Деон Мейер - Cobra

By that time the cops would have got hold of the rucksack, and probably the phone too.

He would have to leave Nadia a message. He would just say that this was his new number . . . No, he would say it was a temporary new number, he had lost his old phone, and please phone him, there was something urgent . . . no, there’s something important he wanted to tell her. Phone as soon as she can.

He took a deep breath so that she wouldn’t hear the tension in his voice, and pressed the numbers.

For the first time Mbali saw the bullet hole in the door that led into the mall. She studied it carefully, and then she tried to understand the meaning of it, in the context of the whole crime scene.

She opened the door and walked into the corridor of the shopping centre. She still had her gloves and her shoe covers on. Her eyes searched for a camera that could have covered the door to the control room.

She found one, ten metres away, high up on the wall.

She measured the angle from where it was. Perhaps it hadn’t covered the door, but it would at least have caught a great deal of the wide corridor in front of it.

‘Mbali?’ She heard a familiar voice and turned. Benny Griessel. He, Vaughn Cupido, and Lithpel had arrived. She steeled herself. Griessel was her favourite colleague. Sergeant Davids’ apparel and grooming were a bit of a scandal, but he did his job well, and he knew his place. Cupido she could not stand. But she was a professional woman. She must be able to handle everything.

She greeted all three, then went and stood in front of the door that led out of the mall’s walkway. ‘The crime scene starts here. You’ll have to put on protection.’

26

Nadia Kleinbooi walked out of class.

In the corridor a guy behind her said, ‘Do those jeans come with the cute bum, or is that an optional extra?’

She looked and laughed at him, a passing flirtation. She enjoyed the attention. She wasn’t as skinny as her brother. ‘You got the calves that they forgot to give me,’Tyrone always said.

Then she would reply, ‘And you got the looks.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your looks. Jy’s beautiful.’ But she knew he was the good-looking one. All her girlfriends used to hang around Uncle Solly’s house in the hope that Tyrone would be there. But Tyrone wasn’t there much. Though he was always there when she needed him.

Only once she was outside, in the weak winter sun, did she take out her cellphone.

Two SMSs beeped immediately.

You have two missed calls.

You have two voicemail messages.

At that very moment it rang, and she saw it was Tyrone’s phone. She answered.

‘Hi,’ said the guy with the sexy French voice. ‘I’m in Ryneveld Street.’

But he pronounced it ‘Rinerval’, which made her smile. ‘There’s a building here, I think it says Geology.’

‘I know where that is. I’ll be there in two minutes.’

‘ Très bien ,’ he said.‘I am at the entrance to the parking. With a silver Nissan X-Trail.’

‘OK,’ she said, and rang off.

She wondered what the Frenchman looked like. It was such a sexy, sexy accent, and his voice was nice – there was a hint of laughter in it, as though he found the whole situation very amusing.

Griessel held the cartridge in his glove-protected fingers.

‘It’s the same snake. And the same initials.’

‘OK,’ said Mbali, and gave them a short, bullet-point summary of what had happened, according to the security men.

‘The Cobra is a pickpocket now?’ Cupido asked, shaking his head scornfully.

Mbali ignored him.

‘That’s not the Cobra.’ Cupido pointed at the screen, and then at the photo on the noticeboard. ‘This guy is too dark. And that’s not racist, Mbali. That’s just a fact.’

She didn’t look at him. She told Griessel the hardest decision they had to take now, was at what stage Lithpel could sit down in front of the video console so that they could look at the material. Because the console was in the middle of the crime scene, and there was the risk that they would disturb forensic evidence if they were all standing around, among the dead. But Thick and Thin were on their way, and their procedures, the video and photography department’s recording, the pathologist’s in-loco examination, and the removal of the bodies could take hours. The longer they waited, the more likely it was that any possible video evidence would prove useless. While the culprit fled further afield.

‘Easy decision,’ said Cupido. ‘There’s no big mystery here. He came, he shot, he left. And we’re already in. Let’s do it.’

Mbali looked only at Griessel.

‘He’s right,’ said Griessel, ‘but we still have to be very careful not to disturb the scene.’

‘OK,’ said Mbali. ‘There’s one other problem. Because the shooting was localised, and the Sea Point SC managed everything appropriately, it has not attracted much attention yet. But when Forensics and the pathologist and the ambulances arrive, that will change. Someone needs to go and tell the shopping centre management. They will want to manage the public and media attention.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Cupido.

‘Where’s the SC?’ asked Griessel.

‘He had to leave. He has another shooting somewhere to attend to.’

‘What shooting?’ asked Griessel, heart sinking, because he didn’t believe in coincidences.

Nadia saw him standing beside the silver X-Trail. A blond man in old denims and a white T-shirt with a cellphone in his hand. Looking around, as though he was searching for someone. Brush cut, narrow hips, broad shoulders, white skin, but tanned, like a surfer. Maybe he was a surfer.

A pity he was on his way back to France . . .

But as she approached, while he looked enquiringly at her and she waved and nodded, she realised he was probably in his mid-thirties. Too old for her. Although . . .

He held the phone up and asked: ‘Nadia?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled broadly. White, even teeth.

‘How can I thank you?’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw two other men in the X-Trail.

‘It is only a pleasure.’ He held out the phone to her.

She reached him and put out her hand to take the phone from him. Then he grabbed her arm.

Two male students in a Volkswagen Citi Golf drove out of the car park beside the R. W. Wilcocks building. The passenger was busy on his cellphone. It was the driver who saw it – the white man grabbing the coloured girl. The rear door of the Nissan X-Trail opened, and he half carried, half dragged her into the vehicle.

‘What the fuck?’ he said and wound down his window.

‘What?’ asked the passenger.

‘That ou . . .’ He saw the X-Trail pull away calmly. He pressed the hooter of his car three times, short and urgent.

‘What is it, bro?’ asked the passenger.

The X-Trail drove on.

The driver bellowed out of the window. ‘Hey!’

‘Cool it, bro,’ said the passenger.

‘Those guys in the Nissan kidnapped that girl right now . . .’ He accelerated, and set off in pursuit of the X-Trail.

‘What girl?’

‘The one in the car.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I am . Call the police.’The X-Trail turned right into Crozier.

‘There’s no girl in that car . . .’

The driver hooted again, reduced his following distance so that he was on the tail of the X-Trail. ‘They’re pushing her down. I’m telling you, call the police. I saw it.’

The passenger wasn’t convinced. ‘Bro, we can’t just call the police. I mean . . .’

The driver swore, a staccato of reproach. He took his cellphone out of his shirt pocket. ‘I will fokken phone them myself . . .’