Trackers (69 page)

On the way out he ran into Jack
Fischer and financial controller Fanus Delport in the passage.

'You're a busy man,' said Jack,
looking pleased.

'I'm making progress.'

'Oh?'

Joubert gave them a quick summary.

Fischer whistled softly through his
moustache. 'That means that Vlok is fucked. You don't leave your Porsche just
to take a dump.'

'Flint,' said Joubert. 'And I will
have to give the SAPS our information. After this morning, there's an official
request.'

'Jesus,' said Fischer. 'Listen, the
law says that we have to give them "information which has relevance to an
investigation". It's impossible to say exactly how much is
"relevant".'

'I'm going to
lay my cards on the table here, Jack.'

Fischer brushed back his abundant
hair.'
Ja,ja ..
. They'll be able to do sweet blow
all with it anyway. Who's the detective?'

'Inspector
Fizile Butshingi. Milnerton.'

'Well, there
you go.'

As Joubert turned on his heel, Fanus
Delport called after him: 'Now don't you go making too much progress ...'

At the major roadworks on the Nl's
Table Bay Boulevard, he felt his rising impatience with the heavy traffic, the
slow pace. As though his brain had shifted into a higher gear.

He could see the whole thing now, he
didn't need his notes and his timeline. All the pieces were there, in focus,
thoughts dancing back and forth, his hypotheses strong, his deductions logical,
as though he were standing on a hilltop, seeing further than before, even
though he didn't know what was on the horizon.

He recognised it, this sense of
urgency, clarity, this barely- suppressed euphoria. He'd struggled to find the
signs, sniffing around, scratching here and there, but he had it all now, now
he was running alongside the trail, he had the spoor, the scent of blood in his
nostrils, the fever of the hunt in his head.

It had been
five, six years since he'd last felt this way.

He'd expected a much older woman.
Perhaps it was the name that had misled him, but Bessie Heese was in her
thirties. And attractive with it. Short, brown, curly hair, fine features,
rimless silver glasses that gave her a faintly professorial air. Elegant. Grey
pencil skirt and a white blouse with lace detail.

She invited him to the 'meeting
room'. Round table, four chairs, no windows. She called him 'inspector'. He let
it go.

'You must understand, inspector,
under normal circumstances ABC would supply confidential information only to
the police. But because Mrs Flint is the wife of an employee, and has made an
official written request, I'm authorised to answer certain questions.' Her
voice

was even, professional. She made no
movement as she spoke, sat up straight and still. In complete control.

'I appreciate that,' he said.

'So, how may I help you?'

He zipped open his writing pad, found
a clean sheet, slid the pen out. 'Was there ever any suspicion that Danie Flint
was involved in anything criminal?'

She hid it well, but he could see the
question surprised her. 'Criminal? No, absolutely not.'

'No large sums of money going missing
at ABC?'

'Area managers don't handle money,
inspector. It... no, it's not possible.'

'None of his people handle any
money?'

'His bus drivers, but then we're not
talking large sums. A few hundred rand a day at most.'

'Ma'am, did any significant amount of
money vanish from ABC last year? Cash in particular.'

'I... I have to say, these are not
the questions I expected.'

'It would help me a great deal if you
answered them.'

'Inspector, the nature of an area
manager's work ... The way we collect money - it's worlds away from Danie
Flint's job description.'

'Can you tell me how it works?'

She thought for a moment, nodded,
then went through it for him. Bus passengers could basically buy tickets in
three ways: on the bus itself, from the driver. Or from the ticket sellers
working at any of the fifty or so sales kiosks dotted about at strategic spots
around the Cape Peninsula. Or at one of the bigger ticket offices, where bus
drivers and ticket sellers also had to hand their cash in every day.

'So,' she explained, 'the area
manager is just not in that loop.'

'I understand,' said Joubert. 'But he
knows people in that loop. Every day he works with people who are part of that
loop.'

'Then he could only be indirectly
involved.'

'In this case that's very likely. Was
there any major theft of cash last year? September, October?'

She sat dead still, her eyes blinking
twice behind the glasses. 'Inspector, am I to understand that Danie Flint was
involved in a crime?'

Joubert realised that this would seriously affect ABC's loyalty
to Flint - and their cooperation with him. 'No,' he said. 'We just have an
inexplicable sum of money to account for here. I don't yet know how he came by
it, but crime is one of the possibilities.'

She digested the information, with a slight, controlled
frown. 'But why do you think this money has something to do with ABC?'

'Statistics.'

'Oh?'

'When a white-collar worker without any history of criminal
activity is involved in fraud, the chances are more than eighty per cent that
his employer or place of work is in the picture.'

'I see,'

He asked the question again: 'Was there any major theft of
cash from the company last year?'

Bessie Heese considered the question. 'Will you excuse me a
minute?'

'Of course.'

She stood up and walked out of the room.

He stared
after her, dimly aware of her shapely calves and ankles, his thoughts
overwhelmed by the possibility that she was going to ask permission to share a
secret with him that might blow this whole thing wide open.

He was mistaken.

It was ten minutes before she returned, tucking her skirt
carefully underneath her as she sat down opposite him again and said:
'Inspector, you must understand, as manager of human resources I only get
involved when a staff member has to face a disciplinary hearing due to misconduct.
If money goes missing without anyone being implicated, I would not necessarily
know about it. So I had to ascertain the facts from our Managing Director
first. And get his permission to share them with you. Because this is highly
confidential information.'

Joubert nodded. He knew that if the stolen sum was large
enough, most big companies would handle it internally. And keep their lips
sealed about
it,
for fear of damage to their
corporate image.

'Our Managing Director has authorised
me to share the information with you. But with the proviso that you inform us
immediately if Danie Flint is involved in a crime.'

'Very well.' He would have to give
something in order to get something.

'The fact of the matter is that our
largest single financial loss due to theft last year was just under 60,000
rand. At one of our ticket offices, in June. We realised it within twenty-four
hours of the theft, identified the guilty parties, and the case was dealt with
within two weeks. Flint was not involved at all.'

'Sixty thousand,' said Joubert. He
couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice.

'Inspector, you must realise, our
systems are highly sophisticated. I know one doesn't always associate it with a
bus company, but we use the best technology available, especially regarding the
finances. We do a daily reconciliation, we can identify anomalies immediately.
Even relatively small amounts.'

He was still battling to accept the
bad news. 'Are you absolutely sure there were no other amounts? Four hundred
thousand or more?'

Her eyes widened a bit at hearing the
amount, but she recovered quickly. 'I give you my word.'

Joubert sat there, his whole theory
destroyed.

'Four hundred thousand? Danie Flint
stole four hundred thousand?' Bessie Heese asked, some expression in her voice
for the first time.

He parked the Honda at work, but he
didn't walk to the office. He left via the basement, walked around to the St
Georges Mall, then up towards the cathedral. He didn't notice the street
hawkers, the stalls, the tourists, the diners and drinkers at the tables
outside restaurants. He was oblivious to the way the stream of home-bound
office workers parted for his tall, broad figure as he moved against the flow,
his brain occupied with the big question: where had the money come from?

Statistics were on his side, the
general rule: a white man in his thirties, with a good job and no previous
criminal record, steals first from his place of work. It all rested on the universal
principle of Predisposition + Environment + Current Circumstances that is
drilled into detectives in every criminology course. In other words, the
suspect's inherent tendency to resort to crime, plus his formative environment,
plus opportunity. And it was the latter that was under consideration here.
Opportunity.

Danie Flint's psyche made him
capable, allowed him to grasp the Big Opportunity. And the profile said the
opportunity was usually in the work environment, because that was where he
spent most of his time. That was where his knowledge was, his experience, his
insight into systems, procedures, security, so that he could assess
possibilities, make judgements about the likelihood of getting away with the
crime.

But Bessie Heese of ABC said they'd
never lost 400,000 rand.

And he had absolutely no idea where
another opportunity might have come from.

He put aside everything he knew. He
walked past the cathedral, up the footpath through the Company Gardens, to
Government Avenue. He went back to the beginning, and tried to construct a new
theory. He thought about the money. A considerable amount. Cash. The key factor
was cash. White collar crime was about cheques, falsified accounts, doctored
tenders, Internet transfers, cooked books. Not cash.

Bank robbery was cash of 400,000. Or
cash-in-transit heists, casino robbery, pension pay points. The rest was small
change. Even the robbery of supermarkets, restaurants, shops. Ten, twenty,
thirty thousand rand if they were lucky.

But banks, cash-in-transit vehicles,
casinos were not Danie Flint's world. In this country that was largely the
territory of organised township crime gangs. Far removed from the bus milieu.

He considered Flint's other
activities and environments. Gym. Circle of friends. Residential neighbourhood.
The only potential was the neighbourhood, he had heard people refer to
Parklands as 'Darklands', with reference to the number of Nigerians who had
moved in there in recent years. But the majority of them were good citizens,
working in legal jobs.

Anything was possible. What if Danie
Flint had struck up a conversation with someone in a sports bar, someone with
a plan?

Unlikely. What could he have offered
them? Nigerian cartels specialised in drugs, credit card and four-one-nine
fraud. And given

Flint's age, his job, the circles he
moved in, he couldn't have been of much assistance.

Unless ...

He would have to ask Tanya about it,
even though it was a wild guess.

Two amounts, two deposits, twelve
days apart. Two-fifty, and one-fifty.

Why two separate amounts? Caution?
Not wanting to attract too much attention? Or was there a more practical
reason?

He stood on the pavement in Annandale
Street, with the entrance to the Mount Nelson Hotel across the road from him,
and he knew he would have to delve into it again, deeper and more thoroughly.
Somewhere there was a piece of information that would answer all the questions.

The only problem was, he had no idea
where to look. And Tanya Flint's money was running out.