by HJ Golakai
“She committed suicide.” A sourness flooded the back of her throat as she said the words out loud for the first time, and she swallowed. “This morning. At her aunt’s house, where she must have gone to hide from the cops after … after our encounter. Her relatives found the body at daybreak.”
“Ah. That girl was bad news o, e no sweet belle at all.” There was silence as he connected the dots. “Ah-ah! Ahh-ahh! So because … now you think say …” A relay of disgusted snorts. “Don’t put that one on me o. You can clear me well for the matter. You say make I talk to her, make she no bother to get revenge. That you get protection so for her own good, make she hands off. So my boys dey tell am straight. To leave you alone.”
“How, Uzo? How did they deliver the message? You just spoke to her? You didn’t …?” His crew, especially the likes of gaunt, rabid-eyed Not-Peter, left ice cubes in her blood. “If you went beyond …”
“Chai, come hear this one! Do whetin? Hear me well: we no touch am at all. We just bring come the bar and carry am go Main Road wen we finish. We yarn am say people wen dey cause wahala for our people anyhow, say things fit bad for them. We dey warn her. Nobody touch am, I dey there. My talk get power, my sistah.”
“Swear to me. Swear that you didn’t hurt her in any way.”
“Ahhh, I take my granmamma wen dey Ife, I take am life swear. Why I go lie give you? You talk say na today them see am, this morning? So wetin you feel say we do wen she fit dey waka till now?” He swore and rambled at length. “Me I no go injure anyone or play with human life for fun. Even if you ask me, I no go do am just like that. Woman for that matter. No be my business if she be your sistah o, your enemy o, or you two dey fight over man business. E no concern me. You understand? I will say it in good English: we did not hurt her; she was in one, living piece when we released her. I would not lie to you.”
“Alright, fine, fine. I hear you,” she appeased. “Did she … say anything? Just tell me straight.”
“Heh. I be secretary? Una woman sef, talk-talk too much. Wait, make I think.” He noisily hawked phlegm down his throat and she grimaced. “She say people thief from her, say them take her property and I dey help them. Na im me I tell am say her problem no be my problem. You na my problem as my person, and she suppose grab say she no suppose make things hard for herself. She sha shout many things o, in Xhosa, wen I no hear.” He grunted. “Who dey fit understand that their noise?”
The line stayed quiet for a while.
“Babe, that woman head no correct. I see am, she no normal. Abi how she do wetin she do if she get sense? No worry yourself. Whetin don happen, don happen. Her wahala don finish. Just leave am like that.”
“Yeah.” She kept the phone to her ear, wanting to say more but too deadened to drum up a befitting sentiment. After an age, Uzo grunted and the line cut to dial tone. He was done.
“In all honesty, I’m not at all shocked really,” Akhona Moloi rasped, her vocal projection marginally improved. “This was headed only one way, down a path to complete destruction. What lay ahead after all the havoc she caused? Did she have the backbone to face prison, if she couldn’t make a good life for herself with all she had going?” She sniffed. “May Jehovah not strike me down, but perhaps it’s better this way. This hell has finally ended for all of us.”
“Did she reach out to you? Before she …”
“To me? What – why? Yesterday? No.” Pause. “No, she hasn’t. Didn’t.”
A weird trickle rode the length of Vee’s spine. “I’m surprised she gave up without a last-ditch effort. Actually … there was this lingering impression she had more up her sleeve than she let on.” She gave an empty chuckle. “Like she was waiting for the perfect moment to play a trump card. I … I dunno. Guess there wasn’t one after all.”
“She overestimated herself, that one. In life, you pick your battles.”
Vee sat up straighter. The line wasn’t clear, but Moloi sounded … icier somehow.
“Anyway. Never speak ill of the dead,” Moloi said, instantly breezier. “I only wished she’d accepted we did everything we could do for her instead of … taking this route.”
“True. It’s so terrible and final.”
“Ja, hey. But don’t feel like it’s your fault! Don’t blame yourself.”
“I –”
“You, me, Gavin, we all did, tried to do, what we could. It’s all we can ever do. These things play out as they will.” The connection muffled; conversation floated around in the background, Moloi’s gravelly whine threaded with two other excited voices. “I’m sorry, Voinjama, I really must go. There’s still so much to catch up on. I’m allowing myself a few more days’ bed rest then it’s back on the horse. Holiday’s over I’m afraid.”
After she hung up, Vee sat tapping a pen against her desk for a long time, eyebrows furrowed.
Chapter Thirty-four
“I don’t know, I can’t say. She hasn’t been in the past two days. I don’t expect to see her in today either.” Vee nodded through Darren’s yacking. “Yes, I do get it. But I’m not comfortable putting it up without her having sent me her drafts. Give it till this evening. Yeah fine, do that updated version on the reactions to the suicide and new developments that I wrote yesterday, it should do for now. Understood. I’ll …”
She leaned down, Dell propped on the dining table in the lounge. An email from Richie, with the subject line ‘Intrigue and subterfuge’, popped up in her inbox. She opened the attachment. Looked like an article, or snippet of one, from a web magazine. Vee read the first few lines, lost interest and minimised it. Despite the relatively well-oiled success of two nights ago, she didn’t have a palate for more Richie right now. How many times had she told him that beyond the latest smartphone or laptop, she and Chlöe didn’t give a rat’s ass about the advances in geekdom that he always harped on about?
A minute later, her spine snapped straight. She maximised the attachment again.
“… could be our best option. They play off each other much better that way,” Darren was saying.
“Mm-hhm. Febs, let me call you back later. In fact, I’ll be in the office in a coupla hours.”
The piece was short and concise, a mere informational highlight in the breaking news shorts. She read it standing, handbag on shoulder and car keys jangling off a finger. “What’s that mean?” she asked the empty room. She re-read, mouthing it out loud line by line, tilted her head back to frown at the ceiling, then her eyes widened. On the third go she flung down handbag and keys, sat back down and took her time, tip of her nose practically touching the screen.
She flopped in the chair. “Well, I’ll be damned …” she whispered.
The security door was smashed in. She walked through it several times, into the building and then back outside onto the street, studying it from every angle. She ran her fingers over the metal frame and conchoidal ring of fractured glass, wishing she still had the Nikon on her, or any one of the office cameras, anything. In frustration she glared at the Motorola flip cell in her hand, which she’d borrowed from her friend Connie. The damn thing worked okay, but it was a model she had no idea still existed, a mascot of a bygone era before phones had cameras and dinosaurs evolved into birds. Where was modern technology when you needed it?
“Sisi, if you just explain to me what you are looking for, maybe I can help you,” the security guard offered, smiling.
She started to shake her head, then glanced up at the awning of B&M Financials. What were her other options? What did anything matter now? It was all too bloody late. “Erm, is Ms Moloi here?”
He shook his head. “She will be back maybe next week. Terrible thing happened to her on the premises. That’s why all this here,” he touched the hole in the glass door, “is damaged like this. She was attacked in her office. Violence, too much violence these days.”
“So there was a break-in?” She knew the answer already.
“What?! Ai ai sisi, no. No-one can break into this building just like that. There’s
this door, and also the security gate. When you come inside, you close both, you can be inside for as long as you want, you’ll be safe.”
“But someone can get inside and upstairs if you forget to lock it.”
He shook his head again. “The security company installed the proper stuff. You can never be too safe in town. Even if you forget to close this gate,” he rattled the iron cage that was drawn aside, “this door,” he tapped the heavy glass, “will automatically close behind you. That’s why we push it open like this during the day, so people can just walk.” The door was held open by a heavy cement block. “There’s no way of opening it from the outside. This handle can only lift and open from inside.” He lifted and lowered the metal bar across the door’s breadth to demonstrate how it served as both handle and release lever. Up, open; down, locked.
“Then who smashed the glass?”
“The ambulance guys. The paramedics came after Ms Moloi managed to make an emergency call, but they couldn’t get upstairs. They tried to smash the door. Someone had to alert the security office and they quickly sent someone with special tools to unblock the mechanism. Then they were able to get upstairs to help Ms Moloi. We heard she couldn’t even move. It was terrible.”
“Why wasn’t one of you around?”
The guard’s eyes flashed for a microsecond. “On Sunday? We don’t work weekends. But maybe now they’ll get a contract with the security company for 24-7 surveillance. It’s better that way, because you never know. She was lucky, eh.” Both hands on hips, he looked both relieved and slightly disappointed, like he’d wanted to regale with a juicier tale to anyone who passed by and made enquiries about the busted door. A tale where someone was beaten to death upstairs and the paramedics had hauled off a pulp of a corpse. “Very lucky. But now look, this door needs replacing chop-chop. If there’s another incident while it’s still like this …”
Vee wasn’t listening. Eyes shut, she tried to press the pieces whizzing around her brain into a sensible pattern. Finally, light flooded the gallery of her mind’s eye. Her breath left her body in one awed ‘whoosh’, like she’d been punched in the stomach. She dropped her face into her hands. “No no no no no no no no …”
“Ha! Of course!” Vee snatched the copy of Brainstorm magazine off the array fanned atop the reception area’s table, brandishing it like the Holy Grail. “Do you know,” she flipped the pages in a frenzy, managing to rip a few, “I’ve wasted over an hour of my life driving around looking for this very magazine? But of course y’all would have it. It’s always the last place you look. All along I should’ve seen the link, leading right back to this office.”
The receptionist’s face looked as if she was mentally running through her training and drawing a blank as to how to handle possible maniacs. “Yes, we would,” she nodded curtly, choosing conversation as an effective smoother. “We’re an IT and software company. That’s one of the field’s most popular magazines. And it’s locally owned and features local companies like The ITF. They actually did a small feature on us this month.”
“Indeed, it did.” Vee closed the mag, keeping her index in as a placeholder. “I’m going in to see him now. Don’t mind me, I know the way.”
“Umm, I don’t think …” the receptionist began.
“He’s not in.” Aneshree Chowdri stood in the mouth of the corridor, blocking it. One look at her face and Vee knew that she knew that she knew. Right then, any resemblance she bore to Joshua scattered like ash. Why had she thought that? This girl didn’t have his long-bridged nose that had that special flaring ability when he was being sarcastic, or his kind, teasing eyes. Hers was a mask of deceit.
Vee walked up to her and leaned in close, hunkering down so they were shoulder to shoulder. “Tell you what. You step aside, and in the process help keep this as civil as possible. Or it can go the other way. Up to you.”
Aneshree backed away till she was against the wall. She jawed the air, her heavy lashes eating up her face the wider her eyes got, like spiders attempting to climb her forehead. “I … we never thought … This wasn’t meant to happen. I couldn’t … wasn’t really involved. I knew as much as I was told.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “This is my job, y’know. I just did my job.”
We all did our jobs. Never stopping to ask the right questions. Spinning cogs in flawless machinery. Vee gritted her teeth and brushed past, leaving Aneshree staring after her as she went down the hall. She got to the door of Walsh’s office and took a deep breath. As she reached for the handle, a passing employee called out to stop her. He caught the expression on her face, clamped his lips together and scurried on.
Walsh looked different. It wasn’t just the switch from a suit back to jeans and T-shirt, the uniform his entire hive seemed hell-bent on adhering to, one he was clearly more comfortable in. He looked settled somehow, calm, serene almost. He was at the window, hovering over a refreshments tray as he absent-mindedly topped up a mug of coffee. She clicked the door shut behind her and he turned. For all of a second, a pleased and surprised grin lit his face. Vee kept her face a mask of stone. His smile crumbled like a building bulldozed and his facial muscles immediately rearranged themselves, jaw setting in a firm angle, lips coming together in a tight line. He set the steaming mug slowly on the tray, eyes never wavering from hers.
“It’s good to see you again. How’ve you been?”
The thumping of her pulse filled her ears. “How have I been. How have I been?” She dropped her chin to her chest and laughed at the floor, shaking her head. “I can’t rightly say I know, Ryan. This past, what …” she counted in her head, doing the math mainly in terms of how many fact-checks and edits and copy edits she’d done lately, “thirteen, fourteen days … to call it a rollercoaster wouldn’t be doing it justice. Now the hurricane of the past two hours, whoo! What words shall I use? ‘Shocked’ is far too pedestrian, and ‘gobsmacked’, I don’t know yet. Not a word you bandy about every day.”
“Voinjama …”
“Vo-in-ja-ma, mister ass,” Vee corrected, snarling over every syllable. His cheeks ripened.
“I can understand how you’d be upset.”
“Ho-ho-ho! Upset, ehn? Too bland, try again. But since you brought it up, let’s rewind and review my emotional canvas so far. I get sent on yet another dead-end assignment and find myself bored witless in the middle of the Karoo. But boredom never lasts long around me. Before I know it, I’m terrified to find myself on the brink of being charged with first-degree murder. I quickly skate past that, thank God, and move into intrigue as the plot thickens. Intrigue mixes with confusion: what possible lead or motive could emerge from amongst a bunch of business owners? I won’t lie, I got a little bloodthirsty at the thought of how big this story could be. It’s the kind that makes careers if it’s handled right. So like the plucky girl detective that I am, I throw myself in and keep digging until it all comes together. A crazy murderer is dead, Moloi the ditzy damsel has been rescued from her distress, a major fraud scandal has been exposed. Cue a perfect ending. But … why doesn’t it feel like a perfect ending, Ryan?”
He simply looked on, mum.
“But I’m being a bore,” she pressed hand over heart. “Let’s do you. Because as exciting as it’s been for me, you’d probably call this past two weeks nothing short of epic.” She waved the Brainstorm. “I bet everyone in the office got a free copy today. You guys must be super excited. Should I read it out loud or is that overkill? Screw it.” She read from the article:
Whilst digital hype often seems to centre around PCs, mobile devices and their apps, it appears the ugly duckling of financial and auditing software could soon outshine its prettier, more popular sister. A new and positively ground-breaking technology that takes the nightmare out of empowerment compliance may soon be available to the business community. The aptly named BEE Scalpel touts itself as a sharp, efficient, multi-faceted and user-friendly platform that will span all BEE services. It is also no small chest-pounding moment that the proud p
arents behind the genesis of this brainchild are local outfits, in the form of Berman & Moloi Financials and local whiz kid The IT Factor. Both companies have received some eyebrow-raising press of late due to their involvement in the LEAD investment deal, which looks to be headed the way of another government scandal. In the wake of the tragic death of B&M’s director Gavin Berman, it’s a ray of hope that the business landscape still respects and recognises independent innovation. It’s not yet clear how widely the software will be marketed, but considering the ever-increasing buzz around B-BBEE and its implementation, which hasn’t always smelled of roses, the potential for expansion here could herald some much needed new shine to a fading rainbow.
“Sit down and hear me out.” His voice was quiet.
“You …” Vee twisted her mouth but couldn’t dredge up an insult scathing enough.
“Insult me all you want, but after you’ve heard my side. We both know you won’t leave until you have.”
She slipped her hands, shaky, into her pockets, but didn’t move towards a chair. She didn’t leave either.
Chapter Thirty-five
“I asked how you were feeling, because I truly am concerned,” Walsh said.
“What, are you worried you might have another emotionally unstable woman on your hands? Don’t be,” Vee replied. She slowly raised her head, trying to feel calm. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “I didn’t come here to flip out on you. I just want to know how you let this happen, how much you knew. Because I just realised how stupid I’ve been. See, I rely far more on luck than cleverness, if I didn’t I’d be in physics or some other coma-inducing career. My problem is that, although I know it’s thoroughly unwise to get emotionally involved – don’t shit where you eat – I suck at it. I get in over my head, and sometimes people get hurt …” She choked. Appalled by a sting of tears, she half-turned, squeezing her eyes shut till they retreated. Ryan moved towards her and she glared him to a standstill. “Gaba killed herself over this. I saw her, before she …”