His drive takes him against the main rush into the city, past the airport, heading off north-east over the Cape Flats towards the satellite suburb of Bellville. Voortrekker Road is congested; he inches forward centimetre by centimetre, scrabbles with the street atlas to find a short-cut, eventually turns off towards the more industrial railway district of Belrail. He finds De Houtman Street, dusty and deserted, coated with grime from the industrial units at its sides, and is immediately depressed. The houses are small and squat, tall pitched roofs on low single-storey structures, each surrounded by walls of grey concrete panels, gardens of cracked salmon-pink bricks, grass bleached yellow by the unending summer.
He parks on the deserted street, smells diesel in the air, urine on the pavement, and hears the clattering of trains on the light breeze from the south. The smog from the Cape Flats extends out here now, the air thick and heavy with the beginnings of a humid day. He tries to push open the rusted garden gate, resorts to a sharp kick, walks up the concrete path to the front door. Mitchell Smith’s house is heavily barred, the entrance itself protected by a steel gate in front of the wooden door. He presses the bell to no effect and knocks instead, fitting his hand through the steel bars to rap loudly.
When the door opens on Mitchell Smith, De Vries does not recognize him. He had been the youngest that night, barely more than a teenager. Now, his skin seems thin, eyes bulging. He has long sideburns, wispy and greying. He looks a lot older than De Vries, yet he knows Smith is ten years his junior.
‘Colonel de Vries?’
Vaughn holds up his ID.
‘You don’t remember me either?’
‘I remember you.’
Smith releases the chain on his front door, unlocks the steel gate and pushes it open. De Vries steps back, then enters. The interior is tatty and old; it smells of fried food, not just from the small, dark kitchen but from the walls themselves.
Behind him, Smith is re-locking the security gate, replacing the chain and locking the front door. Vaughn watches him, feeling increasingly claustrophobic. Smith wears his keys around his neck. It reminds De Vries of Father Jacobus and the ostentatious crucifix on his chest. Smith shuffles, clinking, back towards De Vries, leads him into the living room overlooking the bare yard. The three windows are barred too. He gestures for De Vries to sit at the dining table, once an elegant mahogany antique, now scratched and pocked with water marks.
‘You want coffee?’
De Vries looks up at him, shakes his head.
‘I don’t have much time.’
Smith sits next to him, opens a green plastic folder, begins to pull out sheets of paper, newspaper cuttings. There seems no order to them. He shuffles them momentarily, then turns to De Vries.
‘In January 1994, seven of us went after the Victoria Drinking Hall suspects. Do you ever think about that night?’
De Vries looks down at the sheets, turns back to Smith.
‘I think you do.’
‘You know what? I did for months afterwards. Then, it went away. All the new challenges, new personnel, new officers. I didn’t have time for it. I had my wife and my job.’
De Vries looks around the room.
‘What happened?’
Smith pauses.
‘Things didn’t work out. My wife left me, left the country. They got me out of the SAPS. They wanted me out and they did it. They did it to most of the white guys. Wouldn’t promote me, made shit up about me. I’d taken this, or lost that; put me on all the shit assignments, made me train those lazy bastards and then watch as they’d fuck it up. They got me out.’
De Vries has heard this story before. Many times.
‘What did you do then?’
‘Do? There’s nothing to fucking do, ’cos there’s no work.’ Smith is shouting now through his small, constricted mouth. ‘Not for me. Not for white guys when there are fifty people looking for anything to do, and if one fucking black comes along wanting work, they give it to him.’
He is shaking, sweat on his brow and under his bottom lip.
‘Why do you need to see me? You said three officers were dead.’
‘None of us are with the SAPS any more. There’s no place for us.’
‘Tell me what’s happening.’
Smith pulls a half page from a newspaper from his file, and pushes in front of De Vries.
Daily Dispatch, 11 March 2015
LOCAL MAN STABBED IN HOME
Former SAPS officer and local builder Sheldon Rich, 43, was found stabbed at his home in Maggs Street on Monday evening. Rich’s wife and daughter discovered his body on their return from a visit to her parents in Port Alfred.
East London police are unsure as to the motive behind the killing as, to date, there are no reports of missing property.
Friends and co-workers have said that Rich was a hard-working family man, with no known enemies. Police are appealing for witnesses, and say that they are mystified as to why anyone would attack Rich in the evening in his own home . . .
‘There’s an article like that every week in every newspaper around the country. In some places every day.’
Smith stares at De Vries, searches through the papers on the table, picks one out and pushes it across to him. Then, he scratches his head with both hands, fingers digging into his scalp so that De Vries can hear the nails on his flesh.
Smith takes a deep breath and says, with forced calmness: ‘Joe Swanepoel went back to live with his family in Middelburg, in the Karoo, a few years back. He was unemployed and did jobs for his father’s business, trying to scrape together a living. He stayed in a room on the second floor of his family’s house. Look.’
Middelburg Observer, 19 March 2015
(translated from the Afrikaans)
Joseph, the son of Oscar Swanepoel of Middelburg, was rushed to Wilhelm Stahl Hospital at 3a.m. Sunday morning, but was declared dead on arrival at the emergency room. The forty-four-year-old former SAPS officer was attacked in his flat above the family home by an unknown assailant. This latest incident, in an area previously considered safe, raises concerns for all those worried about safety in their own homes.
The SAPS would only say that he had been attacked with a knife in what they described as a ‘brutal killing’.
A representative of the neighbourhood watch told our reporter that Joe, as he was widely known, did not take security very seriously and doubted that even his front door was bolted securely.
‘If you do not take precautions in our country today, even here in Middelburg, you are asking for trouble.’
‘I kept in contact with Johan Esau. You remember him? He phoned me two weeks ago to tell me that both of them had been killed. Then he sent these clippings. When I tried to phone him, there was no answer. I called the police in George on Friday, and they told me that Johan had been murdered. Knife attack in his yard. Maid found him in the morning when she came in to work.’
Smith is speaking fast now, mouth twitching. De Vries tries to avoid looking at him directly; Smith’s anxiety is making him nervous too.
‘It’s not coincidence. It can’t be.’ Mitchell Smith is gabbling. ‘Three of the men who were with Kobus Nel. Each of them murdered, with knives, in under a month.’
De Vries feels slightly dizzy, finds himself staring at the table, scrutinizing the newspaper clippings for something which might distinguish one attack from the other.
‘What did you tell the police in George?’
‘Nothing. I told them nothing.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘You have to find Mike de Groot – he was the other guy in Nel’s van. You have to warn him. You have to tell him what’s happening.’
‘Why can’t you contact him?’
‘It’s gone bad for Mike,’ Mitchell Smith says. ‘He couldn’t cope, man. He seemed okay, carried on like the rest of us. Did the new training, the courses. Worked okay with the new black guys, the fat, lazy, coloured fucks, even when they were promoted past him. Then, one day, Joha
n and I were driving to Forries for beers. We saw Mike under the freeway ramp, over by Settler’s Way, just standing on the island between the carriageways . . .’
‘Doing what?’
‘Nothing, man. Just standing, talking to himself. We called out to him, but he looked straight through us. We stopped, got him into the car, but he was gone, man. Something in him was gone. Didn’t even know where he was. Week later, he was out of the force.’
‘Where is he now?’
Smith shrugs.
‘Someone said they saw him over by Table View at the traffic lights, holding up a fucking sign, selling wooden beads.’
‘You know if . . . ?’
‘If he’s still alive? No. I don’t know that.’
Smith looks around his hot, stench-filled room. De Vries sees peeling paint, stained carpet, empty bottles and upturned glasses under the tatty sofa; he wonders what Smith sees.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’m scared. Who knew we were there? Who even knew who we were?’
‘No one,’ De Vries says firmly. ‘No one knew. No one said anything or did anything for twenty-one years . . .’
‘Except for Kobus Nel.’
‘What interest would he have?’
‘He’s a rich guy now, ja? Made his fortune. Lives the highlife, but they say the money isn’t legitimate; that he’s connected to the mafia people, the gangs, maybe the Russians.’
‘It doesn’t mean he has anything to do with this.’
‘Who else knows?’
De Vries sighs, finds himself scratching his head hard and wonders whether it could be fleas from Smith, whether he spreads this contagion of misery and filth.
‘Perhaps it should have come out at the time.’ He looks up at Smith, speaks quietly. ‘I doubt there would have been an investigation. It would have been swept away, but at least we would have done our duty. Nel made it pretty clear what would happen if we did speak out. I’m talking about our jobs, our safety, our family. You didn’t mess with him . . .’
‘I can’t sleep,’ Mitchell Smith says. ‘I can’t think about anything else.’
De Vries stands up.
‘There’s not much I can do. There’s no viable threat to you. Even if you tell someone the story, I doubt they’ll act.’ He gestures at the front door. ‘You have your security looking tight. Remain alert. I’ll do what I can.’
‘I thought . . . I thought I could go away . . . ?’
‘You could. Might have to be for some time . . .’
Smith looks at him; he is exhausted.
‘I haven’t even got enough for a bus fare, man.’
‘Is that why you wanted me here?’
Smith stands up.
‘No.’ He draws himself up, pushes his shoulders back gingerly. It is, De Vries thinks, a tired attempt to display some pride. ‘I wanted to tell you. I wanted to warn you. I don’t want your money. I’ve made it so far.’
‘We weren’t in that house. We didn’t see what happened. You and I only guessed what those guys did. No one is going to bother with you, or me.’
‘Johan told me.’
‘I don’t want to know. I thought about it long enough.’
‘He just cut them down, man. They didn’t know anything. They were random. He fucking shot them one by one. Children in front of parents, little kids.’
‘Two kids got out.’
Smith looks up at De Vries.
‘Got out? What do you mean?’
‘You didn’t see them? I saw them, two of them, after the shots. They got out the back of the shack, ran away.’ De Vries feels his heart in his chest, his throat dry. For a split second, he is back there, in the rain and the dark, the sweat thick on his face; the images of the Victoria Drinking Halls, smoking and black, disemboweled, still fresh in his mind.
‘You only had to look at Johan’s eyes. He remembered every day. It wasn’t like the army, man. These people weren’t enemies, weren’t threatening us. They were just there and Nel wanted them dead.’
‘Nel was a brutal fucker, but it was twenty-one years ago.’
‘He put his hand in their blood and smeared it on the guys. He fucking blooded them, man, like fucking hunting dogs.’
De Vries gets up.
‘All right. That’s enough. This gets us nowhere . . .’
‘Sheldon and Johan and Joe . . . They’re all dead . . .’
‘They were all SAPS. Even if they are connected, there are other reasons why someone would do this.’
Smith shakes his head.
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘I do.’
‘You’re going to tell someone that these crimes are connected? That they must be connected?’
De Vries knows that this is the question he will be asked; he does not know the answer. There is little co-operation between areas and provinces, no database against which to check for similar crimes. Each of the detectives looking at these cases will not be aware of the other, such is the size of the country. Yet, if he links the crimes, he resuscitates everything that happened on that January evening twenty-one years ago: what was said and done; what was not said.
‘Stay alert. Leave it with me. I’ll look for Mike de Groot. We’ll make sure he’s safe, you’re safe. It’ll be okay.’
Mitchell Smith scratches himself some more, crosses the room to what could once have been a modern hi-fi unit but now stands empty except for a cracked pottery chicken in blue and white. He opens the drawer and pulls out some pictures.
‘Take this, then. That was us . . . I don’t know, seven, eight years ago.’ He points to the man at the end of the picture. ‘That’s Mike. He didn’t know what the fuck was happening, but we took him with us anyway.’
‘Took him?’
‘Beers, man. We took him for beers.’
He unlocks the door and steel gate, follows De Vries down the path to the boundary of his dusty garden. De Vries opens the gate, turns to say goodbye, but finds Smith following him.
‘I’ll walk to your car.’
De Vries looks at him, puzzled. Smith says: ‘Last ten days, I’ve been out once to get food, buy some electricity. I don’t feel safe here. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to stay in.’
De Vries sees desperation on the man’s face and cannot decide if it is justified or if a slow hysteria is taking over his mind.
‘These are hard times for all of us. Change is always hard. Keep going and they’ll get better.’
He gets into the car, winds down the window. Smith is on the street by the car.
‘You think so?’
De Vries nods, starts his car, rolls away. A few houses down, he says out loud: ‘No.’
By 9.30 a.m.,Vaughn reaches his building, his mind full of three murders hundreds of kilometres away, possibly connected; possibly connected to him.
He rides up in the lift, deep in thought, and finds the squad-room almost empty, no sign of Don February. On his desk, he finds a summons from General Thulani’s office. He walks back out into the squad-room, pours almost a full mug of coffee from the dregs at the bottom of the jug, adds three sugars, drinks it down like medicine. In the lift’s mirror, he picks coffee grounds from the tip of his tongue, feels grittiness in his throat.
‘A sexually aggravated murder of a respected clergyman and his wife in Worcester? That one sentence tells you what it will be.’ De Vries shivers and looks up at haughty Thulani in full dress uniform.
‘I think you should take this one. I spoke to the Captain down there. I get the feeling they are very keen to have some assistance.’
‘That is an unusual position, sir.’
‘It is. However, I think we should show that your department is not just here to take high-profile media cases, but that you are prepared to help, to get your hands dirty.’
De Vries smiles; he can never wash his hands free of the dirt.
‘I don’t see how we can take this on, sir. I would not have selected it
as a case for our unit.’
‘I’m listening to the word from Pretoria, Colonel. The mood is that we have to work closely together, support each other within the service.’
De Vries sighs.
‘The investigative teams, as you know, are already stretched. We have one leader in physiotherapy, booked out for at least two more weeks, one on leave and Major Adams is in Paarl on the family farm murders.’
‘But you have concluded the Holt case?’
‘I am concluding it, yes sir, but I still have a few days on it.’
Thulani sits up, raising himself still higher.
‘Could that not be undertaken in conjunction with this new case?’
‘It could, sir . . .’ De Vries starts slowly. ‘But think how it would reflect on us if there were to be a mistake made at this point? Brigadier du Toit is insistent that we fully complete one task before another is begun . . . For reasons of certainty in court, clarity to the media.’
De Vries feels tangible pleasure in quoting back the rule book to a man like Thulani.
‘Could you at least go out there to see . . . ?’
‘Sir. In the minds of the media,Trevor Bhekifa is still connected to this matter. Until everything is demonstrated to be cut and dried, there will always be rumours. I understood that this was not acceptable.’
Thulani sighs, nods reluctantly.
‘It is not.’
‘That is what I thought, sir.’
‘Very well.’
‘Why did the caseload come to you, sir? As the senior officer in my unit, I should be handling allocation of new cases. You should not have been bothered with it.’
‘In the light of the protocols coming down from above, I thought it was appropriate to look out for opportunities to broaden our scope. Always, there are compromises. This matter will be another victim of our over-stretched system.’
‘Protocols from Pretoria?’ De Vries says casually. ‘Brigadier du Toit mentioned that a Major had been enquiring about the Holt case . . . Was that the same man who contacted you?’
‘Major Mabena?’
‘I think it was . . .’
He has no idea, but he now has a name.
‘He is an attaché between the administrators and the Police Ministry.’
The Serpentine Road Page 18
