“You didn’t see her after that?”
“Walked straight into the hands of traffickers. That’s what they were, according to Sandy. Human traffickers.”
When I held out my hand to Benjamin as I took my leave, he held it in both of his and told me to return when I could. “Sandy said goodbye to me,” he said. “On that last call – when she told me Amanda was dead. It was more than I deserved. More than I’d had before, and more than anyone else had, I know that. ‘Goodbye’, she said, ‘and don’t follow me. If anyone follows me, I am done for.’” His hands held mine in a firm grasp and his eyes tried to see inside my head. “I believe she is still alive, Ben, but I don’t want you getting any foolish ideas about going after her. Because I think it is the kind of thing you might be inclined to do. I know you were a soldier. Promise me that you won’t go after her, promise me that.”
I made the promise, and spent most of the three-hour drive back to Cape Town wondering whether it was one I could keep.
Four
Khanyisile Gabuza of the Department called me as I struggled along a country road in heavy rain to avoid roadblocks on my way back into the city.
“Where are you?” she asked, and I could imagine the bared teeth of what she thought was a friendly smile, which she tried to project down the phone line.
“In my car,” I said.
Khanyi sighed. “Father thinks you’re up to no good.”
“Does he?”
Don Fehrson, the elderly leader of the Department, had attended Bible college in his youth, some time in the Dark Ages, and might even have been ordained as a priest, although there were few people alive who remembered that far back. It was apparently for this reason that Fehrson encouraged his staff to address him as ‘Father’, although I suspected it was his way of overcoming the stain of his despotic past. ‘Father’ Fehrson was well past retirement age, and the methods he had used to outlast his peers and survive so long in the secret corridors of state security were rumoured to be of a dubious nature.
“We received an alert on that identity you stole from us,” said Khanyi.
“Identity?”
“Freddy Moss,” she said. “The identity you took from the seventh floor.”
“You’ve tagged that?”
“You said you’d misplaced it. Or it was stolen in that business at the rugby grounds.
“But it turned up?”
“Someone using the identity passed through a roadblock on the N2 heading out of Cape Town.”
“Goodness,” I said.
“Father wants you to bring it back.”
“I’ve misplaced it. How can I bring it back?”
“He says you’re up to no good.”
“Does he?”
“He’s concerned for you, Gabriel.”
“You can tell him I’m fine, thank you, Khanyi.”
Khanyi sighed. “Father wants to see you.”
“Because of the missing identity?”
“No, on another matter.”
There was a note in Khanyi’s voice that I did not like; it had the ring of someone in authority about to ask something of me, something potentially life-threatening.
“Want to discuss it over the phone?” I suggested.
“No. Father wants to see you,” repeated Khanyi, as if she’d run out of her prepared lines.
“I’ll pop around some time and we can drink some of the Department coffee.”
Khanyi made a dismissive sound. She knew my opinion of the dishwater the Department served under the guise of coffee.
“You still in Caledon, Gabriel?”
“Certainly not.”
Which was true, because I was just entering Franschhoek, a small town on the outskirts of Cape Town.
“That man Breytenbach has been speaking with Father,” said Khanyi.
“Has he? The gold mining Breytenbach?”
“You know very well which Breytenbach I mean. The one who lost all that gold.”
“I thought it was only a few bars.”
“More than a few bars, Gabriel, you know that.”
“Why has he been speaking with Fehrson?”
“Why don’t you come in for that coffee and Father can tell you all about it?”
“I look forward to it.”
“We’ve got our eye on you, Gabriel. Be careful what you get up to.”
And she ended the call.
I called Tannie Sara to rid myself of the bitter aftertaste of my call with Khanyi. Tannie is Afrikaans for ‘aunt’ and is also used to address women in an informally respectful way. Tannie Sara was Sandy’s great-aunt, but she had stepped in to be a mother to Sandy and had raised her from the age of three when Sandy’s grandmother, Tannie Sara’s estranged sister, had died of grief a few short years after Sandy’s own mother had died giving birth to Sandy.
Tannie Sara’s late sister would have been mortified at the thought of her granddaughter being raised by a member of the family she had forsworn on moral grounds. But Sandy couldn’t have wished for a better childhood; Tannie Sara had never failed to provide her with boundless love, despite the demands of managing the family business.
When she answered my call, Tannie Sara complained how long it had been since my previous call and said that she would be delighted to see me, of course she would. Neither of us mentioned Sandy. But I could tell that she heard something in my voice, and would probably fortify herself with a sherry in preparation for the news I was bringing about her beloved niece. Tannie Sara was one of the strongest women I knew, but also one of the most vulnerable, and Sandy’s disappearance had taken a dreadful toll on her.
District Six House had established new premises in Green Point after the government razed the old ones to the ground with their bulldozers. The tax documents described the Green Point establishment as a guest house, and it did have beds, and there were guests, but the primary service it offered involved shorter-term stays with less emphasis on the warm embrace of the comfortable decor, and more emphasis on the human embrace of the employees. And in Tannie Sara’s defence, the term ‘brothel’ was not one of the options on the tax forms.
The House was in a tiny cobbled street that headed up the slope of the mountain from the main road, but ran out of steam after only a couple of hundred metres, leaving in its wake a double row of semi-detached Victorian houses, which gazed across the cobbles at each other, and determinedly avoided looking down the hill and out to sea.
Tannie Sara insisted on several hugs, and she held on tight and wiped away her tears before they could smudge her mascara. She had been a beauty queen many years ago, and despite her substantially increased girth and additional sixty years, was still one, in my opinion, although she struggled to see it in the mirror when applying her make-up and always ended up overdoing it. She held my arms and pulled back to inspect me, then nodded with satisfaction.
“You need a drink,” she said, “I’ve already had a small sherry myself.”
“Why don’t you have another,” I suggested. “And make it a whisky for me.”
“Single malt, on the rocks,” she said, releasing me and wiping her eyes again. “I never forget these things, not when it comes to family.”
The front room, which Tannie Sara called the day lounge, had a crackling fire, which we had to ourselves because her other guests were upstairs amusing themselves as best they could, given the poor weather. I stood in front of the fire and admired the wall of photographs showing the history of the establishment, while Tannie poured our drinks with a heavy hand.
The photographs were arranged in chronological order, starting when District Six had been only a few city blocks on the windswept and less desirable flank of Devil’s Peak, overlooking Cape Town city centre. It was populated originally by freed slaves, and became a cultural centre for the burgeoning mixed-race population produced by the many cultures that met at the southern tip of Africa. The sixth municipal district of Cape Town developed a unique community where a new people forged their own
identity and culture. The brothel had been the brainchild of Tannie Sara’s strong-willed and ardently feminist grandmother, who headed up their matriarchal family and who had raised Tannie Sara. The photographs showed her as a stern woman, standing straight and proud on the top step of a handful of stone stairs leading up to the old house. She had recognised the opportunity presented by the powerful sex appeal of young, coffee-skinned beauties with few career options on the one hand, and the insatiable appetite of the men who wielded power within the divided country on the other. Exhibiting an impressive business acumen, she had created the ‘House’, which provided refreshing drinks, spicy Asian dishes, and additional spicy entertainment in the upstairs rooms for those guests who needed a little something extra.
Tannie Sara handed me a tumbler of whisky, then dropped into an armchair with an audible sigh. She sipped at her sherry, then placed the glass on a table beside the chair, laced her fingers together, and looked up at me.
“Is it bad news, skattie?” she said, using the Afrikaans term of endearment she had adopted in the time we’d spent together – trying to understand what had happened – in mutual bereavement after Sandy’s disappearance.
“Not bad news, Tannie, surprising news.”
Tannie Sara reached for her sherry and took another tiny sip as if she wanted to delay the surprising news.
“You shouldn’t be doing this, skattie,” she scolded. “You know you shouldn’t. It’s time you stop chasing her. You’ve got yourself that nice new girl now, is her name Robyn?”
“Robyn, yes.”
I had told Tannie Sara about my nascent relationship with Robyn. I had even introduced them over an afternoon tea, and Tannie Sara had given her approval.
“That nice new girl Robyn has kicked me out,” I said.
“What did you do, skattie?”
“I think the word she used was ‘closure’.”
Tannie Sara nodded and sipped her sherry.
“She’ll wait,” she declared. “I can read girls like a book. That girl will wait for you.”
“If she doesn’t drink herself to death first.”
“Oh, that’s her problem, is it?” Tannie Sara placed her sherry back on the table. “I knew there was something.”
“It’s one of Robyn’s problems.”
Tannie Sara drew a deep breath.
“I’m ready, skattie,” she said. “Ready for the surprising news.”
“Did you know that Sandy found her father?”
Tannie Sara didn’t seem to react. She sat absolutely still in her armchair, like a stone Buddha.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
But then two tears appeared in her eyes, and spilt out, leaving dark trails of mascara down her cheeks.
“My sister wouldn’t let him near Sandy. She said he was worthless and no good.” Tannie Sara sighed, reached for her sherry, and took a sip. “When my sister passed, I made no effort to change that.” Another sip of sherry. “I regret that now, regret what we did to her father.”
She sipped at her sherry again, but discovered the glass was empty. I went over to the gilded drinks tray and poured her another.
“I should have said that to Sandy,” she said. “That’s what I regret the most. Not that I didn’t try to undo the damage my sister had done, but that I never spoke to Sandy about her father.”
“She had a sister as well,” I said, and Tannie Sara looked up at me with surprise. “Half-sister, different mother of course.”
Tannie Sara sipped again at her sherry, and another two tears rolled down her cheeks.
“The things we didn’t know,” she said, then pulled a tissue from between her breasts and dabbed at her cheeks.
“Did Sandy ask you anything about trafficking?” I asked, “in the last few months?”
“Trafficking, skattie?”
“Young girls being drawn into prostitution, being sold.”
“I know what trafficking is,” she said bitterly. “You’re not going to do this to me too, are you?”
“Do what, Tannie?”
“My girls choose to do what they do. They are career girls, you know that. They make good money, they wear Prada, prance about in Jimmy Choo, take holidays in Greece. There’s nothing shameful; don’t start flinging about your big words, Benny. There’s no trafficking here.”
Tannie Sara wiped at her eyes again. She had stopped worrying about preserving the mascara, and looked back up at me with eyes surrounded by dark smudges.
“Is that what Sandy suggested?”
Tannie Sara buried her face in the damp tissue and gave a quiet sob, her great shoulders heaving up and down. I waited a moment, then went to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Sandy would never think you were involved in that, Tannie,” I said. “She knew your business was different.”
She looked up at me, her face a mess of dark streaks.
“I should have said I would take them, skattie, but I’m not a rescue centre, am I? I’m a business, not a charity.”
“Take who?”
“The girls she wanted me to take in.”
“Girls that had been trafficked?”
Tannie Sara applied the tissue again and spread her mascara further.
“There were two of them. I said to her: ‘What are you doing messing with girls?’ Do you think she would answer me?”
“I don’t.”
“That’s when she started about the trafficking. It made me angry, skattie. ‘I’ll not have anything to do with those girls’, is what I told her. They’re the damaged ones, the drug addicts, the ones who won’t make it. My clients don’t want that kind of girl, do they?”
Tannie Sara looked at me with her panda eyes.
“I said no,” she said, and two further tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s why she left, skattie, I know it is. It’s why she left.”
“No, it isn’t. Her leaving had nothing to do with you or your house. She went to find her sister.”
Tannie Sara sniffed and used the crumbling tissue to wipe her cheeks again.
“Did you suggest where Sandy could take the girls you wouldn’t accept?”
She nodded and applied the tissues again.
“When she wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. A private house called Pandora; appointment only. They take all types. Run by a woman called Lee, half Chinese, I think. I told her to take them there. I didn’t want to end up in one of her newspaper articles, did I? She said she wasn’t going to write about it, but I knew it would end up in the papers somehow. And she didn’t want you to know about it. I knew she’d become ashamed of it all. Ashamed of me, of my business.”
“She was never ashamed of you, Tannie, never.”
Tannie Sara took a deep breath, which she let out in a heavy sigh. “You think her sister is one of the girls she wanted me to take?”
“I think she might have been.”
“I should have taken them.”
“Sandy should have told you the truth.”
“Go to Pandora, skattie. Go find her sister, maybe she can tell you where Sandy has run off to.”
“Her sister isn’t there. Not anymore. She’s dead.”
Tannie Sara gazed at me with her Panda bear eyes, and I could see her adding that fact to the tally of her guilt. She leaned forward in the armchair and started struggling to her feet. I helped her up.
“I’ll get the card for Pandora. I keep them in the back office.”
She crossed the room with her slow, rolling gait, as if the past few minutes had worsened the pain in her hips. She paused at the door and turned back to me.
“You know what they say about dancing with the devil, skattie.” She hesitated, so I shook my head. “The devil won’t change into an angel, but he will change you into a devil. They say that the girls who come into the business through drugs, trafficking … It’s a one-way street. There’s no way out for them. I tried explaining that to Sandy, but I didn’t know it was her own sister she was trying to help.�
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She turned and left the room. The heat from the fire was causing steam to rise from my trousers. Tannie Sara’s stern old grandmother gazed down at me from the photos on the mantelpiece. She stood in the central photograph with a bevy of young beauties arranged around her, like a group of nurses gathered about the matron of an old-fashioned hospital. But with too much flesh, not enough clothing, and smiles on the faces that hinted at a shared secret. Before them were a few small children, smiling cheerfully, a little out of focus. One of them was Tannie Sara. Dressed in her Sunday best and forcing a grin so large that it closed her eyes. Her almost identical sister stood beside her. They both grew taller and more elegant as the pictures stepped through the years. A photo of Tannie Sara giving a regal wave with the sash over her shoulder, when she had been declared the Queen of District Six, riding in a horse-drawn cart, petals in her hair, her sister looking glum in the background. Then Tannie Sara was standing beside her grandmother, who seemed to shrink with each year as Tannie Sara grew in height and girth. The sister too grew, but as Tannie Sara widened and strengthened, she became narrow and frail. Other young girls sprouted on the steps in front of District Six House, like the staggered frames of a flip-book animation. Tannie Sara’s sister rested a proprietorial hand on a fragile girl, and the two of them moved steadily to the side of the group of constantly changing seductresses, the physical distance a manifestation of the separation that Tannie Sara’s sister and niece had created between themselves and the family business. In the final frames they stood to the side, the mother’s hands always resting on her daughter’s shoulders. Then in the next photo Tannie Sara’s sister stood before an empty space, her face looking as if all the strings had been cut, her hair turned grey and in her arms a baby.
That baby was the end of the matriarchal line. That baby was Sandy.
Five
That evening I returned to a warehouse at the end of an outer jetty of the Cape Town docks that had been my home for the past few weeks. I was looking forward to a quiet, solitary evening, but as I pushed open the rusty door, I discovered I was not alone.
Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3) Page 3