by Deon Meyer
'...they have assured me they will leave no stone unturned until they have done so. They are allocating every available resource to the search as we speak, and they think it is only a matter of time ..
'Thank you, sir ...'
'Now, the only reason why the Ambassador himself is not calling you, is because he is away on official matters up north in Limpopo Province, but it is my job to coordinate all functions of the US Government in the Cape Town consular district, where I maintain contact with senior South African officials, both provincial and national...'
'Mr Burton ...'
'Please call me Dan ...'
'Our biggest concern is that Rachel said something about the police when she called.'
'Oh?'
'She said that she could not even go to the police.'
The Consul General was quiet for a moment. 'Did she say why?'
'No, she did not have time. She was very distressed, she said "they're here", and then I just heard noises ...'
'She said the police were there?'
'No ... I don't know ... She said "they're here, please help me" ... But the way she spoke about the police ... I don't know, it was my impression that she could not trust them. And I've been doing some reading on the Internet. It says here the man in charge of the whole police force over there is being charged with corruption and defeating the ends of justice....'
'Oh, my God,' said Jess, looking at the computer screen.
'Well ...' the Consul General seemed to need time to digest this information. 'I know how it looks, Mr Anderson, but I have every reason to believe the law enforcement people in Cape Town are highly competent and trustworthy. I will certainly call the Commissioner right away to get some answers ... In the meantime, I've taken the liberty of giving your phone number to the authorities. The Commissioner has assured me the officer in charge of the investigation will call you as soon as he can, and he will keep you updated on all developments. His name is ... Ghreezil, an Inspector Benny Ghreezil...'
'Ask about Erin,' whispered Jess Anderson.
'Mr Burton, Erin Russel... Is there any news about Erin?'
'It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Miss Russel was killed last night, Mr Anderson ...' His wife let the blanket slip from her shoulders, put her hands on her husband's shoulders, pressed her face into his neck and wept.
Inspector Mbali Kaleni told the uniformed policemen that Carlucci's Restaurant was to be treated as a crime scene. She had the whole area cordoned off with yellow tape. Then she cleared the restaurant and had the employees and clients wait at the patio tables while two Constables took their names, addresses and statements.
She ordered a Sergeant to call Forensics to test the back and outside doors for fingerprints. She asked the young man in the apron, the one that had seen everything happen, to go with a Constable in a SAPS vehicle to the Caledon Square police station to help compile an Identikit image of the attackers. The young man said he couldn't; he was in charge of the shop. She asked him if there was someone he could call to replace him. He said he would try.
'Hurry up,' she said in her commanding way. 'We don't have time.'
'Did you check the number?' he asked her.
'What number?'
'The Land Rover's registration number. I got part of it. I gave it to the guys who were here.'
'I will check.'
Before the young man could walk away, she asked him to confirm in what direction the girl and her assailants had run. He pointed, but she held up a chubby hand and said, 'No, come show me.'
She put on her sporty Adidas dark glasses and led the way out of the restaurant, to the corner of Upper Orange and Belmont. The young man pointed towards the city centre. 'I want to make sure. You saw her run that way?'
'No, I told you, I didn't see her run in any other direction, so she must have gone down Upper Orange. The guys came back through the shop, shoved me, ran down to the corner, and the next thing, they came back for the Land Rover. Then they went that way too.'
'They were young?'
'Yes.'
'What is young?'
'I dunno, early twenties ...'
'Fit and strong?'
'Yes.'
She nodded and gestured that he could go. She called the Sergeant who had come to take the statement. He confirmed that he had radioed in the Land Rover's number.
'Call them. Ask them what they have found.'
He nodded and went over to a patrol car.
She looked at the street again.
Why would they come back for the Land Rover? Two young men, chasing a girl from two o'clock that morning. She must be exhausted, but they didn't run after her, they came back for a vehicle? Made no sense.
She wiped perspiration from her forehead, adjusted the strap of the big black handbag over her shoulder and put her hands on her hips. She was oblivious to the uniformed men watching her, sniggering and whispering behind their cupped hands.
She turned around slowly, looking down every street. She wiped her forehead again. They couldn't see her any more; that was the thing. The two attackers would have pursued her on foot if they could see her. She had disappeared; that was why they fetched the vehicle.
Kaleni called two young Constables who were leaning against a police van. 'You, and you,' she pointed, 'come here.'
They came, laughing self-consciously. She told them to go out the back of the restaurant as far as the wooden door, which was still bolted shut.
'But don't touch anything.'
'Yes, Inspector.'
'And when I say "go", you run back through the shop, out through the front door, until you get to me. Ask that guy with the apron exactly where they ran, then you follow the same route. You understand?'
'Yes, Inspector.'
'OK. Ngokushesha!'
Kaleni walked around the outside to the wooden door. She waited- until she could hear the Constables' footsteps in the alleyway on the other side of the door.
'Are you right next to the door?'
'Yes.'
'Don't touch anything.' She checked her watch, waited until the second hand was close to the twelve o'clock mark.
'Are you ready?'
'Yes.'
'When I say go ...' She counted down from five to one, then barked 'Go!' She heard them take off, feet echoing off the restaurant wall. She watched the second hand travel five, ten, fifteen, twenty, then the two Constables came around the corner. Twenty-four seconds to reach her.
'OK. Now, I want you to start from this door, and run down the street, as fast as you can.'
They looked at her, out of breath, but willing. They took off.
'No, wait!'
They stopped and turned back. They weren't smiling now.
'I will say "go" again,' she said, her eyes on the watch. She Waited for the twelve mark again, counting down, and shouted 'Go!' They sprinted away and she kept an eye on them and the watch. The young man had said the attackers had pushed him over. Add one second for that, maybe two. They might have run outside and, not knowing in which direction she had gone, stopped and looked up Upper Orange and to the right down Belmont. Another two or three seconds.
She marked the Constables' progress at twenty-four and thirty seconds, then yelled at them, 'OK!', but they were out of earshot and kept on running, two blue uniforms in full flight down the long hill.
'Hey!' she tried again, to no avail.
'Isidomu,' she muttered and began to walk down the street herself, keeping her eyes on the thirty-second mark.
Rachel Anderson heard the sirens racing up the street only twenty metres from where she lay in the bougainvillea bush. She knew they were for her because the man in the restaurant would surely have called the police. And she could hear how the wailing stopped nearby, just up on the corner.
She lay still. All the thorns were out now, only the stinging of her wounds remained, Her breathing was normal, the sweat dried in the deep cool shade. They wouldn't be able to see her, even if th
ey walked past down the street, even if they came into the garden.
She would wait until they stopped looking. Until they went away. Then she would decide what to do.
Mbali Kaleni walked to the corner of Upper Orange and Alexandra Avenue - more or less the twenty-four second mark. She walked slowly across the road to the opposite pavement.
The girl must have turned left here into Alexandra. That was why the men couldn't see her.
Something wasn't right.
She stared up Alexandra Avenue. The slope. A very tired girl. This morning early, before six, someone saw her high up on Lion's Head. Just after ten she was down here in Oranjezicht. She had come a long way, but she was on her way down, to the city. So would she get here and choose a street that led away from her destination? It was uphill, steep; it would be hell' on tired legs.
But if you are afraid and your pursuers right behind ...
Deep in thought, Kaleni rested her hand on the white picket fence of the single-storey Victorian house on her left. She looked for the two running uniformed idiots. Yes, there they were, walking back, chatting happily.
A block further on was the Molteno Reservoir. But that was more than forty seconds from Carlucci's, even if Rachel Anderson could run as fast as two fresh, fit constables. No, she had to have turned this corner. Or ...
Kaleni considered the Victorian house, looked at the fence. It was the only house in this part of the street without high walls or fences - the only alternative.
That's when she saw the damage to the flower bed. The ground cover was scraped away in a broad swathe. She took off her dark glasses. The palm prints were there, the footprints beyond, three of them before the edge of the lawn. She judged by sight the distance between the fence and the damage. Could someone climb over here? And land there?
She walked on, looking for the garden gate, and found it. She jogged over to it, an odd, hurried figure with a handbag over her shoulder, pistol on her hip and dark glasses in her hand.
'I'm not white enough for her,' Fransman Dekker said when Griessel concluded his call with Vusi.
'What?' said Griessel, his attention still on the phone. 'Sorry, Fransman, I have four more messages ...' He put it to his ear again. 'Melinda?' he asked.
'I can't talk to a man ...' Dekker said, in falsetto sarcasm.
'I'll be finished soon ...' Griessel listened. 'It's John Afrika ...'
Dekker took two steps down the passage and turned. 'But it's because I'm a hotnot. Fucking hypocritical gospel singers ...' he said and shook his head.
'John Afrika again ...' Griessel shook his head.
'Such a great Christian,' said Dekker.
'I have to phone the Commissioner back,' Griessel said apologetically. 'The girl... She phoned her father. In America .. . Commissioner, it's Benny ...'
Dekker stopped at the studio door, pressed a palm against it, leaned on it and bent his head.
Griessel said 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' over the phone, until at last: 'I'm on my way, I'll be there now.' He switched off the phone again.
'She won't talk to you because you're coloured?' he asked Dekker.
'That's not what she says, but it's what she means.'
'Fuck that. She can get a lawyer, and she can ask for a woman to be present, those are her choices ...'
'You tell her.'
'That's exactly what I'm going to do,' said Griessel. And then the lights went out.
Chapter 20
Ndabeni was restless. He drank the last of the tea, put the cup on the tray and pushed it away. How long would it be before the people arrived, before Petr had his staff awake and on the go? What was Mbali Kaleni doing with his case up at the restaurant? That was where the action was; there was nothing going on here. Perhaps he would wait another ten minutes. If no one had arrived by then ...
Then the big room went dark, everything eerily quiet, even the air conditioning off. Another power cut. Yesterday it had lasted for three hours.
Pitch black, he could see nothing.
He had to get out. He felt for his cell phone, pressed a key to light up the screen and turned it so the light shone over the table, picked up his notebook and pen and got up. He walked carefully between the tables and chairs, down the passage. A faint yellow band of light shone out of Galina Federova's office. He walked over to it, saw she had lit a candle and was busy pushing another into the neck of an empty beer bottle.
'Hi,' he said.
She jumped, said something that sounded like 'Bogh' and nearly dropped the beer bottle.
'I'm sorry ..
'Eskom,' she shrugged.
'What can you do?' he asked, rhetorically.
She lit the second candle as well, sat down behind her desk and took out a cigarette.
'I can do nothing.' She lit the cigarette from the candle.
Perhaps Russians were not into rhetorical questions. 'I'm sorry, but I will have to go.' 'I can bring you a candle.'
'No. The girl... she was seen.'
'Oh?' The pencil-drawn eyebrows were raised high. He didn't know how to read that. Vusi took a business card out of his pocket and put it down in front of her. 'Please, would you call me when the people from last night arrive?'
Federova picked up the card in her long nails. 'OK.'
'Thank you,' said Vusi. Using his cell phone as a torch, he walked back the way he had come in, through the kitchen, where Ponytail was counting booze bottles by the light coming in from the back door.
'What you do about the power? What the police do?'
He considered explaining carefully to the man that the police had nothing to do with the electricity supply. But he just said: 'We call Eskom.'
Vusi walked out of the back door into the alley, where the sunlight was blinding. He heard Ponytail call: 'Funny. I love funny cop,' but he was in a hurry and his car was up in Long Street, more than ten minutes' walk. He wanted to talk to Kaleni at the restaurant, he wanted ... Vusi stopped just where the alley opened into Strand Street. There was something he could do, even if Benny Griessel said he didn't want Organised Crime involved. He chose Vaughn Cupido's number and called him.
'Speak to me,' Cupido answered immediately.
'Do you have photos of Demidov's people?'
Cupido didn't answer.
'Vaughn, are you there?'
'Why do you ask?' suspiciously.
'Do you, Vaughn?'
'I cannot confirm or deny.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means I'm just an Inspector. You will have to ask higher up.'
'Ask who?'
'The Senior Sup.'
'Vaughn, we have a man who saw two of the attackers in Oranjezicht just now. If he can ID Demidov's people ... It could save the girl's life.'
It was quiet again.
'Vaughn?'
'Let me get back to you ...'
Rachel Anderson heard the click-click of a woman's shoes on the garden path just metres away from her, and another sound, the rhythmic whisper of fabric on fabric. The noise stopped abruptly, then she heard a sigh and someone knocking loudly. Rachel kept her breathing shallow; she turned her head slowly so she could see her feet. Was she deep enough into the bushes?
Again someone hammered on the door. 'Hello, anybody home?' in an African accent, a woman, urgent.
What did it mean?
'Hey, guys!' the same voice barked, authoritarian. 'I called you back, but you did not hear.'
A man's voice answered from the street, then the same African woman: 'No, stay on the pavement, this might be a crime scene. Just go and tell them at the restaurant I need Forensics. Shoe imprints, I want them cast and identified.'
There was the sound of a door opening and a man's voice: 'Can I help you?'
'How are you?'
'That is not an appropriate question. Why are you hammering on my door?' The man's voice answered calm, timid.
'Because your doorbell is broken.'
'It's not broken. There is a power failure.'
> 'What? Again?'
'Yes. Can I help you?'
'I am Inspector Mbali Kaleni of the SAPS. We are looking for a girl who is running away from assailants, and I think she was in your garden. I want to know if you saw her.'
'I didn't see her ...'
'Over there. Can you come and take a look?'
'Is that your police ID?'
'Yes.'
'When did this happen?'
'About forty minutes ago. Can you please come and look at your garden? You did not see her?'
'No. But I heard her ..
Rachel Anderson's heart went cold.
'You did?'
'Yes,' said the man. 'I heard footsteps, around the corner of the house ...'
'Here?'
'Yes, just here. But I heard her run to the wall there, I think she jumped over, to the next house. By the time I looked through the window, she was gone.'
'Take a look at the tracks,' said the policewoman.
There was a moment of relief as the voices faded, but her pulse accelerated again because she didn't know where her tracks led. Then she remembered falling in the flower bed when she jumped over the wall. Was that all? Did the tracks lead here? She had stepped in damp ground; mud might have stuck to the grass or the slate of the path.
She heard the woman's footsteps on the path again. She kept dead still and closed her eyes.
Benny Griessel opened the big door of the AfriSound recording studio angrily. John Afrika had told him to hurry; they were waiting for him. The room was pitch dark, as it had no windows. The shaft of light from the open door illuminated Melinda; she stood with big, frightened eyes, hands folded across her breast, Bambi In Danger. He said, 'The power is off,' and she dropped her hands. Had she thought the darkened room was a police ploy?
He went up to her and said with all the patience he could muster: 'Madam, you will have to talk to Inspector Dekker. With or without your lawyer. That is your choice. You can request that a female officer be present, but you are not a victim; it's his discretion.'
'A female officer?' she was confused.
'A female member of the police.'
She thought for a moment. Then she said: 'He misunderstood me.'
'Oh?'