said.
    ‘We’ll soon find out.’
    ‘But the police are finished with the crime scene?’
    ‘Yes, they’ve taken photographs, dusted for prints and all that. They’re just leaving the crime-scene tape up a while. In case, you know.’
    ‘Are you sure? We don’t want to mess up their investigation.’
    ‘We won’t mess up anything,’ said Jessie. ‘We’ll only try and help. The more brains on this the better.’
    ‘I wonder if I should