The Score

by HJ Golakai

  He looked away, turning back to the window. A dry, soundless chuckle shook her shoulders. Of course he knew about her final encounter with Xoliswa Gaba. Moloi knew. Vee saw it on his face, right then, the way she’d heard it in Moloi’s voice. They’d known from the beginning. She’d been the only dummy in the dark.

  “Gaba wanted to tell me, tried to, but as usual her M.O. left a lot to be desired. I’m only filling in blanks now.”

  Vee took a deep breath. “Once upon a time there was a very bright girl. More than a little messed up, but such is the burden of brilliance. Girl conned her way into a sweet job, perks, advancement, the works. I kept puzzling over why she didn’t go for bigger fish. She had the balls to make it at any major financial house. But looking at her history, it was clear that a sense of family mattered more, and B&M gave her that for a while. But Girl, like the rest of the world, was a creature of habit. She was a craver, took things by force. Maybe she knew she was being used too, but she thought she was better at it. She wasn’t. She was up against two, or should I say three, masterminds on the other team. Fast-forward down the road to disaster, throw gallons of gas onto a bonfire and voila here we are. The end.” His expression shifted by a minute degree. “I left out all the good parts for you to colour in. Call me a coward, but I don’t have the energy to confront Moloi right now, not to mention I know for damn sure she won’t subject herself to this. She’s in the clear, and from the looks of it, doesn’t have much of a conscience. But you’ll humour me.”

  He nodded, silent for so long she wondered if he intended to respond. It wouldn’t be the dumbest, most unexpected move if he simply ordered her off the premises. He lifted his head. His dark eyes had the nerve to look pained, haunted. Vee wanted to break his nose. “Off the record?” he asked softly.

  She cracked up. “Of course. In my outburst I forgot to mention this is purely a social call. I’m not that dumb to expect you to be that dumb.” He cocked his head, hesitant. She held her arms akimbo. “You wanna frisk me for phones, bugs, recording devices? Knock yourself out.”

  Walsh shook his head immediately. His haircut had overgrown; in a few days he’d be as bushy as when they first met at the lodge. How could so much have happened in so little time? He pushed aside a stack of paperwork and perched on the edge of the desk. “Firstly, I’m sorry. You may not trust where that’s coming from, but it’s sincere.”

  “No. Don’t you dare,” she spat, jaw working. He didn’t get to go there.

  He trained his eyes on his hands, intertwining fingers and scratching a thumb over his palm as if trying to scrape off debris or dead skin. “We didn’t mastermind this, at least I didn’t. That suggests a deplorably malevolent level of premeditation, and I’d never be a part of something like that.” The mastermind role was already taken, said the look he shot her. Vee felt a chill down her back, the memory of Moloi blinking behind glasses like a befuddled nocturnal creature rising in her mind. “That at least I can say for myself, though it won’t alleviate my conscience, which believe me I do possess. All of this started from an idea. One idea that started as a light-hearted conversation over a boring business lunch, and grew into a product.

  “Naturally it was LEAD that threw us into the same sphere,” he continued. “Berman immediately struck me as a gambler but he had a sharp mind, he kept his ear to the streets. Whether he knew LEAD would come to nought or not, who can say. He knew enough BEE crooks to know where the money was and which way the wind blew it. He got fed up with all the lengthy rigmarole and wanted to walk out of there with more than he’d come in with. Akhona followed wherever Gavin went, they were a package deal. We got chatting sometime early last year about projects we’d poured our resources into over our careers, ideas that hadn’t come to fruition but might’ve if something hadn’t gotten derailed. The what-ifs. Gavin let on about a tool that his IT guys had developed but he’d never run with; time, capital, R&D being what it is. He asked I take a look at it, see if it had wings. I could tell Moloi wasn’t comfortable with the idea but at the time I didn’t read much into it. He gave me one of the most incredible developments I’d seen in a while. Simple, cross-cutting, very now. Once it was in front of me I almost kicked myself for not having thought of it myself.”

  “The Scalpel.”

  “Yes. Gavin christened it that.” Walsh smiled in an acrid manner, as if he saw the irony of a man that had met a murderous end coming up with a name that was a little steeped in violence. “A program that needed work, but it made us business partners. In a nutshell, the software we developed is a BEE evaluation tool. Not every company has the time or resources to fork out for a full evaluation, not knowing beforehand their readiness or eligibility on the current market. Scalpel’s a turnkey system that does an all-in-one job. Computing raw data on a company’s current status, summing up potential, verifying portfolios and paperwork for a scorecard, finding ways to bolster an existing scorecard. With fine-tuning, the proper backing and recognition from the accreditation boards, it’ll be the first of its kind to do it all.”

  “And private businesses and auditing firms could lease the software and use it on-site for their own evaluations, meaning endless knock-on profits for you,” Vee cut in. “Hell, even the government could pimp it as a standard platform when it catches on. And it will. Of course, a system like that sounds heavily reliant on manpower. You’d need personnel to do data input and client consultation and all the rest of it. Trained personnel, the kind B&M’s consultancy would provide. They needed you as much as you did them. All bases covered, all backs scratched.”

  “Yes.” Walsh’s head jerked up and he blinked at her with a familiar expression, delighted surprise that she had a mind capable of making intuitive leaps. It was the same patronising look he’d given her last time she was in his office and it made her want to lunge. “Long story short, I’d handle the nerdy component, they’d provide the financial expertise. It was all set to run smoothly.”

  “Until the pesky oversight in the shape of Xoliswa Gaba, the actual creator, reared its ugly head. Tell me about that. And please, don’t edit yourself.”

  Walsh clenched his jaw. “She was their best programmer, and she’d learnt the ropes over time, outside her scope. That made her a rare thing, what we call a subject matter expert that also had technical expertise – in effect, a systems developer. To develop a system or piece of software starts with a prototype, a blueprint if you will. Lines of code; what command performs what function, push here to start. A lot of research goes into the first stages: the software requirement, system architecture and logical design, data modelling. Then finally there’s the physical implementation. After PI comes beta testing, checking what you’ve done is functioning.” He studied her and she nodded that she was following. “In a company set-up, like here at The ITF, these are mandatory steps, and usually a team effort. But it can be done solo and Gaba did it, with very little outside help. After she was confident enough with what she had she launched a beta version, the first raw version of the software, where the user interface is tested. As her superiors, Gavin and Akhona oversaw the process.”

  “And not long after they relieved her of it, and of her job too.” Now Vee understood the seat of Gaba’s outrage, her inability to let sleeping dogs lie. They’d excised a piece of her soul and gone running. “She completed it –”

  “No, not completed. She did not complete it,” Walsh parried emphatically. “For argument’s sake, let’s say at the beta phase a system’s about seventy-eighty per cent developed. That’s a hypothetical. If more feedback and input goes into it and leads to fundamental changes, the updated creation becomes the alpha version.”

  “And here you stand, the alpha male. Ready to feed off a worker bee’s glory.”

  He showed the first flash of anger. “You clearly don’t have a grasp on how this works. We had to do a gap analysis and assess every limitation that system had. We basically had to overhaul all her original formatting. Customise it. Deploy it in a test environme
nt on a top-of-the-range server to see it run. Train analysts in how to use it … a ton of extra work before it went live! The ITF put the heart and soul into what was essentially a skeleton.”

  “Gavin and Akhona made all the right noises. I bet they patted her on the head for the great work, then said at that point in time B&M didn’t have the funds or capacity to see it through. They put the project on a back burner and tossed her out,” Vee breezed on, glad to have gotten a rise out of him. “Companies have an iron clad clause in their contracts: intellectual property remains with them if an idea or product is developed during the course of employment. Maybe she could’ve fought it, but she shrank off, defeated. Years later you breeze in with the likes of Aneshree up your sleeve and take it to the finish line. And I’m supposed to believe you were completely in the dark.”

  “Look, I swear to you, I had no idea how badly they’d treated her.” He took stock of her expression before shaking his head, resigned. “Maybe … I could’ve looked into it deeper. It did feel too good to be true and … I didn’t want to rock the boat with too many questions. Berman was a guy always angling to make more money, and I wanted to make a beautiful product. I saw nothing wrong with that. Until Berman started hemming and hawing. I nipped it in the bud asap. He knew from the get-go – I don’t do subpar work with shoddy tools or shifty partners. That’s when he came clean about Gaba. She was an issue firmly in their camp and they had to handle it. I didn’t want any blurry ethical boundaries.”

  “Oh, they handled it. After she got wind that they were raising her brainchild from the dead, she be damned she wasn’t getting played. The first bribe was meant to fill her eyeball and get rid of her, but no chance. She wanted a fight.”

  “I wasn’t in the loop about blackmail and bribes till it was too late. I tried to stay out of it. They advised me to stay out of it. Meddling from an outside party would’ve driven the situation to critical mass that much more quickly.”

  “It went to critical mass anyway! You knew it would, you had to! And you didn’t stay out of it to help. Covering your ass was directly proportional to protecting your investment. Dirt on you would filthy everything you’ve worked for, and if there was a chance of the deal going sour for B&M, it didn’t have to extend to you and your sanctified good name.”

  “That’s not true.” He rammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Bullshit. Why didn’t you pull the plug, or at least hold off till the smoke cleared? Wasn’t Berman’s murder enough of a red flag, or you managed to talk yourself past that too?” Vee didn’t realise she was shouting until the door creaked open a few inches and half of a colleague’s frowning face poked in, murmuring, “What’s going on? Is everything –”

  “Piss off!” Walsh barked, and the door banged shut immediately.

  “Did you even suspect it, when Moloi started playing the puppeteer?”

  “This isn’t …” He shut his eyes and inhaled deeply. “It’s not how you’re making it sound.”

  “Oh, for true? Sorry o. I have a flair for the dramatic when dead bodies keep dropping around me,” she snarled. She advanced, fingernails digging into palms, and felt no small measure of triumph when he shuffled away, a tint of fear in his eyes. The thought flashed in her mind of the effect Xoliswa Gaba would’ve had on him; she would’ve eaten him alive. “There are no wealthy morons, Ryan. My yearly income’s probably your monthly toilet paper budget, so sell that shit somewhere else. I get it, I should’ve connected the dots. Akhona strung me along, strung me up, yet I didn’t see it. She made me before I made her, smelled the hungry journalist vibe and fed it. Sat back while I built a half-assed story around a mysterious disk full of gibberish. She was probably laughing the whole time, knowing what was on it was like looking through a keyhole and trying to describe what’s on the other side. I didn’t see who was really laying the breadcrumbs because Gaba was so glaringly obvious, and she made sure I kept thinking that. Hell, why should I complain? I got the scoop. She just made sure it was after everything was in the bag.”

  “We all hedged our bets, far too heavily, I see that now. Deals of this nature are secretive for good reason.” He looked distant, like he was talking to himself. “They’re delicate; any misstep or bad press or leaking of protected information can blow them up.”

  “But you had your doubts, didn’t you, pretty soon after the murder,” Vee pressed, relentless. “After my attack, it didn’t hit me until much later how off it was that Gaba was the culprit. It didn’t add up. Besides Berman, who was dead, the only people at that lodge who knew of the disk’s existence were you, Akhona and Aneshree. You had Aneshree sniffing around like your pet bloodhound, I’m guessing because the disk was work product for her anyway. So who had Gaba on a leash? I know it knocked around that big brain of yours. Who’d sent her after me fit to kill, knowing she was desperate enough to be put up to it? Because you knew for sure she was being manipulated … but why was she allowing it, why didn’t she fight back, really fight and fight dirty? Why didn’t she ever come after you? She was definitely the type to. The answer was crystal clear. Gaba was being kept in check with either a threat or a promise, by someone who spoke her language. With Gavin out of the picture, who but Akhona wielded that kind of power.”

  “No.” Walsh shook his head slowly, like a man coming out of a reverie, then faster, eyes hardening to cold stones. He pushed off the edge of the desk and strutted behind it. He didn’t sit; all he needed was a barrier method of forging distance. “No. Don’t you dare insinuate that I, we, colluded to remove Berman and foist blame on that troubled woman. That’s beyond low and ludicrous.”

  “No, it wasn’t premeditated. You look genuinely surprised and you’re no actor. But Moloi. Granted, she cared about Gavin too much to go as far as planning his murder. But she didn’t gauge how disturbed Xoli truly was, and once it clicked she saw her advantage. She was almost too chickenshit to take it, controlling Xoli must’ve been like riding a tsunami, but she had to try.” Vee eyed him long and hard. “What’s she told you? Akhona? That it was a coincidence Gaba came to The Grotto? Bet she said Gaba heard it through the grapevine, or that Gavin let it slip that y’all were working on a major contract up there that would effectively cut Xoli out. But I bet my life Akhona was the one who told her, threw it in her face what was happening. She knew what Gaba’s stressors were. ‘Your ex-lover’s trying to screw you one last time.’ It would’ve been her one chance to get back at Gavin for messing up their lovely corporate bubble, not to mention ignoring her feelings for him. All she had to do was goad Gaba into showing her ass publicly, push the spurned ex into embarrassing him at a crucial time. But Akhona didn’t count on an actual murder being committed. She was genuinely shocked and distraught afterwards. But it was done and she realised everything didn’t have to fall apart; she could still get out with something if she stayed the course. The rest was damage control. Moloi manipulated Gaba into targeting me; she fed all of us information that was just true enough to hold up if it was checked out, but not enough to throw suspicion on her. Or you. Guerrilla tactics.”

  “That’s ridiculous. How on earth could she have twisted her into doing all this?”

  “Because she’s that good. And Gaba was that broken,” Vee answered simply. “I can’t prove it, but somehow I know that Moloi has some kind of hard proof that Gaba killed Berman. All she had to do was blackmail her to stay in line and keep her mouth shut. Maybe she even promised her that once everything was settled, she would cut her a big fat check with the software’s proceeds, more money than she’d ever been offered before, a reward for everything she’d been through.” Vee heaved a sigh, her chest leaden with guilt. “Even if Gaba wanted to back out, she couldn’t. I realise now there were times when she was trying to tell us, but she just couldn’t get the words out. Even if she’d told the full story, who would believe a murderer over Moloi?”

  “No. You don’t know what you’re saying. Akhona Moloi behind a plot of Machiavellian proportions? Jer
king us all, me, around? Yeah right.” He laughed but it rang hollow. His face darkened again. “She couldn’t possibly …”

  “Come on! Ask your new business partner how she really got her injuries. I learnt a lot about security doors and spindle-lock mechanisms today. Ask her, how an intruder managed to break into her office to launch a surprise attack, without actually breaking in. How Gaba got around an alarm system and two security doors … or if Moloi simply let her up herself. Insulted Gaba until she attacked, and that was the final nail in her coffin. But Moloi forgot the door, and to be honest it’s a detail no-one’s bothered to check. We’re all too busy feeling sorry for her.” Vee folded her arms. “Gotta be careful with these things. Lie too much and the strings get tangled.”

  Walsh was ashen. He was leaning on his desk, weight propped on white knuckles, and he sprang to his full height, emotions rioting across his face. He whirled back to the window again, staring outside. When he turned around, his expression made Vee feel a tiny bit sorry for him. “Why … I don’t … Why?” he said.

  “Why not? The whale of her career is under her nose, jeopardised by one rogue element. She needed Gaba shut down. Well, Gaba’s been shut down.”

  Walsh massaged his temples, making his hair stick on end even more. “I told them to send her to me. We could’ve incorporated her into my team, hired her as a private consultant. I was willing to prepare a package to smooth any ruffled feathers –”

  “O-ho, ‘send her to me’. The grand summons from the IT king.” Vee jerked a shoulder in a bitter shrug. “They didn’t. You were willing and they weren’t.”

  “So that makes me the bad guy. What was I to do, mount my steed and Don Quixote in to save the day?”

  “We’re all the bad guy! Me, you, Gavin, Moloi. Even Xoli … if she’d just gotten out of her own goddamn way and asked for help.” Vee sagged, all her strength draining into the floor through her feet. “Look, I don’t have a dog in this fight, not after this, so I can’t wash my mouth on you. Fair enough. But know this – shit comes back around, believe that. Lions never lie down with lambs, so you better be real confident how big your nuts are before you proceed here, or it’ll be the worst decision you ever make.”