I asked whether she was involved, or had been forced into driving the car and coaxing me out of the house. Adam shrugged. “We can’t be sure. She certainly knows Mchunu, who is some kind of business associate of her husband. She’s estranged from him – he lives in Durban and she’s based in Mthatha – but their businesses still seem to be linked. We’ll have to follow it up, but until we can speak to her, we can’t do much. That said, however, I doubt if she was involved in the killing of either her brother or her father. My guess is that Mchunu has some kind of hold over her – perhaps connected to her husband’s business, perhaps not – but only involved her in your kidnapping. She could plausibly turn up at your house.”
“And … and Thabo Mchunu?” I didn’t even want to mention his name. Uttering those words made him, and yesterday afternoon, too real.
“We’re holding him. He hasn’t been cooperative so far, and he’s a man with important political connections.” Adam rubbed his hand over his face. He was undoubtedly under pressure from his superiors to produce watertight evidence if he wanted to hold Mchunu, and eventually charge him with two murders. I asked if he was the killer, and Adam shook his head.
“No – he’s much too much of a Mr Big for that. But I’m certain he contracted the killers. And I have no doubt he would have been prepared to kill –.” The unspoken “you” echoed in my head. Adam leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “I should be getting a statement from you, Laura, about what happened yesterday, but I’ll give you the background.” He paused, and grinned at me, the smile lightening up his grim face and making me feel suddenly warmer. “You deserve it.”
And so Adam explained that early the previous morning, Durban police had arrested two men in a shack settlement on northern edges of the city. They were, in fact, the guys behind Flash Funerals, which operated, probably illegally and unlicensed, from the bakkie I had seen. Adam had gone down to Durban to interrogate them, and had arrested them on the spot on suspicion of Phineas Ndzoyiya’s murder and brought them back to the city. One had talked, and Adam had just taken a break from the interview when my call came through.
“I actually thought you had pressed the dial-out button by mistake, and I was about to disconnect when I heard you mention Thabo Mchunu. I listened, and realised what was happening: he must have got word from somewhere that we had arrested his hitmen and he was angry. He obviously saw you as a nuisance, and presumably called in Busi Dhlamini to take him to your house. And then, a few minutes after your call, Michael phoned Thembinkosi.”
Adam explained how he and the sergeant had been monitoring my phone. They hadn’t known what car we were in, but a traffic cop who had been at the bumper bashing that held us up phoned in, concerned by what she had seen, saying the passenger in the front seemed agitated, and that she had caught a glimpse of what might have been a firearm in his hands just as the car drove off. Thinking that maybe it was a hijacking, she managed to scribble down the registration number. Adam said they realised pretty quickly that we were heading for the N3, and they immediately got cars out looking. Fortunately, with that tip-off, they had been on our track almost right away.
“We were following, as discreetly as we could. No lights or sirens. But once you turned off the main road, we had to act. We had no idea where you were headed.”
I couldn’t help feeling that I might have been shot when the police appeared behind us, or killed when Busi smashed into what must have been a crash barrier of some kind. I suppose I would have been what the military and the cops cheerfully refer to as collateral damage. As it was, I had two spectacular bruises on my knees, probably from when I rolled out of the car, and the flaky feeling that comes when you realise you’re genuinely lucky to have survived.
Adam went on to tell me a bit more of what he had discovered. The whole Mendi connection was a red herring: Phineas Ndzoyiya had indeed felt strongly about it, and it was his initial argument about it with Mchunu that had made him do some research into the other man’s background to try to find out why he should have been so interested in a memorial on the Pondoland coast. He had uncovered a whole lot about Mchunu and his involvement in companies that were buying up land and putting together a consortium of shadowy, politically well-connected figures aiming to get a toehold into titanium mining, and make a fortune. The memorial gave him a plausible reason to visit the area as a civil servant involved in National Heritage. On the surface, the mining companies seemed to be Australia based, but what was going on behind the scenes would need a lot of forensic digging. I looked at Adam: I felt cynical about anyone’s chances of ever unravelling that kind of thing. It would need political will, and if Mchunu was really well connected in South Africa’s power structures, a provincial police force would be unlikely to get the access it would need to make anything stick. Mchunu was beginning to sound like one of the country’s Teflon men. I could testify that he had tried to kidnap me, and what he had said about me interfering in his plans, but a clever lawyer might be able to make that go away.
Adam explained that environmental assessments stated that the mining in the area would do irreparable damage: then there were others claiming it would be minimal, as long as a bit of rehabilitation was done. Phineas Ndzoyiya had methodically investigated the background of those involved, and was suspicious that one of the pro-mining reports had been paid for by a company linked to Mchunu. He was beginning to voice those suspicions in the Pondoland community, and although there was a body of opinion that wanted to see the mining go ahead, Phineas was beginning to get more people to ask more awkward questions. The mine and the arterial road that would have to be built to service it would disrupt communities and bring dubious advantages.
“When Mchunu suggested Daniel contact Phineas Ndzoyiya about the Mendi,” said Adam, “he was probably wondering whether there was something in it for him, some way of dealing with Ndzoyiya, or at any rate, keeping tabs on him. He knew Daniel was coming here, and would be around the university … I don’t think Rhoda Josephs was involved, but again, we’ll have to investigate. She’s a friend of Mchunu, and he probably asked her to be in court when Daniel appeared, but that’s all. But we’re pretty sure he spoke to Martin Shongwe, who is a cousin of his, and asked him to keep an eye on Daniel while he was on campus – which, of course, is how he heard that Daniel and Phineas had agreed to meet.
“When he heard Phineas was coming up from Durban to see Daniel, I reckon Mchunu decided it would be a good time to get him out of the way, once and for all. He sent his hitmen – the guys at Flash Funerals seem to have owed him for favours in the past – to murder Phineas. They picked him up from his son’s house, and probably killed him in their bakkie – the vehicle’s still with forensics, but if he was murdered in it, we’ll find out soon enough. Then Shongwe must have phoned Mchunu to say Daniel was planning to come to see you. According to the hitman who is now singing like a bird, Mchunu phoned him and told them to dump the body near your house, though probably without any real idea about how to make a link. But I’m sure he would have found a way to alert us to Daniel’s presence when the body was found. It was just lucky for him that Daniel found it himself – a bonus. That made us focus on the Mendi connection rather than anything else. And, of course, Daniel’s link with a bunch of immigrant vigilantes in Johannesburg, and his reluctance to talk to us didn’t help his cause. Maybe we were a bit too quick to arrest him – a Zimbabwean refugee who was known to the police.”
Adam sighed. “We’ve all made mistakes: it wasted time, but then, when you got into contact with Paul Ndzoyiya, Mchunu was concerned that more might come out, I suppose. And your remark about Flash Funerals got him worried.” For a moment, we sat in silence. I know I was contemplating my guilt, guilt for another death, guilt for all the worries I had caused. I have no idea what Adam was thinking … probably that he was exhausted.
Then Mike’s cellphone rang, and the moment was over. He went off to chat to one of his friends, and I got to my feet and offered to make Adam another cup of coffe
e. He nodded his thanks, and I headed into the kitchen, which was showing signs of a visit from my mother, smelling of bleach, looking spotless and devoid of the usual odds and ends that collect on the draining board. I would probably spend the next few weeks hunting for things.
When I went back into the studio, Adam was asleep, lying on the sofa. I set the mugs down and contemplated his neat form. Even in sleep, he looked tidy, dapper. Feeling suddenly protective, I took a deep blue mohair throw that hung over the back of a chair and spread it over him as gently as I could, careful not to disturb him. I caught a faint scent of soap from him: he had showered before coming to my house.
Mike walked back in, and stopped in the doorway. I motioned to him to be quiet, determined not to wake the exhausted man. He gave me a grin, more knowing than I expected, but all he said was: “Gives a whole new meaning to sleeping policeman, doesn’t it?”
Having a cop who is investigating a high-profile murder case fall asleep in your house is awkward. I sat down and looked out of the window, drinking my coffee and expecting Adam’s phone to ring at any moment and wake him. But nothing happened. Slowly, shadows from the trees edged their way across the grass, dry now, and showing the brownish patches of winter. The room was getting cooler, but I felt more peaceful than I had all day, despite – or maybe because of – the sleeping policeman. Mike came in again, and looked at Adam.
“What now?” he mouthed, reasonably.
“Dunno,” I shrugged. “I don’t want to wake him, but he can hardly stay here all night. If nothing else, Sergeant Dhlomo will probably come looking for him.”
Mike chortled, and I suddenly began to giggle. We struggled to keep quiet, but our spontaneous laughter was an enormous release of tension. And trying not to wake Adam made it even funnier. I began to feel as if my lungs would burst. Just as Mike headed for the kitchen to explode into loud guffaws, the phone rang.
I got up to answer it, tears running down my cheeks and battling to control my breathing. As so often in crisis moments, it was Simon. Told by Rory about yesterday, he felt it his duty to enquire if I was okay. Actually, since my telling Ms Tits to fuck off, my interactions with Simon had been friendlier than usual. I had no wish to go down that road and explore why. Anyway, he wanted to know if I was all right, and whether there was anything he could do. I’m not sure what the response would have been if I had said yes, but I didn’t. Mercifully, he didn’t ask why I sounded like someone recovering from a chronic attack of asthma.
When I hung the phone up and turned round, Adam was sitting up, looking embarrassed. He apologised profusely. Looking at his watch, he realised that he had been unconscious for the best part of two hours. “My God – I’m so sorry. I’ll have to go. The sergeant will be beginning to think I’ve been kidnapped too!” It was enough to start me laughing again, and after a surprised look, Adam joined in.
He left, assuring me he would be back to take my statement later.
36
IN FICTION, MURDER STORIES seem to end with the unmasking of the criminal. And that’s not surprising, considering that in real life the aftermath is mundane, bureaucratic and short on dramatic moments, though long on a dull feeling of unease. After the excitement of the arrests, there were statements to be made, and various court appearances for Mchunu and his two hitmen. None were given bail: one Flash Funerals’ man had talked and would be a state witness so was being kept inside for his own safety. Without what he was going to say, it might be hard to get a conviction. The other had no fixed address.
It seemed that Thabo Mchunu was considered a flight risk, and a threat to witnesses, though his attorney was working hard on bail appeals, and Robin informed me he thought that it would eventually be granted. After all, the trial was still months away. That gave me pause. Was I one of the people who could be vulnerable if he was a threat? I had had enough dealings with Mchunu to know what his threats felt like. I knew I would have to give evidence when he came up for trial, and that prospect was chilling enough. I would have to talk about that horrible afternoon with Mchunu and Busi Dhlamini. She was out of hospital, and, as far as I knew, had not been charged with anything, though presumably she had been interrogated. Maybe she had been an unwilling participant, though I couldn’t help feeling she had been a lot less unwilling than I had been.
I felt myself in a curious kind of limbo. It seemed that by the time anything made it to court, all the incidents would be so long in the past that I might not even be able to remember the order of events, or what had been said. Other traumas – the fear, the humiliation, the desperate sense of being torn from my children and unable to control my life – I found harder to forget.
I saw nothing of Adam Pillay. I had been surprised, and pleased, when, about three weeks after the first bail hearings, he phoned and asked me if I would have lunch with him one Sunday. He fetched me from home, and took me to the same coffee shop I had gone to with my parents on my birthday. Maybe I was reminded of the case, the aftermath of my previous visit, or maybe the situation was inherently awkward, but lunch was not a success.
We couldn’t discuss the case. After all, he was the investigating officer and I was both witness and victim: a player in the story. And although I found myself liking him more and more when I thought about him, in reality it was difficult to overcome the barrier the murders had erected: the ease I had felt with him the day we met in the plantations had dissipated, lost in the horror of it all. Conversation was stilted: too much was off limits and, under the circumstances, that exchange of information about ourselves and our likes and dislikes that forms the beginning and basis of most interactions between men and women was hardly an option. Both of us knew a smattering of intimate details about the other, and neither of us wished to probe further, but nor did we know how to circumvent them. And, although we parted as friends, it seemed that only the court case would bring us together again.
I was depressed. I followed my father’s advice, and had sought out a counsellor. Maybe it helped: I couldn’t be sure. I tried to concentrate on getting on with my life. Mrs Golightly had called me in for a lengthy and rather uncomfortable conversation. I told her there would be a trial, and that I would have to give evidence. She expressed sympathy, but made it clear that I was now expected to show more diligence than she felt I had been doing recently. Although she refrained from saying so, she did not expect her teachers to consort with murderers or murder suspects, or to find themselves in the witness box in high-profile cases. And to get kidnapped obviously smacked to her of a disorderly life. She irritated me, but I needed the job, so I bowed and scraped and returned diligently to my classroom.
I wondered whether, when Mike finished school and had left home, I should move away, make a fresh start somewhere else. But where to go was the problem. Johannesburg had all the disadvantages of a big city; Cape Town was home to Simon and Ms Tits, which put it off limits; my friends were here. So I didn’t pursue the idea. But I was aware that my life needed some kind of shot in the arm.
Epilogue
“HURRY UP, MA. WE’LL be late.” Rory stood juggling my car keys. Both boys were standing in the hall, waiting impatiently for me to appear. “I’ll drive so you can get as pissed as you like on the proceeds of your sales,” he went on.
“Fat chance of that. But okay. Off we go.”
We were headed for the opening of the exhibition. Vanessa and I had spent the previous day hanging it, and even if I have to say so myself, it was looking pretty good. Ness had put her networking skills into overdrive, and half the world seemed likely to be there. I would have been too diffident to ask many of the people she had contacted, but I had to admit I was glad she had done it.
The first people I saw when we walked in were Simon’s parents. His father gave me a hug and remarked on how good the work was; his mother smiled as if it hurt her (it probably did) and cornered the boys. But I was amazed that she had actually appeared. My parents were there as well, keeping their distance from their one-time fellow in-laws. D
ad whispered to me that one of my paintings already had a red sticker attached to it, pointing to the one of the china in a cupboard. At the same moment, Vanessa whirled up, hugged me and told me I had made the first sale of the night. Two of hers boasted green stickers, but mine had actually been paid for.
My father had bought most of the wine – it was significantly better than the usual chateau cardboard that all too often is dispensed at exhibition openings. I was touched that he had volunteered, and Ness had immediately taken him over, telling him what we would need, and the best place to get it. He had taken it all in good part, Ness being one of his favourites. I had a long conversation with Verne and Chantal. Verne was kind about the work, and slipping his hand into his jacket pocket, gave me an envelope.
“I was in Joburg for a meeting last week – another heritage one, with a major change of personnel as you can imagine – and I managed to slip out and see Daniel. He gave me this for you, and said he was sorry he couldn’t get down for tonight. But he’s got a job, working for a guy who makes water features and needs someone to paint the fake rocks, make them look real. He says it’s actually quite fun, and still leaves him time for his own work.” I started to say something, but Verne held up his hand. “I know, I know. It sounds terrible. But he needs to feel that he’s earning, and settling down a bit after what happened. Anyway, read his letter.” I thanked him and slipped it into my bag. Now was not the time.
The gallery director made his way over to the microphone and welcomed everyone to the exhibition, making kind remarks about Vanessa, Ben and me. Ness responded with her usual lively charm, telling everyone what a wonderful opportunity it was to buy art. We had agreed – or at least, I had – that she should be the person to speak. I’m not much on promoting myself in public, but it seems second nature to her. I had a feeling Ben had not been asked for his opinion. Verne then officially opened the show, and the party went on.
Just a Dead Man Page 21