The Fallen

by Jassy Mackenzie

  By the time Jade got back in her car, she’d been sufficiently distracted from her previous thoughts and the next couple of hours passed calmly.

  Her pit-bull-like subconscious, however, refused to leave the topic alone. As Jade drove past the rather stark-looking sign notifying her that she was now in Gauteng Province and ordering her to enjoy her stay, the truth hit her like a ten-pound hammer.

  She dug in her pocket for her cellphone and, after checking her mirrors for any signs of cruising Metro Police vehicles, pulled it out and made a call.

  49

  The next morning, back in Johannesburg, Jade got up at dawn and went for a run. Bonnie, the cheeky Jack Russell from down the road, wriggled under the fence and joined her for the last section, bounding alongside her in the middle of the road in a death-defying sprint that led them to Jade’s front door.

  The sand road felt coarse and scratchy, but not uncomfortable under her bare feet. They were toughening up well. She was going to continue her barefoot running regime, she decided. After all, there were times when it could prove very useful.

  Back at her cottage, she had a quick shower, put the kettle on, made herself a coffee and gave Bonnie a bowl of water and a doggie treat. Jade wasn’t sure exactly how the packet of bone-shaped biscuit treats had ended up in the cottage. She definitely couldn’t have bought them for the dog on one of her infrequent shopping trips. Not when she’d enforced a strict no-feeding rule after Bonnie had worked out how to get through Jade’s garden fence and had become a regular visitor.

  After breakfast she checked her emails, did a load of washing and hung it out to dry.

  And then, finally, it was time to head off to the interview that she’d managed to set up yesterday afternoon.

  The secure estate where Larry and the flame-haired Roxanne lived was a twenty-minute drive away, in a suburb called Blue Hills. She arrived there at nine in the morning and, after making a phone call to confirm that she was expected, the guards let her in.

  Roxanne’s description of their house had been both vague and difficult to hear. When Jade had called her, the signal hadn’t been good, but she still had the feeling that Roxanne wouldn’t actually mind if she lost her way and never arrived at all. What she had been told to look out for was a newly planted mature olive tree by the gate and a Tuscan-style fountain in the courtyard.

  Roxanne, or Roxy, as she preferred to be called, had sounded very proud of those two possessions.

  The fountain, when Jade finally saw it, was a monstrosity—a circular concrete pool twenty feet in diameter, with a pinkish, faux-Tuscan finish and a water-spewing, tunic-clad goddess on a pedestal as the centrepiece.

  The olive tree didn’t look too good either. Set in a raw circle of earth, it was taller than she had expected, but as scrawny as an anorexic teen, and its scanty leaves were dull and drooping.

  Jade allowed herself to briefly entertain the appealing possibility that Larry had wasted a large chunk of his money by buying that full-grown tree.

  She climbed out of her car and walked over to the front door, where she pressed the door bell.

  After a minute, she heard soft footsteps. A key turned in the lock and the door swung open.

  The expression on Roxanne’s face was a roughly equal blend of resentment and suspicion. She was wearing a turquoise and silver sarong over the now-familiar bikini. The toenails on her bare feet were painted Hummer-orange, to match her hair.

  ‘You found us, then?’ she said in a tone that clearly conveyed she wished Jade hadn’t. ‘I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got to get ready to go out in a minute. What do you want?’

  ‘I need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Larry said we should only talk to the detective. He said that’s how the police work and that we mustn’t discuss it with anyone else.’

  Jade bit back the impulse to say that the detective would have found it much easier to talk to Larry if he and Roxanne hadn’t left for Jo’burg almost immediately after the murder.

  ‘Is Larry here?’ she asked.

  A sullen headshake. Orange hair flopped across Roxanne’s heavily made-up face. ‘He’s at work.’

  ‘The questions I want to ask you aren’t about the murder. Not directly.’

  ‘What are they about, then?’

  Jade looked pointedly past Roxanne’s shoulder, across the tiled hallway, where she could see wide glass sliding doors opening onto a massive covered entertainment area. The colour scheme was an uninspired white and blue pinstripe. Bar stools, sofas, wicker armchairs, squashy armchairs. Enough furniture to accommodate the whole of the United Nations.

  Roxanne got the message.

  ‘Come through,’ she said, entirely without enthusiasm.

  Jade settled herself on a white canvas chair opposite the sofa where Roxanne must have been sitting before Jade arrived. There was a Hello! magazine lying open on the sofa arm and what looked like iced coffee in a tall glass on the nearby table.

  Fat drops of condensation slid lazily down the outside of the glass, reminding Jade of how hot the day was becoming. Roxanne didn’t offer her a drink, though. She took a sip of her own, ice clinking.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ she asked again.

  ‘Tell me about Monique,’ Jade said.

  Roxanne blinked, as if puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

  Suppressing a sigh, Jade wondered exactly who was supposed to be asking the questions here.

  ‘You spent a lot of time with her out on the boat.’

  ‘Well, not just me. We were all on the boat.’ Roxanne sounded defensive, as if Jade was accusing her of something.

  ‘Did she talk much?’

  ‘Oh, ja. She was one of those people who had, like, verbal diarrhoea. She would bang on and on to whoever was willing to listen. Which, unfortunately, turned out to be us. And that other woman, the one who never smiled.’

  ‘What did she bang on about?’

  Roxanne paused before continuing. ‘Her life. How many tough breaks she’d had. Larry said she was one of those “Poor Me” people who were always on the lookout for money and sympathy. He also reckoned that, given half a chance, she’d be into anything with a dick.’ She smiled in a smug way, as if pleased that her man had sussed out the instructor.

  ‘What did she say was wrong with her life?’

  ‘Well, she spoke a lot about some crazy ex who wouldn’t leave her alone. She said that was why she was working here now. She said she’d been managing a bigger resort on the other side of the estuary, but after he’d tracked her down, she’d had to leave. You see? “Poor me.” Like it was everyone else’s fault, not hers.’

  ‘Really?’ Jade leaned forward in her seat, hoping her obvious interest would encourage Roxanne to keep talking.

  ‘I mean, half the things she said I don’t know if I believed. I thought they were exaggerations. Larry thought they were lies.’ Roxanne took another sip of her drink, then put down her glass and examined her orange nails.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. Something about the guy having been in prison, but getting out early for some reason. Oh, and on that subject, one thing I do remember her saying was that he actually kept her prisoner in his flat. Like literally locked in. She told us that one time he tied her to the bed and didn’t let her go for twenty-four hours. He put an adult nappy on her and went out for the day. I nearly hurled when she told me that. I mean, how disgusting!’

  ‘It seems strange that somebody would make that story up,’ Jade volunteered.

  ‘Well, maybe she didn’t make that part up.’

  ‘Did he know that she was working at Scuba Sands?’

  ‘Oh, no. She was in hiding. Or so she said. But one time, on the way out to sea, he did SMS her. She showed it around. I mean, it might have come from anyone, but it was a bit creepy, all about how much he loved her, that she was just like his dead wife, and that he wanted to be with her all the time when his job was over. I remember she went as w
hite as a sheet when she read it. That’s about it, I think.’

  At that point, Roxanne folded her arms in a way that very much suggested Jade’s time was over.

  ‘You and Larry left without paying. Why?’ Jade said.

  Roxanne’s face shut down like a steel trap. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just wondering …’ Jade let her voice tail off on purpose.

  ‘Look. The resort wasn’t well secured,’ Roxanne snapped. ‘We could all have been killed. Larry said that if people don’t provide value for money, he won’t pay.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Roxanne smirked.

  ‘You have a lovely house.’

  ‘Look, don’t start insinuating that because we’re wealthy people …’

  ‘No, no. I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. I meant it’s very well kept. Clean and neat. Do you have one maid working here, or more than one?’

  ‘None,’ Roxanne said carefully. And then, as if deliberately trying to shock Jade, she added, ‘Actually, Larry won’t have blacks working in the house. It’s one of his rules. So I do the housework. Not that there’s much to do. We eat out most of the time. And the washing gets collected and delivered by a laundry service.’

  ‘That’s handy,’ Jade said, keeping her voice neutral.

  ‘Yes, it is. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Could I use your bathroom before I go?’

  ‘Down the passage.’

  Roxanne glanced in the general direction of the tiled corridor. Then the cellphone on the coffee table started buzzing.

  ‘Hey, girlfriend,’ Jade heard her say. ‘No, not busy at all. We still on for brunch later? I was thinking the Castle in Kyalami. For the view.’ She laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess it has to be.’

  Halfway down the corridor, an open door led into a palatial bathroom. Sunken bath, gold fittings, twin basins, gilt mirrors.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. Roxanne was still talking into her cellphone and fiddling with her hair as she finalised her plans for the morning.

  Jade walked on. The open door at the end of the passage led into an even more grandiose master bedroom that had its own lounge suite. Fluffy white floor throws surrounded a monstrous four-poster bed that seemed bigger than Jade’s living room.

  Swiftly, she slipped inside. The bed wasn’t made. Minus one point for Roxy’s housekeeping skills. But lying at its foot was a turquoise leather handbag—the same bag that Jade had seen Roxanne carrying around from time to time at the resort.

  People generally keep money in three places. In a safe, in bedside or desk drawers, and in their purses or wallets. Jade couldn’t access the safe, although she was sure there was one. A quick root through the turquoise bag yielded only a couple of crumpled fifty-rand notes and a fistful of credit cards.

  When she opened the bedside drawer on what she guessed was Larry’s side of the bed, she struck gold. Inside a half-empty box of men’s tissues, she discovered a thick wad of hundred-rand notes held together by a tightly stretched rubber band.

  Quickly, Jade removed half of them and stuffed them deep into her jeans pocket. Then she hurried out of the room and back down the passage.

  To her relief, Roxanne was still on the phone and still on the couch. As she adjusted her position, Jade caught a glimpse of a small, but unmistakable, roll of fat around her middle. Too many brunches, perhaps. Jade wondered whether Larry was the type of man who would one day trade her in for a younger, trimmer model.

  ‘Yes, exactly. We could go shopping afterwards in Sandton. You think Tanya will also be free? Well, do you want to call her or shall I? Hang on a sec.’

  She looked up at Jade, stood up and then walked over to the front door and unlocked it.

  Jade stepped out into the stifling morning.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, but Roxanne didn’t reply.

  ‘Tell Tanya to meet us at the Castle,’ she said to her caller, and slammed the door in Jade’s face.

  Jade walked over to her car with a victorious smile on her face. She could feel the stack of notes, their edges hard against her thigh. Although Neil was dead and couldn’t use the money they owed the resort, Jade had decided she’d see if there was a suitable charity—something run by surfers, perhaps—that she could donate it to.

  Failing that, she would give it to the SPCA.

  Larry might never notice that half his stash of cash was missing, but if he did, he couldn’t blame the domestic worker, because there wasn’t one. Jade wouldn’t have wanted an innocent person to be fired because of what she had done.

  She drove round the gaudy fountain and headed out of the estate, waving a friendly goodbye to the guards as they raised the exit boom to let her leave.

  50

  Jade’s first call on her way back to her cottage was to Inspector Pillay.

  ‘You’ll probably get around to investigating Bradley’s flat before too long, but I thought I’d give you a heads-up on what you might find there,’ she said. ‘I think he somehow got hold of the woman—the one who was reported missing on your list. She’s being kept prisoner there. Tied up. Perhaps tranquilised or sedated in some way. And it would save her a whole lot of discomfort and potential health complications if you went to fetch her now.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Pillay exclaimed. ‘We were going to go and search his residence later on today, but I’ll send a team there immediately. Thank you. How did you …’

  ‘You’d have picked it up in your interviews,’ Jade said. ‘I’ve just spoken to Roxanne, the woman who left early and went back to Johannesburg. She told me that he’d done the same thing to Monique.’

  Pillay thanked her again. His voice was filled with excitement—presumably at the thought of rescuing the imprisoned woman and thus clearing his Missing Persons backlog completely.

  Jade drove on, deep in thought.

  Her musings were interrupted by the beeping of her phone. Looking down, she saw Craig had sent her a text message.

  ‘hope ur doing well. guess what? am in jo’burg 2day. going 2see elsabe this eve. we’re flying2 namibia 2moro 4 a week together! wish me luck. think it’s serious this time. thanks 4 everything. all the best, c.’

  There it was again, that horrible suspicion her subconscious was still grappling with. It loomed, large and ugly, but dissolved into shadow when she tried to grasp it.

  She decided not to go home after all.

  Instead, she turned around and drove towards the M1 highway—slowing as she was caught in the last wave of the morning rush-hour traffic—and took the south lane, going towards central Johannesburg.

  Back in Johannesburg, Moloi had sat down at his work desk before six A.M., having broken one of his own rules by leaving home before his young daughter had woken up.

  He’d gone in to see her, though, and spent a few minutes there with his wife, smiling down at their child’s wiry black hair and soft brown skin, half buried under the folds of her pink duvet and clutching the stuffed giraffe of which she was inordinately fond.

  Even so, he still felt guilty about being at work and not at home.

  But he had too much on his plate today. A suspect in one of his murder cases had been arrested and was in detention at Hillbrow police station. Moloi would be driving there in an hour to question him. Then it would be straight back to the police station and into a meeting with the Hawks—the new elite organised-crime unit—followed by another meeting with somebody else from Organised Crime in the department where David now worked. And then, back to his own department for a lunchtime team briefing, and a phone conference with a pathologist from the Germiston labs after that, assuming that the urgent post-mortem had been completed by then.

  And then the rest of the afternoon he planned to devote to tackling the sizeable mound of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk—a programme that would take him well into the evening. Or so he thought.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  While he was inte
rviewing his suspect in Hillbrow—sweating, stammering and, to Moloi’s experienced eye, as guilty as sin—he missed five calls on his cellphone, which he’d switched over to silent.

  Two of the calls were from the same number—the captain from the Hawks who had requested the urgent case meeting. Listening to the voicemail, Moloi learned that he’d had to fly to Cape Town for another case and wanted to know if their meeting could be rescheduled for tomorrow.

  Moloi phoned the captain as he hurried back to his car through the station’s ammonia-rich basement car park. Whether this was from human urine or artificial cleaning agent, he couldn’t tell. Both were unpleasant, and he stepped carefully to avoid the suspect puddles on the concrete.

  He left a message on the captain’s voicemail to say that tomorrow would be fine and climbed into his car, slamming the door on the unpleasant stink with a sigh of relief.

  It was only when he was driving out of the basement parking that he realised two things.

  One, he had an unexpected hour’s gap in his schedule.

  And two, Dunbar Street, where Themba Msamaya lived, was only five minutes’ drive away.

  He did have other work demands that could easily have filled the hour, but he owed Patel more than a few favours, and being able to set his former colleague’s mind at rest was infinitely more appealing than catching up on his long-overdue filing and form-filling.

  The Hillbrow police station was just beyond the crest of the hill on the eastern side of the suburb. Moloi scowled as he noticed the banks of old and rotting litter that were piled up on the sides of the road just outside the exit. Surely the station commander could make a better effort at keeping his precinct and its surrounds in good order, he wondered, as he drove down the hill towards Yeoville.

  When he turned into Dunbar Street, Moloi was surprised to see a small group of people standing outside the entrance to Msamaya’s building. A couple of cars were parked outside at odd angles, as if the owners had braked to a hurried stop before jumping out of their vehicles.