Cobra

by Deon Meyer

  He saw nothing. He moved on, searching for possibilities.

  The time, time was running out.

  Why did that bro’ want to shoot him?

  Because he was a witness.

  Why had that bro’ come in there with a silenced gun like a secret agent and blown all those mall cops away?

  Maybe a big heist in the mall?

  Probably drugs, and the mall cops were all dealers who were skimming. That’s the only thing that would have brought a coloured bro’ out of the woodwork with a silenced gun.

  Tyrone searched for a mark, to steal a phone.

  And then he thought, what a blerrie fool he is, that’s what stress will do for you. Don’t steal a phone. Buy one.

  The Sea Point Station commander was still leaning against the wall of the security chief’s office. He listened to Captain Mbali questioning Jerome, the official who was first on the scene. All stuff he would have asked, he thought, it wasn’t as though she was that clever.

  Jerome was clearly still in shock. He was as white as a sheet, his voice muted, and he hesitated before each answer, as though he didn’t want to recall the events. He said the roster was such that only one official was off duty at a time. His break was from ‘oh nine hundred hours’, but he was on duty at the Clock Tower car park, and he first had a chat with a friend on his way back to the tea room. And then he wanted to see what Knippies looked like in real life, and so he went to the control room. He wasn’t even sure the super would allow him to look at the pickpocket, but he thought he would take a chance, as they had looked for the ou for so long.

  ‘So you came in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the door was open?’

  ‘Which door?’

  ‘The one to the corridor.’

  ‘No. It was closed.’

  ‘Did you see anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Jeez, lady, I saw all of them dead . . .’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Before you got to the control room. Did you see anybody or anything that did not belong there?’

  ‘No. It was just very quiet.’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  The Sea Point Station commander’s cellphone rang. He saw Captain Kaleni give him a dirty look. He wondered: How does she think I can help it? He recognised his station’s number and walked out of the office as he answered it.

  It was his charge office, and the constable’s voice was weighted with drama. ‘Captain, we have another shooting. Up in Schotsche Kloof.’

  ‘Yes?’ His heart sank, but he mustn’t show it.

  ‘A woman phoned at eleven thirty-three, Ella Street number eighteen, and reported an intruder at her gate, he was busy climbing over the fence. So I asked her, are the doors locked and she said yes. So I sent a van, they were there at eleven forty-four. The gate was still locked. They rang the bell, but no one answered . . .’

  The SC’s patience ran out. ‘Is she the one who was shot?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. They found her there inside. One of the windows is broken . . .’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  It was not his day.

  Tyrone bought a phone from the Somalians in Adderley. First they

  tried to palm an LG E900 Optimus 7 off on him for R900.

  ‘Nine hundred for a hot Windows phone. Do you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘It’s a good phone. Not hot. Cool.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s a good phone. I’m not paying nine hundred for a hot phone. And I don’t want a Windows phone. Nobody wants a Windows phone. What else do you have? For under two hundred?’

  ‘No. Two hundred? Nothing for two hundred. We only sell good phones. Not hot phones.’

  He didn’t have time to tell the Somalian with his soft eyes and big smile that he was talking shit. He shook his head, turned, and walked off.

  ‘Wait,’ said the Somalian, as Tyrone knew he would.

  ‘Two hundred.’

  ‘For that? It’s a relic. One hundred.’

  ‘One seventy-five. It has a SIM card. It works.’ The man switched the phone on.

  ‘Let me test it.’

  ‘No. I will show you. I will call my friend.’ He typed in a number and held it out so that Tyrone could listen. It rang. Someone answered.

  ‘You see. It works. Pay as you go, you can top up. Not a hot phone.’ He switched it off.

  ‘How much time on the card?’

  ‘Ten hours’ talk time.’

  ‘OK.’ He didn’t believe the man. Probably closer to an hour or two. But that was all he needed. He took out the stolen wallet.

  ‘So, did you touch anything?’ Mbali asked again.

  ‘No,’ said Jerome, the security official.

  ‘What about the outside door handle?’

  ‘Yes, I touched that.’

  ‘And inside?’

  ‘No, nothing. Wait. I touched the inside door handle too. And the toilet door, and the basin and . . .’

  ‘I’m talking about the crime scene.’

  ‘No, I never touched anything in there.’

  ‘OK. Did you look at the TV screen when you were in there?’

  ‘Yes. But just for a moment. I mean, all my friends . . .’

  ‘I understand. Is that Knippies on the screen?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘So there is a video of Knippies that was taken today?’

  ‘Yes, they watched him, and all the cameras are recording.’

  ‘OK. Thank you.’

  Tyrone ran up to the Company Gardens so that he could phone Nadia without a hundred ears listening.

  She didn’t answer. He got her voicemail, drew a breath to leave a message, then reconsidered and rang off. What could he say that wouldn’t frighten her?

  Her phone was on silent. She was in class. It was twelve minutes to one. She would probably come out just after one.

  By that time the cops would have got hold of the rucksack, and probably the phone too.

  He would have to leave Nadia a message. He would just say that this was his new number . . . No, he would say it was a temporary new number, he had lost his old phone, and please phone him, there was something urgent . . . no, there’s something important he wanted to tell her. Phone as soon as she can.

  He took a deep breath so that she wouldn’t hear the tension in his voice, and pressed the numbers.

  For the first time Mbali saw the bullet hole in the door that led into the mall. She studied it carefully, and then she tried to understand the meaning of it, in the context of the whole crime scene.

  She opened the door and walked into the corridor of the shopping centre. She still had her gloves and her shoe covers on. Her eyes searched for a camera that could have covered the door to the control room.

  She found one, ten metres away, high up on the wall.

  She measured the angle from where it was. Perhaps it hadn’t covered the door, but it would at least have caught a great deal of the wide corridor in front of it.

  ‘Mbali?’ She heard a familiar voice and turned. Benny Griessel. He, Vaughn Cupido, and Lithpel had arrived. She steeled herself. Griessel was her favourite colleague. Sergeant Davids’ apparel and grooming were a bit of a scandal, but he did his job well, and he knew his place. Cupido she could not stand. But she was a professional woman. She must be able to handle everything.

  She greeted all three, then went and stood in front of the door that led out of the mall’s walkway. ‘The crime scene starts here. You’ll have to put on protection.’

  26

  Nadia Kleinbooi walked out of class.

  In the corridor a guy behind her said, ‘Do those jeans come with the cute bum, or is that an optional extra?’

  She looked and laughed at him, a passing flirtation. She enjoyed the attention. She wasn’t as skinny as her brother. ‘You got the calves that they forgot to give me,’Tyrone always said.

  Then she would reply, ‘And you got the looks.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong wi
th your looks. Jy’s beautiful.’ But she knew he was the good-looking one. All her girlfriends used to hang around Uncle Solly’s house in the hope that Tyrone would be there. But Tyrone wasn’t there much. Though he was always there when she needed him.

  Only once she was outside, in the weak winter sun, did she take out her cellphone.

  Two SMSs beeped immediately.

  You have two missed calls.

  You have two voicemail messages.

  At that very moment it rang, and she saw it was Tyrone’s phone. She answered.

  ‘Hi,’ said the guy with the sexy French voice. ‘I’m in Ryneveld Street.’

  But he pronounced it ‘Rinerval’, which made her smile. ‘There’s a building here, I think it says Geology.’

  ‘I know where that is. I’ll be there in two minutes.’

  ‘Très bien,’ he said.‘I am at the entrance to the parking. With a silver Nissan X-Trail.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, and rang off.

  She wondered what the Frenchman looked like. It was such a sexy, sexy accent, and his voice was nice – there was a hint of laughter in it, as though he found the whole situation very amusing.

  Griessel held the cartridge in his glove-protected fingers.

  ‘It’s the same snake. And the same initials.’

  ‘OK,’ said Mbali, and gave them a short, bullet-point summary of what had happened, according to the security men.

  ‘The Cobra is a pickpocket now?’ Cupido asked, shaking his head scornfully.

  Mbali ignored him.

  ‘That’s not the Cobra.’ Cupido pointed at the screen, and then at the photo on the noticeboard. ‘This guy is too dark. And that’s not racist, Mbali. That’s just a fact.’

  She didn’t look at him. She told Griessel the hardest decision they had to take now, was at what stage Lithpel could sit down in front of the video console so that they could look at the material. Because the console was in the middle of the crime scene, and there was the risk that they would disturb forensic evidence if they were all standing around, among the dead. But Thick and Thin were on their way, and their procedures, the video and photography department’s recording, the pathologist’s in-loco examination, and the removal of the bodies could take hours. The longer they waited, the more likely it was that any possible video evidence would prove useless. While the culprit fled further afield.

  ‘Easy decision,’ said Cupido. ‘There’s no big mystery here. He came, he shot, he left. And we’re already in. Let’s do it.’

  Mbali looked only at Griessel.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Griessel, ‘but we still have to be very careful not to disturb the scene.’

  ‘OK,’ said Mbali. ‘There’s one other problem. Because the shooting was localised, and the Sea Point SC managed everything appropriately, it has not attracted much attention yet. But when Forensics and the pathologist and the ambulances arrive, that will change. Someone needs to go and tell the shopping centre management. They will want to manage the public and media attention.’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Where’s the SC?’ asked Griessel.

  ‘He had to leave. He has another shooting somewhere to attend to.’

  ‘What shooting?’ asked Griessel, heart sinking, because he didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Nadia saw him standing beside the silver X-Trail. A blond man in old denims and a white T-shirt with a cellphone in his hand. Looking around, as though he was searching for someone. Brush cut, narrow hips, broad shoulders, white skin, but tanned, like a surfer. Maybe he was a surfer.

  A pity he was on his way back to France . . .

  But as she approached, while he looked enquiringly at her and she waved and nodded, she realised he was probably in his mid-thirties. Too old for her. Although . . .

  He held the phone up and asked: ‘Nadia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled broadly. White, even teeth.

  ‘How can I thank you?’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw two other men in the X-Trail.

  ‘It is only a pleasure.’ He held out the phone to her.

  She reached him and put out her hand to take the phone from him. Then he grabbed her arm.

  Two male students in a Volkswagen Citi Golf drove out of the car park beside the R. W. Wilcocks building. The passenger was busy on his cellphone. It was the driver who saw it – the white man grabbing the coloured girl. The rear door of the Nissan X-Trail opened, and he half carried, half dragged her into the vehicle.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he said and wound down his window.

  ‘What?’ asked the passenger.

  ‘That ou . . .’ He saw the X-Trail pull away calmly. He pressed the hooter of his car three times, short and urgent.

  ‘What is it, bro?’ asked the passenger.

  The X-Trail drove on.

  The driver bellowed out of the window. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Cool it, bro,’ said the passenger.

  ‘Those guys in the Nissan kidnapped that girl right now . . .’ He accelerated, and set off in pursuit of the X-Trail.

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The one in the car.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘I am. Call the police.’The X-Trail turned right into Crozier.

  ‘There’s no girl in that car . . .’

  The driver hooted again, reduced his following distance so that he was on the tail of the X-Trail. ‘They’re pushing her down. I’m telling you, call the police. I saw it.’

  The passenger wasn’t convinced. ‘Bro, we can’t just call the police. I mean . . .’

  The driver swore, a staccato of reproach. He took his cellphone out of his shirt pocket. ‘I will fokken phone them myself . . .’

  The X-Trail turned right into Andringa. They followed, the driver had to look up from the cellphone, then down again, to type in the number.

  ‘Watch it!’ said the passenger.

  The driver looked up quickly. The X-Trail had stopped suddenly. The doors opened and two men came running back, each with a pistol in hand.

  ‘Fok, bro, reverse!’ screamed the passenger. But the driver hadn’t even stopped yet, and when he did, with a short shrill screech of tyres, it was too late. The men were right there, moving impossibly swiftly. And surely. One aimed a weapon at the front wheel. A soft explosion, then the hiss of the tyre going flat, and then they were at the doors of the Golf, jerking them open, grabbing the cellphones from their hands. Then they slammed the doors, ran back to the X-Trail, jumped in.

  The X-Trail drove off.

  The students sat there.

  ‘Jissis,’ said the passenger.

  The driver let out a sound that was just like a tyre defl ating.

  Benny Griessel didn’t use his cellphone. He phoned the Sea Point SC from a telephone beside the video console in the control centre.

  The first thing that the station commander said to him was: ‘There’s a cartridge here with a snake on it.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘I was present at Captain Kaleni’s interrogation at the V&A. She phoned someone and talked about “shell casings with the etchings of a snake” . . .’

  ‘OK, who is the deceased?’

  ‘She hasn’t been identified yet. Young coloured woman, she seems to have been alone at home. Intruder gained access via a broken window in the sitting room. He forced open the woman’s bedroom door, the lock is broken. And he shot her once, in the forehead.’

  Jissis, thought Griessel. What the fuck was going on? ‘OK,’ he said, and tried to keep the vexation out of his voice. ‘It’s definitely linked to two other murder cases. I’m sending Captain Vaughn Cupido, if you can just seal the scene so long.’

  ‘Already done,’ said the SC.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ said Griessel, with relief. And satisfaction, because the SSA didn’t know about this one yet. ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Ella Street number eighteen, up in Schotsche Kloof’

&nb
sp; Griessel rang off. And then everything happened at once.

  ‘Vaughn, I’ll have to send you to the Bo-Kaap,’ said Griessel.

  ‘It’s that girl.’ Lithpel Davids pointed a finger at the TV console where a video was being played back.

  ‘My fok,’ said Cupido.

  ‘That is very unprofessional language,’ said Mbali.

  Griessel’s cellphone began to ring.

  ‘What girl?’ asked Mbali.

  ‘The Facebook girl. Alvarez,’ said Lithpel.

  They climbed slowly and carefully over the bodies of the security men to reach the TV screen.

  ‘What Facebook girl?’ asked Mbali.

  ‘It’s her,’ said Cupido.

  Griessel’s cellphone kept ringing, but his eyes were glued to the screen. Lillian Alvarez stood with her face to the camera. She stared at a hairpin in the hands of the pickpocket. Knippies’s face was turned to her, his hand touching her handbag.

  ‘What Facebook girl?’ asked Mbali again.

  From outside came the voice of Arnold, the short, fat Forensics guy: ‘Hallooo? Anybody home?’

  Griessel answered his phone: ‘Hello?’

  ‘You had better hurry,’ said the woman’s voice, the one who called herself Joni Mitchell. ‘SSA are on the way. They are going to take over the scene.’

  ‘The Waterfront scene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then she rang off.

  ‘He stole something from Alvarez,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Liewe ffff . . .’ said Jimmy, the skinny Forensics detective, when he saw the five lifeless bodies. But he never completed the word because Captain Kaleni shot him a withering look.

  27

  ‘Out,’ said Benny Griessel to Thick and Thin.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s you who should leave?’ said Jimmy. ‘You are occupying the whole—’

  ‘Out!’ said Griessel more sharply.

  This was very unlike the Griessel they knew. They just stood there.

  ‘Jimmy, please, go and wait out in the corridor. And hurry up.’

  They heard the urgency in Griessel’s voice, and responded.

  ‘Is somebody going to tell me about this Alvarez girl?’ asked Mbali.