The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  If he hadn’t been suspended, De Villiers, like every other member of the police who lived in the district, would have been called up to don his uniform and assist with crowd control.

  Instead he was able to spend the day indoors to finalise his report. Emma and Zoë went on their usual Saturday morning excursions, ballet class first and shopping to follow, while De Villiers sat hunched over the computer.

  After an hour of mulling over the facts, he called Henderson.

  ‘I need to make an identification, Sir, and I think it will be best if you were present,’ he explained.

  Henderson wanted to know more. ‘I’m not giving my weekend away for nothing,’ he said.

  ‘It’s about the Prime Minister’s arrow, Sir,’ De Villiers said. ‘I think I know who has the bow and the quiver and arrows to complete the set.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ Henderson demanded. ‘And moreover, why should I help you?’

  ‘Because you know that I am not the man who shot at the Prime Minister, Sir, and because I think I know who did.’

  There was a long silence before Henderson answered. ‘I’ll meet you at your house.’

  ‘This had better be good,’ Henderson said a quarter of an hour later as he fastened his seatbelt in De Villiers’s car.

  They passed the fifteen-minute drive in silence. De Villiers stopped in the parking lot in front of an East Tamaki archery store. A white minibus with blackened windows stood in front of the archery store. At the other end was a similar minibus but black. The rest of the parking lot was empty.

  ‘Now tell me what’s going on,’ Henderson said.

  De Villiers turned to face his superior. ‘I think I know the man who owns this store, and if I’m right, then I think we’ll find a link between him and that arrow you showed me.’ He shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘I need you to pretend to be a customer while I hang around in the background. If it’s the right man, I’ll leave and you can follow me when you’re ready.’

  De Villiers opened the glove box and put on a pair of Emma’s sunglasses. They covered the upper half of his face. A cap pulled low over his eyebrows completed a rudimentary disguise. Henderson nodded and they alighted. Henderson turned his back to the wind to light a cigarette. He marched deliberately towards the shop. De Villiers followed a step behind.

  They stopped at the door. The shop window displayed various bows and a range of archery equipment. Prices were marked down by 33%. It was an impressive display of bows and arrows and other accessories of pig-hunting and archery. Henderson flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter and entered. A bell at the door alerted the storekeeper that he had customers.

  De Villiers followed Henderson inside and pretended to study for-sale items in a waist-high glass cabinet. He listened as Henderson introduced himself to the man at the counter. ‘Good day, I wonder if you can help me. I’m thinking of taking up archery, but I’m completely ignorant about it.’

  De Villiers half turned to hear the shopkeeper’s voice. ‘I’m sure we can find something for you,’ the voice boomed. ‘Tjaart Erasmus, pleased to meet you.’

  De Villiers watched from under the peak of his cap as the two shook hands.

  He left the shop immediately when his suspicions were confirmed. When he got to the car, he sensed movement behind him. He tensed and the hair on his arms rose. He opened the driver’s door and slowly turned around. There were only three cars in the parking lot, his, and the two minibuses. There was something odd about the black minibus. It had a second antenna and seemed to be rocking slightly on its springs, but De Villiers couldn’t see through the blackened windows. He stared at it for some time before he got back into his car and waited for Henderson.

  When Henderson eventually came out of the archery store, he had a handful of brochures and a quotation for a full kit for a bow-hunter. A complimentary cap sat skew on his head.

  ‘What’s that about?’ De Villiers asked as he pulled out into the road.

  ‘I got his fingerprints on the brochure and his handwriting on the quote,’ Henderson smiled. ‘Now tell me what you know.’

  ‘I know him from way back,’ De Villiers started.

  A police car first overtook them at speed and then slowed down in front of them. The black minibus stopped behind them.

  De Villiers looked at Henderson with disappointment. ‘What now?’

  ‘I’m stuffed if I know,’ Henderson proclaimed. ‘Let’s see.’

  A constable alighted from the police car and came around to the driver’s window. ‘I need to take down your full particulars,’ he said, leaning down to be at eye level with De Villiers. ‘Full names, please.’

  De Villiers wanted to argue, but Henderson took over. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Henderson, head of the International Crime Unit, and this is Detective Constable de Villiers of my unit. We are on an official investigation. What’s this about, sonny?’

  The constable straightened up and cast an anxious look at the black minibus. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, ‘Please wait here, Sir. I’ll be back in a minute.’ The door of the black minibus opened. A man in the minibus had one foot on the tarmac but remained hidden. A gloved hand came around the door frame and beckoned the constable over.

  Henderson would have none of the delay and followed the constable to the driver’s side of the minibus. De Villiers watched in the rear-view mirror. He saw Henderson displaying his warrant card and smiled to himself. He probably outranks these men, he thought.

  The constable came back to De Villiers. ‘Just stay where you are, please.’

  De Villiers continued to watch the proceedings at the minibus in the rear-view mirror. He saw Henderson disappearing into the back of the minibus.

  It must have been fifteen minutes before Henderson returned to the passenger door and got into the car. ‘Let’s go,’ he said as he fastened his seatbelt.

  ‘What was that about?’ De Villiers asked.

  ‘Is your car a no smoking zone?’ Henderson asked, and when De Villiers shook his head, added, ‘I think we’ve struck oil here. That was the Anti-Terror Unit. They’ve been watching the comings and goings at the archery store for some months now, something to do with that business in the Ureweras.’

  De Villiers put the car in gear and pulled off. Henderson looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to get home. There’s a rugby test on tonight and we’re having some guests over. My partner will kill me if I leave all the work to her. Now tell me, who’s this Tjaart …’

  ‘Erasmus,’ De Villiers completed the sentence.

  ‘Yes,’ Henderson said. He flicked the cigarette stub out of the window. ‘Explain.’

  ‘It’s him, Sir,’ De Villiers said. ‘I’m positive we can connect the arrow to him.’

  ‘I suspected that you might say something like that,’ Henderson said. ‘And I’ve asked the Anti-Terror Unit not to let him out of sight until our unit’s investigation has been completed.’

  ‘That sounds good, Sir.’

  Henderson remembered his last visit to the Prime Minister’s house. ‘We don’t have time to waste,’ he said. ‘We need a full report by Monday morning.’

  ‘It’ll be ready, Sir.’

  De Villiers stopped in Macleans Road behind Henderson’s car. The two men alighted and faced each other across the roof of the car.

  ‘You’ve been secretly investigating the case, haven’t you?’ Henderson said. He wagged a finger at De Villiers. ‘And you probably have a report all but ready.’

  De Villiers nodded. ‘I’m a policeman, Sir, and that’s what we do.’

  ‘Monday, first thing,’ Henderson said. ‘Address it to the Commissioner and say that I detailed you to conduct this investigation outside the normal procedures due to the importance and sensitivity of the matter.’

  Henderson reached across the roof of the car and they shook hands.

  After the rugby test, De Villiers telephoned Johann Weber in Durban to commiserate with him.

  ‘I saw it coming
,’ Weber said. ‘Wrong number 10, wrong number 8, wrong tactics, I would suggest.’ Like most rugby fans, he was long on opinions but short on knowledge.

  ‘I need more help with my enquiry,’ De Villiers said when they had exhausted their lay analysis of the rugby.

  The conversation lasted half an hour, a twenty-dollar phone call, but it was time well spent.

  De Villiers was ready to terminate the call when Weber changed the topic. ‘What happened in Pretoria, Pierre? The girl came back with a bottle of champagne and said you had been to a soccer match at Loftus.’

  ‘I left you a note,’ De Villiers explained. ‘It’s in the glove box. Didn’t Marissa tell you?’

  ‘No, she just gave me the champagne.’

  ‘There’s a note in the glove box. The note explains it,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ Weber asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, one last thing then,’ Weber said. ‘The Boks are going to win in Dunedin next week.’

  ‘They’ve never won there and they won’t win this time either,’ De Villiers argued.

  ‘All it takes is a lucky bounce,’ Weber countered. ‘And it’s about time.’

  That’s what I need, De Villiers thought, a lucky bounce.

  Weber said goodbye and rang off.

  De Villiers worked late into the night.

  He had a pot of coffee at his elbow when the Sunday paper was delivered well before sunrise. By lunch time the weather had cleared a bit and at three in the afternoon the sky was clear. He settled on the couch in front of the television and with Zoë snuggling against his side, watched the replay of the ladies’ final at Wimbledon. He looked on in amazement when Venus Williams lost the first ten points to her younger sister, yet came back to win the match in two sets.

  I’ll need to play well from here on if I want to win, he mused, but if Venus can do it from two games down, maybe I can too.

  Venus gave him hope. He put in an extra effort to complete the dossier. By Sunday night it was ready, the title on its cover sheet somewhat more pretentious than the contents: A dossier on the attempt on the PM’s life.

  A weekend well spent, he thought as he crawled into bed.

  He reached the city just before nine, among the Monday-morning workers rushing to their posts. The heavy rain of the weekend had washed the city clean and there was not a scrap of rubbish to be seen all the way from the Ferry Building to the Auckland Central Police Headquarters. The brisk walk had invigorated De Villiers, and he stood at ease on the steps outside the main door, waiting for someone of predictable habits to make her appearance.

  The Commissioner’s private secretary came out of the building, exactly as anticipated, cigarette already between her lips. De Villiers waited for her to take a deep draw before he stepped closer.

  ‘Good morning, Ma’am.’ He addressed her formally because she was an officer and outranked him by several notches.

  Inspector Amigene Murra was a tall woman and she looked De Villiers in the eye. ‘What can I do for you, soldier?’ she asked.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m Detective Constable Pierre de Villiers and I need to get a confidential report to the Commissioner urgently and by secure means.’

  ‘Give it to me,’ she said, pointing with her cigarette at the envelope in De Villiers’s hand.

  De Villiers handed the envelope over. ‘Please Ma’am, it’s for the Commissioner’s eyes only.’

  ‘No worries,’ she answered in the local vernacular. ‘He’ll have it before his first cup of coffee this morning. He’s on the early flight from Wellington and the driver has already left to fetch him from the airport.’

  ‘Thank you,’ De Villiers said and turned away.

  There was still time for breakfast. He headed for the Borders bookstore.

  Auckland

  Monday 7 July 2008 40

  The members of the panel had already taken their seats when De Villiers entered the conference room. There was no one at Detective Inspector Henderson and Detective Sergeant Kupenga’s table.

  The chairman waited for De Villiers to settle down. Mason was unusually subdued, not the ebullient Laurence Mason QC of before the weekend.

  ‘The police officers most closely involved in the enquiry have been called to an urgent meeting with the Commissioner of Police. They will only be available at noon and the enquiry proper will stand adjourned to that time,’ he announced.

  De Villiers stood up to leave.

  ‘Please wait!’

  De Villiers turned around to see who had spoken. It was Sione Hotene, the man who worked for the Immigration Service.

  ‘Detective de Villiers, I’ve been subjected to racial abuse, and name calling, including being called a nigger, a pa Maori, and all sorts of other names.’

  ‘I don’t know the term pa Maori,’ De Villiers confessed and sat down.

  Hotene smiled at De Villiers. ‘The definition of a pa Maori is one who is not yet settled into European society, a pa being a fortified Maori settlement. It is an extremely derogatory term, suggesting that such a person is unsophisticated and backward and doesn’t belong in a modern society.

  ‘It means someone from the deep rural areas who is too backward to cope with the urban environment and too unsophisticated to be allowed to mix with decent, educated, civilised people.’

  ‘I see,’ was all De Villiers could muster. ‘The same as japie, then,’ he said aloud without realising that he was doing so.

  ‘Exactly,’ Hotene said, looking sideways at the chairman. ‘The same as japie.’

  Detective Inspector Henderson couldn’t remember how many times he and Kupenga had been put on the carpet before the Prime Minister, but here they were again. This time, though, they were accompanied by the Commissioner himself, not one of the Deputy Commissioners. Henderson had no doubt that they were in for a rough time.

  She made them wait.

  ‘We have a strong lead, Ma’am,’ Henderson said immediately when they were called in. ‘There is a closed disciplinary enquiry underway and we hope to have some final answers later today.’

  ‘Hope isn’t good enough. I want certainty, something I can take to the public.’

  So it’s about politics then, just as you expected, an inner voice told Henderson.

  ‘We are reasonably confident that we’ll know by this evening whether we have enough evidence to arrest our suspect and for you to make a press announcement,’ he said.

  ‘There will be no announcement to the media,’ the Prime Minister said immediately, the political animal within her smelling a kill. ‘I’ll make any announcements personally.’

  The Commissioner looked hard at Henderson. He’d been given no warning that Henderson might be closing in on a suspect.

  The Prime Minister broke the silence, locking eyes with Henderson. ‘I’ll hold you to your undertaking. You may go now,’ she said, threatening and dismissing them in a low baritone.

  She waited for Henderson and Kupenga to close the door behind them before she offered the Commissioner a chair. He was one of the party faithful and she could talk plainly and confidentially to him.

  ‘How is their investigation really going?’ she asked, not looking up.

  The Commissioner didn’t have an answer. He knew no more than what Henderson had reported to the Prime Minister minutes earlier.

  ‘Do we have a suspect we can name, or a group we could expose in Parliament?’ the Prime Minister asked. ‘That surely would make a splash.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the Commissioner answered, unaware that a dossier in the hands of his personal assistant at the Auckland Central Police Headquarters provided the answers to both questions.

  ‘You asked to meet about the Ureweras matter,’ she said.

  The Commissioner nodded. All matters involving Maori were by their nature politically sensitive. ‘We have a major operation in progress and will be making several arrests in the course of the day.’

  ‘Good news at last,’ she s
aid.

  ‘You have no idea, Prime Minister. Especially after the mess last year when we had no evidence.’

  ‘So we’ll know enough to make an announcement later in the day, will we?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Good. Are we on the same flight back to Wellington?’

  ‘I’m on the one o’clock flight,’ the Commissioner said.

  ‘So am I,’ she said. She checked her watch. ‘We’d better go. Come with me. The driver is waiting.’

  Inspector Amigene Murra caught up with them when they were already in the car. ‘I have a dossier for you, Commissioner.’ She handed him the sealed envelope through the window. ‘I haven’t opened it.’

  They left directly for Auckland Airport just as Pierre de Villiers’s disciplinary hearing was about to resume.

  On the way to the airport the Commissioner asked, ‘What’s with these immigrants, do you think, Prime Minister? We never had kidnappings and ransom notes until we allowed them to come and settle here.’

  ‘We need them. They bring investments and replace our skills losses to Australia,’ she said. ‘Otherwise we would have stopped them coming a long time ago.’

  The Commissioner remembered the envelope on his lap and opened it. He started reading but quickly turned to the last page to read the conclusion.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, they’ve done it!’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  The Commissioner waved the dossier at her. ‘They’ve solved the case.’

  ‘Who? What case?’ she asked.