by Deon Meyer
He deciphered the first statement, written by a charge office constable in nearly illegible handwriting. It was made on 27 November by a Cindy Senekal, described as a ‘friend of the missing person’.
According to Cindy she had talked to Richter a number of times on the telephone on Wednesday 26 November. He was ‘upbeat’ and ‘normal’. The last call was at 16.00. They had a date to have dinner at the Dorpstraat Deli in Stellenbosch at 19.00. When he was fifteen minutes late, she tried to call him, but only got his voicemail. Senekal tried again a number of times, and left two voice messages. She waited at the restaurant until 19.45, and then returned to her townhouse. Over the course of the evening she tried again to contact him by phone, without success. Senekal said Richter’s cellphone had gone directly to voicemail around 20.30, and had stopped ringing. Her final call to him was at 00.24. ‘I called again this morning at approximately 06.50. At that time, I was just getting his voicemail. So I drove to his house. The doors were locked. Nobody answered the door. Ernst was sometimes a little late for dates, but he’s never disappeared like this,’ the statement read.
His cellphone number and a description of his car, a grey Audi TT, were also written down.
Just after 08.00 Senekal drove to the offices of Alibi.co.za in Stellenbosch. Richter’s car was not in its usual parking spot. She went into the offices, and asked after him. The staff did not know where Richter was. After talking to the operations manager of Alibi, Desiree Coetzee, she went back to her own place of work. Senekal and Coetzee communicated many times during the day of Thursday 27 November, and neither could make any contact with Richter. They agreed that Senekal would go to the police if there was still no news by 17.00, which she did.
The second statement was taken on 28 November by a detective of the Stellenbosch station at the Alibi offices, in an interview with the operations manager, Desiree Coetzee. It only added a few more details: Richter was last seen two days before, on 26 November around 17.15, when he left the Alibi offices. He was dressed in jeans, white trainers, and a black T-shirt with the words I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person in white letters on the front. He was, as always, in a good mood. There were no calendar entries on his computer for the rest of the day. His grey Audi TT was his only vehicle. His colleagues knew of no real enemies, but the company regularly received threats, from religious fanatics in particular. They had included death threats directed against Ernst Richter, but were, without exception, anonymous, and sent from temporary email accounts, or masked mail servers.
Cupido sighed. That was what he’d been afraid of. They’d have to follow up on each and every one of those threats.
The Coetzee statement went on to say that Richter had no notable record of absenteeism, although he was sometimes late for appointments, ‘but never more than an hour’.
The third statement was from Bernadette Richter, the victim’s mother, but Cupido hesitated before he read it. Something didn’t fit. He pushed the docket away and leaned on the desk.
Something that Senekal or Coetzee had said in their statements?
No. The flaw wasn’t there.
Cupido stood up. He hated sitting down, he just couldn’t think like that. He walked out of his office and down the passage, without any particular destination.
Fokken Benna, why did he have to go on the booze again, where was his partner when he needed him?
He really wanted to talk to Griessel about this case. They were a team, the Yin and Yang of the Hawks, Batman and Robin. He often thought they worked so well together because he, Cupido, was the dancer: Twinkletoes, pappie, lightning mental footwork; he was the investigative artist, with everything that went along with it – creative, eccentric, a little touchy at times. And Benna was the philosopher, the thinker; man, that dude was methodical. And grounded, except for the dop, of course, but the drinking was only because Benna thought too much, and too deeply. In this job that was dangerous.
So their usual routine was that he, Cupido, tossed ideas around, a thousand miles a minute, and Benna was the screen, the filter, the gatekeeper. His sounding board.
And now his sounding board was dead drunk, and he would have to manage on his own for now.
So, something still didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t something in the statements.
Something this afternoon, at the mortuary.
He stood still for a second in the quiet twilit passage.
It was the dates.
He turned, jogged silently back to his office on his Nike Air Pegasus takkies. He clicked on the computer screen to open the Outlook diary, and counted the days from 26 November, when Richter had disappeared.
Twenty-one, until this morning, when Richter was found in the Blouberg dunes.
Trouble was, the body he’d seen in the mortuary this afternoon had definitely not been buried for twenty-two days. Not enough decomposition. He might have been dead a week or so, tops.
So where was Ernst Richter for the first fourteen days after he went missing?
The plot thickens.
He wanted to phone Cindy Senekal and talk to her, now.
He suppressed the urge, and pulled the docket closer again. He shifted his chair, put his feet up on the desk and leaned back comfortably. He balanced the folder on his belly, and read on.
The third statement was taken by the same detective, during an interview with the mother, Bernadette Richter. It provided nothing new, except that she expressed her deep concern, as her son had ‘never run away before’.
Cupido paged over to the Investigation Diary in Section C.
It showed that on the morning of 28 November at 11.25 two detectives from Stellenbosch forced open the door of Richter’s house in Mont Blanc, Paradyskloof, and searched it. There was no sign of a struggle and no clues to indicate what could have happened to the missing man.
Enquiries were made at the neighbours, but led nowhere.
On the same day, Richter’s grey Audi TT was found, locked and parked at 16.42 in Stoffel Smit Street, Plankenbrug in Stellenbosch.
The offices of the light industries in the area were visited. Nobody knew Ernst Richter.
Audi Centre in Somerset West was called in to assist in unlocking the vehicle. After that the vehicle was processed. On the same day the detective also requested a forensic report on Richter’s cellphone number, and issued an official missing persons bulletin, which included a statement to the media.
In the following week there were entries about fruitless attempts to trace the threats made against Richter and Alibi. The numbers on Richter’s cellphone records were followed up on, but produced nothing significant.
Vaughn read the two reports in the docket’s Section B. The first was a forensic report on the Audi TT Coupé. Only Richter’s fingerprints, as retrieved from his office, and those of Cindy Senekal, were identified. Two other fingerprints were found, but the SAPS database produced no match. Which meant that the person or persons had no criminal records. Semen was found on the passenger seat. The report said it was probably not older than fourteen days. No blood spots were found. Richter’s leather wallet was found in the glove compartment. It contained three Premier bank cards, his driver’s licence, a reloadable Gautrain card, a Makro card, his medical aid fund card, 19 of his own business cards, R786.74 in cash, and seven receipts for general purchases. Also in the glove compartment were one marijuana cigarette and a small plastic bag with about ninety grams of marijuana, a packet of cigarette papers, two boxes of matches, a ballpoint pen and the car’s official documentation.
The other report was about Richter’s cellphone. On the evening of his disappearance it was in contact with both the Papegaaiberg and the Golf Course towers at Stellenbosch until 20.17, after which all contact was broken. The list of calls made and received showed that Richter had last talked to Cindy Senekal at 16.08.
On that day he a
lso phoned two colleagues and his mother, or received calls from them.
Cupido swung his feet down from the desk, and put the folder back down.
He found Cindy Senekal’s number and called.
‘Hi, this is Cindy. You know what to do after the beep.’
He left a message, just his name and number, as he didn’t know whether Richter’s mother had let her know or not. He looked up the number of the Alibi.co.za operations manager, Desiree Coetzee.
It wasn’t in the file.
He cursed softly, although he knew that happened sometimes. The detective probably had the number in his notebook or on his cellphone. He hadn’t expected the docket to be passed on to the Hawks.
He turned to his computer, and clicked on the tab of Alibi.co.za that said Contact Us. He found a list of links to frequently asked questions, media enquiries and ‘Client Service’. The latter provided three email addresses and a toll-free number.
There was no physical address.
He called the toll-free number. It rang for a long time.
‘Alibi dot co dot za, Ashley speaking, I’d love to craft your alibi.’ A woman’s voice, very seductive.
He identified himself, using the Hawks’ official name, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations. He didn’t feel like having to explain himself to some young girlie. ‘I’m working on an investigation concerning one of your staff members,’ he told her. ‘I need a physical address for your premises.’
‘I am not at liberty to give you that information, sir.’
‘I’m a Hawks detective.’
‘I understand that, sir,’ awfully polite. ‘But we get a number of similar calls from people who say they are from the police. I am under instructions not to give out our address.’
‘You can call me back. Just go the website of the Directorate, and call the number you see there, for the Cape Town office . . .’
‘Sir, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to call our office number tomorrow, after eight-thirty.’
‘What is your office number?’
She read it out, an 880 landline in Stellenbosch. Cupido wrote it down.
‘Now, is there anything else I can help you with?’
‘I want to speak to your operations manager, Desiree Coetzee. Could you call her, and ask her to call me?’
‘I don’t have her number, sir.’
‘Do you have a supervisor, or a manager or something?’
‘I’ll see what I can do, sir.’ He could hear her lack of enthusiasm. ‘Anything else?’
He said no thanks, and rang off.
13
Transcript of interview: Advocate Susan Peires with Mr Francois du Toit
Wednesday, 24 December; 1604 Huguenot Chambers, 40 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
FdT: I think Grandpa Jean proved Shakespeare wrong. The fault was in his stars and in himself . . .
SP: Shakespeare had a foot in each camp. Kent, in King Lear said: ‘. . . the stars above us, govern our conditions’. And what about ‘giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel’ . . .
FdT: Your Shakespeare is better than mine.
SP: A wine farmer who can quote Shakespeare is a pleasant surprise.
FdT: Grandma Hettie made me read Shakespeare. She and I were the readers in our family . . . And my mother . . . I think I told you that already. Sorry, it’s the stress . . . Ouma Hettie was clever, she would quote passages of Shakespeare, such interesting titbits, and if I asked, then she would fetch the book, and say, Read, Shakespeare is better life orientation than life itself. So I read Shakespeare. Julius Caesar was my favourite, that’s why I remember it best – and because that quote always reminds me of Oupa Jean. Because he didn’t have complete control. If he hadn’t broken his leg, or if it had happened later . . . Everyone said he would have been a Springbok, even people who weren’t that keen on him. Three months before the wedding . . . If you look carefully, you can see one crutch sticking out in some of the wedding photos, and the plaster of paris on his lower leg. And maybe it would still have been okay, if he had recovered in time. But when they selected the team at the end of the year tour to England in 1951, he wasn’t right yet. They picked Fonnie du Toit instead, and he was nearly thirty. No relation, though. And Hansie Oelofse as the younger fly-half . . .
If he had been another sort of person . . . If he could have processed the setback, got over it. Maybe it was a combination of things, because there were a whole lot of changes all at once. Suddenly he was a married man and there was a bun in the oven, he doesn’t get picked for the Boks, and he’s trapped on the farm with a broken leg, a man who had always been on the go . . . Four months after the wedding, my father arrived and he was a colicky baby. Before all the troubles, Oupa Jean had apparently been a big party guy, it was all part of the rugby culture in those days. But then he started hitting the bottle hard, and Ouma said he wasn’t a nice man to be around then.
He was never really the same player again. There were those who said his leg bothered him always, that it didn’t mend properly. But Ouma Hettie said it was pride. And the fact that everything had come to him so easily, he had so much natural talent. He believed he was better than anyone else, he didn’t want to put in all the hard work to earn his place from scratch again. And when he finally woke up in 1955 and began training seriously, it was too late. Because another chap, who was about half the size of Oupa, but with double the heart, made the WP and the Bok team instead. Tommy Gentles . . .
14
Vaughn Cupido followed another of the links that John Cloete had sent him – again to the website of Netwerk24.
It was a story that had appeared in the Rapport newspaper; the headline said: Isabeau talks to Ernst Richter. Alibi Boss never wants to use his own product.
He began reading:
On his black T-shirt are the words ‘I went outside once. The graphics weren’t that great’.
And now he is outside again, on the veranda of the Häzz coffee shop in Stellenbosch’s Ryneveld Street (‘because they have Wi-Fi’, he says when we make the appointment). I ask whether the ‘graphics’ are better. He looks at me. ‘Much better, now that you are here . . .’
Ernst Richter laughs infectiously, holding up his hands defensively in front of him: ‘That’s too smooth, please don’t write that I’m some kind of pick-up artist . . .’
‘Are you?’
‘No! But I have a sense of humour. And you gave me the gap.’
‘Do you always take the gap?’
‘I wouldn’t say always.’
But there’s one gap he did take – the one he saw when South Africans in their hundreds began joining websites for adulterers. Richter has just made the headlines countrywide with Alibi.co.za, a website and smart phone app that sells infidelity, lies and alibis at a price.
‘Sjoe, when you say it like that it sounds uncool even to me,’ he says. But the broad smile does not waver for a second, maybe because fifteen thousand people have downloaded his app already?
‘The support of the public is a big relief,’ he says, swiftly and smoothly, as if coached by a media trainer. ‘We didn’t know what to expect. But it’s just more proof: there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’
And publicity he’s had in abundance, from all sides: ministers, Christian and family organisations, even the Minister for Women in the Presidency; and a spokesperson for the Department of Justice who hinted that the company’s products ‘might not be legal’.
‘We did our homework. There is not a single aspect of Alibi that is not absolutely legal. They can come and see.’
He doesn’t look like the boss of a lie factory, this open-faced boy, the only child from Cape Town’s northern suburbs who’d once nursed a dream of becoming an artist. How on earth has he got to this point?
‘Aah, you know, life is strange . . .’
Cupido�
�s reading was interrupted by the sound of his cellphone – an unknown number. He checked the time display on the phone; it was nearly ten.
‘Cupido.’
‘This is Cindy Senekal.’ Her voice was cautious and a little afraid.
He hated passing on news of a death. And the problem was that he didn’t really know how close Senekal had been to Ernst Richter. The docket just said ‘a friend of the missing person’, but from the statement it seemed more like she was a girlfriend. This was where he needed Benna, with his greater diplomatic skills.
‘Thank you for calling me back. I’m very sorry, but I don’t have good news . . .’
Total silence at the other end.
‘Is there perhaps someone with you who can support you?’
No reaction, until he asked: ‘Are you there?’
‘Is Ernst dead?’
‘I’m very sorry. His body was found this morning.’
There was a single sound, a cry of pain. Cupido didn’t know what to say.
‘I thought so,’ she said at last.
A little weird, Cupido thought, sitting in Cindy Senekal’s lounge a little bit later.
She was a blonde poppie: long, straight hair, slim body, big honey-brown eyes; mid-twenties, very pretty. A mooi girl, and she knew it.
Ten to eleven, in a white townhouse with a green roof in Kleingeluk, Stellenbosch, she sat on the sofa across from Cupido. Her two female housemates perched like bookends on either side, each holding one of Cindy’s hands. All three had been crying, all three were now under control.
Cindy, the sexy one, centre stage with the little fat one on the left, while on the right sat the wannabe. A lesser lookalike, not as pretty as Cindy, but trying hard – same blonde hair, style, the works. Cupido knew, you only had to look: pretty girls always come with that entourage, or a close facsimile thereof.