Daddy's Girl (36 page)

A waitress moved out of the shadows and filled the glasses with vodka.

‘Everything’s in place, Mr Gorky.’ Voëltjie Ahrend knocked back his second shot and held out his glass for a third.

‘To new markets.’ Gorky raised
his glass.

The fingers on his left hand were stumps, casualties of rocket fire during the dying days of the Russian-Afghan war. He had hidden in a remote village near the Russian border, where the poppies grew thickly in the fields in the summer. It had been the start of a cooperation that had put food on the table of the villagers and had proved profitable for Gorky.

‘Three years,’ said
Voëltjie Ahrend, glancing at his perspiring lawyer, at the men Gorky had brought along to work out the details of the deal, and faced him again. ‘Camps Bay to Milnerton. Fixed rent, the money paid to the Americans and the 28s. No more fighting – just wastes money. You do the wholesale, I do the retail. We split the profit.’

He licked his lips. This was just the start.

Gorky held up his
hand. ‘And these difficulties with the police raids? The start-up capital we loaned you? It is cleared?’

‘Just the final details need to be sorted out.’ Voëltjie Ahrend held out his glass again.

‘Of course,’ Gorky shrugged. ‘There are different ways of making problems go away here in South Africa. Scandal is bad for business, especially for friends who might be in government. And I can
see that there are many areas for expansion here. The country is wide open for investment.’

He shifted in his chair and looked hard at Voëltjie Ahrend. ‘We expect a clean operation. No more shooting, no more arrests, no more under-age girls. From now on, clean as your mother’s kitchen. We get everything we need in place, we win all the battles. Then there’s no need to fight a war.’

‘Voëltjie
Ahrend will see that things go smooth.’

‘And the police? The Gang Unit?’ Gorky got up and walked over to Ahrend. ‘Valentin says not all are on your payroll.’

‘Fighting over small change,’ said Voëltjie, ‘like mongrels over a bone. It means nothing.’

‘The beautiful woman?’ Gorky was standing right next to him.

‘What woman?’

‘Small, blonde, tough. Nice tits. Asking questions
on Saturday night. About a little girl who’s missing.’

‘I’ll fix her. Easy.’

‘Good, little bird. Enjoy. Is your job.’ The Russian draped his arm over Voëltjie’s shoulders. ‘You make me happy, I make you rich. You make me unhappy…’ Gorky smiled.

‘You’ll be happy, Mr Gorky. The 27s are men of their word.’

Ahrend’s phone buzzed.

Gorky’s eyes were fixed on him. He was adept at
reading the fear in others and turning it to his advantage.

‘You have more business.’ Gorky returned to his seat. ‘A busy man. I like that. I hope it is your connection on the phone?’

‘It’s the one I put on crutches,’ Ahrend smiled, reading the message on his phone. ‘He’s returning the stock.’

‘You think like I do, little bird,’ said the Russian.

‘Give Voëltjie half an hour.’

‘You will join us to celebrate when you are finished?’

‘Vodka for you. Champagne for Voëltjie,’ he said, dusting an invisible speck of dirt from his suit. He held his hand up, stopping the two bodyguards who stepped forward as he about to leave.

‘Voëltjie won’t hold you up,’ he said. ‘Please, gentlemen. Continue.’

Graveyard de Wet was in the shadows when Voëltjie Ahrend reappeared
in the parking lot and walked over to the empty Maserati. The bouncer watched from the door; behind him, one of Gorky’s heavies. Voëltjie took out his phone. It cast a blue glow up at his face as he made a call. The Russian lost interest. Went back inside.

‘Donovan,’ called Voëltjie, trying his driver’s number again. But Donovan wasn’t answering. ‘I’m going to fucking kill you,’ said Voëltjie
to the darkness. He put his phone back in his pocket and moved towards the copse of trees, following the instructions he’d received on his phone.

De Wet was behind him, a shadow moving among other shadows.

Voëltjie Ahrend looked back once, then moved into the darkness of the tangled undergrowth beyond the car park. De Wet followed until Voëltjie came to an open field near the highway,
hanging back while he crossed it, waiting to see who else was there.

No one.

He watched Voëltjie duck into a hole in the dilapidated building half-hidden in the trees. A light shone through the grimy glass for a moment, then vanished. He relaxed. In the dark, in the passages twisting through the old building, Voëltjie wouldn’t stand a chance.

He skirted the open field, a predator closing
in on his prey

He stood at the entrance Voeltjie had used. Listened. Went in.

Latisha van Rensburg woke up to the phone ringing in her living room. She eased herself away from Calvaleen and hurried barefoot through the cold house.

‘Hello?’ Latisha pressed the phone to her ear, breath held as she waited for a response. ‘Who is this?’

‘Tell me, Mrs van Rensburg. Is your daughter home?’

A sharp gasp. Then Latisha murmured, ‘Why don’t you just leave us alone,
Dr Hart?’

‘Look, please, I need you to find something for me.’ The voice was low, coaxing her as if she were a frightened animal. ‘Now, while I’m on the phone, please. Look on the table where you’re standing. On top of that pile of folders. Those dockets. Tell me what’s there.’

Latisha stood rooted to the spot.

‘Do it now, Latisha, or a little girl is going to die.’

Clare struggled
to hear Latisha’s low monotone as she read the numbers off the files. The numbers Calvaleen had dropped through her letter box – the case numbers she’d found on her father’s desk. The phone was slippery in Clare’s hand when she disconnected.

She pushed open the door. Riedwaan’s path was marked in the thick dust on the floor. There was no other sign of him.

She had to get hold of Phiri.
Clare keyed in a message, her fingers clumsy. Then she heard something move ahead of her in the dark. Willing the message to go through, she shoved the phone back into her pocket.

Moving soundlessly forward, she pulled the door closed behind her before following Riedwaan’s tracks. She heard voices ahead of her.

She listened.

Outside, the muffled din of traffic. Inside, nothing. Then
a scraping sound. Behind her.

Once again, silence.

She felt her phone vibrate. Waited.

The sound of metal on cement. Clare ducked away just as a man limped past her. She followed him.

Up ahead, the sound of the radio, where she assumed Riedwaan had gone.

‘Where is she?’

The eye of the pistol cold on the skin covering the vertebrae.

Riedwaan’s gun slid over the pimples
above the collar as he stood over the figure hunched over the radio.

‘Chill, man.’ The bravado unsteady. The accent making the fine hairs on the back of Riedwaan’s neck stand on end. ‘Who are you? What’re you talking about?’

‘Show me your wrists,’ said Riedwaan.

‘
Fok jou
,’ said the drug-wasted boy.

‘Where’s your boss?’

‘I don’t have a boss, man.’ He was too high to be frightened.
‘I am the boss.’

‘Where’s the one with the tattoo, the red and black snakes? Looks like a 27.’

‘Boss,’ snorted the boy. ‘He’s not my boss.’

‘Then you’re the one who’s responsible.’ Riedwaan’s voice even. ‘Where’s my daughter. And no more of your little jokes.’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’

The boy didn’t even see Riedwaan’s hand move as he hit him.

‘You can’t fuck with me,’
he shouted, the swagger still there despite the bubble of blood in his left nostril. ‘There’s one of you and three of us.’

Three.

Riedwaan’s mind raced. Three meals had been bought at the garage, and one for the child.

‘Not in here, there isn’t,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Does it look like there’s anyone around whose even going to notice what I’m about to do to you?’

Riedwaan grabbed the
boy’s gelled hair and smacked his face onto the table. His forehead hit hard but it was his nose that made the sickening crunch.

‘So don’t you be fucking clever with me.’ Riedwaan pulled the boy’s head back, straining his collar against his Adam’s apple.

‘Now,’ said Riedwaan, settling in, bending the boy’s head back another vertebrae-snapping few centimetres. ‘We’re going to start this
conversation again and we aren’t going to get side-tracked, are we?’

‘No, sir.’ Blood and mucous were smeared over the boy’s face.

‘Where’s your boss?’ Riedwaan’s hand tightened. The boy’s eyes rolled back in his head. ‘Where’s Voëltjie Ahrend?’

‘He’s,’ stammered the boy. ‘He…’

His face whacked onto the table again, same crunch.

‘I hope your mother loves you,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Because you’re not going to be pretty once I’ve finished with you.’

The boy swallowed, his nose just a few centimetres from the table top again. His mind clear as a bell now. ‘He’s not my boss.’

‘And where’s Yasmin?’ demanded Riedwaan. ‘For your sake, she’d better be alive and she’d better be fine.’

‘Er,’ gurgled the boy. ‘It would be easier if you let me go.’

‘I don’t give a
fuck what’s easier for you,‘ said Riedwaan. ‘You talk to me and maybe I’ll reconsider.’

‘I knew this was a mistake,’ the boy was crying now. Seventeen years old, back to being a child. ‘Ever since we started with that stupid litle girl.’

‘Why did you get involved?’

‘For money,’ said the boy, as if Riedwaan was stupid.

‘Who’s paying?’

‘The job was just supposed to take two days,’
said the boy. ‘But you couldn’t fucking find her, could you? And you’re meant to be some kind of super-cop?’

‘Where is she?’

‘We didn’t hurt her.’

‘Who did you do it for?’

‘Quinton’s idea.’

‘The one with the tattoo?’

‘Yes,’ sobbed the boy. ‘I want to go home now.’

‘And who gave Quinton the idea?’ Riedwaan bent close to the boy, pulling his neck back another painful
couple of centimetres.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I just go fetch, do this, do that. Buy the food, make the tapes. It’s the others who drove. It’s them that owed the money.’

‘What money?’

‘For the heroin. Voëltjie’s heroin. The stuff that was confiscated. That fucking heroin.’

‘Where are the others now?’

‘They went to the Palace, they left the girl here. I was
meant to go too. We were all meant to go, but I smoked too much. I just wanted to chill.’

‘Who told you to go, and to leave my daughter alone in this place?’ Riedwaan’s mouth was close to one ear, and his gun was pressed against the boy’s other ear.

‘I told you, man,’ he snivelled. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say his name.’

‘Whoever you’re working for will seem like a kindergarten teacher
after me. Tell me where she is,’ Riedwaan shouted.

Then the boy’s head burst open.

Riedwaan’s gun cold in his hand, his ears ringing from the shot.

All six bullets in place, the chambers full.

‘Faizal.’

Riedwaan, wiped his face, turned towards the door.

‘Still the one-man lynch mob, I see.’

Riedwaan’s police issue Beretta pointed at him, the safety catch off.

‘Jesus,’ said Riedwaan, his back to the dead boy. ‘What did you do?’

‘Your service pistol, Captain?’ The broad-shouldered figure leaned against the doorway, his left hand resting on a crutch.

‘But I handed that in.’ Riedwaan stared at the weapon. ‘On your orders. Orders from Salome Ndlovu. Is she behind this?’

‘The Special Director decided to take herself back to Johannesburg,’ said Clinton Van Rensburg.

‘So she—’

‘All she did was cause trouble. Useful trouble, though.’

He slid his hand over Riedwaan’s gun. ‘You’ve taken good care of this.’

‘Why have you got my firearm?’ Riedwaan stepped forwards.

Van Rensburg lifted the gun again.

‘Wasn’t a problem at all for me to get it
released. In any case,’ Van Rensburg smiled, ‘I have some unfinished business. And you, Captain, are going to finish it for me.’

Van Rensburg shifted closer to him, proffering the pistol in his gloved hand.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Riedwaan. ‘You’ve fucking lost it, man.’

‘As I said, you’re going to finish it off for me. Of course, that’s if you want to see her again.’

‘Who?’ Riedwaan felt stupid. He sounded stupid.

‘Yasmin,’ said Van Rensburg. ’Your little girl.’

‘What’ve you done, Van Rensburg? Why’re you here alone? Where’s Phiri, and the others?’

‘It’s the way you like it. Nobody else, Faizal. Just you and me and this bit of filth that you just cleaned up for me. Thank you. No prints on this but your own,’ he said, holding out the pistol.

Van Rensburg’s face was haggard, he looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. Not a good state for a man with a finger on the trigger. Riedwaan took a step towards him.

‘I told the lot of them to go out, to leave this place. If he’d listened to me he’d still be alive.’ Van Rensburg looked at the dead boy and shook his head. ‘Came from a nice family, can you believe it?’

‘What’ve they got to
do with Yasmin?’ Riedwaan tried to get his brain to work. ‘Why did they take my daughter?’

‘I told them to.’

‘But why?’ Riedwaan kept the torrent of rage in check, knowing that if it broke its banks his chances of getting Yasmin alive were gone.

‘You’ve held Yasmin on your lap, read her bedtime stories. She’s been like a daughter to you. For fuck’s sake, you have a daughter. Calvaleen’s
like her big sister.’ His voice tightened. ‘Did you make the video of her dancing?’

‘My idea,’ said Van Rensburg, ‘although I couldn’t be there for it. Had to see to Ndlovu and all her business.’

‘Was it just to torture me?’

‘I had to give Clare Hart a way to locate her. You see, I’ve been watching your little doctor. She’s sharp. Sharp enough for me, because she got you here. But
not sharp enough for you, because she didn’t catch me out. Even with those heroin dockets – wherever the fuck she got those.’