by Deon Meyer
All pretty meaningless, as far as their investigation went.
They asked her if he ever worked overseas.
She said no, Oh goodness me, the child was taking a break, he needed it so much after all the years of terribly hard work, day and night.
Did he ever say anything over the phone about money matters?
No, never.
Did he go to investigate business opportunities in the East?
Not that she knew of. He must have looked at things through his entrepreneurial eyes; he was such an entrepreneur, such a natural businessman.
But he never said anything?
No.
Apart from the payment he got for the web design company, did he ever inherit or win money, come into a windfall somehow?
Now where would the poor child inherit money from? ‘I am the only family he has,’ she said, as though he were still alive.
On the N1 on the way to Stellenbosch, Griessel remembered a few things about the previous night.
Alexa had been there. He could remember that much. He was very drunk, but she was standing beside him. She said very little. Just that she would be there until he was finished.
Had she taken him home?
Had he phoned her from The Dubliner?
He took out his phone, while he drove, and checked his call register.
No, no calls after he left work.
How had she known he was in The Dubliner? He’d never been there in his life before.
Surely she hadn’t followed him?
‘It’s drugs,’ said Frankie Fillander as they took on the Christmas shopping traffic in Durban Road on the way back to the office.
‘Yip,’ said Liebenberg. ‘Even the time period makes sense.’ Because they both knew that was the only way you could make more than two million rand in ten months.
And South East Asia was back on the international drug dealing hit parade. Thailand – part of the so-called Golden Triangle of drugs in that region – was the Mecca of the heroin black market, but international cooperation and the attempts of the Thai government had largely forced it to a standstill, for nearly a decade.
But from around 2007 the cultivation of poppies in Myanmar began to increase. And in 2010 and 2011 they became the world’s biggest suppliers of methamphetamine – the key ingredient of tik – thanks to the inhospitability of Myanmar’s northern regions and tik’s growing popularity in Asia.
Ernst Richter’s travels followed all the main smuggling routes, more or less – Thailand, Vietnam, China and India.
‘Bad news,’ said Fillander. ‘Bones won’t find anything. It’s a cash business that. They don’t work through banks.’
It was no easy task, getting three years’ statements in printouts and digital files from Premier Bank, with a search warrant that was pretty light on detail.
Cupido, Boshigo and Ndabeni went together to the Stellenbosch branch, because the more Hawks people, the greater the pressure, the more official and serious it seemed.
First they were kept waiting to see the branch manager, because it was ‘a very difficult time of year, he’s busy with clients’. And then the manager wanted to call his head office before he handed over the Richter statements – on a Saturday morning, when the head office staff of Premier Bank were all on their weekends. Finally he reached a senior general manager on his cellphone on the golf course, and the man said he must cooperate. A whole hour later.
Then there was a problem with the system, which necessitated more calls to Johannesburg, and pushed Cupido’s patience past breaking point.
‘I’m telling you now, you are going to get those archived statements for me this morning,’ he told the bank manager, wagging a threatening finger, ‘or I will charge you and your bank with obstruction. This is a murder investigation, not some disgruntled client you’re dealing with. You don’t mess with the Hawks, pappie. So tell those people on that phone they must get their backsides in gear. Now. Or I will bring down the full force of the SAPS on you.’
They emerged from the bank with the statements – printouts and digital – only just a little before twelve, filled with renewed hope that Bones would be able to decode it all. Until Frank Fillander phoned and said it was drugs, because it was Southeast Asia. And that meant cash.
Vaughn Cupido had cut his eye teeth at the Narcotics branch. He knew that industry. He knew Fillander was right. He stood in the hot sun of Stellenbosch’s busy Plein Street, beside the Hawks car, and threw up his hands in the air. ‘Jissis, fok!’
A coloured aunty walking past, all dressed up in her Saturday best, paused to admonish him: ‘Haai nee, boetie. Your mother would cry herself to sleep if she heard you talking like that.’
69
Transcript of interview: Advocate Susan Peires with Mr Francois du Toit
Wednesday, 24 December; 1604 Huguenot Chambers, 40 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
FdT: Did you ever hear of Gary Boom?
SP: No . . .
FdT: The Bordeaux Index?
SP: No . . .
FdT: Gary Boom is a South African. He was born here, in Cape Town, in the fifties. He was a beer drinker in his younger days. Then a friend took him out for dinner one night and let him taste some good wines, and he fell in love then and there. But he could only really afford to drink fine wines when he moved to London and made a fortune in the City.
In the nineties, he grew more and more dissatisfied with the lack of transparency and the shoddy service in the London wine trade. They say he once ordered a whole case of Château Pétrus, and when they delivered it, he wasn’t at home. The guy just left it at the back door. Château Pétrus! It’s like . . . that’s thousands of pounds of wine. That was the last straw, and Boom decided to do something about it.
He went and worked for a year at a wine dealer’s to learn about the industry, and then he started his own company. The Bordeaux Index. But he approached it completely differently. The Bordeaux Index is like a stock exchange for wines. Boom decided everything should be open, transparent; everyone must be able to see what wines were selling for. And his clients could buy and resell, because after all wine is really an investment.
And it’s a good investment. The wine index has been doing better than the stock exchange since 1982, and up until the early 2000s it grew at a fairly constant rate.
But then something very big happened in the international wine market: China.
There are many theories, but it really comes down to one thing: Chinese economic growth had produced a new generation of the nouveau riche. Since 2000 they had developed an ever-increasing taste for Western luxuries, ways of flaunting their status. And red wine – expensive, good French red wine – is one of the most cultivated luxuries and status symbols you can get.
By 2011 China was the fifth largest importer of French wine. In two years, they say, it will be the biggest wine consumer in the world.
The next big thing came along in the form of the vintage years 2005, 2009 and 2010 in Bordeaux. Phenomenal years. With the Chinese splashing out, and the limited volume of wine, prices began to rise sharply. And they kept rising. In 2011 Château Lafite Rothschild sold for five hundred euro a bottle. That’s more than five thousand rand. For one bottle. In 2012 the price was around eight thousand rand per bottle. And now, this year, this December, a bottle sells for eleven thousand rand.
And most of them are bought by the Chinese. For decades London and New York were the cities that hosted the biggest wine auctions. In 2011 Hong Kong took over that title.
All of this is important to understand.
And then you must also remember, my dream was always to make a Bordelaise blend, something like the wine of Château Lafite Rothschild.
70
Benny Griessel knew he had to do a meticulous job of searching Ernst Richter’s house again. If he could find the missin
g, hidden cellphone – or anything that would make a difference in the case – he could at least begin to deserve Vaughn Cupido’s loyalty. And perhaps begin to win back his friendship.
So he worked slowly and thoroughly, despite his body’s complaints. He carefully considered every room, thought of all the hiding places that he had discovered in his life, put himself in Richter’s shoes – where would he have hidden something in this house?
He began with the garage, but there were practically no possibilities there.
He spent an hour on the kitchen. He unpacked every cupboard, looked in every pot, poked a pencil into the instant coffee tin and the sugar packet, fiddled with the De’Longhi Prima Donna coffee machine until the little front door swung open, and the water container came out.
He searched the stove, fridge and freezer, he moved the appliances away from the wall so he could look behind them. He did the same with the washing machine and dishwasher. He lay on his back under the sink and realised the Ativan was making him drowsy – he hadn’t slept very much either and the hangover was still very much with him. His head felt very thick. He swore out loud and his words echoed through the silent house.
He found nothing in the kitchen or the laundry room.
In the sitting room he gave the drinks cabinet a wide berth at first. He was busy squeezing the chair cushions one by one when his cellphone rang. Cupido.
‘Hello, Vaughn.’
‘Where are you, Benna?’
‘Richter’s house.’
‘Praise the Lord.’
Griessel said nothing.
‘Benna, can you have a look around for Richter’s passport? And drugs?’ And Cupido filled him in on the new theory about the victim’s travels through South East Asia, the two or three million rand of unexplained income.
Griessel said he would see what he could find.
‘But nothing so far?’
‘Nothing yet.’
Vaughn’s voice dropped to a whisper: ‘And are you sober, Benna?’
‘Yes.’
He spoke again normally: ‘We are at Alibi. Vusi and I are going through his office again. Bones is sitting here with the bank statements. When you are finished, come round here . . .’
To see if he was really sober, thought Griessel. He rang off and finished patting the seat cushions and checking the undersides of the chairs. He searched inside the TV cabinet, opened every computer game DVD case, looked behind the decoder and game consoles, felt for a possible false bottom in the two drawers where remote controls and manuals were stored.
Nothing.
Time to do the drinks cabinet now.
He went outside first, smoked a cigarette, looked up at the mountain behind the house.
He had a gnawing feeling that he had already missed something. A sum that didn’t add up. He must gather all his strength, concentrate, what could it be?
He didn’t know. But the feeling wouldn’t go away.
He took a deep breath, walked back in and began to search the liquor cabinet. He unpacked everything. Thirteen bottles of red wine. Five were French. Château Lafite Rothschild. Never heard of it. The rest were local. Two cylindrical tins for expensive whisky made him pause, but the bottles were still inside, the seals unbroken.
When the cupboard was empty, he inspected it slowly and thoroughly. There were no hidden cavities. With some difficulty, he lifted the cabinet and looked underneath it.
Nothing. Zilch.
He packed everything back, carefully, methodically, with trembling hands and his brain in neutral. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s rested cool and heavy in his hands. He put it back. Closed the door.
He went out to smoke another cigarette.
It felt like a victory. Even though the perspiration was clammy on his skin.
At sixteen minutes past one Cupido SMSed him. Passport found here.
By half past one Griessel was famished, and remembered he had skipped breakfast. He drove to the Engen garage on the R44, withdrew cash and bought a litre of Coke and two sandwiches. He ate one on the way back to Richter’s house, and sat at the kitchen counter to eat the other.
He thought through the search. He still had to look in the ceiling above the first floor, and comb through the garden.
He had done the bathrooms, the toilet water tanks, the bedroom, every corner of every cupboard, every single pillow, every mattress. He’d taken down every painting, hung them all back again. And found nothing.
But still he had the feeling he had missed something.
He munched on the sandwich and drank Coke straight from the bottle and tried to puzzle it out. There was something about this house that did not fit Richter.
Did he perhaps have another place?
Surely Bones would have picked up on something like that from the statements.
What was it that bothered him about the house?
He looked over the kitchen and sitting room. He thought about the bedrooms upstairs. And then the feeling slowly took on a vague shape, and he thought: Richter lived in and with and through technology. It was his life.
But here in this house there was practically none: just the two game consoles and the coffee machine. He got up, looked for the power button on the coffee machine, switched it on.
A small screen lit up. The machine went through a cycle, made noises, sprayed out a little steaming water.
It worked. There couldn’t be anything hidden in some electronic nook or cranny, as far as he knew.
He sat down again, drank more Coke.
Richter lived his life through technology.
Cellphone. More than one. And a laptop that had disappeared.
Portable technology. That you could take from work to home to continue with your life.
One cellphone gone. Laptop gone.
No, he didn’t know what it meant. And his brain was woolly from the medication, the lack of sleep, the alcohol withdrawal.
He gulped the last mouthful of Coke, got up, took a torch from his murder case and went to look for the access panel to the ceiling.
Only dust, that was all he found. And sweltering heat under the roof, so that the perspiration streamed off him. Two hot water geysers, which he inspected from top to bottom. No trace that anyone had been up there in months.
He climbed out again, walked down the stairs, outside, and started from the far end of the garden. A long, alluring blue swimming pool. He fiddled with the outflow filter and examined the Kreepy Krauly, then the whole pump and filter housing. Walked through the garden, looked at places where the ground might have been disturbed.
At half past two he took a shower in Ernst’s third bathroom to wash off the dust and sweat of the attic and the garden. He wanted to be clean, tidy and as fresh smelling as possible when he arrived at Alibi’s offices. Hopefully it would compensate for how bad he looked.
Under the running water he played the whole case through mentally. The body found beyond Blouberg, the car in the industrial area here. The forensic investigation showed that he had been strangled somewhere in the area, under a jacaranda, near a vineyard. Cupido said it looked as though Richter had made large amounts from something to do with drugs.
Drugs.
Big money. The long tentacles of the drug networks. And an industry that did not hesitate to eliminate useless links in the chain.
Richter had had a public cellphone, and one for blackmail and perhaps other monkey business.
The laptop had disappeared.
That’s all they had.
He turned off the water, dried himself, dressed. Then he locked up carefully and drove away.
In the bottleneck of the R44, on the way to the Alibi offices, his brain was in neutral.
And then it came to him, from somewhere in his subconscious, the back of his mind, from wherever.
This wasn’
t new to him. He had experienced it often. You put in the information, collected all the facts, sifted through them all and then you left it all there inside, to mix and marinate, to sink in. And sometimes, in the night, on the edge of sleep, or in the early morning, in the shower, or from the weary haze of a hangover – somewhere where your thoughts are unfocused and loose – then it jumped out.
The memory of yesterday’s hangover floated into his mind: him and Cupido, on the road from Bellville to Stellenbosch, Thursday morning. How he was trying to explain to Cupido that if Vollie Fish had also been a drinker, he wouldn’t have committed suicide. How Vaughn had just snorted, and said read the stuff on the back seat. And so Griessel had read the docket from the Stellenbosch detectives.
And it gave him the idea now.
It wasn’t the kind of idea to make him turn on the siren and speed off, or reach for his cellphone to call Vaughn. It was just a possibility, something that required attention and further inspection.
A thing that would show Cupido that his heart and mind were in his work after all. And just maybe it would produce something useful?
He didn’t drive straight over to Alibi. He headed for the SAPS Stellenbosch charge office first.
Griessel joined his colleagues in Desiree Coetzee’s office. She wasn’t there, but Vusi and Bones and Vaughn were, all of them around the desk, their eyes on Boshigo’s laptop screen.
They greeted him, but barely looked up.
‘You didn’t find anything,’ said Cupido, resigned.
‘No. You?’
‘We’ll know in fifteen minutes,’ said Bones, his hand on the computer mouse, eyes on the Excel spreadsheet.
‘Can you come with me quickly?’ Griessel asked Cupido.
Vaughn looked at him. Questioning, measuring.
