Authors: Deon Meyer
On the way to work he prepared for the six o’clock meeting. He would have to delegate tasks. Give the priorities to IMC. His greatest hope was that they would mine gold from the ore of Kotko’s cellphone calls. If he had been dumb enough to use his usual number to negotiate a murder with a hireling.
Then he saw the newspaper billboards: HAWK IS NEXT, SAYS SHOOTER.
That woke him up.
There must have been another email.
Nyathi was waiting for him, and handed him the printouts.
He realised the colonel had not slept.
He read the first one.
Sent: Wednesday 2 March. 23.39
Re:
Today I will shoot you dead.
Only those six words.
Rage pierced his fatigue and he looked up at Nyathi, searching for words to express it.
‘Read the other one.’
Sent: Wednesday 2 March. 23.39
CC: [email protected]; [email protected]
Re: Mercy
‘You shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death.’ Numbers 35:31 ‘Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.’ Deuteronomy 19:13
They took bribes. The media should go and look at the evidence in black and white the directorate of prority crimes is corrupt they are protectiing the generals that they work for. I have to wipe out those who shed inoncent blood.
It is war now. Today I will shoot a Hawk.
Solomon
Before he could take pleasure in the knowledge that stress must be to blame for those spelling mistakes, before he could say anything to express his contempt, Nyathi laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘We have secured the building. But I think you should stay in the office today.’
He argued vigorously, but to no avail. He pleaded, offered alternatives, suggested solutions.
Nyathi listened to it all as they walked to the big parade room. Then he just shook his head.
‘No.’
There was rebellion in the room. It was borne on the aggressive voices of nearly thirty detectives, the undertone of controlled rage at the shooter, his emails, his attack on a colleague. And the DPCI’s lack of action. ‘Where is Mbali?’ came the accusing question.
Nyathi struggled to silence them. He sketched the safety precautions, cautioned them to be careful.
Griessel stood up. First, they insisted on hearing from his own lips about the night before. His account drew out a rumble of indignation.
‘Where is Mbali? The big Kia hunter.’
‘Probably still sleeping.’
A chorus of accusation and dislike.
The ever-friendly, ever-restrained Nyathi stood up, so obviously upset that silence was immediate and overwhelming.
‘Is this what we do? When we are shot at by madmen, and the media, and the top brass? Is this what we do? When our commanding officer is fighting for his career in Pretoria? You should be ashamed of yourselves. While you were sleeping, Captain Kaleni worked. Straight through the night. She has followed leads the rest of us missed. She is hunting down this dog who is shooting us, and I think she just might catch the bastard before this day is out. So shut up. And show some respect.’
When Griessel began to talk again, he had their full attention.
The day’s work began with renewed energy, activated by Nyathi’s words, and a female detective who had put them all to shame.
The day’s work began with so much promise when the SAPS station at Melkbosstrand informed them that they had found the burned-out Chana.
At half past six they phoned in the engine number, and Nyathi, Mbali and Griessel sat watching the IMC screens as they searched for the name of the owner on the vehicle registry system.
Neville Alistair Webb. Fifty-five years old. Langley Road in Wynberg.
They sent the task force to bring him in, acutely aware of the urgent need to make progress.
At 8.12 they shoved the short, dismayed and protesting Webb into Mbali’s office. ‘I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything,’ he said, red in the face.
Griessel sat and listened. She asked the questions.
‘You own a 2007 Chana panel van, Mr Webb.’
‘Shit. I knew it.’
‘Please do not swear, Mr Webb. What did you know?’
‘That he was a crook.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy who bought it.’
‘You are saying you sold the Chana?’
‘Of course I sold it. How do you think I paid off my creditors? I sold the van, I sold the shop, I sold the stock, I sold my car …’
‘When did you sell it?’
‘Almost too bloody late …’
‘When?’
‘Last week of January.’
‘To whom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No, I don’t know. And you know what, I don’t care. I really don’t care. Because he paid me cash, and I paid my debts, and what he did with the bloody van is his problem, not mine.’
‘You had better start caring, Mr Webb. The vehicle was used in the shooting of several police officers, one of whom was killed.’
‘Jesus.’
‘May I ask you to refrain from profanity, Mr—’
‘No, you may not. You break down my door like barbarians, you assault me in my house like a criminal, in front of my wife, you drag me here, and you’re trying to blame me for making a perfectly legal sale of my legally owned property? And then you expect me to speak in a civilised manner? Bullshit. If I could still afford a lawyer, I would have called him, and sued your arses. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you what happened, and then I’m walking out of here. And if you don’t like that, you can shoot me. Because I really don’t care any more. You hear me? I don’t care.’
‘What happened, Mr Webb?’
‘The Internet happened, that’s what. Amazon and Kindles and iPads happened. You know how long I ran my bookshop? Twenty years. Put two kids through university. And then? E-books. Boom. Recession. Boom. Savings. Boom. No more Book Webb. Just one big financial mess.’
‘What happened with the sale of the Chana?’
‘I advertised it in the
Argus
, on
Auto Trader
, on
Gumtree
. The market
is swamped, everybody’s in trouble. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody. After almost six months, I’m on my way to insolvency, and finally this guy calls me, last week of January, and he says he’ll pay cash, he’s in Jo’burg, he’s busy, he’ll have someone fly down and pick it up, I must just leave the keys and the registration papers under the driver’s seat carpet and park the van at the airport. So I think it’s a bit weird, but the next day he calls and says I must check my account. And the money is there. So I did what he asked. And when he called again, I gave him the number of the airport parking spot, and that’s the last time I heard from him.’
‘But the vehicle is still registered to you.’
‘And that’s my fault?’
‘Can you prove that you sold the van?’
‘How the hell am I going to do that?’
‘You tell us.’
‘Look at my bank statement, for God’s sake. Twenty-two thousand, in cash, last week of January.’
‘Where were you last night at eleven o’clock?’
‘At home. With my wife.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘No. We had a party. Elvis was there. And Frank Sinatra. Great guy.’
‘Just you and your wife.’
‘I’m leaving now.’
‘Mr Webb, please sit down.’
‘I have nothing more to say.’
‘Mister Webb—’
‘Shoot me.’
That was the highlight of the morning.
Xandra nt hapi. Bad reh ystdy. X w u. B warnd.
He was still trying to decipher Ella’s SMS – it was worse than Fritz’s – when his phone rang.
ALEXA.
‘Where are you, Benny?’ Her voice was cold and stiff.
‘At work. How are—’
‘Here in the Cape?’
‘Yes …’
‘I thought you were in Johannesburg, Benny?’
‘I was there yesterday, I—’
‘You couldn’t have let me know that you were back?’
He had phoned her back. When was it, last night some time. Had he left a message? Too many things had happened, too little sleep. ‘I think I left a message.’
‘You didn’t say you were back. When did you get here?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. Alexa, I—’
‘Did you prefer to be alone, Benny?’
‘No. We worked till very late, I’m sorry, it was a bit crazy.’
‘Is today a bit crazy too? Or can we see each other?’
Jissis
, what could he say? With the bodyguards and the fact that he was penned in here. ‘Alexa, I want to see you, the trouble is just—’
‘I understand.’ She cut the call, and he stood there with the phone to his ear and the words on his tongue and the powerlessness paralysing him. He called Ella’s number, because he at least wanted to find out what
Bad reh
meant.
She didn’t answer, but sent another SMS.
Xandra X. Tlk ltr.
He was trapped in the building. With too much time to think while they waited for the Kotko and de Vos cellphone reports, for the feedback from the teams that had gone out to the hotel, the city CCTV centre, to Silbersteins.
He thought about his inability to sustain any relationship. With his children, his ex, with Alexa. Was it the job, or was he the problem?
It had to be him, because there were lots of policemen whose marriages lasted.
He thought about his inability to comprehend the Sloet case. And how Mbali Kaleni, so much younger, with much less experience, through all the chaff of Kotko and the transactions and the Trust, had seen the grain. He thought about Bones Boshigo’s words yesterday. ‘You’re an old fox.’ The only truth in that was the ‘old’. He never made the connections, he never thought the whole thing through like Mbali. He was too busy playing the strong man in that cell with Kotko, too
focused on his conviction that it was the Russian himself who had killed Sloet.
He had lost his touch, somewhere in the months that he was doing training and mentoring work for Afrika. And just could not shake off that rust, it was inside him, encrusted with the damage of thirteen years of drunkenness. Maybe that was why Afrika had recommended him to the Hawks. So he could rid himself of Griessel-the-toothless-jackal.
Had he ever had a worse week in his life?
Fuck knew, he would have to pull his finger out. He would have to catch a wake-up and shake off this paralysis, never mind how far behind he was with sleep.
But the day kept dealing out the knocks.
Rumours that the Cape Hawks were a topic of debate in parliament were confirmed. The opposition talked about ‘this nest of vipers’ that needed cleaning out. A man said on a phone-in radio programme: ‘Leave this guy alone, let him shoot the whole corrupt gang, so we can begin afresh.’ So-called law enforcement experts used words like ‘turning point’ and ‘low point’ and ‘crisis’ in interviews. The flood of media calls began to include foreign journalists, and everything was reinforced with reporters and photographers who set up camp outside the DPCI building. Bellville uniforms had to come and maintain order, direct traffic.
The fragile, bespectacled Dr Tiffany October sat down with Griessel and Mbali and methodically explained the pathology report of the suicide of Frikkie de Vos. If you took into account the blood spatter against the head rest of the Toyota Fortuner, the precise entry and exit wounds of the shotgun, the gunpowder residue on de Vos’s hands and in the back of his throat, the size of the vehicle cab, and the total absence of any other bruises, grazes or wounds, she said, there could only be one explanation: the man had committed suicide.
Later, in the afternoon, all their other theories toppled one by one, like dominoes.
It was Griessel who took the calls, who had to pass on the news. From Silbersteins, the Cullinan Hotel, and the city CCTV control centre, that the teams were coming back empty handed. Every time
his heart sank further, and the desperate fatigue seeped deeper into his bones.
He was there when the spider’s web of de Vos’s cellphone calls – blown-up and projected onto the IMC wall – brought more disappointment. When Mbali, now practically walking in her sleep, called the widow in search of an explanation, and had to hear that ‘Frikkie’s crooked clients only emailed, they were too scared of cellphones’. And she didn’t know which email address de Vos used, it must be on the computer somewhere.
Mbali sat in the IMC centre with her head bowed, her back turned to them, and Griessel saw her shoulders shudder at the onslaught of tears, but she did not look up.
And then the mortal blow.
It came some time during the drowsy depression between three and four o’clock. The long corridors were quiet, the telephones had stopped ringing, and only Fick was still busy at his computer, the irregular click of his mouse the only sound in the room.
They heard the footsteps approaching on the tiled floor, measured and weary. Nyathi, always so proud and erect, leaned against the door-jamb, his body crumpled like that of an old man, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘The brigadier has just come out of the National Commissioner’s office. He called to tell me that he will be facing a formal disciplinary hearing tomorrow morning at nine. He’s their scapegoat. They want to suspend him.’
In the shocked silence that followed, in a hopeful tone that was completely out of place, Fanie ‘Fucked’ Fick said: ‘Now
that’s
very weird …’
Fick saw the expressions on the faces that turned towards him, the reproach and disgust.
‘No, really,’ he said, and pointed at the screen.
‘What, Fanie?’ asked his immediate boss, Captain Philip van Wyk, crossly.
‘This Frikkie de Vos,’ said Fick. ‘We only looked at his cellphone up
to the day of his death. Because that was the last day that he
made
calls.’
‘So?’
‘But I looked at calls received. I … there was nothing else to do …’
‘What is it, Fanie?’
‘After
he died, on the nineteenth of January, he was phoned four times from the same number. There were voice messages left twice. On the twentieth, another two calls. What’s so peculiar to me – they are from the police station in Victoria West.’