7 Days (22 page)

Milnerton was busy, just before seven. Busier than he had expected. It was vehicle traffic, he consoled himself, people hurrying home, very few pedestrians.

He parked just beyond Loxton Road, so that he had an unimpeded view of the entrance to the supermarket. He scanned the area first, made very sure that no one was paying him or his panel van any attention. He climbed over the seat, pulled the curtain down quickly. Sat still for a while. His breathing was rapid. Sweat ran down his cheek – it was the wig, and the closed windows in the Cape summer heat. He wiped his hands on the overall, took the old Nokia out of his pocket. He had memorised the number. He typed it in, and phoned.

It rang six, seven times. ‘SAPS Milnerton, can I help you?’

He let his anxiety show. ‘There is a robbery, at the Spar, Milnerton Mall, you have to come quickly!’

‘Sir, I need your name and address, please.’

‘No, no, they will shoot me, please come quickly, it’s a robbery, four men! The Spar in the Milnerton Mall, Millvale Road!’ Then he cut the call, turning the cellphone off immediately. His hands shook, so that he struggled to open the battery cover. His fingers slipped. He swore softly, and then it came off. He ripped out the battery, shoved it all back in his pocket.

Then he bent down and opened the toolbox.

It was the support of his colleagues that caught Griessel offside, that made him gulp back the emotion. He knew it was the fatigue, lack of sleep, the intense day, and the stress of the unexpected new responsibility that dragged him down. He must disguise his gratitude. He gave IMC section A of the case file so they could copy all the information, he divided the detectives into teams and allocated tasks. He noticed
their zeal, their focus and willingness. He heard their encouragement (‘We will get him, Benny’) and saw Brigadier Manie sitting off to the side and watching it all with satisfaction.

Once everyone was busy, he walked over to the commanding officer of the Hawks. ‘Brigadier, there are some of the interviews I want to do myself …’

‘Carry on, Benny, JOC leader is a mobile position, we are all only a call away. They must just keep you informed, and you keep me and Zola …’

Griessel’s cellphone rang. He answered. ‘This is Faber from the PCSI. We are at the apartment, can you come and unlock for us?’

Before he could reply, he heard Mbali’s voice from the doorway. ‘Brigadier, he’s just shot another one. And this time it’s serious.’

His mouth gaped in panic, he panted for air. His first instinct was to stamp on the accelerator, to flee, to hide away in the safety of the dark garage, but he had to suppress that desperate wish. He bellowed in frustration and fear. Everything had changed.

It wasn’t his fault.

After an eternity, they had come, three patrol vehicles with sirens and lights had raced past, tyres squealing around the corner of Loxton Road. One had screeched to a halt there, the others had raced past, turned up Millvale, right to the front of the supermarket. Less than a hundred metres from him.

Five uniforms had jumped out, weapons in hand.

He had the rifle ready, followed the nearest one through the scope. He knew he must wait, the shot was too difficult while they were running.

Then the policeman stopped, to his surprise and relief, and he hastily positioned the cross hairs on the leg. This was his chance, he squeezed the trigger. At that instant the man crouched down on his haunches, the rifle bucked, and he knew, immediately, he could see through the lens, it was through the belly, a gut shot. A cry erupted from his throat, Christ, and the panic exploded inside him. No time to
unscrew the hiking pole, he lost all self-control, throwing the rifle down on the carpet, tearing the screen up, clambering about in feverish haste. The overall hooked on something, he tugged, it ripped, he leaped over into the seat, switched the Chana on and drove, without looking. The shrill blare of a hooter just beside him, his head jerked. ‘Christ,’ aloud this time. A woman in a Toyota, her face twisted with rage, he just looked straight ahead, and drove. He knew he had made a big mistake. Two. Three.

He had killed a policeman. The Chana had attracted attention. And now the rifle lay in the back, out in the open.

In the CATS parade room Griessel listened as a visibly upset Mbali, phone to her ear, asked again and again, ‘Is the ambulance there yet?’ Then, on her way to the door, she said to Manie, ‘I’m going, Brig, I have to be there.’

Detectives on their cellphones asking stations in Bothasig, Table View and Maitland to set up roadblocks, their voices loud and urgent. Someone spoke angrily to Telkom, giving information about the telephone call that Milnerton Station had received. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t wait until tomorrow …’

He realised he could do something himself. He used the call-back function, got Faber of PCSI Forensics team on the line. ‘You will have to go to Milnerton first. There’s been another officer shot.’

‘Solomon?’

‘We think so.’

‘Do you have an address?’

He gave it. Faber said they were on their way, and rang off.

Griessel stood a little longer, looking and listening, with a vague desire to be part of
this
team right now. The adrenaline of the chase, the terrible urgency, the tangibility of a prey with a name.

And then the realisation came back, of the increased pressure on his investigation. He was the one who had to get his arse in gear. To stop Solomon from shooting again.

He only got away at a quarter past ten. When the news came that Constable Errol Matthys had died of his wounds in the Milnerton Medi-Clinic; the internal bleeding and organ damage were just too severe.
When they were sure the roadblocks were too late, the shooter had slipped through the net. When there was nothing more for him to do.

He phoned Alexa while he was driving. She answered herself. She asked, ‘How’s the case going?’ He could hear she was sober, and relief flooded over him.

‘Not too well. I’m on my way.’

‘I’ll tell Ella she can go to bed then.’

‘I’ll be there soon.’

When he stopped in front of her house twenty minutes later, the veranda light went on, she opened the door and stood waiting for him. ‘You’re tired,’ she said, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I kept a pizza warm for you. Ella ordered them.’

He saw the deep lines, her sallow skin tone and the sheen of perspiration on her face. She was having a hard time. Momentarily, he recalled her doppelgänger, the unblemished Annemarie van Eeden, and he felt an immense compassion for Alexa.

‘I am very proud of you,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.

Her shoulders sagged, as if her strength had reached its limit, and she wept. He put his arms around her. She leaned into him.

For a long time they simply stood like that, until she was calm.

He kept to his agreement dutifully. In the kitchen, while he ate the pizza and drank a glass of orange juice, he told her about his day.

She laughed at Griessel’s description of Bones Boshigo and the eccentric Len de Beer, and she shook her head with a little smile over the wealth of Henry van Eeden. When he told her about Egan Roch, she leaned forward with greater concentration and nodded as though it all made sense to her.

She carried his plate and cutlery to the sink, and sat down again. They lit cigarettes together. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it will help.’

‘Anything will help,’ he said, grateful for her effort.

‘Simóne, the singer with the photos … It seems to me there have been more of them in the past few years. Especially in Afrikaans music. It’s an interesting phenomenon. Odd, surely, because I think most of them are women. It’s as if … they are moths, Benny, in the bright light of musical limelight. They’re not attracted because they’re addicted to
singing, they’re attracted because they’re drawn to the spotlight. They want to be famous. That’s all.’

He heard the seriousness, the sincerity, behind her words, and realised she was giving him a gift, a kind of apology. She had clung on to this today, her refuge in the midst of the flood.

He wanted to touch her.

‘I don’t get the feeling that it’s about wealth,’ she said. ‘Men … to them, fame means money. And sex. But to these women it’s just the concept of being known. Of being special. I struggle to understand it. I have wondered whether it’s something to do with the Afrikaner and where we are now, in this South Africa? Afrikaner men have lost their power, their dramatic image. There’s so much indifference about their lot now, there’s only compassion for the new nation, that greater whole. Is it a woman’s way of restoring some balance? A kind of rebellion, an instinctive way of filling the vacuum? Perhaps it’s a universal phenomenon, too many people, there are no individuals or characters any more, we are all just … conduits.’

Her eyes came back to him, as though she guessed she was going off on a tangent. ‘I don’t know, Benny, these women, so terribly hungry for fame. They go to endless trouble, singing and elocution lessons, diets … Their parents spend thousands on stylists and photographers and musicians and recording studios. The girls who wait at the doors of the music promoters with a CD in their hands … They market themselves unashamedly. They have no loyalty, they are like butterflies that flit from flower to flower, in search of the strongest nectar to make the dream come true. And they all have the narcissistic streak, envy, jealousy, the big hair, the hours spent in front of the mirror, the promotional photos taken over and over again. There are the tight clothes and the cleavage, everything that screams: “Look at me, look at me, please just notice me.” What I’m trying to say is that Hanneke Sloet might have had the same desire, the same personality. The legal world was her stage, her spotlight. That is where she would have wanted to make her mark.’

He remembered his conversations today. ‘Sloet told her mother about the big money in BEE deals,’ he told Alexa. ‘She thought about starting up on her own. She told the big brain behind it all that she wanted his job.’

‘That terrible hunger,’ she said.

‘Nine years ago she had an affair with one of the senior partners. Married man, in his fifties.’

‘She probably thought he would help her get on in her career. And I think that’s the reason she broke up with her boyfriend … I don’t think he was useful to her any more.’

‘That makes sense,’ he said.

She smiled, in self-mockery. ‘You don’t need an amateur detective, do you?’

‘I need someone who understands women like her.’

‘Do you want to hear my theory?’

‘I do.’

‘Her hunger. Who did her hunger put at greatest risk?’

That was a good question. ‘Not van Eeden. He’s already rich … Do you think Egan Roch? Do you think he still had hopes?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘The air hostess … he’s moved on. I think her colleagues.
One
of her colleagues.’

At a quarter to seven he was in the parade room for the JOC meeting, fresh, having slept fairly well. And Alexa had looked so much better, the worst withdrawal symptoms behind her. She didn’t have to rehearse today. Ella was coming to her house, and they were planning on going shopping – their specific purpose disguised in a vague and all-encompassing ‘girls’ stuff’ brush-off that he was happy not to pursue.

The burden of guilt felt lighter this morning.

The team leaders didn’t have much to report – most of the information about the builders and security personnel of the apartment block would only be available during office hours. Griessel asked Cupido to unlock the crime scene for PCSI, and said that he would be in discussions with Sloet’s friends and colleagues, and that his cellphone would be on at all times.

When the meeting was over, Griessel walked with van Wyk to the IMC office.

It was a large room, seven people sat at laptops in the gloom of muted lighting. A video projector displayed a graph on the wall.

‘That is Hanneke Sloet’s provisional contact graph for January,’ said van Wyk. In the centre of the screen was a small square, marked with the initials HS. From there a delicate network of thin lines stretched to top and bottom like the facets of a diamond. ‘Up here are the numbers of people who phoned her cellphone in January – the dotted lines are SMSs – and here are those she contacted. In the course of the day we will add names to the numbers. And we will get data from the service providers of calls made from July to December last year. We put each number through the RICA database for IDs, and then again through criminal records. By tonight we should have a more complete picture. And of course we will include the latest shooter developments.’

‘There are developments?’

‘The cellphone, and the vehicle.’

‘We have a vehicle?’

‘Woman read the story in the paper this morning, said she was
driving past the scene last night, at practically the exact time, when a hippy in a white delivery van cut in front of her. Mbali is busy with her now in Milnerton.’

‘A hippy,’ said Griessel sceptically. Women were usually better eye witnesses than men, he didn’t know why, but a hippy?

‘Yes, we’ll see about that. There’s the cellphone too, at least. The shooter used it last night to phone the Milnerton station. It’s not RICAed, he made no other calls during the past month with it, and he turned it off. But the phone is pay-as-you-go, he regularly bought a top-up, the last was on Saturday February fifth, airtime of R49 bought at Clicks in Canal Walk. We’re following that up. Naturally we’ll cross reference the number with all the gun owners … At the moment we have one hundred and forty-seven people with licences for a triple-two and two-two-three rifles in the Western Cape, who also bought Remington Accutips in the past year. Three of the rifles have been stolen in the interim, so CATS have to follow up each of those cases as well. It’s going to take a long time. We haven’t linked that database with Sloet’s yet, we just haven’t got enough manpower. This afternoon perhaps … when we know more about the panel van too.’

Mbali stood with the woman on the pavement beside Koeberg Road. She had to talk loudly to make herself heard over the noise of heavy traffic.