7 Days (32 page)

They sat down. Pruis asked for water. Mbali fetched a carafe and a glass. Pruis drank deeply, wiped the sweat from his brow and said he realised it looked as if he had been protecting Kotko. But he wanted to make it clear that before this morning, and Captain Griessel’s phone call, he hadn’t made the connection between Kotko and communism. It was twenty years since the end of communism in Russia. Twenty years. If they had asked him about a Russian it would have been a different matter … And he had never, but never, connected Kotko to Hanneke Sloet’s murder. There was just no way, no motive, that made sense to him …

‘But you knew about the bayonet?’ Mbali asked in total disbelief.

‘But Hanneke was never tortured … I swear, it never crossed my mind.’

‘
Hayi
,’ said Mbali, her disgust at the man obvious.

Du Preez pointed at the video camera beside the table. ‘We are going to record the interview, Mr Pruis.’

The lawyer nodded.

Du Preez switched on the camera, and nodded at Mbali.

She asked, ‘Did you know about Makar Kotko’s ties to senior members of the South African Police Services?’

Pruis’s eyes widened slightly. ‘No.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Yes. We knew he was connected to people in government. And the Youth League.’

‘But no SAPS people?’

‘No.’

‘You had Sloet contract Jack Fischer and Associates to investigate Kotko?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have the Fischer report?’

‘Yes. In my office.’

‘Will you make it available to us?’

He hesitated for only a moment. ‘Yes.’

‘And there is nothing in the report about a SAPS member?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Did you do any other research, or have any other research done on Kotko?’

‘We did due diligence on ZIC. His company.’

‘And you found nothing about any SAPS members?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know about the trust Kotko controls?’

‘What trust?’

‘The Isando Friendship Trust.’

Pruis shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who knew about Kotko’s interest in Sloet?’

‘How would I know how many people she told?’

‘Who at your law firm knew about it?’

‘The romantic interest?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just me. It’s not the sort of thing Hanneke or I wanted to advertise.’

‘On the eighteenth of January you and Sloet had a meeting with Kotko at your offices?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you indicate to Kotko in any way that you knew about his KGB background?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And his history with bayonets?’

‘No.’

‘Was there any way Kotko could have known about the Fischer investigation?’

‘We pay them to be discreet.’

‘Could he have known?’

‘I don’t really think so.’

‘But it’s not impossible?’

‘Nothing is impossible. It’s just very unlikely.’

‘Mr Pruis,’ said du Preez, ‘if another member of the SAPS is shot today, and we find any evidence that you have not told us the whole truth, I will make it my personal number-one priority to criminally prosecute you. In any way I can think of. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there anything else you would like to say to us?’

‘I’m sorry. But I’m telling you, there is nothing else.’

Mbali stood up. ‘We’d better share all of this with Benny,’ she said.

After take-off, Bones looked at Griessel’s hands, clamped tightly to the armrests. ‘You OK, Benny?’

‘I don’t like flying.’

‘It’s safer than driving,
nè.’

‘They fall, Bones. Every now and then.’

Boshigo laughed.

Later, as they enjoyed the light meal with the gusto of detectives who’d had no time for breakfast, he said, ‘You know I’m just window dressing on this trip? The black face to appease the gods …’

Griessel’s mouth was full of food. He could only shrug.

‘So, what do you say about all this stuff, Benny? The politics, the intimations of corruption …’

He finished chewing before answering, ‘What can you say, Bones? That’s how it is. And it’s not new. When I was with Murder and Robbery, in the old days … The things we had to do. For politics. Cover-ups. Look the other way. Those days you never saw any of it in the papers. They got away with a lot more.’

‘Nothing changes,’ said Boshigo thoughtfully.

When the air hostess had removed their empty plates and plastic cutlery, Bones said, ‘Last night, when you phoned, I was watching a
movie.
In the Shadow of the Moon
, a documentary about the astronauts who went up there. And at the end of the movie one of the astronauts, when they were in the shadow of the moon, he looked at the earth and he said, it’s so small and fragile. But everyone he knew was there,
nè
. And after they came back down, they went on this world tour, and in every land the people said to them, “We did it.” Not, “You Americans did it.” No. “We did it.” I got all emotional,
nè
. I grew up in Fort Beaufort. When I was
this
tall, my father took me outside one night, he showed me the moon. He said Benedict, people have walked on that. Why? Because they dreamed,
nè
. He said, you must go into this world,
ukuphupha
, with a dream. And you must follow that dream, until you catch it. This morning when I heard about all the shenanigans, I thought, what is happening to us? Madiba had this dream, Benny. The Big Ukuphupha for South Africa. But we are losing that dream now. I sat there last night, missing my father,
nè
, he died in two thousand and five, and I thought, why can’t we be “we” again? In this country. In the whole world. Because we are all on this one small planet.’

‘According to Kotko’s credit card, on the night of the eighteenth of January he paid for two rooms at the Southern Sun Cullinan Hotel in the Strand area,’ said Captain Philip van Wyk.

‘Two?’ asked Manie.

‘That’s right, Brigadier. We’re waiting to hear from the hotel who signed in. But there were two more payments on the card. One was for dinner, an amount of 1,232.45 rand at the Buena Vista Social Café in the Waterfront. The other one was for 3,000 rand to Midnite Moves.’

‘The escort agency?’ Cupido asked.

‘Yes,’ said van Wyk. ‘His cellphone records show that he phoned Midnite Moves at 18.32 and 18.51. I thought you would want to know that.’

‘Thanks, Philip,’ said Manie.

‘Sounds like a man setting up an alibi,’ said Cupido.

‘Exactly,’ said Brigadier Manie. ‘You’ll have to go and find out, Vaughn.’

Griessel stared out at the expanse of the Karoo shifting past below them, and he wondered why he never thought about such things? Dreams for a country. And a planet that was
one
. Deep stuff.

Like Alexa and her ‘people’s dramatic images and conduits’. Trouble was, if he wasn’t scurrying around with case files, he was thinking of his bank balance and his drinking problem and his divorce, about Carla’s boyfriend and Fritz’s tattoo. And how not to make a fool of himself. If he dreamed, it was about sex. With Alexa.

How did you get your head past all that and start worrying about the planet?

Mbali was on the point of walking out of the women’s toilet on the second floor of the DPCI building when two Hawks detectives walked past.

‘Now you know why Afrika got her to be JOC on the shooter,’ she heard one say.

‘Because of Amsterdam?’ asked the other.

‘That’s right.’

It burned through her.

In her office her phone rang. She answered. It was a member of the Hawks’ Crime Against the State group (CATS) saying there were no suspects who had worked in Table View station in September and had since been discharged. And the station commander assured them that he had not discussed General Afrika’s phone call, about releasing the two Russian citizens, with a single soul.

She did what she always did when she was upset. She got up from behind her painfully neat desk, picked up her big black handbag and slung it over her shoulder. She closed the office door behind her, walked to the lift, and took it down to the ground floor. She walked out of the front door, up Market Street, to Voortrekker. At the traffic lights she waited until she could cross, and then turned left, past the entrance to Home Affairs, where passport photo salesmen and hawkers of pens and ID-book covers hustled. Past the Tote. Today she didn’t look with repugnance at the good-for-nothings hanging about there. Past K’s Hair Design and into Catch of the Day.

The little grey-haired woman greeted her. ‘The usual?’ she asked Mbali.

‘Yes, please.’

She watched the woman scoop up the chips with a little steel shovel and slide them into the white paper bag until it was full, the salt and
vinegar sprinkled over, the whole package wrapped up in a sheet of brown paper. She put it down beside the cash register.

‘You should eet feesh.’

‘Maybe next time.’

‘One medium chips. One Coke. Twenty-six seventy-five.’

Mbali had the cash ready. She handed it over, took the chips and can of cold drink and put them carefully in her handbag. So her colleagues would not see them.

‘Thank you.’

‘See you tomorrow. Catch the bad people.’

‘Bye.’ She walked out. Only then, with her source of comfort safely in her handbag, did she think about the worry and the tension.

That was what everyone thought: John Afrika had requested that she lead the case because he thought he could manipulate her.

It was a triple blow. She wasn’t making any progress. The allocation of the case hadn’t been on merit. And Afrika had believed he could control her with his knowledge of the Amsterdam fiasco – the biggest, most horrible humiliation of her life. Which had only happened because she hadn’t wanted to let her country down.

Her discomfort and the suspicions of Sunday were now confirmed.

What was she going to do?

Back in her office she shut the door, sat down, took out the Coke and chips and put them on the desk.

She unwrapped the paper. The aroma was strong.

She pulled the first chip out with her fingers, and put it in her mouth.

She would show John Afrika. And all the others, like Vaughn Cupido and his hangers-on, the ones who gossiped and sniggered and made insinuations about her fastidiousness, her figure, her sexual orientation. Musad Manie, who did not want to send her ‘vinegar’ to Jack Fischer. She would show them, she would catch this shooter. On her own. In her own slow, thorough, by-the-book way, which she knew irritated her colleagues immensely.

She ate all the chips, solemnly, one by one. Before they got cold. She crumpled up the bag and the wrapping and went and disposed of them in the rubbish bin in the women’s toilet. Otherwise they left a smell in her office and they gossiped about that too.

She washed her hands.

She walked back, sat down at her laptop and opened a new Word file on the computer. She began to type.

She saved the document. Unlocked the drawer, and took out a chocolate bar.

At a quarter past twelve Captain Moses Zondi of the Hawks in Johannesburg was waiting for them in the arrivals hall. He was a big man with a short scar from a knife wound on his neck. He and Boshigo greeted each other like old friends.

Outside Benny lit up a cigarette.

‘That stuff will kill you,’ said the fit Boshigo.

As they walked to the car, Moses Zondi said, ‘Kotko is at his office in Sandton. We have full surveillance, and the Task Team, standing by. If he moves, we will know. We have another team outside his house in Magaliesview, near Montecasino in Fourways. The moment we have the search warrant, we’ll go in. Task team, Forensics, the works.’

‘You have the right address this time, bro’?’ Bones Boshigo asked. Nearly a year ago the Hawks in Gauteng had raided the wrong address when they had wanted to arrest the fugitive Radovan Krejcir for fraud. Since then they’d had to endure much mockery from their colleagues.

‘Not funny,’ said Zondi. Then he hit back, ‘There’s this rumour about the Slaapstad Hawks doing something really stupid in Amsterdam. What happened?’

‘The boss isn’t talking.’

‘Which reminds me, you have to call your CO, right away.’

‘Not me,’ said Boshigo. ‘Benny is running this one. I’m just the pretty black face,
nè.’

Griessel drew deeply on his cigarette, held it between his lips and took out his cellphone. He phoned Manie.

‘First the good news, Benny,’ the brigadier said. ’Skip Scheepers got the name of Jack Fischer’s source from them half an hour ago, the one who knew about Kotko and bayonets in his KGB days. The source is a member of the Executive Committee of COPE, the opposition party. In the nineties he was still with the ANC’s Intelligence wing, he got to know Kotko in Lusaka. Colonel Nyathi talked to the source, and he is prepared to go on record. I think the source is playing politics, but now it’s in our favour.

‘The second thing is, Fischer and Associates’ research says Kotko and his ZIC company made investments to launder money for his boss, Arseny Egorov. They say if we dig deep enough, there’s enough evidence to prosecute him. And the third thing: Kotko was in Cape Town on the night of Sloet’s murder. His credit card records confirm that. And we plotted his cellphone records for January. He made four calls, which all registered at the Dock Road tower at the Waterfront.’