Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3)

by David Hickson

  “You and me,” said Fat-Boy, “we find that boat, Angel. Just you and me.”

  “If you say so, Fat-Boy,” I said. I was feeling exhausted and could think of doing nothing but lying down and sleeping. “But only if I don’t succeed at killing you first.”

  Fat-Boy looked at me, and he opened his lazy eye a little wider.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Angel,” he said. “That’s the last time you touch me. What the fuck were you doing undressing me on the beach? I don’t care what happens – your lily-white fingers don’t touch this black body of mine again. Ever.”

  Captain Andile Dlamini had given up smoking about the same time I had, several months ago. Since giving up he had smoked at least as many cigarettes as me, but he told me he felt optimistic that the accrued guilt would soon turn him into a smoker who had not only given up, but who would also not sneak the occasional cigarette several times a day. I didn’t share his optimism, but perhaps that was because of the obsessive way that I saw him sucking at a cigarette now. The Cape Town Homicide division of the South African Police Service announces at entrances to the building that it is proud to host smoke-free offices, so Andile and his colleagues kept the windows open, even in winter, as they smoked their way towards solving a small portion of the crimes that made Cape Town one of the top ten murder capitals of the world.

  “Where is she?” asked Andile, as he blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “When you said it was about that journalist of yours, I thought you were bringing her in with you to explain why you terrorised that judge.”

  “I didn’t terrorise him, Andile.”

  “Well, if you didn’t bring your journalist in to confirm your story, why are you here?”

  “I need a little help finding her so that I can bring her in.”

  “She’s disappeared again?”

  “Not again, strictly speaking. I might have exaggerated a little when I said I had found her.”

  Andile clasped his hand over his mouth, and the tip of his cigarette turned almost white.

  “Exaggerated?” he said, without bothering to blow the smoke out first. “You mean you didn’t find her? You almost found her?”

  “You could describe it like that.”

  He sighed.

  “I don’t think you realise the severity of your situation, Gabriel. You are the prime suspect in the murder of a prominent member of the justice system. Having ‘almost found’ the person who could support your story is not a good defence.”

  “Which is why I need your help,” I said.

  Andile sighed again, creating a small cloud of smoke that hid us from the view of his colleagues.

  “What kind of help?”

  “There was a young woman treated in hospital a few months ago for a knife wound to the throat.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “I don’t know. She was the victim of an attack in Muizenberg. Surely there would have been a report about it?”

  “This woman your disappearing journalist?”

  “No, she was a colleague of hers.”

  “I see,” said Andile. He took another gasping draught of his cigarette. “Knife wound to the throat?”

  “It was a nasty wound which they stitched up, she spent several days in hospital.”

  “I’ll take a look,” he said, and cleared piles of paper away from the keyboard of an ancient computer. He hit some keys, then hit them harder when nothing happened, and finally switched the computer on, which produced better results.

  “That man you found in the docks,” he said as he typed, “the one with the gunshot wound to the chest. Know who he was?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “Big businessman, a founder of Dark Bizness.”

  “Really?”

  Andile tapped some keys and scowled at the computer screen.

  “Have you got a cold?” he said, when I sneezed.

  “Think I might be getting one.”

  My swim with Fat-Boy in the freezing waters of the Atlantic was taking its toll. I had caught a few hours of sleep the previous day, and then checked out of the Twelve Apostles because Chandler had instructed us to scatter. But sitting around wondering what to do with my life had been little fun, and so I had come to see Andile despite the heavy cold.

  “I’ve got one here,” said Andile. “Knife wound, throat, young woman, Muizenberg. April this year you said?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “It lists her occupation as sex worker.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Andile turned to me and demonstrated how flexible he could be in his smoking habits by inhaling a lungful of smoke and blowing it over me, all without using his hands.

  “What do you want to know about her?” he asked.

  “I want to know if another woman checked into a hospital or was involved in a crime of any sort that day or within a few days afterwards.”

  “Should I check the morgues as well?”

  “You probably should.”

  “And this would be your journalist?”

  “Yes. She was with the young woman when she had her throat slit.”

  Andile turned back to the computer, tapped at the keyboard, and peered through the haze of smoke for several minutes.

  “Dark Bizness,” he said after a long pause, “that’s who that man was. The one you stumbled across in the docks. And a member of Breytenbach’s private security outfit. Gang warfare has flared up, you will have seen it in the news.”

  “I must have missed it,” I said. “Gang warfare at the docks? That’s incredible.”

  “Please tell me you’re not involved, Gabriel.”

  “I don’t have a gang. Gangs aren’t really my thing.”

  “Word on the street is that the Dark Bizness crowd are fighting it out with Breytenbach’s security.”

  “The gold mining man?” I said, to demonstrate my ignorance.

  “The same,” said Andile. “The one who claims all that gold was stolen from him.”

  “And they’re starting a war over a few bars of gold?”

  Andile turned to me and removed the cigarette from his mouth in order to stub it out. Then he gave me the intense stare that usually preceded tough questions. I liked Andile and sometimes thought that we could be friends. I appreciated his passion for what he did – his obsessive determination to pursue justice – and it didn’t bother me that we were on different sides of the law. Although that was probably why our friendship had not developed past the occasional sharing of cigarettes.

  “It was more than a few bars,” he said. “Khanyi has told me you are well aware of that.”

  “Has she? How’s that going, with Khanyi?”

  I offered him another cigarette, as was appropriate if we were going to talk relationships. He took the cigarette and then cupped his hands around mine as I lit it for him.

  “Khanyi is very focused on her career,” he said eventually.

  “That’s just nonsense. I’ve seen the way she is around you. I always put in a good word for you, you should know that.”

  “I’m not sure that helps, Gabriel. Khanyi might not consider a good word from you as a recommendation. In fact, she has confided that both she and Major Fehrson are concerned about the path your life has taken since leaving their employ.”

  “That’s very kind of them.”

  “Khanyi told me you were a soldier, quite respectable a short while ago. British army, is that right?”

  “Never respectable,” I admitted, “and between you and me it all ended rather badly.”

  “Yes, she told me that, too. Post-traumatic stress, she said.”

  Andile clutched at his face as if he regretted mentioning that, but he was only sucking on his cigarette.

  “Something about a terrorist ambush in the Congo. You were posted to gold mines in Uganda?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not Breytenbach’s gold mine, was it? He owns a gold mine up there.”

  “Does he? Wha
t a coincidence.”

  “Do you know the broken window theory, Gabriel?”

  “Find the people who are breaking the windows and you stop them from doing worse?”

  “That’s right. Smaller crimes lead to bigger crimes; larceny will lead eventually to homicide.”

  “In my experience it can also work the other way. Homicide could lead to larceny.”

  Andile inhaled again. The cigarette crackled, and his eyes narrowed.

  “If you are in trouble, Gabriel, you should come clean before things escalate.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that, Captain. Thank you.”

  “Khanyi has told me she is concerned about you.”

  “You and Khanyi should really find something else to talk about on your dates.”

  Andile nodded, as if allowing me that small joke at his expense.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked, indicating the computer. I guessed all of this was simply a preamble to some big revelation.

  “Nothing,” he said, and turned back to the computer to demonstrate. “There are several clearly unrelated cases, but nothing that could be connected to your young sex worker. How would you describe the race of your journalist?”

  “I would describe it as a medium toffee.”

  “Coloured or Indian toffee?”

  “Coloured would be what it says in her ID.”

  Andile shook his head and scrolled through a list on his screen.

  “I’m now weeks after the wounded sex worker, and there is nothing.”

  I waited. I knew he would not have subjected me to the broken windows speech if he hadn’t found something.

  “Except for this,” he said eventually, after I failed to respond.

  “What is that?”

  “No woman, so it’s not your disappearing journalist.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Two men, died in a fire in their car.”

  “Burnt to death?”

  “Their car burned, with them inside it.”

  “How is that related to the girl in hospital?”

  “It was a few days after they released her from the hospital and just up the coast in the Strand.”

  “It seems a tenuous connection.”

  “There is also the manner of their death.”

  “They didn’t burn to death?”

  “Wounds to their throats, it says here,” said Andile, and he pointed his cigarette at the screen but looked at me. “Knife wounds to the throat,” he said again, in case I hadn’t understood the first time.

  “That’s interesting. What can you tell me about those men?”

  He turned back to the screen.

  “Local scumbags, in and out of prison, drugs, car hijacking, they did whatever came their way. Had recently turned their lives around and discovered religion – they both joined that big church, the House of God.”

  “Isn’t it called the House of Our Lord?”

  “That’s the one. But according to this report they couldn’t shake off their past – the deaths were put down to infighting, Cape Flats gangs, vengeance for past betrayals, that kind of thing.” He turned back to me. “No mention of a disappearing journalist, or a wounded sex worker.”

  Andile was silent for a moment, then he said, “You will bring her in to me when you find her, Gabriel, won’t you? The Gauteng boys are baying for your blood, and I’m holding them off on the basis that you will bring this journalist of yours in to explain what you were doing threatening that judge. You can be grateful none of your DNA showed up at his house, but I know enough of your background to not be surprised by that.”

  “My military training didn’t include instruction in covering up DNA evidence,” I said.

  “Nevertheless, try not to stumble across any more people with gunshot wounds. And try not to visit people who end up dying from knife wounds to the throat.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  “I’m also concerned about the trend developing here, Gabriel. Deeply concerned. I don’t like it.”

  “Trend?”

  “The number of people you come into contact with who disappear, or die.”

  “It is deeply concerning,” I agreed, and left him with the last two cigarettes in the pack. Kicking the smoking habit when deeply concerning things are happening is pretty damn hard, I know from experience.

  Eighteen

  “Where are you, Gabriel?” asked Khanyi when I returned her call.

  “I’m right here.”

  Khanyi sighed. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you, but you never answer.”

  “That story has a happy ending though, because you’ve got a hold of me now.”

  “This your new number?”

  “It is one of them.”

  “Father is deeply concerned about you.”

  “That is very kind of him, but you can tell him I’m in fighting good health.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a cold.”

  “Was there a reason you were trying to get hold of me, Khanyi, or was it just the annual health check?”

  “Captain Dlamini says you threatened a government minister.”

  “Does he?”

  “Don’t play games, Gabriel. I’m trying to help you. It would be in your interest to stop playing the fool and listen to what I have to say.”

  She paused. I demonstrated my willingness to listen by saying, “Which is?”

  “You need to give yourself up.”

  “To the police?”

  “Yes. Give yourself up to the police.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “They have a warrant for your arrest – that’s why Father’s concerned. It would be better if you gave yourself up instead of running from the police and waiting for them to catch up with you. It would be an indication of your innocence.”

  “Is it those parking tickets? I can explain that.”

  “Of course it’s not the parking tickets. But seeing as you bring them up – you realise those have been coming to the Department? You didn’t hire a car using one of our IDs, did you? In any case, you should be thanking me for all the trouble I’ve gone to, Gabriel, not making jokes. The warrant is for two murders.”

  “Two?”

  “And what happened to your journalist? Captain Dlamini says you went to see him, but there was no journalist. Now another man is dead, and Captain Dlamini says he can’t hold them off any longer.”

  “Who is the other man?”

  “A member of the Cabinet – Minister of Education I think – Jessop Ndoro. Captain Dlamini says if you’d been there an hour later you’d be locked up in a cell by now. The warrant came through just after you left.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about what Captain Dlamini is saying. How are things going with him? You two seeing much of each other?”

  There was a click and then a disappointing silence. Khanyi had ended the call, and I hadn’t even had the chance to thank her.

  I went out onto the small terrace of the apartment I had broken into the night before. It belonged to a neighbour of mine whom I’d overheard talking about a business trip that would take him out of town for several weeks. If he hadn’t meant to include me in the conversation, he shouldn’t have spoken into his phone with so much volume. And I did not think he’d mind my staying in his apartment. I’d even done him the favour of watering the indoor plants. In any case, I didn’t intend staying long because it was risky, given the proximity to my own apartment. But I hadn’t been able to think of anywhere else to go – and Breytenbach’s men were being kept busy in the docks, so I didn’t think it likely they would come looking for me. But now that the police had a warrant for my arrest, they’d be ringing at my doorbell before too long and doing searches of the neighbourhood. I lit a cigarette and thought over my options again. The warehouse at the docks was out of the question; they were still in a state of emergency. Going to another hotel would mean using an identity that the Department didn’t have on their list, and I’d run out of th
ose. The identity I’d used at the Twelve Apostles was not available because Chandler had insisted on collecting our documents before we parted ways. I would also need to abandon the rental car, which the Department were no doubt tracking as well. I had reached the point of my last resort: calling Chandler and asking for him to arrange somewhere else to hide, when my phone rang. It was one of the numbers I had for Fat-Boy.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m right here.” I had a sense of déjà vu.

  “I been busy, Angel,” he said, and paused, as if expecting me to congratulate him.

  “Busy doing what?”

  “I found the boat,” he said in a breathless voice. “Found the fucker, Angel, I found it.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did.” Fat-Boy’s voice had gone flat with disappointment at my reaction.

  “And the heavy stuff? That still on it?”

  “No, Angel, that’s gone.”

  “The captain? Did you find Jannie?”

  “Coast guard did. He was dead. They found the boat floating out to sea and towed it back. There’s been police crawling all over it. The locals here say they removed his body.”

  “But no concrete blocks?”

  “Why would the police take the blocks?”

  “Because of what was inside them.”

  “No, they didn’t take the blocks. There were no blocks when they found the boat.”

  “The locals where? Where is it?”

  “You wanna see it? We’ll go there together.”

  I didn’t see any point in going to look at an empty boat – except for the fact that I wouldn’t here when the police came knocking.

  “Where is it?” I asked again.

  “Saldanha Bay.”

  Saldanha was an industrial harbour a couple of hours’ drive up the west coast.

  “You got wheels?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then I’m in. Let’s go see the empty boat.”

  “Are you in trouble, Angel?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You never ask me for a ride.”

  “I’ve had problems with my rental.”