by HJ Golakai
“You don’t think anyone’s genius, but yours is mind-blowingly original,” Vee muttered.
It was designed for use in financial or banking environments from the looks of the data it was set up to capture. It has a client/server topology of the three-tiered kind, i.e. client – application server – database server. A Linux platform – which is an open source platform anyone can use – is the backbone, and it uses the Oracle database. It also has a Javascript front end: in ‘computers for dummies’ language that refers to the user interface, in this case designed to host hundreds of concurrent users. I retrieved some of the data, what looked like client information …
She straightened up. “Bingo.”
… but this disk won’t help you much, to be honest. It’s more of a snapshot.
“Dammiiiiiit,” she groaned.
If you’re after a scoop, or leverage, then your best bet is the mother lode – find what this software did or the source of the client data. A good portion of it is corrupted beyond salvation, so I can’t possibly know how much code constituted the entire program or how much was lost. Who even stores valuable information on CDs anymore? Amateurs.
“Here endeth the word according to Guy Richie. Let the church say amen,” she snarked.
She shut the manila folder over a page she’d wasted time and ink printing, lines and lines of letters and symbols, gibberish that lit lightbulbs only for geeks like Richie. Papers slipped out of the file onto the floor. Scooping them up, she almost missed her moment. Ducking into the B&M building with her usual clipped movements, Akhona Moloi practically cut a spy-furtive figure with the collar of her light jacket upturned against the murk and two heavy-looking totes underarm.
Stuffing papers under the laptop case with one hand, Vee scrambled to wind the glass down. “Akhona!” She shot an arm through the window and waved. Moloi squinted in her general direction. Grabbing her handbag and locking the car, Vee prayed the woman wouldn’t decide she wasn’t up for early interrogation and shut the door in her face.
“Hoo!” she heaved when she caught up. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Moloi replied, more a question.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind. Things tend to move so fast with these investigations. You get one piece there, another one yonder, you need this and that to glue it together.” Vee forced her awkward, apologetic laugh. “I should’ve called, but you know how mornings can be. I figured with … everything,” she gave a sad nod, “you’d be having a lot of early starts. Just wanted to knock this out of the way so I wouldn’t clutter up your schedule later.”
“Ja, but I don’t –”
“I know how much you wanted to help, and said if we had any more questions don’t hesitate …”
Moloi blinked, wan smile on lips, trying to recall uttering those exact words last they met. “Ehhh …” She blinked up at Vee through fogged up glasses, suddenly evoking a laughably strong likeness to a children’s storybook character, a mole or beaver; a perfect caricature of friendly and myopic bemusement. She muttered something, stuck a key in the door from a ring, and gave the hefty metal handle a couple of tugs until Vee took a bag off her and leaned a hip into it. “I don’t have time, though. You’re right, I do have an early start. There’s so much on my plate –”
“Completely understand. Deadlines, right? Uggh. I’ll be brief.” Shouldering the tote of what felt like rocks, Vee slipped inside before she could really protest.
“Hhmmm. Should you …” Moloi gave her keys a few short tosses in the air, mulling a question over in her mind. She dropped the keys into her bag. “It’s strange you’re working this investigation. What with,” her hands swirled in a suggestive arc, “your involvement …”
“Oh that. You sound like my boss.” Vee smiled. “Let’s just say we’ve come to an understanding. He’s given me a very short rope. I don’t intend to hang myself with it. Hence my ‘enthusiasm’.”
“And the police? Back at the lodge it looked like they had their sights set on taking you down. Sorry, that’s a cruel way of putting it.” Moloi tried to remove her glasses, snagged a stem behind one ear, yanked it off, wiped the lens on her shirt tail, plopped them back on, then pulled them off, blinking at the frames as if floored as to why she still had them on. Muttering, she propped them on top of her head. “Are they still questioning you?”
“Once, half-heartedly. I’m done agitating over it. They’re satisfied that, one, I was simply unlucky enough to drop a personal item near the crime scene and I’m not their guy, and two, even if I was a prime suspect, I’m not much of a flight risk. I’m demoted to an open but unlikely avenue. Perfectly cool with that.”
“Good. Good for you. I’m sure your paper has contingencies for this kind of thing. What with the kind of work you do, you guys always getting yourselves into these kinds of scrapes.”
“We’ve got legal. The quality kind.”
The small talk duly borne, Moloi collected herself and reclaimed her bustling energy from earlier. After the glass door suctioned shut, she clacked the security gate and hustled to the stairs.
Vee bounded after her. “I didn’t know they gave out keys to these buildings.”
“Hhmmm? Mmm. They don’t. Not usually. But this is a small building. Only the little shop down here,” rounding the corner to the next flight she pointed down to a kiosk, its window awash with cheap trinkets and attire, “and one room with a call centre above us. They’re part of the job placement agency next door,” she popped a finger east of the green-glazed wall, “who needed more space. B&M takes up the most space, our own floor. Gavin and I keep such strange and busy hours that we managed to get our own keys.” She paused, one leg aloft on a stair, and shot a look over her shoulder at Vee. “Gavin and I kept such strange hours. I … I keep strange …” She nodded, self-corrected to satisfaction, and kept going.
“Must be nice, still. Offices in the CBD, prime catchment area.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Compared to, where was it? The lil place y’all started off at, off Main Road. Not bad, but this is one helluva step up.”
They stopped at the top of the stairs. Moloi looked up, a long way up, nodding, her smile growing acrid. Vee pondered the possibility that she subconsciously chose work footwear with heels, even a little heel, because she loved how her height intimidated. Wasn’t like she needed it otherwise.
“I see you’ve done your research. You’re right, it’s been quite a journey. We’ve come a long way, especially in our, shall we say class of clientele, and we’re both really proud of that. Oh. I’m … ag, shit man.” Moloi gave up patting herself down and threw her hands in the air. Vee calmly reached in the tote slung over her shoulder and fished through the bottom till her fingers located a key-holder, a rather dingy teddy bear. Moloi plucked the keys off her, lips mashed together.
“I see you’ve been doing a lot of reading.” Peering through the armhole space into the bag, Vee ran a finger down a row of spines. Marketing for the New Africa; Copyright and Patent Law in South Africa; Finance in the Digital Age.
“Yes.” Moloi hastily hoisted the cotton straps off her own shoulder, then Vee’s, swung and tossed both bags onto the office floor. The office had deteriorated. Save for carpet space, which was being swallowed up fast, there was barely a surface uncluttered by something stacked, open, strewn, or upended. “I’m up against it, as you can imagine.” She jerked the curtains apart, recoiled with an ‘euggh’ at the fog and dreary sky, and settled for half-drawn.
“It’s not easy running the show and keeping on top of everything that actually makes the show. Gavin …” Her eyes got faraway again, lost until they tuned in slowly to Vee’s presence. Her neck drooped like a meek, wilted sapling. “This won’t be easy.”
“It won’t,” Vee sympathised.
“Well.” Moloi threw her arms up again, this time in exaggerated ‘what can you do’ fashion. Behind her desk, she hefted more junk – notepads, pens, a teacup – off the chair, and sat. “I’m sorry to be rude
, but let’s get on, okay? I agreed to be helpful, but there’s an early meeting coming in. There’s a few things to see to so long.” She closed her eyes briefly, gave a short laugh. “First of all, let me apologise for the mess. It’s testament to the madness. Which leads me to why I can’t spare much time.”
“No problem.” Vee perched on the nearest chair’s armrest. On the seat of its upholstery was a sticky, dark red stain that her butt and freshly laundered tan palazzo weren’t in the mood to challenge. “Like I said, I’ll keep it short. Not so sweet, though.”
Moloi sat up straighter.
“Listen.” Vee took a breath. “I can’t abide by being lied to. It’s offensive. In my line of work, you might say that’s more than a little empty,” she shrugged, “but I, naively enough, actually stand by it. Especially a case like this, which I again, for obvious reasons, am taking a little personally.”
Moloi tensed.
“I’ll cut to the chase. Xoliswa. Tracked her down yesterday. Illuminating.” Vee propped a leg on the chair’s frame and laced her fingers over her knee.
Two ropes of muscle bulged the skin on either side of Moloi’s head as her brows came together. “I don’t know what you’re leading up to.”
“Consultant scam.” Vee smacked her thighs. “Akhona. I can and will find this out. It might take longer than if you simply levelled with me, but I don’t see what good it will do. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Mainly, why would a skilled and talented black woman, I speak of Gaba now, why would she continue on here when she could’ve moved on in a heartbeat? Her profile puts her in the league of the so-called ‘black diamonds’; she’d have been head-hunted in a snap. And she was, from the looks of her personnel records, and y’all incentivised her nicely to stay. Nicely, but not greatly. Yet still … she stayed. Plus, there’s this.” She reached into her bag and brandished the disk, flipping its case to and fro, its shiny side catching and flicking light over the walls. The slackening of Moloi’s facial muscles bordered on comic.
“Before you go thinking I’m bluffing you with any old CD, yes it looks different, I had to salvage the info and transfer it to a new one. I’ve looked at it.” Didn’t make head or tail of it. “I had a computer expert look at it. Thoroughly.” He didn’t think much of it either. “It’s not hundred per cent yet, but I have a very strong idea what this is about.” Vee hunkered shoulders and leaned in, the firm but empathetic confidante. “This is beyond serious. You wanna go down with a sinking ship after the captain’s dead, it’s your own funeral. Literally, perhaps.”
Moloi shunted papers across her desk like a dealer at a cards table, fingers aflutter. After a minute she stopped, releasing her breath in a long, slow whoosh. She put one hand on top of the other and pressed both down to the desk, not before Vee saw how badly they were shaking.
“She was really quite talented. We didn’t see it at first, but in time …” She rubbed her upper hand over the other gently, lullaby-soft, like she was consoling herself.
“Her work was brilliant.”
Moloi snorted. “She would say that. Gavin did, admitted as much once in a while. Said it like a secret, ‘psst, don’t let her hear you say that’, like she didn’t have enough experience patting herself on the back.” Her expression curdled. “The problem with intelligence, brilliance, whatever you want to call it, is you have to control it, make it work for you. If you’re going to work with it, then be sure, positive, it’s on your side. Gavin was greedy.” Her head shook in bemusement, as if for her this represented the most base and idiotic of urges. “Xoli’s bright but ag, too out there. Can never see the big picture. She just wants now, wants, wants, wants.”
“She found something.” Thighs throbbing from the precarious balancing act, Vee slid off the armrest and settled into the chair’s cushion. “She got nosy, started sniffing …”
Akhona Moloi reclined and folded her arms. No, no, no, no, come on, Vee cringed inwardly. Don’t shut down on me. She held her breath and kept her eyes nailed on her, sharp but askance, willing back the vulnerability, needing her to open up again.
“Doing business without cutting corners is hard.”
“What, integrity is impossible?”
Moloi grimaced and leaned forward, elbows on desk. “It’s possible. It just takes … forever. And resolve. Shortcuts and flat-out fraud, believe it or not, are more the norm than the anomaly. The saying that under wealth and success stories there’s always some dirt, it’s a cliché for a reason.” She looked at Vee, then looked away. “I’ll spare you the speech.” She messed more papers about, then in one resolute sweep piled them up and knocked their edges straight before putting them aside. “Xoli started out as a data entry analyst, sometime programmer, and to be honest we didn’t expect her to stay long. Data people tended not to. A lot of them were fresh graduates, they didn’t mind the mindless stuff till a better offer from Standard Bank or Old Mutual or wherever came up, then they left. But she liked the fit, thought there was more autonomy and room to grow here, and we agreed.”
“But she noticed a lot. She was one of those inspired ones that didn’t simply do their job, they got creative with what they were given, went outside the lines. Someone like that, you can’t feed them a standard story and expect them to swallow it. Soon enough she figured out Gavin took risks. Necessary risks, he liked to call it.” Her mouth puckered in distaste. “The consultant scam … it wasn’t … it didn’t start with us, truly. We got pulled into it, and trust me I know how that sounds. We were always up for extra contracts outside the usual daily scope, and we all know government tenders were the juiciest ones. You were lucky to land one. But they weren’t always above board. Certain large and even medium parastatals –”
Vee started to interrupt.
“Forget it. You want names, you dig that up yourself.” Moloi folded her arms, drawing her swivel chair closer to the desk. Her gaze stayed down and off in the distance, scouring the wall like her lines were written on it. “They threw out these bids, capital projects, tenders, what have you, for other smaller companies, usually BEE ones, to consult on. Not only to finance outfits like us; tenders for any service. Transportation, procurement and goods supply, catering, you name it. The scam was pretty simple. If you’d done enough work for them, got known as a preferred supplier, you were conscripted to provide consulting services on tender. In our case, we were provided volumes of data to analyse, and naturally, we’d provide a quote for our work.”
“Aaand … All the costs were overinflated.”
“Yes. We’d do the work for a fraction of that and get a nice cut for looking the other way while the fatcat on the other end took his share, which was usually a lot. Or, what happened more often, we’d quote to consult for say R2 000 an hour inclusive. Then we’d hire junior consultants to crunch the data for, say, R200 an hour. Not many, a few good ones.”
“Few naive ones, who had no idea how much y’all saved using them.”
Moloi rumbled, a sound more like regret than scorn. “They’d analyse the raw data, generate more meaningful charts and figures, log it into our system. We’d then send the lot to aforementioned ‘parastatals’” she flicked air-quotes, “to electronically release payment for services provided. The agreement was we had to split it with the cronies on the other end who’d doled out the orders or sent contracts our way. Of course, it couldn’t be split with everyone; that would defeat the purpose of jacking up the quote …” Her voice trailed.
Vee staccato-blinked. “You can’t mean … How could I have missed one of the most popular, backhanded corporate tricks ever? Y’all had the junior freelancers do the work, and instead of paying them even that lil pittance, y’all what, fired them? What’s that …? That’s … it’s like a twisted sweatshop.”
Cringing, Moloi nodded. “You could call it that. Sometimes we offered less from the get-go, having anticipated how much it would set us back. Other times there’d be some infraction after a few weeks to let them go and deny at least part of the s
alary.”
“Ah-ha.” Vee nodded. “So that’s how y’all cooked up grounds to fire Gaba.”
“No, that’s how she wound up staying. Xoli’s a quick study. She made herself indispensable while she was temping. When she developed suspicions, she dug quietly until she had solid evidence, then she pounced. We expected the worst but it wasn’t a bad deal. She was young. They’re all floating around at that age but she wasn’t, not deliberately anyway. She wanted permanence.”
“She collected enough evidence of the shortcuts onto this disk, and probably many more like it, and used it as her leverage.”
A look flickered across Moloi’s face, but she primmed her lips and didn’t elaborate. “We needed her kind of drive around here. Win-win.” She spread her hands. “Look where we are now.”
Vee did indeed cast a perfunctory eye around, if for no other reason than to avoid the look of dejection, imploring, on Moloi’s face. Her office didn’t exactly lift one’s spirits either. The carpet needed the loving suction of a vacuum, badly. On the extra desk near the back wall, the scatter of papers, stationery, dirty cups had grown. When Vee looked back, Moloi’s gaze had strayed off again, her thumb and index finger harassing her afro into a twirl near her hairline. The patch had been worn to a coin-sized area of stubble.
“You’re terrified of her,” Vee realised, treading lightly, afraid to break the lull.
“Gavin’s gone. That leaves me … and her.” Moloi reeled her eyes back into the present and they locked with Vee’s until she shifted uncomfortably. “If something happens to me … that will be that. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I –”
“Write your story,” Moloi abandoned fiddling with her hair long enough to wave dismissively, hand moving in slow-mo like she was shooing flies in her sleep, “and this place will survive it. I’ll survive. But with her on this warpath, hanging this over my head, for God knows how long … I can’t.”
“Why won’t the police –”
“Don’t you think I keep asking that?!” Moloi reared in her seat like a dog on a tenuously short leash. Vee jumped, scooching back a little.
