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<-PREVIOUS... leading to his employer’s suburban enclave. The road passed through some open veld and was busy with 7am traffic. He had been feeling uncomfortable for some while, and now the need to defecate was urgent. He looked about and saw a clump of bushes some 20 metres from the road.
Buckling his belt after having relieved himself, he skirted the bush in order to rejoin the highway. It was then that he stumbled upon the naked body of a white woman.
On arriving at work he first had breakfast, prepared by the housekeeper, and only then did he request an interview with his employer. The Madam of the house let out a theatrical scream when he described what he had stumbled upon, and collapsed onto a nearby sofa. She had him relate his simple tale another three times, all the while repeating, ”Oh my God, it must be Bruce Dreyer’s wife.”
She phoned the police and they promised to send someone; but they were short of transport. She kept phoning on and off throughout the morning until a battered police car arrived just before midday. The gardener repeated his story yet again, and then drove with them to the stretch of veld where the body lay.
First he led them to where he had performed his toilet, and pointed out the evidence that proved he wasn’t lying. Then he showed them the corpse.
A swarm of blowflies was hard at work. After two and a half days in the hot African sun she had lost her chief attribute, her figure. Distended with gas, she had become a bloated, middle-aged matron. And her lovely pale skin was ruined forever, having turned a blotchy grey and brown and black. It made her blond hair look white. As the primary biodegraders in the decomposition process, the blowflies were taking their job seriously and continued to lay their eggs, by the thousands. The first larvae had already hatched and were greedily consuming Barbara’s nutritious flesh.
One of the policemen went back to the car to radio for the detectives.
The blowflies were concentrated about the orifices. Mouth, ears and eyes, anus and vagina – these were the normal points of entry. Also, after having been repeatedly raped, she had been both stabbed and shot, thus providing additional access points for the industrious insects.
The gardener looked on with ghoulish fascination, and thought some heavy thoughts. Like, ‘Why such violence?’ and ‘Why such abandonment of restraint?’ And ‘Why such total surrender to the devil?’