Trackers (56 page)

'Do you think they're serious?' He
stood up, picked up the sandwiches. Wallet, cellphone and new briefcase, he
ticked off the reminders to himself.

'I hope so. But call me when you can.
I'm very curious.'

He walked over to her, kissed her on the
forehead, breathed in her subtle feminine scent appreciatively. 'I will.'

'You're going to be early.'

'The roadworks ... I don't know what
the traffic will be like. And better early than late.'

'Love you,' she said. 'My PI.'

He smiled. 'You too.'

When he opened the front door she
called out: 'Have you got the briefcase?'

He turned back to fetch it.

'She's a fifty-five,' was how Jack
Fischer briefed him in the passageway, police lingo, a reference to the SAPS
missing persons form.

In the conference room he could see
that the loss was recent. Her narrow shoulders drooped dejectedly, her eyes
stared absently down at St George's Mall, the pedestrian area three storeys
below. She clutched a cellphone against her chest, as if hoping it might ring.

Jack Fischer let him walk ahead, then
said: 'Mrs Vlok?'

She jumped, startled. 'Pardon me ...'
she said, putting down the phone and holding her hand out. 'Tanya Flint.' The
smile was forced, the eyes weary.

'Flint,' said Jack Fischer, as if
memorising the name.

She was in her thirties, Joubert
guessed. Short, dark brown hair. A determination in the line of her jaw, the
set of her mouth, now softened
by anxiety.
And loss. The black jacket, white blouse and black skirt were professional, but
somewhat loose, as if she'd recently lost weight.

'Mrs Flint, I am Jack Fischer, and
this is Senior Consultant Mat Joubert.'

She shook each one's hand quickly,
intimidated by the bulk of the two middle-aged men against her slight frame.

'Sit, do sit.' It sounded almost like
an order to Joubert, though Fischer was trying to be gallant.

'Thank you .'With a brave smile. She
slid the handbag off her shoulder and moved towards a chair.

They sat around the big dark wood
table, Fischer at the head, Joubert and Tanya Flint on either side.

'Madam, firstly, a warm welcome to
Jack Fischer and Associates ...' The big ring on Jack's finger flashed with the
genial wave of his hand. He was in his sixties, but his thick black hair showed
little grey, the side parting was precise, his moustache bushy.

'Thank you.'

'Has Mildred asked if you'd like
something to drink?'

'She did, thank you, but I'm fine.'
Her hand wrapped around the cellphone again, thumb rubbing the back.

'Excellent, excellent. I just want to
give you the assurance that although I don't handle all the cases personally, I
am nevertheless kept up-to-date on everything every day. But with S.C. Joubert,
you are getting one of the best in the country. He has recently left the South
African Police Services after thirty-two years of service - he was Senior
Superintendent, and Head of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit here in the
Cape. He's an old hand, madam, with incredible experience, a brilliant
investigator. Now, before I leave you in his very capable hands, just a few
admin matters. You understand that, should we accept your case, there is a
deposit payable?'

'Yes, I saw ...'

'Excellent, excellent.' Broad smile
below the extravagant moustache. 'We work on an hourly rate of 600 rand,
excluding travel costs, naturally also any fees for lab work, external
consultants, that sort of thing, but we check everything with you first. We're
not the cheapest, but we're the best. And the biggest. And our system ensures
that you don't spend more than you want to. We'll tell you within two days if
your case can be resolved. When the work reaches eighty per cent of your
deposit, we give you a ring. When it reaches a hundred per cent, we ask for a
further deposit.'

'I understand ...'

'That way there are no surprises, you
understand?'

She nodded.

'Any questions?'

'I... No, not at the moment.'

'Excellent, excellent. Well, good,
Mrs Flint, now tell us what we can do for you.'

She set the cellphone down carefully on the table in front of
her, drew in a deep breath. 'It's my husband, Danie. He disappeared on November
twenty-fifth last year.' As the tears welled up in her eyes, she shifted her
gaze to Mat Joubert and said: 'I won't cry. I made a decision that I wouldn't
come here today, and cry.'

She went off to pay the 30,000 rand
deposit to senior financial controller Fanus Delport while Joubert waited for
her in his new office. He experienced a measure of tension within himself. For
the first time in his career someone had to pay directly for his services. And
it was six, seven years since he'd last done investigative work himself, in the
front line. 'It's like riding a bicycle,' Jack Fischer had said two months ago
during the recruitment interview, 'you just get back on again.'

He hoped it was true.

Tanya Flint appeared in the doorway.
'May I come in?'

'Of course,' he said, standing up,
waiting for her to sit down. He saw her look around, take in her surroundings.
The room was still bare, the dark wood wall units empty. The only personal
items were the leather folder for his notepad, his briefcase with two
sandwiches in it, and the framed photo on the desk.

'It's my first day,' he said, by way
of explanation.

'Oh. Then I'm lucky.'

He wasn't sure what she meant.

She pointed at the photo. 'Your
family?'

'My wife and my ... stepchildren.'
He'd never liked the word.

'She's very pretty.'

'I think so too.'

An uncomfortable silence. He flipped
open the leather folder in front of him. Inside it was a pen and an A4 writing
pad. At the top of each page, in silver letters, stood
Jack
Fischer and Associates,
pale, like a watermark. He slid the
pen from its loop and clicked the nib out, at the ready.

She unclasped her handbag, on her lap,
and took out a photo and a notebook. She handed him the photo. Postcard size,
in full colour, of a man in his thirties. The sandy hair trimmed in a short
brush cut,
braai
tongs in one hand, bare chested,
outside, laughing. An open, boyish face. There was a certain carefree air about
him, someone who had managed to dodge most of life's blows. 'This is Danie,'
she said.

She wanted to start on the day that
he'd vanished, but Joubert asked her to begin right from the beginning. 'I need
all the background I can get.'

She nodded, resolute. 'I understand.'

And she told him. With a note of
barely-suppressed nostalgia in her voice.

She had met Danie Flint seven years
ago, when she was twenty-six and he was twenty-eight, at a gathering of mutual
friends in Bellville. Not love at first sight, but there was a connection, a
natural ease with each other. She liked his sense of humour, the way he
laughed, his respectfulness towards her, from the beginning. 'He was so
considerate.' And, with a small longing laugh: 'His shirt was always hanging
out, even though he tucked it in a hundred times a day.' Joubert noted the past
tense and thought it was better that way. It meant that she was realistic, she
had already weighed up all the possibilities in a country where disappearance
and death generally went hand in hand.

Flint was a route planner for the
Atlantic Bus Company, the giant firm whose buses, with their bright yellow ABC
against a navy blue background, were such a common and irritating presence on
roads of the Cape Peninsula. He was doing a part-time diploma in Passenger
Transport at the University of Johannesburg - hard-working, enthusiastic,
ambitious.

Back then she'd been marketing solar
heating systems for swimming pools, knowing that it was temporary, a training
ground before she began her own business.

A suburban love affair, unremarkable,
unsensational. Thirteen months after their first meeting, he asked her to marry
him. She had said 'yes' with complete certainty.

After the wedding they'd bought a
townhouse in Table View. Later, with Danie's promotion to area manager at ABC,
they'd chosen a small three-bedroom house in Parklands. Children, they agreed,
would have to wait for now. He wanted to study, she had her dream of running
her own business. 'I set up eighteen months ago in Montague Gardens. We
manufacture plastic pool covers and leaf catchers,' she said, fishing a
business card out of her handbag and passing it to Joubert. The black
silhouette of a spy-like figure in a large hat superimposed over a kidney-shaped
swimming pool icon. Undercover was the company name.

'My business was just starting to get
off the ground when the economic crisis hit. But Danie carried us, with his
salary. We worked so hard ... And then, on the twenty-fifth of November, Danie disappeared.
He was at work the whole day. We spoke on the telephone, must have been about
half past three. Then he said he was going to the gym when he left work at
five. He'd usually be home by half past six after that, he'd try to go to the
gym four times a week. I found his car at the gym, eleven o'clock that night,
but he was just gone ...'

'Mrs Flint, I have ...'

'Tanya,' she said.

Joubert nodded. 'I need as much
detail about that day as you can give me.'

She opened the notebook in front of
her. 'I wrote everything down ...'

'That's good,' Joubert encouraged
her.

She looked at her notes. 'I only got
away from work at a quarter to six, then I stopped at the Spar for bread and
milk and salad. I was probably at home by quarter past and wanted to get the food
ready in time, because on Wednesdays we watched
Boston
Legal,
it was Danie's favourite, it starts at half past seven.
Supper was ready around seven, but he wasn't at home yet. But with Danie ...
Sometimes he'd get talking to someone, he's just so spontaneous, so now and
then he'd be late. But then I called him, ten past seven, and his cellphone
just rang. I didn't leave a message, because maybe he was still in the gym. But
at twenty-five past I started to get worried, because he never misses
Boston Legal,
he was crazy
about it, he always said, "Danie Flint", you know, like "Denny
Crane". Then I called again, but he still didn't answer. So I left a
message. I just said, call me, I'll tape the show for you, because perhaps his
phone was on silent, perhaps he'd forgotten to switch it on. Eight o'clock I
called again. You know how a cellphone rings for a shorter time when you've had
a missed call or a voicemail you haven't listened to yet? Then I thought maybe
he'd had a call-out, if one of the buses had been in an accident, or something
like that, then they'd call him, then he'd have to go. So I called Neville
Philander who works with him, and Neville said no, Danie left work at five, he
doesn't know about any call-out, he'll try to find out. Then I started calling
Danie's friends, and his mother, she lives in Panorama, but no one had seen
him. Then I called his cellphone again and I got in my car and I drove to the
gym to look for him, but...' She made a shrugging gesture that said he wasn't
there.

'The police station is right next to
the gym in Table View. So I went in and I said my husband is missing and the
guy said to me since when and I said he should have been at home at half past
six, and he said, "Ma'am, it's nine o'clock now," and I said he
hadn't let me know. Then he asked, "Did you have a fight?" And I said
no, and he said, "Ma'am, you know men," and I said not
my
man. And then
he said, "He's probably with his girlfriend." That's when I started
crying.'

Joubert's first instinct was to defend
the charge officers, who had to deal with every imaginable kind of domestic
trouble every day. But he just shook his head and asked, gently: 'And then?'

'Then I went home again, because I
was afraid that Danie was already there and wouldn't know where I was, maybe
someone had stolen his cellphone, I thought it was something like that, I
shouldn't worry too much, I must just stay calm, it's probably just something
silly.. But he wasn't at home and he still didn't answer his phone. Neville
from his work called back and said there wasn't any call-out. Then I phoned his
mother again, because I wanted to be sure I wasn't being paranoid, but she also
said Danie isn't like that. Then I got in my car and I drove and looked at all
the places where he might be, maybe he'd gone to have a beer with his friends
at Cubana or the Sports Pub, but he was nowhere. And then I drove to the gym
again at eleven o'clock and then the parking lot was almost empty and there was
his Audi, and I got out and looked through the window and his gym bag was in
the back. And I tried the door and it wasn't locked, and then I knew something
really bad had happened to him. I walked from there back to the police station.
They sent this young chap in a uniform with me, and he came to look and then we
walked back and the guy behind the counter took out two forms and said I must
fill them in. The one was an indemnity. Since when have the police needed an
indemnity?'