Daddy's Girl (25 page)

‘This heroin is really pure,’ he said. ‘Look at the results. It’s something new, which is probably why it was checked out. A boutique drug being given away to rich kids. The same drug – just cheaper, cut with more shit – will go to the poor kids, to bring them down from their five-day crystal meth highs.’

‘Creating your own captive market.’

‘Exactly. Marketing is about turning desire into need. With drugs, it works especially well. Check it out.’ Van Zyl jotted down an address and handed it to Riedwaan. Sunset Links, Milnerton. Cheek-by-jowl houses for the recently rich.

‘And the other two?’

Van Zyl called them up. ‘Similar cases. A couple of girls searched outside a strip of nightclubs
in Sea Point. The other, a private party in a new club owned by some Russians. They bought the land from the Council for peanuts. Meant to be upmarket. Upmarket, downmarket. It’s the same when you die of an overdose.’

‘The narcs have been busy,’ said Riedwaan.

‘They play their cards close to their chests. Maybe this is why.’ Van Zyl zoomed in on one of the pictures. ‘Isn’t this your friend?’

Riedwaan bent close to the screen, his hand going up to his swollen cheek.

‘Voëltjie Ahrend. He must be in a bit of debt after losing his stock,’ Van Zyl said. ‘Is he the one who beat you up?’

‘Associates of his,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You wear white suits like Voëltjie does and you’re going to be full of
fiemies
about getting blood on your hands.’

‘Self-appointed eagle of the 27s, currently
man-about-town. Look who he’s with. An ex-mayor and two city councillors. Must have been the opening,’ said Van Zyl, flicking through a few more photographs. ‘These are not the kind of girls you get for free.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Some new club, looks like. 101 Coronation Road.’

‘Can you test where this shit is from?’

Van Zyl adjusted the images on his screen.

‘Northern Afghanistan,
it says. The border with Russia. It flooded the Russian market in the ’80s and early ’90s. Soviet troops brought it back and made a fortune out of it while everyone else was weathering Gorbachev’s perestroika.’

‘And now?’

‘The Russians don’t need it any more,’ said Van Zyl. ‘Russia’s booming like we were a couple of years ago. They prefer cocaine.’

‘So why’s it here?’

‘Cocaine’s
a boom-time drug. Heroin’s a recession drug. Economic recession and moral bankruptcy is what we have here. Heroin’s your answer to both.’

Riedwaan put his hand in his pocket. He pulled out the coin, still in its evidence bag, and laid it on the table. Van Zyl picked it up and turned it around.

‘It was tossed at two girls who were shot in the back on Friday. Aged nine and fifteen.’

‘Shall I run a test on it for you?’

‘Can you do that?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Sure, let’s see what’s on it. Money gives away all a man’s secrets.’ He took the coin to a machine that whirred in the corner. ‘Will take me a bit of time, though.’

‘I’ll wait,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Not in here, you won’t,’ Van Zyl snorted. ‘It’s like having someone read over my shoulder with you watching me. Go
get something for me to eat, seeing as I missed my Sunday roast for you.’

‘You mean you missed three hours of your mother-in-law asking when you’re going to leave the police and get a proper job that’ll keep her daughter in the style she’d like to get accustomed to.’

Van Zyl laughed. ‘Man, I’m still hungry. There’s an Engen on the N2, with a Steers. Ribs and chips for me, and a Coke Lite.
Here’s some money.’

‘We’ll sort it out. You get me a match, your lunch is on me.’ Riedwaan picked up his keys. Riding out there would be better than sitting here waiting, watching a computer crunch numbers.

Forty minutes later, there was a reward for Riedwaan when he opened the door to Van Zyl’s office.

‘There’s a baby,’ said Van Zyl.

‘You’ve earned yourself a free lunch?’ asked
Riedwaan, putting the takeaway down on Van Zyl’s desk.

‘Positive traces. Whoever held this coin had also been handling heroin. That make any sense?’ Van Zyl pushed a printout towards Riedwaan.

Riedwaan looked at the graph that Van Zyl had produced, the man’s notes alongside it written in looped lettering, almost illegible.

‘With handwriting like this, you could have been a doctor,’
said Riedwaan giving up. ‘Is it the Afghan stuff?’

‘Give me another hour and I’d put my cock on the block for you.’ Van Zyl’s eyes were fixed on his screen. ‘For this level of certainty, I’d sacrifice yours.’

‘So, you’re pretty certain.’

‘Might not stand up in court,’ said Van Zyl, ‘but I’m sure.’

‘Why do you do this? Scientific curiosity?’

‘I suppose so. Or at least, that’s
mostly why,’ said Van Zyl. ‘I photocopied what I could find for you. Some of my case notes in our log, the printouts from the intern’s database.’

Riedwaan took the sheaf of papers from Van Zyl, the case numbers and notes in his cursive handwriting. ‘You got a record in there of who picked these up?’

‘Should be the same person who dropped them. It’ll be in the security log at the entrance
desk. Ask the guard to show you.’

The security guard in the lobby had his ear glued to a deafeningly loud soccer match on the radio.

‘Can I look through your record book?’ asked Riedwaan when he had the man’s attention. ‘I’m checking on a collection.’

The man shoved a bulging folder under the bulletproof glass. Riedwaan flicked through the tattered pages, stopping at the date jotted
down by Van Zyl. There were two full pages for a Monday two weeks before. Many of them were recognisable, and came from cops from the busiest weekend stations.

‘Can you make a copy of these?’ he asked.

‘No problem.’ The guard fed the sheets into the Xerox machine behind him.

It was impossible to read the scrawl in the badly-lit foyer, so Riedwaan went outside to decipher the entries.
He called Clare, leaving her a message to call back, and lit a cigarette. Beyond the highway, invasive aliens from Australia that had been planted a century earlier covered the white sand dunes. Roofs the colour of dried blood were visible beyond the scrub where small children wandered to play, finding a piece of wire here, a tin there, and fashioning them into toys.

Riedwaan’s phone rang.

‘Well, what’s the story about the docket numbers?’ asked Clare.

‘All heroin busts. Different places, but all the same origin. Afghanistan.’

‘Your Russians?’

‘Looks like it. Worth quite a bit of money, too,’ said Riedwaan. ‘If I can work out who buried them, then we can figure out what they have to do with Yasmin. Let’s meet in town. It’s a long story.’

‘Okay, but I’ve got to
see Pearl first.’

‘See you later, then. Long Street, that Irish pub. There’s a corner booth at the back. Meet me there.’

Pearl still wasn’t picking up her phone. Rosebank was half way to the supermarket where Pearl worked, so instead of heading for town, Clare turned down Paradise Road. She pulled into the parking lot on Main and stopped under the spill of neon at the entrance. Not many customers just before seven on a Sunday evening. Picking up a basket, she walked through the aisles. Pearl was at the bread
counter, packing the remnants of the day’s bake into plastic bags for the staff to take home.

‘Why aren’t you answering your phone?’ asked Clare.

‘I’m working, Doc,’ her eyes widening at the sight of Clare. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Two Portuguese rolls, please.’

A supervisor drifted by. Pearl, with her scars and her attitude, would always be on probation.

‘Phone has to be off
when I work, or I’ll be fired.’ She handed Clare the rolls. ‘How’s Captain Faizal?’

‘Alive,’ said Clare.

‘I heard from one of the 27s cherries. He’s very lucky,’ said Pearl. ‘Not many people survive if Voëltjie Ahrend thinks you need a lesson. He must have had a good reason to let him live.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ said Clare. ‘About the dockets.’

‘My shift finishes in ten minutes.
I’ll meet you outside.’

Clare picked up some cat food too, paid at the check-out, and returned to her car. Fifteen minutes later Pearl was at her window, a black hoodie pulled over her navy-and-red uniform.

‘I’ve got to get the train,’ said Pearl. ‘Not many on a Sunday.’

‘We can talk while I give you a lift to the station.’

Clare drove out of the parking lot and turned back into
Main Road.

‘What dockets are you talking about, Doc?’

‘The ones you dropped at my house,’ said Clare.

‘Not me, Doc,’ said Pearl. ‘I don’t go your side of the mountain. Cops stop me there too often for loitering.’

‘So who, then?’ asked Clare. ‘And why?’

‘Maybe it was a plant.’ Pearl flashed a gap-toothed smile. ‘You must watch TV. That’s what the cops do in the movies.’

‘What for?’

‘Fuck knows, Doc. Cops are like that. You try them from my side of the railway line one of these days. Even your nice Captain Faizal. There’s no law for people like me yet. What were the dockets about?’

‘Drug busts,’ said Clare.

‘Well, if you can smoke it, you can sell it on the Flats,’ said Pearl. ‘D’you find out what it’s got to do with Yasmin?’

‘There was a piece
of elastic in the envelope. Pink elastic. Hers, I imagine.’

‘Maybe,’ said Pearl. ‘But any house with a sewing machine is going to have some elastic lying around.’

‘True,’ she said, stopping at the traffic lights outside the Arderne Gardens, where they’d met the previous afternoon. A fourteen-year-old wearing a short skirt and tall boots swung on the poles of the bus shelter. Two women
in a car weren’t even worth a glance.

‘Did she know anything, the 27s girl?’

‘Not really.’ Pearl inched her window open and lit a cigarette. ‘Sorry, Doc. I’ve got to have a smoke. It’s been a long day.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Clare. ‘Seems everybody smokes except me, these days. Do you think Voëltjie Ahrend knows anything?’

‘It’s hard to say what Voeltjie knows and what he doesn’t.’

‘You heard something?’ asked Clare

‘You know, sometimes it helps being female. Makes you invisible. They just talk as if you’re not there.’

‘What’s your guess?’ asked Clare.

‘Voëltjie’s got something big meant to be going on this weekend. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t want eyes on him right now.’

‘What is it that’s going on, Pearl?’

‘Some deal of his. It’s making Voëltjie
very jittery,
op sy senuwees
.’

‘Something’s going wrong?’

‘I tried to find out. Picking up
stompies
, it sounds like there’s some big money issues. Some stock he should have is missing. Something he hasn’t been paid for that’s hurting someone higher up the chain.’

‘You don’t know what?’ asked Clare.

‘Doc, did you ever see that Maori movie,
Once were Warriors
?’

‘I did,’ said
Clare. ‘What’s it got to do with this?’

‘Keep your legs open and your mouth shut.’ Some bitch in the movie tells that to her friend who’s had the shit beaten out of her. It’s the same here. So if I come asking questions, then I’m attracting attention. And I get
moered
and where does that get Yasmin?’

‘Okay, Pearl, I get you.’

‘So I just got to listen, and wait,’ said Pearl. ‘And you
don’t need to look at me like that, Doc. You think I don’t know how fucking urgent this is?’

‘Okay,’ said Clare. ‘So there’s these drug cases and there’s some money issue. But would Yasmin solve Ahrend’s money problem?’

‘No cop’s going to have the kind of money that Voëltjie’s interested in,’ said Pearl. ‘And it doesn’t sound like she’s for sale anywhere. Voeltjie’s so the
moer
in that
I get the feeling this whole thing was freelance. Somebody new, maybe trying to make things difficult for Voëltjie. Maybe not. It sure got him in the eyes again, and I don’t think that’s what he wants. Story is, he blames the cop’s daughter for causing all the trouble.’

‘Yasmin?’

‘No, the other one. The one I told you about yesterday.’

‘Calvaleen? You saw her?’

‘She told me her
boyfriend owed someone money. Took her out, wined her, dined her, gave her some tik to smoke. Said she might as well give him what he was going to take anyway. Fucked her in the car, just like that. They call it date rape in the magazines. I read it in
Cosmo
. It really fucked her up. Maybe because it was so soon after her father was shot. Maybe because she was a virgin.’ Pearl shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘But who did the boyfriend owe money to?’

‘She didn’t say.’ Pearl blew a jet of smoke into the cold night. ‘But you don’t fuck with Voëltjie, and in any case, he’s pretty much got a monopoly on drugs and making women into whores. So must be him somewhere along the line.’

Pearl threw away her cigarette butt. ‘You see, Voëltjie learnt at the foot of the master, thanks to your Captain.
Faizal put him away, a year waiting trial. And where does he land up? With Graveyard de Wet.’ She looked away as she carried on. ‘Voëltjie came looking for me after he was released. Said he had a message from my father. It wasn’t a message I wanted to get. But I got it anyway. You’ve seen what he does.’

‘Too often,’ said Clare.

‘I hate to think of them together, the two of them. Voëltjie
and my father.’

Pearl pulled her hoodie closer to her body.

‘Is Yasmin dead?’ asked Clare.

‘I didn’t say I heard that,’ said Pearl.

‘So, you heard something?’

‘Rumours about rumours.’

‘She’s alive?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll stick with that,’ said Clare.

‘Me too,’ said Pearl. ‘You find anything out?’

Clare stopped the car opposite the entrance to the station. A couple
of cars went past, then it was quiet again.

‘You recognise this?’ She held out Professor Young’s sketch of the tattoo.

‘Expensive. Not a prison chappie, that one. Whose is it?’

‘I was hoping you might tell me,’ said Clare.

‘I’ve never seen this,’ said Pearl, shaking her head. ‘Where’s it from?’