Trackers (64 page)

'I am.'

'Come and see me again. Any time.'
Her perfume was strong, her eyes full of meaning.

His head was spinning when he drove
away. He considered the influence of a mother like Gusti Flint on her son. And
how he was going to tell Margaret about this encounter, as that was the one
thing that made his wife furious: another woman, knowing he was married, yet
giving him the come-on.

Only once he was beyond the Canal Walk off-ramp did he focus
his attention on the problems of the investigation. How was he going to get the
top drawer of Danie Flint's desk open without paying a few hundred rand for a
locksmith? And then he began weighing up the possibilities, and when he thought
of Vaatjie de Waal, he turned around at the Otto du Plessis interchange and
drove all the way back to Parow.

Vaatjie de Waal lay half inside a
Subaru Outback, only his short, fat lower body visible in a grubby blue
overall, his head and torso under the instrument panel.

'Vaatjie,' Joubert said.

'What?' Irascible, impatient.

'Can we talk?'

De Waal moved so that he could see.
He recognised Mat Joubert, shut his eyes, shook his head and sighed. 'No, oh,
Jissis.'

'Social visit,' said Joubert.

'Like hell,' said de Waal, scrabbling
around on the seat till his fingers closed around a small pair of pliers and he
disappeared behind the instrument panel again. Joubert guessed the boss of
Decible Demons must be installing a radio or taking one out. On the window
fronting Voortrekker Street was the promise:
Mad About
Car Audio, Crazy Prices, Insane Sound.
That must be Mrs de Waal's clever
marketing. Vaatjie's talents lay elsewhere.

'I don't know anything.'

'I want your skill, not your
information.'

'What for?'

'I have a drawer that needs opening.'

'Get Kallie van fucking Deventer.'

'I'm not in the Service any more,
Vaatjie.'

That stopped him. He dived out from
under the panel, extricated himself from the interior with surprising speed and
stood up. He was half Joubert's height, but broader. His head was as round as a
ball, the frown just a single crease in the high forehead. 'Why?' he asked, and
wiped his hands on his overalls.

'Retired.'

'But why?' Hands at his sides, just
as much a cartoon character as he had been when Joubert knew him at high
school.

'It was time to go.'

'And now?'

'Now I'm in the private sector.'

The eyes flicked from Joubert to the
reception desk where Vaatjie's wife was sitting out of earshot behind a
computer.

'I'm not in that line any more.'
Meaning housebreaking, his first career.

'But you still know how to work a
lock. And I don't see customers lining up outside here.'

'Times are tough, friends are few.'

'Two hundred rand for five minutes'
work.'

'You're fucking crazy. I don't work
for peanuts.'

'What's your price, Vaatjie?'

'Five hundred.'

'It was good seeing you again,'
Joubert said, and turned to go. 'At that price I can get a locksmith.'

He was nearly at the door when
Vaatjie called: 'Three hundred.'

'Two-fifty,' said Joubert over his
shoulder.

A moment of silence. 'OK. Fucking
OK.'

As he walked into the office, his
cellphone rang.

'Boetie
, I've got bad
news,' said Dave Fiedler. 'Your IMEI profile, there's nothing. Last SIM card
was your subject's, last phone call was 25 November, he's been off the air
since that day, not a peep since. Sorry,
Boetie
, I wish I
could help more.'

He thanked Fiedler, sat down behind
his desk. He felt disappointment, and for the first time concern, a deeper
unease. That had been

their best chance of a breakthrough,
to find something to grab hold of in the darkness. More than that, it said something
about the disappearance. Your opportunistic thief, your vengeful ex-bus driver
would have used the phone, or sold or pawned it. Even thrown it away somewhere,
for someone else to sell.

That was 3,500 down the drain. Now
they would have to spend more money on the fingerprints, another shot in the
dark.

Tanya Flint didn't take the news
well. Joubert could hear the despair in her voice, the exhaustion.

'What now?'
she asked over the phone.

'Now we'll have fingerprints done.
And I'm not finished with ABC, I want to work through the personnel records.'

She was quiet for a long time before
she asked: 'Tell me honestly: Is there any hope?'

'There's always hope,' he said, too
quickly maybe. Then, 'When I finish tonight, we can reconsider. We ought to
have a better idea by then.'

'Thanks,' she
said, but without enthusiasm.

He phoned Jannie Cordier, the
forensic technician, and asked him to go and take the fingerprints,
after
half past
six, when Tanya would be at home. Then he saw to it that his admin on the
project programme was up-to-date before he went to pick up Bella van Breda.
Less than two days' work and the expenses were over 10,000 already. And there
was nothing that he could do about it.

'So, you know Bennie Griessel,' he
said to Bella, in his car on the way to the ABC depot.

'We have talked,' she said, and when
he glanced at her, he saw the blood-red blush again.

'How is he?' It had been a month
since Joubert had last talked to him. His former colleague was, like most SAPS
members, very unhappy about his move to Jack Fischer and Associates. And
Joubert could only speculate about the reasons. There was the usual antipathy
to the private security business, the feeling that someone who left the Service
was somehow a traitor. Also a touch of envy. And Jack's outspoken opinions
about the police in the media hadn't helped.

'Fine, as far as I know. Bennie is
very busy. Been practising his bass guitar a lot. And he's started a band. I
think he has a new girlfriend.' 'Oh?'

'Some or other old singer.' Then she
changed the topic, very deliberately. 'Tell me, what do you want me to do
tonight?'

He filled her in on the background,
and said he was on a fishing expedition. He was looking for anything that could
throw light on Danie Flint's disappearance.

'OK,' she said. 'I'll give it a go.'

It took Vaatjie de Waal just over
forty seconds to open the drawer.

Joubert reported to a weary Neville
Philander, who, with a wave of his arm said to them: 'Go ahead, have a ball,
Santasha will stay until you're finished, I'm going home.'

They walked to Danie Flint's cubicle.
De Waal unrolled a leather bag on the desk, chose a thin, L-shaped tool that
looked like an Allen key, fiddled in the keyhole, tried a slightly thicker one,
kept his ear close to the drawer and nodded once, before he straightened up and
pulled the drawer open.

'Two hundred and fifty,' he held his
palm out to Joubert. 'I should have charged you petrol money as well.'

Joubert took his wallet out of his
jacket pocket and counted out the notes. 'Thanks, Vaatjie.' He nodded in the
direction of the bag that Vaatjie had already folded up and tied with a ribbon.
'I thought you weren't in that line any more?'

'You're not in the SAPS any more,'
said de Waal and took the money. 'Tell me, where is Kallie van fucking Deventer
nowadays?'

'Kallie took a golden handshake, four
years ago. He and his wife run a guest house somewhere. Gansbaai?'

'A guest house?' he asked, as though
that were beneath anyone's dignity.

'As far as I know.'

Vaatjie nodded. 'OK. Cheers,' and his
short, round figure walked around the corner of the partition.

Bella watched him go, then looked
questioningly at Joubert.

'We were at school together,' he
said. 'His father, Oom Balie, was a locksmith in Goodwood. Vaatjie learned all
about locks. Then he went burgling. For seven years. Tokai, Bishops Court,
Constantia, a one-man housebreaking epidemic. Until Kallie van Deventer caught
him. Vaatjie went to jail and got very fat. And when he came out, Kallie caught
him again within a week, stuck in a kitchen window in Rondebosch, half in, half
out..

While she laughed, Joubert pulled the
top drawer fully open, had a look inside and saw only three items. He took out
a Vodacom Starter Pack for a mobile phone, the packaging cut open, and put it
on top of the desk. Then a key holder with two keys and a metal disc on it. On
the disc was a design with the letters 'SS' in the middle. Below, the logo
'97B' was punched into the metal. The last item in the drawer was a sheet of A4
paper torn in half. On one side four rows of letters and numbers were written
in blue pen, neatly and precisely.

2044 677 277

9371

L66pns8t9o

speedster430

Joubert turned the paper over. It was
one of the bus company forms, with columns and headings, unused, unmarked. He
looked at the writing on the other side again. Was the first one a telephone
number? Couldn't be, all local numbers begin with a '0'.

Then he realised Bella was standing
beside him. 'Excuse me. If you would like to sit down ...' and he gestured at
the chair and the computer. 'Go ahead, please ...'

'OK.' But first she bent down and
kneeled, pulled the computer drive closer and had a look behind. Then she
switched the machine on and sat down in the chair.

Joubert put the page down on the
desk, looked closely at the two keys again. On one there was a Yale logo, on
the other only six numbers. His fingers turned the metal disc on the keyring.
The SS logo. It looked vaguely familiar. And the 97B? What could that mean. A
flat number? Could be. A hotel room?

SS
.

He rubbed his finger over the punched
characters, in search of ideas. He came up with nothing.

He put the keys aside, opened the
Vodacom package. There was a small manual, an empty plastic container where the
SIM card had

been, and the cardboard card with the
SIM card and cellphone's PIN number.

His brain made a connection, to
something he had seen here earlier. He opened the middle drawer and stared into
it. Between the writing materials, its cord neatly rolled up, lay the Nokia
phone charger. But in the glove compartment of the Audi there was another
charger, another brand, he couldn't remember what, he should have written it
down.

'He had another phone,' he said.

'What?' asked Bella, but Joubert
didn't answer. He took his own cellphone out of his pocket and called Tanya.

'Danie's cellphone, what kind was it
again?'

'A Diamond,' she said. 'An HTC Diamond.'

He asked her how long her husband had
had the HTC.

'I think he had an upgrade in April
last year.'

'What phone did he have before that?'

'Oh, also an HTC, I think it was the
TyTN, the one that slides open. Why?' Hope in her voice.

He was afraid of getting her hopes
up. 'I'm just making sure. We're in his office, I've found a page with a bunch
of numbers on it. Can I read them to you?'

'OK.'

He read the first series and asked
her if it meant anything to her.

'No.'

After the third series she said: 'It
sounds like a password. For his computer maybe.'