7 Days (41 page)

‘Yes, Aunty.’

‘Rita …’

‘
Ja, mies
?’

‘Can you leave the jam for a little bit?’

‘It’s got to be
stirred
now,
mies.’

‘Aunty …’ said Sollie Barends, the urgency of the case pressing on him.

‘Shush now,
seunie
,’ said Jacky Delport, and stood up with difficulty. ‘Rita is going out for a bit, I will stir the pot.’

‘
Ja
,
mies.’

‘Shut the door.’

‘
Ja
,
mies.’

‘And don’t you stand at the door and listen.’

‘No,
mies.’

Mrs Delport went over to the stove, and stirred the boiling jam. ‘Come closer,
seunie
,’ she whispered, conspiratorially.

The sergeant crossed over to her side. ‘Lift your hand.’

‘Aunty?’

‘Lift your right hand,
seunie.’

He raised his right hand. ‘Now say after me: I swear on my mother’s life …’

‘I swear on my mother’s life …’

‘What I am going to hear now, I will never repeat.’

The cellphone signal came and went. They heard the hiss of a vehicle, and Sergeant Sollie Barends’s voice over the loudspeaker.

‘The aunty said … swear on my mother’s … with Potgieter. For years … who it is—’

‘Sollie,’ said Griessel, and got no response. ‘Sollie, can you hear me?’

‘—kan.’

‘Sollie, stop. If you can hear, stop where there is signal.’

Seconds ticked past. Only the hiss.

‘He’s gone,’ said Mbali, deflated.

‘Captain, can you hear me now?’

‘Yes,’ said Griessel. ‘We couldn’t make out what you were saying.’

‘Oh. The aunty said … Are you still there?’

‘Yes, we can hear you.’

‘Captain, the aunty made me swear on my mother’s life I wouldn’t tell. But my mother will understand, it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘What did she say, Sollie?’

‘She said she and Oom Willem Potgieter from the farm next door have shared a love for years, that’s how she describes it. And when the
mannetjie
was here about the books, that night, Oom Pottie came to check, out of jealousy, she says. Scared she would cheat on him. With a young man. Are you still there?’

‘We’re here. We’re listening.’

‘And so he peeped in the window at the
mannetjie
who was still sitting and working. And he told her he knew the man. But she thought he was talking nonsense. But he said, no, not personally, but he knew him, and he was trouble.’

‘And?’

‘Now I’m driving over to the Oom.’

‘He didn’t tell her who the man is?’

‘No, Captain …’

‘Or how he knew him?’

‘No, Captain, she said she told him he was lying, he was just jealous, she didn’t want to hear.’

Sounds of frustration through the IMC room.

‘Sollie, you’d better get moving then,’ said Griessel. ‘As quickly as you can.’

The sniper parked under the tree, against the fence along the railway line.

The branches hung low over the Audi, the foliage dense and green.

He surveyed the area. The station was only twenty metres away, but the path led people to Ford Street. Nobody would see him.

He got out, walked around to the boot. Looked around again.

No eyes or attention on him. He opened the boot, took out the plastic bucket, snapped open the lid. He bent, scooped the mud out with his hand and smeared it over the number plate. Walked around to the front number plate, repeated the process. Put the bucket away in the boot. Made sure once again that there were no people around.

He wiped his hands clean on the cloth, picked the rifle up with his
left hand, pressed the boot shut. The pain in his hand was agonising. He walked back, climbed quickly into the car. Pressed the barrel of the gun down into the foot well of the passenger seat.

Only then did he look up, at the entrance to the building.

Clean shot.

Not the Chana. Not what he had planned. The risk was higher. But it would only take one shot. And he knew the maze-like escape route off by heart.

The clock on the IMC wall ticked past six o’clock.

The team members sat ready at their computers. On the various screens, the databases waited for input: the national population register, the SAPS record centre interface, the vehicle registration system.

Cupido was talking. He was the only one. He was going on about how it would be someone from Silbersteins. He listed the reasons. They were the spider, right in the middle of this web. They connected Kotko and Sloet and Afrika and the shooter. They were in minerals and stuff. He was sure they did business up there in Vosburg too, what with the oil in the Karoo.

Nobody was listening to him.

Quarter past six.

The telephone remained silent.

Griessel dashed out to go and relieve himself. He knew the telephones would ring as soon as he left the room.

When he hurried back, at nineteen minutes past six, still nothing had happened.

At twenty-one minutes past six the phone rang in the stifling silence. ‘
Hayi
,’ Mbali said, jumping.

Griessel pressed the button.

‘Griessel.’

‘Captain, this is Sollie, Captain.’ Despite the static on the line they could hear the tone of his voice, the note of apology, as though he was conscious he was about to disappoint them all.

‘What have you got, Sollie?’

‘Captain, I don’t know if the Oom is so
lekker
in the head.’

‘How so, Sollie?’

‘Captain, he’s seventy-six, his glasses are as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle … I think he must have seen wrong, it can’t be right.’

‘Please,’ whispered Mbali.

‘What does he say, Sollie?’

‘He says it’s that
ou
who got off in the Chev case.’

‘The Chev case?’

‘No, the Chev case. The cook. The woman who cooked food.’

‘The chef?’ asked Cupido loudly, he couldn’t help it.

‘That’s right. The cheffff,’ the sergeant over-corrected. ‘What was her name?’

‘The Steyn case?’ asked Griessel. ‘Estelle Steyn?’

‘That’s him, Captain. The Oom says it’s that
mannetjie.’

Griessel’s mind wanted to discount what he’d just heard, it didn’t make any sense.

‘No, man,’ said Cupido disappointed. ‘It can’t be. He was a consultant. At KPMG.’

‘KPMG are CAs,’ said Bones. ‘Chartered accountants.’

‘Bookkeepers,’ said Mbali, and the hope and excitement penetrated her voice. ‘Auditors. What was his name?’

‘Brecht,’ said Griessel. ‘His first name?’

‘I’ll Google it quickly,’ said an IMC member.

‘He hates the police,’ said Mbali. ‘Very much.’

‘He was Eric or something,’ said Cupido, still sceptical.

‘He hates …’ said Griessel and looked at the spot where Fanie Fick usually sat. Fick the investigating officer in the Steyn case. Fick, with his hangdog tail-between-the-legs-bloodhound-eyes who was a daily reminder of the massive errors of that case.

‘Erik Brecht,’ said the one who had been Googling. ‘Erik
Samuel
Brecht.’

‘Where’s Fanie?’ asked Mbali.

‘At the Drunken Duck,’ said Griessel. Where Fick went every afternoon after work. Benny knew the place. In the past he had frequently drowned his own sorrows there.

And then he remembered the shooter’s email.
Today I will shoot a Hawk
. And it all fell into place. ‘
Jissis
!’ He sprang up and ran to the door, then realised he had no car, he had no idea where the flat-tyre
BMW was. He stopped in his tracks. ‘Vaughn,
he’s
the Hawk who’s going to be shot. Come!’

Fick drank another Klipdrift and Coke. One last one.

They hadn’t even said thank you.

He was the one who had thought further, who had looked at de Vos’s records from after his death. Noticed the calls. Looked up the number.
He’d
thought of all that.

But no ‘thank you’, no ‘good work, Fickie’, no ‘of course you must stay until we find out what’s going on’. No, just pack it up, stack it up, and bugger off. Go to bed, see you in the morning.

Because he was Fanie ‘Fucked’ Fick. No one really wanted to know him.

He hoped they didn’t find anything.

Erik Samuel Brecht checked his watch.

Just a few more minutes.

Captain Fanie Fick, the man he hated most in all the world, came out of
that
door at half past six, like clockwork. Every weekday. Half drunk. On his way home.

He pulled the rifle up with his good hand.

The pain didn’t bother him now.

He shoved the barrel out of the window.

Clean shot.

Sixty metres.

Then it would all be over.

Then he could get on with this meaningless life.

Cupido raced like a madman down Voortrekker Street, siren wailing, lights flashing. The traffic was mercifully light.

‘He missed me on purpose!’ yelled Griessel.

‘What?’

‘Last night. He missed me on purpose. So he could send the email. To me. But he didn’t mention my name to the media.’

‘Benny, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He had a plan, Vaughn. From the beginning. He had a
fokken
plan.’

He took out his Z88, held it in his hand.

Fick put his empty glass down solemnly.

Time to go home. To his wife. And his two daughters.

And the disappointment in their eyes.

Because he drank. Because he had gone rotten. Given up.

They never would understand. This albatross that was hung around his neck. He would never get rid of it as long as he was in the police. For the rest of his life, he would be the one who had fucked up the Steyn case. Put an innocent man through hell. Nobody remembered the inhuman pressure from Estelle Steyn’s parents, top management, and the media, nobody remembered the support and encouragement of the commanding officers, the forensic unit, the public prosecutors.

Get him, Fanie, get him.

And he had.

He stood up, said goodbye to the barman. Walked to the door.

He was the scapegoat, sacrificed on the altar of the SAPS.

Just as they wanted to do with Manie now. That’s why he had felt no sympathy there in the IMC room. That’s the way this miserable system worked.

Someone had to go down in flames, take the blame.

The barrel of the Sako triple-two protruded from the window, the home-made silencer extended, visible. His eye was against the scope. The ugly railed entrance to the Drunken Duck was in his sights, then the hanging sign.
OPEN. Pool. Darts. Pub. Grill
. The white neon light shone ever more brightly from inside, as the sun sank low.

Erik Brecht heard the sirens approaching.

Logic told him it couldn’t be for
him
.

The entrance darkened.

Captain Fanie Fick. With his stiff upright walk, the concentrated attempt to hide his intoxication.

He aimed the sights on Fick’s heart.

The sirens were high-pitched and shrill, just behind, where Voortrekker became Strand Weg.

It would mask the shot better.

He breathed out, pulled the trigger, his body flooding with a
sense of immense relief. The rifle bucked in his hands and Fanie Fick fell.

Tyres screeched around the corner.

Griessel saw the body lying on the concrete seam between Keast Street and the parking area, and he cursed. Cupido saw the movement, a glimpse of something beyond Francis Road, between the trees, a car behind dark foliage, on the station side. He raced over the island, the police car slamming against the kerb, bouncing and sliding across the sand and the meagre grass. He shouted, ‘There’s the fucker!’

A surreal sound, a cellphone ringing, and Griessel realised it was his. Alexa, he swore it was Alexa, fate’s crazy timing.

A flash of faster movement behind the trees, Cupido spun the steering wheel, he would have to cut him off. The back of the car skidded in the sand, the wheels losing traction, then he was on the tar, squealing tyres, shooting forward into Loumar Road. He hit the Audi, bonnet angled to bonnet, airbags exploding. They jerked forward against the seat belts, the crash echoing in their ears, tearing metal, shattering glass.

Griessel’s cellphone rang again. He tried to get out, but the airbag was pressing him tightly. He was winded, blinded. The bastard was going to get away, he had to get out. He lifted the Z88, shot a hole in the airbag, fumbled for the handle, wrenched the door open, leaped out. The Audi was right next to him. He saw Brecht still behind the wheel, his face grim. The right hand, white bandage wound around it, reached for something.

The cellphone kept ringing.

Griessel aimed his pistol. ‘Pick up the gun!’ he screamed, because he wanted to shoot the fucker. ‘Pick up the gun!’

Brecht sat transfixed.

Cupido was out, came running around the car.

‘Radio for an ambulance!’ shouted Griessel. ‘And go and help Fanie!’

The cellphone was quiet.

A train rumbled past, undisturbed.

The news of Fanie Fick’s death added a ruthlessness to the interrogation.