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

by David Hickson

  “They’re not friends,” said Fat-Boy. “It was the end to the Docklands War, that’s all. Lebo would never be friends with that BB creep.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Chandler. “We need to proceed with caution.”

  That morning’s newspaper had announced a cessation of hostility in the Docklands War, accompanied by a surprising photograph of Lebogang Madikwe shaking hands with Riaan ‘BB’ Breytenbach and celebrating their resolution of ‘temporary financial discord’, which Chandler had pointed out was nonsense when he had visited my room at six that morning. There had been nothing financial about their discord. The photograph and the article beneath it bothered him deeply.

  “Breytenbach is a racist pig,” said Fat-Boy. “I am just about family. Nothing to worry about, Colonel.”

  “You’ll ask him about it?”

  “Course I will. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Alright then,” said Chandler. “Sounds like we’re back in business.” He calmed his nerves by beaming at us both. “We’ll upgrade,” he announced. “Billy and his secretary will take the Presidential Suite.”

  Fat-Boy groaned. “I’m not taking him into my bedroom, Colonel, we don’t need the Presidential Suite.”

  “You certainly will take him into your bedroom, Fat-Boy. When it comes time to arrange the finer details, we need him in a private space. Cannot have tourists wandering through frame while we’re doing it.”

  “You’ll like the Presidential Suite,” I said. “Entrance hall, plush bedroom, dining area, large lounge, wet bar and balcony making up a spacious haven.”

  “Stop winding Fat-Boy up, Angel,” said Chandler, “and for God’s sake stop quoting that damned brochure at us.”

  “It’s all I have to read.”

  “So turn on the goddamn TV.”

  “And look at my face all over the news?”

  Chandler sighed.

  “What’s a wet bar?” asked Fat-Boy.

  “It’s a bar with a kitchen sink in it,” said Chandler, and he got to his feet. “No wonder Robyn’s retreated to her room. You two are driving us mad. I’m going downstairs to arrange the suite. Pack your underwear, Fat-Boy, we’ll move this afternoon.”

  He left the room and probably would have slammed the door if the Mount Nelson hadn’t been thoughtful enough to provide slam-proof doors.

  “Those men,” said Fat-Boy after a minute of silence. “You said there was a judge who was killed, and someone else?”

  “A politician.”

  “The police think you did it?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “You told me about a judge and a politician, that night in Saldanha.”

  “Did I?”

  “And you said there was a third one, a church man.”

  “I’d had too many beers.”

  Fat-Boy had been gazing at the flowery wallpaper vaguely. His eyes moved to me now to ask his last question.

  “Is the church man going to die too, Angel?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “He seems like the kind of man who can look after himself.”

  “The three-cup trick,” announced Chandler. We were arranged before him on the luxurious soft furnishings of the Presidential Suite. “The three-cup trick has been used to fleece the gullible of their hard-earned cash for centuries. Some sources claim it dates back to ancient Egypt.”

  Fat-Boy sighed loudly.

  “Can we skip the history lesson, Colonel? If you’re gonna start showing slides of the pyramids, we’re gonna have to open up that wet bar.”

  “You need to understand this, Fat-Boy,” said Chandler. “We’ll open the bar just as soon as you understand our plan of action. Now, what do I have here?”

  “Three cups,” said Robyn, ever the star student.

  “Indeed. And under one of them I place a ball.”

  Chandler held up an ice cube, which he placed under one of the coffee mugs, then he shuffled the mugs about on the countertop with the practised skill of a confidence trickster.

  “Now,” he fixed his gaze on Fat-Boy. “Where is the ball?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “That one in the middle.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I just told you I got no idea, Colonel. Course I’m not sure.”

  “Let me give you a clue.”

  Chandler lifted the mug on his right. The melting ice cube was revealed.

  “Let’s try again,” said Chandler, and he replaced the mug, using it to flick the ice cube off the counter. It fell to the tiled floor at his feet with a clatter.

  “You dropped it, Colonel,” pointed out Fat-Boy.

  “Dropped what?”

  Chandler shuffled the mugs again.

  “Now where is it?” he asked.

  “It’s on the floor,” said Fat-Boy. “I already told you, you dropped it.”

  Chandler sighed.

  “The point is this,” he said. “The gold is the ball, or in this case the ice.” He stooped to retrieve the block of ice and placed it under a mug. “We load the gold into a vehicle in order to transport it to a location.” He shuffled the mugs again.

  “What location?” asked Robyn.

  “Doesn’t matter. Somewhere private, somewhere the mark will feel comfortable. The Dark Bizness warehouse would suit our purposes.”

  “What purposes?” I asked.

  “To perform an inspection, nothing more. Billy Mabele will not buy a pile of gold without first ensuring it’s the real deal. He’ll get his gold man,” Chandler pointed at himself, “to do a spot check. That is only natural and is expected by the mark. But it achieves something else.”

  Chandler lifted a cup to reveal the ice cube.

  “It shows him where the ball is,” said Robyn.

  “Exactly.” Chandler replaced the mug over the ice cube and moved the other mugs to the side so that our focus was on the mug with the ice. “And having inspected the gold, it goes into escrow – we get a third-party security company to keep it locked up to make sure the mark doesn’t switch it out for a pile of lead, and the mark keeps eyes on it. Billy Mabele transfers the money – that only takes a few hours – and the security company delivers the gold to him. They could sail the valuable stuff fifteen nautical miles out to sea. That way the transfer takes place in international waters where nobody can do a thing to stop it.”

  “I don’t do sea,” said Fat-Boy. “Almost died the last time. I’m not doing it again.”

  “You won’t need to,” said Chandler with a smile. “Because we don’t care if they sail it out to sea. It won’t get to that stage of the transaction because Billy Mabele won’t be transferring any money, will he? Therefore the gold will not be sent to sea. It will remain locked up in the third-party security safes. When the penny drops and Lebogang Madikwe realises he will not ever be paid, he will open up the safes where the gold has been locked away, and will find …” Chandler lifted the mug under which he’d placed the ice cube, “… nothing.”

  The ice cube was no longer there.

  “How d’you do that?” demanded Fat-Boy, impressed despite himself.

  Chandler gave another thin smile. He lifted another mug to reveal the ice cube.

  “A magician should never reveal his secret,” he said. “But seeing as you are going to have to perform this trick yourself …”

  “The ice that fell to the floor was not the original block of ice,” said Robyn before Chandler could reveal his secret.

  “Exactly.” Chandler beamed at her.

  Fat-Boy looked confused. “We’d better start practising,” he said. “Gonna need a bunch of ice. Whaddaya say we open up the wet bar and get ourselves some ice?”

  Lebogang Madikwe called Billy Mabele in person later in the day because he realised Billy was a man who didn’t like to deal through underlings. Billy Mabele said that he was indeed a man who didn’t like to deal through underlings, even if they were called Justice. Lebogang Madikwe suggested
lunch and Billy proposed the Lord Nelson Restaurant, which we had reconnoitred earlier. It was all very straightforward. Nobody mentioned gold, frustrated fences, or barges hijacked at sea.

  Chandler booked a table at the Lord Nelson Restaurant, and pre-ordered five ostrich meat burgers because Fat-Boy didn’t see the point of having a burger that could be consumed with a single bite. Chandler also arranged a lunch of his own with a retired Rhodesian soldier he had fought beside before my time.

  “Isn’t he a retired Zimbabwean soldier?” I asked. “Don’t we call Rhodesia Zimbabwe now?”

  “We do,” said Chandler, “but he was a soldier in the Rhodesian army, not the Zimbabwean one. The Rhodesian army lost the war – you don’t start wearing the other team’s jersey just because they hold the trophy.”

  The Rhodesian soldier was co-founder of a specialist transport company called Fidelity Cash Delivery. Chandler wanted to remind his friend over lunch of the good old days when they had fought beside one another, and ask him what the possibilities were of us borrowing one of his armoured vehicles – which were used to transport cash around the country, and were the closest thing you could get to a military tank without needing the resources of a national treasury. Chandler had decided that we needed one for Fat-Boy’s plan and his three-cup trick to work.

  Robyn and I had been instructed to keep out of sight of Lebogang and his entourage, and so we worked on some details in my small room while Billy and Lebogang took their lunch. Robyn had two different coloured markers, and she was drawing routes on a large-scale plan of the docks. We had marked several potential routes, all of which started at the only quay on the outskirts of the yacht club long enough to accommodate the ninety-metre yacht that Fat-Boy and I had seen floating in Saldanha Bay. The routes ended at the Dark Bizness warehouse, two kilometres from the yacht club, although the distance varied, depending on which of the circuitous routes was chosen.

  “You’re in trouble,” said Robyn when we’d finished marking the routes. She looked up at me, her eyes flashing with what seemed like anger. “Aren’t you, Ben?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  She shook her head with irritation.

  “Stop,” she said, holding up a hand as if about to direct traffic. “Stop with all the sarcasm, and the jokes and your usual bullshit. I know what you were doing when those two men were killed. I sat down and took a close look at it. You were with us – it wasn’t hard to figure it out – even Fat-Boy’s conviction that you killed them was shaken.”

  She paused, and her anger stepped up a notch.

  “Why don’t you tell the police? You could end all this nonsense in a few minutes.”

  “It would achieve nothing.”

  “Nothing? You wouldn’t be facing murder charges, for one thing. You wouldn’t be running from the police.”

  “But what would the repercussions be for you? How many skeletons do you think the police would dig out of Chandler’s closet? And Fat-Boy’s? Let alone the nonsense you’ve got up to over the years.”

  “That’s a bullshit excuse. We can look after ourselves. What’s the reason you’re letting this drag on?”

  “I’m not letting anything drag.”

  “You know who did it, don’t you? You know who killed those men, but you’re keeping quiet about it.”

  I didn’t answer immediately, and the tightly wound spring of Robyn’s anger snapped.

  “Stop protecting everyone, Ben! The person doing this is not worth protecting – all they’re doing is using you – don’t you see that? They’re hiding behind you. Because who better to hide behind than a known killer?”

  I still said nothing. Robyn looked back down at the plan with a sigh.

  “The police must know enough about what you did in the army,” she said. “If they know only half of what Brian told me, they know enough.”

  She grabbed a different colour marker and started drawing angry question marks over the smaller alleys. I resumed my measurement of the routes and filled in the details of each with the careful precision Chandler expected.

  “Sometimes you surprise me,” she said after a long silence, her attention still fully on the road map. “You know you’ve been set up for this, don’t you? You’ve been framed.”

  She looked up at me again, and the fire had faded from her eyes.

  “But you’re going to let them get away with it, aren’t you, Ben? You’re being careless, allowing the police to track you, so they will pin the blame on you. And in the end you will be the one who will pay the price.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Robyn. I’m not a martyr.”

  Robyn smiled.

  “Denial of martyrdom is the mark of a true martyr. You should remember that the next time you decide to martyr yourself.”

  Twenty-Four

  Fat-Boy, playing the role of Billy Mabele with enthusiasm, invited Lebogang Madikwe to share his concerns over their ten ostrich burgers (Lebogang had concurred with him about portion size and considered the five burgers a selfish pre-order on Billy Mabele’s part). Lebogang Madikwe told Billy about the items of value that were in his possession and wondered aloud how such items of value might become the property of someone rather like Billy. Billy in turn explained if those items of value were to find their way to him, he would have his metals expert verify their value, and that it would be a good idea to then hold them in a sealed vehicle until some form of financial exchange could be made, after which they would be taken to sea and become the property of himself.

  “You like the sea?” Lebogang had asked him.

  “I don’t do sea,” responded Billy. “What kind of Xhosa does sea?”

  Lebogang suggested Billy didn’t have a big enough boat and explained that the only reason he went to sea was because he had a particularly big boat.

  At which point they had ordered their third beer, loosened their belts to accommodate for them, and Lebogang had confessed that he was not experienced in the manner of transporting these particular items of value. He asked for Billy Mabele’s recommendation. Billy mentioned armoured cash transport vehicles, dropped the name of a reliable company, and suggested they meet the next day to discuss the details in the Presidential Suite, which had a wet bar that would be open for their pleasure. Lebogang said that suited him, although he was not in a rush – he would need five days to get the items of value ready. Billy was magnanimous and suggested three days. They had ordered a fourth beer each and asked for the dessert menu.

  Over dessert Lebogang had told Billy Mabele how much he reminded him of his late brother, and Billy Mabele had commiserated with him over his recent loss, a few tears had been shed, more beer had been ordered, and the two men had emerged from their lunch on unsteady feet with an arm each about the other’s shoulders, and the promise of mutually beneficial business ahead.

  Even Chandler had to admit that Fat-Boy had delivered a consummate performance.

  “We are magicians,” Chandler reminded us in the briefing before the meeting of the titans in the Presidential Suite the next day.

  “I thought we were crooks,” said Fat-Boy.

  “Magicians pull off their tricks by misdirection. They get their audience to focus on the right hand while the left hand is doing the mischief.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Fat-Boy.

  “We need Lebo to focus on the wrong thing,” said Robyn.

  “Exactly,” said Chandler. “He needs to be entirely focused on the logistics of the handover so that he doesn’t worry about the inspection. Tell me you understand the process.”

  “The handover is when he takes the gold out to sea, after we pay him for it.”

  “That’s right. Of course he won’t do the handover, because we won’t pay him. And the inspection?”

  “Where I bring my gold man in to check the gold is real.”

  “Full marks. Emphasise that the handover is his call. Let him focus on that. Give him free rein. He can do it in whatever way he wants. International waters, but you are
happy to be told the exact manner of it.”

  “I thought we didn’t care about the handover? We’re not paying him; there won’t be a handover. Why do we care about the handover?”

  “We don’t,” said Chandler, and he sighed.

  “We get him to focus on the handover so that he doesn’t pay attention to what happens at the inspection,” said Robyn.

  “Correct. He will be so worried about the handover,” emphasised Chandler, “that he won’t notice what we’re doing on the way to the inspection.”

  “Is that wet bar wet, Angel?” asked Fat-Boy, looking over at me with desperation. “All stocked up and ready to go?”

  “Fully stocked,” I confirmed.

  “I don’t think you’re paying attention, Fat-Boy,” protested Chandler.

  “I’m getting into my role, Colonel. This is how Billy Mabele likes to roll. He starts the day with a beer. I’ll take my first one now, Angel.”

  I passed Fat-Boy a bottle of beer from the fridge. He popped the cap off the bottle by holding it against the writing desk that had been in the original hotel when it was built in 1899, and delivered a swift downward blow with his powerful left fist. Chandler winced. The desk was only slightly splintered in the process. Fat-Boy licked a finger and rubbed the gash of splintered wood with it.

  “Why does he need five days to get the gold to us?” I asked.

  “He’s got it on a boat,” said Fat-Boy. “You know he has. We saw his big fuck-off boat. Boats move real slow, Angel. Didn’t you know that?”

  “We could do that trip in a sailboat in twelve hours. That big boat of his could do it in a quarter of the time. I don’t understand why he needs five days.”

  Fat-Boy shrugged. “If it makes you happy I’ll give him two days.”

  “We need more time than that,” said Chandler. “Don’t push too hard, he’ll get suspicious.”

  “My homeboy Lebo isn’t suspicious,” said Fat-Boy. “He’s taken to me like a brother.”

  “Don’t be so sure – he didn’t get to where he is by being gullible. Hit me with questions, Fat-Boy. What are his objections going to be?”