‘Look!’ Parwaiz exclaimed delightedly, and when Farah followed his finger pointing to the sky she discovered the large banner high above the square: a replica of an age-old image depicting a young woman waving an Afghan flag.
‘Malalai!’ Parwaiz called out her name at the top of his lungs, as if he’d just bumped into an acquaintance he hadn’t seen in years.
Farah recognized the painting of Malalai from her childhood visits to the National Museum. Suddenly she remembered the prediction Parwaiz had whispered in her ear at the time.
‘Dar ayenda to mesle u mashhur khahad shodi.’ One day you’ll be just as famous as her.
Thinking of the old days and seeing the large banner gliding through the air had the unexpected effect of making her feel like the timid little girl she’d once been, especially when Parwaiz’s long arms enveloped her in a fatherly embrace.
‘Thank you, dokhtarem, for all of this,’ he said softly.
‘No, no, don’t thank me, dear uncle. Tashakor az shoma!’ I ought to thank you! she stammered.
‘Would you believe,’ Parwaiz began as they carried on walking, ‘that in the sixties and seventies Kabul was known as the Paris of the East? There was a sense of promise in the air. Nobody can imagine it these days, but that’s how it was.’ He turned around. ‘The people who organized the get-together this afternoon must have known.’
They had now reached the entrance to Parliament. Farah looked at the mostly young men and women around them. The majority of them were Afghan, sons and daughters of Afghan fathers who’d been civil servants during the Russian occupation. Like Parwaiz. Fathers who’d sought asylum in the Netherlands with their families and who’d found themselves caught up in all kinds of legal proceedings. Like Parwaiz.
What was it like for a child to see its own father branded a war criminal? She hoped that the young adults around her were just as proud of their fathers as she was of hers. She cherished the memory of him as her hero.
Farah was jolted from her thoughts by the sudden appearance of a blond cameraman. He peered through his viewfinder with his left eye squeezed shut and with the other eye shot some footage of her and Parwaiz. Behind him stood a thick-set sound engineer, bald as a coot. He was recording the ambient sounds using a microphone with a grey plastic popper on a long boom pole. Farah smiled at the camera and then glanced at a flustered Parwaiz. She was curious to see how she looked alongside kaka jan on this special day. Maybe the festivities would even make the evening news.
Having taken his shot, the cameraman spun on his heel like a professional dancer, bent his knees a little and walked away from them, into the crowd, holding the camera steady and straight. The soundman followed right behind.
The television crew was headed in the same direction as most of the bystanders, as though pulled by a magnet. At the same time, she sensed a growing excitement sweeping through the crowd like a gust of wind. At the entrance to the Parliament building people were crowding around a man in his forties with cold blue eyes and a square jaw. Dressed in a well-fitting navy pinstripe suit, he looked like he’d stepped straight out of a fashion spread. Farah immediately recognized Vincent Coronel, the most controversial leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives. The frontman of the right-wing Democratische Partij Nederland was firmly opposed to the introduction of the general pardon. Several camera teams and photographers had gathered around him, and flanked by two burly bodyguards Coronel spoke passionately into the extended microphones. The vast majority of the onlookers tried to drown him out by jeering and chanting slogans, but Coronel took no notice and continued, illustrating his argument with firm gestures. Whichever way you looked at it, Coronel was no coward. He wasn’t doing this in a little pressroom somewhere, or at an inconspicuous back entrance. No, he was standing here, as he put it himself, ‘in the heart of democracy, on the square where William of Orange, this country’s founding father, now faces the sorry sight of multiculturalists frittering away our national heritage!’
Farah thought that Coronel’s behaviour didn’t show courage as much as boundless arrogance and she hoped the people around her would have the good sense to refrain from doing anything stupid in response to his provocation. It only took a single unhinged person to give Coronel the ammunition to start harping on about the ‘lack of respect for our Dutch values in most immigrant circles’.
She noticed that Parwaiz was starting to feel uncomfortable amidst the jostling, and decided to return to the relative peace and quiet of the square. She was about to cross the road when Parwaiz grabbed her by the arm. It was immediately clear why: an approaching silver Bentley. Although the car wasn’t going very fast, it moved the way she’d once seen Russian tanks moving through the streets of Kabul, without any intention of stopping.
‘Bachem, watch out.’
She saw that the Bentley, which glided past majestically, was driven by a chauffeur in a dark-grey uniform. As the car passed, Parwaiz’s paternal grip suddenly turned into a painful, cramped grasp. Horrified, he stared at the unfamiliar man in the rear. He clutched his chest with both hands, as if wanting to tear his shirt to shreds, and uttered an almost animalistic yell, which cut through Farah like a knife.
As his knees buckled, Parwaiz’s face drained of colour and he started retching. He panted for help. He seemed absolutely horror-stricken, and when Farah broke his fall, he felt as fragile as a glass sculpture splintering from within. She managed to gently lower him on to the pavement, where he lay writhing in pain and began vomiting.
She rolled him on his side to prevent him from choking. His brown skin had turned ashen, and he could barely utter a word. Farah wiped the vomit from his face and supported his head with her other hand. Then she sat up and yelled as loud as she could for someone to phone an ambulance.
Very few people had a clue what was happening. It was too busy. The band on the square kept playing and the kites were still dancing up in the air.
Although he was now barely breathing, Parwaiz tried to pull her close. As Farah bent over him, she brought her ear as close as possible to his mouth. He produced some soft, incoherent sounds.
‘Don’t talk, kaka jan. Don’t try to talk.’
But he pulled her close again and whispered hoarsely in her ear.
‘Mi … ka … lov …’
Practically emotionless, like a statement. As if those three sounds could explain what had happened.
‘Mikalov? Kaka jan, what do you mean?’
He looked at her without reacting.
With eyes that were devoid of life.
11
In the last light of the setting sun, Paul saw a bloody hand appear above the edge of the fiftieth floor. Then the second hand appeared, and a moment later he was staring straight into the eyes of the man with the smashed-up face.
His yelling alerted the night nurse who ran into the room where Paul, connected to tubes, was lying amidst the beeping hospital monitors. When he opened his eyes again, it was morning and there was a young black man in a white shirt beside his bed looking at him as if he’d just been told a bad joke.
The man introduced himself as Elvin Dingane, Homicide detective. He was curious about what Paul had been doing in the dilapidated Ponte City tower complex.
Paul wasn’t sure he could trust Dingane, although everything about him suggested he was an extremely committed and conscientious detective. Somebody who was used to getting down to business. A man who radiated confidence, with even a bit of empathy in his eyes – something you rarely saw in men who performed the thankless job of detective.
‘Does the name Thaba Zhulongu mean anything to you?’ Dingane asked.
‘Who?’
‘Thaba Zhulongu, Senior Defence Official.’
From a brown leather folder, Elvin Dingane pulled a black-and-white photo of a civilized-looking black man with a friendly smile.
‘Is this Zhulongu?’ Paul asked.
‘When he was still in one piece,’ said Dingane. ‘He leaves a young wif
e and three children behind. We found what was left of him splattered on the ground-floor rubble in Ponte City.’
Paul felt the panic race through his body again and his head began to throb violently.
‘The Scorpion Unit doesn’t consider you a suspect, Mr Chapelle,’ Dingane calmly said. ‘It’s clear to us that you walked into a trap; you should count yourself lucky that you survived.’
The Scorpions were considered the most successful opponents of organized crime in the whole of South Africa. Paul gave Dingane another inquiring once-over and decided not to beat about the bush with him.
‘If it’s the same man,’ Paul said, looking at the photograph, ‘then, when I found him tied to that pillar, there wasn’t much left of him.’ He let out a laboured breath. ‘He’d been tortured. Then they hurled him to the bottom of the tower to show me what they do to snitches.’
‘It was Zhulongu,’ said Dingane. ‘We were able to identify him by his dental records. Because of his murder, we’ve been ordered to launch a full-scale investigation into the affairs of Jacob Nkoane’s ministry.’
‘Damn,’ Paul said, grinning. ‘It gets better all the time.’
‘The good news is that the majority of the ANC’s leaders are trustworthy people, Mr Chapelle, who’ve all demanded that the corruption be investigated and fought at the highest levels of government. The bad news is that we’re unable to offer you any form of protection. That beating you got in Ponte City was a warning. If you carry on with your inquiry, after the next article we’ll probably find you somewhere in an alley, under a bridge, or in a landfill. And I can assure you there will be far less life in you compared to now.’
‘So you’re asking me to abandon my investigation?’
‘I’m asking you to leave the investigating to us now.’
‘I’ll have to give that some thought,’ Paul said curtly, as he sunk deep into his pillow and closed his eyes.
12
Walking the line on a crime scene required the utmost in concentration: a kind of tunnel vision. You had to continually scrutinize the few square metres right in front of you, until you saw something out of the ordinary. The detectives formed a line and slowly walked in formation from the hill where the villa was situated through the woods towards the road. A controlled march of silent men with their faces pointed downwards, no further than an arm’s length apart from each other, their eyes searching for possible variations in colour, different shapes and footprints. Any evidence to corroborate that a young boy dressed as a girl in traditional Afghan attire had possibly run for his life here.
Joshua Calvino was walking the line on the right, alongside Marouan Diba. He was having trouble concentrating on the matter at hand. In twenty-four hours he’d seen his partner change from a bitter but reliable colleague into an out-of-control, bad-tempered enigma. Suddenly Diba was a shadow of the detective he’d once been.
From the very first moment Joshua had started working with him, he knew he’d need to be tough as nails. He’d have to be able to endure Diba’s moods and get used to the underlying threat posed by his partner’s pent-up anger. Joshua had been forewarned. Yet, as a junior detective he was determined to learn a lot from the renowned Marouan Diba, who’d scored on several fronts early in his career.
Diba’s reputation preceded him. As a policeman, he’d ended up in the limelight by carrying out an impressive number of heavy-handed arrests of Moroccan youngsters in Amsterdam. Remarkably, because of this, these youngsters grew to respect him, and eventually made him their confidant. If there was something or other in the air, police command sent Diba to check it out. And nine times out of ten he managed to put to rest yet another conflict about to erupt between the neighbourhood’s immigrant and Dutch residents.
A few years later, he even shot to national attention. He led an investigation team at Schiphol Airport to eleven boxes in the hold of a cargo plane arriving from the Caribbean, an unprecedented achievement. The estimated street value of the 600 kilos of cocaine hidden in those boxes was in the neighbourhood of forty million euros, making Detective Marouan Diba responsible for the second largest drug bust ever at the airport.
Joshua certainly wanted an icon like this as a mentor, at least for a while. So he’d resigned himself to the inconveniences that came with the package, like the fact that Diba more often than not started his shift reeking of alcohol, that he tended to sweat like a pig, and his manners and eating habits were like those of a pig too. Joshua, headstrong as he was, continued to believe in the good intentions behind the unruly and sometimes revolting behaviour of his one-time hero.
Yet even Joshua couldn’t deny that Diba’s best days were now behind him. He was a man entangled in what appeared to be a web of depression. Joshua read it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, he even saw it in his step. Diba carried a heavy burden.
There was intense speculation behind his back about what that burden might entail. Alcohol addiction, a failed marriage, manic depression or an impending burnout were just a few of the variations on the topic. But despite all the speculation no one spoke to Diba directly, not even Joshua. Talking about these kinds of things was not what you did as a member of the police force. You just kept going.
In one way or another Diba’s decline made Joshua feel a moral obligation to protect his colleague for as long as he could. For that reason alone, he wanted nothing more than for this whole affair with the boy to be solved as quickly as possible. Hopefully then he’d be able to put Diba on a plane to Marrakesh for a much-needed holiday.
By now the line had reached the spot Joshua had marked this morning because Farah had found the earring there. The detectives continued in silence. Only the rustle of the low bushes brushing against their trousers and the crackle of twigs beneath their shoes were audible, while behind them came the occasional shout of the forensics team who were setting up a perimeter around the villa.
Suddenly one of the detectives to the left of the line raised his hand. On an overhanging branch hung a torn piece of blue fabric stitched with gold thread. The detective marked the spot by tying a piece of police tape around the tree.
Joshua could hear Diba breathing heavily, but resisted the urge to glance at him. Instead he scanned not only the ground in front of his feet, but also secretly focused on Diba’s area. And this paid off. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw something. It was a dull shade of red and half hidden by the dark moss on the ground. He was counting on Diba to also spot it; after all, it was lying right in front of him. But Diba kept going as if he was sleepwalking.
When Joshua himself gave the sign to stop, he thought he’d caught a glimpse of despair in Diba’s eyes. Or was it anger?
Joshua left the line and walked past Diba towards the red object, which looked like a slipper or a sandal. He tagged the spot with a piece of tape. He gazed back at the place where they’d all entered the woods, and he imagined the zigzagging path the boy must have taken. As they got back into formation, Joshua didn’t dare ask himself the obvious question: had Diba really missed it?
When they were finished, based on the spots they’d marked, they would be able to reconstruct the most probable route the boy had taken and give the area another once-over for more trace evidence. The question still remained if the fleeing boy had been chased by anybody. They needed to find footsteps, but unfortunately the forest ground was very dry. In the past few weeks it hadn’t rained much to speak of. At least not enough to soften the ground, therefore making it easier to detect footprints.
Joshua walked the course again, together with a forensic detective who was snapping photos and placing additional markers on the spots they’d investigate later in the day. But while he was doing this, Joshua had only had one thing on his mind. What the hell was going on with Diba?
The forensics guys in their white suits were still busy on the patio and around the villa. Joshua saw Diba watching from the other side of the police tape with a worried expression. A bigger contrast with the man who just a day ago ha
d gone berserk at the firemen hosing down the burning station wagon was hardly conceivable.
One of the forensic detectives shouted to his colleagues that he’d found something by an oak about fifteen metres from the villa. Joshua thought he saw him holding a bullet casing in the air. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought he heard Marouan cursing under his breath.
‘What’s going on, partner?’ Joshua asked casually.
‘What did they say again?’ Diba replied without even looking at Joshua. ‘It’s all a lot of smoke but no fire.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t see any smoke.’
‘Keep your jokes to yourself, Cal. How many detectives are working this crime scene right now? And what are grown men like you and me actually doing, with all this senseless line-dancing through the woods? Maybe we should all hold hands too? And why? Because you and your squeeze went romping around the woods early this morning and don’t dare to tell anyone.’
‘What’s your friggin’ problem, Diba?’
‘What did you tell Tomasoa this morning?’ Marouan asked crossly. ‘That you were here with me?’
Joshua threw him a harsh look. ‘And you’re telling me that you didn’t see anything on the ground just now?’
‘Let me tell you what I see,’ Diba angrily replied. ‘Here, right in front of my nose, I see a hypocrite who’s chasing his Italian dick.’
Joshua had to keep himself from punching Marouan in front of all their colleagues.
‘Hey, I’m talking to you, asshole!’ Diba shrieked in a high-pitched tone. He was panting.
At that moment, the Examining Magistrate arrived at the villa. He gave Dick Park, the head of Forensics, permission to go inside using an old pass key. Joshua thought back to what Farah had said to him earlier that morning. ‘This is much bigger than we actually realize, right?’ He turned around and saw Diba slip into the woods and decided to follow him.
Butterfly on the Storm Page 20