Authors: Deon Meyer
‘Did Hanneke Sloet have any contact with Masondo?’
‘Not really. Maybe briefly at a meeting or a cocktail party.’
‘What about email? Telephone?’
‘I seriously doubt that,’ said van Eeden. ‘She simply had no need to communicate with him.’
‘Are there any other communists involved with this whole deal?’ Griessel wanted to know.
‘Masondo was the only member of the SA Communist Party. The others showed no sign that they had any ideological leaning in that direction.’
They thanked van Eeden and drove away, in silence.
Griessel had two voice messages on his cellphone. The first was from Cupido. He said there were two firearms registered to the Bonne Espérance Estate. A two-seven-oh and a thirty-oh-six. They hunted occasionally, especially up in Limpopo. Apart from that, nothing. Egan the Vegan was most likely not the shooter.
The second was from Cloete, the media liaison officer. ‘Benny, call me, please.’
Griessel called him back.
‘They are calling him the Solomon Shooter, Benny,’ said Cloete, with the guilty tone of a parent explaining the behaviour of a naughty child.
‘Because of the Bible verses.’
‘Yes. Because of the verses. Benny, they like the guy. They like his references to corruption, they like his Latin even more. They are asking for comment from the National Commissioner and the cabinet, stuff like, “Is this not another sign that the SAPS are failing at their job?” And, of course, about the assertion that we actually know who the murderer is.’
‘It’s not true,’ said Griessel wearily.
‘Are we one hundred per cent sure, Benny? God knows, it will come back to haunt us …’
‘It’s not true, John.’
‘OK. Have you anything I can clear with the Camel?’
‘Nothing.’
Griessel could hear Cloete slowly blowing out cigarette smoke. ‘OK,’ said the liaison officer, ever-patient. ‘We’ll talk again.’
Griessel put the phone away, leaned back against the headrest and said,
‘Jissis.’
‘I’m sorry, Benny,’ said Boshigo. ‘I tried.’
‘No, Bones, I don’t know what I would have done without you. It’s just … It’s five o’clock. And this mad bastard is going to shoot one of our people any moment now, and we have nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m beginning to think he’s playing us, Bones. There is no communist. Or he wants us to suspect Masondo, to waste our time. And I can’t think of a single reason why he would want to play us. Except that he likes shooting policemen. And that means he is mad and cunning, and you know how difficult it is to catch
those
ones.’
‘They always make mistakes.’
‘Sooner or later. But we don’t have time. We don’t even have a suspect. Nothing. I look at this whole thing and I see nothing. That apartment of hers, the block was not even finished when she moved in. There were plumbers, electricians, labourers … There are the men who carried in her boxes. One of them could have stolen her spare key … Or sold her some story. Practically impossible to catch a guy like that, there’s nothing forensic, just a ball hair in the bathroom, and old fingerprints on the boxes – which helps us not one bit.’
‘Shit,
nè
.’
Griessel thought long and hard. Then he said, ‘Footwork. Footwork and a big stroke of luck. That’s all that’s going to save us.’
In Otto du Plessis Drive, trapped in the snail’s pace of rush-hour traffic, the sniper watched the IRT bus passing him in the fast lane. He felt envious.
On the radio of his Audi A4 he heard the five o’clock time signal, and he turned the sound up a bit to listen to the news.
In another email to the media the Cape Shooter, who has already wounded two policemen, justified his actions with the statement that extreme diseases required extreme cures. This quote was made famous by the Roman Catholic
political extremist, Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British Parliament with gunpowder in 1605
.
The sniper, whom some in the media are referring to as the Solomon Shooter, due to his quotes from the biblical book of Proverbs, alleged in the email that the South African Police Services know who murdered the late corporate lawyer Hanneke Sloet
.
A spokesperson for the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations said a statement about the situation would be released later today
.
The Solomon Shooter.
He liked it. The wisdom of Solomon. The opposite of this morning’s accusations of incoherence and religious extremism, homophobia and racism.
The Solomon Shooter. Who was wise enough to know that the SAPS would have ramped up its guard on police stations significantly. In two hours he would have a new surprise for them.
Before he went to tell Manie and Nyathi that there were no communists with any motive for taking Hanneke Sloet’s life, Griessel sat down in his office and phoned Hannes Pruis, the director of Silberstein Lamarque.
Pruis didn’t answer his cellphone. Griessel phoned the office number. Eventually his PA answered. ‘I am sorry, sir, Mr Pruis is in a meeting.’
‘Go and get him out of it,’ said Griessel.
‘I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t do that.’
‘Miss, we have two options. Either you go and get him out of that meeting, or I drive all the way to the city and haul him out myself.’
‘Hold on.’
While he waited, he checked his laptop to see whether Fritz had sent him an email yet.
It was right at the top, the only one that wasn’t a Hawks bulletin. The subject was
Your new son-in-law
.
He clicked on it.
The Hypocrite and the Tatoo Dude
, Fritz had typed at the top, spelling mistake and all. In the photo, Carla was laughing, happy. She looked directly into the camera. And beside her, with a huge arm
possessively around her shoulders, towered the muscle man, his eyes fixed on her with an expression of complete enchantment. Griessel could see the black flames of a tattoo curling out from under the tight, short-sleeved shirt and down the bulging biceps. ‘Fuck,’ said Griessel.
‘What?’ said Hannes Pruis over the phone.
‘Mr Pruis …’
‘This better be good, Captain, I’m in a meeting.’
‘You knew about Masondo,’ said Griessel.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You knew that Masondo has misused trade union funds. You knew he is a communist. And you said nothing.’
‘It had absolutely nothing to do with Hanneke’s death,’ Pruis said, curt and angry.
Not enough sleep, the frustration of not getting anywhere with the investigation, the man’s attitude, and the muscle man photograph all conspired together. Griessel lost his temper. ‘But I asked you specifically about communists. And then you were very vague and said maybe. And you gave me seven names. While you knew very well that there was only one communist, and he had already made trouble. As far as I know, that is called obstructing the course of justice.’
‘And now you’re threatening me?’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Now listen carefully. I will not be threatened by a mere captain. If you want to make accusations, make them in court, then we will see.’
‘I’m going to do more than that. Because this is not a threat. I am going to get a search warrant, and I’m going to get your people to bring every last document about the whole transaction over here, and we are going to go through them piece by piece, until I have evidence that you lied to me. And I am going to tell the press about your lack of cooperation with us in solving the murder of one of your own people. And let me tell you now, if there is the slightest connection between Masondo and Sloet’s death, I am going to arrest
you
. Goodbye, Mr Pruis …’
‘Captain, wait …’
‘I’m listening,’ Griessel said.
‘You must try to understand …’ The attitude was still there, but
somewhat tempered now, a man clinging to his patch of high ground. ‘We … Silbersteins signed a confidentiality agreement. If we violate that … I can’t gossip about the parties involved in the transaction. And Masondo … That was long ago. It’s been dealt with, he’s been moved out. Hanneke had no contact with him. None.’
‘Did Hanneke know all about it?’
‘We all knew about it.
We
did the due diligence for SA Merchant Bank, a year ago already. We were satisfied that it posed no risk to our client. I can’t understand how you could believe there’s a connection between that matter and her death.’
‘Did she ever talk about him?’
‘As a team we talked about him once, early last year. When we weighed up the risk. Since then, never. He is a nonentity in the scheme of things. He draws a salary as director but has no influence. That is why I said nothing to you. Because there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘You’re dead certain that I’m not going to find something tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow that shows that …’
‘Captain, let me say now, I would not put my firm and my own professional reputation on the line if I thought there was the slightest possibility. If I thought Masondo were involved, I would go and arrest the bastard right now myself.’
‘Benny, are you sure?’ Manie asked.
‘I am sure, Brigadier.’
Griessel could see the relief on his commanding officer’s face, the great weight of a political mess falling away. But then Manie frowned, ‘Then why does the shooter keep going on about the communist?’
‘He’s playing us, Brigadier. I think he knows there’s a communist somewhere. He wants us to waste our time. So he can shoot more policemen.’
‘You think he was part of the transaction?’
‘I think he knew her, Brigadier. And she said something.’
‘Or he’s taking a shot in the dark … in a manner of speaking. There
are just too many different possibilities, Benny.’ Then, pensively, ‘Why does he want to shoot our people?’
Griessel shook his head, then said in resignation, ‘I will understand if you want to give the Sloet case to someone else, Brigadier.’
‘No, Benny,’ he said decidedly. ‘This is your case. What I will do is show you how the Hawks operate.’
They gathered in the parade room of the Violent Crimes unit. The room was full, with the entire Information Management team, all the detectives of Violent Crimes, a bunch of CATS, Bones Boshigo of Corporate Crime, the warrant officer of the TOMS group – the Tactical Operational Management Service that did searches – Nyathi, and Manie all sitting in front of him. It took Griessel twenty minutes to sketch the broad outlines of the Sloet case, and the state of the investigation. With the greatest concentration – he did not want to look like a clown in front of all
these
people. He put all his cards on the table. He said they had nothing, except that the victim knew her attacker somehow or other. That could mean anything, from a worker who carried or fixed something for her, to a friend or colleague. He explained about the missing front door key, the removal company that had helped Sloet with the move, the security personnel of the apartment block, builders and tradesmen, the set-up at Silberstein Lamarque, and the little they knew of her private life.
Then he said any suggestions would be welcome.
Musad Manie spoke first. ‘Benny, you’re the JOC leader on this one.’
‘
Jissie
, Brigadier …’ He didn’t know how to manage a joint operational command centre, it was usually the work of a colonel. And there was a lot he still wanted to do himself.
‘We’re behind you, Benny. Philip, tell him what you can do.’
‘We make connections, Benny,’ said Captain van Wyk of the IMC in his quiet voice. ‘We take all her contacts – phone, Internet, everything, and we start to draw lines. As the information comes in, we can give you a graph of everyone she has been in contact with. And who they are. Criminal records, credit black-listings, traffic fines … Just give us her cellphone and office numbers, her email addresses, her
Facebook ID … Oh, and her banking details. We can do a full analysis, look at tendencies and patterns, anything out of the ordinary.’
‘We’ll have to get all the names and ID numbers of the law firm people, her friends, the builders, and the removal company,’ said Nyathi. ‘The Violent Crimes group will have to do the legwork. Benny can divide you into groups and allocate responsibilities.’
‘As the info comes in, we capture it,’ said van Wyk.
‘Benny, would you consider bringing in PCSI? Let them go over the crime scene again?’ asked Nyathi.
The PCSI were the elite forensic people, the Provincial Crime Scene Investigation unit, who worked almost exclusively for the Hawks. Griessel had never seen them in action, only heard of the advanced technological toys they used.
‘There has been contamination, sir …’
‘These guys are really good.’
‘Can’t do any harm,’ Manie encouraged him.
‘Let’s bring them in,’ said Griessel. He tried to think what else was needed. ‘We must look at similar crimes as well,’ he said. ‘The past five years. Murder and assaults on women who live alone, especially where robbery is not the motive. Large stab wounds. We will have to talk to the pathologists, we will have to get bulletins out to the detective branches.’
‘Don’t be too specific,’ said Manie. ‘We spread the net wide in the beginning. Pull the parole records too, see if anyone with a similar modus operandi has been released in the past year.’
‘There is the possibility that the shooter knew her …’ said Griessel.
‘We will connect the databases of the two JOCs,’ said Philip van Wyk. ‘See what jumps out.’
‘OK,’ said Nyathi, ‘we’ll manage this thing as it develops. Let’s get cracking.’
He tried to muster some self-confidence from his earlier sense of satisfaction, but it deserted him when he put on the overall, the wig and the cap and climbed into the Chana.
Then the tension came, from deep inside him, spreading slowly through him like a fever. He began to perspire, his hands clammy on the steering wheel, with nausea in his guts and his thoughts flitting and
leaping from one risk to the other. Doubt. He wasn’t made of the right stuff. They were going to catch him.
Only sheer willpower stopped him from dropping it all.
He drove south down Koeberg Road, past the police station in Milnerton. He didn’t look, he knew they would be on their guard, people on the lookout. He was too scared to make a U-turn, and used Mansfield Road and Masson Road to change direction legally, then come back down Koeberg with his van pointing north.