An Ordinary Day

by Trevor Corbett

  ‘Hello,’ she said softly.

  ‘You look tired, my love.’

  ‘I feel very relaxed. How is little Alex?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s missing you. She wants you back home.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Of course. The house is empty without you.’

  ‘That’s sweet. I hope you mean it.’

  ‘I think I’ve become quite unpredictable.’

  ‘I’m more like the unpredictable one. Who would have thought I’d be the one to lose my mind and end up in hospital?’

  ‘You haven’t lost your mind. You’ve just got to give your mind time to adjust to all this new stuff.’

  ‘I always thought it would be you who would lose it, not me. I thought I had it all together. You’re the one that can’t handle stress.’

  ‘I know, Steph. Just when I think I’ve adjusted to the stress I’ve got, more comes along. Pressure cooker, that’s me.’

  ‘Well, there’re plenty of beds in this hospital. I’m sorry I’ve added to your stress.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Being with you is a stress-reliever.’

  ‘I guess things aren’t going well at work, then?’

  Durant nodded. ‘I sometimes wish I didn’t know so much about what’s going on in the world. I think of the guy waving the red flag on the roadside when the council’s cutting the verges. That guy doesn’t know about weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism and assassins. He is just waving the flag and the biggest decision he has got to make is whether to hold the flag in his left hand or in his right.’

  ‘You’re also holding a red flag, Kevin, don’t you see? You’re also warning of danger ahead. Without the guy holding the red flags, we’re all doomed. He also stresses, I bet. What if someone ignores the flag and drives into the tractor? It’s just a different scale.’

  Durant smiled as he noticed a spirit returning to Stephanie’s eyes which made them shine. ‘See why I need you, my love? You put things in perspective for me.’

  ‘So I’m not completely useless?’ she smiled.

  A nurse came into the ward and began closing the curtain around Stephanie. Durant stood up and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I’ve got a surprise lined up for you. But you have to wait for your birthday. Think about that, Mrs Durant.’

  ‘Thanks for being here. I love you more than ever.’

  Durant had reached the door of the ward when Stephanie called him.

  ‘Kevin, keep waving that big red flag of yours.’

  He smiled and walked out.

  It was almost closing time when Salem walked into a neglected hair salon in Broad Street and was ushered into a back office where a Nigerian called Frank sat him down in a dirty chair. Frank smiled, but Salem didn’t smile back.

  ‘Have you got what I ordered?’ Salem asked.

  ‘I said it would take three days, and it’s taken three days. Your order was very specific; you were lucky to get it in three days.’

  He slid an envelope across the table. ‘It’s all there.’

  Salem opened the envelope and studied the contents. A passport, a visa and a credit card. He grinned and extended his hand to Frank, who shook it. ‘You’re a master – expensive, but a master. I can see why I was referred to you.’

  Salem reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a package wrapped in plastic. ‘Count it if you like, but it’s all there.’

  Frank smiled again. ‘It’s always good doing business with professionals. I like you Russians – you never hassle about the prices. The Chinese want everything for nothing. Have a safe trip, Mr Kovashov.’

  Frank waited until Salem had reached the busy street corner and disappeared into the crowd before he sat down in a grimy chair and dialled a number. ‘Salaam, Splinters. I’ve got two things for you.’

  Stephanie needed a hug more than any of the liquids which were slowly being dripped into her veins and which the doctor said would have a sedative effect. The medication was dulling the anxiety and fear, but it was also leaving behind an abysmal emotional vacuum to which she had almost surrendered. She didn’t have the will to fight it. The emptiness made her loathe herself more. She needed a warm and caring person who would take her and hold her tight and tell her everything would be fine. It felt like she’d been lying in the hospital bed for days. It felt like Kevin had abandoned her to the cold desolation of the private ward and she wasn’t sure if he’d even been to see her.

  Kevin Durant could handle crises at the office with machine-like efficiency. He could delegate, investigate, operationalise and problem-solve. But his sick wife appeared to be a crisis of insurmountable proportions. No quick fix here. Staying away from her seemed the logical response from him; he was predictable in that way. Her eyes, tired from remaining closed for so long, focused on a bouquet of roses on the table beside her and she managed a half-smile. She silently reprimanded herself for being too harsh on him. Kevin hadn’t abandoned her at all. She must have just missed him.

  The ward door opened a crack, and Stephanie felt her heartbeat quicken as the silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway. She tried to urge herself into the sitting position, her ungainly gown falling open at the back, and it was only when the strong hands grasped her shoulders and helped place a pillow behind her head that she realised it was Richard King.

  ‘You look stunning this morning, Mrs Durant. As beautiful as the roses I sent you.’

  She closed her eyes and with a hesitation that was merely academic, she held her arms out and embraced him tightly which, in that moment, seemed like the most natural and sane thing to do.

  Durant was drained, not only physically, but also emotionally. His ears rang continuously and it felt as if someone had tied a thick cord around his chest and was gradually pulling it tighter. His mind was playing out like a movie, but the images flashed by at such a speed that it was impossible to comprehend the plot. He rubbed his burning eyes and looked across his office desk at a picture of him and Stephanie taken at their sixth anniversary dinner a few months before. Durant shook his head as he realised he was looking at two strangers. He looked ten years younger in the picture – healthy blond hair, a face unburdened with the lines and creases of unrelenting stress and emotional conflict. And Stephanie – she looked beautiful in a black dress and with a carefree smile passionately radiating from her confident and relaxed face. He grappled with the realisation that he had recklessly allowed his life to descend into a dark and unexplored abyss. It felt like he was living inside a nightmare, unable to escape and unable to go back to the real world where everything was still manageable. He silently wished someone else could have taken on these burdens, someone who was stronger than he was, someone more resilient. The human mind wasn’t meant to endure such sustained pressure for this length of time.

  Amina came into his office first, followed by Shezi. Both sat down silently, feeling the palpable tension in the air.

  ‘I need answers,’ Durant said, without looking up from the photograph on his table. ‘I need to know why Uptown Girl’s dead and where Salem could possibly be hiding with twelve million us dollars.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Amina said softly.

  ‘Yes, it’s a nightmare. So we need to wake up and deal with it.’

  ‘It’s stress, Kev,’ Shezi said without looking at Durant. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  Durant stood up, then sat down again. ‘I’m fine. I just can’t work like this.’

  ‘One day at a time,’ Amina said. ‘Small steps. We’re getting there.’

  ‘Too slowly, guys. People are dying. We’re responsible.’

  Shezi put his hands on Durant’s shoulders and rubbed them. ‘Feel that? Feel the hands, brother, relax these shoulders. We’re not responsible. We’re just civil servants. Doing a job.’

  ‘So how did Ali just disappear off our radar screen? We’re sitting with all the pieces of the puzzle – why can’t we see the picture?’

  ‘Some of the puzzle pieces are con
fusing,’ Amina said confidently, ‘and we’re only starting to understand why now.’

  Shezi nodded solemnly. ‘We’ll find Salem. He doesn’t know we’re onto him, so he’ll be careless. We’ve got the borders covered. Days, brother, and this thing’s a case study.’

  ‘We’ve got the damn Libyans breathing down our necks wanting to know why we can’t protect their diplomats. Everyone’s looking at us as if we’re a bunch of idiots. Can things get any worse?’

  Amina and Shezi were quiet. It couldn’t get much worse.

  ‘And the worst thing is we had an arsenal of surveillance on these people. And right under our noses, one’s killed, one flees and one disappears into thin air. Is this the NIA or the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? Hello, anybody know?’

  Amina spoke without looking up. ‘I think we’re all feeling the pressure, Kevin.’

  ‘Ja, well maybe I’m feeling it a little more than you right now. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘It’s fine, Kevin. Just relax.’ Shezi pushed his thumbs deeper into Durant’s shoulder muscles.

  ‘Ouch! Steady on. Mike – the wine companies – if Salem’s involved in imports and exports of wine, even if it’s just a cover, there has to be some evidence of it. There’re only a finite number of wine companies, distributors, importers, exporters in South Africa. Take whatever you need; go to Cape Town if necessary; taste the damn wines if you have to, but please, please come back and tell me you found a link to Malta and Salem.’

  Shezi nodded.

  ‘Amina. We need to know where Ali is. If Salem’s looking for him, maybe we can get to him when he finds Ali, if he hasn’t already found him. Go to Ali’s work. Talk to someone there about a madman who’s out to kill him. That should get their attention. Forget the fact that he’s our target for a moment.’

  ‘We lose the initiative,’ Amina said. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘The rules have changed. Salem’s our main priority now, even if it compromises the fact that we’re interested in Ali. We can’t let anyone else die. It’s kinda an annoying obligation of ours – keep the bad guys alive.’

  Detective Inspector Heath had the warrant to the cellphone service provider and traced the murder scene cell number to an address within twenty-four hours; a record he doubted would ever be beaten. The excitement turned to disappointment and then anger when he realised the physical address the subscriber had given to the service provider was a small substation in a dead-end street. It took Heath a further two hours to request a detailed billing from the service provider and identify a frequently dialled number, which he guessed was the home phone number and then found the address of the subscriber. He was in position at 5 a.m. – a small park about twenty metres from the suspect’s driveway. From here he could easily slip into the street and follow the car when it left home. It was an agonisingly long wait until ten past seven when a Land Rover reversed down the driveway, turned into the road and slowly made its way north. Heath clicked on his radio and gave the surveillance unit the go-ahead to follow the vehicle.

  Durant longed for something cold to drink, but the area in which he’d parked fifteen minutes earlier was nowhere near a tearoom. The heat was so overpowering, it seemed to have replaced the air inside the vehicle with a moist and foul distillation of the surrounding buildings’ effluence. Durant remembered reading in the agent handlers’ manual never to meet informers in your vehicle, unless it’s an absolute emergency. He figured the author probably wrote that chapter in his car in the Durban summer. This was an emergency, but there was no time to go through the mandatory protocols of the spy tradecraft: indicators, counter-surveillance, alternative meeting places and escape routes. When Splinters phoned him thirty minutes earlier, he sounded like a schoolboy who’d found the marking sheets the day before the final exam.

  Splinters was always late for meetings, but he was a necessary evil. Necessary because his information was always reliable and worth the sacrifice and cost of acquiring it; and evil because his criminal activity went way beyond the generous stretching of the boundaries of law the public prosecutor had allowed him. The ace he held up his threadbare and dirty sleeve was that he was irreplaceable, and he knew it, Durant knew it and Masondo knew it.

  Splinters’s wiry frame appeared in Durant’s rear-view mirror, darting across the road like an ostrich, his small head belying the genius brain within. As he came around to the passenger door, Durant pondered both the genius and the foolishness of the 50-year-old man whose features were that of a person perhaps ten years older. Many things had, over time, worn the deep lines on his face into a telling and somewhat sad snapshot of the person he once was. The laughter lines under his eyes and the slightly turned-up creases on the corners of his mouth were lines which revealed a once-happy soul which had long since regressed into a cold and hermit-like existence.

  Splinters’s lot was badly cast: the bottle took his money years ago; his greed took his conscience and his job at the bank; his wife took what was left. When the auditors uncovered the fraud he’d committed over a ten-year period, they were astounded. It was the work of a genius, not of a crook. In an unprecedented twist to the case, the hushed courtroom heard the forensic auditors testify for the defence and called for leniency and a second chance. The second chance came in the form of Kevin Durant. Splinters was approached, trained in spy craft, briefed and then dangled to one of the biggest Nigerian crime syndicates in the city; it wasn’t long before the float dropped and the baited hook was firmly in the belly of the underworld.

  Splinters became an indispensable asset to the criminal organisation; an advisor, a specialist, professional and trustworthy. Every stolen credit card, chequebook, forged banknote and bogus letter of credit the syndicate laid hands on first went through Splinters for approval. And most of these financial instruments came to Durant and were neutralised, worked, jinxed, returned or, for the sake of Splinters’s credibility, allowed to proceed in the criminal supply chain.

  Durant had given Splinters purpose in life again. He was nothing more than a hobo, an unkempt, unwashed shell of a man with self-respect as sparse as the few grey hairs on his head. Except when he was with Durant, that is. When he slipped like a timid reptile into Durant’s secure area, his frame straightened perceptibly, and when he spoke his voice had the authoritative tone again, which in years gone by had the bespectacled bank clerks scurrying around at his bidding.

  He shuffled into the car nervously, the hallmark smell of alcohol preceding him like an invisible wave. He greeted Durant and they exchanged some pleasantries.

  ‘Good news all around, Kevin. Good news, and better news for you today, my friend. I need to smoke, Kevin. You mind?’

  Durant minded. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘Kovashov. It’s a name, remind me to tell you. But first …’ and he held out a small envelope with the relish of a child holding out a picture he’d just coloured in. Durant took the envelope, flipped it open and took out the credit card that was within. He’d done this dozens of times before, but was unprepared for the flood of excitement which rushed through his body. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Frank.’

  ‘Nigerian Frank? Where did he get it?’

  ‘Brought to him. Taken off a woman at one of the malls. A tourist. Careless, Kevin man. Overseas card, big credit limits.’

  ‘I briefed you about this woman forty-eight hours ago. And you bring me her credit card. This is amazing.’

  ‘Say it again, Kevin. I love it when you say that.’

  Durant wouldn’t say it again, not because he didn’t want to, but because his car door was pulled open without any warning, and he was dragged out of the car by a set of strong, gloved hands. In the split second before his head was pushed down onto the pavement, he saw Splinters dashing up the road and vanishing around a corner.

  The voice was authoritative, but mild. ‘Mr Durant, I’m Detective Inspector Heath of the SAPS and I’m arresting you for the murder of Leila Elhasomi.’

  10


  Heath’s office was bleak and depressing. The furniture was old, the walls were grimy and the desk was littered with manila files, official-looking documents and a variety of pens, punches, staplers, paper clips and scissors. Durant was asked to sit behind the desk and his handcuffs were released by a young constable who offered him coffee. Durant used a few seconds to analyse the desk of the man who had an hour earlier arrested him.

  His eyes were drawn to two photographs. One, yellowed by time, showed a young police officer with some of Heath’s features but more matured, holding a newspaper poster which read ‘Top Cop Nails Drug Kingpin.’ Heath’s father, a dedicated and devoted policeman. That made Heath a second-generation cop. This was good. Another photograph showed a young woman and a small child smiling at the camera. The child, possibly five years old, had an oversized police cap on his head. Durant frowned, then smiled. A family man. His young son looked up to his father. This was also good.

  The door opened and Heath walked in with a cup of coffee in one hand and a brown folder in the other. ‘Sorry, Mr Durant, for your treatment earlier.’

  Durant rubbed the back of his neck and gave an exaggerated grimace of pain as Heath placed the cup of coffee on the table. ‘It was procedural, I assure you. This is a high-profile case and there’s a lot of pressure from the top.’

  Durant slapped his hand on the table with a loud bang, although the effect of the coffee cup tumbling over and spilling coffee over Heath’s desk was a little more dramatic than he’d hoped for. ‘I demand an explanation immediately, Heath. You can’t treat people like this, I’ve done nothing.’

  Heath calmly righted the cup and dabbed his files with a white handkerchief.

  ‘Okay,’ he said calmly. ‘But I’d like to ask you a few questions.’ He sat on the corner of the table. ‘The chap in the car with you. Who was he?’