Bad Seeds
Page 24
She sat down at the dining room table, looking out over the breathtaking vista, and Botha poured them some water from the bar fridge. Jade felt as if she’d been whisked away on an unexpected vacation. She told herself she needed to be careful, because they were not out of danger yet, nor was David. With your head up in the clouds, it was easy to forget about those laying snares at your feet.
“You never finished telling me about Gillespie,” Jade said.
“What do you want to know?” Botha handed her the glass.
“You said he makes a habit of not paying people, that he spends the money. On what? And how do you know?”
Botha nodded. “To explain, I’m going to have to give you more background.”
“Okay.”
“Lisa was in charge of security at Inkomfe when Gillespie blazed in like a comet, apparently. His father had a history with the place and had been a trusted employee, plus Gillespie had overseas experience. He was charming and capable and he had vision. But Lisa hated Gillespie’s guts and believed he was useless. Now Lisa was a dedicated manager, and her work was her life. She had zero people skills; she was tall and skinny and gray-haired, a real sergeant major of a woman, but there was never a time when she didn’t put Inkomfe first. Her conflict with Gillespie turned into a personal vendetta, and in the process she lost all credibility. Before she left, Lisa sourced and hired me. It was one of the last decisions she made as a manager. She said I needed to be on-site to make up for Gillespie’s incompetence, and because she wanted a reliable pair of eyes and ears there.”
“How did you feel about coming into that situation?”
Botha shrugged. “It’s what I do, Jade. I assess setups like that and compile evidence on individuals who aren’t doing their jobs and aren’t working in the company’s best interests. That’s what Lisa briefed me to do when she sourced me. I’ve also done industrial espionage assignments for IT companies as well as stealing intellectual property back for people who’ve been screwed over and forced to leave. I suppose Lisa felt that Inkomfe’s security was her intellectual property and that Gillespie had stolen it.”
“What did you find?”
“I found a whole lot of evidence of mismanagement. Systems were being changed to make them more vulnerable. Employees were becoming disempowered. I compiled a dossier of what was wrong as well as an urgent list of recommendations of what needed to be done to make Inkomfe safer and get the security back to standard.”
“Then what happened?”
“Lisa had left by then, but she was continuing to investigate Gillespie’s personal life. We were staying in touch and speaking frequently. She contacted me one night, told me she’d gotten something on Gillespie. Something big. The information she had discovered wouldn’t just hurt Gillespie, it would destroy him.”
“So you met up?”
“We met the following night at Grand West Casino. She called at about eight. I was leaving work and went straight there.”
“What did she show you?”
Botha let out a long breath. “She gave me a big pair of sunglasses, and we snuck into the salon privé. Gillespie was sitting at one of the high-stakes blackjack tables.”
“Oh,” Jade said. Her interactions with Gillespie were suddenly making sense.
“He’d been there for four hours, she said, and he would stay for the night, like he always did. So I said, ‘Okay, let’s see if he does.’ We sat outside the casino and ordered a couple of drinks. We stayed there until four thirty a.m. From time to time, I went in to check, and he was still there, at one table or another. Blackjack, roulette, craps. And while we drank, Lisa told me what else she’d found.”
“What was that?”
“She said she’d researched his family history. Gillespie Senior had become an alcoholic who drank a bottle of vodka a day. I knew he’d died years ago, but I hadn’t known the circumstances. Lisa told me he’d crashed on the way home one night. Wrapped his Mercedes around a tree.”
Jade tilted her water glass, watching the condensation trickle down. A compulsive gambler whose father had been an addict. She should have guessed from Gillespie’s delays, his meeting points near casinos, his excessive use of gambling terminology. But the man had indeed been charming and had hidden his problem well. Like most serious addicts, he was an accomplished liar who knew how to put just the right spin on his fabrications.
“It all made perfect sense. Gillespie’s constant absences and lateness. The times he hadn’t had cash on him for emergencies and had to borrow from us. And other things, too. One of the last projects that Lisa worked on before she left was a clock-in system based on biometrics. Gillespie delayed its implementation and prioritized something else. Then he exempted management from it. That way, nobody knew that most of the time, instead of driving around the center and checking perimeter fences, he was at Grand West or Silverstar or Montecasino.”
“Did Gillespie know Lisa was following him?”
“She said she was being careful, but that he might have seen her once or twice. She didn’t care, she said. She had left Inkomfe. What could he do?”
“What indeed,” Jade agreed cynically as she thought of Lisa’s house, torched to the ground, and Lisa herself, who had been missing since then.
“She said there was more information coming. Facts about his previous job in the Middle East. He’d gotten himself into very big trouble there. Lisa had done some research and called a few contacts. She said she’d get it to me when it was ready. And I asked her for something else.”
“What?”
“I asked her to find out where Gillespie’s money was coming from. Management salaries are good, don’t get me wrong, but Gillespie was playing for enormous stakes, and any gambler is bound to lose more than they win; that’s how the house advantage works. My feeling was that he’d gotten himself deeply into debt. That his financial situation was becoming a crisis.”
“And did you tell Loodts?”
“I took all the evidence of Gillespie’s incompetency to him and presented it at a meeting three weeks ago. I told him Lisa and I had researched the situation and found the facts. But he wouldn’t hear a word against Gillespie.”
Jade raised her eyebrows as Botha set his glass down on the table hard and repeated, “Not a single word. He said that I was to keep out of this, and that he would investigate it his own way, in his own time. I could see that he didn’t believe me; he thought Lisa had influenced me and that the accusations were fabricated. After logical argument and then shouting didn’t work, I stormed out of his office. He yelled after me that I’d just put the nails in the coffin of my career.”
“And then the attempted sabotage took place?”
“Yes. After that, Loodts agreed to meet me again. I think he realized that he’d been wrong. But our meeting never took place, because he was murdered before I could speak to him.”
Jade nodded, but inside she felt sick when she remembered Loodts’s body in the bloodied motel room, and David telling her there had been signs of torture.
The situation at Inkomfe had reached the boiling point. A meltdown was approaching. Somebody had set these events in motion. Someone with a strong enough motive to take down a company, even commit murder.
Ambition, greed, desperation or revenge. She wondered which had been the driving force, and for whom.
Chapter Forty-Four
It was three thirty p.m. when Mweli left the police station after updating her case notes. Finally, she had the chance to follow the directions Abigail Sykes had given her the night before. She wanted to check out the place Scarlett Sykes had stayed with her boyfriend, now her suspected murderer. Mweli had intended to take another officer with her for backup, but after the dredging operation, nobody was available. Phiri and one of the other detectives had been called to the scene of an attempted robbery, her sergeant was stuck in traffic outside Pretoria High Court
and the two constables had to man the office.
So she went on her own. Taking a quick drive past couldn’t hurt. She wouldn’t do anything risky and would only go in to ask questions if she deemed it safe. She made sure that Phiri knew where she was going before she left.
Finally, before she walked out, she checked that her service pistol was fully loaded and holstered it on her hip, noting to her surprise that she was able to pull the belt buckle one hole tighter than she had the time before. It must have been the activity of the past few days, she decided, combined with all the clean living in the form of meat-free meals. At any rate, it was incentivizing her to take another step toward health. Maybe one day every week where she cut out the Coke and drank only water? Soda-Free Sunday? She’d have to strategize later.
Mweli put the directions on the passenger seat, fastened her seat belt and headed off, hoping that she’d be there and back before the afternoon traffic became too heavy. She had a lot more work to do before her day was over.
With her attention focused on the map and the road ahead, she didn’t notice the big black SUV that eased its way into the line of cars behind her as she headed onto the main road. Although she glanced into her rearview mirror regularly, she didn’t spot it. The driver was careful to stay a few cars behind, to camouflage himself behind bigger trucks, and to change lanes frequently to stay out of her line of vision.
As she drove, Mweli puzzled over the case. It made sense that Scarlett Sykes was working with the criminals. Perhaps that was why Loodts’s life had ended in that motel room. Even the most suspicious person would tend to be trusting of a young blonde in need of help. She could imagine how it might have gone down.
“Mr. Loodts? I have important information about the sabotage . . . I think my boyfriend was involved in it. I’ve taken some photos of what I saw, and recorded a phone call I heard. Who’s my boyfriend? I’m scared—I’d rather tell you face-to-face. Yes, of course we can meet urgently. I live in Randfontein. No, I’m scared to give anyone my home address. Can you check into the Best Western motel? It’s close by, and safe. We can meet there, and I’ll show you what I have.”
Using her as bait, the criminals could very easily have overpowered him.
And then her usefulness had ended—or more likely, she’d made a mistake and become a liability. Crashing the car into the motel’s signpost was enough, Mweli supposed. It had attracted attention far earlier than the murder would have done otherwise. And it explained why the tow truck driver and the wrecked car had been so difficult to trace. He hadn’t been a real tow truck driver, and had simply moved the vehicle somewhere it wouldn’t be found.
Here she was. This was the point where Abigail’s map began. Now she needed to start focusing carefully. She was prepared to take a few wrong turns along the way, because Abigail would have made her journey at night, frightened and stressed. In the daytime, things looked different. You saw side roads that could easily be missed in the dark, and distances seemed shorter in sunlight. But even so, the map was pretty clear. It was definitely somewhere in this run-down industrial suburb.
When the driver of the black SUV saw where Mweli was headed, he pulled over and made a quick phone call. He asked a question and received instructions. The instructions were very clear. There was no room for doubt in what he was being told to do. When he disconnected, he accelerated, catching up with the detective, this time not caring if she saw his grille close and threatening in her mirror.
Mweli glanced down at her map again. She was in the right area for sure, but she’d turned too early. This road led to a cul-de-sac. She’d have to go back. Slowing down, she glanced in her mirror and drew in her breath sharply as she saw the idiot who’d nearly rear-ended her. Well, she needed to turn around anyway. Let him pass; she would pull over.
It was only as the car accelerated past her before swerving to block her way that Mweli realized with a sickening lurch of her stomach that he could be going nowhere because there was nothing ahead except a concrete crash barrier.
And now the door was opening, and there he was, gun in hand, a Kevlar vest strapped over his black shirt. With cold fingers she fumbled for her service pistol, wishing that she’d spent more time on the shooting range in recent months because it felt awkward, its grip almost slipping out of her damp palm. She opened the window and shouted, “Police! Put your weapon down!” Her voice sounded squeaky with stress, and of course he didn’t obey. A shot split the air, and Mweli jumped so hard her head nearly hit the roof as a star-shaped crack appeared in the windscreen and the bullet thudded into the passenger seat. Another shot split the air above her head as she ducked down.
Before she knew it, she was firing back, leaning out of the window, supporting the gun with her left hand as she aimed with her right, muscle memory flooding back and lending her arms a steadiness she hadn’t expected.
When you are threatened, you shoot to kill.
Bullets pumped out of her pistol. One, two, three, four. The man dove for cover, but staggered, clutching his thigh, as he reached the safety of his car door. He tried to fire again, but the shot went wide, and her next one hit him in the neck. He stumbled and fell. Mweli climbed out of the car on cotton-wool legs. He was still holding the gun, and she didn’t trust him. At the same time, she found she couldn’t shoot again.
“Put your weapon down!” she cried.
But the man didn’t put it down. His fingers remained curled around it even when he succumbed to his injuries and collapsed, his forehead thumping onto the pitted tarmac.
“Dead . . . he’s dead. Oh, my God, he’s dead.” Mweli climbed into her car again and collapsed on the seat. One of the criminals . . . she’d killed him. It was the first time she’d fired her weapon at an attacker, and she could only pray it would be the last. She was shaking all over, so badly that she stalled the car twice as she reversed away from the SUV and drove back down the road, parking at the intersection with her hazard lights on while she got on the radio and made her calls.
When the paramedics arrived fifteen minutes later, they had to prize the gun out of the man’s tightly clenched fingers before declaring him officially deceased at the scene.
Chapter Forty-Five
Working with his task team, it took David just two hours to formulate their sting operation. He felt more motivated than he’d been in a long time. He was thrilled—amped—that he could strike a blow against organized crime while saving Jade from danger. This assignment, code-named Operation Zebra because they were currently on a wildlife theme, meant far more to him than he would ever admit. It was a deeply personal endeavor.
He needed to make sure that he didn’t allow his emotional involvement to cloud his judgment or lead to any errors. This had to go like clockwork, start to finish. He wanted it to appear in police textbooks one day as an example of how to do things right.
His preparations were interrupted by two important phone calls.
The first was from a still-breathless Officer Mweli. She had been investigating the premises where Scarlett Sykes’s boyfriend had operated. While approaching the warehouse, she had been ambushed by an armed criminal who had fired shots at her. Returning fire, Mweli had killed the criminal. In the car, which had been reported stolen a few days earlier, Mweli had discovered another firearm as well as a pack of commercial explosives in the trunk. It was possible that these explosives were the same type that had been used to blow up Botha’s Porsche.
“Excellent news!” David had shouted over the phone. “Well done.”
“He didn’t have any ID on him,” Mweli said, “but we’re running his prints through the system as a priority. Hopefully this is one of the gang who was involved in the incident at the Best Western.”
One less for him and his team to worry about later. David felt triumph surge inside him, briefly overcoming the nervousness that clawed at his stomach whenever he thought about the sting operation ahead.
“Thembi, you’re going to be in charge of coordinating the backup vehicles. We need two plainclothes detectives per vehicle. Two vehicles following us, a third waiting at the rendezvous point. We have no idea what their strategy will be, but so far the modus operandi seems to be aggressive pursuit during hours of darkness. We will put the plan into action after nightfall, but in order to give the team better visibility, the garage we draw them into will be lit. Even though it will be dark out on the roads, the criminals will be looking for two people in the car, a man and a woman. So we’ll give them those two. I’ll drive, and I’m going to ask you to sit beside me, Alberts, wearing a wig.”
Smiles all around followed that announcement.
“To add an element of surprise, we will—”
David’s phone started ringing again. He snatched it up, hoping that the interruption would be brief.
“Is that Superintendent Patel?” the caller asked. She sounded young, breathless and excited.
“Speaking,” David said.
“I’m Yasmin Pillay from the Sandton Sun Hotel. I work at the reception desk. This might be wrong, but we were all shown an email yesterday from Organized Crime, telling us to be on the lookout for a suspected terrorist sympathizer.”
The Rashid Hamdan case. “Yes?” David said, scooting his chair over to the desk and picking his pen up eagerly.
“Well, I think I saw him here. I checked with one of the porters, and he also took a look and said it could definitely be the same person, except his hair was longer and brown, not black.”
“When was this?” David pushed the pen into the paper, leaving an inky stain. “What room is he checked into?”