7 Days

by Deon Meyer

  ‘OK,’ he said, and spelled out his email address.

  ‘Thanks.’ And the line went dead.

  Griessel shook his head, put the phone away, and went back in. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the two women. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Mister Big,’ said Grobler.

  ‘Oh. Yes. So she told you about her and Egan. In December?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Grobler.

  ‘And as far as she was concerned it was just a one-off …’

  ‘Quickie,’ said Grobler.

  ‘… occurrence?’ said Griessel.

  ‘Yes,’ said de Koker.

  ‘And there were no other men in her life?’

  ‘There were,’ said de Koker.

  ‘Hannes Pruis,’ said Grobler.

  ‘The pig,’ said de Koker.

  ‘Hannes Pr—’ His phone rang again.

  He managed to change the instinctive fricative to ‘faux pas’ again, took the phone out of his pocket, and stood up.

  ‘You don’t need to go outside, we understand,’ said Grobler.

  ‘About the investigation and all,’ said de Koker.

  He could see on the screen it was the DPCI. He didn’t want to take a call now, he wanted to hear about Hannes Pruis, his lifebuoy after their flood of words had washed away his spare key theory. But he would have to answer. ‘Excuse me,’ he told the women. ‘Griessel,’ he said into the instrument, halfway between his chair and the door.

  ‘Benny, this is Fanie Fick of IMC. Did you just receive a phone call?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Griessel.

  ‘It was the shooter,’ said Fick.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Solomon. The shooter. It’s the same phone he used to call Milnerton station yesterday.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Griessel before he could stop himself.

  And then he looked guiltily into the eyes of the plump, motherly Aldri de Koker.

  37

  ‘He called the provincial office switchboard first, fifteen minutes ago,’ said Fick. ‘They can’t tell us who he spoke to. No logs, too many calls. We were caught napping, it was so unexpected, but then we knew he was on the air again. What did he say to you?’

  ‘He wanted my email address. He said Hannes Pruis wanted to send Hanneke Sloet’s diary.’ So the shooter knew about Pruis, Griessel realised.

  ‘Do you want us to look at your emails?’

  ‘Yes, pl—’ He remembered the photo of Carla and the muscle man that Fritz had sent. ‘No, wait,’ he said, ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘He phoned from the city, Benny. The call was too short to triangulate. If he phones again, try to keep him on the line.’

  ‘His phone is off now?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘OK. I’m coming. Give me …’ He still wanted to hear the story of Hannes Pruis and Hanneke Sloet. ‘… forty minutes.’

  He put the phone away. Both women were sitting and watching him intently. It took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘Hannes Pruis?’ he said to Grobler and de Koker. ‘He and Hanneke had an affair?’

  ‘An affair?’ asked de Koker, a bit shocked.

  ‘Never!’ said Grobler. ‘Mister Small.’

  ‘But just now you said they had …’

  ‘You asked if there was a man in her life,’ said de Koker.

  ‘Hannes Pruis made sure that he was the only man in her life,’ said Grobler.

  ‘Slave driver,’ said de Koker. ‘Little man. Jealous of Mister Big, he made sure they didn’t have any time together.’

  ‘So Pruis had a thing for Hanneke?’

  ‘All men had a thing for Hanneke.’

  ‘But he was jealous of Roch?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have been too?’

  ‘But did he do anything? I mean, did he harass her?’

  ‘He made her work late.’

  ‘She wore herself out for him.’

  ‘So you are talking about a professional relationship?’

  ‘An understanding,’ said Grobler. ‘Hanneke had the understanding …’

  ‘And Pruis just had the standing,’ said de Koker. ‘You should have heard him at the memorial service.’

  ‘As if he really knew her at all.’

  ‘Used her, yes. He used her.’

  ‘Worked her butt off.’

  ‘Even weekends …’

  ‘We had to put up with that. And Mister Big. That’s why they broke up.’

  ‘Apart from the quickie.’

  ‘We barely saw her, those last months.’

  ‘Please,’ said Griessel. ‘Just a minute.’

  They looked at him expectantly.

  ‘She never had an affair with Hannes Pruis.’

  ‘Not in the Mister Big sense of the word,’ said Grobler.

  ‘That means “no, absolutely not”,’ de Koker explained. ‘Except that he made her work too hard.’

  ‘There was no other man in her life?’

  ‘No,’ said Grobler. ‘Where would she find the time?’

  Griessel breathed out, as if he had survived a sprint. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Faux pas?’ Grobler asked. ‘Is that some sort of police code?’

  He knew everything was happening too fast, he had to keep his wits about him. In the BMW he first phoned Cupido and asked if he would go to the law firm straight away and supervise the questioning of personnel.

  ‘Sure, Benna.’

  ‘I found the spare key, Vaughn. She gave it to one of her friends. Aldri de Koker.’

  ‘Knock me down with a vrot fish … Aldri? What kind of name is Aldri? Look, we coloureds have our peculiarities, but fuck knows, you whiteys can think up kak names. What is our approach with the lawyers now?’

  He thought of the shooter knowing about Pruis. ‘Alibis, Vaughn. For the eighteenth of January, and for the shooter.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Let’s make sure. Ask about fights, jealousy, office politics, affairs … Who would be angry if she set up on her own? Oh, and, did she have anything valuable in her apartment, something that might have belonged to the lawyers? Anything. Documents … I don’t know, Vaughn, something that might have had great value.’

  ‘OK. The whole shebang,’ said Cupido. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Griessel put on the BMW’s lights and siren and drove to Bellville.

  The fucker had phoned him. Jissis, and he wasn’t on the ball. He replayed the conversation with Solomon. The hoarse voice, half dulled, he must have been holding something over the mouthpiece. The hurried words. He wanted to be quick, he knew he could be traced.

  But he was calm. Shot a policeman dead yesterday, today he was calm. And cheeky.

  For the first time he felt rage against this insane bastard. But also the knowledge: this was not your usual mad hatter.

  What did he want to send? Why now? He had only used John Afrika’s email address up till now.

  There was something else, a note that he felt he should write down. And now he couldn’t recall it, those women had talked a hole in his head.

  Was it something he had forgotten to ask them?

  His cellphone rang again. It was Colonel Nyathi. ‘Benny, we’re having a meeting in half an hour, in the brig’s office.’

  There were no new emails.

  He deleted the one from Fritz after one last look at the picture of Carla and Etzebeth. Then he carried his laptop down to IMC.

  There was no longer the frenetic activity of this morning, only the IMS personnel at their work stations, concentrating. He put his laptop down on Fanie Fick’s table. ‘He hasn’t sent anything yet,’ said Griessel.

  ‘I know. We’re watching the mail server. Put your laptop here and log in. I’ll keep an eye on it.’ With his apologetic attitude and sad eyes, like a bloodhound.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Griessel, and looked for a wall socket. It was hard for him to look at Fanie Fucked. As if he saw how he’d end up.

  ‘We have more or less all the names and numbers of the builders of 36 on R
ose,’ Fick said. ‘Plus the removals, and security. Her Vodacom records for the last six months of last year are coming soon.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I should be able to start running the match at about eight o’clock.’

  ‘You’ll call me …’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Anything on the shooter’s panel van?’

  Fick shook his head. ‘Chances are good that he stole the Kia. They can’t find anything.’

  ‘He’s clever,’ said Griessel.

  ‘We’ll get him,’ said Fick.

  Griessel opened his email, and turned the screen so that Fick could see. ‘We still don’t have Sloet’s cellphone records for December?’

  ‘They should be here any moment now.’

  ‘Can you see if there is anyone with a Russian surname who phoned her on the twenty-second?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I have to go to a meeting …’ He took out his notebook and pen. ‘If you get a chance – I just want to check someone’s criminal record …’

  ‘Sure,’ said Fick. Eager to help. To be part of a case again.

  ‘There’s no rush …’ Griessel wrote down the name and surname, tore out the page.

  Fick read. ‘Calla Etzebeth. Where does he fit in?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Thanks, Fanie.’ It was an effort to keep the pity from his voice.

  There was a moment that morning, with the sickening smell of the red spray paint in his nose and the uncertainty gnawing at him like a slow cancer, that the sniper was ready to pack it all in.

  There was huge relief in the idea. Just walk away. Drive the Chana and take the rifle and the cellphone and the wig and the clothes and go and pour petrol over them. Set it all on fire and just walk away.

  He put down the spray can, untied the rag from over his mouth, pulled off the gloves, and sat down on the garage floor, his head between his knees.

  After a while he pictured himself like that, defeated and dejected, and it was too much to bear. He could not let it end here, because then they would have won.

  It was the turning point, that knowledge: His life depended on it.

  Slowly he crawled back up the slope of despair, warmed his hands over the glowing embers of old fires. And then the plan came to him, the strategy, the knowledge that the best defence was attack. That he held the trump cards. He just had to play them right.

  He got up, turned on his computer and searched on Google for ‘Benny Griessel, SAPS’. In the news databases of Media24 and iol.co.za he found enough about the detective’s career to work with: for the previous two years Griessel had been attached to the office of General John Afrika, Western Cape head of Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, before he was transferred to the Hawks, probably quite recently.

  It brought him new insight.

  He used the Peninsula telephone directory, and wrote down the possible numbers.

  He considered his timing and the fact that the origin of cellphone calls could be determined. He drove the Audi into the city, to the big parking lot at the Waterfront. There he took a deep breath, steadied pen and paper on his knee, and called the SAPS Provincial Office. He asked for the Administrative Department. A woman with a coloured accent answered.

  ‘Who am I talking to now?’ he asked in an irritable voice.

  ‘Sergeant April.’

  ‘This is Colonel Botha, Directorate of Priority Crimes.’ A deliberately intimidating high rank. He went on, obvious frustration and irritation in his tone: ‘Did you send us the correct home address of Captain Benny Griessel? Because his post keeps being sent back.’

  ‘Colonel knows I can’t give that out over the phone.’

  ‘Sergeant, what do you want me to do? If I don’t have the correct information, the Captain will not be paid at the end of the month. Is that what you want?’

  ‘No, Colonel.’

  ‘And it’s your fault. I feel like phoning John Afrika, it can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Couldn’t Colonel ask the Captain himself?’ she tried to divert him.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Veronica …’ Very intimidated.

  ‘Benny is busy with the Sloet case, Veronica. Do you really want me to bother him with such nonsense?’

  ‘No, Colonel.’

  ‘Let me give you the address I have, and then you tell me if it is the one you have.’

  He held his breath, unsure whether his gamble would work, aware of the ticking of the clock, that the length of this call must be limited. She hesitated, and he tried another approach.

  ‘Sergeant, I understand it’s not your fault. But please help me – you know how it is if someone doesn’t get their pay cheque.’

  She sighed at last, then asked, resigned, ‘What is his personnel number, Colonel?’

  His brain froze and he mentally kicked himself, he should have thought. Then an inspiration: ‘That’s not here either.’

  ‘Benny Griessel?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Hold on,’ she said apologetically.

  Then he heard her typing on a keyboard. And she said, ‘There is only one Benjamin Griessel. Number 128, Nelson’s Mansions, Vriende Street, Gardens?’

  ‘That’s not what we have.’ He scribbled it down hastily, delighted with the success of his little ploy. Then he made another mistake. ‘And his email?’

  ‘Colonel, he will have a DPCI email …’

  He scrabbled for an answer. ‘We have to remove the old one.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  Relief. But he had to get the email address.

  How?

  A possibility formed in his mind, another gamble, but with an irresistible pay-off: he could talk to Griessel himself. He could taunt his hunter.

  ‘Is this the correct cell number?’ He gave her a fictitious one.

  ‘No,’ she said, and slowly read out the correct one.

  He ended the call, switched off his phone, and, with the warm glow of success, drove to Sea Point, to change his location. He parked on the other side of the swimming pool, in the area that looked out over the flat, windless summer sea. He phoned the detective. In that moment, when the man answered, there was a separation from reality, and he was curious to hear his own voice. Would it tremble, would it hesitate?

  It didn’t.

  The detective, the Benny Griessel he had seen in the news photos, sounded unsettled. Absent. And that gave him pleasure – it was the result of the pressure he brought to bear, his actions, his campaign. He wrote down the email address, put the cellphone down, took out the battery. He put everything in the glove compartment and drove home before the rush hour could detain him. To write the email. And he knew this tranquillity he had found would stay with him.

  Tonight, in the dark, he would go and reconnoitre the area around Vriende Street and Nelson’s Mansions. In the Audi, and on foot.

  Because that was where he wanted to fire his next shot.

  38

  They were all sitting around the big table in Musad Manie’s office – the brigadier himself, Zola Nyathi, Werner du Preez of CATS, Philip van Wyk of IMC, Cloete of Public Relations, Mbali and Griessel.

  The voice of Captain Ilse Brody, criminal behaviour analyst of the Investigative Psychology Section in Pretoria, came clearly over the conference phone in the centre of the table. ‘You all know a profile is a moving target,’ she said. ‘But this is what I have: male, white, and Afrikaans. His terminology and ideology betray that, and his age. He is fond of the word “communist”. He also uses “communist bedfellows”. That strongly indicates to me someone who grew up under the previous dispensation. He could be anything between forty and seventy years old. But it takes a certain amount of physical ability to do what he is doing, so he would most likely fall in the age bracket between forty and mid-fifties. If I take everything into account, my best guess is that he is in his mid to late forties.

  ‘He has a hunting rifle at his disposal, scop
e and ammunition, and therefore most likely a gun licence. He has the means and space to adapt to his specific purpose. He has access to the Internet, knowledge of anonymous email servers, quotes in Latin, and has relatively good language skills. All that, along with the timing of the police attacks, indicates to me a white collar worker who is not unemployed.

  ‘I’ll come back to timing later, because it has more interesting implications. But let’s look at the religious and political references first. There is a degree of self-justification in those, but my instinct tells me we are working with someone who is on the right of the political spectrum. Probably not far right, he isn’t fanatical enough for the Boeremag, but he would have sympathy with them. And if I may interject here: the long hair that the eye witness saw, does not fit this picture. The anti-communist, the religious right would have short hair, probably a moustache, beard, or both. The chances are good that he was wearing a wig.

  ‘He is religious, but I don’t think he belongs to an extremist or charismatic group. To tell the truth, I don’t think he is in any way a community or group person. He sees himself as the white knight, the lone wolf, the solitary protector of moral values and justice. There are no psychoses, but most likely a personality disorder – perhaps a kind of Messiah complex.’

  They could hear the rustle of paper over the line. Then she went on: ‘This offers us some possibilities. He is on the social and professional fringes, not the sort of come-and-braai-at-my-place-tonight kind of guy. An introvert, living just a little secretively, very serious about himself and life. He might be married, but will not be loving towards or involved in his wife’s life, rather cold and aloof. The kind who believes he is head of the house, he makes the decisions.

  ‘The most interesting thing for me is the temporary regression of his correspondence. His first emails are short and powerful, careful and full of confidence, and without spelling or grammatical errors. It seems he spent time on them, went to some trouble. He knew he had the upper hand, he was writing from a position of strength. He is busy positioning and justifying himself, as though he is preparing the stage for the media attention to come. That brings me back to the megalomania and the Messiah complex. Make no mistake, that is how he sees himself: he occupies the moral high ground, the SAPS does not. But then, in the email of February twenty-seventh to the press, it changes. Not spelling mistakes, but typos. Suddenly he’s in a hurry and nervous, as though the moment is greater than he anticipated.