by Deon Meyer
‘Here’s a good one. Did you hear the one about the masochist and the sadist who got married?’
‘No.’
‘This girl was a sadist. She meets a guy in a bar. He’s a masochist. They get chatting, and find out about each other. They fall in love, and think they’ll make the perfect couple. I mean, what better? But they decide there’s no hanky-panky before the wedding. They’re saving themselves for a hectic honeymoon, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Griessel. What else could he do?
‘So, that first night, the guy comes out of the bathroom naked, and the girl’s sitting on a chair in her sexy undies, and he says: “Hurt me, baby, hurt me.” And she just smiles and says: “I won’t, I won’t.”’
Jimmy and Arnold screamed with laughter as if it was the first time they’d heard the joke. Griessel laughed with them.
Finally, wiping his eyes, Arnold asked him: ‘So, what can we do you for?’
Griessel handed them the bag containing the Okapi blade. He explained its origin, and asked them to test it for everything, but especially for the fingerprints he hoped to find.
They made the usual noises about how difficult it was to investigate a surface that had been subjected to that kind of situation.
‘What about all your new equipment?’ he asked. They had bragged all over the shop when the new electrochromic and fluorescence technology had been installed. On metal surfaces it could trace and photograph fingerprints that were invisible to the naked eye.
‘We don’t want to make any promises,’ said Arnold.
‘We only do miracles on Fridays,’ said Jimmy.
‘If it rains,’ said Arnold.
‘And it doesn’t do that much any more . . .’
Griessel knew how they worked. They lowered expectations so that they could crow even more if they made a breakthrough. He had them sign the necessary documentation so that the evidence chain of custody transfer paperwork was up to date, and then he left before they could get started on any more jokes.
Chapter 23
He found Cupido in his office at his computer. Griessel sat down in front of his colleague. ‘Johnson Johnson was stabbed in the back of the neck with an Okapi before he was thrown off the train. That was the cause of death.’
‘Saturday Night Special?’ Cupido was incredulous.
‘That’s it.’
‘Shit, Benna.’
‘My sentiment exactly.’
Cupido looked up. ‘This is a weird case, pappie. Very weird. To start with, a SAPS member picked up Johnson’s luggage at Rovos in Pretoria only hours after the system heard he was dead. And now that member is missing in action. As if he never existed.’
‘I also had a—’
‘But wait, there’s more. The Flower sent in the cavalry. Uncle Frankie, Vusi and Mooiwillem. They’re trying to contact all the foreigners, so I started with the local passengers. And here’s the thing. First up I run them through the database to see if they have criminal records. And, lo and behold, five of them are clean. The other two, wait for it, are ghosts, pappie. False identities. Phantoms, missing in action, as if they never existed.’
‘How do you know?’
Cupido reached for the folder that Brenda Strydom had given them, took two registration forms out of it. ‘Okay, check this out. We have a Mr Terrence Faku and a Mr Oliver Green. Each one in his own pullman compartment. Both from Cape Town, Faku in Kensington, Green in Newlands. Aged seventy-two and seventy-one respectively, home language Xhosa and English respectively, right?’
Griessel looked at both forms. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ said Cupido. ‘Now, here’s our problem, Benna. Neither of those passport numbers exists. They look right, because they’ve got the right number of digits. But the system says “not found”. There are no such numbers. So, I schemed, the system’s the system, never perfect, let me check the addresses. No such addresses. Those streets don’t exist, Benna. Ghosts, missing in action, never existed. Two old fogeys, seventy plus. Faku and Green. Fake. Now why, Benna, would you use a fake ID and a fake address for a Rovos train trip? Why?’
Griessel just shook his head. Then he said: ‘The sergeant at the VIP Protection Unit, the one who phoned Johnson last, he still hasn’t called back, but his commander called Kaleni and warned us not to harass him.’
‘Harass him?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Jissis,’ said Vaughn Cupido.
They were discussing the anomaly of an Okapi knife on a Rovos train when Colonel Mbali Kaleni walked in and said in disgust: ‘I came to tell you that I spoke to Sergeant Kagiso Dimba’s commanding officer at the VIP Protection Unit. And this time he promised to have the man call you. They are a bunch of self-important idiots.’
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Griessel. His cell phone rang, and he recognised the number. He answered.
‘This is Dimba from the VIP Unit in Pretoria. Why are you looking for me?’ He sounded irritated and disrespectful.
Griessel was annoyed. ‘Because you were the last person Sergeant Johnson Johnson called. And he was murdered, and I am investigating the case. Do you think that’s a good enough reason to be looking for you?’ He heard Kaleni click her tongue in anger.
For a moment Dimba was quiet. Then: ‘Yes.’
‘And the duration of the call was one minute and twenty-three seconds.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did he call you?’
‘We worked together, back in the day. He called to say hi.’
‘For only one minute and twenty-three seconds?’
‘Are you saying I’m lying?’ Dimba shot back aggressively.
‘I’m not saying, I’m asking. He just called to say hi for eighty-three seconds?’
‘I was busy. I could not talk to him.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I said I was busy.’
‘I heard that you were busy. What were you busy with?’
A sigh. ‘I was with people. We were talking. There was noise. I said I will call him back.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. But he did not answer.’
‘Could you tell me exactly what he said?’
Another sigh, longer, deeper, more irritated. ‘He said hello, and how are you. He said he missed the unit, and he asked about our other friends.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. I said, “I can’t really talk, I’ll call you back.”’
‘He didn’t mention that he was on a train?’
‘No.’
‘He didn’t mention that he saw anyone familiar on the train?’
‘I told you what he said.’
‘How often did he call you?’
‘That night?’
‘No, in general. Did he call once a week? Once a month?’
Another hesitation. ‘Maybe once a month.’ And then quickly added: ‘Maybe less.’
‘To say hi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you call him? From time to time?’
‘Not really.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant Dimba. That’s all for now.’
Dimba discontinued the call without another word.
Griessel looked at Cupido, then at Kaleni. ‘That was strange,’ he said. ‘He’s lying. Through his teeth.’
‘Colonel,’ Vaughn Cupido said, ‘this docket is weirder than a warthog on a merry-go-round, I’m telling you.’
Headquarters of the Hawks was a large building in Market Street, Bellville. It was originally designed and built for the South African Revenue Service, but the planning was poor: SARS quickly outgrew it and found a new, larger, home two blocks north, in Teddington Street. Consequently, the Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation moved in. The DPCI could never entirely fill the building. And in the last few years the numbers of personnel had gradually dwindled, leaving the building with its wide corridors and multiple offices to develop a ghostly atmosphere, helped on by the pitiful inability of
the Department of Public Works to keep it maintained.
After five, when the other units of the Hawks began leaving for home, it could be eerily quiet. That was why Colonel Mbali Kaleni’s voice carried with ease down the passage and echoed when she called Fillander and company to a meeting.
Fillander, Liebenberg and Ndabeni’s footsteps reverberated on the tiled floor, and they crowded into Cupido’s office. Griessel and Kaleni sat opposite Cupido.
‘Tell them what we know, please,’ said Kaleni.
In turn, Griessel and Cupido brought them up to date with the latest developments.
‘There are two important matters here,’ said Kaleni. ‘The first is, why did Johnson Johnson call a former colleague at the VIP Protection Unit? Of all the people in the world, at that moment, just after nine on a Saturday night, from a train. And why would Dimba lie? And why did he protest about being harassed when we were calling about a murder investigation?’
‘Because they’re a bunch of . . .’ Cupido stopped himself because Kaleni did not tolerate bad language ‘ . . . idiots.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But they’ve always been a different type of idiot. This is new.’
There was no arguing with that.
‘And then,’ she continued, ‘there’s the matter of the Okapi. We know it’s a township gang weapon. How does that tie in with Johnson? Or Dimba and the VIP Protection Unit?’
‘He recognised someone that night, Colonel,’ said Griessel. ‘Someone Dimba also knew. Maybe a waiter or a cook or something. We’ll have to take a close look at all the train personnel. Rovos might have missed a criminal record somewhere.’
‘Maybe Johnson and Dimba were dealing a little, some coke or dagga on the side, for the VIP politicians they were protecting. Maybe they were being supplied by a township gang. Lots of them up there in Gauteng,’ said Cupido.
‘We’ll have to get Johnson’s bank records, going back,’ said Fillander.
‘We’ll have to get Dimba’s cell-phone records,’ said Ndabeni.
‘We’ll have to try to identify the two old fogeys,’ said Cupido.
‘That’s the strangest thing in all of this. Two old men. It just don’t fit,’ said Kaleni.
‘Maybe they were just getting away from their wives,’ said Fillander. ‘Maybe they’re not connected at all.’
‘They’re connected,’ said Cupido. ‘I feel it in my bones.’
‘But they’re ghosts,’ said Kaleni.
‘Photos,’ said Liebenberg, and everyone looked at him.
‘What do you do when you’re a tourist on the most luxurious train in the world?’ he asked. ‘You want to show all your friends you were there so you take photos. We have to call all those passengers and ask them to send us their photos. The ghosts must be on one of them, even if only in the background.’
‘That is a brilliant idea,’ said Kaleni.
‘Of course, only those showing other passengers,’ said Liebenberg. ‘Just to narrow it down a little.’
‘Ja. He isn’t just a pretty face,’ said Fillander.
Chapter 24
Footwork.
In the old days, before the whole world began leaving digital footprints with cell phones, GPS and the internet, that term meant a detective was on foot when investigating a crime. House to house. Up the street and down the street. Searching for witnesses and clues and evasive bits of the docket jigsaw puzzle. It was always pure drudgery, frustrating, exhausting and time-consuming, but that was what you had to do when searching for needles in haystacks.
The members of the Hawks’ Serious and Violent Crimes Unit still spoke of footwork, even though it was not as literal these days.
From just after seven in the evening, Griessel and Cupido sat at their computers in an attempt to connect ID numbers to criminal records. Footwork of the fingers, arduous and mechanical. Each individual’s details had to be typed in separately. Then they had to wait for the system to respond, and then they fed in the next one. The speed of the system depended on DPCI’s line speed and the demand on the central servers. And the accuracy of the investigators’ typing, a factor that gradually deteriorated as the night wore on.
They divided the details of the train employees between them. It was a quarter past eleven when they finished. There wasn’t a single positive result. Rovos employees were as clean as a baby’s conscience.
Arduous footwork that had produced nothing.
They drove home, discouraged and weary.
In the city centre, Griessel stopped at the traffic lights at the junction of Strand Street and Buitengracht. A thought occurred to him and he turned left, towards Cape Town station. He parked in front of the Rovos reception hall. He got out of his car, walked to the parking area behind the station, then towards Adderley Street, looking for the city’s CCTV cameras.
There might be footage of the two seventy-year-olds arriving at the station. At least the Metro Police, ineffective as they were, kept the data for ninety days. That was, if all the cameras were working.
He lingered beside the broad main street. It was close to midnight. He remembered his days as a young constable at Caledon Square station, on night duty, walking these deserted streets in the early hours, driving around in an old Datsun police van. How often had he breathed in the atmosphere of this area, the breeze off the harbour redolent of sea and fish, the mountain like a sturdy sentinel behind? And the silence, as if Cape Town took a breather at night to recuperate before the madness of another day.
Knowing that in some way he was jointly responsible for the state of order.
Lord, his life had been so uncomplicated and easy in those days.
He lit a cigarette and stood looking at the imposing traffic roundabout where the fountain once spouted its plumes, back before the Great Drought. Now it was dry and silent. No traffic to speak of. Only a minibus taxi every few minutes, ferrying nightshift workers home.
He couldn’t see any cameras.
He sighed. Alexa would be asleep already. He should go home.
Alexa was still awake. She was sitting in the kitchen with her MacBook, busy with spreadsheet numbers and a mug of hot Horlicks. She clucked over him, exclaiming how exhausted he must be. Would he like a hot drink, or food? She’d made soup, and bought fresh bread from Knead Bakery in Kloof Street. He said, no, thank you, they’d had something at the office.
He wavered, wanting to ask her now. His heart beat faster. He had to get it right, had to lie convincingly, control his body language. Don’t sit down with her: that would be too formal, too here-comes-something-big. She mustn’t suspect.
He said: ‘This train docket is wearing us out.’
‘Ay,’ she said, and touched his hand. ‘I can imagine.’
‘But we should be finished next week. And then . . . Vaughn mentioned a restaurant outside Stellenbosch that you would love. So I wondered . . .’
‘Benny! That would be marvellous.’
‘He even phoned them. They’ve got space, next Sunday night.’ He kept his tone light and casual, then stopped breathing. Would she suspect, spot the snake in the grass? Usually she was the one who planned and made reservations. ‘Just to get out a bit,’ he added for effect.
Alexa looked at him. There was an instant when he thought, She knows, but then her face brightened. ‘Oh, that Vaughn,’ she said, ‘he’s such a darling.’
‘He is . . .’
He sat down, half disappointed that Cupido was getting the credit, half relieved to get away with the fib. And mildly amused at what his colleague would have to say about the ‘darling’ label.
‘Thank you, my master detective,’ Alexa said, ‘for thinking of something nice in between all your work. Come on, tell me about your day.’ She closed the laptop.
He lay with her in his arms. She always fell asleep so easily. He listened to her breathing, astonished at her ability to put the day behind her so smoothly.
It was because their worlds were so incredibly different. Hers was filled with music
and numbers, his with murder and mayhem.
And on the edge of sleep he knew why he was so scared to ask her to marry him.
At five in the morning he went for a ride on his bicycle, the old black-and-white Giant he’d bought at Mohammed ‘Love Lips’ Faizal’s pawnshop in Goodwood.
It was dark and chilly. In the winter he wore tracksuit pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, a faded windbreaker and cycling gloves. He didn’t like the tight, pretentious, expensive gear that sports shops kept trying to sell him. He was soon perspiring, riding up the steep gradient of Kloof Nek. Then he turned left, towards Table Mountain cable-car station, and followed the contour road all around the flank of the mountain to the lookout point where he could see the lights of Parow and Bellville, and the Rhodes Monument below.
All the way he was thinking about his revelation last night. He knew what the source of his fear was: he was terrified Alexa would say no. He knew she loved him immensely, but what if she was even more afraid than he was? She’d been so damaged by her first marriage. Would she take the chance on a second, with the – slight but undeniable – risk that it could happen again? Maybe the informal arrangement they had now was more acceptable to her. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as Cupido would say.
She knew only too well the dangers of a marriage between two alcoholics. And there was the financial gulf between them. Alexa’s wealth wasn’t the sort that could supply a Lamborghini in the garage or a mansion in Hermanus, but in comparison with the pauper policeman he was, she was extremely well off. And a good businesswoman to boot. At some stage she must have weighed up the pros and cons of marriage, how it would affect her assets. How could he let her know that he didn’t want her money, not even a tiny share of it? He couldn’t just pluck out the ring and say: ‘Alexa, marry me, but don’t worry, we can draw up a pre-nup contract because I’m not after your money.’
He knew she wouldn’t just say no. She would look at the ring, and then at him, and then her face would slowly melt, tears would roll down her cheeks, she would take his hand and say with consuming tenderness: ‘Ay, Benny, I’m so sorry, but I can’t . . .’ He could see it. She wouldn’t embarrass him.