Random Violence (27 page)

“That’s the problem with security in the new South Africa,” he heard Whiteboy say behind him, as if reading his mind. “These automatic gates and walls and electric fences. They’re wonderful if the criminals are on the wrong side, but they’re a real bitch when you want your backup to get in.”

“They’ll get in eventually.”

“I’m sure they will. It won’t matter though.”

“You planning on killing yourself as well as us, then? There’s no way you’re getting out of this situation.”

“Turn to your left here, please, Mr. Policeman.”

The ground was uneven and sloped down a steep incline. David stumbled in the gloom and felt his balance go. Hope’s weight yanked him forward, impossibly heavy in his arms. They were going to fall. He would be OK, but Hope would hit the ground with David’s entire weight behind him.

He took another giant step forward, fighting to regain his balance. He heard Hope cry out, a small helpless sound. As his right leg hit the ground he threw his weight backwards, bracing and twisting against the downward pull. His runaway momentum slowed, but at the same time his foot bent to the side and a white-hot pain lanced through his ankle, sending agonizing daggers straight up his leg.

He brought his good leg under him and stood panting, limbs quivering. He didn’t know if his ankle would support his own weight, never mind the extra burden in his arms, but he had no choice. He took a tentative step forward. Perhaps it would be fine. Perhaps he could even play up his injury, let Whiteboy think he was more incapacitated than he was.

He almost collapsed. His ankle had no strength in it.

Behind him, he heard Whiteboy laugh.

“Don’t even have to waste a bullet on you,” he said.

David heard a humming noise, and a wooden garage door obscured by an overgrowth of ivy began opening up. Inside was a black Mercedes, its body gleaming even in the dim light. It had no front number plate.

Whiteboy walked past him and pulled a back door open.

“Put him in there.”

David lurched towards the car. “You’re crazy. You won’t even get out of the gate.”

“Don’t let it worry you. Just put him in there. Across the seats.”

David leaned forward, hopping on his left leg as he tried to maneuver Hope into the car. He lowered the man’s shoulders down and pushed. The seats were leather, more slippery than fabric, which made the job easier. For a moment, their eyes met. David stared back at him helplessly.

Over the car door, Whiteboy still had the gun trained on him.

“Close the door.”

David slammed the door shut. The sound was heavy and loud in the concrete-walled garage.

“Open the trunk.”

David obeyed.

Whiteboy’s smile widened. “Get in.”

David stood his ground. “No.”

Whiteboy indicated again with the gun. “In.”

“No.”

“Don’t stall, Mr. Policeman.”

“Stalling or not, it’s game over.”

Whiteboy shook his head. “Not at all. This particular prop-erty is what’s known as a Rand lord’s house.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“The people who originally bought land here in Houghton were extremely wealthy. Most of them had made a fortune on the mines. There aren’t many houses left like this one. They’re double-sized. Whoever this Rand lord was, he liked his space. So you see, it actually has two gates. One opens onto River Road, where your intellectually challenged col-leagues are trying to work out how to get in. The other one opens onto Fifth Street, which runs parallel to River. I’m sure it’s conveniently free of the police.”

David watched Whiteboy’s gun hand. It was rock-steady. The man wasn’t panicking. The police were at the gate and he was making wisecracks. He was supremely confident.

“I’ll give you a count of five,” Whiteboy said. His lips drew back from his teeth, and his voice changed abruptly from calm and amused to furious. “You’re lucky I’m giving you a chance at all, you dumb piece of shit. I’ll shoot you right here, right now. It won’t slow me down for a second.”

David started to climb into the black-carpeted trunk. He was dealing with a madman. Better to stay alive for a while longer. He could make a plan, he could try to attract atten-tion as Whiteboy was driving.

The trunk had a shallow rim. To get in he had to lift his legs and bend his knees and duck his head. It would have been a simple maneuver if it wasn’t for his damn ankle. He had to lift it over the lip with his right arm and then roll over it. He half-fell inside and landed on all fours. It was the easiest thing in the world for Whiteboy to do what he did next. As quick as a snake, he whipped his arm forward and whacked David’s head with the butt of his gun. It was a solid blow, and so fast that David had no time to react. He saw the Beretta flash towards him and then his head jerked sideways, bouncing off the metal lid before he slumped down onto the carpet.

His world blacked out in an instant.

38

White & Co had developed Fairway Lodge after the grieving owner had sold them the family home. His wife had been shot and killed outside the house while leaving for work one morning. Lake View Manor had been started when the resi-dents sold their place after the next-door neighbors were bru-tally tortured and murdered in a house robbery. White & Co had killed two birds with one stone on that particular project, because the woman who lived at the end of the road had sold to them too. That beautiful piece of land then had forty luxury cluster homes erected on it and became Sandton Ridge.

Jade scribbled notes on her paper and ended her final call. She couldn’t believe it. In every case, the surviving home-owners had sold to White & Co in a panic, traumatized by recent violent events. They had all unquestioningly accepted Mark’s assurance that property prices had been adversely affected by the current crime wave and that they needed to move somewhere safer as soon as possible, so that their bad memories could start to fade.

All the survivors had told her how charming Mark was, how he had worked hard for the sale. How he visited them many times before the tragedy occurred. They’d regarded him as a friend.

The operation was as slick as any Jade had seen. Mark would gain the trust of the victims. During his conversations with the families, he would discover who wanted to sell and who didn’t. Whiteboy would “remove” the reluctant partner, or orchestrate a nightmare crime scenario close to home to nudge the potential sellers into a “favorable” decision. Then the sale was as easy as taking candy from a baby. Easier, Jade thought, because in her limited experience babies and candy tended to form sticky combinations.

She was also sure that if any other developers decided to go up against White & Co for a particular property, Whiteboy would find very effective methods of making them change their minds.

She frowned, gazing out of Piet’s kitchen window at the rolling hills, with the trees and fences and barn silhouetted against a tangerine sky.

There was only one problem.

She was still no closer to discovering why Annette had died.

If Mark, like Whiteboy, was a complete psychopath, she could have understood why he murdered his pregnant wife. Just. But Annette? Had she died because she was trying to prove that Ellie had been murdered? If so, how had she known about Ellie?

She hurried back to the lounge where the faxed copy of Ellie’s friends and contacts that Bill Scott had provided lay on the coffee table. Jade’s notes crawled around the edges of the photocopied text like ants around a sugar bowl. She only had one piece of paper. And there had been a lot to record.

Jade scanned the list, hoping to see Annette Botha listed as one of Ellie’s friends. Perhaps she’d tried to catch up with her after a long break and panicked when she couldn’t trace her.

Ellie’s list of contacts read like that of a spoiled teenager. Her father had done his best. She thought he must have racked his brains to help her and David. He’d remembered names of riding instructors and dressage instructors, which was presumably different from normal horse riding, although Jade couldn’t see how. She’d had riding friends and dressage friends. She’d had tennis friends and cycling friends and golf friends. Friends from school. Ellie had more friends than Jade could believe. No wonder she was smiling in the photograph that stood on her father’s polished cabinet.

She was so intent on searching for Annette that she almost missed a familiar name. She carried on past it, and then she frowned, went back, and read the name again.

“Adrian Muller. Golf Coach.”

Annette Botha hadn’t known Ellie Myers. But her brother Adrian had. Well enough for her father to have added his name to the list.

Jade raised her head. She wished that she had her timeline in front of her. She’d forgotten to add one name to it. The name of Adrian Muller, who’d died five years ago, stabbed during an ATM transaction.

Ellie had died five years ago, in February. When had Adrian died? Were their deaths connected?

Jade went into the kitchen, turned on the light. She walked over to the boxes containing Adrian’s sporting equipment. Packed and labeled by Annette before her move. She found a spoon in the sink. Using the edge of the spoon, she sliced down the center of the packaging tape of each box.

In the biggest one, she found golf clubs. More golf clubs. Golf bags. More golf bags. How many did a golfer need, she wondered. Other boxes contained golf shoes, shirts, trousers, tailored shorts. Umpteen caps. Plastic items which after a moment’s confusion she identified as tees. Gloves, all for the left hand. She couldn’t find any right-handed ones. Perhaps golfers only wore gloves on one hand. There was an entire gym bag crammed full of golf balls.

And one tennis racket.

Jade turned off the light and looked out at the early evening sky. Her eyes were automatically drawn to the dark bulk of the barn, framed by the tidy rows of wooden fencing. A brand-new horse barn, never used. Why had it been built? Adrian was a golfer. He had won trophies for his sport. He didn’t own any breeches or shiny riding boots. There was no tack in the boxes. No whips or gloves or big padded helmets. Clearly, Adrian hadn’t possessed any riding gear, or owned any horses. But Ellie had. Ellie was a horsewoman who prac-ticed the mystifying art of dressage.

Ellie was three months pregnant when she died.

Jade shot back into the lounge and grabbed her cell phone.

Reality returned to David in a gray, dizzy haze. For a moment he wished it hadn’t. His hands were fastened together behind his back. The cable ties around his wrists were digging into his flesh. His legs were tied. His head was pounding and the bump on his temple burned every time the car turned or slowed. Bile churned in his stomach. At least he wasn’t gagged. If he threw up, he wouldn’t choke to death. Although in the heavy, solid trunk of the car, his voice was of no use to him.

David thought about Graham Hope tied up on the back seat. He couldn’t hear the man, couldn’t sense any movement from the car’s interior. Hope clearly wasn’t struggling. David supposed that, at night, there was no chance that anybody would notice him through the deeply tinted windows. Even if he made faces or tried to smash the window with his head, as David would have done.

Or perhaps wouldn’t have done. Not if Whiteboy had been in the driver’s seat with a loaded gun.

And then he heard a familiar, persistent noise. His dulled brain took a while to register what it was. His cell phone, ringing in his jacket pocket. Whiteboy obviously hadn’t bothered to take it away from him. He must have thought that a sharp blow to the head, together with the cable ties, made it unnecessary.

After a short, intense and painful struggle, David realized he was right.

He slumped back down onto the carpet. Wasting his energy wouldn’t help him now.

He could feel his cheek resting on the sharp edge of some-thing small and shell-shaped. In the dark he couldn’t see what it was. But he wondered if it might be the missing fingernail, the one that had torn away from Dean Grobbelaar’s hand moments before he was tied to a tree to meet his bloody fate.

Jade phoned Piet first. His phone didn’t even ring. It went straight through to voicemail. Then, on reflex, she called David just to see if he would speak to her. No reply.

Jade called Johannesburg Central. She needed to know when Adrian Muller had died. She was sure that Piet would remember.

She knew David wouldn’t be there, so she asked for Captain Moloi. He sounded tense and abrupt. Jade supposed that was because he was talking to her. Williams must have briefed him. She’d probably been labeled as a traitor, a turncoat. A career-damaging person.

Jade didn’t care.

“I need to ask Piet Botha a question,” she said.

“He was released just now. Williams told us to let him go. No reason to keep him any longer.” Moloi seemed guarded.

“Oh.” Jade paused, confused. She had assumed that Piet would call her as soon as he was released. “Did you give him back his cell phone? Because I haven’t been able to get hold of him.”

“Yes, we did.” Moloi answered patiently. “All the usual pro-cedures were followed.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“I’ve no idea, Jade. Perhaps you could ask the sergeant at the front desk. He might have asked to use the phone there, if his battery was dead.”

“Thanks.”

A minute later, Jade was speaking to the sergeant. She informed her that yes, she remembered the man with paint on his face. He had passed by her desk after his release. She told Jade that Piet had met the person who had come to the station the other day. The man who had been using crutches. The one she had fetched a chair for.

“Piet got a lift with him?” Jade asked.

“Yes, I think so. He was standing in the doorway when Piet went out. I saw him speak to Piet. Then they walked away together.”

So Graham Hope had picked him up. She was sure the insatiably curious estate agent had been eager to get the latest news from the holding cells. What better way to do this than giving the former suspect a ride home in his car?

She tried Piet’s number again. The phone rang straight through to voicemail a second time.

Jade thumped the table in frustration. She needed her case file. For a crazy moment she wondered whether she should risk driving back to the cottage to get it. Because now she needed to contact Graham Hope urgently, in order to speak to Piet. She thought of the solidly packed queues of traffic between Johannesburg city and the northwestern suburbs. They could be another hour getting here. And there was no guarantee that Graham wouldn’t whisk Piet off for a bite of supper, to squeeze more information out of him before he took him home.

Graham Hope’s business card was in her case file in the cottage. His number wasn’t stored on her cell.

She had one remaining option, and her chances of success were fading as fast as the evening light. With a sigh, Jade picked up the phone and dialed the number for the estate agents board.

The phone rang twelve times before it was answered. The woman sounded annoyed. Jade was sure she’d been on her way out of the door. She’d probably forgotten to turn on the answering machine and had only answered the call so she could have the satisfaction of telling the caller that her com-puter was turned off so they’d have to ring back tomorrow.

“It’s me again. I called you earlier,” Jade said.

“Yes. You did. Twice. Well, I’m on my way home now. Any-thing you need to ask will have to wait until morning.”

There was no other choice. Jade would have to grovel.

“Please. I’m a private investigator in the middle of a vitally important police investigation. I’m sorry I took up so much of your time today. There is one final piece of information I need from you now. It’s incredibly urgent and if you give it to me I promise I’ll get off the phone and never bother you again.”

The woman sighed loudly. Jade felt a glow of triumph. She was going to cooperate.

While she was listening to the faint sound of the computer starting up, Jade wondered why she hadn’t ever tried to nego-tiate with David in the same way. Perhaps it would produce better results. Perhaps she should try it sometime.

Jade drew a pattern on the last blank corner of her paper, outlining a box for the number. It was a nice thought. But she knew she never would.

“What do you want?”

“The cell number of one of your estate agents. A Mr. Graham Hope.”

She heard the woman repeat the surname as she searched the database. “Hope, Mr. G. Yes. We do have one for him,” she said. Jade wrote the number down, thanked her profusely and said a hurried goodbye.

She dialed the number. He answered at the other end of the crackly cell phone line. Jade couldn’t hear what he said at all.

“Hi there, Graham. It’s Jade. Is Piet with you?”

More crackling.

“Piet Botha. Is he there with you?”

“No. This is Graham.” His voice sounded deep and grainy, distorted by the poor line.

Jade sighed. She hoped he was heading into a better cell reception area, because otherwise this was going to be a long conversation.