by Deon Meyer
In the morning Margaret was cheerful. As he ate his yoghurt and muesli, she said: 'You know, I've been thinking. All this moving around, all the trouble with the building contractors, the property market, buyers in and out of the house, any time of the day. Maybe it's time for a change.'
'What do you mean?'
'I was out in Constantia yesterday, and I was standing there, looking at this tired old house, thinking what it was going to take to fix it all up, going through it all again, and I asked myself, why? Do I really want to? Do we really need to? Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I need something entirely new, but I just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for it.'
'No,' he said. 'You're not getting old.'
She kissed his cheek. 'There's money in the bank. And I like this house. It's perfect for us. And I like Milnerton. It's ... central, we're close to everything, the neighbours are nice ... I'm happy ...'
He nodded, not sure where she was going.
'Start your own agency,' she said.
'My own?'
'Mat, these last few days ... It was like the old days again. You were so immersed. Despite Jack Fischer, you were enjoying it.'
'That's true.'
'So, start your own agency. You're a detective. It's what you do. Do it for yourself. I know, it will take a while to generate the income, but we're comfortable, financially.'
'Margaret,' he said seriously. 'You're not just saying that because I'm a bit down?' 'You know me better than that.'
It was true. He nodded.
'I can help. Do the books, answer the phone, decorate the office.'
'I...'
'And besides, I've always wanted to be a Pi's babe.'
'You are ...'
'A private dick's dame. A gum-shoe's gun moll. A sleuth's skirt...'
He smiled.
'A shamus's broad, or dame, or chippy...'
She kept on. Until he laughed.
100
Back at the office you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. The silence hung oppressively. Fischer and Delport were in consultation, behind closed doors. Mildred, the receptionist, scarcely greeted him.
He sat down at his computer, brought the project up-to-date, made sure everything was correct so that Jack couldn't point an accusing finger at anything. Then he walked out, to Greenmarket Square, went and sat in a coffee shop, so he could think things through.
He knew where the gaps in his knowledge lay, but he wasn't sure how to fill them.
Danie Flint had spent the greatest part of his day at work. He operated his secret life from there, the bank account and the Yahoo email. And it was in his working hours that he had found the financial opportunity. Had to, Tanya was dead sure she would have known if it came from somewhere in their social circle.
But how? What was it that he didn't know about Flint's daily tasks, his routine?
Hard to say. Because Neville Philander, the overworked, frenetic, telephone-answering Operational Manager, never had the time to give him the detail. And Philander sat with all the information, the personal contacts, the first-hand experience. How would he get him to share that calmly?
He outlined his plan as he drank the coffee, then he took out his cellphone and made the call.
Bessie Heese was in a meeting. He asked her to phone him back urgently. He couldn't drink more coffee, he'd had two cups at home as well, but he didn't want to go back to the office. He paid his bill and left, thought of lingering in Clarke's Bookshop, there was nothing else to do.
Heese phoned before he reached Long Street.
He described the situation with Neville Philander.
She was businesslike, faintly irritated. 'Didn't we ascertain that the money didn't come from us?'
'We only ascertained that it wasn't your money. I can't remove his work environment from my list yet. I'm only asking for an hour or two of Philander's time. Away from the office.'
She countered. 'That is the nature of Mr Philander's job. He has a central managerial role.'
'I know. But he's the one who can help.'
He deduced from her silence that she was weighing things up. 'Very well,' was the reluctant response. 'Can he come to your office?'
They met at the Wimpy on St George's. Joubert drank tea, Philander a cappuccino, and exclaimed to Heaven when Joubert told him about the money. 'No way, he couldn't have stolen it from us.' Then, dumbfounded, he wiped the milky foam from his upper lip.
'I know. But the chances are good that in some or other way in the course of his duties he spotted the opportunity.'
'He only works the bus routes,' said Philander, shaking his head. 'Tell me where he could scratch out that kind of money.'
'Tell me exactly how he worked.'
'I did tell you.'
'I want detail.'
'Like in every hour of the day?'
'Please.'
'It's not gonna help you.'
'Then I can rule it out.'
Philander stared out of the window, in no mood for this conversation. He shrugged. 'If Aunt Bessie says talk to the PI, I suppose a man's got to do it.'
'She's a bit of a Nissan,' said Joubert.
Philander laughed. 'That's the truth.' He sipped at his cappuccino, took a deep breath, and said, 'OK. Danie Flint. Typical working day. Leave home, half past six, seven o'clock, doesn't go to the office, goes directly to his areas, drives along his routes. Every day a different routine, to keep the drivers on their toes. Milnerton, Montagu Gardens, Killarney, Du Noon, Richwood, Table View, Blouberg, Melkbos, Atlantis, in no specific order. Too much to cover in one day, so the idea is to cover your whole area in two or three days.'
'In his Audi?' He wanted to see it in his mind's eye, exactly how it was.
'That's right.'
'Sticking exactly to the bus routes.'
'That's it. The routes of choice, for that day.'
'Can you give me the routes?'
'Do you want to drive them?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Sure.'
'Why must he drive the routes every day?'
'To check if the driver is keeping to schedule. Are they on time? How they drive, how full the buses are. He's there if a bus breaks down, or is in an accident. He scouts new routes, where there are people standing waiting for taxis, and he looks for opportunities, he checks how the routes can be improved.
'Then around eleven the area managers come back to the office. To do the admin. Write up the notes from the morning, record and process accidents and mechanical problems. Handle driver infringements. Check fuel figures, new drivers trained and started on the job, answer emails, fine-comb DRMP logistics, read bulletins, attend meetings, it's mostly the same, every day.
'Then, around three o'clock, it's back on the routes, exactly the same story, for precisely the same reasons. There's no time to snooze, no time to make big bucks, it's just not possible.'
'He got the money somewhere,' said Joubert.
'Maybe he inherited. And he didn't want to tell Tanya.'
'Inherited money doesn't come in cash.'
'Fair enough.'
'Were you ever an area manager?'
'I was,' said Philander.
'Imagine you needed a lot of money. Cash. Urgently. You have to get it, even if you have to steal, let's say your wife is in hospital...'
'You mean, where would I steal it at work?'
'Or in the work environment.'
Philander drank the last of his cappuccino while he pondered.
'There's only one place. The big ticket office. But you would need two or three other men, walk in there with guns and masks, and rob the place.'
'No other possibilities?'
'Not for big bucks.'
Joubert hid his disappointment. 'Another cappuccino?'
'Aren't we just about finished?'
He wasn't sure if there was anything else. He thought back over everything Philander had said. One thing stood out. 'The DRMP, tell me what that stands for again?'
'Driver Risk Management Pr
ogramme.'
'Is that the thing that caused the strike?'
'Just so.'
'But it's a computer program. Why would they strike over that?'
'It's much more than a computer system.'
'Oh?'
'It's a long story.'
Joubert nodded. He had the time.
Philander sighed. 'Maybe we better order more coffee.'
101
'It's all about the DriveCam.'
'The DriveCam?'
'In 2007, we were the first depot where Mr Eckhardt and them experimented with the new system, because we are the smallest. And the best, even if I have to say so myself. The thing works like this: every bus gets a video camera up front, here by the rear-view mirror. The DriveCam. One eye looks forward, and one eye looks back, and there's a hard drive inside. Now, obviously the camera doesn't put everything from morning to night on the hard drive. It's on all the time, and it records everything, but it's got like a motion detector and a little computer thingy inside, if the bus jerks, then it saves image and audio, ten to fifteen seconds before the event, and ten to fifteen seconds after, depending on the severity. Are you with me?'
Joubert said he thought so. But didn't a bus jerk a lot?
'Look, I say "jerk" for explanatory purposes. The motion sensor works with what they call "inertia". You know about G-forces? Now, that's the thing. If the driver donners into something, then it's negative G-force, negative inertia, then your DriveCam records. If he brakes helluva sharply, or accelerates too quick. Even if your driver goes around the corner too fast, then the sensor registers, and it saves the video ...'
'Why include cornering?'
'Why? When do you go around the corner too fast, my bro'? When?'
'Tell me.'
'When you run a red robot, that's when.'
'Aah ...'
'Now we come to the mind-blowing part. When that bus comes back to the depot tonight, then all those bits of video of the jerks automatically download wirelessly onto our server. Just like that, when the bus drives in the gate, you see? And that server is connected to the Internet, it sends all those clips to America, because that's where the system was developed. The Americans have software that analyses it all, and they email those video clips of trouble back to the area manager. The serious stuff, like accidents, are cc-ed to me and Mr Eckhardt.'
'Let me just make sure I understand,' said Joubert. 'If the bus accelerates or brakes too fast, the camera records it...'
Philander nodded. 'With a back and front view. You can see what the driver is doing, and you can see what is happening in the road.'
'And at your gate it sends it via a radio signal to a computer, that mails it to America.' In disbelief.
'More like a wireless transmission, like a cellphone. It's high tech, my brother, you've got to open your mind to understand it. But it's not just people looking at it in America, it's software that first detects if it was an ugly thing, then the analysers look at it...'
'And have you received any videos like that?'
'Lots. Last month a driver hit a pedestrian, and when we looked at the video, we saw the driver bend down and take his cellphone out to make a call. Then he hit the pedestrian. We fired his gat, in twenty-four hours, because what could he say? There was the evidence. In Technicolor.'
Insight: 'That's why the drivers went on strike.'
'Right. The union said it was unconstitutional, invasion of privacy. But the fact of the matter is, it actually protects them. Because there are a lot of accidents when those cunts with their expensive German cars cut in front of the bus, that class of thing, because everybody hates a bus, never mind that it's taking the poor people to work, the fat cats don't think that way. Anyway, we use the videos for training, your drivers get better and better. And the big thing is, collision damage is down sixty per cent, my bro', sixty per cent! And traffic fines also. You don't just save money, you save time, you've sixty per cent less grief too, that's the thing. And you can reward the drivers who have a clean record, because there's more money for a pay rise.'
'So Danie got the videos every afternoon?' A possible source for the 400,000 rand stirred in the back of his head.
'He checked them in the afternoon, but they come in the morning already. Tonight the server sends it to America, tomorrow eleven o'clock when Danie clocks in at his PC, the emails are waiting for him. If there was big shit, Mr Eckhardt would have phoned me already, and I would have phoned Danie next, so the stuff he checked in the afternoon was run-of-the-mill stuff, stuff that he would have to take up with his drivers. You know, careless driving, doing stupid things. That's the stuff he would talk through with his drivers in the afternoon.'
'It's a lot of power to have ...'
'I'm not following you.'
'The videos. Danie Flint had the power every day to fire drivers. Because he had proof. Like you say. In Technicolor.'
'So?'
'How many drivers did he supervise?'
'About eighty.'
'And what does a bus driver earn?'
'Depending on the overtime, between four and six a month.'
'Six thousand?' while he did the calculations in his head.
'That's it.'
'Very well. Let's say Flint begins to say to the drivers, I've got the evidence, I'm going to fire you, but if you give me a thousand, I'll drop it.'
Philander thought about it, but soon shook his head. 'No, it wouldn't work.'
'Why not?'
'A thousand rand? A week's pay? Most of the drivers couldn't afford that, that guy would run to the union to complain so fast you would just see a blur.'
'Make it less. Five hundred. Two-fifty.'
'With all due respect, you're thinking about two-fifty with a Whitey brain. These are people with a wife and a bunch of kids, payments on the house and the car, school fees ...'
'But if you lose your job, you have nothing.'
Still the head shake. 'Let's do the sums. Maybe three or four serious incidents a week. At two-fifty a pop, you're getting a thousand rand a month with your extortion. Now it would take you ... about 400 months to get to 400,000 rand. Let's double the income, then it's 200 months ...'
His theory collapsed. 'That's true.'
'I'm telling you, that money isn't coming from ABC. There's no way.'
Joubert wasn't ready to give up, he grasped at a straw. 'May I look at his material? The actual videos?'
Philander looked sceptical. 'That's union trouble. Confidential stuff. I'll have to phone Mr Eckhardt...'
'I'd appreciate that very much.'
'Are we finished now?'
'We're finished now.'
He knew he would have to return to the office some time or other, but he hoped Philander would soon get permission for him to go through the DRMP statistics, so that he had an excuse.
He walked to Long Street, went and stood in front of the science fiction shelves at Clarke's, but found nothing he wanted to read. Fantasy was all the rage these days, and he had tried it, but to no avail.
Inspector Fizile Butshingi phoned him after eleven. 'Nothing that will help us. I've checked everything. Cash-in-transit heists are the only possibilities. And they don't fit.'
Joubert thanked him.
'Anything new on your side?' Butshingi asked.
'Not really. I'll let you know.' And then a light went on and he said quickly before the detective rang off: 'Inspector, could you tell me, were there any in-transit robberies in the area north of the N1 ?' Reconsidered, made the area larger: 'And west of the N7. Or on the N7. Montagu Gardens, Milnerton, Richwood, all the way up to Atlantis ...'
'Why there?'
'That's where Flint's bus routes ran.'
'It's a stretch,' said Butshingi.
Maybe not. But Joubert just said: 'I want to cover all the bases.'
'I'll get back to you.'
Seven minutes, and his cellphone rang again. It looked like Bessie Heese's number. He answered.
'M
r Joubert, my name is Francois Eckhardt. I am the Managing Director of ABC. Do you have a moment?'
'Of course.'
'Mr Joubert, you will excuse me, but I'm going to be frank with you. Up to now we have done everything in our power to accommodate you. For the sake of Mrs Flint. But I am at the point now where I must begin putting the interests of the company, and all its other employees, first. Especially when it comes to the DRMP records, I have to protect the confidentiality of the bus drivers' performance information, and be very careful not to violate our agreement with the union. We can't afford another strike. I hope you understand ...'
'I understand,' he said, but his heart sank.
'We can grant you access to the system, but you will have to sign a confidentiality agreement with the company. No records may leave our premises, no information may be made public. Unless you have my written permission. And now I must say that I think you will be wasting your time, that system misses nothing - but if you identify any indication of misconduct by ABC employees, however insignificant, you must immediately and personally bring it to my notice. I will make my cellphone number available to you.'
He weighed up the implications. 'Even if I sign it... If there is evidence of a crime, we will have to hand it over to the police. That's the law.'
'Mr Joubert, all crimes that have been demonstrated by the system have already been communicated to the police. That is not a factor. Are you prepared to sign?'
He wondered if it was worth the trouble, aware that he was desperate. Perhaps he was holding too tightly onto his theory that the money and Flint's job were somehow connected. But he owed it to Tanya to be thorough, to follow the statistics and a vague notion to the bitter end.
'I am.'
Before he reached the ABC depot, Butshingi let him know there was one in-transit robbery in the broader Flint area. 'But does Century City count?'
'I'm not sure. Do you have details?'
'Nineteen September, ten o'clock in the morning, on Century Boulevard ...'
Joubert felt the small injection of adrenaline. It fitted his timeline perfectly.
'... between Waterford and Waterhouse Boulevards. Seven men, two vehicles. More than 800,000 in cash taken. The transit driver was killed.'