Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3)

by David Hickson

  “Breytenbach will send reinforcements. We need to get out of here now.”

  Robyn lifted her tog-bag and hesitated for just a moment, as if to pay her last respects to the two dead bodies we were leaving behind. Then we left the warehouse and walked up the deserted quay through the rain.

  When we reached the rental, I drove us out of the docks and into the city, where I parked beside the strip of park called the Company Gardens. I was confident nobody had followed us, but we sat on a bench where I could watch the car and we took a moment to gather ourselves. I pulled the business card I had found on the big man out of my pocket and turned it over.

  “Dark Bizness,” I read aloud.

  “Bizness with an I - Z?” asked Robyn.

  “That’s what it says, b-i-z-ness.”

  “They’re a cosmetics company,” said Robyn. “Make cosmetics for dark skins. They’re big.”

  “So what was a man from a cosmetics company doing with Breytenbach’s goons in our warehouse?”

  “He was pretending to be Fat-Boy.”

  “But why?”

  “Call the colonel,” suggested Robyn.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” said Chandler on speaker-phone after I had given him a summary of the afternoon’s events. “Breytenbach might as well have been handing out pamphlets announcing he’s lost eighty million US dollars. That man was just the first entry in Breytenbach’s treasure hunt.”

  “Let’s hope he’s also the last,” said Robyn.

  “Call it in,” said Chandler.

  “Call it in how?” I asked.

  “You tell me, Angel,” said Chandler. “You’re the one with all the contacts.”

  “There will be repercussions.”

  “We’ll face those. Right now the two of you need to fade from view. Lie low and wait for my call. I’ll arrange somewhere for us to stay. Then we’ll discuss your repercussions.”

  “The Angel Gabriel,” proclaimed Captain Andile Dlamini, when he heard my voice. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You have?”

  “Our girl Khanyi has five numbers for you, but she tells me none of them are working anymore.”

  “This is my new one,” I said. “This one works.”

  Andile Dlamini was a wiry homicide detective I had worked with when the Department had dragged me in on a recent job. He was a dedicated policeman with integrity, as far as I could tell, a rare commodity in a country plagued with corruption and bursting at the seams with lawlessness. He seemed as good a person as any to call about the unfortunate dead bodies in our warehouse.

  “What was the cause of death?” he asked, once I had explained the reason for my call.

  “Gunshot wounds.”

  “Oh, Freddy,” he said and I could hear the sucking of his breath and crackling of the tobacco, which meant that he still hadn’t kicked the habit. When I had first introduced myself to Andile, it had been with the name on one of the Department’s fake ID cards, because of my futile efforts to escape the attention of Breytenbach. Freddy Moss had been the name, and Andile still liked to use it occasionally, perhaps to highlight the inauspicious start to our relationship. “You didn’t fire the gun that caused the gunshot wounds, did you, Freddy?”

  “Not all of them.”

  “And you just happened to find these bodies? At the docks, is that what you said?”

  “The docks,” I confirmed, and gave him the location of the warehouse.

  “Any witnesses who could confirm that you discovered the bodies after the occurrence of the gunshot wounds and not before them?”

  “Unfortunately not,” I said. “I was alone. And if you could consider this an anonymous tip-off, that would be for the best.”

  Andile sighed and sucked on his cigarette again.

  “That’s why you called me, is it? To avoid the call tracing.”

  “I knew you would help.”

  “What are you getting yourself into, Gabriel?”

  “Did you say you’ve been looking for me?”

  Andile sighed again. “There was a judge who climbed into his swimming pool recently and didn’t climb out again.”

  “A judge?”

  “Judge Rousseau.” He sucked on the cigarette again.

  “A swimming accident?”

  Andile blew smoke into the microphone.

  “You could say that.”

  “What does it have to do with me?”

  “I need you to come in and see me.”

  “Could we meet somewhere?” I said.

  Andile laughed at my tone of voice. “Let’s meet on neutral territory,” he suggested. “We’ll meet at your old offices.”

  “The Department?” I didn’t bother concealing my surprise. “What do they have to do with it?”

  “Your previous employers have been helpful in my efforts to find you, Gabriel. They tell me they’re expecting you to pay them a visit on other business. We could kill two birds with one stone.”

  “I see,” I said, although I saw very little. There was a moment of silence. “How’s the cracking of the nuts going?” I asked.

  “None of your business.”

  “I’ve always thought you and Khanyi would be a good match,” I said. “I’m on your side, you know that.”

  Andile and Khanyi had met on the recent job I’d done for the Department. He had been the police liaison, and the mutual attraction between them had been obvious from their first meeting. Although Andile had once described Khanyi to me as ‘a tough nut to crack’. Speaking to either of them about the other was always a good way of changing the subject.

  “I’ll set it up for nine tomorrow morning,” said Andile, with another sigh. “Get there on time and we’ll keep your tip-off anonymous, how about that?”

  “Sounds like a deal,” I said.

  “But try not to make a habit out of finding bodies with gunshot wounds, Gabriel. Khanyi warned me about you.”

  I laughed at his joke, but it occurred to me after he ended the call how ironic it was that Khanyi should have warned him about me. Most of the things I had done that Khanyi knew anything about had been done on her behalf. The person he should have been warned about was her.

  Thirteen

  When death came to Justice Rousseau, it did not come gently, according to the newspaper report I read that evening.

  His life took some time to extinguish. The judge struggled against the knife used to cut his throat, which only brought him more pain, and deepened the incision that brought about his demise. He trailed blood across the soft carpet of the entertainment room where we had held our conversation. He trailed blood across the marble-tiled surround of his infinity pool and the immense splash that he made as he hit the water woke a slumbering girl beside the pool. The reporter described how she had watched in horror as he floated belly down and his blood spread like a blossoming flower about his naked body.

  Is it possible that Justice Rousseau saw his life flash before him in those last moments as he gazed into the depths of the pool? According to the newspaper article, it had been a life that started with much promise, fuelled by a passion for justice. But I supposed his unusual appetites eventually got the better of him, although there was no mention of this in the newspapers.

  I wondered whether it was the young, passionate and committed man who reached up to him from the depths of that pool to take him down. Or was it the depraved, sexual predator with an obsession for young girls who embraced him in those last few moments?

  When the witness beside the pool had found sufficient clothing, had called security, had packed her minimal belongings into an overnight bag, and made a quick getaway without leaving her name, the police were called. But by then the knife – and the person who had wielded it – were both long gone. Security believed there had been a group of young girls enjoying a party with the judge, but the police were struggling to identify any of the guests and were calling for anyone who had information to come forward.

  The murder of Justice Francois
Rousseau was condemned as a heinous crime, and his good works were lauded. No mention was made of his unacceptable appetites, and certainly no mention was made of a secret club whose list of founding members included a Frank Rose.

  But I knew that Frank Rose was only the first of three founding members of that club. The first to be listed in the club’s official documentation, and – apparently – the first of them to die.

  I arrived early the next morning at Greenmarket Square, the old cobbled heart of Cape Town on the edge of which the Department had its offices. I had dodged three roadblocks that had sprung up around the docks since dawn and I felt good enough about that to treat myself to a coffee at Giuseppe’s. Greenmarket Square hosts a flea market during the day which acts like a spiderweb, trapping tourists like flies on their way in and out of the five-star hotel on the western side of the square. I was in time this morning to watch the stall holders setting out their wares, their casual banter providing a comfortable white-noise background to my anxious thoughts as I wondered what the Department had to do with Justice Rousseau, and why Andile had insisted on meeting in their offices.

  I spotted Khanyi approaching me across the square as I was firing up my third cigarette. It would have been hard not to spot her because the leopard print outfit she was wearing had been made from a rare purple leopard, and it hadn’t been a very big one so there was not very much of Khanyi’s outfit. Khanyi was a Zulu from up north, and she had inherited all the best bits of her warrior ancestors, particularly her well-proportioned build, long muscular legs, strong mid-section and impressive upper layer. Her dramatic sense of dress extended beyond her choice of colour and paucity of material, to include tempting buttons in all the places they seemed most likely to pop.

  “You still indulging in that disgusting habit?” Khanyi asked, as she sat down on the other side of my hubcap-sized table.

  “Your police captain hasn’t kicked it,” I said, and Khanyi’s already dark face darkened further.

  “He’s not my police captain,” she said.

  “Although I think he wants to be,” I said.

  Giuseppe had also spotted Khanyi’s approach, and felt the need to express his Mediterranean appreciation of her beauty, which he did by pressing her against him tightly enough to see if any the buttons would pop. They didn’t, and so Khanyi ordered a milky coffee, refolded her long legs and studied me with evident disappointment.

  “I can’t believe you’re getting yourself into trouble again, Gabriel,” she said. “This is the third time this winter.”

  “It’s only the second time. That Minhoop affair was not trouble of my making. And as I remember it, you asked for my help.”

  Khanyi sighed.

  “And we all know how that ended,” she said.

  We did. It had ended badly when an Afrikaans socialite walked onto a rugby field and detonated the explosives attached to his body in front of a television audience of millions. The fact he had spent the last half hour of his life in my company was not looked upon favourably by the Department.

  Khanyi was blowing into the foam on her cappuccino and looking at me as if expecting me to say something. I realised she had spoken again.

  “What was that?”

  “Father said you shouldn’t expect us to protect you.”

  “Protect me? Of course I don’t expect that. Protect me from what?”

  “The police, Captain Dlamini, all this trouble you’re in.”

  I was about to protest again that I wasn’t in any trouble when it occurred to me why we were meeting at the Department offices. Andile Dlamini was throwing me a lifeline in the form of my erstwhile employers. He didn’t want to have a casual conversation about a judge who had failed to climb out of his swimming pool, but had accusations to level, and he expected my previous employers to defend me. He was likely to be disappointed. We all were.

  “You can tell Fehrson I don’t expect any protection,” I said.

  “You can tell him yourself,” said Khanyi. “Captain Dlamini is already upstairs. We can go up just as soon as you’ve put that cigarette out.”

  “Oh good,” I said, and made the cigarette last as long as I could.

  “You broke into his house and threatened him,” complained Andile Dlamini, after we’d all greeted each other with brisk squeezes of the hand – no smiles because of the circumstances – and had taken our seats at the vast oak table in the meeting room they called the Attic.

  “I paid him a visit,” I said, “I certainly didn’t break anything.”

  “He lodged a formal complaint. The Gauteng office has a charge sheet against you.”

  Andile looked perpetually tired. His long, thin face stretched taut with weariness. He had told me he had given up smoking when we worked together after the Minhoop massacre, but that hadn’t applied to smoking other people’s cigarettes, and as he bared his teeth at me now, I confirmed it was something he was still struggling with. His teeth were tinged with yellow and his breath was mint, with an undercurrent of burnt tobacco. I took the baring of the teeth as a friendly gesture and notched up my innocent confusion.

  “There must have been a misunderstanding,” I said.

  “You didn’t threaten him?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You realise this is a murder investigation, Gabriel?” Andile’s eyes rested wearily on mine. He hadn’t mentioned the dead bodies the police had cleared from the warehouse the previous evening – with a bit of luck we could avoid that unfortunate mess altogether.

  “Of course I do,” I said, and tried a reassuring smile, but it didn’t have the intended effect. Andile sighed, and turned to Fehrson, who was sitting at the head of the table like an umpire at a tennis match.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Fehrson with an encouraging smile, “you should tell us what you were doing there? In the judge’s house.”

  Fehrson had started his work with the security services back in the dark ages of the apartheid years when his masters had discovered his extraordinary ability to hold two opposing views and argue each with equal passion. It had been a useful skill for a pastor fighting in the army of the world’s greatest pariah, but his masters realised it was also a skill that could be put to use in the shadowy world of intelligence. And Fehrson was living testament to the truth of that, as one of very few bastions of the apartheid era who had survived the transition to the new government.

  “Of course,” I said, and spread my reassuring smile around a bit. “I went to see Justice Rousseau about a woman.”

  “I knew it,” said Khanyi quietly, her eyes on the table. “There’s always a woman.”

  Fehrson gave her a warning glance and turned back to me.

  “Captain Dlamini would appreciate your cooperation with this, young man,” he said in his fake private school accent that matched the tweed suit he was wearing as if he was about to depart for a hunting weekend. He was in fact an Afrikaans man from a small rural town, but had spent most of his life behaving as an English gentleman – behaviour I was convinced was a clever ploy for surviving the transition from the apartheid government to the democratically elected government almost thirty years ago. But Khanyi insisted I was being cynical whenever I suggested this and told me that his continued employment in state security was because he was such a good man. He was looking at me now like the paragon of all good men, his pale blue eyes kind and innocent, his white hair in quaint disarray.

  “Captain Dlamini has been asked by his colleagues in Gauteng to produce a report regarding your visit to Justice Rousseau.”

  “I see,” I said, and looked at Captain Dlamini, who was not looking enthusiastic about it.

  “That is why we are all here. So if you could provide him with as much information as possible,” said Fehrson, “we can all get on with more important things.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Truthful information,” said Fehrson, in case I had not understood that aspect of his suggestion.

  “Of course,” I said. “Fire awa
y with your questions, Captain.”

  I kept my eyes on Andile, keen to start imparting the truth. He looked back at me with his weary eyes and reached into his crumpled jacket as if to retrieve a pack of cigarettes, but then withdrew his hand empty. It was a habit of his, and I had often wondered whether he had a pack in his pocket and liked to touch it for reassurance, or whether the pocket was empty and the action was unconscious.

  “Who was the woman?” asked Andile.

  “She was young – little more than a girl. She’d been given a short jail sentence, but after her release from jail she disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? In what way did she disappear?”

  “Her father filed a missing person report, but nothing came of it. They didn’t find her.”

  “She served a jail sentence for what?”

  “Solicitation. She had taken to working on the streets.”

  “Prostitution,” said Khanyi, who had started her career with the Department as a secretarial assistant and despite her meteoric rise to power still had the minute-taker’s habit of finding the most succinct word to ensure we were all talking about the same thing.

  “Prostitution,” I agreed.

  “What would that have had to do with Justice Rousseau?” asked Andile. “He was a High Court judge. He wouldn’t have been dealing with a young girl on the streets.”

  I wanted to suggest that Andile might be surprised by the extent to which Justice Rousseau had dealt with young girls on and off the streets, but I said: “He was sitting on the JSC, so I guess he was a judge of judges, wasn’t he?”

  “JSC?” asked Khanyi.

  “Judicial Service Commission,” explained Andile. “They investigate complaints against judicial officers.” He turned back to me. “I didn’t know Rousseau was sitting on the JSC. You would think it would have come up in the investigation. Are you sure about that?”

  “Not sure,” I admitted. “But I do know there was a complaint levelled at the judge who had sentenced the girl, and I was led to believe that Justice Rousseau was dealing with that complaint.”