Trackers (65 page)

'Maybe,' he said. 'And Speedster four
three zero ...?'

'I don't know ... No.'

'Thanks. I'll see you when we've
finished.'

'Please, phone me if you find
anything.'

When he had rung off, he put the
symbols where Bella could see them. 'Could it have something to do with his
computer? A password?'

'Maybe ...' she clicked the mouse,
opened a window that said 'Network Connections', then another. 'No,' she said.
'It's not his network password ... Do you want to see his mail?'

'Please.'

'There's a lot...' and she showed him
the Outlook panel. 'Two hundred and sixty-five new messages.'

He bent down and looked at the
screen.

'Most of them are DRMP notifications,
I'm not certain what that is. There's a DRMP icon on his desktop too,' she
said.

Joubert tried to remember what the
acronym stood for.

'It's something to do with how they
manage the company. I'm looking at more personal stuff rather. Just a second
...' He went around the divider, found a chair next door, dragged it alongside
her and sat down.

'The rest are just ABC HR. Bulletins.
A couple of junk mails. The rest are ABC email addresses, look,' and she let
the list scroll under the cursor. 'I don't see anything funny ...'

'Can you print out the whole list for
me?'

'Just the headers?'

She could see he didn't understand.
'It gives you the sender and the subject.'

'Please.'

'OK. You just use Page Setup and
Table Style .. .'The mouse moved with impressive speed. 'I don't know where the
printer is.'

'We'll find it later. What else is
there?'

'Just give me a minute.'

'I'll go and look for the printer.'

He picked up the sheet of symbols and
walked down the passage until he came to an office where a young coloured woman
was sitting at a switchboard.

'Santasha?'

'Yup, you must be the Private Eye.'
She giggled and put out her hand. She was plump, with large mischievous eyes
that laughed along with her mouth. 'This is a first for me.'

He shook her hand. 'Pleased to meet
you ...'

'Is it you people printing?' she
said, holding out a sheaf of paper.

'We are. Thank you.' 'Found
something?'

'I don't know. We'll be as quick as
we can.'

'No rush, I get overtime ...'

He showed her the symbols. 'Would you
know what this is?'

She studied it carefully. 'Absolutely
no idea.'

He sat with Bella, staring at the
rows of numbers and letters.

Why did the first one look like a
telephone number? He remembered the telephone directories in the credenza,
took one out and studied the local dialling codes. The Oudtshoorn area was 044,
but then the first number '2' made no sense. He ran his finger down the list of
international codes, but none of them matched either.

Bella made a humming sound.

'Did you find something?'

'His browser history ... Can I have a
look at those passwords?'

He passed it to her, looked at the
screen. She had the Internet Explorer web browser open to a page with the
heading 'Yahoo! Mail'. 'His history shows that he used
this
webmail...'
She looked at the four rows of symbols, typed 'Speedster430' in one box, then
something else in the box for the password, but he could only see asterisks.

'Bingo,' she said, as the web browser
opened a new page. 'He had a Yahoo mail account. It's his address -
[email protected]
. And that L66 series is his password.'

'Aah ... ?' He still didn't know how
she could have worked that all out, but then the page loaded fully and there
was nothing - no emails.

'Looks like he deleted everything.
Let's see if there is anything in the Sent Folder ...'

She clicked again. The folder was
empty.

'That's weird,' she said.

'Why?'

'Look at his Outlook. Look at his
Documents folder on the hard drive. He wasn't great on maintenance. But his
Yahoo account...'

'It's clean.'

'Very clean.' She hesitated a moment.
'But there's another thing ...' She moved the mouse, scanning the browser
again. 'His history shows that he was often on his bank's website ...' Absa's
Internet Banking page
appeared on
the screen.

'No, they bank at Nedbank,' he said.
That had been clear from the statements Tanya Flint had given him.

'Maybe,' said Bella. 'Let's try the
first number ...' The one he had thought was a telephone number.

'And the shorter one may be his PIN.'
A new page loaded.

Your chosen SurePhrase™ is: FLINT D. Your PIN has been
successfully verified. The last time you logged on to Absa Internet or
Cellphone Banking service was 25 November.

Type in only the characters of your password that fall in the
RED blocks.

'Twenty-fifth of November,' whispered
Mat Joubert. 'The day he disappeared.'

Bella van Breda typed in the third
row of numbers and letters in the boxes.

The screen changed.

'How did you know?' he asked.

'That's how people are. They use the
same things, the same passwords. It's easier to remember.' They looked at the
screen.

Balances

Click on an account name or number to view transaction
history.

Warning: the available balance on your account may include
cheque deposits that

are
not yet fully paid over to the bank, and that could still be reversed.

Joubert whistled through his teeth. A
hundred and thirty thousand rand. That changed everything. 'Can you print that
out?' he asked urgently.

'It won't disappear,' said Bella calmly.
'Let's see what's going on in the account...'

She clicked on the account number and
a statement appeared on the screen.

Mat Joubert sank back into his chair.
'Can you believe it,' he said. 'Can you believe it.'

'Four hundred thousand rand?' asked
Tanya Flint, her face tight with shock.

'It looks like two cash deposits,'
said Joubert. They were in her living room, he on the couch, she on a chair,
the coffee table between them. 'On the seventeenth of October, 250,000, and on
twenty-ninth of October, another 150,000, which adds up to the grand total
of400,000 rand. Then he made a payment of just under 250,000 rand on the
twenty-seventh of October, a direct transfer to an M. Marshall, and another on
the twelfth of November, to HelderbergUp, for just over 11,000 rand. The rest
is made up of cash withdrawals, interest and bank charges.'

Tanya sat on the edge of her chair and raised her hands to
her face, her eyes never leaving the printed statement. Her body heaved. 'Oh,
God,' she said.

She told Mat Joubert she didn't know
where the money came from. She had never heard of an M. Marshall or
HelderbergUp.

He asked if there was anything Danie
Hint could have sold. He asked whether Gusti Flint could have given or lent her
son money, or if there was any source she could think of, however odd, such as
the Lotto, anything. And each time she gave the same desperately certain, 'No.'
Then: 'How could he have hidden it from me?', pain and betrayal distorting her
face.

Before Joubert could try to answer
the question, someone called from the kitchen 'Hallo-o-o-o ...'

When he had arrived, Tanya Flint had
told him the forensic technician was at work in the garage, but she was too
anxious about the news, so there had been no time to say hello. He got to his
feet.

'Jannie Cordier?'

Cordier looked like an Edgars
advertisement, in dark blue chinos, yellow and blue checked shirt, neat brown
belt around the narrow

hips. He stood, aluminium case in
hand, looking at Tanya's tear- streaked face.

'Excuse me ...' he said.

'I'm Mat Joubert. Did you find
anything?'

'That car has been wiped,' he said.
'Only one set of prints, on the door and the steering wheel. I will have to
take Mrs Flint's to crosscheck,' his high-pitched voice matching the boyish
face.

'What do you mean, wiped?' Tanya
asked.

'From top to bottom. The boot is
clean, the radio, the cubbyhole, the whole thing. Someone did a very good job.'

Tanya Flint looked stunned by the
news. 'What does it mean?'

Joubert sat down slowly, because he
would have to explain the implications to her with a great deal of diplomacy.

'If you ask me: bad news, Mrs Flint,'
said Cordier. 'Very bad news.'

She looked at Joubert. He shook his
head, unhappy with Cordier's tactlessness. Then he agreed with a sigh: 'It isn't
good.'

Cordier waited patiently for Tanya
Flint to calm down before he took her fingerprints. When she went to wash her
hands, Joubert walked the technician to the door. 'Tact isn't your strong
point,' he said to the man.

'What? I'm just honest.'

Joubert just looked at him.

'Someone would have had to tell her
sooner or later.'

'Later might have been better.'

Cordier bristled and turned on his
heel, barking, 'I'll send my bill!' over his shoulder as he walked angrily to
his van. Joubert shut the door and went slowly back to the couch.

Now he had to deal with the other
cellphone and the keys. It was going to be a difficult night.

Her hands were shaking when she came
back and sat down. The lines on her face seemed deeper, the rings around her
eyes darker.

'Tanya ...' he said.

'There's something else,' she said,
already certain of it.

'Yes.'

'Tell me. Let's just get on.'

'He had another cellphone.' He told
her about the Vodacom Starter Pack, the Nokia charger. She sat motionless and
stared at the carpet. At last she said, 'What else?'

He took the keys out of his pocket,
and put them down in front of her. She looked at them reluctantly.

'Do they also
come out of the drawer?'

'Yes.'

She picked
them up. The keys jangled as she trembled.

'Do you know what this is, here?' she
asked and held up the SS logo between her fingers.

'No, but I...'

'Self
Storage,' she said.

That lit up an image in his head, a
big advertising board somewhere at the side of one of the roads he occasionally
took: the blue SS logo, the advertisement for storage space. 'Do you know about
it?'

'I know the logo. They have a
warehouse in Montagu Gardens, close to my business.'

'Then I'll
have to go and find out.'

She didn't give him the key. She
closed her fist around it, as though it were something precious, a treasure.