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The Rwandan Hostage

Page 8

by Christopher Lowery


  Then she played back the morning’s conversations she’d recorded on the phone. The volume had been on maximum and the discussion could be clearly heard. She shivered again at the sound of the men’s’ voices lying to her and trying to find out about Leo’s father. Using the ‘Share’ feature, she emailed the recording to her laptop and filed it under SA Interview Nwosu & Coetzee July 12. She’d been in the station for less than half an hour, but a lot of that time had been spent waiting, so she edited the recording to about fifteen minutes of conversation.

  Next, she looked up the number of Diepkloof Police Station. It hadn’t occurred to her to call there last night. Using the same pretence, she asked about a missing boy. She used her mobile to record the conversation. She’d downloaded a special app to do this, but it wasn’t difficult. For the first time, she informed the operator of Leo’s name. But the answer was the same. Nobody in the station had ever heard of him.

  Emma rang off then replayed the recording. She sat back at the desk. It’s a conspiracy, she thought, I was right, it’s a conspiracy and Leo is the victim. This is the final proof. Nwosu’s own police department knows nothing about the kidnapping because he and Coetzee organised it. That guard Masuku must be involved as well. God knows how many more people are involved. But why? She asked herself for the hundredth time. Why on earth would anyone want to abduct my son? Well, now I’ve got ample proof of what’s going on. I just need to find a way of using it. She emailed it to her laptop and saved it under Diepkloof Tel. July 12.

  Finally, Emma opened up Dropbox. She created a new folder, called Leo Stewart then went to ‘Share a Folder’ and entered Jenny’s email address. She dragged the file she’d prepared with the four items, the CCTV clip, the photo, and the recordings of the conversations in the police station and the telephone call, into the Leo Stewart folder in the Dropbox. Then she went downstairs to get something to eat. She was famished.

  It was sixteen hours since Leo had been taken.

  TWELVE

  Marbella, Spain

  I’ve shared some of my files or folders with you. To open them, just click the link(s) below. Jenny found this message when she looked at her laptop in the office in York House, in southern Spain. The house, with its several hectares of surrounding land, was located on the Las Manzanás Golf Course, near Marbella. It had been her father-in-law, Charlie Bishop’s house, which she’d inherited jointly with Leticia da Costa, a young Angolan woman who was the mother of Charlie’s son, Emilio.

  She opened up Dropbox and found the Leo Stewart folder. After studying the film clip and photo and listening to the recordings, she took her notebook and played everything through again as she typed her notes. Finally, she ran the film clip again, trying to see if there was something that stood out, something she may have missed on the first viewings. Hmm, that’s interesting. She ran it through three more times, stopping it in the same places each time and making more notes. Jenny closed down Dropbox and sat thinking for a while then she picked up the telephone and made several calls.

  It was three o’clock when she called her sister back on her mobile and Emma answered immediately. After a snack and a sleep, she was feeling more like her normal self, although her voice shook when she asked, “So, what’s the verdict, Jenny? Am I crazy, or has my son been abducted?”

  “You’re definitely not crazy and I’m sorry I doubted you. It seems too incredible to be true, but I’m convinced Leo’s been kidnapped and that Coetzee and Nwosu are involved. But what’s more important is I’m also convinced you’re in very grave danger and we’ve got to take immediate steps. We have very little time, so listen carefully and please don’t argue.”

  “Why don’t you Skype me? These calls are going to cost a fortune.”

  “It’s not a good idea and you mustn’t worry about the cost. Just listen and do what I tell you.” Jenny adopted her school teacher voice. “First, go and check outside your door and make sure there’s no one around. Do it now.”

  “There’s no one in sight,” her sister confirmed a few moments later.

  “Good, lock it and bolt it with the dead bolt and keep it that way.”

  “Now,” she continued, “go and sit as far from the door as possible, and speak quietly, so there’s no chance of anyone hearing. Have your laptop ready so you can look at something.”

  “Right.” Emma sat by the window, her laptop open on the bedside cabinet. “What’s this all about? You’re scaring me.”

  “Just taking precautions. You’ll see why in a moment. Now, first question. Who does Leo know in Johannesburg?”

  “No one at all. We’ve been here five days and apart from the staff in the hotel, we’ve never spoken to anybody except waiters and shop assistants. There was a shooting outside the hotel on our second day, so we’ve never even walked about outside, it’s far too dangerous. We’ve taken the bus and a couple of taxi rides to see one or two attractions and then the coach to the football match. But I don’t see what all that’s got to do with his disappearance”

  “Think about it Emma. I’m sure whatever was done to Leo must have been done by someone he recognised. He’s too smart to let a stranger come up and stick a needle into him or do whatever it was to knock him out. So it must have been someone that he met at the hotel or somewhere else you’ve been. Someone he had confidence in. Now listen, I may have spotted something on the video clip. Play it again and tell me what you see.”

  “I’ll pull it up. What do I have to look for?”

  “There’s a man who’s in the picture at the beginning and then comes back into range at the end. See if you recognise him.”

  “Jenny, I’ve looked a thousand times and I haven’t seen anyone I recognise.”

  “Look at it again. First you see the corridor between the toilet and the exit. It’s exactly as you described, a huge crowd of people moving all over the place so you could hardly get through. And when you watched the clip you were looking only at Leo being pushed out, which is normal. It’s what you wanted to see, so you didn’t pay attention to the rest of the picture. If you look again carefully, you’ll see a man move into camera range behind the wheelchair. He follows it until it’s gone from sight and I think the guy pushing the chair actually turns to say something to him. Then he comes walking back from the exit again after Leo’s gone. You can’t make out his face because he’s wearing a baseball cap but you can see he’s got lots of curly black hair and a beard. He’s in a black bomber jackets with silver stripes across the upper arms.

  “It’s not obvious, because he’s underneath the camera and there are lots of people around him, but it’s definitely the same man. He goes out of sight when the wheelchair gets near the exit, but gets caught again when he comes back in. Just what he would do if he wanted to make sure that Leo was taken out successfully, except he doesn’t realise he’s come back into camera range.”

  “Ok. I’m watching it now. When do I see him?”

  “It’s just as the wheelchair is coming through. If you look at the bottom of the picture, on the left, you’ll see a great big black man in a red and blue shirt.”

  “I’ve got him.”

  “Next to him comes in the man in the baseball cap and it looks like the guy who’s pushing Leo out is talking to him.”

  “In the baseball cap and black jacket. I see him now. Oh my God, I don’t believe it!”

  “Do you recognise him?”

  “It looks like Barry Lambert, the hotel manager!” Emma glanced fearfully at the locked door. “So that’s why he’s been so friendly with us, especially with Leo. He offered to take him to Lion Park, but I put a damper on it. After the shootings in the street I didn’t want Leo out of my sight in a city like Joburg, so I made up an excuse. Leo was furious, but I got tickets for us to go there with a tour bus on Friday. It was a wonderful day out. He absolutely loved it,” she added sadly. “And I’ve just remembered, Lambert suggested taking us to the Gold Reef City amusement park tomorrow, for our last day here.”

&nbs
p; “Are you sure it’s him, this Barry Lambert?”

  “Let me run it through once more.” She reran the clip, her heart in her mouth. “I think it’s him. I can’t see his face properly under the cap but there can’t be two people like him with all that curly black hair and the beard.”

  “Then it must be him, it makes sense. He’s the only person that Leo might have trusted because he’s the manager of the hotel. And he has to be involved, otherwise he would have gone to help when he saw Leo in the wheelchair, but he did nothing. He and the other guy must have drugged Leo and stage managed this whole abduction.”

  “No, it’s not possible. I’ve just remembered, when Coetzee called the hotel last night, he spoke to Lambert. If he was at the hotel, he couldn’t have been at the stadium.”

  Jenny thought for a moment. “But it must have been at least an hour and a half after Leo was kidnapped that Coetzee spoke to him. He had ample time to get back and take the call. In fact, I bet that was a set up as well. Lambert has got himself an alibi if anything goes wrong, because Coetzee called him at the hotel in front of you.”

  Emma reran the clip once more. “I want to see him come back into the picture. Wait, the wheelchair has gone out... there he is again.” He’s walking back now. I recognise him and the jacket from behind. You’re right, it can only be Lambert. He must have orchestrated the whole thing with the other man otherwise he’d have looked for me. He knew we were both there and he did nothing to help us.” She put her hand to her mouth, not believing what she’d seen

  After a few moments of silence, Jenny asked, “Are you OK?”

  “I was just trying to work out how they drugged Leo so quickly. I know there are some very fast acting knockout drugs, but they have to be injected to take immediate effect. They only had five minutes or so before I came out of the loo.”

  “They must have been waiting by the toilets, it’s logical, everybody goes at half time. Lambert sees you go into the ladies and knows you’ll be stuck there for a while. They follow Leo in, get chatting to him, jab a needle or something into his arm then hold him up so he doesn’t fall to the floor. The nurse comes in behind with the wheelchair and they cart Leo out. Job over in two minutes flat. Simple but effective.”

  “But Leo would have felt the jab. He’d have bashed him or called out or something. He wouldn’t have just let them inject him without a struggle.”

  “That’s why there were two of them. One of them must have held him from behind, hand over his mouth, so he couldn’t yell for help. There’s so many people milling about it wouldn’t even have been noticed. This was well planned and well executed. If it hadn’t been for that guard, Masuku, we might never have found out the truth about Lambert. He and Mr. X were the field agents and Coetzee and Nwosu are obviously involved at a higher level.”

  “And they probably originally intended to take Leo when Lambert invited him to Lion Park. Or,” Emma reasoned, “they would have another chance if we’d gone to Gold Reef City with him. That’s three alternative plans to make sure they got Leo.” She sat back in shock and fright, absorbing the implications of such a well-organised plan. This must have been set up before we even arrived in South Africa. And now I’m staying in a hotel with the man who organised the kidnapping of my son and the only two other people I know in South Africa are his accomplices. My God!”

  “Emma, pull yourself together and put those thoughts aside for now. We have to take immediate action and you have to listen to what I tell you. Are you alright?”

  “I’m sorry, Jenny. I’m just dazed by all this. I brought Leo to South Africa for the biggest trip of his life, it cost me a fortune and now it’s cost me my son. I just can’t bear it. This is all my fault, we should never have come here.”

  “Don’t be silly, Emma,” Jenny said. “You haven’t lost Leo. Look at the film. He’s only unconscious. If you look really carefully at him in the chair, you’ll see his eyes flicker. He’s drugged, but alive. And that’s the most vital thing. We’re not dealing with a murder here, we’re dealing with an abduction, just as you thought. That means when these people make their demands known, whatever they are, we can take action. We can get Leo back. But now we have to prepare ourselves for the next step and you can’t do it from there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re in terrible danger and the more you find out about Leo’s abduction, the more danger you’ll be in. Sooner or later the kidnappers are going to catch on that you won’t tell them anything because you don’t trust them and then God knows what they might do. We have to get you out of there now. Today.”

  “But how can I leave without Leo? I can’t just abandon him here in Africa!”

  “Just think, Emma. What can you do there? Nothing! You don’t want to talk to the Embassy and you can’t trust anyone else because they all seem to be in this together. You’ll be much better able to do something in a safe environment where you can work in the open and not hide in your hotel bedroom. And I’ll help you. I have some contacts and I’ll help you to get Leo back and give these people the ransom they deserve – a lifetime behind bars. That’s what we have to achieve. We can do this, Emma. Have faith in me and together we’ll get Leo back.” Jenny’s voice had taken on a hard, calculating tone. She was reliving an episode from her past, an episode in which only her strength and determination had saved her and her family. She was convinced she could do this.

  “But I don’t even have a plane ticket and the flights are completely full.”

  “I’ve already arranged everything. Don’t worry about that. As long as you’ve got enough cash for a taxi ride, we’ll have you safely out of there today. Just listen carefully, take notes and trust me.

  “Now,” she continued, before her sister could raise more objections, “What time are you supposed to see Nwosu?”

  Jenny spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the arrangements she’d made on the telephone that afternoon, repeating every detail of her plan, patiently hushing her sister up every time she raised an objection, until she was certain Emma had understood everything.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Jenny.” Emma was weeping softly again. “I suppose you’re right, it’s the only way, but I just hate the idea of leaving Leo here in this bloody country.”

  “I’d be extremely surprised if Leo is still in South Africa, as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been reading up on abductions. Apparently it’s most common to take hostages out of the country where they were kidnapped and hold them in a different place. Not only does it make it more difficult to find them, but the international laws between countries complicate prosecuting the offenders if they get caught. Sometimes they move across borders several times.”

  “But I’ve got his passport. How can they take him across a border without his passport?”

  “I don’t think borders are too much of a problem to people like this. If Nwosu is involved you can be sure it’s for good reasons and one of them would be just that, getting around bureaucracy and borders. So leaving South Africa doesn’t mean you’re abandoning Leo. You’re going somewhere where you have more chance of finding help to get him back again. Just get your things together and follow the plan and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She must have been a terrific school teacher, Emma thought to herself. She wiped her eyes and cleared her throat, decided now. “All right. I’ll follow your instructions to the letter.”

  “There’s one more thing, Emma, and I’m sorry if it’s a very touchy subject, but we need to discuss it. From your conversation with Coetzee and Nwosu and what you told me about the British High Commission, there’s something about Leo’s birth, or his father, that you don’t want to disclose. I’m convinced that’s the reason for his abduction. I don’t know why or how, but there’s no other possible interpretation of their questions. They know something about Leo’s father and that’s what this is all about.

  “I don’t want to pr
y into your life any more than I want you to pry into mine, but I have to know what’s going on here, otherwise I can’t help. When we see each other you have to be completely open with me. It could make the difference between finding Leo or not. OK?”

  Emma sighed. “It’ll actually be a relief to tell you everything, Jenny. You’ll be the first and only person to know the truth. Not even Leo knows, and you’re right, it might possibly be of importance, I just don’t know.”

  On that note the two women said their goodbyes, Jenny to make some more calls, and Emma to set out on the most dangerous journey of her life.

  It was eighteen and a half hours since Leo had been taken.

  THIRTEEN

  Johannesburg, South Africa

  At five minutes past four, Emma got into the taxi that had brought her back to the hotel that morning. She chatted pleasantly with the driver, but inside she was shaking with fear. The manager, Barry Lambert, had accompanied her to the door, asking again about her son. She managed to refrain from smacking him across the face, just replied, “I’m going back to the station now. They say they’re following several leads, so I’m praying there’s some news. I’ll see you later, Mr Lambert.”

  Emma was wearing her safari jacket and carrying only her laptop bag with a change of underwear and a few cosmetic articles squeezed in beside her computer and Leo’s notebook. She was reluctant to leave everything in their rooms, but there was no other choice to avoid suspicion. As the driver pulled away from the hotel, she said, “Please take me first to the shopping centre around the corner. I need something from the chemist.”

  The driver stopped on the corner by the entrance to the mall and she jumped out, carrying her bag. “I’ll just be two minutes,” she said, and ran into the building. It was bustling with shoppers, mostly Indian, who were the predominant residents of the area. She’d been there previously with Leo, stocking up on some filling snacks and drinks for a fast growing schoolboy. Walking quickly along the alleyway she turned the corner and went out the exit on the other side of the street. Continuing along the street she found the nearest taxi rank and climbed into an old blue Peugeot. The driver was a young Indian man with slicked down hair and a beaming smile.

 

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