by Deon Meyer
They searched for close on fifteen minutes, under the beds, the desk, the two mats in the bathroom. Then they went outside to report to Mbali Kaleni.
They sat in the colonel’s car, since Thandi Dikela had taken off her shoes so they could be placed in an evidence bag. It was too cold for her to stand on the concrete pavement in her socks.
Thandi was occupying the front passenger seat, Mbali Kaleni beside her, Griessel and Cupido in the back. She was a sturdy woman, her long, thin African braids rippling like a waterfall in the light of the streetlamps whenever she shook her head, so fiercely. Each time Kaleni would put a hand gently on her knee to comfort her. She turned to her right so that she could at least see Griessel.
‘On Saturday my father was upset. I could hear he was . . .’ Thandi spoke with a British accent.
‘This was when you called him on the phone?’ asked Griessel.
‘Yes.’
‘You called him every day?’
‘No, I – I called once a week, maybe . . . I . . . He was living an active life – he had many friends, he was healthy, he was busy. There was no need to call that often.’
‘Why did you call him on Saturday?’ asked Cupido.
‘Just to talk.’
‘And prior to Saturday? When was the last time you spoke to him?’
‘I think . . . maybe the previous Sunday.’
‘So you only called him about once a week?’
Her voice rose. ‘Why is it important? Why are you asking me that?’
Kaleni raised her hand to interrupt the interview. ‘Thandi,’ she said, ‘they have to ask you about everything, because we have a very big decision to make. We have to be very sure that this was a murder.’
‘It is a murder. They killed him. I just know it.’
‘I believe you. But there’s very little evidence. All we have is the missing shell casing. And my detectives say it might still turn up if it was caught in his clothing somewhere, and they can’t see it without moving the body.’
‘He did not write that letter.’
Kaleni’s voice remained calm and gentle. ‘I believe you on that as well. But you also said that it does look a little like his handwriting . . .’
‘It’s fake. I’m absolutely sure. And why did he say to me that if something were to happen to him . . .’
‘I need you to understand what our choices are right now. The first is that I do what is expected of me. I call the Mowbray station commander, he sends his people round, and they take up the investigation. They’ll listen to you, and they’ll maybe ask a handwriting expert to look at the letter, if they believe you. But you’re a family member, you’re deeply emotional, and you said your father was upset on Saturday. So, they will be very sceptical.’
‘How could they be sceptical? I wouldn’t lie about— He was not upset in that way.’
Kaleni stilled her, with a hand on her arm. ‘Just listen.’
‘Okay.’
‘If you’re right about the enemies of your father, there will be very—’
‘What enemies?’ asked Cupido.
‘Keep quiet,’ said Kaleni, ‘and let me finish.’
‘Right,’ said Cupido. ‘Sorry.’
‘The enemies of your father are very powerful. We know that from experience. They forced us to stop another so-called suicide investigation just a short while ago. It’ll be very easy for them to get the Mowbray station to declare this a suicide and close the case. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘That is why we don’t want to involve them anytime soon. So, the other choice we have is to get the very best people in right now, the rest of my team, Forensics and a videographer, and we hit the case as hard as we can, before anybody can interfere. If we can prove that you’re right, if we have a very strong case, then it would be much harder for them to stop us.’
‘Then that’s what we have to do.’
‘Yes, we’d like to do that. But there are implications. I’ll put my people and my boss in a very difficult situation. I will put my career, and those of my people, in jeopardy. I can’t do that if we’re not sure it’s the right thing to do. That’s why you need to answer our questions as best you can.’
‘I don’t want to get you into trouble. It’s just . . . He’s my father, he’s . . .’ Thandi dropped her head, and wept.
Kaleni comforted her, arm around her shoulders.
Griessel and Cupido waited. Three, four minutes.
Despite the peculiar situation, Griessel had to admit that Thandi was a brave woman. She’d found her father there, absorbing all that terrible shock and grief and anger. She must have waited a long time outside for Kaleni to arrive, then had sat in the car in the dark for a few hours, all the while picturing the scene inside the house. It must have been very hard.
At last Thandi shook her head. Her braids rippled.
‘I’m ready,’ she said.
Chapter 54
She stared into the darkness as she spoke. Sometimes her voice cracked. Then she would pause and drop her head, hiding her face behind the curtain of braids until she had recovered.
‘I called my father when I missed him, when I had the time to miss him, when I had the time to think about something other than my job. It’s crazy busy, and I often felt guilty that I didn’t call him more often. Now I feel I should have. But it’s too late . . . Sometimes I called and he said, no, he couldn’t talk, he was busy, working in his garden, or he was with his friends, talking, playing Umlabalaba. So I’d respect his wishes, and leave him alone. But he was happy, this past year. We spoke about once a week. Sometimes a little more often, sometimes less. On Saturday we spoke for the first time in a while. I asked him, “How are you, uBaba?” and he said he was fine. But I could hear it in his voice, he was . . . He sounded like he did two years ago, when he was totally fed up with politics. I knew that tone of voice. So I asked him . . .’
‘Thandi,’ said Griessel, with as much compassion as he could muster, ‘I know it’s hard, but we need you to describe the tone as closely as you can. Was he sad? Was he angry? Was he anxious?’
‘If I said sad, you’d think he was depressed. And then you’d think he did this to himself . . .’
‘We won’t think anything until we have all the information, and all the evidence we can get,’ said Kaleni. ‘Just use the words that feel right.’
Thandi nodded. ‘He was sad. The kind of sad that . . . Disappointed, that’s a better description. Like when I was a teenager and would stay out too late, he wasn’t angry then, just that kind of disappointment, sadness that I did the wrong thing. That was what it sounded like to me. I knew that tone well.’
‘Thank you,’ said Griessel.
‘So I asked him, “Dad, what’s wrong?” He said, no, nothing. And I asked him, “What are you doing?” and he said he was working in the vegetable garden. You’ll see it behind the house. That was his pride and joy. He said spring was coming, it was time to get the beds ready. He was putting in compost. And the whole time I could hear he wasn’t himself. He was trying to sound happy, but there was this undertone of disappointment . . . So he asked me how I was, and did I have a boyfriend yet. He was always on about that, in a teasing sort of way. And I always answered that I didn’t have time for men in my life. There was too much important work to do. And he asked, “How are things at work? How many houses have you built for the people?” He was very proud of what I do. He asked all the things he usually asked, and how was my mother. They got divorced twelve years ago, when he was never at home because of his work. And I said she was fine. And right at the end, when we were saying goodbye, he said, “Thandi, if something happens to me, I want you to call Mbali Kaleni. I trust Mbali.” So that made me pretty anxious, because he sounded . . . scared. It was just . . . out of the blue. I said, “uBaba, don’t say that! What’s wrong? What’s going on?” I was very upset. I think then he realised he’d spoken without thinking of the consequences. So he started backpedalling. He laughed
, said he was just joking. And I said, “You weren’t joking! What’s wrong?” And he said, “No, no, nothing’s wrong.” He was just testing me to see if I still loved him. And he could hear I loved him very much. I scolded him, I said, “You make me worried, uBaba, that’s not funny.” He said he was sorry, it was a bad joke. So we said goodbye. I sat there, very uncomfortable, replaying our conversation in my head. And I was pretty sure he did sound scared, when he referred to Mbali. Just for that moment. And then it really worried me. So I called him again, about fifteen minutes later. I asked him again, “What’s wrong?” Again he made jokes, he said there was a lot wrong, the weather was wrong, there was the drought – how was he going to get his vegetables to grow? And did I know you can’t find a rain tank in Cape Town? Everybody was buying rain tanks, there were none left to buy. So that’s something else that was wrong. Maybe I could help him find a tank, so he could catch the rain one day, when God blessed us with rain again, and water his vegetables a little.’
That was when her voice deserted her entirely. She gave in to sobs, and Colonel Kaleni had to wipe away her own tears before she was able to console Thandi Dikela.
Once she had calmed down, Thandi said she had phoned five times on Sunday and again on Monday because she couldn’t stop worrying. Each time he told her not to keep on at him, everything was fine. She wanted to pop round, but he said, no, he was very busy.
And then, this afternoon, she had phoned and got no answer. Eventually she came to check. The front door was unlocked. She went inside, saw him. And the letter on the table. She immediately knew it was fake. Then she was certain they had murdered him, and wanted it to look like suicide. She phoned Mbali Kaleni. It was just past six.
‘What time did you make the first call?’
‘I . . . I think it was around four.’
‘We need you to be absolutely sure. Could you check on your phone, please?’ Griessel asked.
‘My phone is in my handbag. In the car.’
Griessel said he would fetch it. They sat in silence until he returned, gave the handbag to her. She took out the phone, checked her call register. ‘It was eleven minutes to four.’
‘That was the first time you called?’
‘Yes. The first time today.’
‘When you arrived and went inside the house, was the alarm active?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you. Now please tell us about the enemies,’ said Cupido.
Thandi said the enemies had surfaced two years ago, when the public protector’s report on state capture was leaked to the media. It incriminated the president of the country, half of the cabinet, and some of the provincial premiers and the heads of state enterprises, exposed as corrupt and criminal, and completely controlled by the three Indian billionaire businessmen. Her father was one of a group of sixteen old fighters, former senior figures in the Struggle, who had called a news conference shortly thereafter. They had publicly called on the president and his lackeys to resign for completely destroying Mandela’s legacy. The sixteen’s declaration was to the point, no beating about the bush.
That was when the trouble had begun. The smear campaign started. Statements that Menzi Dikela and his co-signers were agents of the old apartheid regime, traitors who served the interests of white monopoly capital. Enemies of the national democratic revolution. There were false news reports on social media, quickly taken up and embellished by the hijacked media houses’ TV channels and newspapers – stories that the sixteen were not only corrupt but guilty of criminal activities and tax evasion. There were scores of death threats, telephone calls in the dead of night, whispers that they were going to kill him. And her father said the worst of all was that former colleagues were behind all of it: those were their techniques, their old tactics.
‘Which former colleagues?’ Cupido asked.
‘My father was with the State Security Agency for more than five years before he retired, as the deputy director of Systems and Technology. And before that he had six years with the old National Intelligence Service. In the apartheid days he ran the ANC’s computer systems in London. He created those systems. He was a pioneer, a hero of the Struggle.’
‘Is that why you have a British accent? Because you grew up in London?’ asked Cupido.
She nodded. ‘South London. I was born there. The first time I saw South Africa was in nineteen ninety-three. We came home in such euphoria. We had such great expectations. And now this.’
‘Why would they want to kill your father now,’ asked Griessel, ‘two years after they made that statement?’
‘They never forget, those people.’
‘Was he still receiving death threats, these past few months?’
‘I’m sure he was.’
‘You’re sure? He told you?’
‘No. I think maybe he didn’t want to upset me.’
‘Was he still involved in politics, or political activities?’
‘They were all political animals, always political, he and the last few friends he had, after their former comrades had shunned them. I’m sure they discussed politics all the time.’
‘Can you think of any reason why they would’ve wanted to kill him now?’
‘Because they never forget. Because that is their way. They destroy your reputation. They isolate you. They let you think they’ve forgotten about you, until you let down your guard. And then they kill you.’
They were standing at the little garden gate in front of the house in Nuttall Street. Mbali Kaleni put her hands on her hips, like in the old days. She told them in a firm, though muted, voice: ‘I think you should go home. I can’t involve you in this.’
Cupido crossed his arms. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Colonel,’ he said.
‘You’ll be endangering your career, Captain. I can’t expect that of you.’
‘Colonel, I’m not captured. I’m staying. And that’s final.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
‘Benny?’ asked Kaleni.
‘Colonel, if we can prove that this was murder before you talk to Brigadier Manie, I think we’ll be in a very good position. I think we need to call Professor Pagel personally and ask him to take some blood urgently. And Thick and Thin. We need to ask them to bring Gerber with them, the blood-spatter expert. We need the best. And we can trust them.’
‘Benny, you don’t have to do this.’
‘I know. But I’m in.’
Kaleni’s hands dropped off her hips. ‘I appreciate it very much. But tell me why you want Pagel to take blood.’
‘Well, Colonel,’ said Griessel, ‘there are no signs of forced entry. There’s no evidence of a struggle and I saw no marks on the deceased to indicate that he was defending himself. If this was murder, then he allowed someone to enter. Which means he most probably knew the perpetrator. Or perpetrators. Or maybe they were posing as law-enforcement officers. But whoever they were, you don’t just sit down and let someone put a gun to your head. You fight. Which he obviously didn’t. So they must have drugged him. You remember the Sea Point case last year, the murder of the two girls who took the guy home from the nightclub?’
‘Of course. The date-rape drugs,’ she said. And then she understood. ‘You’re right. Get Pagel.’ She remembered that the biggest obstacle in the Sea Point case was proving that the women’s drinks were doctored. The initial investigators hadn’t drawn blood in time. The substance that the suspect had used – gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, as it was commonly known – could only be traced in the urine within ninety-six hours.
‘And why Gerber?’ asked Cupido.
‘I looked at the victim’s hand,’ said Griessel, and pointed in the direction of the house behind them. ‘There’s the fine spatter you typically see from a point-blank shot. But the blood is only on the barrel of the pistol, on his thumb and on the sleeve of his shirt and jersey. There’s nothing on the other fingers, which is strange. I think someone’s hand was on top of his, pushing the gun
to his temple. And pulling the trigger. Maybe someone who knew a little about gunshot residue, but not much about spatter patterns.’
‘That’s good, Benny. We’ll get Gerber too.’
‘Colonel,’ said Cupido. ‘There’s one thing I don’t like about this.’
‘Yes?’
‘The reason why they killed him.’
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘I think she honestly believes that was the reason. But she wants this to make sense, so she’s grasping at straws. It’s just . . . I’ve never heard of such a thing. The president and his people actually having someone killed for dissent? I mean, they disgrace them, they hit them with trumped-up charges, they make them lose their jobs, like they did with some of our generals, some of our colleagues in Durban, but killing the man two years after he was one of sixteen people who signed a declaration? That I don’t buy.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying we have to look at the forensic and medical evidence to prove that this was murder. But we’d better also find a very good reason why they did it. Or they will crucify us.’
Chapter 55
Kaleni told Thandi Dikela to go home and try to get some sleep. Then she stood outside her car to make calls to everyone they would need to join them.
Griessel and Cupido went to fetch more equipment from their cars, put on gloves and shoe covers again, and went in. They placed yellow numbered markers at each of the four possible sources of clues they were aware of – the possible footprint in the sitting room, the grains of soil under the kitchen table, the pen and the suicide note.
‘Not much,’ said Cupido, when he surveyed their handiwork.
‘Amen,’ said Griessel.
They stood at either side of the body, voices muted, affected by the strange atmosphere in the house. ‘Benna, let’s take a moment here. That drug theory of yours. Walk me through it.’