Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

49

You know I have great respect for you, Van Heerden,” said Mat Joubert.

He didn’t reply, knowing what was coming.

“As far as I’m concerned you’re one of us. One of the best.” He sat on the edge of a living-room chair in Van Heerden’s house, spoke seriously. “But this morning, things changed. Now there are civilians in the firing line.”

Van Heerden nodded.

“We’ll have to take control, Van Heerden.”

He simply nodded. “Control” was a relative concept.

“We don’t want to exclude you. It’s Nougat’s case. You’ll work with him. Share all your information.”

“You already know everything.”

“Are you sure?” O’Grady’s voice was suspicious.

“Yes.” Except the call that was coming at two o’clock and the wallet in his pocket.

“This woman, Carolina de Jager. She was the mother?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

“I’ll take you to her.”

“And I’ll need those photographs.”

“Yes.”

O’Grady looked sharply at him, as if gauging his sincerity.

“I’m sorry, Van Heerden,” said Joubert, as if perceiving his disappointment.

“I understand,” he said.

“How do we play the media?”

Van Heerden thought for a moment. Minutes ago he had wanted to use the newspapers and television to break Brits, to use the natural aggression of the media as his battering ram to gain information about the whole cover-up. But now, after seeing the man’s struggle, he was no longer so certain.

“Say we’re cooperating. Everyone, the Defence Force as well. Say the investigation is at a sensitive stage and we must keep back certain information. But a breakthrough is imminent. Keep them hungry.”

Joubert gave a little smile. “You should come back, Van Heerden.” He rose. “Let’s go and feed the monster.”

They walked out, stood outside. The Murder and Robbery detectives led the way to the media lines, the press suddenly moving in anticipation. Then, behind it all, Van Heerden saw a new row of cars moving along the driveway. Right in front, in a white Mercedes-Benz, was Orlando Arendse.

“I wanted to warn you,” said Tiny Mpayipheli behind him. “The boss phoned to say he’s on his way.”

♦

There was something surreal about the scene. While he was briefing the repairmen, he looked out over the smallholding. In front of his mother’s house stood Orlando Arendse’s “soldiers,” all their weapons concealed under their clothing, self-conscious and uncomfortable about the proximity of the squadron of blue police uniforms that had formed a line close to his house – and on the other side stood the cream of the SANDF, the pick of the Urban Anti-Terrorist Unit. The fourth group, the soldiers of the media, was now depleted – only the patient crime reporters who had made the connection between art and Joan van Heerden remained.

Opposite, in his house, Nougat O’Grady was questioning Carolina de Jager. Behind him, in his mother’s living room, one of the main bosses of organized crime in the Western Cape was talking to Joan van Heerden about the merits of postmodern art in South Africa while in another room a doctor was treating Wilna van As for shock.

He shook his head.

This thing.

He needed silence now, thinking time. He wanted to read the letters again, comb them for information about Venter and Vergottini. He wanted everyone to go on their way. But he would have to wait.

Orlando had come back from the hospital, said Billy was in intensive care and it didn’t look good.

Tiny Mpayipheli shaking his head and saying it was just like the Anglo-Boer War: the people of color who had nothing to do with the fight were in the middle. They were the ones who died.

“Billy is a fighter. He’ll make it,” said Orlando.

He had phoned Hope before Joubert and the others had commandeered his living room. Told her the SAPS had officially taken over the case. But they didn’t know about the 14:00 call. She must take it. And contact him on Tiny’s cell phone.

“Good,” she’d said. Their conspiracy.

He had told her the one who phoned might be Venter or Vergottini.

The others were dead.

Six out of eight.

She was quiet at the other end of the line. And then she said she would phone.

What had happened, two decades ago, to make Death so frequent a visitor now?

Brigadier Walter Redelinghuys arrived, went over to Bester Brits. They talked for a long time, then walked toward him. He went to meet them, heard someone behind him. It was Orlando Arendse.

“I have a stake in this. Don’t look at me like that.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

Joubert, O’Grady, and Petersen came out of his house, saw the new grouping, also came over. The detectives’ eyes widened when they saw the crime baron.

“Orlando,” said Mat Joubert without warmth.

“Bull,” Orlando said in acknowledgment, using the nickname Joubert had earned on the Cape Flats.

“What is he doing here?” Joubert asked.

“It’s my man who’s in hospital.”

“Who are you?” Walter Redelinghuys wanted to know.

“Your worst nightmare,” said Orlando.

Mat Joubert frowned deeply. “What are you doing, Van Heerden?”

“I’m doing what I have to do.”

“I want to know how we’re going to cooperate,” said Walter Redelinghuys.

“I won’t work with him,” said Joubert, nodding in Arendse’s direction.

“Just as well, I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Orlando and his men made a valuable contribution to the investigation,” Van Heerden said uncomfortably.

“You’re one of us, Van Heerden. If you needed cover fire, we would’ve helped.”

“Without asking questions?”

And they all stood there.

“We’ve just taken over the case with Van Heerden’s support, Brigadier.”

“Nonsense,” said Redelinghuys.

Joubert ignored him. “I’ll leave ten uniforms here,” he said to Van Heerden. “You don’t need Orlando.”

He did. Because of the dollars. But he couldn’t say that.

“I want Tiny Mpayipheli.”

“He also Orlando’s?”

Van Heerden nodded.

Walter Redelinghuys: “Bester is also in.”

“No,” said Van Heerden.

“Why not?” Heavily.

“He creeps around this thing like a thief in the night. He tried to get me off the investigation, he lied like a trouper, he withholds information, putting people’s lives in danger. He contributes nothing and he bugs my phone calls. Bester is out. We’ve kept you out of the media but more than that I bloody well won’t do. He can carry on creeping if he wants to, but up to now all he’s done is cause trouble.”

“I contributed what I could.”

“Have you told Murder and Robbery about the body in Hout Bay, Brits?”

“Which body, Brits?”

“Schlebusch.”

“Jesus.” Joubert turned. “Tony, Leon, we’ve got to go.”

“There’s nothing left for you,” said Brits.

“Did you interfere with a murder scene?”

“I solved a military problem.”

For a moment Van Heerden thought Mat Joubert was going to hit the Defence Force officer, but then Joubert gave a deep sigh. “I’m getting married on Saturday, and on Sunday I’m going on a honeymoon to the Seychelles. It gives me two days in which I’ll use every possible channel to get you out of this thing, Brits…”

“I object,” said the brigadier.

“Fat lot of difference that’s going to make,” said Orlando Arendse. “You don’t know the Bull.”

Redelinghuys opened his mouth but was forestalled by a woman’s high, distraught voice.

“It’s you!”

Carolina de Jager came walking up, her finger pointing at one of them.

“It’s you,” she said, her voice breaking. She walked past them to Bester Brits, hit him on the shoulder.

“It’s you. You’re the one who took away my son. What did you do, what did you do to Rupert?” She hit the man on the chest and he simply stood there, didn’t stop her. She hammered at him, weeping, until Van Heerden reached her.

“Easy,” he said in a soft voice.

“It’s him.”

“I know.”

“He brought the news of his death.”

He took her hands away from Brits, held her against him. “I know.”

“Twenty years. And I’ll never forget his face.”

He held her.

“He was the one who took Rupert away.” She cried uncontrollably, the sorrow of a lifetime. He could do no more, heard Bester walking away without a word.

There was nothing he could say to comfort her.

♦

Shortly before one, he closed and locked the door of his house behind him, arranged a few loose papers on the table in front of him, put down a pen, and tugged the wallet out of his pocket.

Worn leather that fastened with a stud. Two hundred and fifty rand and loose change. Bank cards. ABSA MasterCard in the name of W.A. Potgieter. ABSA cash card with the same name. Receipts. All in the past week. Van Hunks Tavern, Mowbray, R65.85. The Mexican Chili, Observatory, R102.66. Vee’s Videos, Main Road, Observatory. Pick ’n Pay, Mowbray, R142.55 for groceries, a credit card slip from the Girls-to-Go Agency, Twelfth Avenue, Observatory, R600.00.

That was it.

He gave the little pile a disappointed look. It wasn’t much help. It needed work. He fetched his telephone guide, looked up the number of the ABSA Card Division, dialed. “Art World Frames and Studio, Table View, here. I have a client at the counter,” he said in a whisper, “of whom I want to make quite sure.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He wants to buy a painting for nearly a thousand rand. His card number is 5417 9113 8919 1030 in the name of W.A. Potgieter and the expiry date is 06/ 00.”

“Just a moment.”

He waited. “The card hasn’t been reported as missing, sir.”

“What is his registered address? I want to make doubly sure.”

“It’s…er…177 Wildebeest Drive, Bryanston, sir.”

“Johannesburg?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you very much,” he whispered, and put the phone down.

That didn’t help much.

But what was W.A. doing so far from home? Why was he hanging around the Cape’s southern suburbs?

He leaned back in the chair, tried to make sense of the day’s events, tried to slot the new information into what he had.

So many dead. And now only Venter and Vergottini remained.

Bester Brits had been the messenger of death then. Involved from the start. But not involved enough to know everything. Like who the protagonist behind it all was.

One of them would telephone at 14:00, one of them wanted to come in and talk, one of them said he wasn’t part of the thing.

And the other one had sent four men to shoot his mother.

What kind of man…what was so big, so important, so wicked that he needed to send four armed henchmen? Was it the money, the huge stack of American dollars? Or was it because he wanted to cover up the evil of twenty-three years ago at all costs?

Schlebusch. Why shoot your erstwhile team leader if he was on your side?

And if Schlebusch wasn’t the evil behind the whole thing, who the hell was?

The timing.

Brits had said it was because Schlebusch’s picture had been in the newspaper that he was shot. But the timing was too tight. Between five, six o’clock when Die Burger appeared and the phone call, there had been too little time to commit a murder, develop a strategy to lure him, Van Heerden, to Hout Bay, and send troops to Morning Star.

It hadn’t worked that way.

Shit, he didn’t know how this thing worked, but he had one thin string he could pull on to see what unraveled. The contents of the wallet.

He looked at his watch. 13:12. Still time to drive to Observatory before the 14:00 call came. He would have to call Tiny. He replaced the contents of the wallet, snapped it shut, put it back in his pocket. Walked to the door. The Heckler & Koch stood against the wall next to the door. He looked at it. The thing was too big. Too unwieldy. Too obvious.

He paused.

Perhaps it was time?

No.

What had Mat Joubert told Bester Brits? Unload the burden.

A moment’s doubt, the old, familiar tug in his stomach when he thought about the Z88, and then he walked to the bedroom, opened the cupboard door, shifted the sweaters in front of the small safe, turned the combination lock, and clicked it open. He took out the old police service pistol and magazine, banged the magazine into the grip – Don’t think, he didn’t want to think – pushed the gun into his belt at the back, pulled his sweater over it, walked to the front door, picked up the Heckler & Koch – he must give it back to Tiny – opened the door.

“Hallo, Zatopek,” said Kara-An Rousseau, her hand in the air, about to knock. She looked at the machine pistol. “Still love me?”