Деон Мейер - Cobra

While he waited, Griessel phoned the SC of Bellville police station to get the details of the shooting. He heard that a security guard had been fatally wounded, and a girl had been admitted to Louis Leipoldt. That was all the station commander could say for sure now, because his detectives were still at the scene, busy questioning witnesses. But he thought it was gang-related, most likely drugs.

‘Colonel, at what time did this take place?’

‘Just after three.’

While he had been in Stellenbosch, the Cobras had shot people, less than a kilometre from the Hawks’ headquarters.

‘We are at Louis Leipoldt now to interview the wounded girl. If you retrieve any bullet casings, let me know. And when the detectives are finished, ask them to phone me. We suspect the case is related to an urgent matter that we are investigating.’

‘I’ll do that.’

Sister Malgas approached with a bulging shoulder bag, which she put down on the desk in front of them. Mbali took out rubber gloves from her equally large handbag, pulled them on, and began to unpack Nadia’s belongings: textbooks on biology, chemistry, physics, and maths.

‘Look here, the bullet hit the book,’ the sister pointed out.

Two notebooks. A bright yellow zipper bag for pens and pencils. A transparent lunchbox with a sandwich and two sticks of dried fruit. A charger for an iPhone, and the phone itself. A small toilet bag with a comb, make-up, and women’s things. A purse, of denim fabric, with Nadia’s student card, a cash card from FNB, a few cash slips for groceries from Checkers, prepaid airtime from Vodacom, and just over a hundred and fifty rand in cash. Two packs of chewing gum, one half empty. A single condom. And last, a key ring with the black and white yin and yang symbol on it, with a round chip for an electronic gate, and a key that would probably fit her apartment’s front door.

Griessel took the phone and began to look at the call register. TYRONE was listed for all the calls from ten o’clock this morning and just after one. Her brother had been phoning her continuously. Or she him. After that, numbers that were not identified in her contacts. The last call, before his own, new phone number appeared, was just before five.

He saw that there was not much charge left in the battery, but he used Nadia’s phone in any case to call Tyrone’s number

Perhaps he would answer.

It rang for a long time, and then went over to voicemail.

‘Hi, this is Ty. You’re looking for me. Why?’

The same voice that had answered Nadia’s phone a while back.

With the leaden feeling of frustration and disappointment he rang off, without leaving a message.

This whole thing had played out at Bellville Station. And David Patrick Adair’s death warrant had been signed there.

41

‘Cool,’ said Vaughn Cupido as they walked into the Protea Hotel Fire & Ice! and he spotted all the neon lights, the slick fittings in glass and wood.

‘Funky,’ said Bones.

They walked to reception, Cupido’s long coat tails flapping.

Bones showed his SAPS identity card to the woman behind the desk. ‘Major Benedict Boshigo, Priority Crimes Directorate of the SAPS.’

Cupido could hear how his colleague relished saying it. He knew Commercial Crimes were mostly desk jockeys; they didn’t get the chance to flash plastic every day.

‘How may I help you, sir?’

‘We called earlier about a Miss Lillian Alvarez. You told us she has checked in.’

‘That must be our reservation desk, sir.’

‘Could you please give us her room number?’

The woman was uncertain. ‘I . . . Our policy . . . I’ll have to check with my manager, sir.’

‘Could you call him for us?’

‘Her. Just a minute . . .’

Cupido looked at an iPad that stood on the counter. Photos of the hotel’s rooms flashed up and dissolved on a constant loop, and below that, Today’s tariff: R899.00 per night (Room Only).

‘Can’t be doing too badly as a research fellow to be able to afford that,’ said Cupido. ‘Unless the rich, digital bank robber of a sugar daddy is paying.’

‘That’s nothing if you’re from England, nè ,’ said Bones. ‘Less than sixty pounds.’

Cupido only nodded, unwilling to discard his financial fraud and mistress theory.

A woman came walking up on black high heels, accompanied by the receptionist. Late thirties, black skirt and jacket, white blouse, thin smile. She knew the SAPS were not good news.

‘Gentleman, how may I help?’

Cupido knew Bones was eager to speak. He stood back.

Bones explained the situation to the manageress. She asked for their identification cards, and studied them carefully.

She looked up. ‘Is there some sort of trouble?’

‘No, she was the victim of a pickpocket this morning. We would just like to talk to her.’

‘A pickpocket? That does not seem like a priority crime.’

‘Uh . . .’ Bones was taken by surprise.

Cupido stepped forward. ‘Ma’am, please, we don’t want to do this the hard way.’ His expression was stern, but he kept his voice low and courteous.

The manageress’s smile disappeared entirely She looked at Cupido, thought for a moment, then nodded to the receptionist. ‘You can give them the room number.’ While the younger woman consulted the computer, the manager said, ‘If there is something I should know . . .’

‘We’ll tell you, of course,’ said Cupido. ‘Thank you.’

Griessel and Mbali had to wait in the hospital restaurant until they could question Nadia Kleinbooi.

They walked from Emergency in Voortrekker Road to the new wing of the hospital on Fairway Road. He walked half a step behind his colleague, still trying to process and express his disappointment. At least the girl was safe, he thought.

And he hadn’t had a drink today, though it had been close, so fucking close. He shivered as if someone had walked over his grave. It was always a danger, when there was so much chaos in an investigation, so much crazy rush and pressure. And trouble. He just mustn’t let the lost battle with the Cobras mess with his head as well. Let him first test his theory on Mbali.

He looked at her, saw how she turned up the collar of the blue SAPS windcheater to keep out the cold late afternoon wind. There was a quiet strength in her walk. On the way to the hospital she had been very quiet, and in the interview with the nurse she was as solemn as ever. But he knew she had been like that from this morning, since the conversation in the car outside the house of the Schotsche Kloof murder. The disapproving frown, the determined, almost arrogant attitude had given way to something else – dismay.

He thought he knew what it was. And he understood.

He had walked that path himself, when he had been appointed by Murder and Robbery – and before he started drinking. Christ, it was a lifetime ago. He had been so full of fire and full of himself and his status, and his responsibility as a Servant of Justice. As Detective. Because when you worked at Murder and Robbery, your role was spelled with a capital letter. What you did mattered .

Part of his smugness was because he had started to run with the big dogs then. The living legends, the guys whose investigations, breakthroughs, interrogation techniques, and witticisms were passed on in seminars, tearooms and bars, with an awed shake of the head. They were his role models and his heroes long before he joined them – in the beginning he was wide-eyed with respect and awe.

But the longer he worked with them – through intense days and nights, weeks and months where he learned to know them as they really were – the more he realised they had feet of clay. Each and every one of them. Everyone had weaknesses, deficiencies, demons, complexes, and syndromes that were laid bare by the inhuman pressure, the violence, the homicides, the powder keg of politics.