Деон Мейер - Cobra

Why not shoot Morris too, why kidnap him?

There was only one person who could answer those questions: Paul Anthony Morris. And they didn’t have the faintest idea who he was.

Suddenly Griessel’s cellphone rang in his pocket, the old-fashioned ringtone that Alexa had chosen. He took it out.

‘Vaughn?’

‘Benna, the photos of the passport are now in the hands of the Deputy Consul General of the British Empire, Madam Carlisle. She says it will take a day or two.’

‘I’ll phone the Giraffe,Vaughn. Maybe he can do something.’

‘Where do you want me?’

He hesitated before asking: ‘Can you go see Louw again?’

‘Of course. I’m not scared of a bit of lesbetarian,’ he said with glee.

Griessel wondered if it wasn’t a big mistake.‘Vaughn, we must work nicely with her. She’s lost some of her men.’

‘Sure, Benna, I’m cool.’

‘Get Morris’s email address and all the documents that he filled in. And we want his cellphone number, Vaughn. Ask whether she kept records of all the calls last week. And the cellphone numbers of the two deceased as well.’

‘I’m all over it. Like a rash.’

8

On the train back to Cape Town, Tyrone Kleinbooi switched off, leaned back, swaying with the motion of the carriage. He liked riding the train. It was an escape from his industry, here in third class. Everyone poor, but there was a hint of hope, as though you were on your way to something better. When he was down, if he had had a hard day at the office, he would often take the train and go somewhere. Lentegeur, Bellville, Simon’s Town, he had twice gone all the way to Worcester by Metrorail, and then he dreamed of Europe by rail, one day. To Barcelona, the Holy Grail of pickpocketing, Uncle Solly always called it.

He knew why his thoughts kept turning to Uncle Solly today. It was the pressure. He had lied to his sister – OK, he had been lying about his job for years now, but he had added an extra untruth today, by December there will be enough for half of next year’s fees as well, which naturally was a blatant lie. That tourism was up seventeen per cent, that the economy of Cape Town was booming, was all true. But it was fokkol help to a pickpocket.

Why? The cameras, that’s why.

When Uncle Solly began coaching him nine years ago, everything was different. Here and there there was a CCTV camera in a shop, but he was not a shoplifter, shoplifting is for amateurs and teenagers,Ty, too easy to get caught, da’s just one exit, and you always want more than one, always. Never mind that nine years ago, he, Tyrone, was only twelve years old, not yet a teenager, but that’s Uncle Solly for you.

Take the postcard trick – those days you could still do it. Saunter in between the outside tables of Café Mozart, there in the Church Street Mall, go up to the tourist with your twelve-year-old even features and your charming smile, and the postcards, all hand-picked by Uncle Solly, pretty ones, Table Mountain, Table Bay, cute Boulders Beach penguins, and a couple with Madiba on. New and shiny.

‘Madam, have you sent your loved ones a Cape Town postcard yet?’ you ask in your sweetest little kid voice.

‘Oh, aren’t you just the cutest. That’s a great idea. George, we should send Shirley a postcard . . . Oh, aren’t the penguins adorable . . .’

And he would put the postcards down on top of the wallet or the cellphone or the passports that lay there on the table, his fingers fanning them out, swift and trained like a card sharp, while he took the wallet and gripped it under the postcards. And the husband asks: ‘How much?’ and he would say: ‘Just five rand, it’s for my school fees,’ and the aunty would say: ‘We’ll take two,’ and she would reach out with her fat, beringed fingers for the postcards, and the husband would begin looking for his wallet. ‘I’m sure I had it . . .’

You hadn’t been able to try that trick for a long time, there were too many cameras around every corner of the city, and somewhere a bloubaadjie officer sitting watching the screens and telling the Metro cops over the radio that you were stealing the tourists blind. Now you had to go back to your little room in the Bo-Kaap about four times a day to change into a different colour shirt and put on another cap or beanie or hat, so that the cop in front of the screens wouldn’t start noticing you.

So what’s a guy to do?

In this industry you went where the marks were, the marks with money. And that meant foreign tourists, because your locals didn’t carry cash – except for the Gautengers and the Free Staters over December, easy pickings if you get them away from a camera, Clifton beach and Camps Bay. And the Biscuit Mill on a Saturday morning, now there’s a paradise, all those milling people, but you could only get two or three wallets before word went around.

Foreign tourists hang out at the Waterfront and in the city and that’s CCTV country, so you have to steal sharp, always in the crowd, you have to move on foot between the V&A and Long Street, between the Castle and the cable car, because the weird routes of the minibus taxis take too long, and the common taxis rip you off . . .

Before November he had to get twelve thousand rand, for this year’s university fees. Before the end of January, another nine thousand for next year’s first payment.

Twenty-one K. How do you do that, Uncle Solly? In this grim winter, with this rain that will keep on till September? With the fences who squeezed you with ‘recession’ and ‘tough times’?

How do you do that and stay out of jail?

Benny Griessel and Mooiwillem Liebenberg found nothing.

They searched the big old house carefully and thoroughly. Morris’s computer, iPad and possible cellphone were not there.

Captain John Cloete, media man for the Hawks, arrived. They went and sat at the dining-room table in the guesthouse to confer.

‘The Giraffe says it’s your call, Benny.’ Cloete had nicotine stains on his fingers, and permanent shadows under his eyes. Griessel suspected that that was the price that the liaison officer paid for his apparent unshakeable calm and patience, despite the inhuman pressure that his job brought with it.

‘It’s a foreigner, John.’

‘So I hear.’

‘We will have to contact next of kin first. That could take a while.’

‘Shall I say “presumably a British citizen”?’

That was not what Griessel wanted. Kidnapping was a delicate, complicated, dangerous mess. If a demand for ransom were received, today or tomorrow, with instructions for no media, the cat would already be out of the bag. And there was no way to put it back in. On top of that, it would be like blood in the water for the media sharks. The fact that it was a foreigner would make them crazy. And they would ruin everything.

‘We don’t know enough yet. I don’t want to say anything about the Brit.’

‘An unknown third party?’

‘No. Absolutely nothing about a third party.’

‘You know it’ll come out, Benny.’

He nodded. There were too many people on the farm who already knew. Colonel Nyathi would have the final approval of the press release anyway, but for now Griessel must try to do what he believed was best for the investigation.

‘I’ll ask the owner to talk to his people, but I think we should just say that one farm worker and two guests were shot. Nothing more.’

‘The moment we identify the two bodyguards, the media will want to know who they were guarding.’

‘Then we must withhold their identities.’

‘Hell, Benny . . .’

‘I know, John, but if the Brit is still alive, we must do the right thing. Imagine if we fuck this one up, what the UK newspapers will write about us.’