Trackers

by Deon Meyer

  'The 900-metre?'

  Another nod.

  'What does that mean?'

  Snyders signalled the limit of his betrayal with a shake of the head. He would answer no more.

  'Who's buried there, KD? At the shooting range?'

  Silence.

  'What happened? How did you kill Flint?'

  The gangster turned his face away, stared at the wall.

  'Who left his car at Virgin Active?'

  Nothing.

  Until October said: 'I'll keep my side of the bargain, KD. But if you're lying to us ...'

  They stood up then. October phoned his station, told them to get manpower, there was digging to be done. Mat Joubert phoned his wife and told her not to stay up for him.

  It was going to be a long night.

  The first place they looked was on the farm in Philippi. They woke up the farmer, drove in convoy to the spot where October showed them to dig.

  Past two in the morning, in the lights of the SAPS patrol cars and the Forensics minibus, spooky shadows of police dogs barking, wagging their tails, sniffing and searching, the spades of the constables rising and falling. The houses of Westridge and Woodlands were only two kilometres away, Mitchells Plain was asleep. A dairy cow mooed in the distance.

  The cry came at seven minutes past three. Everyone put down their tools, and gathered at the spot. Torches and searchlights, while two men uncovered the bundle in the sand. A corpse, wrapped in what was once a black bedspread with a faded orange floral pattern.

  There was enough of the remains for Joubert to look at the face with the bullet hole between the eyes and say, 'That's him. That's Danie Flint.'

  Underneath the cocoon, a firearm. Johnny October had it carefully stowed in a plastic evidence bag.

  Joubert knew he should phone Tanya Flint. She had the right to know. But he allowed her a few more hours of sleep before turning her life upside down one more time.

  The search near Atlantis only began at a quarter past five, as the eastern horizon changed colour and the south-easter picked up, a bleak wind gusting small plumes of sand off the shovels.

  'The gate' in KD Snyders' minimalistic description was the main gate of the South African National Defence Force's Good Hope shooting range, permanently wide open, the only deterrent yellow warning signs with Ongemagtige toegang verbode, No unauthorised entry.

  And just inside the gate, on the left, the place where marksmen at 900 metres could fire at targets far to the right. It was a platform of concrete blocks, sand and gravel as high as Joubert's head. It stretched for easily twenty paces, and behind it, the 'corner' in KD's description, where two boundary fences and the platform made a triangle. A hundred and fifty square metres of grass-covered sand. It was a good place to bury a body, for when the SADF was not there, one person could easily keep an eye on the single access road, while two more prepared the soft sand out of sight behind the high platform.

  The uniforms from Atlantis and Table View, under direction of Thick and Thin, the Laurel and Hardy duo of Forensics, began to dig carefully at the northern boundary.

  Six o'clock came and went without success.

  At half past six, Joubert could postpone the phone call no longer.

  He went and sat in his car to get out of the wind, and phoned.

  She answered quickly, as though she had been up for ages.

  'Tanya, it's not good news.'

  The sound she made told him that, despite everything, she had still hoped.

  'I'm so sorry,' said Joubert, and he knew it was inadequate.

  'How did he die?'

  'He was shot.'

  There was silence over the phone. Eventually she asked: 'Who did it?'

  He played for time, said they didn't know enough yet, but before the day was over they should have the full picture.

  'I want to know,' she said.

  At ten past six they found the first body.

  It was a shallow grave, in the middle of the triangle, scarcely a metre below the fine sand.

  Joubert knelt beside October and Butshingi, watching the forensics team in the soft morning light carefully scrape away the sand from the body with their hand-brooms and brushes. Others were busy widening the hole, taking buckets of sand away to pour carefully in a heap.

  'A woman,' said October in surprise. Recognised by the sandals on her feet, the shape of her body. The grey-white sand clung to her. Forensics brushed it solemnly and carefully from her face. The features were unrecognisable, thanks to three bullet wounds. Only the long, black hair in a plait, undamaged.

  'They didn't even cover her.'

  A minute later a constable pulled the yellow bag out of the sand. October, wearing rubber gloves, opened it, found a woman's purse, and inside it, a driver's licence.

  'Cornelia Johanna van Jaarsveld,' October read out quietly.

  The surprise was the second body. It lay barely a metre from the woman, at the same depth, but with a black plastic bag wound tightly around his upper body. Only when forensics had cut it away, did October recognise him.

  'Jinne,' he said, astounded. 'It's Tweetybird.'

  Johnny October asked the SAPS Task Force to arrest Terrence Richard Baadjies and his chauffeur, Mannas Vinck, at Baadjies' house in Wynberg with a big show of force. And to bring them in in separate vehicles.

  In the Wynberg Police Station, at nine minutes past eleven, they kept the two of them apart. An imperious Terror Baadjies in one of the cells, where every now and then he shouted: 'I have the right to an attorney, you fucking Nazi cunts,' and then grinned smugly.

  They kept Vinck in the tea room, the only place they could question him.

  'I'm just the driver,' he kept saying. He was short, fast-talking, punctuating his speech with animated hand gestures. The face under the yellowish-white Panama hat was deeply lined. Tattoos on the sinewy arms.

  Butshingi and Joubert sat and listened. quietly and politely, October sketched the situation. 'You're in trouble now, Mannas, you're in a really deep hole.'

  'I'm just the driver.'

  'You're an accomplice, Mannas, to three murders. We have a video that links you. You know, the one Danie Flint was using to blackmail Terror? You're in it, large as life.'

  'I don't know Flint.'

  'You helped to bury him, Mannas, down at Montagu's Gift. But that's not even your biggest problem. You helped to murder Tweetybird. You won't last an hour in Pollsmoor. And that's where I'm going to send you now.'

  'I'm just the driver.' But the eyes were flitting back and forth now.

  'I'm taking you to Pollsmoor, and I'm going to show the video to all the inmates, Mannas. In slow motion.'

  'Jirre.' The hands were suddenly still.

  'But we can help each other, Mannas.'

  107

  'It was a buy,' said Mannas Vinck. 'But the whole thing was a fuck-up from the start.'

  He and Terror, KD Snyders and Tweetybird de la Cruz had driven out, past Atlantis, about ten kilometres beyond Mamre. It might have been the twenty-ninth of September, he couldn't remember. Terror and Tweetybird had argued over the 'partners', but they had deliberately never mentioned the partners' names, it was none of Vinck and KD's business.

  What partners, asked Johnny October.

  He didn't know, there were partners in the whole diamond deal, the Ravens were the middlemen, he was just the driver, he didn't want to know everything.

  And then?

  Then they went to do the buy, ten kilometres past Mamre, amongst the Port Jackson bushes. Buying klippies from a whitey bitch with a fucking gun in her hand and some fucking attitude, talking to The Bird like he was shit.

  The words bubbled out of Vinck, a slippery stream. He said Tweetybird had a bag with four million rand, the bitch wanted to see it, holding the fucking notes up to the sun as though she would know what counterfeit looked like. Then she showed the stones, a shit-house full.

  Then Terror hit her, right on the mouth with his fist. He took the gun away from her an
d he shot her between the fucking eyes and The Bird said what the fuck are you doing now and Terror turned around and shot The Bird in the heart with the bitch's gun, three shots, and he, Mannas, and KD Snyders stood there and they had no words, Terror had just shot Tweetybird, the fucking Boss of the Ravens. But then Terror said, don't look so fucking scared, load them in the fucking boot, what did you think was going to happen when he was sitting in Bolivia? Are we going to take orders from Moegamat Perkins? Is that what you want, from that cunt who got The Bird into this shit in the first place?

  Then we loaded up and drove away, the bitch's car is probably still there, if the fucking thing hasn't been stolen a long time ago. And then the bus buggered into us, just past the shooting range.

  Vinck said Terror first thought it was the bus driver who was blackmailing them.

  Then they found out who it was, someone knew a chlora at ABC, Santasha Somebody, but when KD Snyders confronted the driver with his brass knuckles, they saw, it wasn't him, it was the fucking supervisor with the red Audi. Then Terror said they must handle this thing very carefully because if it came out that they had shot The Bird, it would be total war. And Mannas Vinck thought, what shit is this, he hadn't shot anyone, but what could he do? Then Terror said, pay the supervisor, we don't need the attention of a whitey murder. So Mannas had to take the plastic bag of money and put it in the shit-house tank of the Atlantic Sports Pub in Table View, like the whitey said.

  But then it was a fuck-up when the whitey phoned and said he wanted more.

  Then Terror paid again, but he knew, the whitey wasn't going to stop. So they tailed him, three weeks, and made their plans. So somewhere late October, KD Snyders hijacked the whitey in his red Audi at the stop street where Bramwell joined Railway Street in Woodstock. They dragged him out and put him in Terror's Mercedes. Vinck drove the Audi to Virgin Active in Table View himself. Then he wiped it clean and took four fucking taxis to get back to Rosebank.

  Then they shot the whitey with the bitch's gun and buried him there beside the dune.

  Mat Joubert sat in Tanya Flint's home, at the dining-room table. Fatigue weighed him down. He wanted to shower, eat, sleep, it was nearly three in the afternoon.

  She came back from the kitchen with the coffee mugs on a tray, her movements slow and mechanical, put it down in front of him. Sat down opposite him, her hands on the table. Silent. There was weariness in her eyes, far greater than his.

  And loss.

  POSTSCRIPT

  108

  WOMAN'S BODY AT ATLANTIS:

  Mystery over tracker deepens.

  CAPE TOWN. - SAPS detectives are still baffled by the involvement of Cornelia Johanna van Jaarsveld (28), a professional tracker from Nelspruit, with crime gangs from the Cape Flats and an alleged illegal diamond transaction.

  Van Jaarsveld's body was found last week beside that of the murdered gang boss Willem 'Tweetybird' de la Cruz in a shallow grave at the SADF shooting range near Atlantis.

  Supt. Johnny October, leader of the investigation team, admitted to Die Burger that 'we are still looking for a great many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle'...

  Die Burger, 19 February 2010

  1 March 2010. Monday.

  He hung his degree on the wall of his new office in the Centre Point building in Milnerton, the MA in Police Science that he had earned ten years earlier. He wondered if that wasn't bragging too much.

  Then he took a step back. Margaret had made the place look really nice. An old, used red and blue Persian carpet, the antique desk she had sniffed out in a shop in Plumstead. Along with the stylish pair of mahogany and leather chairs for visitors.

  On the desk was a laptop. Beside it lay his writing pad, bought at CNA. An Oregon pine bookshelf against the wall with his Police Science textbooks, and a photo of him, Margaret and the children. And on the glass door, just:

  Mat Joubert

  Investigations

  He shifted the framed certificate so that it hung level, heard a knock on the door. Probably Telkom, coming to connect the phone.

  'Come in.'

  A man opened the door, medium height, almost colourless hair, cut short.

  'Mat Joubert?' he asked.

  'That's right.'

  He closed the door behind him, came closer, put out his hand. 'I am Lemmer.' The grip was strong.

  Not Telkom's man, Joubert thought. There was something about the sinewy, physical ease, the watchfulness of the cool eyes that reminded him of a predator. He knew this sort. Mostly trouble. He had worked with them, he had arrested some, usually with difficulty.

  The man reached for his pocket, took out a piece of paper and unfolded it - a newspaper clipping, which he held out. Joubert took it and looked at it.

  Mystery over tracker deepens, the heading read. He recognised it, his name was also in it, more than a week ago.

  'I have information,' Lemmer said.

  Joubert looked up. 'You'll have to give that to the police.'

  Lemmer shook his head. 'No.'

  Joubert folded the clipping up again, gave it back to the man, walked to his chair. 'Then you'd better sit down.'

  On the other side of the desk he took something else out of his pocket, put it down and pushed it closer to Joubert. 'Is that her?'

  On semi-glossy paper, a photo of a young girl, torn out of a black- and-white publication, maybe a school yearbook because she was in uniform. The long black hair was held back with an Alice band, pretty face. The small smile betrayed a rebelliousness, a challenge.

  Joubert picked it up in his big fingers, studied the features. Tried to compare it to the disfigured face he had seen at the shooting range in Adantis. There was a strong resemblance.

  'Maybe.'

  'Did she have a small red birthmark, just behind her left ear?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Can you find out?'

  Joubert nodded. 'I can. Did you know her?'

  'No.'

  Joubert looked up from the photo, querying.

  'Her name is Helena Delfosse. She has the birthmark. She was last seen on the twenty-first of September in Nelspruit, at the clothing boutique where she works. In the presence of her cousin, Cornelia Johanna van Jaarsveld, also known as Flea. And I suspect Delfosse was in Loxton in the Bo Karoo some time during the night of September twenty-sixth to pick up Flea.'

  Joubert studied the man again. 'How are you involved?'

  The grey-green eyes drifted to the degree certificate on the wall. Then Lemmer got to his feet. 'You can keep the photo. Her parents' address is on the back.' He turned and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back. 'The newspaper didn't say what firearm was involved ...'

  Joubert did not react, just folded his arms.

  He saw the glimmer of a suppressed smile on Lemmer's face, then the man came back slowly, put his hands on the back of the mahogany chair. 'I was in a truck with Flea van Jaarsveld for eighteen hours. Coincidence, chance circumstances. It was long enough for her to lie, cheat and steal from me. I went looking for her, to get my stuff back.'

  Joubert folded his arms. 'And did you?'

  'No.'

  'What was her driver's licence doing in Delfosse's bag?

  Lemmer deliberated before he answered. 'In Nelspruit they say Helena Delfosse was the tamer version of Flea - a little wild, a little rebellious, but never overboard. Just enough to be the favourite grandchild of her grandpa, big Frik Redelinghuys. The same grandfather who refused to recognise Flea. The cousins had no contact with each other the last ten years. Until August last year. When Flea walked into the boutique.'

  'What are you saying?'

  'I'm saying the driver's licence was no accident. With Flea nothing is accidental.'

  Joubert digested that. Then he said: 'The firearm in the Atlantis case has been ballistically connected to the one that was found under the body of Mr Danie Flint near Mitchells Plain. It was a Beretta 92 Vertec.'

  A shadow crossed Lemmer's face, unfathomable.

&nb
sp; 'Thank you.' And he walked back to the door.

  Joubert began to understand. 'You're going to stay on her trail.'

  'If I can find it.'

  'You're looking for trouble.'

  Lemmer opened the door. 'I don't look for it.' And just before he left: 'It finds me.'

  BEST-SELLER'S SUCCESS BUILT ON RUMOURS OF TRUTH

  Did Osama Bin Laden get medical treatment in South Africa?

  'Nonsense,' says the publisher. 'It's pure fiction.' But the author refuses to comment, and expert opinion maintains that the success of the thriller, A Theory of Chaos, can be ascribed to the persistent rumours that writer Milla Strachan based it on the truth. The book recently became the number one best-seller in South Africa.

  A photo of Strachan, a former housewife from Durbanville, appeared in the Sunday papers in October 2009, along with that of the missing former navy diver and anthropologist Lukas Becker. Becker was wanted at the time by the SAPS in connection with unspecified, serious crimes, and was described as 'armed and dangerous'. The authorities published a statement shortly afterwards, admitting that Strachan's supposed involvement was 'an administrative error', and offered her a public apology.

  The book's main male character, Markus Blom, is an ex-soldier and archaeologist. The story is told from the perspective of a housewife from the Northern suburbs (Irma Prinsloo) who accepts a position at the now-disbanded Presidential Intelligence Agency - and is involved in an international terrorist plot where Osama Bin Laden is smuggled into South Africa for emergency medical treatment.

  A spokesperson for the new, united SA State Security Agency declined to comment, and said, 'SASSA does not react to fiction'. According to the CIA's website, Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, is still thought to be in hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The United States Consulate in Cape Town did not respond to further questions.