Stolen Lives

by Jassy Mackenzie

  Jade wondered whether she would have left a money trail when she paid Naude. If she had, Moloi would easily be able to follow it. Hadn’t David told her once that Moloi had an accounting degree, and a nose as keen as a bloodhound’s when it came to sniffing out the truth?

  Unless Jade could prove beyond doubt that somebody else had murdered Terence Jordaan, Pamela would be facing a guilty verdict and a lengthy jail sentence. As would Naude.

  Jade wondered why Naude hadn’t seemed more worried about that. After all, he surely couldn’t hope to evade the police forever—not unless he was planning on fleeing the country.

  She called Pamela’s cellphone number, but wasn’t surprised to discover it was unavailable.

  Putting her phone back into her pocket, Jade stood outside the club’s entrance, momentarily indecisive. She had no transport now, but a lack of wheels was the least of her worries.

  As the manager of the Midrand branch of Heads & Tails, and the person responsible for hiring staff, Tamsin was perfectly placed to procure an endless supply of victims for her lover to traffic both locally and abroad. She could easily have done so without her father knowing. When Jade had seen the interview forms in Tamsin’s house, she’d assumed that the contact numbers of the applicants’ closest relatives had been requested for the sake of thoroughness. Now she knew better. That information had allowed Salimovic to locate and torture the trafficked victims’ loved ones.

  Jade remembered the two black women wandering despondently away from the club. Young women with no close family ties, recently arrived in Jo’burg, would be desperate to find work in the city where highways were jammed with suvs and luxury vehicles, and where the rich lived like Hollywood film stars in their high-walled palaces.

  The city that lured its visitors in with the promise of endless riches, only to renege on the deal in the most brutal ways.

  Jade turned round and walked back into the club.

  If a client had strayed into the back offices of Heads & Tails, Jade was sure he would have retreated fast, confused and disappointed.

  The club’s darkly lit glamour stopped at the door to the admin office. Inside, Jade saw no semi-nude girls—not even any pictures of them. The only wall hanging in evidence was a calendar featuring luxury cars. It made sense when she thought about it. Motor mechanics traditionally had girlie calendars in their offices, so why shouldn’t girlie-club owners go for cars?

  The offices were small in size and decorous—modest, even—in appearance. A middle-aged woman with permed hair and a sour face sat at one of the desks, hunched over her computer screen, working her way through what looked like a pile of invoices.

  “This is where Tamsin sits.” The bunny-eared receptionist who had brought her inside pushed open the door to another small room. It had taken some persuasive talking for Jade to gain access to the admin section. The bouncer hadn’t wanted to let her through. He’d made her wait in reception for over an hour, and it was only when she threatened to call Pamela—an empty threat, given the fact that her phone was switched off—that he had given her grudging permission. She could see him even now, hovering at the main door. Watching her.

  Jade walked into the office, out of range of the bouncer’s steely glare. She had braced herself for the same clutter that she’d picked her way through in Tamsin’s house. To her surprise, the place was tidy.

  Extremely tidy, now that she took a closer look. A pink jersey was folded on the back of a chair, and a few pens and pencils were set squarely on the desk.

  Jade stepped over to the desk and opened a drawer. It slid out easily on smooth runners. Then she tried the handle of the cupboard, and the door sprang open with a metallic clang. Both the cupboard and the drawer were empty.

  She closed the door again carefully and checked the other drawers, but she already knew what she would find in them, which was nothing.

  Apart from the furniture, the jersey and the most basic stationery items, the office was empty.

  No perfume, no cigarette packets, no hand cream, no chewing gum, no water bottles, no framed party photos. Not even any of the blank interview forms she’d seen in Tamsin’s study. No completed ones, either.

  She wondered if there had been anything else in the office an hour ago.

  “Where’s all Tamsin’s stuff?” Jade asked.

  Bunny Ears fidgeted with her bunny ears. “I—well, Tamsin usually brings her laptop when she comes to work.”

  “And the records for the staff who work here? Where are they kept?”

  “Oh, Clara deals with those.” The receptionist indicated the lady with the perm, who was now tidying her desk. “She does all the filing.”

  From the doorway of Tamsin’s office, Jade saw two large metal cabinets behind Clara’s desk. Three of the drawers were labelled “Staff”.

  Clara raised her head and stared at Jade through thick, horn-rimmed glasses. Her gaze had all the warmth and friendliness of a nest of vipers.

  “Thank you,” Jade said to Bunny Ears. “I’ve seen enough.”

  David answered on the second ring when she called him. He sounded as if he was driving.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “On my way back from a meeting,” he replied. From the despair in his voice, Jade knew immediately that there had been no news of Kevin. She feared that he had given up hope; that he no longer believed his child would be coming home safely.

  “Are you anywhere near Midrand?”

  “I could be, in about twenty minutes.”

  “Could you possibly give me a lift home? I’m at Heads & Tails.”

  “Okay,” he replied tonelessly. He disconnected without saying goodbye.

  Jade stared down at her phone in concern.

  Then she walked over to the gate and stood there, in the parking lot, watching as cars arrived and other cars—fewer of them— left. To pass the time, she thought about the logistics of what Tamsin had been doing.

  Trafficked victims had to be sourced. That was easy enough. She remembered the staff advertisements she’d seen in the papers. Dancers Needed. Earn Big Bucks. Full Training Given. That was a lie, because the club hired only experienced dancers, many of them on contract from Europe. Only inexperienced applicants who fitted certain other criteria would be candidates for trafficking.

  What had happened to those girls next, Jade wondered.

  The victims who had ended up at Salimovic’s brothel had been “broken in” by him personally, at his London home. But if Tamsin had also been supplying girls to other, more local establishments, they would have needed to be broken in beforehand.

  Kept prisoner somewhere while they were raped. Held until Salimovic, or one of his accomplices, could locate and torture one of the women’s family members in order to ensure their silence forever.

  “She goes away from time to time on business. Disappears for a few days, then she’s back again as if nothing’s happened.”

  Staring at the white van with the tinted windows, Jade replayed Naude’s words in her head. Her arms covered themselves in goosebumps as she suddenly realised what Tamsin must have been doing.

  Without a doubt, she was the one who had hired the trafficked women. And Jade was willing to bet that she had also transported them from place to place. Driven them away to a secure location where their nightmare would begin, and a few days later, delivered them to their final destination.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when tungsten headlights on full beam lit up the club’s entrance gate and a bright orange Mazda with mirrored windows and an oversized rear spoiler swung in and roared towards her.

  Jade recognised the car David was driving. It was one of the unmarked vehicles from the detectives’ car pool, which she guessed he would be using as the undercover vehicle for the brothel raid later that evening. Although it was not exactly unobtrusive, a casual observer would never have suspected it was a police car. It looked more like a low-end drug dealer’s runaround.

  The first time she’d seen it, she
had immediately christened it the Pimpmobile. David’s expression of outraged embarrassment as he’d wound the window down had made her laugh so hard she’d ended up sitting on her driveway, tears streaming from her eyes.

  Happier times.

  Now she jogged over to an empty parking spot and waved David in. He hesitated, then swung the car hard left and parked. He unfolded himself from the car and walked towards her with exhausted, foot-dragging steps.

  “What’s going on now?” he asked.

  “This van.” Jade pointed towards the people-carrier with the darkly tinted windows. “I think this is how she’s been transporting the victims.”

  David rubbed at his eyes using his knuckles, as if this was too much information for him to absorb.

  “Who transports what?”

  Jade gave him a brief rundown of what she believed Tamsin had been doing.

  David listened, nodding occasionally. Then he lowered his head and pressed his fingers into his temples the way he did when he had a bad headache. Jade realised he was having to force himself to concentrate on the job at hand.

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it? Let’s have a look inside it, then.”

  He walked over to the van and tried the door. It was locked.

  Squaring his shoulders, summoning up what must have been a final reserve of energy, David set off towards Heads & Tails. Jade was at his shoulder as the bunny-eared receptionist let him in, a decision that she was sure the lady would soon regret.

  “Welcome to Heads—”

  “Police Superintendent Patel, Organised Crime Division.” David interrupted her, shouting over the throbbing music as he showed her his detective’s id. “I have urgent questions about criminal activities relating to one of your vehicles.”

  Bunny Ears smiled nervously. “Which one would that be?” she asked.

  Before David could respond, the bouncer stepped forward. It was Naude’s friend, the same man who had been watching Jade when she was in the offices earlier. Mr Expressionless.

  He was about six feet tall, and so muscle-bound that she doubted whether it would be physically possible for him to clean his own teeth. Up close, he smelled odd. A sour, chemical odour. The smell of steroids leaking out of his pores, she decided.

  “I’ll handle this, Pearl,” he said to Bunny Ears.

  Pearl. Of course. Given the stage names in this place, perhaps the hefty bouncer would turn out to be called Granite.

  “You want to come this way?” He indicated the door leading to the admin offices that Jade had seen earlier. “We can talk in there.

  Less noise.” He stretched his lips into a smile, exposing a row of white and entirely false-looking teeth.

  After the hubbub in the club’s reception, the silence of the offices was a welcome relief.

  “Which vehicle are you interested in finding out about?” The bouncer’s words sounded very loud in the quiet room.

  Jade noticed with a start that the snake-eyed admin lady—what was her name? Clara?—was still tidying up, bent over one of the filing cabinets. As Jade watched, she moved back to her desk and glanced up with an expression that looked like she’d been chewing on a lemon rind.

  “The plain white van,” David said. He walked through the door that the bouncer indicated, into Tamsin’s small office.

  He sat down on Tamsin’s chair, leaving Jade the one in front of the desk.

  The bouncer pushed a third chair across the carpeted floor into the office.

  “Your name is?” he asked again.

  David sounded irritated at having to repeat himself. “Superintendent David Patel, from the Organised Crime Division.”

  The bouncer closed the door behind them and sat down.

  “You need information on this van?”

  “Yes. Firstly—”

  “Do you have a warrant, sir?”

  “A warrant is on its way,” David said, with such assurance that only Jade knew it was a bluff.

  Jade heard a muffled creak from outside the door. Clara, getting up to do another bout of tidying.

  “Sorry,” the bouncer said. “But I’ll need to check the warrant as soon as it arrives. What else do you want to know?”

  When she heard keys jangling, Jade realised she had guessed wrong. Clara wasn’t doing anymore filing. Clara was finally going home. To dance widdershins round her cauldron or sacrifice a goat in her back garden, or whatever the hell she did for fun in her spare time.

  “Firstly, who is the vehicle’s designated driver? If there is more than one person, I’ll need every name. Secondly, how long has it been owned by this company, and was it purchased new? Thirdly, where has it been … ”

  Then Jade heard the faraway rattle of a big diesel engine starting up.

  She was on her feet as fast as if an electric current had been run through her chair, before David could say another word and before she could offer any explanation for her actions.

  The big bouncer was ready for her. He was quick on his feet, too, despite his size. He moved just as swiftly. Before Jade could get to the door, he was positioned in front of it, blocking her exit. Feet apart, knees slightly bent, arms at midriff-level in front of his body.

  Braced for a fight.

  On certain occasions, Stewart had explained to her trainees, a bodyguard would not be able to avoid getting involved in physical conflict. When that happened, she said, she was going to share the only rule for success.

  “Martial arts?” the American student had asked, and Stewart had turned on him with a withering glare.

  “Martial arts are bugger-all use to you in a street fight, laddie. I’ve seen black belt experts knocked out cold by street fighters because the experts couldn’t decide which of their fancy moves they should begin with. The only rule is this. Act fast and act first. Practise one or two moves until you know them better than your own name. Use them instantly, and with all the force you have.”

  Jade was at a disadvantage in terms of height and weight, compared to most of her opponents, so she’d rehearsed a routine as swift as it was dirty.

  By the time David shouted “What the hell?” Jade was already making her move.

  A feint with the left hand to draw the bouncer’s stronger right away by throwing a weak punch; a move that only tricked people because she was a woman. He grabbed her left hand hard, crushing it in his meaty fist, but that didn’t matter, because before he could do any damage, Jade let rip with her double whammy. Her right knee hammered into his groin, and her right fingers straight into his eyes, as stiff as prongs.

  The bouncer let out a strangled gasp and doubled over, clutching his groin, just as David half-leaped over the desk to help her, pens and pencils scattering.

  “Jadey! What on earth’s the problem?”

  “Knock him out!” she shouted. She wrenched the door open so fast that it slammed into the bouncer’s back. Pounding her way through the now-empty office towards the door at the back with the big green Fire Exit sign above it, she was relieved to find that Snake Eyes Clara had left it unlocked when she’d left.

  When she’d left to drive away in the white van with the mirrored windows.

  Jade sprinted across the car park. Clara had already reversed the van out of its parking place, but she seemed to be having difficulty engaging first gear, because when she saw Jade racing towards the driver’s door, she put her foot down and it promptly stalled.

  Jade flung herself at the driver’s door and grabbed hold of the handle.

  Locked, of course. Bloody central locking. And now Clara was turning the engine over again, glaring through the window at Jade. In a couple of seconds she’d be on the move.

  Wrenching her Glock from its holster, Jade smacked the butt against the window glass with all her strength. Despite her efforts, the window didn’t break. One of the drawbacks of owning a gun made largely of polymer, perhaps.

  The engine roared into life and Jade heard the gearbox engage. She was sure that, this time, Snake Eyes would have worked out wh
ere to find first gear.

  Jade angled the gun away from Clara’s head and aimed at a place where she had a clear line of sight through the opposite back window. With her left hand she grabbed a tight hold of the vehicle’s roof-rack.

  As she fired, the van surged forward, so fast and suddenly that the rack ripped out of her hand and she went sprawling, face-first, onto the rough tarmac.

  Jade thought it was over then, but, wonder of wonders, the abrupt leap forward had been caused by Snake Eyes stalling the car a second time, startled by the sound of the gun.

  She scrambled to her feet. Her shoulder throbbed and her right cheek was stinging. Her elbow was grazed where she’d used it to break her fall, but her right hand was undamaged, and so was the gun it held.

  The bullet-hole in the window that was now a web of cracks had given her the opportunity she needed. She punched the Glock’s butt into the hole, and this time the glass gave way so easily that Jade’s arm just kept on going. The side of the gun clubbed Clara on her right temple.

  It was a hard and uncompromising blow. The woman reeled sideways, stunned. Her horn-rimmed glasses flew off her head.

  Jade fumbled for the door handle through the rough-edged gap. She pulled it up, and she was in. Another whack on the head for Clara. Two points scored for the Glock. The admin assistant collapsed sideways, lolling onto the passenger seat.

  Jade grabbed her ankles and yanked them towards the door. The woman was wearing brown court shoes. One of them fell off as Jade dragged her out of the vehicle. As she did so, Clara’s skirt rode up and exposed her legs and her knickers, both of which were off-white and thick-looking. Jade slid an arm under her head to stop it from thumping down onto the tarmac. She didn’t want to kill her. Dead bodies were far harder to question than admin assistants with a nasty headache.

  “How much did Tamsin pay you?” Jade asked the prone woman rather breathlessly, as she moved her none too gently into the recovery position. “Were you and Granite-Face getting good money to keep quiet about what she was doing?”

  Jade didn’t expect an answer to her questions. Clara’s snake eyes remained closed and she groaned softly.