Cobra

by Deon Meyer

  He knew why his thoughts kept turning to Uncle Solly today. It was the pressure. He had lied to his sister – OK, he had been lying about his job for years now, but he had added an extra untruth today, by December there will be enough for half of next year’s fees as well, which naturally was a blatant lie. That tourism was up seventeen per cent, that the economy of Cape Town was booming, was all true. But it was fokkol help to a pickpocket.

  Why? The cameras, that’s why.

  When Uncle Solly began coaching him nine years ago, everything was different. Here and there there was a CCTV camera in a shop, but he was not a shoplifter, shoplifting is for amateurs and teenagers,Ty, too easy to get caught, da’s just one exit, and you always want more than one, always. Never mind that nine years ago, he, Tyrone, was only twelve years old, not yet a teenager, but that’s Uncle Solly for you.

  Take the postcard trick – those days you could still do it. Saunter in between the outside tables of Café Mozart, there in the Church Street Mall, go up to the tourist with your twelve-year-old even features and your charming smile, and the postcards, all hand-picked by Uncle Solly, pretty ones, Table Mountain, Table Bay, cute Boulders Beach penguins, and a couple with Madiba on. New and shiny.

  ‘Madam, have you sent your loved ones a Cape Town postcard yet?’ you ask in your sweetest little kid voice.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you just the cutest. That’s a great idea. George, we should send Shirley a postcard . . . Oh, aren’t the penguins adorable . . .’

  And he would put the postcards down on top of the wallet or the cellphone or the passports that lay there on the table, his fingers fanning them out, swift and trained like a card sharp, while he took the wallet and gripped it under the postcards. And the husband asks: ‘How much?’ and he would say: ‘Just five rand, it’s for my school fees,’ and the aunty would say: ‘We’ll take two,’ and she would reach out with her fat, beringed fingers for the postcards, and the husband would begin looking for his wallet. ‘I’m sure I had it . . .’

  You hadn’t been able to try that trick for a long time, there were too many cameras around every corner of the city, and somewhere a bloubaadjie officer sitting watching the screens and telling the Metro cops over the radio that you were stealing the tourists blind. Now you had to go back to your little room in the Bo-Kaap about four times a day to change into a different colour shirt and put on another cap or beanie or hat, so that the cop in front of the screens wouldn’t start noticing you.

  So what’s a guy to do?

  In this industry you went where the marks were, the marks with money. And that meant foreign tourists, because your locals didn’t carry cash – except for the Gautengers and the Free Staters over December, easy pickings if you get them away from a camera, Clifton beach and Camps Bay. And the Biscuit Mill on a Saturday morning, now there’s a paradise, all those milling people, but you could only get two or three wallets before word went around.

  Foreign tourists hang out at the Waterfront and in the city and that’s CCTV country, so you have to steal sharp, always in the crowd, you have to move on foot between the V&A and Long Street, between the Castle and the cable car, because the weird routes of the minibus taxis take too long, and the common taxis rip you off . . .

  Before November he had to get twelve thousand rand, for this year’s university fees. Before the end of January, another nine thousand for next year’s first payment.

  Twenty-one K. How do you do that, Uncle Solly? In this grim winter, with this rain that will keep on till September? With the fences who squeezed you with ‘recession’ and ‘tough times’?

  How do you do that and stay out of jail?

  Benny Griessel and Mooiwillem Liebenberg found nothing.

  They searched the big old house carefully and thoroughly. Morris’s computer, iPad and possible cellphone were not there.

  Captain John Cloete, media man for the Hawks, arrived. They went and sat at the dining-room table in the guesthouse to confer.

  ‘The Giraffe says it’s your call, Benny.’ Cloete had nicotine stains on his fingers, and permanent shadows under his eyes. Griessel suspected that that was the price that the liaison officer paid for his apparent unshakeable calm and patience, despite the inhuman pressure that his job brought with it.

  ‘It’s a foreigner, John.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  ‘We will have to contact next of kin first. That could take a while.’

  ‘Shall I say “presumably a British citizen”?’

  That was not what Griessel wanted. Kidnapping was a delicate, complicated, dangerous mess. If a demand for ransom were received, today or tomorrow, with instructions for no media, the cat would already be out of the bag. And there was no way to put it back in. On top of that, it would be like blood in the water for the media sharks. The fact that it was a foreigner would make them crazy. And they would ruin everything.

  ‘We don’t know enough yet. I don’t want to say anything about the Brit.’

  ‘An unknown third party?’

  ‘No. Absolutely nothing about a third party.’

  ‘You know it’ll come out, Benny.’

  He nodded. There were too many people on the farm who already knew. Colonel Nyathi would have the final approval of the press release anyway, but for now Griessel must try to do what he believed was best for the investigation.

  ‘I’ll ask the owner to talk to his people, but I think we should just say that one farm worker and two guests were shot. Nothing more.’

  ‘The moment we identify the two bodyguards, the media will want to know who they were guarding.’

  ‘Then we must withhold their identities.’

  ‘Hell, Benny . . .’

  ‘I know, John, but if the Brit is still alive, we must do the right thing. Imagine if we fuck this one up, what the UK newspapers will write about us.’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to the bodyguard people. They will have to cooperate.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Cloete sighed. ‘I will say the investigation is in a sensitive stage, we will release more information when we’re sure it will not hinder the process. That should cover us, but they’ll know we’re hiding something.’

  ‘Thank you, John.’

  ‘Wait until the Giraffe approves it.’

  Just after one, Christel de Haan and two restaurant workers brought them food – steaming plates of waterblommetjie stew. Griessel thanked her, and phoned Vusi Ndabeni and Frankie Fillander to tell them to come and eat.

  Then he explained the dilemma over the kidnapping and the media to de Haan.

  ‘Can you request that no one talks to the press?’

  ‘We would have asked them anyway. Marcus is very concerned about our brand and reputation. All our wine goes to Europe.’

  He thanked her, and called Cupido.

  ‘I have the Gmail address, Benna. Paul underscore Morris, one five. Helps us fokkol. And there’s nothing in the contract that says who Morris is, no next of kin. I don’t understand how these people do business. And you should see that Body Armour office. Grand, pappie, big bucks.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘N1, at Century City, I’m on my way to you. Found anything?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re nearly done, Vaughn, you can go straight to the office. Give IMC the cellphone numbers of the two bodyguards, so they can identify the cell tower and begin checking all the calls from Friday.’

  ‘That’s smart, Benna . . .’

  ‘It was Ulinda’s idea.’

  ‘That darkie, hey. Nobody’s fool, despite the battering.’ Radebe was a light heavyweight who had lost all four of his professional fights on points before he left the sport. It was his capacity to absorb blows that earned him his nickname of ‘Ulinda’, the hardy honey badger.

  ‘See you at the office,’ said Griessel, and rang off.

  Just after dinner, he, Liebenberg, Ndabeni, Radebe, and Fillander went walking along the remainder of the farm boundary, but they found nothing. If there were
tracks, the rain had washed them all away in the interim.

  Just after three, when the state pathologist had come and gone, and the last ambulance had driven away, they sealed the crime scene. His colleagues went back to the office, and Griessel drove into the city to go and negotiate with Jeanette Louw of Body Armour.

  He turned on the heater in the car to banish the cold and damp. The pressure of being JOC leader made him uncomfortable, so that he thought through it all, slowly and with extreme concentration. Because his head was not clear. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. Not after all the odd looks his appearance had drawn.

  He swore out loud over the stupidity of last night. Because JOC leader was an opportunity to be relevant again. He had worked so hard over the last six months to catch up, to fit in with the Hawks, to accept the whole team thing and become an efficient cog in the Hawks’ wheel. Despite the fact that he was the oldest detective in the Violent Crimes group, steeped in the traditional way of doing things.

  And now he looked like this.

  He would have to keep his head.

  He focused on the case, ran through everything that he had seen and heard that morning. He came to the same conclusion: first they must know who Morris was.

  Fuck knew, tonight he would have to get some sleep, he couldn’t look and feel like this tomorrow as well.

  What worried him most, was that he had begun lying again. This time to Alexa, to Nyathi, to his colleagues. And the déjà vu that brought back all the old, bad memories of ten, eleven years ago. Anna, at that time still his wife: ‘Where have you been, Benny?’

  ‘At work.’ Breath reeking of alcohol, drunken eyes, swaying on his feet.

  ‘You’re lying, Benny,’ she would say, with fear in her voice. That is what he remembered – the fear. What was going to happen to her husband, what was going to happen to her and the children?

  It had been so easy to lie to Alexa this weekend, and to Cupido this morning. The old, slippery habit was like a comfortable garment, you just slipped back into it.

  In those days he could justify it. Rationalise. The stress, the trauma of inhuman violence and what that did to his head, the impossible hours, the sleeplessness, dreams, and his own phobias, that something like that could happen to his loved ones.

  But no more.

  He didn’t want to lie any more.

  9

  When he emerged from the lift on the sixteenth floor of the office building in Riebeeck Street, he saw what Vaughn meant by ‘grand, pappie, big bucks’. Bold masculine letters on the double glass doors announced BODY ARMOUR. Below that, in slim sans serif: Personal Executive Security.

  He pushed open the door. The walls and luxury carpets were grey, the minimalist furniture was of blackwood, only here and there a splash of verdant green and chrome. Behind a black desk, with only a silver Apple laptop computer, a slim green telephone, and a small aluminium name-plate that said Jolene Freylinck, sat a beautiful woman – long dark hair, deep red lipstick, black blouse and skirt, elegant legs ending in black high heels.

  ‘You must be one of the detectives,’ she said, her voice serious, muted.

  He was all too aware of how she might know this.

  He nodded. ‘Benny Griessel.’

  She reached out a manicured hand for the telephone, pressed a button, waited a second. ‘Detective Benny Griessel is here.’

  She listened, glancing at him with a slight frown. ‘You may go in,’ she said and pointed at the black doors with the chrome handles.

  He could see how upset she was. ‘Thank you.’

  Jeanette Louw sat behind her blackwood desk. The jacket hung from a stand in the corner, her striped tie was loosened. She seemed older and more weary than this morning.

  ‘Captain,’ she greeted him. ‘Come inside. Please take a seat.’

  He could hear the suppressed antagonism. He sat down in a black leather chair.

  ‘I understand from your colleague that you still have no leads.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘You know he’s an arsehole. And that has nothing to do with race.’

  Griessel sighed. ‘He’s a very good detective.’

  Louw just stared at him. He was unsure how to address her. ‘Were you in the Service?’ he asked.

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’ With distaste.

  He was too tired to react.

  ‘I was the Regimental Sergeant Major of the Women’s Army College in George,’ said Louw.

  He merely nodded. It would have been easier if she were a former officer. ‘It seems as though Morris has been kidnapped,’ he said.

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘It makes things awkward with the media.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The trouble is . . . We assume he’s a rich man . . .’

  She grasped the point instantly. ‘Because he can afford my services.’

  ‘That’s right. It may be that they want ransom . . . And we don’t know whether his next of kin have been contacted by the kidnappers yet. Usually they demand that nothing appears in the press, and the police may not be contacted, or they will kill their victim.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘If we tell the media that there were two bodyguards, they’ll want to know who was being guarded.’

  ‘And who they were working for?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want to reveal anything for now.’

  She was smart. ‘Is it possible to . . . Would the families of your men understand? If we keep the names out of the media? For now?’

  Louw leaned back in her chair. She rubbed a hand over her strong jaw, then said: ‘As much as it will be best for the reputation of my company not to have publicity, I would have to leave that up to the families. I owe them that at least.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘B. J. Fikter has a wife and child . . .’

  Griessel said nothing.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  At the Hawks’ offices on the corner of Landrost and Market Street in Bellville, he knocked on the frame of Zola Nyathi’s open office door.

  The colonel waved him in, motioned him to sit.

  With Nyathi’s eyes glued on him, he reported back precisely and fully.

  ‘Thank you Benny. Good work. But we have a media problem.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ve approved your strategy, but Cloete says they’re going nuts. The radio stations are already throwing around words like “massacre” and “bloodbath”, and are speculating about drugs and gang violence. I don’t know how long we can keep this under wraps.’

  ‘I’ll move as fast as I can, sir. The Consulate . . . If we can get hold of Morris’s family . . .’

  ‘The brigadier has spoken to our Deputy National Commissioner, who has asked Foreign Affairs to get involved. So we should soon see results.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Griessel stood up.

  ‘Benny, just a moment,’ said Nyathi, very seriously.

  He sat down again. He knew what was coming.

  ‘Benny, I don’t want to pry. But you understand that your personal well-being is very important to me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You have a mentor, at the AA—’

  ‘A sponsor, sir. But I can assure you—’

  He stopped talking when Nyathi lifted his hand. ‘You don’t have to assure me of anything, Benny. We have a few hours before the cellular data and consular information comes in. I want to ask you to go home, take a shower, and speak to your sponsor. Would you do that for me, Benny?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But I want to—’

  ‘Please, Benny, just do that for me.’

  He didn’t want to go home. As he drove, he phoned Alexa.

  ‘You must be totally exhausted,’ she answered with a voice full of sympathy.

  ‘I’m jus
t coming for a quick shower and change,’ he said.

  ‘Ay, Benny, I understand. Is it the Franschhoek murders?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I heard about it over the radio. Do you want something quick to eat?’

  ‘Thanks, Alexa, but there won’t be time. See you in half an hour . . .’

  And then he phoned Doc Barkhuizen, his sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous.

  ‘Doc, I want to come and talk to you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Around six o’clock, Doc.’

  ‘Come to my consulting rooms. I’ll wait for you.’

  Doc, who never reproached him. Was just always available.

  But he would have to lie to him too.

  The garden gate of Alexa’s large Victorian house in Brownlow Street, Tamboerskloof, didn’t squeak any more. Nearly seven months’ worth of restoration work completed, and the garden had been redone. Now it looked like the home of a veteran pop star.

  She must have been waiting at the window, because she opened the door for him and hugged him.

  ‘I don’t smell good,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care.’ She squeezed him tightly. ‘I’m just so glad you’re safe.’

  ‘Alexa . . .’

  ‘I know, I know . . .’ she let go of him, pulled him by the hand. ‘But that’s the way it is if you love a master detective. I made a sandwich, come and eat quickly.’

  He didn’t like being called a ‘master detective’. He had at least persuaded her to stop introducing him that way to her friends.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said.

  ‘Pleasure. I will keep the surprise for later, after you’ve showered.’

  The pickpocketing week has a very specific pattern. Fridays and Saturdays are prime time, people take to the streets, their thoughts are los and casual, Uncle Solly used to say, and they are flush, cash in pocket.