Thirteen Hours

Chapter 35

John Afrika had ranted and raved over the telephone: 'You phone the father in America, Benny, you phone him, fuck knows I can't do it, how the hell, I'm on my way, jissis, Benny, how the fuck did it happen?' He slammed the phone down and Griessel was left standing with his cell phone in his hand, wondering whether Jack Fischer and Associates had a job for an alcoholic who was stuffing up two cases in a single day. He felt like smashing his phone against the wall. But he had just hung his head and stared at the floor, thinking what was the use of being sober, he might as well get drunk. Then Vusi ran in, breathless, and said, 'Benny, it was the delivery van that nearly hit us - we have an eyewitness.'

So now they were on the pavement with a woman, dark glasses, early thirties, a little pale and shy. At first glance she was quite ordinary, unimpressive, until she began to talk in a soft, melodious voice that seemed to come from the depths of her heart. She said her name was Evelyn Marais and she had seen everything.

She had come out of Carlucci's on the way to her car across the street. She pointed to a red Toyota Tazz, about ten years old. She had heard shots and had stopped in the middle of the street. She spoke calmly and clearly, without haste, but she was obviously not entirely comfortable with all the attention. 'The first shots didn't even sound like gunshots, more like firecrackers; only later did I realise what they were. Then I looked. There were four of them carrying a girl out of there,' she pointed an unvarnished nail at the corner of Belmont. 'They—'

'The girl, how were they carrying her?'

'Two had her by the shoulders, two carried her legs here behind the knee.'

'Could you tell if she was resisting?'

'No, it looked like she was ... I think there was blood on her hands, I thought maybe she was hurt and they were helping her to the van, an ambulance ...'

'Was it an ambulance?'

'No. I just assumed. For a moment. Logical, in a way, before the other shots went off. They were much louder. But I couldn't see who was shooting, they were in front of the van. I only saw them when they came running around it. One man, the driver, had a pistol with a silencer in his hand.' This was the moment that Griessel began to suspect she was not just your average eyewitness.

'A pistol with a silencer?'

'Yes.'

'Ma'am, what work do you do?'

'I'm a researcher. For a film company. And it's Miss, actually.'

'Can you describe the men?'

'They were young, in their twenties, I'd say. Handsome boys. That's why I assumed at first that they were helping her. Three were white, one was black. I didn't notice their hair colour, sorry ... But they ... three of them were in jeans and Tshirts, no, one was wearing a golf shirt, light green, almost lemon, it looked quite good with the jeans. Oh, and the other one was in brown chinos and a white shirt and collar with some writing over the pocket. It was too far to see ...' Griessel and Ndabeni looked at her in amazement.

'What?' she said uncomfortably, shifting her dark glasses up onto the top of her head and looking back at Griessel. He saw brilliant blue eyes, the shade of a tropical sea. The sight of them changed her whole face from pale to lovely, from ordinary to extraordinary.

'You are most observant, Miss.'

She shrugged shyly. 'It's just what I saw.'

'The girl, Miss, it's very important, you said she had blood on her hands?'

'Yes, her hand, wait a bit, her right hand and her arm up to here,' she indicated her elbow.

'Nowhere else?'

'No.' 'But she wasn't struggling?'

'No.'

'Did it look as though she was ... unconscious?'

'I ... perhaps. No. I don't know. But she wasn't struggling.'

'And the panel van?' Vusi asked. 'You don't know what make itwas?'

'A Peugeot. But I must admit, I didn't know that. Only when it drove off did I see the logo. The one with the little lion, you know, rearing up ...'

Griessel just nodded. Fuck it, he wouldn't have made the lion and the Peugeot connection. He looked at her eyes and thought, this woman is a genius.

'A silver Peugeot, but quite dirty,' she said. 'I will have to check what model it was ...' Before Griessel could say that wasn't necessary, she added: 'And the registration number if you want it, of course.'

'You got the registration number?' Griessel was astonished.

'CA four-oh-nine, then a little hyphen,' and she drew a line horizontally in the air with her finger, 'and then three-four-one.'

The detectives plucked out their cell phones simultaneously. 'Miss,' said Benny Griessel, 'would you like to come and work for us?'

'In any case,' Willie Mouton said, standing up and starting to wheel his chair back towards the door on its silent wheels. 'Adam phoned me last night, some time after nine, to tell me about Ivan Nell's stories.'

'And?' Fransman Dekker asked.

'We laughed about it. Adam said, let him bring his auditor, let him run up some overheads himself.'

'That's it?'

'Adam said he was going home, because Alexandra wasn't well, he was worried about her. And that's where Josh Geyser was waiting for him. I don't care what he's telling you. I'm not a detective or anything, but you can see in that man's eyes he is capable of anything.'

'Vusi, we're working against the clock now,' Benny Griessel told him at the garden gate. 'I've sent for Mat Joubert . ..' He noticed Ndabeni's expression. 'I know, but fuck the Commissioner, we have to get the girl. I want you to follow up on the Peugeot. It might be a false number plate, but let's try. I don't care what you have to do, there can't be hundreds of them in Cape Town. Forget about the scene, forget everything, the panel van is your baby.'

Vusi nodded enthusiastically, fired up by Griessel's urgency.

'Mat Joubert can deal with the scene, I'm going to get her, Vusi. All I want to do now is find her. I just want to make a quick pass through the house, see if there is anything significant, then I am going to try and work out how they knew she was here. Some way or another ... I don't know how, I want to find out who else she phoned ...'

'Fine, Benny.'

'Thanks, Vusi.' He turned and walked into the house, trying to reconstruct the event quickly. In the hallway they had smashed the leaded glass of the front door, opened it and gained entry. They shot the old man here. On the left was a giant study, once a sitting room perhaps. The large work table was covered with countless documents and a telephone. To one side a chair was overturned. Had she phoned from here?

He walked down the passage, looking into all the bedrooms. Nothing of note. On the way back he went into the guest bathroom. It smelled faintly of recent use. He traced a finger along the bath. It was wet. He sniffed. Soap. That meant nothing. He examined the inside surface of the bath thoroughly. Hair in the plug, two long, dark strands. Rachel's? He went out. She had taken a bath. She had time for that. That meant she trusted the old man a great deal. He must find out his name.

He crossed the hall again and went into the kitchen. Everything was immaculate. He spotted the open back door, ran out, careful to watch where he stepped. He saw blood outside, a long trail over a paved pathway and part of the lawn. Fear gripped his heart. He squatted down reluctantly to examine the splashes.

God, had they cut her throat? The thought was a blade in his guts.

No, not possible. He had asked Evelyn Marais if the blood was only on her hands.

Yes, her hand, her right hand and her arm up to here.

Nowhere else?

No.

But the blood pattern outside told a different story.

Hoping she hadn't left yet, he jumped up and ran out through the back gate, left in Belmont to where the growing crowd stood behind the yellow tape on the corner, under the watchful eyes of policemen. His eyes searched out the Tazz. There it was still, the woman seated inside, looking as though she was about to drive off. 'Sorry, sorry,' he said to get through the crowd. The Tazz pulled away, but he was just in time to slap the side of the car. She looked up in fright, saw him and stopped. 'Miss,' he gasped, out of breath, standing at her door while she wound down the window, lifted her dark glasses and rested her right arm on the door. 'Excuse me,' he said.

'It's OK.' The blue eyes watched expectantly.

'The girl ...' He struggled to catch his breath. '... are you absolutely sure about the blood ... just on her arm?'

She turned off the engine and shut her eyes. She sat like that for about half a minute. Griessel curbed his enormous impatience, wanting her to be sure.

The eyes opened. 'Yes,' she nodded decisively.

'There was no blood anywhere else?'

She shook her head from side to side, absolutely certain. 'No, just the arm.'

'Not on her head or neck?'

'Definitely not.'

'Thank God for that,' said Benny. He picked up the hand resting on the open window frame and kissed the back of it. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you, thank you,' and he turned and began to jog back.

It wasn't Rachel Anderson's blood.

Fransman Dekker's first instinct was to blame Mouton and Steenkamp for his frustration, for the anger that was bottled upinside him. He stood behind the closed door of Adam Barnard's office and looked up at the framed photographs. He felt like grabbing one, throwing it on the ground and jumping on it. It was the way Mouton had said Josh Geyser did it, as though Dekker were an idiot. It was the way Steenkamp leaned back in his chair, smug, windgat whitey ...

He glared at Adam Barnard in one photo. Big man full of confidence. The smile was the same in every photo, the way he looked at the camera, his body angled slightly, hands around the shoulders or waists of the artists. He was the very image of success, Mr Beloved, not an enemy in the world.

Impossible.

And that, Dekker knew, was the source of his frustration: he was in a dead-end street. The whole investigation was slowly but surely sinking into a swamp of, fuck it, improbabilities. Nothing made sense and the whiteys were laughing at him.

And where was Mbali Kaleni?

He walked around the desk, sat down and put his elbows on the desk, head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He would have to think, he would have to suppress this anger and think it all through from the beginning, because none of the pieces fitted together. Josh and Melinda Geyser. Both were lying. Or neither. The video? The blackmailer? Where was Mbali? She had found something and was following it up, she was going to solve the case and he would look like a fool. He took his phone out of his pocket and called her number. It rang and rang and rang.

She would see who was calling, she was ignoring him on purpose. His temper flared up again, like a wildfire.

Wait, wait, wait. Calm down.

He put his head in his hands again and closed his eyes. Fuck knew, he would have to pull finger to crack this one.

Concentrate: Adam Barnard was carried into his house, up the stairs to his drunken wife.

That meant someone who knew his wife passed out, blind drunk, every night. That meant someone who was strong enough to carry the dead weight of Adam Barnard. Someone who knew

Barnard had a pistol in the house - and knew where to find it. Forget Bloemfontein and the blackmailer, there was no way. The knowledge of the pistol was key.

Who would know?

Josh Geyser? Perhaps. Maybe Melinda too. Knowledge. Motive. Strength.

But Benny Griessel had said it wasn't Josh. Griessel was nobody's fool, even though they said he used to drink like a fish. Was Griessel mistaken, how much of the new Captain's attention was on the churchyard murder? He was only human after all ... Knowledge of the pistol. How many people would know that? Alexa Barnard, another one pronounced innocent by Griessel, an alcoholic woman. Was Benny being objective? As a sister-in-drink, had she pulled the wool over his eyes? Did she have help? A lover?

Who else? If you took into account that seventy or eighty per cent of crimes were committed by someone in the immediate family.

Then it struck him - the maid. Whining Sylvia Buys, only concerned about where she would find another job. Sylvia, who was so terribly fond of Adam Barnard, so quick to lay the blame on Alexandra. He must not overlook her. Motive? Anything. Had Adam caught her stealing? Confronted her?

How well had the Geysers known Barnard? Would they have visited the house?

Would one of them have known where to find the pistol? He would have to find out. He would have to phone Griessel first, tell him he had doubts about Alexandra, about the Geysers. Benny wouldn't like it.

Where was Mbali?

Someone knocked.

'Yes?'

Natasha Abader put her head around the door. 'There is a policeman at the door. He says he wants to show you where they found a shoe.'

He jumped up. 'Thank you,' he said and walked over to her. 'I want to talk to you again, please.'

She didn't look too ecstatic about that.