Finally, he looked in my direction.
‘Visiting is over for the day, you will have to come back tomorrow,’ he said to me and turned back to his friend.
‘I want to come and visit tomorrow. What do I have to do?’ I said, in a slightly louder voice than normal.
‘The first bus leaves at 9:00 a.m, so park your car there and catch the bus,’ he pointed to what looked like a field. ‘You had better arrive a bit earlier than 9.00 because it gets extremely crowded for the first bus.’
‘So if I am here by 8:00 do I wait here,’ I pointed to just beside the guard house where I was talking to the guard.
‘No, you see that area over there, behind the fence, where there is a circle in the road,’ he stood up and pointed to an area about 50 meters away where the dirt road circled around a grass island. ‘That’s where the bus leaves from. Make sure you get on the right bus as there are three prisons on this site and two different buses.’
‘I want to go to the maximum security prison,’ I emphasised.
‘Then you must take the bus for Prison C. Oh, by the way, you mustn’t bring a mobile phone with you, or you won’t be allowed in.’
‘Thank you very much. I will be back in the morning,’ I left the guard still talking to his friend, very grateful that he had condescended to talk to me.
If I had pitched up on the Sunday at 9:00 a.m, as I had originally planned, I probably would have taken the whole day to see Dale Fortuin and would have missed my flight.
I checked out of the hotel early the following morning, drove to the prison and joined the bus queue at around 8.15 a.m. By the time I reached the waiting area, there was already a queue of around twelve people. All had the appearance of being seasoned prison visitors. They seemed to know each other and were carrying all manner of odds and ends in plastic bags.
I got talking to a lady who turned out to be English and from Tonbridge in Kent. She told me that she was visiting her boyfriend. He had been in prison for about 5 years and still had another 23 years to serve. She explained that she came out from the UK twice a year for just over two weeks, which meant that she was able to get in six visits on each trip.
‘You must be very devoted to him,’ I said, after she had told her story.
‘He would give up hope if I stopped writing to him and coming to see him,’ she explained.
‘How long do the visits last after all this queuing?’
‘Generally we get forty five minutes, but if the processing takes longer than usual, it is reduced to half an hour. It depends on which of the prison officers are on duty, some are nicer and more efficient than others.’
‘What happens when we get off the bus,’ I asked her.
‘You have to queue up again at a window at the side of the gate. They will write down your details and also note the name of the prisoner that you want to see. Have you brought your passport with you?’
‘Yes, I was told that I had to,’ I nodded.
‘If you stick close, I will explain what to do at each stage of the process. Sometimes they can be difficult if they don’t recognise you.’
‘I am so glad that I met you, it seems all extremely strange to me. I would have been blundering around not knowing what to do,’ I smiled at her, genuinely grateful for her help.
I was used to the disciplines of the British Army and this whole set up was hard to believe. It appeared that you had to fight for yourself in the system and not be too polite. Some of the older ladies had brought folding chairs to sit on, and others just sat on the ground. The children ran around making a lot of noise, keeping themselves amused.
Just before 9:00 a.m, the bus arrived and the crowd, which had swelled to nearly thirty people by this stage, surged towards the entrance door of the bus.
‘Sit beside me at the front here,’ my guardian angel advised me. ‘At the other end we will be out first and get to the window quicker. Sometimes they make the visitors at the end of the queue go on the next visit, so it is advisable to be at the front.’
‘I’ll stick right with you,’ I said as masses of exceptionally large African ladies squeezed past me, laden down with their plastic bags stuffed with clothes, books and sundry other items.
As the bus slowed everybody stood up and made a charge for the exit at the front of the bus. I stood out in the aisle to block the onrushing hordes and let my colleague out. Having descended from the bus, she guided me towards the window. I had to wait for an additional 20 minutes before my details were taken by the prison staff.
After that, there was still further waiting to endure, and it wasn’t until 10:0 a.m that I heard the bolts being drawn back on the massive entrance gate and we were allowed to enter. All the male visitors had an ink stamp placed on their arms, to signify that they were a visitor and not an inmate. Every visitor was now thoroughly searched, with all the bags being turned out onto a table before they were repacked. Having endured all this I was now through the process and was able to buy some fruit and chocolate, plus a can of Coke, for Dale.
The next problem I had was, how was I going to recognise Dale when I finally got into the meeting room, and how would he find me. I needn’t have worried as the problem was solved quite easily. The prisoners knew their visitors and they all quickly sat down, leaving Dale as the only one left standing. It was also helped by the fact that I was one of the only visitors with a white face.
This dark haired pale young man, with an intensely sad and vacant face, eventually spotted me and came over towards me. The orange overalls, he had to wear, didn’t help his looks as they were three sizes too large and emphasised his pallor.
I put my hand out towards him.
‘You must be Dale Fortuin,’ I asked him as he shook my hand.
‘And who are you?’ he looked surprised that he had a visitor that he didn’t know.
‘It’s a long story, but I am a friend of people who know that you didn’t murder your brother. My name is Vince Hamilton.’
He sat down on the bench facing me. All the prisoners were seated the same side with the visitors facing them and space was at a premium. We both had to lean forward to hear each other as the noise level was extremely high.
‘Are you able to help me prove my innocence then? I have tried everything from in here, and I am getting nowhere,’ I could see tears forming in his eyes.
‘I don’t know what I can do Dale, but I am quite hopeful that I will discover in the near future what is going on and pin the blame on the person who put you in here.’
‘How soon can you do that, I am desperate? Being stuck in here is worse than hell itself.’
‘I am close, but it is going to take another few months I am afraid.’
‘Well I suppose that gives me some hope, and, when I came in here this morning, I had no hope.’
‘Listen Dale, time is moving on, and I want to hear your story as that’s the real reason that I have come all this way to see you.’ I didn’t want this visit to be wasted.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, can you tell me exactly what happened?’
‘I’ll try if you think that you can help me.’ He paused to collect his thoughts......
‘About a year ago my brother Phillip was asked, by my father, to fly a man and some packages from an airport in Limpopo to an airfield near Stellenbosch.’ He continued. ‘As he was going to have to fly back on his own, he asked me to go with him. I gladly agreed.’
‘Who was the man who had to be delivered Dale?’
‘His name was Harold Fortiscue, and he was a business contact of my fathers.’
‘OK, what happened then?’
‘When we landed in Stellenbosch, Harold Fortiscue went off in a car that had been left there for him. He asked us to stay with the aircraft until he returned. My brother, on taking one of
the packages out of the aircraft, dropped it, and it burst open exposing diamonds. He then patched it up as best he could with black tape and put it back.’
‘So Harold wasn’t around at the time Phillip was looking at the package.’
‘No, he had driven off somewhere. Anyway, a while later Harold returned with another man, whom he didn’t introduce us to. I know that he was certainly Dutch or Afrikaans as we heard him speak. Harold went into the aircraft, reappearing with the damaged package. He was examining it extremely closely with a worried expression on his face. He talked to the Dutch man, and they became extremely excited that the package was damaged.’
‘Could you actually see the diamonds?’
‘No Phillip had resealed it exceptionally well. Phillip then apologised to them for having let the packet drop.’
‘What happened next Dale?’
‘The Dutch man asked me if I would drive into Stellenbosch in the car, and buy them some beers, which I did.’
‘So when you left the airfield, there was Harold Fortiscue, a Dutchman, who was probably a guy called Caas Teifel and your brother.’
‘Yes, but, when I arrived back at the airfield there were swarms of police, and I was arrested for the murder of my brother.’
‘I don’t believe it. So what do you think happened when you went to get the beers?’
‘They must have shot poor old Phillip, called the police and then blamed me. They said that I used a gun that Phillip carried on the plane. Because of all the crime around South Africa, my father had given Phillip one of his hand guns to carry in the plane. On the way down to Stellenbosch I had taken it out of its hiding place and handled it, so my fresh fingerprints were on the gun.’
‘Would Harold Fortiscue have seen you handling the gun?’
‘I guess so, and he would have seen where Phillip stores it.’
‘So why do you think that they killed Phillip?’
‘I have being trying to work that one out for the past year. The only reason that I can come up with is he knew what was in the package. They probably would have killed me too, but they needed me alive to blame for the shooting.’
The prison officer in charge of the room started to clap his hands and called out that visiting time was now over.
‘Listen Dale, you have my sympathy; however, that is clearly not enough. If it is the last thing that I do I will get Harold Fortiscue and Caas Teifel for what they did to you and your brother.’,
‘Thank you Mr Hamilton, I feel a lot better now knowing that there is somebody trying to sort this whole thing out. My parents have been utterly useless in all this, probably because they are both involved in some way.’
I stood up and handed him the bag of goodies that I had brought in for him.
‘This isn’t much Dale, but I bought these for you on my way in,’
‘Every little helps and thanks for coming to see me.’
I watched as his face changed from being animated, when he was with me, to a blank expression as he was ushered out of the room. My heart was sore at my inability to help him, and I felt so sorry for him. When all the prisoners had gone back into the inner sanctums of the prison, a gate was locked behind them, and they opened the outer gate to the courtyard for the public to leave by. We all wandered up the hill to the large gate that we had come in by, where, after a short delay and checking of the stamp on my arm, they let us out to go and get the bus back to the car park.
I was shattered. What an emotionally draining experience to talk to someone who had been framed and was now spending every minute of every day in that dreadful prison. If ever I needed more incentive to try and solve this case, I now had it. There was nothing that anybody could do for Phillip, but there was certainly something that I could do for Dale.
I finally arrived back at my car just before midday, totally drained by my experience. A forty five minute visit to Dale had taken me a total of four hours from the time that I had arrived at the prison. How on earth did the regular visitors do this week in, week out, it showed a lot of love and perseverance? The prisoners being visited didn’t see what their visitors had to go through for such a short time with them.
I climbed into my car and drove to the airport, a changed and wiser man, but also a Vince Hamilton determined to see justice done.
Chapter 26
The two hour flight on South African Airways gave me a chance to sort out a few of the thoughts that were racing around in my head. If I had my doubts that Harold Fortiscue was involved, those doubts were now banished from my mind. Every direction I took in this investigation I encountered him. Caas Teifel’s name also kept appearing in not too favourable a light.
This whole situation with Dale and Phillip Fortuin happened just over a year ago so that confirmed that there must have been a shipment of stolen diamonds sent to Europe in 2005.
I knew the source of the diamonds was the Mookgopong mine in Limpopo. A year ago the diamonds were transferred to the Cape by a small plane flown by Phillip Fortuin. This time, I suspected, they had gone in Jacques Fortuin’s car, probably because things had gone so horribly wrong a year ago.
These were cold blooded killers, who would stop at nothing in the protection of their smuggling operation. There also must be substantial money involved, for so many people to be associated with the chain. Each link in the chain, I suspected, took out a large whack of money.
The other thought to hit me was that there must be more dealers involved other than Edward Crawford. It was most unlikely that he could shift the large quantity of stolen diamonds that must be making their way to Europe. With the Rotterdam dealer Caas Teifel involved, they could be sold to dealers all around the world. Perhaps Willem, with his contacts, could clarify the situation for me.
I felt intimidated by the whole scenario. Here was I, a ‘trainee’ private investigator, up against a well-organized international diamond smuggling ring spread over at least two continents. In the army, we had a saying that ‘whoever holds the information holds the key to the battle and will be the victor’. Despite my inexperience I felt that I was still well ahead in the information stakes.
Harold Fortiscue was part of the enemy in this exercise, and he knew I was involved in trying to discover how the diamond chain worked and who was involved. My advantages lay in the fact that he didn’t know where I was or what I had found out. In South Africa, the only people who could identify me were the two gorillas from the mine and Moira Fortuin. The others didn’t know me, unless Caas Teifel had seen me in Rotterdam when I visited Willem for the first time.
The other piece of information that I had, and which they were unaware of, was that I knew the method they were using to ship the diamonds back to Europe. All in all, I reckoned that I had enough information to enable me to stay one step ahead of them. My primary objective now was to be one hundred percent sure that the diamonds were put on board the Belle Diamant before it left Cape Town to return to Europe. Once they were on board the yacht I could track them back to whatever port they landed at using the satellite tracking device fitted to the yacht.
In the meantime, if I used my electronic listening device to good effect, then I might not have to get too close to any of the people involved to gather the information I needed. I had changed the batteries in the device when I was in the UK and had brought plenty of replacements with me, so I should have plenty of listening time available to me.
By the time the plane touched down, I felt a lot more confident, and was ready to bring the South African sector of this investigation to a satisfactory conclusion. This confidence almost got me into trouble and could have been the end before the beginning. I collected my luggage off the carousal and was striding out into the arrivals area, when I spotted Moira Fortuin talking to her husband Jacques. He looked as if he had just arrived on a flight and was being picked up. There was another man with them who seem
ed also to have just arrived. Having recovered from my shock, I took a sharp left turn and vanished in behind a large family who were fortunately in the right place to hide me. Keeping my head down, I moved slowly away from the Fortuin’s until I was safely behind a pillar. I kept an eye on the exit door and soon saw the three of them go through the door, leaving me safe in the arrivals area.
Wow that was close! Luckily they had been talking in a close knit group when I had emerged through the sliding doors and hadn’t been looking around them. If I had come out through the doors before them, then the waiting Moira would have identified me. There weren’t many people around, it being a weekend, and she would have been looking closely at the people coming through, trying to find her husband. Recovering my luggage had delayed me, and, presumably, Jacques Fortuin wasn’t carrying any luggage, so he was out before me.
Shaken, I moved with exceptional care to the car rental desk, signed up for my car, and drove to the guest house. I dumped my bags before parking the car in the multistorey car park.
My intention had been to relax and recover from the journey, but I decided that it might be a better idea if I took my listening device out to Camps Bay and tried to find out whom their male guest was.
I remembered the way this time and managed to find my spot below the house without the aid of the friendly Tom Tom voice. Checking that there were no dogs around, I went up the path to the corner where I had hidden before. Unfortunately, it was raining, and my shoes and trousers were soaked through by the time I reached my hiding place. One advantage of the rain was that I doubted if the dog owners would be out walking their animals at this hour of the evening. I was unlikely to be troubled by cold nosed dogs.
I kept the sound turned up and pointed the device at the back rooms of the house where I saw activity.
‘Is that room alright for you Caas?’ a voice I took to be Moira Fortuin asked.
‘It’s perfect and has a marvellous view over the bay,’ the man replying had a strong accent, which I would bet on as being Dutch.
The Diamond Chain Page 15