Cobra (22 page)

She measured the angle from where it was. Perhaps it hadn’t covered the door, but it would at least have caught a great deal of the wide corridor in front of it.

‘Mbali?’ She heard a familiar voice and turned. Benny Griessel. He, Vaughn Cupido, and Lithpel had arrived. She steeled herself. Griessel was her favourite colleague. Sergeant Davids’ apparel and grooming were a bit of a scandal, but he did his job well, and he knew his place. Cupido she could not stand. But she was a professional woman. She must be able to handle everything.

She greeted all three, then went and stood in front of the door that led out of the mall’s walkway. ‘The crime scene starts here. You’ll have to put on protection.’

26

Nadia Kleinbooi walked out of class.

In the corridor a guy behind her said, ‘Do those jeans come with the cute bum, or is that an optional extra?’

She looked and laughed at him, a passing flirtation. She enjoyed the attention. She wasn’t as skinny as her brother. ‘You got the calves that they forgot to give me,’Tyrone always said.

Then she would reply, ‘And you got the looks.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your looks.
Jy’s
beautiful.’ But she knew he was the good-looking one. All her girlfriends used to hang around Uncle Solly’s house in the hope that Tyrone would be there. But Tyrone wasn’t there much. Though he was always there when she needed him.

Only once she was outside, in the weak winter sun, did she take out her cellphone.

Two SMSs beeped immediately.

You have two missed calls.

You have two voicemail messages.

At that very moment it rang, and she saw it was Tyrone’s phone. She answered.

‘Hi,’ said the guy with the sexy French voice. ‘I’m in Ryneveld Street.’

But he pronounced it ‘Rinerval’, which made her smile. ‘There’s a building here, I think it says Geology.’

‘I know where that is. I’ll be there in two minutes.’

‘
Très bien
,’ he said.‘I am at the entrance to the parking. With a silver Nissan X-Trail.’

‘OK,’ she said, and rang off.

She wondered what the Frenchman looked like. It was such a sexy, sexy accent, and his voice was nice – there was a hint of laughter in it, as though he found the whole situation very amusing.

Griessel held the cartridge in his glove-protected fingers.

‘It’s the same snake. And the same initials.’

‘OK,’ said Mbali, and gave them a short, bullet-point summary of what had happened, according to the security men.

‘The Cobra is a pickpocket now?’ Cupido asked, shaking his head scornfully.

Mbali ignored him.

‘That’s not the Cobra.’ Cupido pointed at the screen, and then at the photo on the noticeboard. ‘This guy is too dark. And that’s not racist, Mbali. That’s just a fact.’

She didn’t look at him. She told Griessel the hardest decision they had to take now, was at what stage Lithpel could sit down in front of the video console so that they could look at the material. Because the console was in the middle of the crime scene, and there was the risk that they would disturb forensic evidence if they were all standing around, among the dead. But Thick and Thin were on their way, and their procedures, the video and photography department’s recording, the pathologist’s
in-loco
examination, and the removal of the bodies could take hours. The longer they waited, the more likely it was that any possible video evidence would prove useless. While the culprit fled further afield.

‘Easy decision,’ said Cupido. ‘There’s no big mystery here. He came, he shot, he left. And we’re already in. Let’s do it.’

Mbali looked only at Griessel.

‘He’s right,’ said Griessel, ‘but we still have to be very careful not to disturb the scene.’

‘OK,’ said Mbali. ‘There’s one other problem. Because the shooting was localised, and the Sea Point SC managed everything appropriately, it has not attracted much attention yet. But when Forensics and the pathologist and the ambulances arrive, that will change. Someone needs to go and tell the shopping centre management. They will want to manage the public and media attention.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Cupido.

‘Where’s the SC?’ asked Griessel.

‘He had to leave. He has another shooting somewhere to attend to.’

‘What shooting?’ asked Griessel, heart sinking, because he didn’t believe in coincidences.

Nadia saw him standing beside the silver X-Trail. A blond man in old denims and a white T-shirt with a cellphone in his hand. Looking around, as though he was searching for someone. Brush cut, narrow hips, broad shoulders, white skin, but tanned, like a surfer. Maybe he was a surfer.

A pity he was on his way back to France . . .

But as she approached, while he looked enquiringly at her and she waved and nodded, she realised he was probably in his mid-thirties. Too old for her. Although . . .

He held the phone up and asked: ‘Nadia?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled broadly. White, even teeth.

‘How can I thank you?’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw two other men in the X-Trail.

‘It is only a pleasure.’ He held out the phone to her.

She reached him and put out her hand to take the phone from him. Then he grabbed her arm.

Two male students in a Volkswagen Citi Golf drove out of the car park beside the R. W. Wilcocks building. The passenger was busy on his cellphone. It was the driver who saw it – the white man grabbing the coloured girl. The rear door of the Nissan X-Trail opened, and he half carried, half dragged her into the vehicle.

‘What the fuck?’ he said and wound down his window.

‘What?’ asked the passenger.

‘That
ou
. . .’ He saw the X-Trail pull away calmly. He pressed the hooter of his car three times, short and urgent.

‘What is it, bro?’ asked the passenger.

The X-Trail drove on.

The driver bellowed out of the window. ‘Hey!’

‘Cool it, bro,’ said the passenger.

‘Those guys in the Nissan kidnapped that girl right now . . .’ He accelerated, and set off in pursuit of the X-Trail.

‘What girl?’

‘The one in the car.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I
am
. Call the police.’The X-Trail turned right into Crozier.

‘There’s no girl in that car . . .’

The driver hooted again, reduced his following distance so that he was on the tail of the X-Trail. ‘They’re pushing her down. I’m telling you, call the police. I
saw
it.’

The passenger wasn’t convinced. ‘Bro, we can’t just call the police. I mean . . .’

The driver swore, a staccato of reproach. He took his cellphone out of his shirt pocket. ‘I will
fokken
phone them myself . . .’

The X-Trail turned right into Andringa. They followed, the driver had to look up from the cellphone, then down again, to type in the number.

‘Watch it!’ said the passenger.

The driver looked up quickly. The X-Trail had stopped suddenly. The doors opened and two men came running back, each with a pistol in hand.

‘
Fok
, bro, reverse!’ screamed the passenger. But the driver hadn’t even stopped yet, and when he did, with a short shrill screech of tyres, it was too late. The men were right there, moving impossibly swiftly. And surely. One aimed a weapon at the front wheel. A soft explosion, then the hiss of the tyre going flat, and then they were at the doors of the Golf, jerking them open, grabbing the cellphones from their hands. Then they slammed the doors, ran back to the X-Trail, jumped in.

The X-Trail drove off.

The students sat there.

‘
Jissis
,’ said the passenger.

The driver let out a sound that was just like a tyre defl ating.

Benny Griessel didn’t use his cellphone. He phoned the Sea Point SC from a telephone beside the video console in the control centre.

The first thing that the station commander said to him was: ‘There’s a cartridge here with a snake on it.’

‘How do you know about that?’

‘I was present at Captain Kaleni’s interrogation at the V&A. She phoned someone and talked about “shell casings with the etchings of a snake” . . .’

‘OK, who is the deceased?’

‘She hasn’t been identified yet. Young coloured woman, she seems to have been alone at home. Intruder gained access via a broken window in the sitting room. He forced open the woman’s bedroom door, the lock is broken. And he shot her once, in the forehead.’

Jissis
, thought Griessel. What the fuck was going on? ‘OK,’ he said, and tried to keep the vexation out of his voice. ‘It’s definitely linked to two other murder cases. I’m sending Captain Vaughn Cupido, if you can just seal the scene so long.’

‘Already done,’ said the SC.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ said Griessel, with relief. And satisfaction, because the SSA didn’t know about
this
one yet. ‘What’s the address?’

‘Ella Street number eighteen, up in Schotsche Kloof’

Griessel rang off. And then everything happened at once.

‘Vaughn, I’ll have to send you to the Bo-Kaap,’ said Griessel.

‘It’s that girl.’ Lithpel Davids pointed a finger at the TV console where a video was being played back.

‘
My fok
,’ said Cupido.

‘That is very unprofessional language,’ said Mbali.

Griessel’s cellphone began to ring.

‘What girl?’ asked Mbali.

‘The Facebook girl. Alvarez,’ said Lithpel.

They climbed slowly and carefully over the bodies of the security men to reach the TV screen.

‘What Facebook girl?’ asked Mbali.

‘It’s her,’ said Cupido.

Griessel’s cellphone kept ringing, but his eyes were glued to the screen. Lillian Alvarez stood with her face to the camera. She stared at a hairpin in the hands of the pickpocket. Knippies’s face was turned to her, his hand touching her handbag.

‘What Facebook girl?’ asked Mbali again.

From outside came the voice of Arnold, the short, fat Forensics guy: ‘Hallooo? Anybody home?’

Griessel answered his phone: ‘Hello?’

‘You had better hurry,’ said the woman’s voice, the one who called herself Joni Mitchell. ‘SSA are on the way. They are going to take over the scene.’

‘The Waterfront scene?’

‘Yes.’

Then she rang off.

‘He stole something from Alvarez,’ said Cupido.

‘
Liewe ffff
. . .’ said Jimmy, the skinny Forensics detective, when he saw the five lifeless bodies. But he never completed the word because Captain Kaleni shot him a withering look.

27

‘Out,’ said Benny Griessel to Thick and Thin.

‘Don’t you think it’s you who should leave?’ said Jimmy. ‘You are occupying the whole—’

‘Out!’ said Griessel more sharply.

This was very unlike the Griessel they knew. They just stood there.

‘Jimmy, please, go and wait out in the corridor. And hurry up.’

They heard the urgency in Griessel’s voice, and responded.

‘Is somebody going to tell me about this Alvarez girl?’ asked Mbali.

‘Later, Mbali,’ said Griessel. ‘We have very little time. The SSA are on their way . . .’

‘Shit,’ said Cupido.

‘The SSA?’ asked Mbali in disbelief. ‘The State Security Agency?’

‘Please, everybody. We’ll talk later. Right now we need to look at that footage. Quickly, Lithpel, play it back.’

Tyrone walked up and down the Company Gardens path. Once again Nadia had forgotten to turn her phone back on. Not for the first time.

He phoned again.

It rang. For a long time.

His heart sank more. He was going to get voicemail again.

Then she answered. ‘Hello?’ and he could hear in that single word that something was wrong. The cops had already phoned her.

‘Nadia, it’s me. I can explain, doesn’t matter what they told you, it’s not true . . .’ He heard something on the line, a hiss, as if Nadia were in a car.

‘They’ve got me,
boetie
. . .’ There was fear in her voice, fear as he had never heard it, and his gut contracted.

‘The cops?’

‘Is this Tyrone?’ A man’s voice. But it wasn’t a cop accent.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Tyrone, I have Nadia, and you have something I want. If you give it to me, we will let her go. If you don’t, I will shoot her, right between the eyes. Do you understand this?’