“Such a dreadful business,” said Chandler.
“They need to find the bastard,” said Piet. “I understand that. And I don’t mind them doing their DNA tests on our farm. Stupid idea though – we’re an hour by car from the town. Won’t find him there. Waste of time. Now they’ve arrested one of our guys. A good man. Brother’s a priest. Fucking idiots.”
“It could have been my Hendrik,” said Melissa, “and Oom Piet. It was their church. Hendrik overslept, otherwise he would have been in the church.” She worked the tear ducts again and produced two perfect tears which rolled down her cheeks to be caught by a tissue that she pulled from nowhere.
“We must go,” said Piet after a brief pause to admire her performance. He kept his eyes on Melissa in case she had any more in her and finished his rum with a clatter of ice cubes.
Roelof held out a hand to Chandler. The decisions might be taken by Piet, but the actions were clearly all taken by Roelof, while Hendrik lagged behind and made the jokes. Piet had not even managed to clamber out of the couch, but Roelof was straining at the leash to go. He had people he needed to shake and phone calls to make.
“A pleasure, Colonel Colchester,” said Roelof, and we heard the terminal building tannoy calling the Van Rensburg party to the information desk. Our time was up. Roelof was not going to need to shake anybody after all. Piet uttered a grunt of satisfaction, or perhaps disappointment: he had the look now of a man who needed to hurt somebody. We all took turns at shaking one another’s hands, Melissa touched cheeks with us both and let us inhale some of her French perfume, Piet left a large denomination note for Vusi once he’d managed to get to his feet, and tried to close his jacket, then discovered it didn’t reach, and Roelof accepted my card and tucked it into a pocket of his jacket. He did not smile.
“It’s a long shot,” said Chandler as we watched the Van Rensburgs climb into their jet. He had allowed us both a proper drink, finally. Vusi had rushed back to his bartending job downstairs with his large denomination note and a pile of our cash, and now Chandler was going through the whole thing and looking for holes. “That tight-lipped one speaks Zulu, you heard that?”
“Zulu or Xhosa?” I said. “He’s been the big guy’s right-hand man for fifteen years. It wasn’t a lie that he did the running of the company.”
“Maybe. But our focus remains that old man. He’s our mark, not the assistant. I’m not sure the old man is the sweet-natured, bumbling fool he pretends to be. There’s some nastiness deep down there.”
Hendrik had climbed into the jet first, probably because he wanted to claim the best seat. Melissa was helped in by Piet, who was smiling and gentlemanly again. The nasty business of the police arresting one of ‘his guys’ was being dealt with by Roelof who climbed aboard after Piet, relaying instructions from the big chief into his phone.
“I’m not sure there is a ship’s captain in the world who would call search and rescue if a rhinoceros fell overboard,” I said.
“Artistic licence,” said Chandler.
“How does a rhino fall overboard?”
“That one’s easy. He followed the signs to the exits.”
“And three helicopters?”
Chandler gave me the flat-lined mouth he called a smile. His grey eyes danced. There would come a time when he would take a step too far, his bluff would be called, and it would all be over. Hopefully that time hadn’t come yet. Kenneth was the last member of the entourage to climb into the jet. He scanned the apron for incoming bogeys as he closed the door.
“I’ll do a course,” I said. “I think it was Zulu they were speaking.”
Chandler nodded. “Damn right you will. Never go into the field without the language. That our plane there?” He indicated an airbus beside the one that was rolling away for Johannesburg.
“We’ve got time,” I said. “Doesn’t leave for a couple of hours.”
Our aeroplane might not have been as exclusive, but it was bigger and faster than Melissa’s.
Eight
The news of the arrest of a suspect in the Minhoop massacre hit South Africa that evening like a silent explosion. It swept people off the streets and bunched them together before television screens, silent and gazing with hatred at pixellated images of the man with his hands bound before him as he was guided into a police van on a farm in the Cape ‘not far from the mourning town of Minhoop’, and driven off to the holding cells. The suspect had a brother who the police were trying to locate, and who became an accomplice in the minds of the public, despite the fact he was an ordained priest. The thought that he was on the run sent shivers down the collective spine of the country.
Chandler drove us back to the docks, and we stopped at Charlie’s, an over-priced bar which had been optimistically squeezed into one of the old fishing-net stores under the stone quay that now formed the outer edge of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. At ground level, the bar was a glass cube with a cluster of tables and chairs and a barman who operated the dumb waiter that delivered drinks from below. Signs advised customers not to throw stones. Access to the lower level was by spiral staircase, and we descended into the aquarium gloom. Here we were a little below high tide level, and usually the customers would gaze over one another’s shoulders to keep an eye on the restless sea as it tried to crack the super-strength wall of glass that kept us all dry. But tonight all eyes were on the television in the corner. Even the barman watched the screen as he poured our drinks, and communication was largely by sign language so as not to miss any of the action.
Jacques Smuts, the lawyer whose rise to infamy had been sparked by his defence of the high-profile boxer who had murdered his pop star girlfriend several years before, was on camera. He looked serious and well-oiled in a green silk tie and handwoven silk shirt that caused the television screen to jump and shiver. He told the reporter in a voice rendered hoarse by injustice that the police had made a grave error, and that his client was innocent of this heinous crime.
The name of the suspect was not revealed, nor was his picture released, except in pixellated parody of a popular computer game. We were treated to the same loop of footage again and again, like a memory game, picking up new details with each pass. The shackled hands with interlaced fingers as if the suspect had been interrupted in prayer. The wristwatch that hung loosely over the wrist and looked expensive, the neat blue trousers, and the matching jacket with brass buttons. There was something incongruous about these snippets of information, something that left us all puzzled. It was as if the man was already dressed for his court appearance. Surely the monster who had killed thirty-three people should have been wearing runaway clothes? Jeans and a hooded top to hide from the cameras, not the smart attire of an upwardly mobile aspirant with expensive accessories? And the brother that the police were seeking was a man of the church, a pastor. That detail also seemed out of place in the context of the murder of thirty-three churchgoers. But aside from these anomalies, and despite the pixellation, there was one thing clear to us all: the man was not white.
Jacques came on air again and said the same thing. It was all a big mistake. The police had no evidence, his client was innocent until proven guilty. But if my fellow imbibers at Charlie’s were anything to go by, the South African public had already accepted his guilt. The man with the square blocks in place of a face was not the man they had expected, but with each repeat of his walk of shame the evidence built up in their minds, and he looked more like the man who bore the guilt beyond a shadow of doubt. I could see it in the tightening of their mouths as the policeman accompanying him on his walk to the van applied a little more force than was necessary to help him into it, the looks of satisfaction as the van drove away, and the looks of contempt as Jacques’ refrain started losing its credibility.
Then a file picture of Piet van Rensburg accompanied text describing the suspect as a well-respected member of the development program that he was proud to support. Piet van Rensburg was going to provide extensive resources to help us all discove
r the truth. I thought I could detect Roelof’s careful mind behind the statement. None of the outright denials that were expected from the notorious Jacques Smuts. Some indignation, of course, but weren’t we all indignant? And a gentle separation from the development program that in better days had been described as the brainchild of this brilliant, concerned man. Roelof was pushing at the jetty with an oar, and the Van Rensburg boat was floating away from the trouble. If things did not go well with Jacques Smuts’ quest, I guessed that we would lose sight of them as they disappeared silently over the horizon.
“It’s going to work in our favour,” said Chandler after we’d watched the fifth repeat.
“Why is that?”
“That Afrikaans man is going to be wanting his weapons even more now.”
Chandler considered me, his grey eyes serious.
“You need to play this carefully, corporal,” he said. “Trying to be two people at the same time is a dangerous game to play. Fat-Boy is not entirely wrong when he raises the issue of trust. If this little caper of ours goes awry and we’re dangling from a thin rope with our pants down, we need to know whose side you’re on. Which person you are.”
“There is only one of me, colonel, you know that. Two names maybe, but one man.”
Chandler’s grey eyes studied me. I gave him an innocent, steady gaze in return. He nodded.
“Very well,” he said. His eyes sparkled a little, and he laid a hand on my shoulder. “It helps to repeat the vows now and then.”
He was right. There was something Chandler like to call ‘the line’. The division between what normal society considered respectable behaviour and what they didn’t. There would come a time when I would have to settle on one side of that line. I knew that. Straddling two worlds was taking its strain.
Robyn was sitting on one of my deckchairs when I returned to the warehouse. She had her feet up on the rim of the seat so she was curled into a ball, her arms hugging her knees tight to her chest. Beyond her the sea shifted restlessly, dribbling bits of the moon between the inky black swells.
“Don’t say anything,” she said to the sea as I approached her. “I’m staying. But we’re not going to talk about it.”
There were dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. I found another deckchair with enough material left to support me and sat down beside her. She didn’t look at me. I lit a cigarette, and then one for her.
“I’ve made the right decision, Ben,” she said.
“What decision?”
“I need time to sort myself out. And you need to find Sandy.”
“Sandy chose to disappear,” I said. “The last thing she wants is for me to find her.”
“But what do you want? You need closure, Ben. You cannot go through life not knowing what happened to her.”
“She made a phone call,” I said, then immediately regretted it.
“A phone call?”
“Weeks after she disappeared.”
“Who did she call?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. My ex-employers have the number.”
Robyn blew smoke at the sea.
“That’s why you’re back with them,” she said. “I thought there was a reason. Did you tell the colonel?”
“Yes, he knows.”
Robyn nodded and sucked on her cigarette.
“Did you tell the colonel about me?” she asked.
“Tell him what?”
“That I’m drinking.”
“He knows that too.”
“I need out, Ben. I’m going to tell him that. I cannot let you all down.”
“You won’t let us down.”
Robyn shook her head with irritation. Her hand trembled as she held her cigarette.
“You know what he’ll say,” I said. “We’re in this together.”
“But not in my state. This started as a crazy idea, but it’s too much now. Fat-Boy will never pull off pretending to be that smuggler. I’m in no state to do anything.”
I said nothing. I was beginning to think she was right. We sat in silence and finished our cigarettes. There was something beguiling about the smooth velvet heaving of the water on a still night. Robyn flicked the remains of her cigarette down the jetty so it kicked up sparks on its way to the abyss.
“It’s the right decision for both of us,” she said.
She turned to look at me, and I could see the helplessness behind her eyes. I did not contradict her. Her decision for us to live separate lives probably was the right one. Because who was I to think that sharing a life with me would help with any of her problems?
Later, after Robyn had given me more sad smiles, a not very appeasing hug, a sisterly kiss on the cheek, and retired to her camp bed early, leaving me alone with the shifting sea and my last packet of cigarettes, Khanyi phoned.
“I’ve got four numbers for you,” she complained. “I never know which one to dial.”
“You’ve hit the jackpot with this one,” I said.
Khanyi sighed. “You busy tomorrow?”
“Very.”
“There have been some complications.”
“They’ve got the wrong guy, haven’t they?” I asked.
“Of course not. What makes you say that? There are some questions, that’s all.”
“I see.”
“We’ll need you here at …” Khanyi’s voice was muffled as she placed a hand over the receiver. I realised she was still in the office. The arrest of the Minhoop gunman had probably resulted in several new buff files landing on her desk, and I had the sense it was not all good news.
“Nine o’clock, Gabriel. We’ll be in the Attic. That police captain will join us. Father is worried they are going to ask the Department to get involved in the investigation.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“Absolutely not. You know the situation. We’ve been suspended, we cannot be poking around in it. We need you to support us in this.”
“In that case, I will be on my best behaviour. I won’t mention any secrets and I won’t bring up my remuneration.”
There was another muffled pause.
“Father says you should stop acting the clown,” said Khanyi, when she came back on the line. “One day someone will take you seriously.”
Nine
The Attic occupies the top floor of the nineteenth century relic of a building that Fehrson called the Warehouse. He had moved his small department here at a time that he had wanted to separate himself from the greater security apparatus of the country. It seemed to have worked, insofar as the Department had survived for many years as an independent office. And that Fehrson, a dinosaur from the apartheid era, still roamed the corridors of secret power was another measure of his success. Although the more cynical members of the Department wondered aloud how secret those corridors were. An undeniable side effect of moving the Department to this building was that Fehrson’s team had become marginalised, often ignored, and had even been forgotten at crucial times, such as when the Minister delivered the security briefing to Parliament.
Even the word ‘Department’ in the list of building occupants displayed above the beefy security guards was missing the ‘m’, which had fallen off some months ago. Now some joker had used white paint on the glass cover so they had become ‘The Departed’.
I arrived at the Warehouse at ten minutes to nine, surprising everyone, particularly Khanyi, with my punctuality. I was clean-shaven, sporting a spotted tie, and I left my sarcasm at the front door with the excessively muscled security guards, who were struggling to tear their attention away from Khanyi’s décolletage, which was floated into the building on a ruff of artificial fox fur, and which bounced in a diverting manner with each step she took. She glared at the guard on the ladder who was scraping the paint off and greeted me with a surprised nod.
“What do you want?” she asked as the lift struggled past the third floor with ominous creaks.
“Want?” I said.
“You don’t do coincidences, Gabriel. Why d
id you arrive at the same time as me, looking like you’re applying for a job? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing a tie.”
“I’m a new man,” I said. “A new look, new wardrobe, new name.”
“Uyahlekisa,” said Khanyi under her breath like she was casting a secret spell.
“Not that ridiculous.”
Khanyi tried to hide her surprise but failed. She regarded me coolly from her wide almond eyes and tilted her cheekbones at me.
“You’re learning Zulu? This new man will speak a new language?”
“Online course. I did a few hours last night. They say I’ll be fluent in three weeks.”
Khanyi thought that was funny. “And then you’ll move on to the other nine indigenous languages?”
“Once I’ve got the basics under my hat, perhaps you could give me a hand with all the clicks.”
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out whether I was performing some complex deception.
“The clicks are the easy part,” she said, and showed some of her warrior spirit in the way she bared her teeth at me.
The lift started making nasty snapping noises as we inched past the sixth floor, and we abandoned it on the seventh. The last hurdle was a spiral staircase which allowed us into the Attic one at a time.
“When it comes to the meet and greet,” I said to her ankles as they preceded me up the stairs, “could we not focus too much on the details?”
The ankles stopped. Khanyi looked down at me like she was deciding whether to crush me beneath one of her imitation Jimmy Choo heels.
“So that’s it. You’re here on time and dressed like a pimp in order to ask me not to use your real name. The seventh floor told me you took one of their fake IDs. Freddy something or other.”
“Freddy Moss,” I said.
“You know you’re not allowed to do that, you don’t work here anymore. For goodness’ sake, Gabriel, has anyone told you there’s something wrong with you?”
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