by Deon Meyer
Griessel stood up slowly, the guilt bearing down heavily on him. Manie had to take the brunt of the fact that he had not achieved anything. With Kotko. With everything. And what could he tell them now, when he himself had no idea what to do?
He stood beside Nyathi. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel,’ he said.
‘Not your fault, Benny.’
A chorus of assent.
He stood there, searching for words, searching for an approach that would not make him look like a fool, aware of the fact that his view might not be correct, that he could make an even bigger mess.
He cleared his throat. He said, ‘We will have to take another look at Kotko, because we’re missing something. He’s in the middle of something. Something to do with the shooter, with Sloet, with …’ He nearly mentioned John Afrika by name, and then realised it was probably not common knowledge. ‘… to do with the allegations against the SAPS, with the deals, the lawyers. And I don’t think it’s just coincidence.’
Supportive murmurs. They bolstered his courage.
‘I want to look at the Fischer report again, Colonel. I want us to go through Kotko’s cellphone records from the beginning again, every person that he talked to in December and January. Look at all the hotel videos again. Go and stand in that hotel room to see if there’s any way to slip out. See if any of the city’s street cameras can tell us anything. We’ll have to show photos of Kotko and his men around Sloet’s apartment block. We’ll have to talk to Silbersteins again, about their meeting with Kotko on the eighteenth. I was not present at Pruis’s interrogation …’
‘We must throw the book at him, Benny, he’s a sly bliksem,’ Cupido called.
‘I felt that way too. The thing is, there are just too many coincidences. Sloet’s death on the day of that meeting. Kotko’s background. His calls. The photo that the shooter sent. The involvement of … a SAPS member. And not one of us believes in coincidences.’
Heads nodded, calls of ‘yes’ and ‘that’s right’.
He couldn’t think of anything else. ‘That’s all I have, Colonel.’
‘Thank you, Benny. People, our biggest enemy at the moment is fatigue. We have been under tremendous pressure, most of you have not slept much in the last forty-eight hours, and now I can see how tired you are. None of us is thinking clearly any more. The brigadier and I discussed this at length, and we both came to the conclusion that there is not much we can do tonight. We suggest that you all spend an hour or two with your families, and then get some rest. Let’s come back here early tomorrow morning, let’s say six o’clock, and take a new, fresh look at things. We have a skeleton staff on the night shift, if there is another shooting victim tonight, we will unfortunately have to call in the CATS team … Where is Mbali …?’
‘In Amsterdam,’ someone whispered.
They laughed, more from a release of tension than spite.
‘She’s asleep already,’ someone else added.
‘That’s what we should all be doing,’ said Nyathi. ‘People …’ He took a few steps forward and his voice softened, ‘get some rest. If we can break this case tomorrow, we’ll go a long way towards strengthening our commanding officer’s hand. Let’s do it for him. Please.’ The last word was an undisguised plea.
Silence descended on the room.
Mbali sat at a little table in the corner of the big warehouse.
She watched the PCSI, the elite forensic team, busy inspecting Frikkie de Vos’s furniture. To one side, with his hands on his hips, stood the frustrated owner of the auctioneers company.
Mbali looked down at the notes she was busy making. It was a timeline, in her small, neat handwriting.
Wednesday, 12 January: Sloet calls de Vos on his cellphone, because he is Kotko’s bookkeeper.
Saturday, 15 January: de Vos commits suicide.
Monday, 17 January: Mrs de Vos takes cash from safe. Computer/drives in office.
Tuesday, 18 January: Hanneke Sloet killed.
Friday, 21 January: Mrs de Vos discovers theft of computer/drives.
Monday, 24 January: Shooter sends first email.
She read it again, making a tick after each one. Then she wrote:
Suicide? Check pathologist report.
Kotko killed de Vos? Why?
Isando Friendship Trust fin. Statements tie Kotko to police corruption.
Theft of computer/drives on 19 or 20 Feb?
And right at the bottom, her strongest intuition, the key to tracing the shooter. She underlined it. Three times.
Only at half past ten did the PCSI team leader walk over to her. ‘There is no doubt,’ he said. ‘Someone wiped all the furniture very carefully. There’s absolutely nothing.’
‘I thought so,’ she said.
There was a missed call on his cellphone, after the meeting. ALEXA the screen had said.
He phoned back, got her voicemail and left a message. ‘Hello, Alexa, I hope everything is fine,’ then immediately thought it was an idiotic thing to say. He pressed on with: ‘I … My cellphone will be on for the rest of the night …’ He wanted to say he missed her, or something. But his courage failed. ‘OK. Bye.’
He went to fetch his laptop from IMC and walked to his office to get the Fischer report to read at home.
On the desk, positioned so that he couldn’t miss it, lay a printout. Cellphone records. With a note from Fick.
Benny
Here are Calla Etzebeth’s records. Hope it helps.
Fanie
He looked at them. The Neanderthal rugby player with the low brow and close-together-eyes had phoned Carla in the past three weeks at least six times a day, and sent fifteen, twenty messages.
That was not a random photo from Rag. This was his daughter’s boyfriend.
Jissis.
53
A quarter to eleven.
The sniper’s limbs were stiff, his backside numb, and his back sore from sitting awkwardly. The adrenaline had come and gone, the tension ebbed and flowed. He had considered leaving many times in the past hour, his head telling him Griessel wasn’t going to come, something had happened. His imagination had nearly made him shoot twice, two dark-haired men who looked vaguely like the detective. He was in too much of a hurry, wanted to swing the scope to the front wheel too quickly. He only just stopped himself in time.
He would wait till midnight. No later.
Then he heard the car coming, in his blind spot, from east to west down Vriende Street.
He quickly rubbed his right eye, gripped the rifle, and looked through the scope.
A white BMW drove right past him, out of focus, too close.
Brake lights lighting up, in time for Nelson’s Mansions.
Flicker light.
The car turned in. The BMW stopped. He focused the cross hairs of the scope on the driver. Saw the hair. The right eye.
It was Griessel.
He felt the shock of the adrenaline surge. He had to make sure. He had enough time, nearly thirty seconds. He forced himself to look again. Was he sure, completely sure?
It was Griessel.
He swung the telescope towards the right front wheel.
Griessel dug the remote out of his jacket pocket, automatically, his head was dull. He found it, pointed it at the gate. It began to move, reluctantly.
He heard the smack, felt the light shock through the steering wheel.
He swore, a half-formed thought – the front tyre, he must have driven over a nail. An unwillingness to accept the implications, he didn’t want to change a tyre at this time of the night.
Another smacking sound. Only then did everything come into focus – someone was shooting at him. The window right beside him exploded.
The sniper fired the last shot, ripped off the hiking pole strap, tossed the rifle quickly down in the tray.
He jerked up the screen between loading bed and driver’s cab and jumped over into the seat.
He looked at the BMW, forty metres away, the glass glittering on the tar. Griessel wa
s sitting there, head bowed.
Christ. He’d shot him dead.
He turned the key. The engine groaned and choked. It wouldn’t take.
He thought his heart would stop.
He tramped on the accelerator, turned again.
A whining sound, without success.
A movement out of the corner of his eye, his head whipping to the right.
Griessel opening the door of the BMW, leaping out.
He turned the key again. His whole body leaning forward in urgency and fear.
Griessel running towards him, his right hand under his jacket.
The engine took.
A gun in the detective’s hand.
Panic, like a serpent in his head.
He slammed the Chana into gear, the revs high.
A booming shot, the bullet’s crack, his window shattering, head jerking in fright, glass spraying on his face. He pulled away, tyres screeching along with the engine, desperately wrenching at the steering wheel to get out of the parking place, but not fast enough.
Griessel right beside the Chana, fist slamming against the panel, the detective screaming something, the sniper racing out of the parking spot. Another shot. A burning pain exploding in his hand. As he raced down Schoonder Street, in the side mirror he saw Griessel running, jacket flapping, pistol aimed at the Chana. He ducked instinctively, as another shot smacked into the panel van.
The corner with Myrtle Street too close, going too fast, braking too late. The tyres squealing he jerked the steering wheel, the rear end of the Chana swinging too far, the right side thumping dully against a vehicle, metal scraping on metal. Accelerator to the floor, the engine stuttering, the panel van juddering, shuddering.
Fear overwhelmed him so that he screamed, shrill, in mortal fear. Another shot cracked, further back, but he didn’t hear it hit.
Then the engine was strong again suddenly and he pulled away down Myrtle, looked down at the pain in his hand.
His little finger was gone, only the bloodied stump remained.
DAY 6
Thursday
54
It was just after one in the morning. The roadblocks, the feverish hunt for a red Chana with a broken window and multiple bullet holes, had produced no results.
In Vriende Street the curious, the hordes of uniforms and SAPS vehicles, and Colonel Nyathi, his brow furrowed with worry, had finally left. Only the night sounds of the city and the single patrol vehicle in front of Griessel’s flat remained. Nyathi had insisted on that, against all his objections. ‘They’ll look after you tonight. Tomorrow we’ll bring in the VIP Protection Unit.’
He walked to the vehicle. He told the two sergeants that he wanted to stand on the corner one last time.
They looked at him wide-eyed, full of respect for ‘the one who had survived the shooter’. The JOC leader of the Sloet investigation.
He paced off the distance again, and looked back at the gate.
It was close.
Two tyres shot out, one after the other. And then, the shot that had missed him, because at that instant, when he’d realised he was being fired at, he’d jerked back his head.
He suppressed his rage at the shooter until he was back in his flat. Only then did he let out a single fierce four-letter word.
He showered and went to sit at the kitchen counter with the report on Makar Kotko from Jack Fischer and Associates. He knew he’d never be able to sleep now.
Towards the end of it he had to read some paragraphs and whole pages over again, his concentration flagging.
When he finally went to bed, close to three o’clock, it was with a reluctant respect for the Russian. A man who had to make his career in the backwaters of Africa, hellholes of civil war, poor infrastructure, corruption, poverty, disease and wretchedness.
A man who had to make do with the flotsam and jetsam of KGB personnel who weren’t good enough for the espionage hot-spots of the First World. Who had to tread on eggshells, walk a tightrope between the minor and major tribal and national conflicts, foreign ideologies, who had to use some fancy footwork to navigate between the conceit and greed and power-hunger of the despots of the Dark Continent, who constantly came and went, and always played the West and East off against each other.
Kotko had made a success of it all. And after the fall of communism he had used his experience, his knowledge and contacts and unique talents, with skill and purpose, to carve out a new career: his retirement vocation as a Southern African envoy of organised crime, with enough money for expensive German cars, a luxurious house, lavish parties, and paid sex.
Reluctant respect, because Kotko was sick: he took pleasure in the pain of others. Traitors, opponents, suspects, were never eliminated with a gun. Always slowly and sadistically with his favourite cutting-and-stabbing instrument, the longer, coarser blade of the INSAS bayonet for the AK-47 from Indonesia, slowly inserted and twisted in the anus of the victim.
He lay on the bed and thought that it could have been the weapon that was used to murder Hanneke Sloet. But with a single swift stab in the torso. That last fact, in his world, made a big difference.
This time, Kotko hadn’t done his own dirty work.
When the eastern horizon began to change colour, in the veld beside the old Atlantis railway line, the sniper lifted the mountain bike out of the Chana.
Pain shot through his hand. The pills, meant for headaches, were of little help. The wound had begun bleeding under the bandage again. The long, traumatic night had taken its toll. But he had to finish the job.
He propped the bicycle against a Port Jackson tree, came back, opened the cans of petrol one by one, and poured the fluid over the panel van – the engine, the cab, the interior. Difficult work with the injured hand.
He tossed the cans in the back. Walked away with the bottle of fuel, a scrap of cloth hanging from it. He lit the rag and tossed the bottle like a jukskei, underarm, for greater accuracy.
He stood and watched the flames bloom, hesitating a moment and then enveloping the whole vehicle with a dull pop.
He walked quickly to the bicycle, put on the cycling helmet, pushed it through the sand to the dirt track, mounted, and began pedalling furiously.
He was already on the tarmac of the R304 when the petrol tank of the Chana exploded. He looked back over his shoulder, and saw the flames and smoke cloud blossom above the trees.
At ten to five, when Griessel emerged from the flat, they were waiting for him: the VIP Protection Unit – four broad-shouldered policemen in black suits and white shirts with dark grey ties.
He sighed, and got into one of the black BMW X5s. He wanted to quip: ‘Work, James,’ but he just couldn’t muster the energy.
On the way to work he prepared for the six o’clock meeting. He would have to delegate tasks. Give the priorities to IMC. His greatest hope was that they would mine gold from the ore of Kotko’s cellphone calls. If he had been dumb enough to use his usual number to negotiate a murder with a hireling.
Then he saw the newspaper billboards: HAWK IS NEXT, SAYS SHOOTER.
That woke him up.
There must have been another email.
Nyathi was waiting for him, and handed him the printouts.
He realised the colonel had not slept.
He read the first one.
[email protected]
Sent: Wednesday 2 March. 23.39
To: [email protected]
Re:
Today I will shoot you dead.
Only those six words.
Rage pierced his fatigue and he looked up at Nyathi, searching for words to express it.
‘Read the other one.’
[email protected]
Sent: Wednesday 2 March. 23.39
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]; [email protected]
Re: Mercy
‘You shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be sur
ely put to death.’ Numbers 35:31 ‘Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.’ Deuteronomy 19:13
They took bribes. The media should go and look at the evidence in black and white the directorate of prority crimes is corrupt they are protectiing the generals that they work for. I have to wipe out those who shed inoncent blood.
It is war now. Today I will shoot a Hawk.
Solomon
Before he could take pleasure in the knowledge that stress must be to blame for those spelling mistakes, before he could say anything to express his contempt, Nyathi laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘We have secured the building. But I think you should stay in the office today.’
He argued vigorously, but to no avail. He pleaded, offered alternatives, suggested solutions.
Nyathi listened to it all as they walked to the big parade room. Then he just shook his head.
‘No.’
There was rebellion in the room. It was borne on the aggressive voices of nearly thirty detectives, the undertone of controlled rage at the shooter, his emails, his attack on a colleague. And the DPCI’s lack of action. ‘Where is Mbali?’ came the accusing question.
Nyathi struggled to silence them. He sketched the safety precautions, cautioned them to be careful.
Griessel stood up. First, they insisted on hearing from his own lips about the night before. His account drew out a rumble of indignation.
‘Where is Mbali? The big Kia hunter.’
‘Probably still sleeping.’
A chorus of accusation and dislike.
The ever-friendly, ever-restrained Nyathi stood up, so obviously upset that silence was immediate and overwhelming.
‘Is this what we do? When we are shot at by madmen, and the media, and the top brass? Is this what we do? When our commanding officer is fighting for his career in Pretoria? You should be ashamed of yourselves. While you were sleeping, Captain Kaleni worked. Straight through the night. She has followed leads the rest of us missed. She is hunting down this dog who is shooting us, and I think she just might catch the bastard before this day is out. So shut up. And show some respect.’