by Deon Meyer
‘Okay.’ Vaughn Cupido addressed his empty office aloud when he’d read the Scherpenzeel statement. ‘Okay.’ If Johnson Johnson had recognised someone on the train perhaps they could focus only on the South African passengers, for now.
‘Not a good sign when a man starts talking to himself,’ said a voice from the doorway. Captain Frank Fillander, the greying veteran of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, entered the room. Behind him were more members of the team, Captain Vusumuzi ‘Vusi’ Ndabeni and Captain Mooiwillem Liebenberg.
‘I can’t have an intelligent conversation with anyone else in this place, Uncle Frank.’
‘Fear not, the cavalry is here,’ Fillander said, and settled himself comfortably into a chair facing Cupido.
‘The colonel sent us,’ said Liebenberg. ‘She said you and Benny are too useless to handle this docket on your own.’
‘That’s not entirely true,’ said Ndabeni, always anxious that his colleague’s humour might be hurtful. ‘We’re here to help.’
‘New suit, Vusi,’ said Cupido. ‘Very stylish.’
‘Thank you, Vaughn.’ Small, slight Ndabeni had the best dress sense in the unit, despite Cupido’s valiant efforts.
‘So, are we going to indulge in chit-chat or are we going to solve the Great Train Robbery?’ said Fillander.
‘Murder on the Rovos Express,’ said Vusi. ‘Classic.’
Johnson Johnson’s former colleague, Warrant Officer Neville Bandjies of the Brackenfell SAPS, stood beside Griessel in the Salt River mortuary’s identification room. The room was small and bare, with a bench against the wall and a faded blue curtain over the viewing window. Plus a bucket beside the bench.
Bandjies was plump; the blue uniform stretched tightly across his midriff. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, taking a deep breath and straightening his shoulders. At least it wasn’t his first time identifying a body, he’d told Benny.
Griessel rapped on the window. The pathology assistant drew back the curtain. The body was stretched out on a trolley, covered with a green sheet, only the head and neck visible.
‘Jirre,’ said Bandjies.
Griessel understood. The damage was gruesome.
Bandjies crumpled, grabbed the bucket and threw up into it. After a while he looked up. ‘Sorry, Captain. But to think, it could be your pal . . .’
‘You don’t need to be sorry. This is a bad one.’
‘It looks like him,’ said Bandjies, and straightened up. His breathing was rapid.
‘You’re not sure?’
Bandjies reluctantly approached the window, made a noise in the back of his throat and called to the assistant: ‘Can you uncover his arm? The right arm?’
The assistant moved the sheet.
‘Turn the arm a bit.’
The assistant complied.
Griessel saw the tattoo. One word, black ink, fancy lettering: Robyn.
‘It’s JJ,’ said Bandjies. And threw up again.
Cupido told them everything he knew about the docket. He split up the tasks among the detectives. He asked Frank Fillander and Willem ‘Mooiwillem’ Liebenberg – the man the Hawks called their ‘weapon of mass seduction’ because he was dangerously attractive to women – to contact the foreign passengers. ‘There were sixty-five passengers on the train. Johnson’s Dutch employer has been covered already. Benna and I will do the seven locals. That leaves you with fifty-seven. Email or phone, as you see fit. We want to know if they saw Johnson, or knew him. We want to know if they noticed anything, ordinary or extraordinary. Basically, your good old fishing expedition.’
Then he asked Vusi Ndabeni to ask Sergeant Aubrey Verwey of Beaufort West where Johnson’s damaged cell phone currently was, so that they could ask IMC to try to get it going in order to analyse it. A photo, WhatsApp messages maybe. Anything.
Then he began to look at the South African passengers.
Professor Phil Pagel let Griessel know they should be finished with the preliminary post-mortem after three, and it was better that he didn’t attend as it would be ‘an uncomfortable one’. Pagel knew of Griessel’s post-traumatic stress disorder as he’d asked the professor’s advice when the shrink had first diagnosed it. That was why Pagel wanted to spare him exposure to the mangled corpse.
Griessel didn’t want to wait at the mortuary. He left via the Durham Street gate and walked down to Albert Street. He liked this area of Salt River and Woodstock: it reminded him of the hustle and bustle of Parow in his youth – the energy, the melting pot of cultures, the variety of old and new businesses packed shoulder to shoulder. Here, he thought, a little bit of the old Cape lived on, but not for long. Woodstock was changing rapidly, the houses being bought up and restored by young people who worked in the city but were not prepared to face the daily nightmare traffic jams to and from the suburbs.
Everything changed. Always. It never stopped.
He realised it was close to noon. He walked into the Old Biscuit Mill. All the eating spots looked expensive. He took a seat at Redemption Burgers and ordered the Straight Ace and a Coke Zero. He took out his notebook and looked over his notes. He must phone Pretoria, but he couldn’t focus his mind on it. The question of proposing to Alexa haunted him. Why hadn’t he told her last night about the Overture dinner?
He didn’t know how to ask her to marry him. That was his problem.
If he invited her and they drove there, arrived at the place and ate their top-ten-in-the-country food and drank their top-ten-in-the-country mineral water and talked . . . When should he ask her – at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the dinner?
And how? It had to be romantic. It had to be a story she would take pleasure in telling, the story that would follow them as a couple for ever. The story she would tell to her friends, or in the next interview with You magazine.
How should he present the ring?
There was one way you always saw in the movies – where you put the ring in her glass of champagne. But they were both alcoholics. He couldn’t have the ring brought to her like that. And, besides, he’d heard of a woman who’d downed the champagne – ring and all. And the couple had had to wait two days, aware of the most unromantic journey the ring was taking, before they could get properly engaged. Whatever with that, you didn’t put a ring in a glass of mineral water, no matter how top-ten-in-the-country the liquid was.
He would simply keep the ring in his jacket pocket. After the starters he would take it out of his pocket, open the little box and let the diamond glitter in the lights. Not that there would be much glittering: the diamond wasn’t that big. He would put it on the table in front of her, then ask her. Or should he ask her first, then take out the ring? What if she didn’t want to order a starter?
Maybe Vaughn knew about these things. But, still, so many potential pitfalls. First and foremost, he must not forget to take the ring with him. And he had to put some thought into his little speech. He couldn’t just say, ‘Alexa, here’s a ring, marry me.’
He wasn’t big on speeches.
This was a big step. And complicated.
He ate with gusto: the burger was delicious. He paid and left, and when he was outside, he looked up the number for the VIP Protection Unit in Pretoria. He called, asked to speak to Sergeant Kagiso Dimba, who’d received the last call from Johnson Johnson.
A constable told him Dimba was on duty, unavailable, and she would leave him a message.
Griessel walked back to the mortuary and sat down in the waiting room.
Eventually an assistant came to call him and took him to the theatre where Phil Pagel was doing unmentionable things to Johnson’s skull with a small electric saw, the sound of it as high and irritating as a giant insect.
Pagel was the most intelligent man that Griessel knew. Outside the theatre he dressed flamboyantly, was tanned and fit for his sixty-plus years, with a long, aristocratic face. But now Pagel was wearing his white pathologist’s garb, large plastic protective goggles on his face, gloves, everything speckled with dark
blood and tissue from the saw, as he bent over the stainless-steel table where Johnson Johnson lay.
It was the smell that always bothered Griessel the most.
Pagel put down the tool and sudden silence fell. ‘Nikita, you’re looking well.’
‘Morning, Prof. Thank you, Prof.’
‘Lost weight?’
‘A bit, Prof. I’m cycling.’
‘Excellent. And I hear the water wagon is still running on all cylinders,’ Pagel said, picking up a pair of forceps and fiddling at the back of Johnson’s head.
‘I’m holding up, Prof, holding up.’ The law-enforcement community was small. Word got around.
‘Impressive, Nikita. Respect.’
And then, with a last, theatrical tug of the forceps and a sharp, wet sound, Pagel pulled something out of the skull, held it up to the light and examined it. ‘Here is your cause of death, Nikita.’
It was shiny metal, in the form of a snapped-off blade, about six centimetres long. ‘Okapi,’ Pagel read the inscription. ‘Made in South Africa.’
Griessel came closer. He deliberately didn’t look at the cadaver, focused on the blade instead. ‘Saturday Night Special,’ he said. The Okapi’s street name.
‘Indeed,’ said Pagel. ‘Pushed in just under the occipital bone. Piercing the cerebellum till just under the brain stem. Instant death. Nikita, I would be most surprised if there was any significant bleeding at the scene. The angle of the stabbing action is from behind and below. Quite some momentum – it’s not easy to get a blade in here, especially not your Okapi. It’s made for cutting, not stabbing. If only I had a rand for every Okapi blade that broke off . . . You don’t get it out easily. The considerable frontal skull damage is in all probability post-mortem.’
‘He hit a steel pylon when they threw him out of the train, Prof.’
‘He was already dead, Nikita.’
‘Defensive wounds, Prof?’
‘Not that I could see, but I will take a closer look. Our problem is that the body has been exposed to the Karoo. Birds, insects and, I suspect, a jackal or two. I’ll spare you the details, save them for the official report.’ Pagel put the Okapi blade in a plastic evidence bag, handed it to Griessel.
He looked at it and sighed.
‘Not what you expected?’
‘This is trouble, Prof.’ The Okapi was the concealed weapon of preference for the township gangs and organised crime on the Cape Flats. Untraceable, anonymous and very common. It brought a new dimension into the case, one that didn’t fit at all.
Chapter 22
While the professor continued his examination, Griessel filled in the chain of evidence forms for the Okapi so that Phil Pagel could sign them off. On the spur of the moment, and because the pathologist was a wise man with whom he had already shared so many personal matters, he said: ‘Prof, I need your advice.’
‘Of course, Nikita.’
‘Prof, let’s say you wanted to ask the woman in your life to marry you . . .’
‘Hypothetically, of course,’ said Pagel, and smiled.
‘Yes, Prof. And let’s say you take her out to a grand restaurant, one Sunday night. At what stage of the evening do you propose to her? The thing is, there’s a chance she might say no. There’s always that chance, and if you ask too soon, the whole evening is ruined, and if you ask her too late, it might not be as romantic as . . .’
Pagel nodded while his hands worked over the mangled head. ‘Interesting theoretical dilemma, Nikita. Very interesting.’ He looked up at Griessel. ‘Here’s my theory, for what it’s worth. And you must understand I only ever did it once in my life. Therefore I must base it on a broader philosophical principle. Ask her during the minuet.’
‘Prof?’
‘A dinner, like so many things in life, Nikita, is like a symphony. You don’t want to do anything major in the allegro. It’s too early. The second movement, the adagio, is too serious. The last part, the rondo, is too late. Therefore, ask her during the minuet. It’s light, it’s enjoyable, it’s happy.’
‘Prof, I have no idea what that means.’
Pagel sighed. ‘Forgive me, Nikita, I get carried away sometimes. Let me try to put it in more practical terms. I would say the right time to propose is just after the main course.’
Griessel drove to Plattekloof, to the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory. There was a smattering of rain. It only ever rained like that in the Cape nowadays. A smattering. He could remember the winters when he was at school, cold fronts moving across the Peninsula for two weeks at a time, constant rain and gale-force winds until you were sick of the grey, wet and cold. Not now.
Everything was changing.
He was also. Slowly but surely.
He ought to be in the minuet of life, but he was still fucking around in the adagio.
His phone rang while he was in Plattekloof Road. He could see that it was Mbali Kaleni. He pulled off the road, because she was extremely strict about cell phones and driving. She would always ask first: ‘Are you using hands-free?’
‘Colonel?’
‘Benny, I just had a call from the CO of the VIP Protection Unit in Pretoria,’ she said. ‘The general implied that you are harassing one of his team. I said I didn’t believe that could be true.’
He explained to her what had transpired.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance, as she often did. ‘Those people think they’re gods because they race around over the speed limit with their ministers in blue-light convoys. Leave it with me.’ She rang off.
Strange, he thought. Most peculiar. It was a murder investigation. The victim was a former member of the VIP Protection Unit. You would expect a bit of sympathy and assistance. Not this.
But this was a different world. He’d heard that that unit was a kingdom in its own right, these days. He would have to wait and see what Kaleni could manage.
Vaughn Cupido’s cell phone rang just before three: it was Brenda Strydom from Rovos. ‘Captain, I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but the policeman who signed for Mr Johnson’s luggage, his signature is indecipherable. I apologise sincerely. Our staff in Pretoria said the man was in uniform, he had stars or some such on his shoulders, and showed her an identification card. I have a scan of the form here, and we think it is Sikhakha or Siknakna or Sukhaha or Sikhakhane, but we can’t say with any certainty.’
‘Spell those names, please.’
She did. Cupido made notes, then said: ‘No problem, ma’am. Do you have a date for the collection?’
‘Wednesday, the sixteenth of August. It was around four o’clock.’
‘Okay. Cool bananas. Thank you, ma’am.’
He looked up the number and called Pretoria Central police station. He asked to talk to the commander and asked the colonel if he had any information about the people who had collected Johnson Johnson’s luggage at Rovos.
‘Who?’
Cupido explained.
‘Never heard of the man, Captain.’
‘Do you have an officer by the name of Sikhakha, or Siknakna, or Sukhaha, or Sikhakhane. Or something like that?’
The colonel thought it over. ‘None of the above.’
Cupido thanked him, and reluctantly phoned Sergeant Aubrey Verwey of Beaufort West.
‘Detective Sergeant Verwey.’
‘Aubrey, this is Vaughn Cupido of the Hawks. I just want to find out who you arranged with to collect Johnson Johnson’s luggage at the train station in Pretoria.’
The silence that ensued gave Cupido his answer.
Verwey said: ‘I didn’t know about his luggage.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cupido, and terminated the conversation. Useless maaifoedie, he thought. What an idiot.
Next he checked his notes and looked at the whiteboard on the wall. He saw that the luggage had been picked up mere hours after the news had gone the rounds that Johnson Johnson’s body had been found beside the track beyond Three Sisters.
The South African Police Service’s Forensic Science Lab
oratory in the Cape was in Silvertree Lane, Plattekloof. It was a large, impressive building, in the shape of a giant C, four storeys high. Four chunky arms extended from it, housing respectively the departments of Ballistics, DNA Analysis, Scientific Analysis, Document Analysis and Chemistry.
Griessel went in search of two particular members of the PCSI, the elite Provincial Crime Scene Investigation, with which the Hawks usually worked.
They saw him coming, Arnold, the short, fat one, and Jimmy, the tall, thin one. Together they were known as Thick and Thin, in the clichéd quip that they loved to recite themselves: ‘The PCSI stands by you through Thick and Thin.’ They thought they were hilarious. The Hawks tolerated them mostly because Thick and Thin were very good at their job.
‘Hey, Benny,’ said Jimmy.
‘You’re so skinny now, you’ll have to drink some coffee to cast a shadow,’ fat Arnold said.
‘Yes, you’ll need some fattening up again, like a Christmas turkey, eh. More of a hungry Hawk than a hunky one, these days.’
Jimmy gurgled with laughter at his own wit, sounding a bit like a turkey himself.
‘Ja, ja, ja,’ said Griessel, used to Thick and Thin’s peculiar brand of humour.
‘Talking of birds, what kind of bird can carry the most weight?’ Jimmy asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘The crane.’
‘Good one, good one,’ said Arnold. ‘Benny, what bird can kick your Hawk’s ass any day?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Steven Seagull.’
Jimmy cackled.
‘Who?’
Arnold was clearly disappointed that his joke had fallen flat: ‘You don’t know who Steven Seagal is?’
‘No.’
‘That’s the trouble with the Hawks. No culture. None.’
‘That’s why they talk about culture vultures,’ said Jimmy.
They chuckled again. Griessel grinned. ‘Are you guys finished now?’
‘We hear you’re planning to get married, Benny,’ said Arnold.
Word got around and, boy, with these two it got round much faster. He didn’t respond.