“Well, how come you have David’s phone?” Moloi snapped.
“I don’t have his phone,” Jade replied, equally snappily.
“But why … ok, I must have made a mistake dialling. Sorry.”
He disconnected abruptly. A minute later, her phone rang again. Again it was Moloi. She let it go through to voicemail.
Almost immediately she had another call. This one was from the United Kingdom. She recognised the +44 dialling code.
The caller was a young-sounding English woman with a pleasant but stressed voice. She asked for Superintendent Patel, and Jade took a message. It was Detective Constable Edmonds, from the human trafficking team at Scotland Yard. She wanted David to call her as soon as possible, please.
“Certainly,” Jade said.
Jade kept her cellphone in her hand, waiting for the call that she was sure would come. In a few minutes, it did.
“Jade. I’ve diverted my calls to your phone.” It was David, and when she heard his voice she felt suddenly sick with nerves.
“Why have you done that?” she retorted. “After what we discussed last night, I would have thought you’d be considerate enough to forward calls somewhere else if you’ve gone and lost your bloody cellphone.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have time to argue. I’ll explain when I see you. I’ll be at the cottage in half an hour. Jade, it’s serious.”
Something in David’s voice was dissolving her righteous indignation. And he’d called her Jade, twice in a row, instead of Jadey. She couldn’t remember the last time David had spoken to her without using his pet name for her.
“Half an hour?” Jade glanced into the mirror and saw Raymond frowning and waving his hands in warning. “David, I’m sorry. I can’t get back that soon.”
“Please.”
The desperation she heard in that softly-spoken word was enough to convince her that she should.
“All right. I’ll make a plan.”
She put the phone away and glanced at Raymond in the mirror. “You’re going to have to rinse me now, I’m afraid.”
Raymond paled. “Sweetie, I can’t possibly do that. The colour will be ruined. It won’t have had time to develop properly and the copper lowlights will be bright orange.”
“How much longer does it need?”
“Another thirty minutes, minimum.”
Jade stood up and pulled off the cape. “I’ll rinse it myself at home then. Now I must pay you, because I need to go.”
Raymond rushed to the till, arms a-flutter. “This is not happening,” he cried. “I’ve never, ever had a client walk out of my salon in the middle of a tint. Sweetie, it’s seven hundred rand for the hair, but Lord knows what it’s going to look like. This is my reputation on the line, you know.”
He crammed a couple of bottles into a pink paper bag and handed them to her.
“Here’s a professional shampoo and conditioner as a gift to you. You must use them when you rinse. Shampoo twice, condition once. And please don’t leave through the front entrance, or somebody might see. Go out through the back door over there.”
Jade put the money on the counter, grabbed the bag and ran. Tinfoil flapped deafeningly around her ears as she sprinted out of the back entrance. Above the rustling, she was aware of Raymond calling forlornly after her, “Shampoo twice, condition once. It’s vitally important, sweetie, and for God’s sake, please use the products I gave you!”
31
David hadn’t slept since he’d left Jade’s house the previous night.
He’d driven back home wrapped in a cloud of sorrowful self-righteousness. He’d made a sad decision, but it was the right one. He and Jade were always going to be an uneasy partnership at best, and an impossible one at worst. Far more sensible to bring this troubled relationship to an end.
In fact, thinking about it with even more brutal honesty—what a roll he’d been on at the time—David acknowledged that Jade was a real catch. Intelligent, fun, beautiful; a woman any man would be proud to call his girlfriend … or even his wife. Thinking about that particular concept made David feel ill, but he’d stubbornly pursued his train of thought.
Yes, you would need to have a certain amount of broadmindedness where guns and shooting were concerned if you dated Jade de Jong, but hell, this was Jo’burg. Every man and his dog carried weapons, and half of them, no doubt, illegally acquired.
The it director—had she mentioned his name? Yes, Steve, a name David now realised he had always hated. At any rate, Steve sounded wealthy. David allowed himself to wonder whether Jade might settle down if she was married to a well-off businessman. She surely wouldn’t need to take on the cases that saw her risking her own life and, occasionally, taking the lives of others?
With an effort, David silenced the small voice in his head that was muttering he was wrong, that if Jade was subsidised by a wealthy partner, then all she would do would be to take on pro bono cases that would only expose her to a darker side of society, and to more danger.
Back at home, he’d listened to the messages on his landline. There was only one, from Naisha. Could David please check his car, because they’d hunted everywhere for Kevin’s maths workbook and it was nowhere to be found. Kevin thought it might have slipped out of his school bag while David was taking him home and, if so, could David take it to Devon Downs before ten tomorrow morning, which was when his boy’s next maths lesson was scheduled.
Suppressing his irritation at the fact that Naisha thought his time was flexible enough to undertake another mammoth voyage to Pretoria and back during morning rush-hour traffic, David deleted the message.
He went back out to the car. Sure enough, under the seat, he discovered a slim, brown-covered notebook with pages of sums painstakingly written in Kevin’s childish hand.
David let out a frustrated sigh. If Kevin hadn’t been a new boy he would have been tempted to phone his wife and ask her if his son could do without his book for a couple of days. But he was, and David couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting his still-fragile world. Nor did he want to upset Naisha, or do anything that might cause her to doubt the decision she’d made to accept the Pretoria job. She’d made a huge sacrifice by turning down the overseas posting, and only because he had begged her to. He’d just have to start work early, then drive to Devon Downs and hand the book in at the admin office.
David got into bed and as his head touched the pillow, the self-righteous cocoon enveloping him dissolved.
He’d been an absolute idiot.
What had he done?
He knew Jade wouldn’t come back to him. Not after what he had said in the car last night. He’d lost her now, and lost her for good. And, furthermore, he had to acknowledge that in the process he’d been a complete arsehole to the two most important women in his life.
He’d enjoyed Jade’s hospitality, her meals—and, talking of meals, why on earth did he end up having the table manners of a pig whenever he’d eaten with her? Was it some kind of rebellion against Naisha’s constant nagging that he conduct himself properly while at the table? He didn’t know.
He’d been eating at Naisha’s place, too. Sleeping there on the odd occasion, and even sleeping with his wife again on one recent, regrettable night when he’d managed to convince himself that getting back together with her was the right thing to do.
What in God’s name was wrong with him? He’d been shirking his responsibilities, refusing to make a commitment, or rather, shying away from making any decision at all, foolish or otherwise.
And he’d lied to Jade about the awards ceremony being cancelled. Why had he done that? He’d invited her along and he’d had every intention of taking her with him. But then they’d had that disturbing argument, where Jade had revealed the side of herself that David had hoped no longer existed.
Her words had filled him with fear.
Lying to a private investigator, David now realised, was an exercise in futility. It had surely been no coincidence that Jade a
nd her consort had ended up going to Emperors Palace that night.
What an idiot he’d been.
David pounded his forehead against the pillow in frustration.
The night seemed endless, and when his alarm clock finally went off at four a.m., David was no closer to reaching a conclusion. All he knew was that he’d never felt so miserable in his life.
He stood under a steaming shower in the hope that the hot water would somehow relieve the leaden exhaustion that had penetrated his bones. When he was a young officer, he’d often spent the entire night dancing and drinking in Durban’s dodgiest clubs and had always managed to get through the next day without a struggle. On really busy weekends, he’d even managed two party nights in a row.
Now, after five sleepless hours, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open, and he had a long day ahead. A meeting with the director of security at OR Tambo airport in the afternoon. A conference after that with the management at South African Airways, in connection with a drug trafficking case that had seen two of their flight attendants arrested at Heathrow Airport. Finally, he would be leading the night-time raid on the notorious brothel in Bez Valley.
He shaved, dressed in a white, collared shirt and beige tie, and checked the fridge to see if any breakfast fare had magically appeared inside.
Fourteen neatly stacked Black Label beers looked out at him.
Sighing in disgust, David slammed the door shut again.
Male pig.
When he got to work, David found that an urgent email from Scotland Yard had been sent late last night.
“A very good morning to you, Superintendent Patel,” the mail from Sergeant Richards began. The British detective’s writing style, like his voice, seemed to be permanently set on “cheery” mode. David glanced out of the window and saw that a faint ribbon of light was starting to show on the horizon.
“I think ‘morning’ might be an exaggeration at this stage,” he muttered.
Scanning the text, David learned that the messages on Salimovic’s home phone had been accessed from a South African mobile number, which Richards had included in the email.
David made a note to get a subpoena issued to the service provider immediately and have the caller identified and the line tapped.
Reading on, he discovered that the team had another urgent question for him. While reviewing evidence from a search carried out on Rodic’s home, one of the detectives had noticed that his passport was missing. They suspected that this passport might have been taken by Salimovic, and perhaps even used to enter South Africa.
David grunted and made another note to check the passport number with Immigration. If Salimovic had used Rodic’s passport to get into South Africa, David would be able to get it flagged as stolen.
The British detective had also attached digital photographs of the two men. Salimovic looked thuggish and brutal with his thin lips, narrow eyes, and stubble-short dark hair. Rodic was plumper, but otherwise not unlike his cousin in appearance.
David got hold of his contact at immigration at seven-thirty that morning, and the man called him back half an hour later to confirm that Rodic’s passport had indeed been used to enter South Africa on the twentieth of October. He also told David he would flag the passport number immediately.
Pleased with the immigration official’s fast turnaround time, David hit the Reply button on Richards’ email, and relayed the good news to Scotland Yard. Now, if Salimovic tried to use that passport again, he would be arrested on sight. If David had his way, the next plane the man would be taking would be a British Airways flight back to the uk, securely handcuffed to his seat, and under police guard.
“Gotcha,” David said, staring at the unsmiling faces of the two criminals on the computer screen with some satisfaction.
32
It was well after eight when David finally sprinted down to his car and set off for Pretoria, worried that his preoccupation with his morning’s work might cause him to be late for his son yet again.
The main road leading to the Pretoria highway was clogged with traffic. He sat, frustrated, in his car, watching the hawkers threading their way through the queues backed up at the traffic lights, selling knock-off perfumes, dodgy-looking biltong and cheap sunglasses.
If they’d been selling coffee, David might have been interested.
Perhaps he should buy a pair of sunglasses, though. His trusty pair of Ray Bans had lost a lens the day before. Now, he had to squint against the bright morning sun without as much as a layer of tinted glass between it and him.
He was about to beckon the salesman over when his phone rang.
The caller was Moloi, and he sounded concerned.
“Superintendent, do you have a minute? I need your advice urgently.”
“Fire away.”
“I’ve just got to Heidelberg City Clinic, where Tamsin Jordaan was supposed to have regained consciousness this morning.”
A stab in David’s heart. Tamsin’s name made him think of Pamela and then, immediately, of Jade.
Then Moloi’s words hit home.
“Supposed to regain consciousness?” he asked, surprised. “What went wrong? Is she still in a coma? Is she dead?”
The motorist behind him hooted, but the noise wasn’t directed at him. It was meant to attract the attention of the roadside newspaper seller, who rushed over with a copy of the morning’s paper in his hand.
“She’s not Tamsin Jordaan,” Moloi said.
“What?” David’s voice was so loud that a passing hawker stared curiously into the car.
“She’s not Tamsin Jordaan. She is a woman of similar age and similar appearance called Raquel Maloney. She does not know Tamsin, has no obvious connection to her, and cannot explain how she ended up at a petrol station on the N3 highway when the last thing she remembers is having coffee alone at Hyde Park Centre.”
“What the …? Piss off, for God’s sake!” David waved an impatient hand at a hawker who was brandishing an array of cellphone devices at him through the car window.
“Sorry, is this a bad time?” Moloi asked.
“No, no, carry on, I was shouting at somebody who’s trying to sell me a bloody hands-free kit for my phone.”
Usually, Moloi would have laughed at a scenario like that, but he was too rattled.
“I made a huge mistake, boss. I assumed we had the right girl.”
“I thought you said she had id on her.”
“She did. She had Tamsin Jordaan’s handbag with Tamsin Jordaan’s id inside. The photo looked similar enough that our officers didn’t question it. Young slim girl, brown hair. Oh, and she was wearing a diamond pendant around her neck which Pamela Jordaan recognised when we described it to her.”
“Does Mrs Jordaan know what’s happened?”
“I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet, but she should be here any minute. She’s coming to visit Tamsin. She still thinks she’s safe and sound.”
“She hasn’t had any requests for ransom?”
“I’ll check when I speak to her, but I’m sure if she had, she would have notified us.”
“Look out for something like that.” David felt his forehead crease into the familiar folds of a frown. So, Tamsin was still missing. Abducted, or possibly kidnapped. But why would somebody have grabbed her and then gone to all the trouble of substituting another girl in her place?
To buy time.
That was the most obvious answer. Whoever had done this had known that Tamsin would be reported missing and had arranged for a near-identical girl to be found so that the search would be called off. But called off before what?
“Look out for a ransom demand,” David said again.
Kidnapping happened fairly frequently in South Africa, and occasionally a high-profile case would make media headlines. The most common form of kidnapping, though, was to snatch children or teenagers and demand a relatively small ransom. These cases happened far more often than statistics showed, because many parents chose to pay up w
ithout informing the police, hoping it would guarantee their child’s safe return. In most cases it did.
Moloi thanked him and rang off.
David rubbed his temples, feeling the throbbing beginnings of another headache, and closed his sore eyes. The darkness offered him momentary relief from his fiery prison.
He opened his eyes again, and a movement at his window made him turn his head sharply.
Another hawker, this one offering sunglasses.
David buzzed his window down and hot air rushed into the car.
“How much?” he asked.
“Fifty rand.” The shabbily dressed black man jabbered out the words, eager to close the sale instantly, before the lights changed and his potential customer was gone. “Only fifty rand for you, sir.”
Before David could blink, the man had thrust a pair of mirrored shades into his hand. “These very good, these ones. Big, too. The right size for you.”
“No, goddammit, I’m not walking around wearing those, I’ll look like a gangster. Give me a plain pair. Just a pair of ordinary dark glasses. Yes, those ones, the ones with the steel rims.”
David pulled out his wallet, glancing in his other wing mirror to check that nobody was approaching the passenger side wielding a brick or a spark plug. Smash and grabs were common at traffic lights, and hawkers provided a useful distraction, allowing the lurking robbers to strike.
He handed over a fifty to the salesman and put on the glasses. The relief from the sun was instant and they were a good fit. He leaned his finger on the window buzzer and got it back up as fast as he could, before the man selling the hands-free kits could come back.
Half an hour later he was outside Devon Downs. A couple of late arrivals were hurriedly dropping off their kids, not even bothering to park properly. David saw children trotting down the long, paved walkway towards the school buildings, bags bouncing on their backs. They broke into a run as a school bell sounded in the distance.
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