Thirteen Hours (42 page)

John Afrika looked at Griessel, at Joubert, at
Ndabeni, and back to Griessel again. Conflicting emotions passed like the
seasons across his face. He nodded slightly. 'Get her, Benny,' he said, and
walked out, careful not to step in the pool of blood.

Griessel's phone rang again, he answered it and the
man from Telkom said: 'Benny, between twelve and two there were only two calls
made from that number. The first was to West Lafayette in Indiana, that's in America,
and the second was to you.'

'Dave, what time was the first one made?'

'Hold on ... thirteen thirty-six. It lasted for two
minutes, twenty-two seconds.'

'Thanks, Dave, thanks a lot.' He ended the call and
thought. He tried to piece the thing together, the thousands of loose strands
in his head.

'Benny ...' Vusi said, but he held up a hand, checked
his cell phone screen, looked up the call register for the record of Rachel's
call to him. He received it at thirteen forty-one. Then he had run out of Van
Hunks and they had raced here. If her attackers had somehow intercepted her
first call, they had only had five minutes more. What if they had been in the
area somewhere nearby? They must have arrived just after he had finished
speaking to Rachel. That was some quick reaction. Too quick ...

A spark lit up in his brain, a flash of insight.
'Vusi, was it here on the corner that she went into the cafe?'

'The deli,' Ndabeni nodded.

'And then she ran down here,' Griessel indicated Upper
Orange.

'Mbali found footprints in the garden.'

Griessel scratched his head. 'They were waiting
somewhere, Vusi. They must have seen her, but with all the police around ...'

'Benny, the panel van ...'

But Griessel did not hear him. Why hadn't they shot
her? Just the old man. They had cut Erin Russel's throat. But they allowed
Rachel to live when they could easily have killed her. Here in this house. But
they abducted her?

Another revelation.

'The rucksack,' he said. They had cut Erin Russel's
rucksack off her shoulders. He bent and looked under the table. 'See if you can
find a rucksack.' He walked down the passage. 'Vusi, take the left,

the bathroom, that bedroom, I'll take the right.' He
stopped. 'Mat, please, can you look in the kitchen and outside?'

'What does the rucksack look like?'

'I have no idea,' said Griessel. But a thought
occurred to him and stopped him in his tracks so that Vusi nearly bumped into
him. He began to phone feverishly. As the sergeant in Caledon Square answered,
he identified himself and asked if there were still uniforms at the Cat &
Moose in Long Street.

'Yes, they are still there.'

'Sarge, tell them to ask where the American girls'
luggage is. Erin Russel and Rachel Anderson. They must find it, and guard it
with their lives.'

'I'll do that.'

Griessel said to Ndabeni: 'They're looking for
something, Vusi, the fuckers are looking for something the girls have. That's
why Rachel is still alive.' And he dashed off to the bedrooms to look for the
rucksack.

'What now?' Natasha Abader asked as he closed the late
Adam Barnard's door behind her.

'Sit down, please,' said Dekker, leaning against the
desk, intimidating her with his proximity.

She didn't like that, her beautiful eyes showed it,
but she sat.

'Can I trust you, sister?'

'I told you, I'm not your sister.'

'Why not, sister? Are you too la-di-da working here
with the whiteys and I'm just a common
hotnot
from Atlantis? You're
chlora, finish en klaar.'

'Do you think that's what it's about?' Her eyes
flashed. 'You can't stand it that I slept with a white man, can you? No, it's
no use shaking your head, I saw how you changed, just like that, when I said he
did it here with me too. Let me tell you, he wasn't the first white man and he
won't be the last. But I don't discriminate, I sleep with whoever I want,
because it's the New South Africa, but you don't want to know about that. You
want to "brother" and "sister" us all. You want us to be a
separate tribe, us coloureds; you're the kind who goes around complaining how
hard it is to be a coloured. Wake up, Inspector, it's useless. If you don't
integrate, you won't. That's the trouble with this country, everyone wants to
complain, nobody wants to do anything, nobody wants to forget the past. And,
just for the record, how many white women have you slept with?'

He looked away, towards the window.

'I thought so,' she said.

'What makes you think I have?'

'What woman can look at you and not think of sex?' she
said.

Now he looked her in the eyes, and she looked back,
challenging, angry.

'I'll take that as a compliment.' Knowing he had lost
the battle, he tried to consolidate his position.

'Why am I here?'

Now he felt uncomfortable to be so close. He stood up
and walked around the desk.

'Because I trust you.'

She shook her head, long hair cascading.

'I am going to tell you things you can't repeat,' he
said.

She just looked at him.

'The people who shot Adam Barnard knew him very well.
They know his wife passes out every night. They know where he keeps his pistol.
You are the only one I can trust. Tell me who knows him that well.'

'How can you say that? He was shot in his house ...'

'No, he was shot somewhere else. Maybe not far from
here, in the street. We found his shoe. And his cell phone.' He saw that
surprised her and it gave him satisfaction.

'Then they took him to his house and carried him up
the stairs and put him down there ... Who knows about his wife, Natasha? Who
knows about the pistol? The Geysers?'

She adjusted her skirt and brushed her hair back over
her shoulder before answering. 'No. I don't think so. I don't think they have
ever been to his house. Adam was ... ashamed of Alexa. A few times she'd ...'

'What?'

'Made a scene when he took people to his house. He
lived here. From morning to night. He would go home about seven o'clock, but he
would come back, often. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, then he would work till
twelve ...'

'So who would have known that?'

She considered before she answered. 'I really can't
say.'

'Please. Take a guess.'

'A guess?'

'Speculate.' 'I knew about his wife ...'

'Who else?'

'Willie and Wouter and Michele ...'

'Who's Michele?'

'She's been sitting in there all morning. She does the
PR.'

'I thought Willie Mouton did production and
promotion?'

'Yes, but she does the
PR.
Promotion is when we pay for something.
PR is when the papers write about stuff, or someone is on TV or radio and you
don't pay for it.'

'Which one is Michele?'

'She's the oldish woman who was sitting with Spider
and Ivan ...'

He had a vague recollection of an older woman between
the younger men. 'And she knows Adam well?'

'They've worked together for years. From the
beginning. She went freelance about seven years ago but she still does our PR
on contract.'

'She went freelance?'

'You know, she set up her own agency. For artists who
don't have a label, or for minor labels.'

'Did she and Adam get on well?'

'They were like brother and sister .. .'There was a
hint that this wasn't the whole story.

'What does that mean?'

'They say Adam and Michele were lovers. Years ago.'

'How many years ago?'

'It's just rumours.'

He gave her a look that said, 'Drop the shit.'

'From when Alexa began drinking, apparently. He went
and cried on Michele's shoulder. She was married herself then ...'

'Fuck,' said Dekker.

She looked at him with disapproval.

'Damnit, sister,' he said indignantly. 'My list keeps
getting longer.'

Mat Joubert walked back through the kitchen to the
hall where Griessel and Vusi were watching him expectantly. He shook his
head. No rucksack. He watched Benny process the information silently.
Joubert waited patiently until he knew he could speak.

'You know about the blood out there?' he asked
Griessel, watching him while he said 'yes'. Benny was standing still, head
tilted sideways, right hand reaching unconsciously for his head and the fingers
scratching in the thick, unruly hair just behind his ear.

A feeling of compassion swept over Joubert for this
colleague, this friend, this man he had known for a lifetime. Griessel's frame
had always been too small for all his energy, so that sometimes it seemed to
vibrate, shock waves of passion pulsing through it like a tsunami. That face -
twenty years ago it had an elfish quality, the mischievous cheek of the court
jester, with an infectious laugh and a preposterous witticism perpetually crouched
behind those bright Slavic eyes and wide mouth, ready to take off in full,
unstoppable flight. You could barely see it now - life had eroded it away in a
network of tiny furrows. But Joubert knew that in that brain the synapses were
firing now. Griessel, sent from pillar to post all morning, was trying to get
his head around the puzzle. When he succeeded the sparks would fly. Benny had
the brain of a detective, always faster and more creative than his. Joubert had
always been slow, methodical and systematic, but Griessel had instinct, natural
flair, the sparkling fly half to Joubert's plodding front ranker.

'It might be drugs,' said Griessel, but to himself. 'I
think the ... the rucksack ...'

'Benny, the panel van was in the Metro pound,' said
Vusi.

Griessel stared into nowhere:'... the girls ... no, I
don't know. Maybe they stole the drugs. Or took them but didn't pay ...'

Joubert waited quietly, till he saw Benny focus on him
and Vusi. Then he asked: 'Is it the girl's blood?'

'No.' Then Benny focused sharply on Joubert, with
sudden insight, and he said: 'It's someone else's blood, not Rachel's, it's the
blood of one of those fuckers.' He grabbed his phone.

Joubert said, 'Benny, let me phone the hospitals.'

'No, Mat, let Caledon Square do it,' and he called
their number and gave the order to the radio room Sergeant: 'Any young man
between the age of, say, eighteen and thirty-five, any colour, any race, any
language, Sarge, every young fucker with blood on him, I want to know about.'
Then Griessel looked at Vusi and said: 'Metro's pound?'

'That's right. The same Peugeot, same registration. It
was stolen, and Metro recovered it in Salt River. It has been parked in the
pound since October, because the owner died of a heart attack and the estate is
frozen. I'm going, Benny. I'm going to find out what's going on there. How did
they get it out of the pound?'

Joubert saw a flicker in Griessel's eyes, a momentary
realisation. 'What?' He knew the value of Benny's intuition.

Griessel shook his head. 'Don't know. Something.
Jissis,
I have to sit and think, but
there's no time. Vusi, excellent work, go and find out, let's get the van,
because that's about all we have ...' A sudden intake of breath. 'Wait,' he
called Ndabeni back. 'Vusi, I want to make absolutely sure, the man from the
deli, did he look at the pictures of Demidov's people?'

'He did.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing.'

'OK. Thanks.'