Africa39 (22 page)

‘Don’t even think about it.’ Vee whipped around. Eyes narrowed, Chlöe stared her down over the head of a wilting Zintle, now snuggled in her bosom.

‘I wasn’t,’ Vee snapped. Maybe a tiny, foolish part of her was. But if she removed the scarf . . . hide it where? And explain the absence of a murder weapon how? Massive shitstorm potential.

The silk had been knotted twice then twisted completely along the length stretched around the neck. The noose closed in a third knot at the back of the head, where the loose material had been fashioned into a loop of sorts, easily slung over a worthy hook. Under the substantial weight, the workmanship of the coat rack was literally holding up. The tips of the man’s shoes barely touched the ground. Breath held again, Vee zoomed her phone’s camera and snapped a close-up of the garrotte. She stared at it for a long time, nonplussed.

A triangular tip of white poking out of his pants caught the corner of her eye. She exhaled shakily. A furtive peep over her shoulder ran smack into Chlöe’s glare, drilling a hole through the back of her head. Answering with silent plea, Vee deftly slid the object from the man’s pocket and stuck it in hers. She turned her back on Chlöe’s widening eyes and frantic head-shaking.

‘They’re coming,’ she said.

Three older men, flanked by two strapping groundsmen in blue work jumpsuits, trudged across the expanse of grass. The groundsmen were no less wild-eyed than they had been when, short of two hours ago, they’d come across the florid-faced white man strung up outside their workroom door. They hung back with a couple of the older men, wildly gesticulating over what Vee felt sure was a colourful extrapolation of a story they’d told several times already. The last of the group, hard-faced and decked in a trench coat that was absurd considering the building heat, made a beeline for them. Is it a coincidence that the police look the same everywhere, Vee wondered, or do they follow an international manual? A surge of weariness cut through the shock, overcame, left her feeling like a jaded witness in a cheap private-eye novel until the policeman tripped on the downhill verge of the lawn and nearly fell. She turned away to hide a giggle.

A crowd of gawkers, guests and staff from the lodge, was in full fluster by the time the officers had questioned them. The single crime-scene technician, whom Vee had anticipated would be an entire team working with scientific flourish, simply clicked away at different angles on a basic Kodak and cut the body down. Another stab twisted under her ribs as the massive pair of scissors worked through her silk scarf.

Chlöe sighed. ‘I feel cheated after all these years of watching
CSI
. We could’ve done that. Well, not take the body down
ourselves
but . . .’

Vee tuned out. The best bit was kicking off. The cops formed a scrum of whispers for what felt like forever. They pulled Zintle, sobbing by then, aside. Head down with hands clamped under her armpits, she seemed to be speaking in fits and bursts. She shook her head and shrugged a lot. As the probing wore on, she stole guilty glances over her shoulder at Vee and Chlöe. One of the cops snuck a comforting arm around her shoulder and leered down the front of her uniform. Finally, Hardface Trench, who was clearly in charge, broke the huddle and set about creating another expert beeline. He had thrown off the coat, revealing a crisp blue shirt and pants of a brown so similar to his complexion that from afar he looked naked from the waist down.

‘Ohhh, Gooood . . .’ Chlöe groaned. Vee steeled her spine and set her expression to ‘concerned but oblivious’. In the pockets of her jeans, her fingers began to tremble as they stroked the rectangle of paper.

‘What’s your name, ma’am?’ Hardface looked directly at Vee.

‘Voinjama Johnson.’ She let him blink, purse his lips, mouth the name soundlessly many times as he scribbled in a battered notebook, and offered no help. She wondered what highly revised version he’d put down. Probably just Johnson; most people went with Johnson.

‘It’s my understanding you know this man.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Hhhmmph. He’s one . . .’ He squinted, flipping at leisure through the notebook.

‘Gavin Berman,’ Vee blurted.

Hardface stopped and raised his head very slowly. ‘You just said you didn’t know him.’

‘You asked if I know him, not if I know his name.’

The policeman’s head reared a barely perceptible inch as his eyes hardened. His body language computed a rapid adjustment from ‘the easy way’ to ‘the hard way’, now clearly the only option on offer. ‘Would you mind coming with me so long? So we can work out how everyone here knows everyone else, which you seem to know a lot about.’ His arm executed an upswing as if to shepherd her along the path. Neither Vee nor Chlöe, crowded to her back like a fledgling to its mother, fell in line. The arm dropped. He flicked his head in the direction of the front entrance and abruptly strode off, a contemptuous click of his tongue slapping the morning air.

‘Find Lovett now. Start with that blonde’s room, then his,’ Vee whispered to Chlöe. ‘I doubt they’ve left yet. And call Nico.’

‘I thought we weren’t calling Nico!’

‘Change of plan,’ Vee muttered.

Vee rotated kinks out of her neck and shoulders as she trudged down the hall to the managing editor’s office, apprehension stirring up her breakfast. She really wasn’t up for it this morning. Investigating for
Urban
magazine had been one thing, but wading through the innards of the
City Chronicle
beast had so far proved a different adventure altogether.
Yeah, definitely Jonah in the belly of the whale level of wading. Nico Van Wyk captained his ship using strangely different coordinates, ones she had yet to decipher.

‘Bugger off,’ he barked in answer to her knock. ‘Unless it’s Johnson.’

The office was cool and furnished with austere, practical taste, a man’s space.
Chronicle
was close to the top floor of the office building, the room swept through from a perfect angle by breeze. Envious as always, Vee thought of her cubicle next to a sealed-off window.

‘Overtaking specific projects without permission.’

She blinked. ‘Beg your pardon?’

Rifling through the filing cabinet behind his desk, Nico didn’t turn or look up. ‘Seat,’ he pointed. Vee considered declining, thought better of it and sat.

He pulled a sheet from a folder and sank into his chair. He vigorously massaged his face with both hands before dragging them over his head, buzzed short of honey-brown hair to downplay the balding dome on top, and down the back of his neck. Deep-set, grey-green eyes that saved his face from being plain were rimmed faintly with red. He stared for ages. Vee squirmed. Finally, he smacked a palm on the desk in a ‘let’s get down to it’ manner.

‘Saskia can’t stand you. You’re not madly in love with her either. She says you’re messing about with the online team, making it hard for her to do her job. Why can’t you learn to stay out of her way? You’ve been here over a year. You should have the hang of it by now.’ He glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. ‘Meddling.’ He looked up. ‘Why do you do that?’

Vee sighed. He was quoting from one of the reference letters in her file, and she would bet her right arm this one was from none other than her old boss, Portia Kruger. ‘I’m not meddling. Not exactly. It’s just . . . Saskia’s the office manager but she barely manages. She’s fulla
wahala
, everything got to be palaver with her. She’s more concerned with running people than she is about quality output. Who cares if I help the web guys? They’re understaffed.’

‘They’re doing fine, all things considered.’

‘They’re not. What things considered?’

‘Backchat and authority issues.’ He tapped a line on the piece of paper, nodding emphatically at her sceptical expression. ‘Seriously, that’s really on here. Kruger’s thorough.’

‘Can I get a copy of that?’

‘What do you think?’ He leaned back again. ‘What’s your deal with Anton?’

Vee threw up her hands. ‘You mean Saskia’s toilet paper. He’s more comfortable with Afrikaans, why can’t he be on the Afrikaans editorial?’

‘He should get comfortable with communicating well in both languages. Chlöe Bishop does.’

‘Chlöe is half Afrikaans. And she studied languages at UCT. Anton can catch up if y’all give him chance to breathe.’

‘Propensity to preach and pick up strays,’ Nico intoned, making an invisible tick against the paper. Vee muttered a curse and sat back. If he was all systems go for a verbal flogging, she wasn’t going to help him at it.

‘Oudtshoorn.’

‘Hehn?’

‘Oudtshoorn. You know where that is?’

Vee flicked through her mental archive. ‘Mossel Bay?’

‘Further. Out in the south-western Cape, Klein Karoo country. The Grotto Lodge is a two-star establishment out there, and they’re gunning for their third this year. They put on their best face during last year’s World Cup and still didn’t get it. They’re not letting it go this year, and that means they need all the stellar reviews they can get.’

He slid a thin manila file, open to a brightly coloured pamphlet, over to her. ‘Looks nice enough. Apparently it was a hot-spot during the soccer, though God knows why anyone would want to be somewhere as beautiful as the Garden Route when it was pissing down at kick-off last June. Anyway, bloody tourists never seem to give a damn about realities like the weather.’ Sighing, he rubbed his eyes hard enough to wrinkle his forehead. ‘It’s gone up in the revolving door ratings with the number of tourists and ministers wives that have been passing through. If they need more positive spin, it can’t hurt. They get publicity, we get advertising.’

Vee gave the leaflet a polite perusal throughout his speech. Adorning the front was a hulking, rustic building of indeterminate architectural style squatting amongst some dusty red boulders. ‘Quaint’ was the first word that leapt off the blurb inside. She closed it. The look she shot was an admixture of ‘I’m not following you’ and ‘I think I am, but you can’t be serious’.

Van Wyk looked weary. ‘Look, I’m sure you’re aware of Lynne being on maternity leave. Again. She’s all we’ve got on travel and tourism right now. The usual piece on accommodation hotspots can’t marinate till she gets back. It needs wrapping up.’

‘And who say I know about travel writing? I’hn know nuttin about it. I can’t even whip up a dozen synonyms for “picturesque”.’

He cracked a whisper of a smile. ‘It’s a tad more involved than that.’

‘Exactly. And I’hn know anything about what those involvements are.’ She opened the folder, didn’t know why she had, and snapped it shut again. ‘Nobody else want this?’

‘There are people who do.’ He paused. ‘No one I’d want or trust to give it to. There are those who could but can’t, because we barely have any free hands. That leaves you. And Tinkerbelle.’

The ones you neither trust nor want to hand it over to.

He coughed. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. I’m certain you can handle this.’

‘So . . .’ Vee took indignant pause. ‘
This
you’re willing to let me do. But you won’t put me on the crime desk full-time. When that’s the job I was promised.’ Khaya Simelane and Andrew Barrow, long-running autocrats of their page, were still holding firm on blocking newcomers. ‘I’ve done courses and learnt so much about web media and editing, which I use all the time working with the online team. But no, I still can’t
join
the online team, that’s got only
three people
despite that it’s more popular than the print edition. Darren appreciates the extra help, but I can’t even put my two cents into the webpage without issues. Because of Saskia Schoeman.’
Who you’re sleeping with, on top of
your liquor problem. Hey, maybe you got drinking problems
because
you messin’ round with her, wouldn’t be surprised. But we only here to talk about
my
shortcomings.
Vee bit the insides of her lips closed.

‘It’s complicated. And I fully appreciate how empty that sounds. You were candid and emphatic in your interview about not being shunted through various departments willy-nilly as you’d been at
Urban
. For the most part I’ve kept my word, but—’

‘I know. This is an emergency. Always is, always will be.’

Van Wyk replied with a long, granitic look. Vee tipped a curt nod, took the folder and got to her feet.

‘Hang on.’ He folded his arms and eyed the ceiling, toying with an idea. ‘I’ve been meaning to, and I guess now’s as good a mood as any to ask. Did you take it?’

Vee furrowed her brows.

‘Year before last, the case you had . . . with the thing . . . and the crazy family . . .’ He twirled a finger in the air, indicating she jump in with the elusive words. ‘The missing Paulsen girl,’ he snapped his fingers finally. ‘The pay-off. That the client offered you for your . . . diligent services. Did you take it?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Johnson, come on.’ He puffed in dramatic exasperation. ‘Listen, you’ve got something. First of all, you don’t play games, which,’ he clasped his hands in gratitude, ‘goes a long way to making my life easier. Top reason I can’t stand working with women. Besides the dramatics and all the time off they need to pop munchkins, of which I’m bloody
gatvol
.’ He sat up straighter. ‘What I’m getting at is, I need to know my people. Now you
know
there’ve been whispers about this. And I know that
you
know that
I’ve
heard, and if I’ve heard, then I’ve wondered. So . . .’ he presented open palms. ‘You’d hardly be the first or last journalist to take an incentive if they felt it was deserved.’