Thirteen Hours bg-2

by Deon Meyer

  She shrugged shyly. 'It's just what I saw.'

  'The girl, Miss, it's very important, you said she had blood on her hands?'

  'Yes, her hand, wait a bit, her right hand and her arm up to here,' she indicated her elbow.

  'Nowhere else?'

  'No.' 'But she wasn't struggling?'

  'No.'

  'Did it look as though she was ... unconscious?'

  'I ... perhaps. No. I don't know. But she wasn't struggling.'

  'And the panel van?' Vusi asked. 'You don't know what make itwas?'

  'A Peugeot. But I must admit, I didn't know that. Only when it drove off did I see the logo. The one with the little lion, you know, rearing up ...'

  Griessel just nodded. Fuck it, he wouldn't have made the lion and the Peugeot connection. He looked at her eyes and thought, this woman is a genius.

  'A silver Peugeot, but quite dirty,' she said. 'I will have to check what model it was ...' Before Griessel could say that wasn't necessary, she added: 'And the registration number if you want it, of course.'

  'You got the registration number?' Griessel was astonished.

  'CA four-oh-nine, then a little hyphen,' and she drew a line horizontally in the air with her finger, 'and then three-four-one.'

  The detectives plucked out their cell phones simultaneously. 'Miss,' said Benny Griessel, 'would you like to come and work for us?'

  'In any case,' Willie Mouton said, standing up and starting to wheel his chair back towards the door on its silent wheels. 'Adam phoned me last night, some time after nine, to tell me about Ivan Nell's stories.'

  'And?' Fransman Dekker asked.

  'We laughed about it. Adam said, let him bring his auditor, let him run up some overheads himself.'

  'That's it?'

  'Adam said he was going home, because Alexandra wasn't well, he was worried about her. And that's where Josh Geyser was waiting for him. I don't care what he's telling you. I'm not a detective or anything, but you can see in that man's eyes he is capable of anything.'

  'Vusi, we're working against the clock now,' Benny Griessel told him at the garden gate. 'I've sent for Mat Joubert . ..' He noticed Ndabeni's expression. 'I know, but fuck the Commissioner, we have to get the girl. I want you to follow up on the Peugeot. It might be a false number plate, but let's try. I don't care what you have to do, there can't be hundreds of them in Cape Town. Forget about the scene, forget everything, the panel van is your baby.'

  Vusi nodded enthusiastically, fired up by Griessel's urgency.

  'Mat Joubert can deal with the scene, I'm going to get her, Vusi. All I want to do now is find her. I just want to make a quick pass through the house, see if there is anything significant, then I am going to try and work out how they knew she was here. Some way or another ... I don't know how, I want to find out who else she phoned ...'

  'Fine, Benny.'

  'Thanks, Vusi.' He turned and walked into the house, trying to reconstruct the event quickly. In the hallway they had smashed the leaded glass of the front door, opened it and gained entry. They shot the old man here. On the left was a giant study, once a sitting room perhaps. The large work table was covered with countless documents and a telephone. To one side a chair was overturned. Had she phoned from here?

  He walked down the passage, looking into all the bedrooms. Nothing of note. On the way back he went into the guest bathroom. It smelled faintly of recent use. He traced a finger along the bath. It was wet. He sniffed. Soap. That meant nothing. He examined the inside surface of the bath thoroughly. Hair in the plug, two long, dark strands. Rachel's? He went out. She had taken a bath. She had time for that. That meant she trusted the old man a great deal. He must find out his name.

  He crossed the hall again and went into the kitchen. Everything was immaculate. He spotted the open back door, ran out, careful to watch where he stepped. He saw blood outside, a long trail over a paved pathway and part of the lawn. Fear gripped his heart. He squatted down reluctantly to examine the splashes.

  God, had they cut her throat? The thought was a blade in his guts.

  No, not possible. He had asked Evelyn Marais if the blood was only on her hands.

  Yes, her hand, her right hand and her arm up to here.

  Nowhere else?

  No.

  But the blood pattern outside told a different story.

  Hoping she hadn't left yet, he jumped up and ran out through the back gate, left in Belmont to where the growing crowd stood behind the yellow tape on the corner, under the watchful eyes of policemen. His eyes searched out the Tazz. There it was still, the woman seated inside, looking as though she was about to drive off. 'Sorry, sorry,' he said to get through the crowd. The Tazz pulled away, but he was just in time to slap the side of the car. She looked up in fright, saw him and stopped. 'Miss,' he gasped, out of breath, standing at her door while she wound down the window, lifted her dark glasses and rested her right arm on the door. 'Excuse me,' he said.

  'It's OK.' The blue eyes watched expectantly.

  'The girl ...' He struggled to catch his breath. '... are you absolutely sure about the blood ... just on her arm?'

  She turned off the engine and shut her eyes. She sat like that for about half a minute. Griessel curbed his enormous impatience, wanting her to be sure.

  The eyes opened. 'Yes,' she nodded decisively.

  'There was no blood anywhere else?'

  She shook her head from side to side, absolutely certain. 'No, just the arm.'

  'Not on her head or neck?'

  'Definitely not.'

  'Thank God for that,' said Benny. He picked up the hand resting on the open window frame and kissed the back of it. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you, thank you,' and he turned and began to jog back.

  It wasn't Rachel Anderson's blood.

  Fransman Dekker's first instinct was to blame Mouton and Steenkamp for his frustration, for the anger that was bottled upinside him. He stood behind the closed door of Adam Barnard's office and looked up at the framed photographs. He felt like grabbing one, throwing it on the ground and jumping on it. It was the way Mouton had said Josh Geyser did it, as though Dekker were an idiot. It was the way Steenkamp leaned back in his chair, smug, windgat whitey ...

  He glared at Adam Barnard in one photo. Big man full of confidence. The smile was the same in every photo, the way he looked at the camera, his body angled slightly, hands around the shoulders or waists of the artists. He was the very image of success, Mr Beloved, not an enemy in the world.

  Impossible.

  And that, Dekker knew, was the source of his frustration: he was in a dead-end street. The whole investigation was slowly but surely sinking into a swamp of, fuck it, improbabilities. Nothing made sense and the whiteys were laughing at him.

  And where was Mbali Kaleni?

  He walked around the desk, sat down and put his elbows on the desk, head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He would have to think, he would have to suppress this anger and think it all through from the beginning, because none of the pieces fitted together. Josh and Melinda Geyser. Both were lying. Or neither. The video? The blackmailer? Where was Mbali? She had found something and was following it up, she was going to solve the case and he would look like a fool. He took his phone out of his pocket and called her number. It rang and rang and rang.

  She would see who was calling, she was ignoring him on purpose. His temper flared up again, like a wildfire.

  Wait, wait, wait. Calm down.

  He put his head in his hands again and closed his eyes. Fuck knew, he would have to pull finger to crack this one.

  Concentrate: Adam Barnard was carried into his house, up the stairs to his drunken wife.

  That meant someone who knew his wife passed out, blind drunk, every night. That meant someone who was strong enough to carry the dead weight of Adam Barnard. Someone who knew

  Barnard had a pistol in the house - and knew where to find it. Forget Bloemfontein and the blackmailer, there was no way. The knowledge of the pisto
l was key.

  Who would know?

  Josh Geyser? Perhaps. Maybe Melinda too. Knowledge. Motive. Strength.

  But Benny Griessel had said it wasn't Josh. Griessel was nobody's fool, even though they said he used to drink like a fish. Was Griessel mistaken, how much of the new Captain's attention was on the churchyard murder? He was only human after all ... Knowledge of the pistol. How many people would know that? Alexa Barnard, another one pronounced innocent by Griessel, an alcoholic woman. Was Benny being objective? As a sister-in-drink, had she pulled the wool over his eyes? Did she have help? A lover?

  Who else? If you took into account that seventy or eighty per cent of crimes were committed by someone in the immediate family.

  Then it struck him - the maid. Whining Sylvia Buys, only concerned about where she would find another job. Sylvia, who was so terribly fond of Adam Barnard, so quick to lay the blame on Alexandra. He must not overlook her. Motive? Anything. Had Adam caught her stealing? Confronted her?

  How well had the Geysers known Barnard? Would they have visited the house?

  Would one of them have known where to find the pistol? He would have to find out. He would have to phone Griessel first, tell him he had doubts about Alexandra, about the Geysers. Benny wouldn't like it.

  Where was Mbali?

  Someone knocked.

  'Yes?'

  Natasha Abader put her head around the door. 'There is a policeman at the door. He says he wants to show you where they found a shoe.'

  He jumped up. 'Thank you,' he said and walked over to her. 'I want to talk to you again, please.'

  She didn't look too ecstatic about that.

  14:02-15:10

  Chapter 36

  Dekker and the young black Metro policeman had to shoulder their way through the journalists at the front door, over the tiny lawn, pass the koi pond, through the access tunnel for the building to Buiten Street. The press kept throwing questions at him like accusations, until they shook off the last vulture on the corner of Bree Street. When would Cloete come and sort out this chaos?

  'Up there, around the corner,' the Metro man said and they walked in silence. Dekker realised the southeaster had picked up and the perfect summer day was gone. He looked up at the mountain. The cloud was beginning to form on its tabletop like an omen. By late afternoon the wind would be gale force; but then it was January, there was nothing you could do about that.

  The Metro man led him to a corner, they turned left into New Church Street and crossed the road. Six paces further on he stopped and pointed with his baton.

  'Right there.'

  'The shoe was lying here?'

  'Just there,' the man confirmed. 'Almost in the gutter.'

  'You're sure of this?'

  'This is where I found it.'

  'You didn't look inside it?'

  'Inside the shoe?' The man screwed up his face in an expression of suspicion, as if he wasn't completely convinced of Dekker's intelligence.

  'I wouldn't have either,' said Dekker. 'Thanks a lot.'

  'Can I go now?'

  'Wait. I just want to know, did they ask you to pick things up?' 'Yes, Senior Inspector Oerson sent us. We had to pick up anything that might have been in a rucksack. Anything. Then I saw the shoe. I picked it up and put it in the plastic bag. I found a hat too, over there on the corner of Watson Street. But that's all. I took it to Abrams, he had the big rubbish bag. I put it in the big rubbish bag. Abrams took the big rubbish bag to Senior Inspector Oerson, because he said he wanted to see everything.' He was thorough and systematic, as though he still harboured doubts about Dekker being the sharpest pencil in the box.

  'Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.'

  The man nodded, turned around and strolled away, swinging his baton, one hand on his cap to protect it from the wind.

  Dekker considered the spot where the shoe had lain. Then the corner of New Church and Buiten. About two to three hundred metres from AfriSound.

  What was the significance of that?

  He took out his phone. It was time to call Benny Griessel.

  The Metro Police licensing department told Vusi the Peugeot Boxer panel van, CA 409-341, belonged to CapSud Trading ...

  'Spell that for me, please,' Vusi asked.

  'Capital letter C, a-p, capital letter S, u-d ... the contact person is a Mr FrederikWillem de Jager, the address is Unit Twenty-one, Access City, La Belle Street in Stikland.'

  'Thank you very much,' said Vusi.

  'But there's a tag on it,' the woman said. 'The vehicle is in the pound.'

  'Which pound?'

  'Our vehicle impound. Just here next to me in Greenpoint.'

  'Is it there now?'

  'That's what the system says.'

  Vusi thought it over. He asked: 'Do you have a phone number for de Jager?'

  'Yip.' She gave it to him.

  Griessel stood at the big table holding a sheet of paper with two numbers on it. One of them was his cell phone number. The other was a Cape number that he did not recognise. He studied the handwriting, comparing it to the notes in tiny, almost illegible scribbles on the hordes of documents strewn across the table. The numbers were written in larger, rounder and more feminine script.

  Rachel Anderson?

  He dialled the other Cape number. Three rings and a woman answered with a distinctive accent. 'United States Consul, good afternoon, how may I help you?'

  'Oh, sorry, wrong number,' he said and terminated the call.

  'Gourmet Foods, good afternoon,' a woman's voice answered.

  'Is that not CapSud Trading?'

  'This is CapSud, trading as Gourmet Foods.'

  'Could I speak to Mr de Jager, please?'

  'Who is this speaking?'

  'This is Inspector Vusi Ndabeni of the South African Police Service.'

  'Mr de Jager is deceased, Inspector.'

  'Oh. I'm sorry. When did he pass away?'

  'Four months ago.'

  'I am calling to enquire about a Peugeot Boxer panel van, registration CA four-oh-nine, three-four-one, that is registered in the name of CapSud Trading.'

  'That must be the stolen one.'

  'Oh?'

  'We bought it early October last year, then we sent it to the sign writers to have our logo applied. It was stolen that very night from the sign writers. And you never caught them.' Accusatory.

  'Are you aware that the vehicle was in the Metropolitan Police pound?'

  'Yes, they recovered it in Salt River, in a Fire Service parking spot, so they towed it away and impounded it and called us. That was mid-October.'

  'Why have you never collected it, ma'am?'

  'Because when Frik died everything was frozen. Nobody could draw money or sign a cheque, and the estate will only be wound up in two months' time. This is the New South Africa, you know, you have to wait and see.'

  'So, as far as you know, the panel van has been in the pound ever since?'

  'Must be, because every week someone phones and says we must come and pay the fine and collect it, and the more I explain about Frik, the less it helps because next week someone else phones.'

  'You are Mrs ...?'

  'I am Saartjie de Jager. Frik's wife.'

  'May I ask how Mr de Jager died, ma'am?'

  'Cholesterol. The doctor warned him, I warned him, but Frik wouldn't listen. He was like that all his life. Now I'm the one trying to clear up the mess.'

  Everything happened at once. Griessel waited impatiently at the big table for his contact at Telkom to get back to him, John Afrika walked gingerly past the blood in the hallway, looking at it in horror, saying: 'Nee, o, jirre,' Griessel's cell phone began to ring and Vusi came through the front door with an excited 'Benny!'

  He thought it was the Telkom man, turned away from his colleagues and answered it. 'Griessel.' Through the window he saw Mat Joubert walking up the garden path.

  'Benny, it's Fransman.'

  Too much at once. 'Fransman, can I call you back?' Behind him the
Commissioner said something reproachfully.

  'Benny, just a quick one, how sure are we that Barnard's wife and Josh Geyser are not involved?'

  He needed to tell Afrika that he had asked Joubert to come, before there were fireworks. 'Don't know,' he said, his mind not on the conversation.

  'So I can question them some more? I'll get Mbali to talk to Alexandra ...'

  The female detective's name forced him to focus. 'Don't you know yet?' he asked.

  'What are you doing here?' he heard John Afrika say behind him. He turned. Joubert had entered the room. He put his hand over the receiver as Dekker asked, 'Don't I know what yet?'

  'Commissioner, I'll explain,' said Griessel and then to Dekker: 'Mbali was shot, Fransman. Here in Upper Orange, the American girl...'

  Dekker was dumbfounded.

  'She's in hospital,' Griessel said.

  'The American girl? What was Mbali doing there?'

  'That's what I wanted to ask you.'

  'How would I know? I sent her to Jack Fischer.'

  'Jack Fischer?' he asked in surprise, and then realised it was the wrong thing to say with both Afrika and Joubert nearby.

  'They did some work for AfriSound, but I think it's a dead end. Is Mbali OK?'

  'Fransman, we don't know, I'm sorry, I have to run. Talk to Geyser again if you think you should. I'll call you later.' He ended the call and said: 'Commissioner, I asked Mat to come and help.' Afrika's face began to screw up in protest but Griessel didn't give him the chance. 'All due respect, Commissioner,' he began, knowing that what he was about to say was not respectful at all, but he didn't give a damn any more, 'you said there's a manpower problem. Mat is ... underutilised at PT, he's the best detective in the Cape and I have an American girl that I have to find, whatever it takes. You can fire me tomorrow, you can demote me to Inspector or Sergeant if you like, but, fuck knows, there's no time to waste. Vusi is working on the panel van they took Rachel Anderson away in, I am going to find out who the hell knew she was in this house. We don't have time to process the scene and I need someone who knows what he's doing. You said I must phone Rachel's father, and I will do it, but not before I know what is going on. Because he is going to ask me and I want to have answers that will satisfy a girl's father. So, please, let's skip the shit and get the girl.' Then he added a final, hopeful: 'With respect, Commissioner,' and waited for the guillotine to drop.