7 Days

by Deon Meyer

  ‘Relationships cool off, I suppose that’s life … We’d been together for two years, her hours kept getting longer. And those last two, three months, we barely saw each other. Now and then on a Saturday night, a Sunday morning. We would have gone skiing together that December, but she had to cancel. And then, in February last year, she arrived here one evening …’

  ‘Here at the workshop?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘No, I live in a cottage up against the mountain. She phoned from her office, about five, to ask if she could come over. She was late, she only arrived after nine. She came to tell me we should take a breather.’

  ‘A breather?’

  ‘Those were her words. She said … she was very sorry, very sad, she said it was unfair to both of us, the fact that we never saw each other any more. And she didn’t want to prevent me from finding anyone else.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said I didn’t want anyone else, and I understood that she was working hard. It didn’t worry me, it was temporary, she wouldn’t be that busy for ever.’

  ‘So you didn’t want to break up?’

  ‘Of course not. I … Hanneke … I thought she would be my wife.’

  ‘But then she told you it was over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were angry?’

  ‘Not angry. Disappointed. No, more than that … Hang on, surely you’re not insinuating …’ The outstretched legs were pulled back and he sat up straight in the chair.

  ‘I’m not insinuating anything. I’m asking,’ said Cupido.

  Roch put his forearms on his knees, leaned forward. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You actually think that I … It’s one helluva insult. About everything,’ he said, controlled but hurt.

  ‘I think that you what, Mr Roch?’

  ‘You think that I could … do anything to Hanneke. A year after we broke up? A year? What sort of person do you think I am?’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘Did you read my statement? I wasn’t even in the country when Hanneke died. How do you do your work?’ he asked with more astonishment than rage.

  Griessel said soothingly, ‘Mr Roch, we need your help. We have to investigate everything over again. We have to make sure …’

  He looked from one to the other. ‘Good cop, bad cop. I see.’

  ‘What do you see?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘I see what you’re trying to do. But hell, it’s insulting …’

  ‘Why? Because we think a guy gets angry when his future wife drops him? That’s insulting?’ Cupido asked.

  Griessel wanted to calm things. ‘Mr Roch …’

  ‘Wait, please.’ A polite request, with his big hand in the air. ‘I can understand … I was probably angry too.’

  ‘With her?’

  ‘With the bunch of lawyers who made her work so late. With myself, for not seeing it coming, for not doing something about it earlier. I could have made more time, been more supportive. But with her … I was very disappointed. Because she didn’t love me enough, because she was so stubborn, because she didn’t want to wait, because she wouldn’t give us a chance.’

  ‘But not angry with her.’

  Roch looked reproachfully at Cupido. ‘Hurt, Captain. The hurt was worse. I loved her. Genuinely loved her. She was an amazing person. We were great together. In every way. The same interests, the same sort of friends … it’s a great loss, when you lose something like that. But what can you do? You take it like a man and you get through it. Even if it takes six months, nine months, you come out on the other side. You don’t look back. And you respect her decision, that’s what you do, because that is what love means, you respect her decision.’

  A soft knock on the door. The coffee had arrived.

  23

  Once the coffee was poured and handed around, Roch sat down again, still with a long-suffering, wounded expression on his face.

  ‘You were overseas in January?’ Griessel asked.

  Roch nodded, sipped his coffee.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Aime la Plagne, in the Alps, for a week. Then Bordeaux. In France.’

  ‘When did you return?’

  ‘The nineteenth. The day after she died.’

  ‘The day her body was found?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What time on the nineteenth?’

  ‘I landed in Johannesburg in the morning. I was back in the Cape around two o’clock in the afternoon, if I remember correctly. I can go and check …’

  ‘Do you still have the documentation for the flight?’

  ‘I faxed it to the other detective.’

  ‘To Nxesi?’

  ‘Yes. It must be on record.’

  ‘The tickets?’

  ‘No, the reservation, the proof of payment.’

  ‘But you still have it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The trip – was it a holiday?’

  ‘For the most part. Aime was for skiing. Then I went to Bordeaux to visit my mentor, at Château Haut Lafitte. So it was sort of work too …’

  ‘Were you alone on the plane?’

  ‘Do you mean …? Yes, I was alone.’

  ‘I would be grateful if you could find the documentation for us.’

  ‘It’s not in your records?’

  ‘We haven’t seen it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Did you see Sloet again after you broke up?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘Yes. Once or twice.’

  ‘Which is it? Once or twice?’

  ‘It’s an expression, Captain. I saw her twice. If you are together for two years, you leave stuff in each other’s places. About two weeks after … sometime in March last year, I took two boxes of her stuff to her.’

  ‘When she still lived in Stellenbosch?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I said things I shouldn’t have said.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I said she’d lied to me.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About why we broke up.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I had … I couldn’t understand it, the whole thing. But it was that time, I was hurt, I just couldn’t figure out how she could just turn her back on everything, out of the blue.’

  ‘Hurt, but not angry,’ said Cupido sarcastically.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Griessel asked.

  ‘I thought there was someone else.’

  ‘And what did she say then?’

  ‘She asked me if I really thought she wouldn’t have the guts to admit it if it was so.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I said, no, that’s true. She had always had guts. For anything.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I left.’

  ‘And the second time?’

  ‘That was in December. She called me …’

  ‘When in December?’

  ‘The first week. Tuesday night? She had started packing up, for the move to Cape Town. She found more of my stuff. Jerseys, socks, stuff like that. She brought them to me one evening.’

  ‘How did that go?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She brought the stuff. We talked …’ For the first time the body language was less comfortable, the eyes glanced once quickly at the door.

  Cupido homed in on that. ‘What about?’

  ‘Well … it was the first time I had seen her with the new …’ He cupped his hands in front of his chest.

  ‘Her boob job?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you talked about it?’

  ‘Yes. I asked her why.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said she had wanted to do it for a long time. And she asked me if I liked it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I said “yes”.’

  ‘The o
peration – was it a surprise for you?’ Griessel asked.

  ‘Yes. She never talked about it while we were together. And it wasn’t as if she was small …’

  ‘Wait, wait,’ said Cupido. ‘She asked you if you liked the boobs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you said “yes”?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And then?’

  Roch’s eyes drifted to the door. ‘Mr Roch …’ Cupido prodded him.

  ‘Then she showed them to me,’ he said at last, as if he was relieved to get it off his chest.

  ‘Her boobs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just undressed and showed you?’

  ‘She didn’t undress. She was just wearing a T-shirt, she … you know, loosened her bra, lifted her shirt …’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘We were together for two years, Captain, it’s not like we had never been naked together.’

  ‘But you’d broken up what … ten months before? And she comes in and shows you her boobs?’

  ‘You make it sound so cheap. I never said she just walked in and showed me her breasts. We sat talking for ages. Drank wine. Later I asked her why she had had it done.’

  ‘And then she flashed her headlights. And you just looked?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Roch got up in a flowing movement, walked behind the chair. ‘I’m not sure it’s …’ He went to the desk, turned around, came and sat down again. The detective’s eyes followed him.

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘You told Warrant Officer Nxesi that you had practically no contact any more, Mr Roch,’ Griessel said.

  ‘Twice. In more than a year. What would you call it?’

  ‘What happened that night?’ Griessel asked.

  Roch moved his hands in frustration, he gripped the arms of the chair, and said, ‘If you really must know, we had sex.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Cupido, ‘that’s practically no contact.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Roch asked, for the first time truly angry. ‘Tell me, what difference does it make? We didn’t plan it, we had been together two years, we were … both very physical, we had already had a few glasses, we were two consenting adults. Tell me, what difference does it make?’

  ‘Let me tell you,’ Cupido leaned forward in his chair, his index finger pointed at Roch, ‘you lied to Nxesi.’

  ‘I didn’t lie. Never.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him you njapsed her? What are you hiding?’

  ‘What have I got to hide? I was on a fucking plane when somebody killed Hanneke. What have I got to hide?’

  ‘You say you were on a plane. Alone. You are going to show us your reservation, but not the actual tickets. But you made that reservation long before the time. Then you took another flight, say a day earlier, paid cash for your ticket, came home. And you took one of the big iron stakes in your shop and went knocking on her door. She knows you, so she lets you in. And you stab her. Because she wouldn’t let you njaps her again.’

  Roch looked intently at Cupido. If this man jumped up now, Griessel thought, they were in trouble. He shifted in his chair to make his service pistol accessible.

  But Egan Roch sank slowly back. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘That is such an insult,’ he said finally. ‘Do me a favour. Call the office of Air France. Ask them if they have an air hostess by the name of Danielle Fournier who was on the flight from Charles de Gaulle to O.R. Tambo on the nineteenth of January. And then go and talk to her. Ask her if she remembers me. And then come back to me with your shit.’

  24

  ‘He’s lying,’ Cupido said when they got back in the car. ‘Egan. What kind of name is Egan? How do you come by a name like that? Do you look at this baby, your laaitie, and say, “nooit, this is an Egan”? Sounds like the name of an alien in a Spielberg movie. Fucking Egan. Egan the Vegan. I’m telling you, that whitey is lying. Jissis, that attitude … I’m a handsome bugger, I work on a wine estate, I make oak barrels, actually I’m fucking cool. Pisses me off. But what pisses me off most, is that he thinks we are fucking fools. He saw those tits, he felt those tits, he njapsed her, and he wanted it again. And she said to him, sorry, mister, it’s all over, you had your chance, you blew it. And then he thinks, if I can’t have it, nobody will. Those jugs must have kept him awake at night, middle of the night. So he lay there and schemed, he was anyway going to Oo-la-laa, so the man makes a plan. Thinks we are fucking fools, I’m telling you, the air hostess story is a lot of kak, she’s going to say “who?”. I scheme he got hold of the name, must have chatted her up when he was flying over, heard she was on the same aeroplane on the nineteenth, one of those short blanket alibis, don’t cover the feet, now he thinks because he can cover his head … But I’m gonna nail him, pappie, I’m telling you. Fokken barrel maker. Egan. What kind of name is Egan anyway?’

  Griessel did not entirely share Cupido’s assurance. There was too much quiet bravado in Roch’s ‘Call the office of Air France’. And Home Affairs would be able to confirm when his passport was registered again on his return. But they would have to follow up, because Cupido was right, the man hadn’t told Nxesi the whole truth.

  ‘We will have to get a two-oh-five,’ said Griessel. The SAPS could only request cellphone records if they had a two-zero-five subpoena. ‘See if he phoned her at work.’

  ‘IMC handles that whole process. And we get a search warrant. We’ve got enough. He lied to Nxesi, a month before her death he fucked her, he’s got these moerse big irons in his barrel shop. And I’m telling you now, fokken “shop”, my arse, where do they get off on that?’

  ‘Vaughn, you’ll have to handle it.’

  ‘Right. Captain Cupido will nail him.’ And after a moment to reflect. ‘Because you have other fish to fry?’

  Griessel nodded. ‘Politics.’

  ‘Is that why you asked him about the communists?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So? What’s the story?’

  ‘Can’t talk about it yet.’

  ‘Fuckin’ politics. Which reminds me: have you found out what the Flower got up to in Amsterdam?’ Cupido asked, because Mbali’s name meant ‘flower’ in Zulu.

  ‘No,’ said Griessel. And in that instant, inexplicably, he knew what was bothering him about the sniper’s last email.

  He would have to go and tell the Flower.

  Major Benedict Boshigo, member of the Statutory Crimes Group of the Hawks’ Commercial Crimes Branch in the Cape, was sitting behind his chaotic desk when Griessel entered. Boshigo’s nose was almost pressed to the printouts that covered the whole surface of the desk.

  ‘Hi, Bones.’

  ‘Hey, Benny. You got something here, nè,’ said Bones as he looked up. His eyes had always made Griessel feel somewhat uncomfortable, prominent and vulnerable in the very thin face, like a famine victim.

  Boshigo was something of a legend, a long distance athlete, a man who had finished the Comrades seventeen times, and the Boston and New York marathons once each. Thanks to those events and a frightening training regime, he was a walking skeleton, literally skin and bone, And that was why his friends called him ‘Bones’.

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  Bones grinned. ‘BEE deals are always full of tricks, nè. Always full of tricks. What we have to ask, is whether this one has any illegal tricks. So far, not, everything above board, it’s not Kebble style corporate raiding, it’s just run-of-the-mill stuff. I think it’s too early, Benny, BEE companies only start flirting with the limits of the Companies Act and the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter when the contracts are signed …’

  ‘Bones …’

  ‘I know, I know, when I worked with Vusi, he used to tell me all the time: “Speak English, Bones”.’

  Griessel had already heard that one of Boshigo’s favourite sayings was ‘when I worked with Vusi’. With the Scorpions, then part of the
national prosecuting authority, Bones had worked with the legendary Advocate Vusi Pikoli. The other saying that his colleagues good-naturedly teased him over was: ‘When I was studying in the States …’ Boshigo was very proud of the Bachelor’s degree in economics he had earned at Boston University’s Metropolitan College.

  ‘Bottom line, Benny, I looked at the detailed joint cautionary announcement of Ingcebo and Gariep. That’s the announcement they made about the whole deal, November 2009, that’s the blueprint for the transaction, how they plan to do the whole thing. A road map. I looked at where they are now, how they adhered to the plan. There’s no motive for murder. I looked at Ingcebo, at the registration documents, at the company charter, at the appointment of directors, it’s all clean. There’s nothing.’

  ‘And the communist?’

  Again the cynical smile. ‘Benny, Benny, there are no communists in Azania any more, nè. Only lip service. A. T. Masondo is Ambrose Thenjiwe Masondo. In exile till ninety-three, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Treasurer of the National Union of Mineworkers, and on the National Congress of COSATU. Mbeki made him Deputy Minister of Mining, he retired along with his boss in 2007, he became a director of Ingcebo in 2009, and managing director of Ingcebo Bauxite. Only interesting thing is …’

  Boshigo shuffled through the documents until he found the right one, and held it out to Griessel.

  A printout of the corporate web page. The caption read Minister Masondo at AGM. Underneath was a photograph of four white men, and a black man in the middle, smiling at the camera. All in suits and ties.

  ‘That’s Masondo, along with the directors of Gariep Minerals. Taken in 2006, when he was minister. He was the guest speaker at their AGM.’

  ‘What does it mean, Bones?’

  ‘It looks like he’s the one who brought in the Gariep deal for Ingcebo. It was his ticket for a seat on the gravy train. Problem is, that’s no crime. It’s all in the public domain.’

  Griessel sighed. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We dig a little deeper, nè. Maybe it’s an iceberg.’

  At 13.05 the sniper sat in front of his computer. The Bible website was on the screen, the one where you can type in any word, like law and right and bribe and war, and in seconds it gives the complete references, even the verses themselves.