by Paul Eksteen
Kwinzee was driven to the school by one of our drivers to collect the bakkie. Sometime after he opened the driver’s door to get into the vehicle: it exploded.
Kwinzee was knocked off his feet and slammed into a brick wall six metres away. Yellow SAPS crime scene tape already sectioned the area off where he had been lying before being taken to the hospital.
The school logo was painted on the wall just two metres from where he landed. ‘Per Aspera Ad Astra’. Reach for the stars. The same slogan as the one used by the South African Air Force. In the case of the Air Force, it was translated as, ‘Through hardships to the stars’. Funny how secondary schools liked their Latin. And this school didn’t even offer Latin as a subject.
The logo of the primary school which Danielle had attended had a little Klipspringer antelope perched on a rock with the slogan ‘Rotsvas’. That made more sense to me.
I decided to get to Kwinzee as fast as possible before someone connected me to the bakkie and I got held up. I therefore made a fast U-turn and drove across the road to the Provincial hospital where the ambulance had taken him.
As I walked into the waiting room at casualties, I saw that Danielle and Lebogang were already there. As I approached them, a doctor came out of one of the casualty rooms and started talking to Lebo.
Kwinzee was still unconscious, with serious burns on his legs, arms and chest and most of his hair burned away. He had some cuts in his face from flying glass and a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and a cracked left arm from getting flung six metres through the air and crashing into the brick wall. The doctors had put a brace around his neck as a precautionary measure.
The doctor wasn’t sure if, and when, he would wake up.
Lebo started walking out of the waiting room down the hall. As I tried to follow her, Danielle grabbed me by the arm. “Maybe she needs some time alone.”
“Right now, that’s the last thing she needs,” I answered as I pushed the door open and followed Lebo down the hallway.
I’ve known Lebo for almost fifteen years. She was Kwinzee’s school sweetheart and they had known each other since their childhood days, from where they grew up in neighbouring villages near Lake Fundudzi in Venda.
He first saw her when she was performing the famous Domba-python dance as a young virgin at Lake Fundudzi. He immediately fell in love with her and started visiting her in her village. They finished high school together and got married in the early 1990s.
Kwinzee used to make jokes about growing up with a white crocodile that guarded the ancestral spirits who inhabited Lake Fundudzi. Later, when he joined the South African Defence Force, the president of South Africa was also known as the White Crocodile.
Lebo was currently working as a manager at one of the local banks in Polokwane and, inter alia, also handled Papillon’s bank account.
I caught up to Lebo as she reached a window and looked out at the hospital garden outside.
“I really can’t believe this, Tom,” she said in a trembling voice. “Wake me up and tell me this is not real.”
“But he’s still with us. He’s strong and tougher than a boiled guinea fowl. He will come out of this soon.”
She sat down in a chair. I stood next to her. When she started to cry, I handed her my handkerchief. When the sobs subsided, she looked up at me. “The doctor didn’t seem very optimistic.”
“Doctors never do. Their job is to dampen hopes, not heighten expectations. Then when the patient comes out of it, they look more competent than what they really are. They do not know Kwinzee like we do. He will be okay. You’ll see.”
It was me who was supposed to be lying there, I thought. He took my place. And now he is lying all broken, unconscious in a hospital bed.
First Jan, now Kwinzee. Thoughts of murder started flashing through my mind. I hope that bitch arrived in Dullstroom this weekend. If not, I would get hold of her at her house in Pretoria. I didn’t care any more about the consequences.
I walked back to the waiting room and found the doctor busy with another patient. “Sorry Doc, but could you determine whether his mind is okay?”
“You mean, whether there is brain damage?”
“Yes, Doc.”
“It is too early to tell. We have to wait for him to regain consciousness to be sure.”
Lebo walked in through the door.
“Tom, you should take Danielle back to school. I will wait with Kwinzee. See you later.”
I put my arm around Danielle’s shoulder and started to turn away.
“And Tom, I want you to find out who did this. I want them to pay for what they did.”
I put my other arm around Lebo and hugged her. “I promise you that I will find out who did this.”
She glanced sharply at me, holding the gaze a little longer than necessary. “You’re going after them, Tom?” It was more a statement than a question.
“It will either be me or they who walk away, Lebo. I owe Kwinzee that. I at least owe him that. And it won’t be them walking away.”
“Is it because of what happened in Vivo, Tom?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what Kwinzee told Lebo. But I was sure that she did not know everything he did after Jan Steyn’s murder.
“I don’t think so, Lebo. But I will find out. Be strong and look well after Kwinzee .”
As I walked out of the hospital, I was stopped by a pair of plain clothes detectives who flashed their credentials in my face.
“Tikatiktif Speursersant Roelofse en tikatiktif Mangwane,” the white guy with an expressionless face introduced them. “Aar you Tom Allen Coetzee van Papielong Panelbeaters?” he enquired.
“I am,” I replied.
“Listen, can I please take my daughter back to school and meet you at the panel beating shop? Kwinzee is still unconscious and is not able to talk. I will tell you everything I know.” Yeah right. They will not get a lot from me. I would rather see what I could get from them.
“Okay. In thirty minutes?”
I dropped Danielle off at school after she explained to me how she got to be at the hospital. She said that she recognised my bakkie as the bombed vehicle and thought that it was me in the ambulance. She ran across the road to the hospital to discover that it was Kwinzee who had been injured. Ten minutes later I met the detectives at my office. It seemed that they had harassed Lebo anyway after I left the hospital.
Sergeant Roelofse did not waste words. “Dis is de first bombing dat we have to investigate ever.”
“Our bosses are screaming dere heads off about Talibans, Nigerian terrorists, Russian spies, and fuck knows wot else. Dey even had a call from de fokken minister dis morning. Wat can you tell us?”
I looked at Roelofse with his frowning face, pockmarked like a firing squad wall and told them how the bakkie ended up at the school and how Kwinzee went to fetch it this morning.
They kept on interrupting with questions I did not have answers to. One interesting fact that I got from the discussion was that Kwinzee had a pamphlet gripped in his right hand. Some new gunshop opening up in Landdros Mare street in Polokwane. Was it not for the pamphlet, Kwinzee would have been history.
It seemed that Kwinzee opened the driver’s door, and as he started to get into the bakkie, saw the pamphlet and got out again to remove it from under the wiper blade.
That saved his life.
As he removed the pamphlet, the time delay of the bomb connected to the opening of the driver’s door expired and triggered the explosion. If Kwinzee was still inside the bakkie, he would have been much worse off.
After an hour and a half of asking the same questions in various different ways and making notes in a brown A4 folder, the detectives were on their way.
“Don’t go too far away, and you can expect anather visit from us. Oh ja. And dare is a bloody jurnalist from some international agency running around, trying to gadder information. If I can advise you — stay away from her!”
He did not have to warn me, I was in no mood to share infor
mation with anyone. The truth of the matter was that I was actually quite pissed off about this car bomb thing. This was not something that should have happened to someone close to me.
Why would someone try to kill Kwinzee? Was it because of what happened over the weekend in Indermark? I couldn’t believe that Selina had reported back to the man who hired her. According to Kwinzee, Selina didn’t even have a contact number or a name for the man. And she owed him money. So, no, it was definitely not Selina this time.
The only other explanation was that the bomb was meant for me. Twice now they had failed. First with Jan Steyn, and now with Kwinzee. Third time lucky. I would have to be very careful in future.
I was more upset than the detectives could ever imagine. And also, very concerned about what might happen next.
The bakkie which was blown up was the same one I had used to go to Dullstroom the previous weekend. Can it be that I was spotted there and followed back to Polokwane?
I know that the school did not have CCTV cameras but there were some on the street corners in town. I wasn’t sure whether they were operational as yet. FIFA demanded a security system in place for the Soccer World Cup which would take place the following year and Polokwane was one of the host cities.
The media made a huge fuss about the newly erected soccer stadium that was being built right next to the old rugby stadium in town at a cost of close to a billion rand. To add oil to the fire, they found out about the security camera system being put in place for an additional forty million rand. A system that will only work once — for three weeks during the World Cup in 2010.
The fact of the matter was that there would be no evidence of anyone placing the bomb in the bakkie. Sergeant Roelofse said that they would interrogate the security guard at the school, but I was not too optimistic about any results.
I needed to think fast and act even faster. I had to stop the serpent before it struck again.
CHAPTER 16
Dullstroom — Friday, 20 March
I was on my way to Dullstroom at noon the next day.
We received some good news from the hospital with Kwinzee coming out of his coma during the night. His speech was normal, and it seemed that the impact to his head was not going to have a permanent effect.
I had received a phone call from detective Roelofse with worrying news though. The forensic team found evidence of a VS-50AR mine in the car wreck. The AR version of the mine contained an integral mercury tilt switch. It seemed like this switch was connected to the driver’s door. As soon as it opened, it would set the mine off.
The mine was placed next to the diesel tank underneath the bakkie and was supposed to initiate a spectacular explosion. Luckily for Kwinzee, the diesel tank of the bakkie had been almost empty.
Something else that was worrying me was the use of the VS-50 mine. I had used it in some SSA jobs before, buying it from illegal connections in Zimbabwe. The person who tried to get rid of me must have similar connections. I was not so sure that the two hired farm murderers had those type of connections. Was someone else involved? Or was the bomb supplied by the Lillynn woman?
The VS-50 is an anti-personnel blast mine and the ones being used in Southern Africa had been manufactured mostly in Sweden and Egypt. During the Bush War, Sweden hit South Africa with sanctions and treated the freedom fighters in Angola and Rhodesia with heaps of VS-50 mines.
These mines had been stockpiled somewhere in Harare after the official war ended in the early 1990s, and they find their way illegally into South Africa every now and then.
Another worrying factor was that Kwinzee and the bomb made headline news in the local, as well as national, papers. It was even mentioned on TV news.
By now, the person who planted the bomb definitely knew that he or she had failed. It was just a matter of time before they would try again.
But who was the target? I parked the bakkie next to the school. It was me who was supposed to collect it the next morning. Not Kwinzee.
Then I must surely be the target. And the next time, I might not be so lucky. The bomber might even target those around me.
I decided to use my BMW GS1200 Adventure motorbike for my second trip to Dullstroom. I was definitely not going to drive in my old Mercedes. I also did not want to take another bakkie with temporary plates from the office. Someone might become suspicious if they spotted a similar vehicle with garage plates lingering around town for the second time within a week. Maybe I had been spotted already the previous week.
My motorbike was equipped with two panniers and a top box which could hold all my equipment plus some raingear, if needed.
I booked into a lodge at the opposite side of town from the Rainbow Lodge using the name of Mr Johan van der Merwe. It was a fake identity supplied to me by Nic Badenhorst a few years ago and was probably one of the most common names in South Africa.
After booking in without a hitch, I had a light lunch of an assortment of trout sandwiches which I washed down with a carafe of the house wine. I drove through Dullstroom a little later on my way to the Rainbow Lodge, and exited town via the N540.
I hid the bike from view in the same copse of trees I had used the previous Friday. After carefully scanning my surroundings, I made my way to my lookout point, getting in place at four in the afternoon. Lying on my sleeping bag, I was trying very hard not to fall asleep, whilst scanning the lodge with my binoculars.
At a quarter to six I saw a black BMW X5 approaching. Bingo!
The SUV stopped at the double entrance gates and a man in khaki chinos with a blue shirt got out of the passenger side of the SUV and opened the gates. I identified the man as Louis, Lillynn’s husband.
I had been through her file again the previous night for the umpteenth time, making sure that I would be able to identify her and her husband from the photographs supplied.
The SUV drove through the gates, down the driveway, and stopped in front of the garage, underneath the carport.
It was interesting that she was driving. South African men do not like their counterparts to do the driving as a rule. It was probably her company vehicle. Or she was the one wearing the pants in the house.
A lady which I immediately identified as Lillynn got out of the car and walked towards the house. She had a bunch of keys in her left hand and was talking on her mobile phone, which she held with her right hand to her ear.
After ending the call, she unlocked the back door and entered the house. A few minutes later she exited again after presumably disarming the alarm system.
They unpacked the car and started to open windows and the front door.
Louis collected firewood from a pile near the back door, and a few moments later smoke was rising from the chimney. In the meantime, Lillynn switched on lights on the top floor. That was where the bedrooms were situated.
The couple was ready for an evening of red wine and kaggel.
I decided to wait another thirty minutes for the couple to settle in, and then to have a closer look at the hedge. The idea was to enter through the rear gate in the hedge behind the garage, using the garage as cover from the house the following morning.
The easy option would obviously be to use the rear garden gate after Louis went fishing. I had to climb over the gate the previous weekend when I investigated the lodge.
According to my information, Lillynn was not a keen fisherwoman. I hoped that she decided to lie in a little in the morning. I didn’t want her awake in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, whilst trying to climb over the fence.
Twilight was setting in and created a golden opportunity for me to move closer to the house. I slowly crawled from boulder to boulder on my stomach, taking my time. I was giving special attention to the three major things that could give me away: shape, shine and movement.
I reached the fence as darkness settled in, and got semi upright into a low squat, peeking over the top of the hedge towards the house. At that same moment a light came on above the kitchen door at the back of the house. I froze i
n place and did nothing but sit and watch the house for a few minutes.
The light that came on didn’t seem to bother anyone in the house, so they must have switched it on on purpose or it might be connected to a day-night switch. If it was connected to a motion sensor, then surely someone would come out to investigate. I was hidden away from view by the garage, so I ruled out a motion sensor.
I was on the shadowy side of the garage but moved to the side of the garage to peek between the SUV and the garage at the back door. The light destroyed my night vision and it took me a while to get used to it.
I could see windows to the sides of the back door and also that the top half of the back door was decorated by four lead glass panels. The windows were open but had burglar bars on the inside. They were too far away from the back door to be used to open the door from the outside.
I looked at the hedge in front of me and saw that the bushes were planted on the inside of a four-foot-high wire mesh fence. The fence must be very old, as it was rusted away in places. It was completely grown over with ivy, and, as I pulled at it, it came apart. I opened a hole behind the garage and made sure that I would be able to crawl through the hole in the morning without too much difficulty, should the garden gate be locked.
I crawled back over the ridge and went back to the BM. I had some sort of an idea of what to do tomorrow but was not yet a hundred per cent sure about how to handle Lillynn.
She knew who I was, and by just questioning her, I would put myself at risk in the future. I initially thought that if things don’t work out, there might be an accident. But now, being on the spot, I was not so sure any more.
The Lillynn in the folder and the Lillynn that got out of the car were two completely different people.
Her photo in the folder was a formal, almost police-file type picture of a woman. The woman who got out of the car was a lady who walked with grace and confidence. Even though she was in her late forties, she was oozing sensuality.
