Private Gold

Chapter 18

“Are we stuck? We can get through this — can’t we?” Isobel looked anxiously at Joey.

Joey took his foot off the gas. Buried in the sticky mud, the uselessly spinning wheels were only digging the SUV deeper. Telling himself not to panic, he looked at the clock, and as he did so, the display changed from 5:39 to 5:40 p.m.

“We may be temporarily stuck, but we’ll get out of this,” he reassured Isobel.

He opened the door, pushing tufts of wet grass aside, and squelched into the mire.

There was no way around. The mud was caused by a stream that flowed through a deep channel. This was the only crossing point. Usually the stream was no more than a trickle, but the heavy rain had changed that. So, somehow he needed to gain enough traction to get his SUV through the worst of the bog.

What to do?

His strengths lay in creative problem-solving. He’d had a reputation for being able to achieve the impossible on short notice, back in his corporate days. Now he needed to draw on his reserves of resourcefulness and wile.

He scanned the area. A few yards farther on were some splintered planks. He guessed that at some time past, somebody had tried to use them to cross the mud, but they hadn’t been long enough. They certainly wouldn’t be long enough to cover the mud now, but he could think of another way of using them.

He thought again about the inventory of essentials in the trunk of his car. A change of clothes, cable ties, duct tape, a knife, and rope — generous supplies of all of them. In this situation, duct tape would be the most useful.

“What are we doing?”

He turned to see Isobel standing behind him. The mud was oozing over her smart white sneakers, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

“We’re going to turn the car into a tank,” he told her.

“How’re we going to do that?”

Joey walked over to the planks and selected two pieces, each a little over two feet long, and a few inches wide.

“We’re going to fasten these to the tires. That way, when the wheels turn, the planks will create more surface area and bite into the mud, just as if they were the tracks on a tank. Here, you hold the plank on top of the front wheel. I’m going to tape it into place, and then we’ll do the other side.”

Joey fastened the plank to the top of the tire using the duct tape, winding it round and round, before wading to the other side. The mire was deeper here, so he used the longer plank. By that stage his fingers were covered in mud, making it difficult to wrap the tape properly.

“Let me do it.” Isobel, whose hands were drier, took over and efficiently unrolled the tape over the plank, and through the gap in the wheel.

“Thanks,” Joey said. “Great job.”

“Hey, no worries. It’s great to feel useful. Makes a change.”

She smiled at him. She had dirt smudged across her cheek, and he wanted to touch her face, to wipe it gently away.

A change from what? he wondered, deciding not to ask.

Instead, he grinned back. “Well, now for the important part — let’s see if it works.” Squelching over to the trunk, he found an old towel to clean their hands with. Nothing short of a pressure hose was going to shift the stuff layered over their shoes and ankles.

When Joey, Isobel, and a fair amount of the mud were back in the car, he started it up again and eased forward. The wheels spun... and then the planks bit in. With a heavy lurch, the car jerked forward. When the planks left the ground, the wheels continued spinning, but when the wood came round again, they made another jump forward.

“Slowly does it,” he encouraged the SUV.

“I hope the tape holds.” Isobel leaned out of the window, anxiously surveying her handiwork.

“It should.”

Carefully, Joey inched the car through the most treacherous section. There was something deeply satisfying about feeling the wooden planks dig into the ground, defying the drag and suck of the mud and propelling the car forward, even if only a short distance at a time.

Gradually, the SUV’s wheels gained purchase, and its momentum increased, powering steadily up the hill. He drove for another minute before he risked stopping.

Then he breathed a sigh of relief, because they’d done it.

“Excellent work.” He and Isobel exchanged a grimy high-five before Joey climbed out and quickly removed the planks.

Checking his phone, he saw he had three bars of signal. More than enough to lead them to Isobel’s coordinates that, according to the map, were four minutes away. They should be in time.

He guessed that if her husband’s business was road freighting, the coordinates would lead to a depot, or rendezvous point of some kind near a highway. However, they were definitely more than four minutes away from any of the main roads.

“Carry on with what you were saying,” he encouraged Isobel. “The background. You need to brief me before we arrive at wherever we’re going.”

“After the bombshell of what Samantha told me, I became an investigator, together with her, as we tried to work out what was going on. It was a massive task. First, we had to gather all the puzzle pieces. Then we had to put them in order, analyzing the information we’d obtained. Vehicle numbers, times, load weights, drivers, routes. It felt like I was actually using my brain for the first time in years.” She laughed.

“And why did these coordinates come up?”

“Because we worked out that the truck driving this route always makes unscheduled stops at that point, for two or three hours at a time. Usually, the loads are lighter after the stop, when the truck is driving south. But occasionally, going north, they’re heavier again.”

Joey nodded, wondering what the reason was for this. Smuggling goods into Johannesburg? But then why the heavier loads going north?

“Also, we discovered there’s only one driver who does this route. All the other drivers get switched between routes and shifts so that the trucks run full time. But not this one. He drives his route back and forth, back and forth, doing trips every two weeks, and the rest of the time the truck stands idle. The route goes from Zambia in the north, down through Zimbabwe, through eastern Johannesburg and into the city center, before heading back again.”

“Any idea what the truck brings down?”

“Coffee loads are quite common. The beans come from a co-op in the north of Zambia, but the rest of the time the cargo varies. Wood, maize, tobacco. All from different suppliers. But no matter what goods are transported, there’s the same discrepancy in the weights every two or three trips.”

“And your husband didn’t pick this up?” Joey asked incredulously.

“The stats weren’t easy to interpret,” she said. “We had to do a lot of research.”

“Did you try showing him the evidence?”

Isobel made a face. “Yes, I tried, but he wouldn’t hear me out. He said I was wrong, and that my calculations were incorrect. He said the weight disparities were normal, and that Brogan had told him they were due to the truck’s fuel consumption because, on this route, they loaded several containers of diesel in Zambia and used it along the way.”

Joey kept quiet, deciding it wouldn’t be prudent to offer his opinion on Dave’s response. This told him something about their marriage, though. It was clear that Isobel didn’t have a voice. Not one that her husband listened to, anyway.

“And Dave didn’t explain why the business was bleeding profits, either,” Isobel added sadly. “So Samantha and I discussed it, and I decided I was going to travel out here to see for myself. I sent her the details of my flights and where I was staying, in case anything went wrong, but she promised me she wouldn’t say a word to anyone.”

“And you’re sure you trust Samantha?” Joey asked, thinking about the hitman who’d come so close to killing Isobel.

“Oh, yes, I trust her totally,” Isobel said.

“People can sometimes give information away innocently,” Joey warned her, keeping his voice gentle. “Especially if they have no reason to be distrustful.”

Now, looking at Isobel again, he saw the beginnings of doubt in her eyes.