7 Days (35 page)

‘You’ll have to spell that for me.’

‘F.R.I.K.K.I.E. is his name. D.E. V.O.S,’ he spelled it out, slowly and carefully.

‘Frikkie de Vos?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is he?’

‘My accountant.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘You can’t. He’s dead.’

Mbali Googled ‘De Vos and Partners’. She found a single web page, of amateurish design, offering accounting services at
Competitive prices!!!!!!!!

She wondered why people felt they had to use more than one exclamation mark.

She noted the same cellphone and fax number that she had obtained from the friendly man at SARS. This time she had a name. Frikkie de Vos.

She called the cellphone number.

‘The number you have dialled does not exist.’

She tried again. With the same result.

Luck was just not on her side. She got up. Corporate Crime would have to tell her how she could track down an accountant.

‘You must phone the Camel urgently,’ said Bones outside, in the blinding Sandton sunlight.

Griessel phoned at one minute past two.

Brigadier Manie’s voice was urgent. ‘Vaughn Cupido says it looks like Kotko didn’t do it. The hotel video shows he was in his room with two escorts the whole night.’

‘
Jissis
,’ said Griessel. After all that trouble. And he had been so bloody certain.

‘I know. But it doesn’t mean he’s completely innocent. Remember the two henchmen that John Afrika got off the assault charges at Table View?’

‘Yes, Brigadier.’

‘Vaughn says it could have been them. Fedor Vazov and Lev Grigoryev. They were in the same hotel as Kotko, and went out in the early evening with him, but only came back after twelve. Table View still had their address details on hand. The two are up there, not far from where you are. The task team has gone to get them. You’ll have to tackle them too, Benny.’

‘Right, Brigadier.’ He hoped Manie wouldn’t hear his faked enthusiasm.

‘I’m sorry, Benny.’

‘Brigadier, Kotko says there’s only one man who knew about the payments from the Isando Trust. An accountant by the name of Frikkie de Vos. Trouble is de Vos blew his brains out with a shotgun on the fifteenth of January. Apparently he was a heavy gambler, and lost just about everything that Saturday night. Can we check the records to see if he’s telling the truth?’

‘I’ll tell Mbali straight away.’

‘What are we going to do about the media, Brigadier?’

‘Benny, I wish I could tell you. I don’t see any light yet. But we still have about forty minutes. Let’s see where we stand then.’

Griessel went and had a smoke in the corner of the police station yard, on his own. So that the bottled-up cursing could be released. ‘F-f-f-f-u-u-u-ck,’ he said, the fricative stretched out and filled with emotion. Then he said it again and again, staccato swearing bubbling out with all his frustration.

His rage at the shooter was renewed, and fierce.

If Kotko had an alibi, if it wasn’t him, why had the shooter sent the photo? Why was he messing with them? Why was he pushing them around?

For the fun of it. To see the police run around in circles, like headless chickens – what sort of sick bastard would do that? All the trouble to fly up here, all the suspense, all the rules broken to interrogate the Russian, all the risks taken by Manie and Nyathi and the Gauteng Hawks, and all for nothing?

Jissis
, what sort of world was this?

And the craving for the bottle stirred in him. His defence mechanism for over a decade. When nothing made sense, drink. It didn’t help to understand, but at least it made you feel less bad about all the shit.

He angrily flicked the cigarette butt through the high wire fence, and watched it land in a small explosion of sparks on the tarred road.

Then he turned and walked back to Bones.

The head of the Hawks’ Corporate Crimes group put the financial statements of the ZIC consultants company in front of Brigadier Manie and said, ‘He’s a money launderer. There’s no doubt about it. The procedure is the same every time: he buys shares in a South African mining company with dirty money, and channels the returns and dividends back to Arseny Egorov.’

‘Did you talk to a prosecutor?’

‘There wasn’t time.’

‘Is there enough, Willie? To get a conviction?’

‘It seems like this guy thought no one would look too closely, Brigadier. Very careless, probably because of all his political clout. We’ve got the goods on him, there’s no doubt.’

‘With his connections and all?’

‘Once we put the evidence on the table, his connections will evaporate like mist in the sunshine.’

Mbali had a premonition.

She walked into the IMC at the Hawks, found a weary Fanie Fick behind his computer and put a note down in front of him. ‘You should get some sleep,’ she said.

‘I’m just happy to be part of a big case again,’ he said, looking at her with his hangdog eyes, and smiling.

‘I want to see if Hanneke Sloet dialled this number.’

‘One second,’ said Fick, and typed the number into the database. Mbali felt sorry for him. She had followed the Steyn case in detail when she was still at the Bellville detective branch. She knew she could easily have made the same mistakes.

The progress bar ran across the screen.

A comment appeared.

‘Yes,’ said Fick, somewhat surprised. ‘On Wednesday the twelfth January.’

‘Six days before she was killed,’ said Mbali. And she knew why IMC hadn’t followed up on it. De Vos was an accountant. They thought it was merely a work-related call to a company that was connected to the empowerment transaction.

‘Whose number is it?’ Fick asked.

‘An accountant,’ she said. ‘Frikkie de Vos. The problem is, he’s dead.’

Before he could ask why that was a problem, she had walked out.

At a quarter past two the task team brought in Fedor Vazov and Lev Grigoryev – two men in their forties. Griessel noted the tough leanness, the physical self-confidence, the lack of anxiety, the stoic patience. Old soldiers, he suspected.

They had identical tattoos in the angle between thumb and index finger. It looked like a C and a six.

He questioned them in a small office in the police station proper, because there were no more cells available. Displaying no emotion, with quiet, calm voices and broken English they answered his questions. They were the bodyguards of ‘Mister’ Kotko. Mister Kotko
needed bodyguards because this was a very dangerous country. No, they didn’t accompany Mister Kotko to his office every day because it was safe there. It was only when he went to other places.

Yes, they remembered the visit to Cape Town on the eighteenth of January. They stayed in the same hotel as Mister Kotko. They spent the day in the reception room of a legal firm, while Mister Kotko was in meetings. That evening they had dinner at a restaurant with Mister Kotko and his two lady friends. Then Mister Kotko and the friends went back to the hotel. And they went to the Jack of Diamonds, the strip joint. They couldn’t remember what street it was in, but it was about two blocks from the hotel. About nine o’clock. They couldn’t remember the exact time when they went back to the hotel.

‘So Cape Town is not such a dangerous place?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You let Mister Kotko go back to the hotel on his own.’

‘He said we can go.’

They didn’t know whether anyone would remember them at the Jack of Diamonds. Maybe the girl who had entertained them to a lap dance in a private room. Cathy. Or Cindy. Or something. Maybe the barman, because they had ordered quite a lot. And left a big tip.

No, they wouldn’t object to having photos taken of them to show to the people at the Jack of Diamonds. They had nothing to hide.

No, they didn’t know the name Hanneke Sloet.

At twenty to three Griessel knew he would get nothing more out of them.

Even worse was his suspicion that they were telling the truth.

For the first time Musad Manie sounded angry. ‘Why, Benny? If it wasn’t Kotko, and it wasn’t his henchmen, why is the shooter bothered with them?’

‘Brigadier, I may be wrong. But even if it were these two, we have nothing to connect them to the case. And I strongly doubt that Hanneke Sloet would have opened the door to them.’

‘Hell, Benny, I can’t understand this one. I just don’t understand it. We’re not a bunch of palookas. Someone is messing with our heads, and I don’t know who it is any more. Vaughn says there are video cameras in the hotel lifts, at the stairs, in the lobby, and the exit. There’s
no way Kotko could have left his room without being recorded. And we don’t have anything else.’

‘No, Brigadier,’ he assented.

Manie sighed. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Benny. Cloete is here with me. We’re going to tell the media that Kotko and his two pals were arrested today for money laundering. And that we are also investigating him for corruption, and organised crime activities, and possible involvement in the murder of Hanneke Sloet. Maybe the shooter will swallow that. Then I’ll phone the National Commissioner, and we’ll wait for the bombs to drop.’

‘Yes, Brigadier.’

‘So go and arrest the lot of them, and tell our Gauteng colleagues to keep them behind lock and key until we are sure. Then you and Bones come home. As soon as you can get on a flight. So we can look at this thing all over again.’

The sniper directed his web browser to News24.com for the eleventh time since three o’clock.

At the top he saw the headline:
Russian arrested for money laundering – questioned about Sloet case
.

His heart rate increased.

He clicked on the report, and read.

Johannesburg. The Hawks are questioning a Russian businessman, Makar Kotko (53), about his alleged ties to the slain Cape Town lawyer Hanneke Sloet, after arresting him on charges of money laundering and corruption in Sandton this afternoon
.

The Sloet case, which has baffled police for more than a month, took a sensational turn this past week, when a lone gunman began shooting members of the SAPS, claiming in emails to the media that authorities know who the murderer is
.

According to Gauteng Hawks spokesperson Sipho Ngwema, Mr Kotko is the managing director of ZIC, a Russian investment consulting service with offices in Sandton
.

The sniper checked the right-hand lower corner of his computer screen. He saw it was two minutes past four.

He thought he would feel relief. Happiness. They hadn’t arrested him for the Sloet murder. They had missed the cut-off time, hadn’t kept their part of the ultimatum.

That meant they were protecting Kotko. The whole corrupt gang. He was right. Captain Benny Griessel was working for John Afrika. They were all in it together.

But all he felt was renewed tension.

He would have to finish what he had begun.

Tonight he would wait for Benny Griessel.

At a quarter past four, after she had received the information about the suicide from the Bothasig station, Captain Mbali drove to the house of the late auditor Frikkie de Vos.

It was a large, neglected place in the quiet Trafford Close.

There was a Pam Golding Properties
For Sale
sign on the front lawn next to the driveway.

She rang the doorbell.

Silence at first, then footsteps. Someone peered through the spyhole. ‘I don’t want to buy anything.’ A woman’s voice.

‘South Africa Police Services. I need to talk to you about Mr Frikkie de Vos.’

‘I don’t speak English much.’

‘My Afrikaans is bad. I am police. I have to talk to you about Frederik de Vos.’

‘Show me your card.’

Mbali held the card up to the spyhole.

The door opened.

‘Frikkie is dead,’ the woman said. ‘You people should know that.’

She wasn’t a pretty woman. And she was crying.

They sat in the sitting room, a fussy space with too many little tables and wall hangings. ‘If the house doesn’t sell within six months, the bank will take it back. Then I lose everything. And do you know how many offers there have been? Not one. Not a single one. The market is dead. And look at this place. How do I fix it up? There’s no money in the bank … there’s no pension, no savings, nothing. Frikkie gambled. Casinos, horses, dogs, rugby, everything. If he
could
bet, he
did.’ She smelled faintly of alcohol, her hair was thinning and unkempt, her mouth small and grim. There were food stains on the faded, light blue short-sleeved sweater. Her lower lip quivered, she wiped her nose with a tissue and said, ‘The worst of all is, I miss him so much.’