Tony Park - Silent Predator

Goodenough thought the man was trying to distract him. He nodded, and tapped the keyboard in front of him. He was actually doing nothing, but he wanted the man to think he was further checking him out. He glanced over at Mr Daniel Carney, who simply smiled again.

‘Where are you going to after South Africa?’

‘Mozambique.’

‘Do you have your onward air ticket?’

‘Um, no. I’ll be driving a rental car.’

Goodenough looked up and, for the first time, thought he saw a crack in the man’s facade. Carney scratched the back of his head. Most people experienced a degree of nervousness, no matter how mild, when dealing with people in authority. This he knew well. He’d had to deal with hysterical women, angry men, and crying children in his time. However, there was no reason for him to detain this man, even though his gut instinct told him that there was something not quite right about him.

He stamped the man’s passport and slid it back across the counter. ‘Enjoy your short stay in South Africa.’

‘Oh, I’m sure I will.’

Sannie arrived at the headquarters of the South African Police Service Protection and Security Services at 218 Visagie Street, Pretoria, at seven-fifty in the morning and took the lift to her floor.

The General Piet Joubert building was not much to look at from the outside, or the inside. Its concrete facade was studded with panels of tiny blue tiles, which did little to enliven its drabness.

She greeted Lizzy, the receptionist, and grabbed a copy of the Citizen, one of the daily tabloids, as she usually did. On the way to the coffee machine she read the front-page story, which was about an operation by the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit to break a people-smuggling racket. SEX SLAVE TRADERS BUSTED, screamed the headline.

Sannie whistled softly as she took her coffee to her workstation. It had been a big effort, run in conjunction with police in England, Germany, Italy and Mozambique.

She sat down, sipped her coffee, and laid the paper down in front of her and continued to read.

Police spokesperson Inspector Martha Nel said the highly organised gang moved illegal immigrants from Mozambique into and out of South Africa by road in concealed compartments in shipping containers on long-distance freight vehicles.

Inspector Nel said: ‘Boys and girls, mostly orphans, as young as eight and nine years old, were transported illegally. Some of them were smuggled by ship from Mozambique to Europe.

Sannie shuddered. As if she couldn’t imagine the fate of the youngsters, the article went on to say that the victims, lured with promises of work and accommodation abroad, were sold into illegal brothels. Most of those transported, however, were young women in their late teens and early twenties.

From the article, Sannie gathered that the operation had gone down a few weeks ago, but details had only now been released to the press. She imagined it was because the investigating officers hoped to net more of those responsible after the initial bust, which had involved the interception of a container load of young people at the Komatipoort border post. The driver would have talked to minimise his sentence, giving detectives the name of the next person up the chain, and so on.

Sannie knew the woman quoted in the story. She and Martha Nel had completed their training together and had both been posted to the rough Johannesburg flatland suburb of Hillbrow, patrolling the mean streets and seedy hotels in the shadow of the landmark JG Strijdom telecommunications tower on their first assignment. They had followed separate career paths, though, when Sannie met Christo and applied for training as a close protection officer. Sannie opened her contact book and dialled the number for the child protection unit’s offices in the Southern Life building in Pretorius Street. She waited for a couple of minutes while the receptionist on the other end transferred her to Martha.

‘Sannie, howzit? It’s been what, five years? How are your kids?’

They exchanged pleasantries and Sannie accepted Martha’s condolences over Christo’s death. ‘Shame. I remember reading about it. He was such a good man.’

‘Martha, I’m sure you’re very busy today, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the people-smuggling operation.’

‘ Ja, you’re right about being busy. I’ve done five radio interviews already this morning. The boss is holding a press conference at ten, so I don’t have long, Sannie, but I’m happy to help if I can.’

‘What’s the South African angle, Martha? They were bringing people into here, according to the article.’

‘Most of them were being sent abroad, but there were some Mozambicans brought into South Africa.’

‘I don’t mean to demean your operation, but that’s hardly big news, is it? I mean, we’ve got Mozambicans crossing every day.’

‘You’re right, Sannie, but it was just kids coming into South Africa with this gang. We think they were being brought to individuals, to paedophiles, rather than to brothels, as was the case in Italy and Germany. This was almost like people getting cars stolen to order. We think the offenders here would ask for a boy or girl of a particular age, and pay big money for them.’

‘So we’re not talking about guys who would go to the local brothel or try to entice kids into their car?’

‘You got it. Wealthy people. Businessmen, professionals, that sort of thing. Very discreet. The kind of pigs who would have a respectable image to protect.’

‘Have you made any arrests in that group?’

‘Not yet. The guys we’ve picked up in South Africa so far aren’t talking. The money and the power of their clients has got them scared. We had better luck with the Germans and the Italians. The middlemen squealed and the police over there have raided half-a-dozen brothels in both countries.’

‘And in England?’

‘Good and bad luck. We got the names of two Pakistani gentlemen and passed them on to the English. It turned out they were already under surveillance for people smuggling, though the pommies were more interested in them for moving possible terrorist suspects. The sex trade victims were a bonus.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘The surveillance team was caught out when they entered the men’s home to download files off their computer. The suspects returned and set off a remote-controlled bomb that destroyed the computer, killed the IT guy downloading the files and burned the house down.’

‘ Jeez,’ Sannie said. ‘Sounds more sophisticated than just people smuggling.’

‘The English were probably right about some terrorist link, but any information that might have been on that computer was fried. We held off releasing any information while the British tried to find another link to the people smuggling, but they eventually came up with nothing, so we went public today. Sannie — sorry, hey, but I’ve really got to run…’

‘Oh, that’s fine. Thanks so much, Martha. Sorry, one more question.’

‘Okay.’ Sannie heard the impatience now in Martha’s tone.

‘The people you’ve picked up here in South Africa… do you think they’ll talk eventually — give up the names of the paedophiles they were supplying?’

‘You can bet on it. We’ll break them down, one way or another. Even if we have to give the bastards witness protection and exemption, we’ll get the main men.’

‘I’m sure you will. Before I go, can I give you a name? Doctor Pervez Khan.’ Sannie gave Martha the doctor’s home address. ‘He’s listed as a missing person, but you might want to mention his name in your questioning of the subjects.’ She said goodbye and hung up.

Sannie had come into work early to ensure she could get onto one of the few computers in the office. She turned on one of the terminals, finished her coffee and skimmed the rest of the newspaper while she waited for the ageing thing to boot up. When it finally came to life she logged in and checked her emails. There were two belated replies to the enquiries she had started in relation to Daniel Carney. Sannie had followed up her theory that Carney might be a South African expat living in London.