7 Days (17 page)

‘Her boobs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just undressed and showed you?’

‘She didn’t undress. She was just wearing a T-shirt, she … you know, loosened her bra, lifted her shirt …’

‘Just like that?’

‘We were together for two years, Captain, it’s not like we had never been naked together.’

‘But you’d broken up what … ten months before? And she comes in and shows you her boobs?’

‘You make it sound so cheap. I never said she just walked in and showed me her breasts. We sat talking for ages. Drank wine. Later I asked her why she had had it done.’

‘And then she flashed her headlights. And you just looked?’

‘I …’

‘Yes?’

Roch got up in a flowing movement, walked behind the chair. ‘I’m not sure it’s …’ He went to the desk, turned around, came and sat down again. The detective’s eyes followed him.

‘What does it matter?’

‘You told Warrant Officer Nxesi that you had practically no contact any more, Mr Roch,’ Griessel said.

‘Twice. In more than a year. What would you call it?’

‘What happened that night?’ Griessel asked.

Roch moved his hands in frustration, he gripped the arms of the chair, and said, ‘If you really must know, we had sex.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cupido, ‘that’s practically no contact.’

‘What difference does it make?’ Roch asked, for the first time truly angry. ‘Tell me, what difference does it make? We didn’t plan it, we had been together two years, we were … both very physical, we had already had a few glasses, we were two consenting adults. Tell me, what difference does it make?’

‘Let me tell you,’ Cupido leaned forward in his chair, his index finger pointed at Roch, ‘you lied to Nxesi.’

‘I didn’t lie. Never.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him you
njapsed
her? What are you hiding?’

‘What have I got to hide? I was on a fucking plane when somebody killed Hanneke. What have I got to hide?’

‘You say you were on a plane. Alone. You are going to show us your reservation, but not the actual tickets. But you made that reservation long before the time. Then you took another flight, say a day earlier, paid cash for your ticket, came home. And you took one of the big iron stakes in your shop and went knocking on her door. She knows you, so she lets you in. And you stab her. Because she wouldn’t let you
njaps
her again.’

Roch looked intently at Cupido. If this man jumped up now, Griessel thought, they were in trouble. He shifted in his chair to make his service pistol accessible.

But Egan Roch sank slowly back. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘That is such an insult,’ he said finally. ‘Do me a favour. Call the office of Air France. Ask them if they have an air hostess by the name of Danielle Fournier who was on the flight from Charles de Gaulle to O.R. Tambo on the nineteenth of January. And then go and talk to her. Ask her if she remembers me. And then come back to me with your shit.’

‘He’s lying,’ Cupido said when they got back in the car. ‘Egan. What kind of name is Egan? How do you come by a name like that? Do you look at this baby, your
laaitie
, and say, “
nooit
, this is an Egan”? Sounds like the name of an alien in a Spielberg movie. Fucking Egan. Egan the Vegan. I’m telling you, that whitey is lying.
Jissis
, that attitude … I’m a handsome bugger, I work on a wine estate, I make oak barrels, actually I’m fucking cool. Pisses me off. But what pisses me off most, is that he thinks we are fucking fools. He saw those tits, he felt those tits, he
njapsed
her, and he wanted it again. And she said to him, sorry, mister, it’s all over, you had your chance, you blew it. And then he thinks, if I can’t have it, nobody will. Those jugs must have kept him awake at night, middle of the night. So he lay there and schemed, he was anyway going to Oo-la-laa, so the
man makes a plan
. Thinks we are fucking fools, I’m telling you, the air hostess story is a lot of kak, she’s going to say “who?”. I scheme he got hold of the name, must have chatted her up when he was flying over, heard she was on the
same aeroplane on the nineteenth, one of those short blanket alibis, don’t cover the feet, now he thinks because he can cover his head … But I’m gonna nail him, pappie, I’m telling you.
Fokken
barrel maker. Egan. What kind of name is Egan anyway?’

Griessel did not entirely share Cupido’s assurance. There was too much quiet bravado in Roch’s ‘Call the office of Air France’. And Home Affairs would be able to confirm when his passport was registered again on his return. But they would have to follow up, because Cupido was right, the man hadn’t told Nxesi the whole truth.

‘We will have to get a two-oh-five,’ said Griessel. The SAPS could only request cellphone records if they had a two-zero-five subpoena. ‘See if he phoned her at work.’

‘IMC handles that whole process. And we get a search warrant. We’ve got enough. He lied to Nxesi, a month before her death he fucked her, he’s got these
moerse
big irons in his barrel shop. And I’m telling you now,
fokken
“shop”, my arse, where do they get off on that?’

‘Vaughn, you’ll have to handle it.’

‘Right. Captain Cupido will nail him.’ And after a moment to reflect. ‘Because you have other fish to fry?’

Griessel nodded. ‘Politics.’

‘Is that why you asked him about the communists?’

‘Yes.’

‘So? What’s the story?’

‘Can’t talk about it yet.’

‘Fuckin’ politics. Which reminds me: have you found out what the Flower got up to in Amsterdam?’ Cupido asked, because Mbali’s name meant ‘flower’ in Zulu.

‘No,’ said Griessel. And in that instant, inexplicably, he knew what was bothering him about the sniper’s last email.

He would have to go and tell the Flower.

Major Benedict Boshigo, member of the Statutory Crimes Group of the Hawks’ Commercial Crimes Branch in the Cape, was sitting behind his chaotic desk when Griessel entered. Boshigo’s nose was almost pressed to the printouts that covered the whole surface of the desk.

‘Hi, Bones.’

‘Hey, Benny. You got something here,
nè
,’ said Bones as he looked up. His eyes had always made Griessel feel somewhat uncomfortable, prominent and vulnerable in the very thin face, like a famine victim.

Boshigo was something of a legend, a long distance athlete, a man who had finished the Comrades seventeen times, and the Boston and New York marathons once each. Thanks to those events and a frightening training regime, he was a walking skeleton, literally skin and bone, And that was why his friends called him ‘Bones’.

‘Did you find anything?’

Bones grinned. ‘BEE deals are always full of tricks,
nè
. Always full of tricks. What we have to ask, is whether this one has any illegal tricks. So far, not, everything above board, it’s not Kebble style corporate raiding, it’s just run-of-the-mill stuff. I think it’s too early, Benny, BEE companies only start flirting with the limits of the Companies Act and the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter when the contracts are signed …’

‘Bones …’

‘I know, I know, when I worked with Vusi, he used to tell me all the time: “Speak English, Bones”.’

Griessel had already heard that one of Boshigo’s favourite sayings was ‘when I worked with Vusi’. With the Scorpions, then part of the national prosecuting authority, Bones had worked with the legendary Advocate Vusi Pikoli. The other saying that his colleagues good-naturedly teased him over was: ‘When I was studying in the States …’ Boshigo was very proud of the Bachelor’s degree in economics he had earned at Boston University’s Metropolitan College.

‘Bottom line, Benny, I looked at the detailed joint cautionary announcement of Ingcebo and Gariep. That’s the announcement they made about the whole deal, November 2009, that’s the blueprint for the transaction, how they plan to do the whole thing. A road map. I looked at where they are now, how they adhered to the plan. There’s no motive for murder. I looked at Ingcebo, at the registration documents, at the company charter, at the appointment of directors, it’s all clean. There’s nothing.’

‘And the communist?’

Again the cynical smile. ‘Benny, Benny, there are no communists in Azania any more,
nè
. Only lip service. A. T. Masondo is Ambrose
Thenjiwe Masondo. In exile till ninety-three, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Treasurer of the National Union of Mineworkers, and on the National Congress of COSATU. Mbeki made him Deputy Minister of Mining, he retired along with his boss in 2007, he became a director of Ingcebo in 2009, and managing director of Ingcebo Bauxite. Only interesting thing is …’

Boshigo shuffled through the documents until he found the right one, and held it out to Griessel.

A printout of the corporate web page. The caption read
Minister Masondo at AGM
. Underneath was a photograph of four white men, and a black man in the middle, smiling at the camera. All in suits and ties.

‘That’s Masondo, along with the directors of Gariep Minerals. Taken in 2006, when he was minister. He was the guest speaker at their AGM.’

‘What does it mean, Bones?’

‘It looks like he’s the one who brought in the Gariep deal for Ingcebo. It was his ticket for a seat on the gravy train. Problem is, that’s no crime. It’s all in the public domain.’

Griessel sighed. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We dig a little deeper,
nè
. Maybe it’s an iceberg.’

At 13.05 the sniper sat in front of his computer. The Bible website was on the screen, the one where you can type in any word, like
law
and
right
and
bribe
and war, and in seconds it gives the complete references, even the verses themselves.

He copied and pasted what he needed.

The insecurity of the previous night, the all-consuming fear, was gone. He was aware of the excitement inside him, the quiet satisfaction. But not complacency. He would guard against complacency,
that’s
where the danger lay, the risk of underestimating and making mistakes. But he could enjoy this morning, the euphoria that he was experiencing since he had seen the newspapers.

SAPS say sniper is religious extremist
, the headlines broadcast this morning.

Extremist
. He had aimed lower. He had hoped they would think he was a serious Bible Basher, but
extremist
was better. It fitted with:
According to Captain John Cloete, the SAPS media spokesman, the communication between the sniper and Hawks was ‘incoherent’ …

An incoherent extremist. A disturbed, unpredictable person who would make a stupid blunder sooner or later. That’s what they thought, and it suited him very well.

He must confirm that perception. He must lead them further from the truth.

He directed the web browser to anonimail.com and logged in. Then he copied and pasted the folder, the first of two emails that he had formulated, in controlled, suppressed self-satisfaction.

Just as Griessel stood up from his desk to go to Cupido, his cellphone rang.

FRITZ.

He sat down again and answered.

‘Hello, Fritz.’

‘Pa, Carla is so hypocritical.’

‘Fritz, I’m …’

‘Did you see her Facebook yet, Pa?’ He reconsidered: ‘OK, OK, let me rephrase that, Pa, she’s got a photo on Facebook of her new boyfriend.’

‘New boyfriend?’ He hadn’t even known she had an old boyfriend.

‘Some or other rugby dude. Muscleman.’ The last word pronounced as though it was something unmentionable. ‘Calla Etzebeth.’

‘Fritz, I …’

‘He’s got a tattoo, Pa. A
moerse
Maori type of thing on his arm. And she tells me I mustn’t get a tatt. What sort of hypocrite is that? Height of hypocrity.’

‘Hypocrisy,’ Griessel corrected him. ‘Fritz, it doesn’t matter. Just because
he
has one doesn’t mean
you
must too …’

‘I know, Pa, I’m not stupid. But it’s hypocrisy. That’s what I say.’

‘Since when is this guy her boyfriend?’

‘Seems like they met during Rag. During the Windows festival. And now Rag is history. A year before I can go and study.’

Griessel couldn’t keep up. ‘Now you want to study? I thought you just wanted to play music …’

‘Pa, it’s an option. A guy has to keep his options open. How could Maties do away with Rag?’

The telephone on his desk rang. ‘Fritz, hold on …’ He picked up. ‘Griessel.’

Brigadier Manie’s deep voice: ‘CATS are doing a briefing, Benny. Can you and your team attend?’

Cupido was busy on the phone. ‘Lady, I understand that. But I am a captain in the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation. The
Hawks. And I’m investigating a murder
…’

Griessel sat down, his mind on Carla. And Calla, the muscle-bound rugby player with the Maori tattoo.

He had a good relationship with his daughter. They talked about a lot of things. Why hadn’t she told him about Calla Etzebeth, new boyfriend? There must be a reason. Was she afraid of the muscle man? Was he on steroids, one of those that produced outbursts of rage and pimples? What had he said to her, complain to your father and I’ll smack you?

He would
bliksem
the fucker, muscles or no muscles.

‘Do you want me to call the press, lady?’ Cupido asked over the phone. ‘Tell them Air France isn’t interested in aiding the police in apprehending the cold-blooded killer of an innocent young woman?’

Did Anna know about the relationship? What did a Maori tattoo look like? What sort of young man would let that be done to him? He would have to take a look on Facebook. First have to find out how. Facebook. Twitter. Cupido calling him ‘old school’. Maybe it was true, but where did people find the time for all this stuff?

‘When will you get back to me? Every minute this killer is loose …’ said Cupido, and cast his eyes up to the heavens.

‘You broadcast yourself,’ Cupido had said. All that he could broadcast was: I am Benny Griessel. I am an alcoholic. A man who makes a fool of himself. Often. An old-school policeman who doesn’t get enough sleep.