by Deon Meyer
‘The bird’s eye view is that this company has never been profitable. And the way we were burning money, it was a stretch. I told Ernst a thousand times. You can ask Desiree.’ He looked in the direction of her office in the hope that she would come to his rescue. ‘These offices were too expensive. We had too many people. We paid them too much. And Ernst’s money was going to run out. But he just said we’ll get there. That’s the bird’s eye view.’
‘How many people did he blackmail?’ asked Cupido.
Visser shrank. ‘I know nothing about that.’
‘Did you ever receive strange payments, large sums?’ asked Boshigo.
‘Only from Ernst.’
Bones looked at Cupido. ‘I think we should focus on Richter’s personal finances, nè. That’s where we should start.’
Cupido saw that Vernon Visser was visibly relieved.
As Vaughn drove back to the office he thought how he didn’t trust the finance director. He didn’t know exactly why, but that relief was just too great when he realised that the focus would not be on his books.
What is he hiding?
He also didn’t trust that moment that Desiree Coetzee and Tricky Ricky had shared. Or was it just that he didn’t like it?
Did she have a thing for whiteys?
Not a pleasant thought, but you couldn’t just ignore the possibility.
The father of her laaitie was white.
You got coloured chicks like that, thought a white guy was a step up the social ladder, parading up and down Long Street, hanging onto their arms. Check me out, I caught myself a whitey. All those Germans and Scandinavians who came to the Cape to get themselves a chlora for the summer holidays, because they thought coloured and darkie chicks were wild in bed, and as a bonus it made them feel non-racist. He hated it all.
But maybe he was jumping the gun. It was his heart talking now. The little green monster of jealousy.
He was there when Desiree Coetzee addressed all the Alibi staff. He sat there listening to how beautifully she spoke. Compassion, real compassion. And eloquence. He would not have been able to make that speech, to tell people they would be unemployed in January, and this just before Christmas. But she pulled it off; many of them came over to thank her afterwards.
She had class, this lady. Real class. And that was what frightened him. Better not to think about these things. Let him rather get his docket up to date, and hear what Benny had to say.
Benna said the regional manager had signed the two-oh-five indemnity, and Cupido said: ‘Jissis, those peppermints help net mooi fokkol. I can smell you from this side of my desk.’
Griessel leaned back in the chair. His face betrayed his embarrassment.
Cupido sat dead still staring at him, and then threw his hands up in the air. He stood up, went over to shut the door and said: ‘What are you going to do if Major Mbali smells you, Benna?’
‘She hasn’t smelled me yet, Vaughn.’
‘Not yet, not over all that cauliflower in her office. But now you stink like a shebeen . . . How much have you drunk today?’
‘I don’t think that has anything to do with you.’
The frustrations of the day were piled high in Cupido, and his temper rose. ‘But it has, Benna. It fokken has. ’Cause why, my gat is on the line here. I’m the damn fool who lied for you two nights ago, while you lay poepdronk in Cape Town Central cells. I am the one who told Major Mbali just this afternoon, that, no, Benna was with me, he banged his head against mine, it’s a fucking media conspiracy. And now here you go on the booze again, and at work, while you’re working on my case . . .’
‘Your case, Vaughn? Your case?’
‘Ja, Benna, my case. I didn’t ask to be JOC leader, but here we are. And as your JOC leader I’m telling you now, get your dronk gat back home, ’cause you’re going to sink the both of us.’
‘You’re sending me home?’
‘Damn straight. And I’m going to take you myself, before you get your gat arrested for DUI.’
‘I’m not drunk.’ Griessel got up. ‘I thought you were my friend.’
‘But that’s the fokken point. I am. And if you were sober, you would see it.’
Griessel shook his head and left.
‘And when you get home, you better have another think. Where will the booze take you? And do you really want to go there?’
Fok Vaughn Cupido. The JOC leadership had gone straight to his head.
Griessel drove home, feeling thoroughly indignant. He wasn’t drunk. He was busy doing his work, reporting on the work that he had done, the work that he had done according to the book.
He was the one who had found out that Ernst Richter had another cellphone.
He was the one who remembered that the blackmailer had sent an SMS. You could only do that from a cellphone, not from a landline. He, Benny, the former technophobe.
And now Vaughn was sending him home, as if he were the new commander?
There were a lot of detectives who drank a beer or a glass of wine over lunch and smelled of alcohol. But that was okay. Just because he had a reputation, a history, he was being discriminated against.
He seethed all the way into the city. There he looked for a drinking hole so he could show them all.
63
Susan Peires realised she was leaning forward in her chair, spellbound by Francois du Toit’s narrative.
She had been so sure it was the brother, Paul. But now the young wine farmer said that his brother and father were dead, back in January 2012. Nearly three years ago.
‘Could I have some water, please?’ he said.
She realised she hadn’t been paying attention, lost in her own thoughts. And she was disappointed that he had interrupted his story.
‘Oh sorry. Of course.’ She pressed the Stop button on the recorder, stood up, her legs cramping from sitting so long. She opened the door and asked her assistant for a carafe of water and two glasses.
When she came back, he was standing staring out of the window.
‘That’s a lot of heartache for one family farm,’ she said.
‘That’s why I said there was some kind of curse on Klein Zegen. I have sometimes wondered whether I shouldn’t get the name changed.’ He smiled wanly.
She wanted to know how the father and son died, but she knew her assistant would bring the water in soon. Let her come and go first. So she went over and stood beside him, looking at the Company Gardens down below.
‘There seem to be more holidaymakers this year,’ he said.
‘It’s probably easier to cope with the load-shedding blackouts by the seaside.’
‘Yes . . .’
The water arrived and he poured out two glasses for them and sat down. She did the same.
He took a deep breath.
She started the recorder and nodded to him.
‘We are nearly there,’ he said with a certain fatigue, as if this were a mountain he had to climb.
He was the only one left, she thought. He himself was involved with Ernst Richter. She quickly suppressed the vague sense of disappointment that she felt and smiled encouragingly at him.
‘At New Year 2012 Paul was released on bail. Pa went to fetch Paul from jail, in the car.’
His voice changed; there was a deeper tone, the pressure of emotion.
‘Eight o’clock that night they crashed into the back of a stationary truck between Three Sisters and Beaufort West. The truck was parked beside the road – quite a few metres from the road: a straight section of road. Wide. The driver had set out some of those warning triangles in front of and behind the truck. It had just become dark. Pa was driving very fast. The traffic police said it must have been around two hundred kilometres an hour.
‘The official version was that Pa had fallen asleep. People said maybe they were fighting. As in they’d
actually come to blows . . .
‘But I don’t think . . . When I put everything together, when I think about Pa’s silences whenever I talked about my future, when I take into account all the circumstances of the accident, and Paul – the person that Paul was. And the life insurance policy had a suicide clause . . . I think Pa drove into the back of that truck on purpose. I think he realised he would never realise his dreams, and he didn’t want Paul to do any more damage. Not to him, not to the farm or to me, but especially not to Ma.
‘It was a murder and a suicide, all in one, in a way that would protect us. And allow the insurance to pay out. That’s what I think. And that’s what Ma suspected too.’
64
Saturday 20 December. Five days before Christmas.
Detectives don’t like Saturdays, because no one is available when you need them. Support units were understaffed, magistrates were harder to reach for warrants, suspects were not at home or at work, businesses closed early, or did not open at all. Banks were full and busy and had no time to give attention to investigative requests.
It disrupted the rhythm of an investigation.
At 07.30 they sat in Major Mbali Kaleni’s office – Cupido, Bones Boshigo, Vusi Ndabeni, Mooiwillem Liebenberg and Frank Fillander.
‘Where’s Benny?’ asked Mbali.
‘I’ve asked him to take a look at Richter’s house and office again. He’s the one who found evidence of a second cellphone. Maybe we missed the phone, or the SIM card or something. He’s taking another look . . .’
She gave him such a long look that Cupido wondered how suspicious she was.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What do we have?’
Cupido nodded at Bones, who was getting his papers together.
‘Regarding the last twelve months’ worth of bank statements, nothing but the odd suspicion here and there, I’m afraid. The main problem is that we only received the past year’s statements from the bank . . .’
‘That’s all we requested yesterday, but we’ll get everything this morning,’ Cupido explained.
‘Right. So the bad news is, there seems to have been no shady income, like from blackmail, during this time. As a matter of fact, there has been no income in the past year, except for interest on his balance. Which he kept in a money market account, by the way, at Premier Bank. But that interest dwindled month after month, because he was putting money into Alibi all the time, nè. Now here’s the interesting part. This boy’tjie was basically flat broke in November. At the end of October, he didn’t pay the water and electricity on his rented house. And he went to the limit of his credit card facility on Tuesday 25 November. For the first time, if you look at the statements. So my theory is, he was very desperate in November, because he knew time was running out. The Alibi overdraft was due to be paid back in December; the company was still not making enough money, and his personal funds had run out. And desperate times, nè, we all know what that means . . .’
‘Desperate measures,’ said Vusi.
‘Exactly. So all you need to do is to find out what the desperate measures were that got him killed,’ he said with a typical Boshigo wave of the hand, as though he had solved their case for them.
‘A big shakedown, maybe,’ said Cupido. ‘Which went wrong. We now know he was a useless blackmailer. None of his schemes were working . . .’
‘Not in the last twelve months, at least,’ said Frank Fillander.
‘Right,’ said Bones.
‘We need to find the other phone,’ said Mbali Kaleni. ‘I’m glad you’ve got Benny working on that.’
‘There’s one more thing,’ said Bones Boshigo. ‘It could be quite important.’
Everyone looked around hopefully at him.
‘Last night in bed I was thinking . . .’
‘So the honeymoon is over, Bones?’ asked Cupido.
‘Hayi,’ said Mbali sternly, because she didn’t tolerate sexual insinuations on her watch.
‘Sorry, Major,’ said Vaughn.
‘Go ahead, Benedict.’ Mbali was the only one, since her promotion, who didn’t call him ‘Bones’.
‘I was thinking about his financial position. That Visser boy’tjie told me yesterday that Alibi.co.za was started with three point two million rand, nè. The two venture capital firms put in seven hundred and fifty thousand each, and Richter threw in one point seven million, because he wanted the majority ownership. This is going to get a little complicated, so I need you to stay with me on this . . .’
They all nodded.
‘Okay. So Richter had one point seven million in cash. That’s a lot of money for a guy his age. I asked Visser, where did Richter get that kind of dough, and he told me the story of the web hosting and development company that Richter co-owned, the one he sold his shares in, back in 2010.
‘Now, concentrate, people, because this is important. He invested one point seven million in Alibi in June of 2013, which is eighteen months ago. But a year ago, he still had a bank balance of just over six hundred thousand rand. That’s the money he has been paying into the Alibi deficit.
‘When we add up those two figures, it gives us two point three million rand. And that’s what kept me awake last night, because there is no way a web development company is worth almost seven million bucks.’
‘Seven million? Where do you get the seven million from?’ asked Willem Liebenberg.
‘Good question, nè. I told you this can get complicated. And that is once again proof that the average IQ over at the Statutory Crimes Group is much higher than at Violent Crimes. Major Kaleni excluded, of course.’
‘Ja, ja, I was smart enough to get you involved, so get to the point,’ said Cupido.
‘Fair enough,’ said Bones. ‘Let me explain. Richter co-owned the web development company with two other guys. There were three partners. He had at least two point three million at the beginning of 2013. So let’s say he must have sold his share in the web design company for at least two point three million: one third of the total value. Which means the company was worth just under seven million. Three partners. Three times two point three. You getting it?’
They got it.
‘And that’s the problem. Web design companies are just not worth that much. It didn’t make sense. I thought I missed something, somewhere. So last night, I called the Visser boy’tjie. Funny guy, that one. And I asked him what was the web company Richter co-owned. So he gave me the name: PixelPerfect. And I started to dig a little. First, I found that they weren’t just a web design company. They started writing apps for iPhones pretty early on, and that was their main source of revenue by the time Richter left. But still, not a big operation, still not worth much more than maybe three million, give or take. And then I searched the Business Day archives, and I found a little news story about the actual deal. Turns out PixelPerfect was sold to an affiliate of Naspers in 2010, and Richter left, taking his share. The sale was for only three point one million. Richter’s share was only about a million bucks.’
‘A million?’ asked Cupido.
‘Indeed,’ said Bones. ‘That’s a lot less than two point three.’
‘Okay,’ said Vusi, ‘I’m with you.’
‘So who’s going to ask the question, nè?’ Bones wanted to know.
‘Where did he get the rest?’ asked Frank Fillander.
‘Bingo. Where did he get another one point three million? At the very least. I think it’s a lot more, because he bought a fancy little car, he was renting an expensive house, and he was living a very expensive lifestyle. My guess is, he had another two million bucks that he got from somewhere.’
Vusi whistled softly. Cupido wanted to swear, but he couldn’t do so in front of Mbali. He thought it all over. He said: ‘It must have been between 2010 and 2013.’
‘But he didn’t work during that time,’ said Mooiwillem Liebenberg. ‘His mother said he tra
velled for . . . I think she said for about a year.’
‘Where to?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘What did he do while travelling?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You will have to go see her again today,’ said Cupido.
‘Roger.’
‘And that,’ said Bones, ‘is why I am going to be at Premier Bank this morning when they open, and I’m going to get his bank statements, all the way back to 2010.’
The thirst. The first thing that Griessel became aware of was the thirst, and then the pressure on his bladder.
He got up, walked to the bathroom, urinated. He was unsteady on his feet.
Lord, he was still drunk. He opened the tap at the hand basin, slurped greedily at the water. It splashed over his face, his bare chest. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stumbled back towards bed, stopped in the doorway. Where was Alexa? Her side of the bed was undisturbed.
He tried to recall the previous night. He had been at The Dubliner, the Irish bar in Long Street. He’d drunk a lot. But he hadn’t made trouble, not as far as he knew.
But how did he get home? He couldn’t remember at all. Jissis, he must have been extremely drunk. He looked at his watch. It was twenty past eight. He was horribly late.
Where was Alexa?
He walked out, down the passage and negotiated his way downstairs carefully. He didn’t want to fall and break his neck now.
She wasn’t in the kitchen, dining room or sitting room.
He went through the laundry room to the garage. Her car wasn’t there.
What the fuck happened last night? Where was she?
He struggled back to the bedroom; maybe she had sent him an SMS. The hangover bloomed through him, and his head throbbed painfully.
He scrabbled around for his cellphone, and eventually found it in the pocket of his jacket, which was neatly hung up in the wardrobe.
Had he put it there last night?
On his phone there was only one SMS from Vaughn Cupido. I’m covering for you again. You’ve got Richter’s house keys. Go look for evidence of cellphone. If you are sober. If not, stay home.