7 Days

by Deon Meyer

  When Griessel began to talk again, he had their full attention.

  55

  The day’s work began with renewed energy, activated by Nyathi’s words, and a female detective who had put them all to shame.

  The day’s work began with so much promise when the SAPS station at Melkbosstrand informed them that they had found the burned-out Chana.

  At half past six they phoned in the engine number, and Nyathi, Mbali and Griessel sat watching the IMC screens as they searched for the name of the owner on the vehicle registry system.

  Neville Alistair Webb. Fifty-five years old. Langley Road in Wynberg.

  They sent the task force to bring him in, acutely aware of the urgent need to make progress.

  At 8.12 they shoved the short, dismayed and protesting Webb into Mbali’s office. ‘I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything,’ he said, red in the face.

  Griessel sat and listened. She asked the questions.

  ‘You own a 2007 Chana panel van, Mr Webb.’

  ‘Shit. I knew it.’

  ‘Please do not swear, Mr Webb. What did you know?’

  ‘That he was a crook.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guy who bought it.’

  ‘You are saying you sold the Chana?’

  ‘Of course I sold it. How do you think I paid off my creditors? I sold the van, I sold the shop, I sold the stock, I sold my car …’

  ‘When did you sell it?’

  ‘Almost too bloody late …’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last week of January.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. And you know what, I don’t care. I really don’t care. Because he paid me cash, and I paid my debts, and what he did with the bloody van is his problem, not mine.’

  ‘You had better start caring, Mr Webb. The vehicle was used in the shooting of several police officers, one of whom was killed.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘May I ask you to refrain from profanity, Mr—’

  ‘No, you may not. You break down my door like barbarians, you assault me in my house like a criminal, in front of my wife, you drag me here, and you’re trying to blame me for making a perfectly legal sale of my legally owned property? And then you expect me to speak in a civilised manner? Bullshit. If I could still afford a lawyer, I would have called him, and sued your arses. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you what happened, and then I’m walking out of here. And if you don’t like that, you can shoot me. Because I really don’t care any more. You hear me? I don’t care.’

  ‘What happened, Mr Webb?’

  ‘The Internet happened, that’s what. Amazon and Kindles and iPads happened. You know how long I ran my bookshop? Twenty years. Put two kids through university. And then? E-books. Boom. Recession. Boom. Savings. Boom. No more Book Webb. Just one big financial mess.’

  ‘What happened with the sale of the Chana?’

  ‘I advertised it in the Argus, on Auto Trader, on Gumtree. The market is swamped, everybody’s in trouble. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody. After almost six months, I’m on my way to insolvency, and finally this guy calls me, last week of January, and he says he’ll pay cash, he’s in Jo’burg, he’s busy, he’ll have someone fly down and pick it up, I must just leave the keys and the registration papers under the driver’s seat carpet and park the van at the airport. So I think it’s a bit weird, but the next day he calls and says I must check my account. And the money is there. So I did what he asked. And when he called again, I gave him the number of the airport parking spot, and that’s the last time I heard from him.’

  ‘But the vehicle is still registered to you.’

  ‘And that’s my fault?’

  ‘Can you prove that you sold the van?’

  ‘How the hell am I going to do that?’

  ‘You tell us.’

  ‘Look at my bank statement, for God’s sake. Twenty-two thousand, in cash, last week of January.’

  ‘Where were you last night at eleven o’clock?’

  ‘At home. With my wife.’

  ‘Just the two of you?’

  ‘No. We had a party. Elvis was there. And Frank Sinatra. Great guy.’

  ‘Just you and your wife.’

  ‘I’m leaving now.’

  ‘Mr Webb, please sit down.’

  ‘I have nothing more to say.’

  ‘Mister Webb—’

  ‘Shoot me.’

  That was the highlight of the morning.

  Xandra nt hapi. Bad reh ystdy. X w u. B warnd.

  He was still trying to decipher Ella’s SMS – it was worse than Fritz’s – when his phone rang.

  ALEXA.

  ‘Where are you, Benny?’ Her voice was cold and stiff.

  ‘At work. How are—’

  ‘Here in the Cape?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘I thought you were in Johannesburg, Benny?’

  ‘I was there yesterday, I—’

  ‘You couldn’t have let me know that you were back?’

  He had phoned her back. When was it, last night some time. Had he left a message? Too many things had happened, too little sleep. ‘I think I left a message.’

  ‘You didn’t say you were back. When did you get here?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. Alexa, I—’

  ‘Did you prefer to be alone, Benny?’

  ‘No. We worked till very late, I’m sorry, it was a bit crazy.’

  ‘Is today a bit crazy too? Or can we see each other?’

  Jissis, what could he say? With the bodyguards and the fact that he was penned in here. ‘Alexa, I want to see you, the trouble is just—’

  ‘I understand.’ She cut the call, and he stood there with the phone to his ear and the words on his tongue and the powerlessness paralysing him. He called Ella’s number, because he at least wanted to find out what Bad reh meant.

  She didn’t answer, but sent another SMS.

  Xandra X. Tlk ltr.

  He was trapped in the building. With too much time to think while they waited for the Kotko and de Vos cellphone reports, for the feedback from the teams that had gone out to the hotel, the city CCTV centre, to Silbersteins.

  He thought about his inability to sustain any relationship. With his children, his ex, with Alexa. Was it the job, or was he the problem?

  It had to be him, because there were lots of policemen whose marriages lasted.

  He thought about his inability to comprehend the Sloet case. And how Mbali Kaleni, so much younger, with much less experience, through all the chaff of Kotko and the transactions and the Trust, had seen the grain. He thought about Bones Boshigo’s words yesterday. ‘You’re an old fox.’ The only truth in that was the ‘old’. He never made the connections, he never thought the whole thing through like Mbali. He was too busy playing the strong man in that cell with Kotko, too focused on his conviction that it was the Russian himself who had killed Sloet.

  He had lost his touch, somewhere in the months that he was doing training and mentoring work for Afrika. And just could not shake off that rust, it was inside him, encrusted with the damage of thirteen years of drunkenness. Maybe that was why Afrika had recommended him to the Hawks. So he could rid himself of Griessel-the-toothless-jackal.

  Had he ever had a worse week in his life?

  Fuck knew, he would have to pull his finger out. He would have to catch a wake-up and shake off this paralysis, never mind how far behind he was with sleep.

  But the day kept dealing out the knocks.

  Rumours that the Cape Hawks were a topic of debate in parliament were confirmed. The opposition talked about ‘this nest of vipers’ that needed cleaning out. A man said on a phone-in radio programme: ‘Leave this guy alone, let him shoot the whole corrupt gang, so we can begin afresh.’ So-called law enforcement experts used words like ‘turning point’ and ‘low point’ and ‘crisis’ in interviews. The
flood of media calls began to include foreign journalists, and everything was reinforced with reporters and photographers who set up camp outside the DPCI building. Bellville uniforms had to come and maintain order, direct traffic.

  The fragile, bespectacled Dr Tiffany October sat down with Griessel and Mbali and methodically explained the pathology report of the suicide of Frikkie de Vos. If you took into account the blood spatter against the head rest of the Toyota Fortuner, the precise entry and exit wounds of the shotgun, the gunpowder residue on de Vos’s hands and in the back of his throat, the size of the vehicle cab, and the total absence of any other bruises, grazes or wounds, she said, there could only be one explanation: the man had committed suicide.

  Later, in the afternoon, all their other theories toppled one by one, like dominoes.

  It was Griessel who took the calls, who had to pass on the news. From Silbersteins, the Cullinan Hotel, and the city CCTV control centre, that the teams were coming back empty handed. Every time his heart sank further, and the desperate fatigue seeped deeper into his bones.

  He was there when the spider’s web of de Vos’s cellphone calls – blown-up and projected onto the IMC wall – brought more disappointment. When Mbali, now practically walking in her sleep, called the widow in search of an explanation, and had to hear that ‘Frikkie’s crooked clients only emailed, they were too scared of cellphones’. And she didn’t know which email address de Vos used, it must be on the computer somewhere.

  Mbali sat in the IMC centre with her head bowed, her back turned to them, and Griessel saw her shoulders shudder at the onslaught of tears, but she did not look up.

  And then the mortal blow.

  It came some time during the drowsy depression between three and four o’clock. The long corridors were quiet, the telephones had stopped ringing, and only Fick was still busy at his computer, the irregular click of his mouse the only sound in the room.

  They heard the footsteps approaching on the tiled floor, measured and weary. Nyathi, always so proud and erect, leaned against the door-jamb, his body crumpled like that of an old man, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘The brigadier has just come out of the National Commissioner’s office. He called to tell me that he will be facing a formal disciplinary hearing tomorrow morning at nine. He’s their scapegoat. They want to suspend him.’

  In the shocked silence that followed, in a hopeful tone that was completely out of place, Fanie ‘Fucked’ Fick said: ‘Now that’s very weird …’

  56

  Fick saw the expressions on the faces that turned towards him, the reproach and disgust.

  ‘No, really,’ he said, and pointed at the screen.

  ‘What, Fanie?’ asked his immediate boss, Captain Philip van Wyk, crossly.

  ‘This Frikkie de Vos,’ said Fick. ‘We only looked at his cellphone up to the day of his death. Because that was the last day that he made calls.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘But I looked at calls received. I … there was nothing else to do …’

  ‘What is it, Fanie?’

  ‘After he died, on the nineteenth of January, he was phoned four times from the same number. There were voice messages left twice. On the twentieth, another two calls. What’s so peculiar to me – they are from the police station in Victoria West.’

  ‘Victoria West?’ said Griessel, dumbfounded, because that didn’t fit any scenario.

  ‘Give me the number,’ said Mbali, and pulled the phone on the desk closer.

  He read it out to her. She phoned.

  ‘Put it on speaker phone,’ said Nyathi.

  She pressed the button. They all listened to it ringing.

  ‘South African Police Service, Victoria West,’ a woman’s voice answered.

  ‘This is Captain Mbali Kaleni, Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations in Cape Town. I would like to speak to your station commander, please.’

  ‘Please hold.’

  They all sat irritably listening to tinny electronic music.

  ‘Captain Kaptein.’

  ‘May I speak to the station commander?’ Mbali asked sternly, suspecting a practical joker.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘What is your name, Captain?’

  ‘Leonard Kaptein.’

  ‘They are going to have to promote him,’ one of the IMC people whispered, because ‘kaptein’ was the Afrikaans for captain.

  ‘This is Captain Mbali Kaleni, Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations in Cape Town. I am investigating the shooting of several police officers this past week …’

  ‘Solomon?’ asked Captain Kaptein.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mbali. ‘So I don’t have to tell you how urgent this is.’

  ‘Blikslater. But what can we do?’ the station commander asked in his distinctive Northern Cape accent.

  ‘Someone from your station called the cellphone number of a Mr Frederik ’Frikkie’ de Vos on the nineteenth and twentieth of January, and left voicemail messages. Mr de Vos owned an accounting firm in Edgemead in Cape Town, and is involved in this case. I need to know who it is that called, and why.’

  ‘ Blikslater.’

  ‘Can I give you the de Vos number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She read the number slowly, every word formed with care, as if she was talking to a child.

  ‘Can I call you back?’

  ‘No, Captain. I will hold the line.’

  In the room of the Hawks Information Management Centre in Bellville, they could hear Captain Leonard Kaptein, five hundred kilometres to the north-east as the crow flies, shout loudly and excitedly: ‘Julle!’ Followed by the sound of his government issue chair being knocked over and clattering to the floor.

  ‘Julle!’ the cry came again, but quieter, as he must have gone out of the door. ‘I want everybody. Now! It’s about Solomon. Get everyone on the radio …’ Then he was beyond the receiving distance of the telephone, only the cooing of a dove in Victoria West sounding calmly down the line.

  Nobody spoke.

  They waited.

  Nine long minutes. Too scared to hope.

  A train rattled past on the far side of Tienie Meyer Street, on the way to Bellville station.

  They heard voices and rapid footsteps. ‘… you sure, Wingnut?’

  ‘Ja, Captain.’

  ‘Hello?’ said Leonard Kaptein. ‘I’m here,’ said Mbali.

  ‘I’m putting on Sergeant Sollie Barends. Tell the woman, Wingnut.’

  ‘Hello, this is Sergeant Sollie.’ It was a younger voice, uncertain, as though finding the occasion quite overwhelming.

  ‘This is Captain Kaleni.’

  ‘Captain, my English is not so good.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Mbali turned to Griessel. ‘Can you talk to him?’

  He nodded, shifted his chair quickly up to the table and said in Afrikaans, ‘Sollie this is Captain Benny Griessel. What do you know about the call?’

  ‘OK. Captain, it was me who called that de Vos.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘About the little rifle, Captain.’

  ‘What rifle?’

  ‘The triple-two, Captain.’ Something happened in the IMC centre, intangible and inaudible, a subtle electric charge.

  ‘Sollie, explain to me carefully, from the beginning.’

  ‘OK.’ They heard the rustle of pages. ‘It’s all here in the case file, Captain,’ said Sollie Barends. ‘That Monday, that’s the seventeenth of January, Aunty Jacky Delport phoned – that’s Mrs Jaqueline Johanna Delport of the farm Syferfontein this side of Vosburg – and she said the little rifle was missing. That’s her late husband’s triple-two. Because on Sunday she began clearing out and cleaning up and she noticed the rifle was gone, and she swore it was the mannetjie from the bookkeepers, that’s the mannetjie who came to do the books for the estate. Then I drove out there, to investigate—’

  ‘Sollie, just hang on a minute. Where is Vosburg?’

  ‘A hundred kilometres from us here. Little place. But the farm is o
nly seventy.’

  ‘Do you know who the mannetjie is?’

  ‘He’s a Samuel. From the Cape.’

  ‘Is that his surname?’

  ‘No, Captain, the aunty thinks it’s his name.’

  ‘She thinks?’

  ‘Captain, Aunty Jacky is eighty-seven, the old brain is not so lekker any more.’

  ‘When was this Samuel there?’

  ‘Here at the end of November, Captain.’

  ‘It took her two months to realise the rifle was missing?’

  ‘That’s what I asked her too, Captain. She said she didn’t need the rifle. And she didn’t have the heart to clean up the Oom’s workroom.’

  ‘Why did she get someone from the Cape to do the books?’

  ‘That’s what Oom Henning told her to do. In the letter.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘That would be the letter he left. Along with his will.’

  ‘What did he say in the letter?’

  ‘He said she can get married again, but just not to Willem Potgieter. Potgieter is the neighbour there. A bachelor. He and Oom Henning had a big fight …’

  ‘Sollie, what did the letter say about de Vos?’

  ‘Only Frikkie de Vos was allowed to come and do the books.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘It looks like de Vos had been doing Oom Henning’s books for the last eight years. The aunty said it’s because of the klippies and the gambling.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oom Henning … Captain, everyone in the district knew Oom Henning was smuggling diamonds. Before my time already, I believe the diamond branch came here to try to catch him out, but he was too clever. He went up to Sun City about twice a year, or down there to your side, then he would come back and tell everyone how he had won. But really it was diamond money. The aunty said Oom Henning met de Vos in a gambling den, one time. Ever since then, he had to do the books, to hide the money from the diamonds from Jan Taks, the taxman. Everything got sent down to Cape Town, at the end of the financial year. But when Oom Henning died, she said she wasn’t sending anything away, de Vos could come to the farm himself and do the books, under her four eyes. But then he sent that mannetjie. Samuel.’