“It turns out that this file didn’t go missing after all,” I said, and placed the battered file on the table between us.
Khanyi frowned at it.
“Is that blood?” she asked. She looked back up at me and tilted her head to the side as if that way she could see me better. “And what’s that look on your face? Are you in pain?”
Shifting on my chair to reach for the file had caused the cut in my side to open up. It was bleeding again.
“No,” I said. “It’s just the look people get when they know it’s too late to get out of this dirty business.”
“Don’t do your big experience thing with me, Gabriel. You’re not in this dirty business anymore. Besides, I’ve studied all this stuff.”
That was right; she had. In the brief time that I’d worked for the Department, I’d made things up as I went along, which was how I thought everyone did it. But Khanyi had been doing the training courses. I kept forgetting that.
The waitress arrived with Khanyi’s espresso. I took another bite of the mud pie.
“The thing is,” I said. “This man Lategan has your boss on speed dial.”
“He does?” said Khanyi. She spooned three sugars into her espresso, then poured the coffee into the glass of ice, and used the spoon to stir it vigorously, making a terrific noise of clattering glass. “Why is that a problem? Perhaps they golf together over the weekend?”
“It’s more complicated than that. Lategan recognised me as a friend of Johansson, the journalist.”
“I thought you said you weren’t friends.”
“We are now,” I said. “But regardless of the status of our relationship, Lategan made a connection between us.”
“When you were asking Lategan for this file? After Father explicitly instructed you to leave it alone?”
“Who do you think it was that decided that this file should conveniently go missing?”
“You’re a conspiracy theorist, aren’t you?” said Khanyi with derision. “Convinced the world is out to get you. What on earth are you on about, Gabriel?”
“I’m on about Lategan,” I said. “And your boss. If Fehrson told him to deny access to this file, then he is protecting someone.”
“Someone,” said Khanyi scornfully. “You mean the president-elect. Are we back on that one again?”
“Maybe. I would like you to take a look at the file.”
“We’re back to your big conspiracy, are we? The president-elect is a killer, and Father is complicit in his crime by protecting him. Why don’t you just confront Father directly? You want me to hold your hand, Gabriel? Is that it?”
“I wanted you to see the file,” I said. “Before I speak to him. Then tell me I’m wrong.”
Khanyi said nothing. She blew over the top of her drink and caused a small cloud to rise from the glass. As a screen for her to hide behind it turned out to be inadequate.
“Why?” she asked.
“The first page,” I said. “The one that explains why a young black girl in the apartheid years happened to have contacts in military intelligence.”
She sipped at her iced coffee and gave me the innocent under-the-eyelashes routine. Then she sighed, placed her glass back into the saucer and opened the file. It didn’t take her long. She closed the file and looked back up at me.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
I explained the crazy idea that had come to me as the sun rose that morning. Khanyi laughed sarcastically and shook her head in dismissal of my idea.
“Come in and talk to Father tomorrow,” she said. “Ask him your questions. I’m sure he will answer them.”
“When has Father ever answered my questions?” I said and smiled to show her it was a rhetorical question. But seriously, when had he?
“I know why you came to me,” said Khanyi, her head tilted to the side, the better to see my pain.
“Why was that?”
“You want me to hold Father’s hand, don’t you? Not yours. I’m beginning to think you might have a heart after all, Gabriel.”
“You have it all wrong,” I said and took a mouthful of mud pie.
Khanyi finished her iced espresso and stared across at the Invaders from Space IX poster. Three remarkably humanoid figures were firing brightly coloured lasers at some uniformed humans. You knew the ones in uniform were the good guys because they had short-cropped hair, good looking faces, and they were all dying.
Fehrson was an angel recently descended from heaven to spread some bad news. His antique desk was arranged so that he had his back to the window, and his white hair was glowing like a halo around his head. His office was crammed so full of antiques that one could hardly move, but there was a comfortable old-world smell about it that always made me feel as if I’d stepped fifty years into the past.
“Thank you for coming in, Ben,” Fehrson said to me as if it had been his idea, and he smiled wearily.
“I spoke to you last night, Father,” Khanyi piped up to remind us all that she was doing her job.
“Of course you did, my dear, of course you did,” Fehrson said vaguely. His eyes drifted past us and alighted on something on the wall behind. He brightened perceptibly. “Did you notice something?” he asked.
I turned to look. There were seven old clocks on the wall, some of them wheezing so badly they didn't sound like they’d make it to midday.
“A new clock?” I said.
Fehrson glowed with pride. “Picked it up yesterday. Can you believe it? An original Frodsham mantle clock. I didn’t think I’d ever lay my hands on one of them. Signed dial, original Earnshaw-type spring detent escapement. It’s magnificent.”
Of all possible locations in Cape Town, Fehrson’s department had its offices one block from an antique market. Sometimes I pitied him. He was frightened to leave the building in case he saw something that he had to buy.
“Does it go?”
“Go?” Fehrson frowned at the irrelevance of the question, chose to ignore it and switched track suddenly. “Something about telephones. That’s what our Khanyisile said. Is that right?”
“It’s about a phone call that you received a couple of nights ago,” I said. “From Lategan, the man who runs the Gold Archives.”
“Oh yes?” said Fehrson vaguely. “Lategan? Do we know a Lategan?”
“We don’t,” said Khanyi.
“Well then,” Fehrson turned to me as if that concluded the matter, and a regretful smile twitched at his lips.
“I went into the Gold Archives,” I said. “A few days ago. To get hold of a file on Lindiwe Dlomo.”
“Those files went missing,” said Fehrson. “I did tell you that.”
“Except that they didn’t,” I said. I placed the file on his desk. Fehrson’s eyes flickered down to it, then back to mine with surprise. “Isn’t that why Lategan phoned you?” I asked. “To tell you that something had gone wrong with hiding the files.”
The door opened suddenly, and Belinda came in with a tray of three steaming mugs.
“I’ve given up asking Belinda to knock,” said Fehrson, perhaps grateful for the change of subject, but Belinda pretended not to hear. She handed me my mug which said on the side ‘Too dumb to work, too poor to quit’.
“I made it strong,” she said and gave us all a glare before leaving again.
“Something went wrong,” I repeated. Fehrson looked up from the white lumps floating on the top of his coffee.
“You’re telling me something went wrong,” he said. He pressed the squawker on his desk. “Belinda, come and remove this stuff immediately. It’s making me ill.” There was only silence in reply. Fehrson sighed.
“Something went wrong at the archives,” I persisted. “That’s why Lategan called you.”
Fehrson tore a small piece of paper from a report on his desk and started trying to soak up the white lumps from the top of his coffee. He said: “Attempted robbery, that’s what the man said. He said the whole file thing was a smokescreen. That the files were just
an excuse you used to get into the building. What on earth were you trying to steal from them?” He looked up at me with angry incredulity.
“Lategan called you because it was at your request that the file went missing,” I said.
Fehrson tut-tutted, but I think that was because he was discovering the science of menisci the hard way. “Nonsense,” he said. “Goodness me! What has happened to you, Gabriel? Using your connections with us to embark upon a life of crime? I had no idea that you had abandoned sanity to this degree.”
“And you requested they block access to the files because there is someone you are protecting,” I persisted.
“Sheer and utter nonsense,” said Fehrson, and then he held up his hand suddenly with an anxious stare at the wall behind me.
“Father, there is something that Gabriel has discovered,” said Khanyi. “Something that we feel should be discussed. I was hoping …” But Fehrson shushed her. He kept his hand up in the air and rose silently from his chair. He moved around the desk and approached one of the clocks behind us, silently so it wouldn’t notice. It looked like an old school clock, with a huge, cracked face, faded numbers and a weathered wooden frame. Fehrson held his ear up to the clock, and his face screwed itself up with concentration. The prognosis was obviously not good. His hand dropped to his side, and his eyes opened to contemplate the floor. Khanyi gave an irritated cough to remind him we were there.
“It stopped,” he said.
“Well, it’s not the fact that it goes that matters surely, is it?” I said. It seemed to me that a moment ago Fehrson had been scornful of the fact that I considered it important. Khanyi had asked me to keep the conversation friendly, and I was doing my best, but sometimes Fehrson could be more than a little trying. He looked at me now through fresh eyes. He’d not realised that I could be so perceptive.
“You’re right, of course, you’re right,” he said and gave a deep sigh, but he didn’t move.
“I was hoping,” said Khanyi again putting a little more force behind her delivery, “that we might discuss the background to the Lindiwe Dlomo case again. We know how she came to be introduced to the Department.”
Fehrson looked up at her. Then his gaze returned to me, and a shadow passed across the blue sky of his eyes. He returned to his seat, sat down heavily and grasped the edge of the desk as if he needed something to hold on to.
“It wasn’t the Department,” said Fehrson. “Not in those days.” But his voice had lost some of its jaunty impatience, and his eyes drooped a little as if he was ageing before us.
“Lindiwe was adopted,” I said. “You told me about Lindiwe’s domestic-worker mother who had such a kind employer. She encouraged Lindiwe to study along with her own child. That kind employer was Cindy.”
Fehrson looked up at me as if I’d thrust a knife into his chest. “Your wife, Cindy,” I added stupidly. “It was Cindy who insisted that Lindiwe do her homework at the same table as your son.”
Fehrson let go of his desk, and his shoulders sagged. A silence fell on the room. The ticking of the clocks swelled to fill it.
“What if it was?” he asked.
“You didn’t mention it,” I said.
“Why should I? Her family history wasn’t of any interest to you. You wanted to know about what she did with the service. What she did to Mbuyo. I told you.”
Fehrson’s clear blue eyes held mine, and for a moment, before his anger rushed in to cover it up, I glimpsed the pain.
“Would knowing this have changed anything?” Fehrson sat forward again and his indignation gave him renewed strength. “You came back to us flinging all kinds of accusations about, and I think we’ve been very patient. Now you have the gall to come back demanding to know details of my personal life. Let me remind you, Ben Gabriel, that you were damaged goods when I took you in. Well-nigh unemployable. And now you’re back to dig around in my personal life?”
“I think that you asked the archives to hide those files because you are protecting someone.”
“Protecting someone?” cried Fehrson. “You think I would do a single thing to protect that man Mbuyo?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “That’s the point. You would not protect the man who killed your adopted daughter.”
Fehrson looked up at me with his big blue eyes. He took a deep breath and let the rest of his anger out with a sigh. “The word ‘adopted’ makes it sound cold,” he said. “She was a part of our family, not only on paper but …” He cast about for the right word. A bony hand came up to his chest, and he held it there as if about to take an oath. “Just because some misguided friend of yours dreams up a conspiracy involving her doesn’t mean that I’m obliged to tell you about my personal life. Telling you her family history wouldn’t bring her back, would it?”
I had no answer for that. We sat in silence for a moment.
“It was not Mbuyo that you were protecting by hiding the files, was it?” I said.
Fehrson’s gaze came back to me.
“It is your daughter that you are protecting,” I said. “Lindiwe.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Fehrson. “My daughter’s been dead thirty years. Why would I protect her?”
I hesitated. He was right. This was the absurd bit, and I knew Fehrson would deny what I was about to say, but I needed to detect the truth behind the denial.
“Because she hasn’t been dead for thirty years,” I said. “Perhaps she isn’t dead at all. Is that why none of the files mention the manner of her death? Because she is still alive?”
“That’s preposterous,” said Fehrson. He turned to Khanyi. “Take this man away will you, Khanyisile? Whatever damage those special forces did to him is obviously irreparable. Take him away.”
I could see the flash of anger in Khanyi’s eyes as she stood up. I’d overstepped the mark. I also stood.
“Did Lindiwe know anyone with the clan name of Faku?” I asked, careful to pronounce it the way Fat-Boy had, not like Johansson.
Fehrson looked up at me. Behind his anger, his eyes shone with painful regret. “Her name was Mona,” he said. “A girlfriend. They used to insist I call her by the clan name so they could have a giggle at my foul mouth.”
I moved to the door where Khanyi waited to escort me out. Fehrson looked back to the clock that had caused all the trouble earlier. It was not ticking. He stood up slowly, as if every joint in his body was giving him pain. He walked up to the clock and stood before it, like he was about to engage in a conversation with it. Khanyi’s mouth opened as if she wanted to say something, but she thought better of it, and closed the door.
Twenty-One
Khanyi’s office was a floor below Fehrson’s. It provided a view over the leaking sewerage pipes of the internal courtyard, and with the window open the buzz of flies reached in with the stench.
“You’re going to need me,” said Khanyi. She opened a bottle of mineral water which was lined up with two glasses on a plastic tray on the old school desk that she used. She poured us both a glass. The tiny room was like a narrow slice of corridor that extended between the window and the door, furnished with cast-offs. One wall was lined with bookshelves of the most tedious books; it was rumoured that Khanyi read history for entertainment. Papers and reports covered the school desk, different coloured folders representing various levels of security. I noticed that, being the good girl she was, there were no red papers on her desk. I sat on the old wooden chair that faced the desk.
“Need you? For what?”
“Who is Mona, of the Faku clan?”
“I thought you would be angry with me,” I said. “It didn’t go as well as I hoped with Fehrson.”
“But you were right about Lindiwe still being alive,” said Khanyi. “Who is this Mona?”
“Johansson, the journalist, claimed his source was someone from the Faku clan.”
“That’s why you need me,” said Khanyi. “I can find her.”
“I’m not sure there’s any point. If Lindiwe is still alive, Mbuyo c
learly didn’t kill her.”
Khanyi smiled. Big even teeth, a whole lot of them, sparkling white against her dark skin.
“You won’t shake me off that easily, Gabriel. You’re not going to drop this. If there is one thing I know about you, it’s that you are no quitter. If you’re about to destroy this Department by exposing some big cover-up, I’d like to know about it.”
The skies darkened with more rain clouds as we waited for Khanyi’s contact at the Xhosa heritage museum to provide us with details of all the Monas in the Faku clan. Khanyi transformed her office into a cosy cocoon of orange light by means of desk lamps whose dusty globes provided only the illusion of warmth with the tungsten light they dribbled over her school desk.
“The iziduko,” said Khanyi, putting a soft click in place at the front of the word so it sounded as if she was tut-tutting to herself, but then turning it into a word, “are like Scottish clans,” she said, “only brown. Our clans are like an extended family. Cousins and cousins of cousins, all of whom make up our clan.”
Khanyi’s phone announced the arrival of a message. There were only three Monas. The second one Khanyi called, Mona Mxolisi of the Faku clan, remembered Lindiwe Dlomo, of course she did. They were the best of friends, weren’t they? Was this because of what she’d told that journalist? She would be happy to meet us, and she knew why we wanted to talk about her friend, even though she had been dead for so many years.
“You do?” said Khanyi with a look at me to be sure I’d heard that.
“It’s that man, isn’t it?” said Mona Mxolisi. “That man they say will be the president.”
The drive to Khayelitsha took over an hour in the heavy afternoon traffic leaving the city. We wound our way around the foot of the mountain, then turned east onto the highway. Corrugated iron shacks started appearing beside the road, and then they clustered closer and thicker so it felt as if we were driving through a forest of them. We were in my old Fiat because Khanyi was certain that if we took her new Volkswagen, it wouldn’t return with all its hubcaps. The clouds coming in off the Atlantic grew steadily darker, and they finally engulfed us as we turned off the N2 highway. My windscreen wiper was missing most of its rubber bits, and so we completed the journey in anxious silence as Khanyi pressed the floor with her brake foot every time I approached the blurry shape of another vehicle in front of us.
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