Trackers (58 page)

'I'm going to fetch them from her
house this afternoon. Want to look around a bit.'

'Listen, ask her if she can get them
electronically off Internet banking, then you give them to Fanus, he puts it
all in a spreadsheet, can build you almost any kind of graph, great overview
for spotting any funny business. And it costs us nothing, but it's double time,
yours and Fanus's. Oh, and your laptop arrives this afternoon, should have been
here yesterday. We have a central database with all the contact numbers and
stuff. And ask Mildred to give the interior decorator a call, let her come and
take a look, we have to tart up that office of yours a bit, you're in the major
league now, my man.'

'I was thinking I'd ask Margaret...'

'No, man, use the decorator, we get
it all off tax.'

The Atlantic Bus Company's Woodstock
depot was in Bromwell Street, opposite the industrial area, next to the Metro
railway line. Joubert had to stop at the gate and sign in with the security
guard before he could drive in. The low office building was in the middle of
the big, fenced area. Row upon row of blue buses, a workshop and giant fuel
tanks behind them. A train rumbled towards Muizenberg as Joubert got out. Heat
rose from the tar, the smell of diesel and oil heavy in the air.

There was no reception. He walked all
the way to the end of the corridor before he found an office with
Neville
Philander, Depot Manager
on the door. He knocked.

'Come in,' a voice called out.

Joubert opened the door. Philander
held a hand over a telephone mouthpiece and said: 'I'll be with you in a
minute,' and then, into the receiver: 'Recovery are on their way, Jimmy, just
hang in there ... No, I've got people here, I have to go. OK, bye ...' He put
the phone down, stood up, offered his hand and said: 'You're the private eye?'

He would have to get used to this. He
walked into the air-conditioned office and shook the tall coloured man's hand.
'I am. Mat Joubert.'

'Neville Philander. Please sit, it's
all a bit crazy here at the moment...'

The telephone rang again. Philander
stood up, walked to the door, shouted down the corridor: 'Santasha, hold the
calls, I've got someone here.'

'OK, lovey,' a woman's voice called
back. Philander sat down again. 'Madhouse, I tell you. Where were we? You
probably want to know about Danie ...'

'If you can tell me.'

'HQ says it's OK. Tanya put in an
official request.'

'I don't want to waste your time. Just
two things really: did Danie Flint have any trouble at work, and did he, in the
month before his disappearance, behave strangely in any way, any differently?'

'There's always trouble here at work.
Are you ex SAPS?'

'I am.'

'Thought so. You've got that look.
Ja,
well, Danie
was area manager, there's usually four of them, it's a tough job ...'

The phone on his desk began to ring
again. 'Jesus,' he said, jumping up, and shouting down the corridor again:
'Santasha, please!'

'Sorry, Neville, my mistake, lovey
...'

He came back to his chair. 'Look
here, the area manager's job is to manage his drivers, and his routes. Danie
was Atlantic North, so everything from here to Atlantis, including Milnerton,
Montague Gardens, Killarney, Du Noon, Richwood, Table View, Blouberg, Melkbos,
not your biggest area, but with all the work on the N1 and the interchanges,
it's also a fuck-up, I'm telling you. Anyway, the main problem is the drivers,
because one half cause trouble and the other half complain, and your area
manager fires at least three or four every month, so if you come ask me if he
had conflict at work, then I'm gonna tell you "for sure", there's
conflict here, but Danie could handle it. He was good with people, he's a communicator,
he had respect, he never played whitey or threw his weight around, if you know
what I mean. Between you and me, he was the most popular of the four, so I
don't think ...'

The telephone rang again. Philander
looked at it, then at the open door. It stopped.

'Sorry, Neville, sorry, lovey ...'

'Jirre
,' said
Philander, 'I'm telling you, ABC stands for Asylum By the Cape, you gotta be
crazy to work here. I'm one man short and management doesn't want to take on
any more, in case Danie pops out of the woodwork, you know? What else can I
tell you?'

'His wife said there was a strike
here last year.'

'
Ja
, that's
another story, went on for two weeks, company-wide ...'

'About pay?'

'No. Our Driver Risk Management
Programme. But Danie was on the sidelines, it was managed by Mr Eckhardt and
those guys.'

'Mr Eckhardt?'

'Mr Francois Eckhardt, Chief
Operations Officer. Anyway, the strike was bad for us, but there wasn't any
conflict here, we just sat and waited every day.'

'Danie's behaviour before he
vanished? Did you spot anything ... abnormal?'

'You tell me what's normal, there's
no such thing here, you see for yourself how it is. Anyway, it's hard to say.
The area managers are on the road most of the time, especially in the morning
and the afternoon, checking out the routes, the rest of the time it's admin in
their offices, there's no time to socialise, so I wouldn't have noticed really.
And I didn't. Ol' Danie is always full of smiles, his work is right, he's a
go-getter. I always say to him, the next thing you wanna go get is my job.'

'So they have a pretty fixed
routine?'

'Very fixed. Out early, back by
eleven, check email, the DRMP logs, scheduling, time sheets, personnel matters,
then they're out again ...'

'And he stuck to it in October and
November?'

'As far as I know ...'

'Neville!' the woman's voice sounded
from the corridor.

'What?'

'Head Office on the line.'

'OK. Put it through.' Then to
Joubert. 'This normally means trouble, you'll have to excuse me.'

Joubert stood up. 'His marriage?'

The phone began to ring. 'How would I
know?' and he shook Joubert's hand.

'Neville, are
you going to pick up or what?'

'Jirrel said
Neville. He put his hand on the phone.

'Off the
record?'

Joubert nodded.

'She's a bit of
a nissen, that Tanya ...'

'Neville!'

Before Joubert
could ask what a 'nissen' was, Philander picked up the phone.

He walked across
the tarmac to his car and opened the Honda's doors to let the dammed up heat
escape. It was the only drawback of a black vehicle, but he didn't mind, it
gave him so much pleasure. One night, thirteen months ago, Margaret had looked
up from her accounts and said: 'It's time you got a new car.' His Opel Corsa
was already six years old then, but it had more than 200,000 on the clock, and
left an ominous oil leak on the garage floor. It didn't take much to convince
him, their finances were looking good thanks to her speculation on houses, and
Jeremy, her eldest, had completed his studies and was on his way to America for
his 'gap year'.

So he went
looking for a car, in his thorough, considered way. Did his research,
collecting catalogues, comparing prices, only to walk into the Honda dealer on
Buitengracht, and there was the Type R with the red logo and the lean, low,
black lines, and he was in love. Back home he had said to Margaret, in his
inescapably Afrikaans accent: 'It must be the Goodwood in me,' and she'd smiled
at his joking mention of the Cape Town suburb where he'd grown up, and hugged
him close, whispering, 'A little bit of a mid-life crisis too', into his ear.
Which was probably closer to the truth, because over the last few years he'd
begun to hanker after the Datsun Triple-Ss of his twenties. Then Margaret said,
'Go buy the car. You deserve it.'

And it gave him
pure, unalloyed pleasure. Maybe the suspension was a bit hard, seats not the
most comfortable in the world, but the handling was incredible. And the power
...

He leaned
against the Honda, took out his cellphone and called

Superintendent Johnny October, former
colleague, now head of the Mitchells Plain detective squad.

'Sup!' said October. 'What a
lekker
surprise!'

'I'm not "Sup" any more,
Johnny.'

'Sup will always be my
"Sup" to me. Howzit going in the private sector?'

'Still too early to tell. And with
you?'

'Rough, Sup. With Tweetybird out of
the country ... This power struggle's hotting up.'

'I can imagine .'Tweetybird de la
Cruz, leader of the Resdess Ravens, had left the country four months ago after
a warrant was issued for his arrest. His business and turf were now fair game
for factions within the Ravens, and for the other criminal gangs on the Cape
Flats.

'Four murders this last week, three
of them drive-bys .. .You wouldn't want the old days back, Sup, but things have
changed.'

'That's true, Johnny. But I don't
want to hassle you, just ask you something quickly: when someone says a woman
is a "nissen", what do they mean?'

October chuckled down the phone.
'Ja,
Sup,
actually, you know, all women are Nissans.'

'Nissans?'

'You know, Sup, like the cars.
Nissan. You remember their old slogan, "We are driven"? If you say
someone is a Nissan, then you mean she's intense. Driven.'

'Aaah ...'

'They say you should rather marry a
Toyota.'

'Everything keeps going right?'

'Exactly, Sup. Exactly.'

Albert Street in Woodstock was a termites'
nest of big trucks, little trucks, minibuses, cars, people.

Joubert was caught up in the traffic
jam and drove without seeing, thinking of his conversation with Johnny October.
The two of them so out of step with the times. Anachronisms. Because Nissan's
slogan was no longer
We Are Driven
and Toyota
had long replaced
Everything Keeps Going Right
with
something else that made no impact on anyone. Probably knew they'd be recalling
millions of cars for faults.

And what did it say about him and
Johnny that they lived with one foot in the past, as if the world began to
overtake you at a certain age? Brand names, slogans, fashions, technology, all
the in-things, the red-hot conversation topics, the deafening chorus of
got-to-have-it- now that faded to a white noise you were only dimly aware of.
He was fifty. October was ten years older, when did this happen? Somewhere in
your late forties? When all of a sudden you realise you've heard all the day's
news before. All the advertising jingles. And all the stories of people's
struggle and striving, their victories and scandals, the way groups and
countries and regions and continents went through the same cyclical processes,
again and again. Everything changes, everything stays the same, and you lose
your sense of wide-eyed wonder, that was the pity of it all.

Joubert became aware of the world
outside again, saw the traffic, the buildings. Memories stirred in him, this
Woodstock made him think of the Goodwood of his youth - the somewhat
dilapidated one- and two-storey buildings with corrugated iron roofs, gables
and pillars, the entrepreneurial spirit of the corner shops, which sold a
little bit of everything, from halal meat to cheap cigarettes, lawnmowers, fish
and chips, second-hand furniture, upholstery services, trailer hitches. People
on the pavements - jogging, walking, standing, talking, doing business, looking
for a gap. Muslims with fezzes on their heads, fishermen with woollen hats,
the headscarfed Xhosas, bare-headed whites, this place just as colour-blind as
Voortrekker Street in the sixties, before all the trouble began.

But even here it wouldn't last.
Between the old dilapidated facades, the charming pastels peeling off, here and
there, the Engine of Progress roared: recent restoration, in lurid colours, new
boutique shops,
CQINZ Fashion, Mannequins Unlimited.
Further down,
the old Biscuit Mill, newly slicked with white and ugly turd-brown paint,
festooned with signs for
Imiso Clay, Exposure Gallery, Lime
Grove, Shout, Third World Interiors,
so that the gracious old building
lost all its charm.