Thirteen Hours (34 page)

The taste in his mouth now was not the brandy or Jack
Daniels that he used to drink, but the gin that he had poured that morning for
Alexa Barnard. He recalled her relief with disturbing clarity; he could see the
effect of the alcohol on her so clearly, how it drove out all the demons. That
was what he desired now: not the smell or the taste, but the calm, the
equilibrium that had evaded him all day. He craved the effect of alcohol. He
heard Vusi say his name once, twice, and then he dragged his face away from the
bottles and concentrated fiercely on his colleague.

'These are the night-shift staff,' Vusi said.

'OK.' Griessel looked around the room, aware that his
heart was beating too quickly, his palms sweating, knowing he must squeeze the
longing out of himself by force. He looked at all the people. Some of the staff
were seated at tables, others were busy arranging chairs and wiping down
tables. For the first time he heard the music in the background, unfamiliar
rock.

'Can you ask them to sit, please?' he said to
Federova, thinking he must pull himself together pretty smartly; he had a
young, lost and frightened girl to find.

The woman nodded and clapped her hands to get everyone's
attention. 'Come. Sit.' Griessel noted that they were all young and good
looking - mostly men, nine or ten of them; four women. None of them looked
particularly impressed to be here.

'Can someone turn off the music?' Griessel asked, his
patience worn thin by the general lack of interest, the liquor and the urgency
inside him.

A young man got up and walked over to the sound
system, pressed or turned something and it went suddenly quiet.

'They are from the police,' said Galina Federova in a
businesslike voice, but her irritation came through. 'They want to ask
questions about last night.' She looked at Griessel.

'Good afternoon,' he said. 'Last night, two American
girls visited this club, young tourists. This morning, the body of one of them
was found at the top of Long Street. Her throat was cut.'

He ignored the subdued sounds of dismay; at least he
had their attention now. 'I'm going to pass around a photograph of the victim
and her friend. We need your help urgently. If you remember them at all, put up
your hand. We believe the other girl is still alive, and we have to find her.'

'Before it is too late,' said Vusi Ndabeni softly
beside him.

'Yes,' said Griessel, and gave half of the photographs
to Vusi, walked to the back table and began to hand them out, watching how they
looked at the picture with the usual macabre interest.

He went and stood in front again, waiting for Vusi to
give out the last photos.

Federova sat down at the bar and lit a cigarette. In
front of him the young workers' heads were lowered, busy studying the photos.

Then two or three slowly looked up, warily, with that
tentative expression that said they recognised the girls, but they didn't want
to be first to raise a hand.

Mbali Kaleni was aware of the disapproval of the
coloured receptionist, but didn't understand it. A person had to eat. It was
lunchtime and here was a table and chairs. That was the problem with this
country, she thought, all these little cultural differences. A Zulu eats when
she must eat; it was normal, natural, and no big deal. She wasn't bothering
anyone; she had no issue with how and what and when brown people or white
people ate. If they wanted to eat their tasteless white sandwiches behind closed
office doors or somewhere in a claustrophobic little kitchen, that was their
problem. She didn't judge them.

She shook her head, took out the tub of mashed
potatoes and gravy, lifted the transparent lid, picked up the white plastic
teaspoon and made sure she took a small, well-mannered portion. This was part
of her ritual: first she ate all the chicken, then the potato, leaving half of
the cold drink for last. And, as usual, she thought while she ate. Not about
the murder of the music man; it was the American girl who haunted her. She had
been so sure she would find her. Her colleagues had been running around in a
panic; in the crisis they had acted like headless chickens, but that was the
way men were. In an emergency they had to
do
something; they couldn't
suppress the impulse. This situation called for calm, for logic and causal
thought. That was how she had found the trail in the flower bed.

And then, nothing. That was what she found perplexing.

The girl would not have jumped the picket fence only to
clamber over the next wall and run down the street again.

But the old man had said he had heard her go up to the
wall.

Why didn't Rachel Anderson knock on his door and ask
for shelter? Too little time.

And if time was so short, she would have hidden from
the street some other way. Why hadn't the helicopter spotted her? The way it
seemed to Kaleni as she thought the situation through was that there were only
two options for a fugitive woman trying to stay off the streets: get inside a
house, or hide somewhere in a garden where nobody could see her. If she hadn't
gone into the old man's house, she must have climbed over the northern wall to
the next house. But Kaleni had had a policeman, a tall, skinny Xhosa, look over
the wall for her, because she was too short. He said there was nothing there,
just a little herb garden and a plastic table and chairs.

Had she climbed over the next wall as well and gone
through the next yard? The helicopter would have spotted her sooner or later.

And if she had travelled so far, why did Mbali Kaleni
have such a strong feeling that she was close by?

She scraped out the last of the potato, put the lid
back on the tub, and the tub back in the little carton.

When she was finished here she would go back to Upper
Orange. Have another look. She owed that to the girl: a woman's calm, logical
and causal thought.

Ivan Nell sat opposite Fransman Dekker in Adam
Barnard's office and said in his deep voice: 'I wanted to see Adam, because I
believe they are cheating me. Of my money.'

'How's that?'

'It's a long story ...'

Dekker pulled his notebook and pen nearer. 'Can you
give me the main points?'

Nell leaned forward in his chair, put his elbows on
his knees and said with a serious expression: 'I think they are cooking their
books. Last night I told Adam I wanted to bring in an auditor, because things
didn't look right. And when I heard over the radio this morning that he was
dead ...'

'What made you think things were not right?'

'Well, to get sales figures had become like pulling
teeth; it's very difficult to get something out of them. Then, last year, the
money I received for some songs in compilations by independent labels ... It
was a heck of a lot more than I expected. Then I started doing my own sums ...'

'So AfriSound is not your label?'

'No, they were, until February last year.'

'They made your CDs?'

'My contract was for three original albums and the
option of a
Greatest
Hits.
That
came out last year, all with Adam.'

'And then you went to someone else?'

'No, I started my own label.'

'Because AfriSound cheated you?'

'No, no, I was not aware then that they were robbing
me.'

Dekker leaned back in the comfortable chair. 'Mr Nell,
can you start at the beginning, please?'

'I... please call me Ivan.'

Dekker nodded, impressed, but he didn't show it. He
had expected an attitude: the man was famous, white and successful. But there
was no ego, no talking down to a coloured policeman, just a genuine desire to
help.

'At varsity I started playing in pubs, for pocket
money mostly, around Nineteen ninety-six. I did English covers, Kristofferson,
Cohen, Diamond, Dylan, that sort of thing, just me and my guitar. When I
graduated in ninety-eight, I started going door to door to get gigs in
Pretoria. I started singing in Cafe Amies, McGinty's, Maloney's, some places
without pay. Nobody knew about me. I used to do two sets of English covers and
the last set in Afrikaans with a couple of my own songs thrown in just to test
the audience. Then it started happening, when the time came for the last set,
the place would suddenly be full. The people would sing along. And the
audiences grew bigger, like there was a hunger for Afrikaans stuff, like they
wanted to belong somewhere, the students, the younger people. In any case, the
gigs increased. Eventually I was playing six nights a week, making more money
than I did at work, so I went full time in Two thousand. In Two thousand and
one I made my own CD and I sold it at the shows . . .'

'For which label?'

'No, I didn't have a label.'

'How can you make a CD if you don't have a label?'

'You just have to have money. There was this guy at
Hartebeespoort who had a studio in an outside room. I recorded it with him. He
charged about sixty thousand then. I had to borrow the money ...'

'So why would you need a label?'

'For just about everything, but mostly for capital. If
you want to make a decent album, a solid recording with good musicians and
enough studio time, you need about two hundred thousand. I couldn't afford
that. That first CD of mine was quite primitive, you can hear that. But you sit
in the pub at night and sing, and then you tell people there's a CD, and they
have had a couple of drinks and so they buy it, let's say ten per night, then
you get your money back. But you can't play it on the radio; it's just not good
enough. If you're with a label they pay for a band, a producer, sound engineer;
they market the thing, distribute it - it's a whole different ball game.'

'So how did you end up with AfriSound?'

'Adam heard what was happening up there, about the
audiences growing and so on. So he came up to listen and said he wanted to sign
me. I mean, Adam Barnard, it's what a guy dreams about, he's this legend, Mr
Afrikaans music. He gave me my big break; he put me on the map. I will always
be grateful to him for that... Anyway, we signed for three albums and the
option of a
Greatest Hits.
He said for the first one I must record my first album again with the best
musicians. Adam produced it himself; it was a dream team. They paid RSG Radio
to play the CD; the album went double platinum. It took more than three years,
but we did well. So did the next two albums, and the
Greatest Hits
, all platinum already.'

'So why don't you want to sing with AfriSound any more?'

'Many reasons. Look, the big labels are going to
squeeze every cent out of you. They make big promises, but they don't always
keep them .. . but in the end it's about margins. From a record company you get
twelve per cent, sometimes less. But on your

own you get everything less input costs, eighty,
eighty-five per cent once you've recouped your studio expenses. That is one
heck of a difference. And now I have the capital to rent a decent studio long
enough to make the best possible product.'

'What do you mean when you say you "did
well"? What amounts are we talking about?'

'Look, it depends ...' Uncomfortable, as though he
didn't really want to talk about it.

'Plus minus.'

'Jonkmanskas
was my first album with Adam. It only did fifteen
thousand in the first year, but you have to build your brand, because if people
like your second album they will go back and buy your first. So,
Jonkmanskas
started reasonably, but now
it's on a hundred and fifty thousand ...'

'And what is your share of that?'

'That also depends on whether I sold it myself at a
concert or if you bought it in a shop.'

Dekker sighed. 'Ivan, I'm trying to get my head around
the music business. Give me a ball-park figure of what you earn with a CD.
Nowadays.'

Nell sat up slowly, still uncomfortable with the
subject. 'Let's say about seven hundred and fifty, over three to four years.'

'Seven hundred and fifty thousand?'