7 Days

by Deon Meyer

  ‘Did you talk to a prosecutor?’

  ‘There wasn’t time.’

  ‘Is there enough, Willie? To get a conviction?’

  ‘It seems like this guy thought no one would look too closely, Brigadier. Very careless, probably because of all his political clout. We’ve got the goods on him, there’s no doubt.’

  ‘With his connections and all?’

  ‘Once we put the evidence on the table, his connections will evaporate like mist in the sunshine.’

  Mbali had a premonition.

  She walked into the IMC at the Hawks, found a weary Fanie Fick behind his computer and put a note down in front of him. ‘You should get some sleep,’ she said.

  ‘I’m just happy to be part of a big case again,’ he said, looking at her with his hangdog eyes, and smiling.

  ‘I want to see if Hanneke Sloet dialled this number.’

  ‘One second,’ said Fick, and typed the number into the database. Mbali felt sorry for him. She had followed the Steyn case in detail when she was still at the Bellville detective branch. She knew she could easily have made the same mistakes.

  The progress bar ran across the screen.

  A comment appeared.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fick, somewhat surprised. ‘On Wednesday the twelfth January.’

  ‘Six days before she was killed,’ said Mbali. And she knew why IMC hadn’t followed up on it. De Vos was an accountant. They thought it was merely a work-related call to a company that was connected to the empowerment transaction.

  ‘Whose number is it?’ Fick asked.

  ‘An accountant,’ she said. ‘Frikkie de Vos. The problem is, he’s dead.’

  Before he could ask why that was a problem, she had walked out.

  49

  At a quarter past two the task team brought in Fedor Vazov and Lev Grigoryev – two men in their forties. Griessel noted the tough leanness, the physical self-confidence, the lack of anxiety, the stoic patience. Old soldiers, he suspected.

  They had identical tattoos in the angle between thumb and index finger. It looked like a C and a six.

  He questioned them in a small office in the police station proper, because there were no more cells available. Displaying no emotion, with quiet, calm voices and broken English they answered his questions. They were the bodyguards of ‘Mister’ Kotko. Mister Kotko needed bodyguards because this was a very dangerous country. No, they didn’t accompany Mister Kotko to his office every day because it was safe there. It was only when he went to other places.

  Yes, they remembered the visit to Cape Town on the eighteenth of January. They stayed in the same hotel as Mister Kotko. They spent the day in the reception room of a legal firm, while Mister Kotko was in meetings. That evening they had dinner at a restaurant with Mister Kotko and his two lady friends. Then Mister Kotko and the friends went back to the hotel. And they went to the Jack of Diamonds, the strip joint. They couldn’t remember what street it was in, but it was about two blocks from the hotel. About nine o’clock. They couldn’t remember the exact time when they went back to the hotel.

  ‘So Cape Town is not such a dangerous place?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You let Mister Kotko go back to the hotel on his own.’

  ‘He said we can go.’

  They didn’t know whether anyone would remember them at the Jack of Diamonds. Maybe the girl who had entertained them to a lap dance in a private room. Cathy. Or Cindy. Or something. Maybe the barman, because they had ordered quite a lot. And left a big tip.

  No, they wouldn’t object to having photos taken of them to show to the people at the Jack of Diamonds. They had nothing to hide.

  No, they didn’t know the name Hanneke Sloet.

  At twenty to three Griessel knew he would get nothing more out of them.

  Even worse was his suspicion that they were telling the truth.

  For the first time Musad Manie sounded angry. ‘Why, Benny? If it wasn’t Kotko, and it wasn’t his henchmen, why is the shooter bothered with them?’

  ‘Brigadier, I may be wrong. But even if it were these two, we have nothing to connect them to the case. And I strongly doubt that Hanneke Sloet would have opened the door to them.’

  ‘Hell, Benny, I can’t understand this one. I just don’t understand it. We’re not a bunch of palookas. Someone is messing with our heads, and I don’t know who it is any more. Vaughn says there are video cameras in the hotel lifts, at the stairs, in the lobby, and the exit. There’s no way Kotko could have left his room without being recorded. And we don’t have anything else.’

  ‘No, Brigadier,’ he assented.

  Manie sighed. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Benny. Cloete is here with me. We’re going to tell the media that Kotko and his two pals were arrested today for money laundering. And that we are also investigating him for corruption, and organised crime activities, and possible involvement in the murder of Hanneke Sloet. Maybe the shooter will swallow that. Then I’ll phone the National Commissioner, and we’ll wait for the bombs to drop.’

  ‘Yes, Brigadier.’

  ‘So go and arrest the lot of them, and tell our Gauteng colleagues to keep them behind lock and key until we are sure. Then you and Bones come home. As soon as you can get on a flight. So we can look at this thing all over again.’

  The sniper directed his web browser to News24.com for the eleventh time since three o’clock.

  At the top he saw the headline: Russian arrested for money laundering – questioned about Sloet case.

  His heart rate increased.

  He clicked on the report, and read.

  Johannesburg. The Hawks are questioning a Russian businessman, Makar Kotko (53), about his alleged ties to the slain Cape Town lawyer Hanneke Sloet, after arresting him on charges of money laundering and corruption in Sandton this afternoon.

  The Sloet case, which has baffled police for more than a month, took a sensational turn this past week, when a lone gunman began shooting members of the SAPS, claiming in emails to the media that authorities know who the murderer is.

  According to Gauteng Hawks spokesperson Sipho Ngwema, Mr Kotko is the managing director of ZIC, a Russian investment consulting service with offices in Sandton.

  The sniper checked the right-hand lower corner of his computer screen. He saw it was two minutes past four.

  He thought he would feel relief. Happiness. They hadn’t arrested him for the Sloet murder. They had missed the cut-off time, hadn’t kept their part of the ultimatum.

  That meant they were protecting Kotko. The whole corrupt gang. He was right. Captain Benny Griessel was working for John Afrika. They were all in it together.

  But all he felt was renewed tension.

  He would have to finish what he had begun.

  Tonight he would wait for Benny Griessel.

  At a quarter past four, after she had received the information about the suicide from the Bothasig station, Captain Mbali drove to the house of the late auditor Frikkie de Vos.

  It was a large, neglected place in the quiet Trafford Close.

  There was a Pam Golding Properties For Sale sign on the front lawn next to the driveway.

  She rang the doorbell.

  Silence at first, then footsteps. Someone peered through the spyhole. ‘I don’t want to buy anything.’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘South Africa Police Services. I need to talk to you about Mr Frikkie de Vos.’

  ‘I don’t speak English much.’

  ‘My Afrikaans is bad. I am police. I have to talk to you about Frederik de Vos.’

  ‘Show me your card.’

  Mbali held the card up to the spyhole.

  The door opened.

  ‘Frikkie is dead,’ the woman said. ‘You people should know that.’

  She wasn’t a pretty woman. And she was crying.

  They sat in the sitting room, a fussy space with too many little tables and wall hangings. ‘If the house doesn’t sell within six months, the bank will take it back.
Then I lose everything. And do you know how many offers there have been? Not one. Not a single one. The market is dead. And look at this place. How do I fix it up? There’s no money in the bank … there’s no pension, no savings, nothing. Frikkie gambled. Casinos, horses, dogs, rugby, everything. If he could bet, he did.’ She smelled faintly of alcohol, her hair was thinning and unkempt, her mouth small and grim. There were food stains on the faded, light blue short-sleeved sweater. Her lower lip quivered, she wiped her nose with a tissue and said, ‘The worst of all is, I miss him so much.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ said Mbali.

  ‘Thank you.’ The tears flowed.

  ‘Mrs de Vos, where do I find your husband’s associates?’

  ‘Associates? What associates?’

  ‘He is De Vos and Partners.’

  ‘No, liewe Vader, I don’t know, it’s been ten years …’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s been ten years since he started using the firm’s money for gambling. That’s when the partners left.’

  ‘But he still called himself De Vos and Partners?’

  ‘On the sign, yes. But it was only him. No right-thinking auditor would come within a mile of him. Why are you looking for them?’

  ‘I need to look at his client list. Do you know where the records are?’

  She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and asked in surprise, ‘But don’t you know about the break-in?’

  ‘What break-in?’

  ‘At Frikkie’s office.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone got in. The week after his death. Walked off with the computer and the back-up. Must have read in the paper that Frikkie was dead, knew there was no one there.’

  ‘All the records were on the computer?’ Her heart sank.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And he only worked alone?’

  ‘Are you from the Bothasig station?’ Mrs de Vos asked.

  ‘No. I am from the Hawks.’

  ‘Because Bothasig knows all those things.’

  ‘They only have the file on the suicide. It doesn’t say anything about Mr de Vos’s work.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘They asked all the questions after the break-in, and I told them.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  She took out a fresh tissue, blew her nose at length, pushed the tissue under the sleeve of the blue sweater and said, ‘Let me tell you about Frikkie. When he took the money ten years ago, everyone left. Partners, clients, friends, everyone. He was very lucky not to lose his registration, I think it was because the partners knew it wouldn’t make much difference. Frikkie wasn’t one for work. Gambling, yes. But not work. So they thought he would go under quietly. But Frikkie was no fool. He got other people to do the work. Sort of stray dogs, if you know what I mean. The business is full of them. The drinkers, the lazy, the stupid, the ones who’ve been fired. Accountants who couldn’t get work anywhere else any more. Frikkie would say: Come and work with me. They would come, and go. One after the other. And let me tell you straight, the only clients Frikkie could get were people who wanted to cook the books. Or who were skimming off the top. That sort of thing. That’s why his employees never stayed. They were scared. Of being caught. And if you ask me, it was one of his crooked clients who stole the records. That’s what I think.’

  ‘Can you remember their names?’

  ‘I kept my nose out of it, I don’t know who his clients were.’

  ‘No, I mean, the people who worked for him.’

  ‘Not a cooking clue.’

  ‘And the bank statements? Where are they?’

  ‘They aren’t going to help you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Frikkie wasn’t a fool. His crooked clients paid him cash. And he paid his lame duck people cash. And he gambled with cash. And he never paid a cent of tax on the whole lot.’

  50

  The Jack of Diamonds in Prestwich Street had a playing cards theme. There were neon examples outside, a massive framed one on the rough, varnished brick wall inside. Playing cards for beer mats and menus and the drinks list at the bar. Playing cards on the barman’s shirt.

  Cupido sat down on a bar stool. ‘Hi, Jack,’ he said.

  ‘You think you’re the first to try that one?’ said the barman, not amused.

  ‘Still clever,’ said Cupido.

  ‘You’re a cop,’ said the barman. He had a hand-rolled cigarette behind his ear. A laconic expression.

  ‘A Hawk, pappie. Your worst nightmare.’ He shoved his identity card across the counter.

  ‘You still have to pay for your drinks.’

  ‘Are you a comedian, Jack? Who do you think is going to have the last laugh?’

  ‘I’m just putting all my cards on the table here.’

  ‘You are a comedian.’ Cupido took the two photos out of his jacket pocket, and put them down in front of the barman. ‘Play this hand, wise-ass.’

  The barman took the cigarette from behind his ear, lit it slowly, and studied the pictures. Eventually he said. ‘Yep, they’ve been here. Last time was about a month ago.’

  ‘So they are regulars?’

  ‘About every month or two.’

  ‘Evening of Tuesday, eighteenth of January?’

  ‘Maybe. Thereabouts.’

  ‘What can you remember?’

  ‘They took Sandy for a private lap dance in the Queen of Hearts …’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘There.’ He pointed to a curtained doorway, behind him. There were playing cards on the curtain.

  ‘Don’t you think the playing card theme is a little overdone?’

  ‘So you’re an interior decorator now?’

  ‘I’ll redecorate your face if you don’t lose the attitude. How come you remember about Sandy?’

  ‘Because she complained.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘About those two. They wanted blow jobs.’

  ‘And now you’re going to tell me you don’t do that kind of thing in this posh establishment.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t do it personally, but you can ask one of the girls.’

  ‘One more crack and I’ll fucking arrest you.’

  ‘Cool it. They didn’t want to pay. Blow job is extra.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I asked them nicely.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then they paid.’

  ‘What time did they leave here?’

  ‘Late.’

  ‘What is “late”?’

  ‘Twelve. One. Thereabouts. Drank a lot. Left a big tip.’

  Mbali knew the Bothasig Police Station was one of the best in the Peninsula. That’s why she was puzzled as to why they had said nothing about the break-in at Frikkie de Vos’s office when she enquired about the suicide case file.

  Until she drove there and asked the investigating officer.

  He was a young Xhosa sergeant, full of respect for her Hawks status and rank, and he told her it wasn’t a break-in.

  ‘There was no sign of illegal entry, Captain. And there was no purchase record of the computer or the back-up drives. I mean, she reported the burglary almost a week after she says it happened. She kept saying how she was completely broke, and kept asking me for the case number to file an insurance claim. And there was a safe in that office, and it’s still there, nobody touched it.’

  ‘So you didn’t open a file?’

  ‘I did. Just to give her the number. I mean, she’d just lost her husband, who’d gambled away all their savings. But there was no burglary. That’s why we didn’t tell you about it.’

  ‘OK. Now, tell me from the beginning. When did she report the burglary?’

  ‘On the twenty-first of January. Six days after the suicide.’

  ‘She came in here?’

  ‘No, she called the station. A vehicle with two uniforms went out to the office …’

  ‘Where is the office?’

  ‘At the b
ack of the Panorama Shopping Centre in Sonnendal. Hendrik Verwoerd Drive.’

  ‘Hendrik Verwoerd Drive?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This DA municipality. They have money to build bicycle lanes for the rich, but they don’t have money to change a street name like that?’

  ‘Viva, ANC, viva,’ said the sergeant. ‘Amandla.’

  ‘Ngawethu,’ said Mbali, the response to the Struggle cry an instant reflex. ‘And then?’

  ‘I was called out. So I saw right away there was no forced entry. Two locks on the door, these small, high windows, but there was nothing. And inside too. Everything was fine. No mess, everything in order. But missis de Vos said there was a computer there, and two back-up hard drives. But you know how, when you pick up a computer, you can see the clean square where it stood?’

  ‘Ewe.’

  ‘Nothing like that. And then I asked for the purchase receipt for the computer, and she said her husband didn’t keep receipts. He just worked in cash. So then I asked about the safe. Big as a fridge, standing right there. With a combination lock. And she said there was nothing taken from the safe. I mean, Captain, why would they not take the safe? If they wanted to steal stuff.’

  ‘How did she know there was nothing taken from the safe?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she opened it.’

  Griessel leaned back in the seat of the plane and shut his eyes for a moment. He was exhausted. His head felt thick, as if the extent of the case had grown too big. There wasn’t enough room for everything any more.

  ‘We are not palookas,’ the Camel had said.

  Manie was wrong. Benny Griessel was a palooka. His instincts had told him it was Kotko. He had been so sure. Everything fitted. Jissis. What was the matter with him? Was he losing his touch? Even in his drunken years he never made such horrible errors of judgement. Maybe that was the fucking problem, this sobriety. Maybe he should get the attention of the air hostess and order a Jack and Coke, because what difference had being sober made?

  At that moment it was such an immediate, seductive escape that he had raised his hand halfway before he came to his senses.