7 Days

by Deon Meyer

  She ate all the chips, solemnly, one by one. Before they got cold. She crumpled up the bag and the wrapping and went and disposed of them in the rubbish bin in the women’s toilet. Otherwise they left a smell in her office and they gossiped about that too.

  She washed her hands.

  She walked back, sat down at her laptop and opened a new Word file on the computer. She began to type.

  • The shooter knows about Kotko’s payment to Afrika.

  • Afrika’s bank? (Where does the Isando Friendship Trust bank?)

  • The shooter had to know Kotko is behind the Isando Friendship Trust.

  • Who runs the trust?

  • How does it work?

  • The shooter knows that Kotko knew Sloet.

  • Did Kotko tell a white, Afrikaans, middle-aged man? (Unlikely.)

  • Who did Sloet tell? (Ask Benny.)

  • The shooter must have known Sloet.

  • The shooter cares so much about justice in the Sloet case that he is willing to shoot officers of the law. Why? Family? (Ask Benny.)

  She saved the document. Unlocked the drawer, and took out a chocolate bar.

  At a quarter past twelve Captain Moses Zondi of the Hawks in Johannesburg was waiting for them in the arrivals hall. He was a big man with a short scar from a knife wound on his neck. He and Boshigo greeted each other like old friends.

  Outside Benny lit up a cigarette.

  ‘That stuff will kill you,’ said the fit Boshigo.

  As they walked to the car, Moses Zondi said, ‘Kotko is at his office in Sandton. We have full surveillance, and the Task Team, standing by. If he moves, we will know. We have another team outside his house in Magaliesview, near Montecasino in Fourways. The moment we have the search warrant, we’ll go in. Task team, Forensics, the works.’

  ‘You have the right address this time, bro’?’ Bones Boshigo asked. Nearly a year ago the Hawks in Gauteng had raided the wrong address when they had wanted to arrest the fugitive Radovan Krejcir for fraud. Since then they’d had to endure much mockery from their colleagues.

  ‘Not funny,’ said Zondi. Then he hit back, ‘There’s this rumour about the Slaapstad Hawks doing something really stupid in Amsterdam. What happened?’

  ‘The boss isn’t talking.’

  ‘Which reminds me, you have to call your CO, right away.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Boshigo. ‘Benny is running this one. I’m just the pretty black face, nè.’

  Griessel drew deeply on his cigarette, held it between his lips and took out his cellphone. He phoned Manie.

  ‘First the good news, Benny,’ the brigadier said. ’Skip Scheepers got the name of Jack Fischer’s source from them half an hour ago, the one who knew about Kotko and bayonets in his KGB days. The source is a member of the Executive Committee of COPE, the opposition party. In the nineties he was still with the ANC’s Intelligence wing, he got to know Kotko in Lusaka. Colonel Nyathi talked to the source, and he is prepared to go on record. I think the source is playing politics, but now it’s in our favour.

  ‘The second thing is, Fischer and Associates’ research says Kotko and his ZIC company made investments to launder money for his boss, Arseny Egorov. They say if we dig deep enough, there’s enough evidence to prosecute him. And the third thing: Kotko was in Cape Town on the night of Sloet’s murder. His credit card records confirm that. And we plotted his cellphone records for January. He made four calls, which all registered at the Dock Road tower at the Waterfront.’

  That was only a few blocks away from Sloet’s apartment building, and Griessel suppressed his ‘jissis’.

  ‘Were any of the calls to Sloet, Brigadier?’

  ‘No. But two were to an escort agency. We’re finding out now how long the girls were with him. All that gives us enough for a search warrant, Benny. The guys in Gauteng put in the request, we should know within the next fifteen minutes. But now the bad news: if we want to get anything on the radio by four o’clock, we will have to make some big decisions by three …’

  Very little time.

  ‘First prize would be an announcement that we have arrested Kotko,’ said Manie. ‘But you will have to be absolutely certain that it’s a watertight case. All hell is going to break loose, Benny. This guy has connections. We’re talking about people in government, Ministerial Committee, the Youth League. We’re talking about immense pressure, we’re talking about weeks of media hysteria. All our jobs are on the line. Mine, yours, the commanding officer up there. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, Brigadier.’ They had reached Moses Zondi’s Hawks vehicle, a silver BMW 3-series sedan.

  ‘Second prize is we leak that he is being detained for questioning. I don’t know whether that would be enough to placate the shooter, but we will have to try. The same drama, the same political implications, so we will have to decide what the odds are.’

  ‘Yes, Brigadier.’ Zondi took Griessel’s case, put it in the boot of the BMW, motioned him to get in. Griessel got in the back.

  ‘The plan works like this,’ said Manie over the phone. ‘You go directly to Kotko’s offices. As far as we know it is just him and a secretary. You begin questioning him straight away, the DPCI team will make sure the secretary does not phone anyone, or mess with her computer or any documentation.’

  ‘Buckle up,’ said Moses Zondi, and stuck a blue light on the front windscreen. Griessel pinched the cellphone against his ear and clipped on the seat belt.

  ‘The minute the search warrant is issued,’ said Manie, ‘we’ll send our teams to search his office and house. The team leaders will talk to Bones, so that you are not interrupted.’

  ‘Right, Brigadier.’

  Zondi pulled away, tyres squealing.

  ‘Bones will inform you if they find anything that might influence your decision.’

  ‘I’ll tell him, Brigadier.’

  ‘Phone me by ten to three, Benny. At the latest. And then tell me what we’re going to do.’

  They drove out of the O.R. Tambo airport building into the Gauteng summer sunshine, blindingly bright. Zondi put on a pair of dark glasses and turned on the siren.

  46

  Twenty-six minutes to one.

  The traffic opened up to the wailing siren. Griessel had to talk loudly above the racket. He told Boshigo what Brigadier Manie had told him.

  ‘It’s like old times,’ said Bones.

  ‘When you worked with Vusi?’ asked Zondi, and winked at Benny in the mirror.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Boshigo, deadly serious.

  Cupido got three patrol vehicles from Caledon Square station to help. Because he didn’t have a search warrant, he would have to rely on effect. And attitude.

  They stopped with screeching tyres in front of the old white-washed one-storey building in Bree Street. Everyone jumped out, ran up to the black-painted security gate. Just to the right of it, on the wall, was an advertisement board, Midnite Moves Private Club, with the silhouette of a howling wolf’s head outlined against a yellow full moon. Cupido rattled the steel bars of the door. It was locked. He looked into the gloom inside. Someone moved against a backdrop of booze bottles. ‘SAPS,’ he shouted. ‘Open up.’

  It took a moment before a buzzer sounded and the lock sprang open.

  Cupido walked in alone.

  Muted lighting, cheap red carpet and cream-coloured couches, a pine wood bar against the furthermost wall. Behind it stood a skinny, sallow man with a cigarette between his fingers, and a thin black moustache that he smoothed nervously with an index finger. His eyes flickered uneasily from Cupido to the uniforms outside.

  Cupido took his identity card out of his pocket, smacked it down on the bar counter and said: ‘Read it and weep.’

  The man leaned forward warily and read.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘Affonso?’ he said with a peculiar doubtfulness, his narrow shoulders bowed.

  ‘Affonso who?’

  ‘Affonso Britos?’

/>   ‘Are you asking me, or telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you?’

  Cupido looked sharply at the man. He suspected it was nerves that were causing the question marks. ‘Captain Vaughn Cupido. Do you know the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigations, Affonso Britos?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m not sure.’ He sounded respectfully apologetic.

  ‘The Hawks.’

  ‘OK. I know the Hawks.’

  ‘Great stuff, Affonso. What do you know about the Hawks?’

  ‘They are scary?’

  ‘That’s the right answer. We are mean motherfuckers, Affonso. We can shut down your little whorehouse in five minutes flat, do you understand?’

  ‘It’s a private club?’ said Britos with cautious objection.

  ‘Now you’re losing me. We don’t want verbal gymnastics.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘I can ask you for your liquor licence, Affonso. I can let those men out there come and check for fire safety violations. I can hit you with the whole Sexual Offences Act 23, if I had the inclination …’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘But we’re not going to waste our time on trivialities, OK?’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Cause this is a murder case.’

  ‘Genuine?’

  ‘Genuine. Serious stuff, so we’re not going to fuck each other around. OK?’

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘Affonso, it works like this: I ask the questions, you give the answers. Understand?’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘So let’s talk about the eighteenth of January. And Makar Kotko.’

  ‘Jirre,’ said Britos. ‘Kotko. He’s worse than the Hawks.’

  ‘Bad answer. And let me tell you, he’s yesterday’s news. Today we will lock him up.’

  ‘Genuine?’

  Seventeen minutes to one.

  He felt the pressure, tried to escape it by looking out of the window. He had last been here four years ago. Everything looked different – the airport, the freeways, the suburbs and the business districts. There was building work everywhere.

  But this was Johannesburg. It always looked different. They never stopped building and moving. That was what he liked about this place. There was an energy here, you felt it, you saw it, you heard it. Everyone in a hurry, determined, still prospecting for gold.

  Long green grass beside the roads, here and there red earth. So different from the Cape.

  How do you interrogate a former officer of the KGB? Cunning, experienced, he would have seen everything, would know every technique in the book.

  They were going to arrive there and Kotko would be sitting behind his desk, most likely with his face to the door, and with a bright window behind him. All the advantages on his side.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  There was something about the tailored jacket in Kotko’s photograph, and the hair that was so perfectly combed. The fact that he thought he had a chance with Hanneke Sloet. The buddy of government figures, a fat wallet. If Kotko were merely an envoy of the Russian Mafia-boss billionaire, his effectiveness ended with his unmasking. He would want to prevent that at all costs.

  That was what he must use. Hit Kotko where it hurt most. Take everything away – his job security, his belief he was untouchable, his political safety net, his dignity, his machismo.

  Play as rough as he could.

  Fuck. If it didn’t work, next week he would be doing a shop security patrol around Canal Walk with a radio on his hip.

  He took a deep breath, took out his phone and called Brigadier Musad Manie.

  ‘Benny?’

  He told his commanding officer what he planned to do.

  Manie was silent for a very long time. ‘God, Benny. We are going to take punishment if he’s not guilty,’ he said. ‘OK, you’ll have to work fast. I’ll phone the commanding officer up there straight away.’

  ‘Thank you, Brigadier.’ He ended the call and shouted to Zondi, ‘What’s the nearest police station to Kotko’s office?’

  ‘Sandton, in Summit Road.’

  ‘Do they have a very small interrogation room?’

  ‘They have these really grotty holding cells …’

  Mbali’s telephone conversation with General Afrika was awkward.

  She said she had to consider the bank as a potential place where someone might have established a connection between him and Kotko.

  I don’t have a connection with Kotko, Afrika said matter-of-factly.

  But is it possible? she asked.

  No. He banked at ABSA, and the Isando Friendship Trust account was with FNB. That was where his main problems began.

  She thanked him and walked down to the Hawks’ corporate crime group who were based in the southern corner of the ground floor.

  The whole team was gathered in one office, busy analysing the financial statements of Kotko’s ZIC consultancy group – which Oom Skip Scheepers had obtained from Jack Fischer and Associates – for money laundering.

  She said she was sorry to interrupt them, but she had to ask if anyone could explain to her how you could look into payments from a trust.

  There were a few alternatives, they said. The bank where the trust account was, the auditors who were responsible for the trust’s statements, and the Receiver of Revenue, who had to check the statements.

  She thanked them and walked back to her office. She would begin at FNB. And banks, she knew, were the slowest of all enterprises to respond.

  Their names were Nika and Natalya. A matching pair, two platinum blondes. Accents heavy, clothing light, flaunting their bodies. They sat side-by-side on the cream-coloured couch in Midnite Moves, their long, bare legs ending in high, spiked heels. Cigarettes between the fingers.

  ‘You are Russian?’ asked Cupido in surprise, and motioned to the fascinated uniforms to move back from the doorway. He wasn’t completely sure which one was Nika and which Natalya.

  ‘Ukrainian,’ said the one on the left. Perhaps Nika. ‘But we speak Russian.’

  ‘So, Makar asks for you both every time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because he wants to speak Russian while he makes hanky panky?’

  ‘Because we are good.’

  ‘And he asked for you on the eighteenth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time did you get there?’

  ‘Long time ago. We cannot remember.’

  Cupido consulted his notes. ‘That night he called here twice, just before six.’

  ‘Then it must have been about seven.’

  ‘And you went to the Cullinan Hotel?’

  ‘No. Restaurant first. Makar likes dinner.’

  ‘Which restaurant?’

  ‘Long time ago. Different one every time.’

  ‘Was it the Buena Vista Social Café? In the Waterfront?’

  ‘Maybe. Long time ago.’

  ‘It’s just over a month.’

  ‘Month is a long time.’

  ‘And then you went to the hotel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Maybe nine,’ said the one on the right, shrugging. Left said: ‘Nine-thirty?’

  They looked at each other, shrugged in unison, as though they didn’t really care.

  ‘What room?’

  ‘Long time ago.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘What do you think? Love happened.’

  ‘With both of you?’

  They did the shrug thing again, in unison. Cupido wondered whether it was a Ukrainian custom.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Threesome.’

  ‘I see. When did you leave?’

  ‘Next morning.’

  ‘You were with him the whole night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on. He’s in his fifties.’

  ‘Makar likes cuddle. After love.’

  ‘So you cuddled until the next morning?
’

  ‘Love. Cuddle. Sleep.’

  ‘And he never left the room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The whole night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much did he pay you?’

  ‘One five,’ said Left.

  ‘Each,’ said Right.

  Cupido whistled through his teeth, impressed.

  ‘Affonso take thirty per cent,’ said Left.

  ‘Bastard,’ whispered Right.

  ‘And how much did Makar pay you to give him an alibi?’

  ‘Alibi? What is that?’

  47

  Nine minutes past one. They were on the sixth floor of the luxury office building on West Street in Sandton, outside the door of ZIC.

  Griessel looked at the eight members of the task team, all kitted out in bullet-proof vests, helmets, boots, assault rifles. He knew they were cowboys, just like their Cape counterparts, fit and muscular, the over-zealous gleam to carry out his wishes in their eyes.

  Griessel nodded at the task team leader, who in his turn gave a hand signal to his man right in front, the one with the big, cylindrical sledgehammer. He swung the hammer back and slammed it violently into the closed office door of expensive Scandinavian wood.

  It caved in, splintering thunderously.

  The task team stormed through, with all the shouting and uproar that Griessel had asked for.

  He walked in behind them, his service pistol in his hand.

  He saw the secretary, a middle-aged woman who looked like someone’s mother, caught halfway out of her chair behind the desk, her hands covering her mouth, eyes wide and frightened.

  The hammer was swung back and the only other office door was broken open too.

  Kotko sat far back in his chair, his mouth half agape, his hands pressed instinctively flat on the desk top in front of him.

  He looked a little older than he had on the photo, in an expensive dark suit, a snow-white shirt and deep blue tie. The oiled hair was combed back.

  The task team reached him, jerked him out of the chair, just as Griessel had asked. Pressed him down on the carpet, clamped the handcuffs around his wrists, then the jingling shackles around his ankles.