Деон Мейер - Cobra

Mbali made a disapproving sound.

‘You’re gonna pay me?’ asked Fiedler.

‘You talk money, you talk to me,’ said Bones. ‘What is your rate?’

‘This is real. This is actually real,’ said Fiedler, pulling up a chair and sitting down. He looked at the numbers. ‘Where are the IMEIs?’ He pronounced it in the trade lingo, eye-me-eyes .

‘We don’t have them.’

‘I should have known. Then it’s going to take a while, china.’

At ten thirty-five, Dave Fiedler spoke out, from behind one of his computers: ‘That second number has been static in Bellville since four o’clock.’

They sat around the conference table. They were familiar with the art of waiting. Each was busy with his own thoughts.

‘Where in Bellville?’ asked Griessel.

‘Boston. Frans Conradie Drive, about halfway between Duminy and Washington. Google Earth shows a place called Brights Electrical.’

‘He’s still there now?’ asked Cupido.

‘Yep.’

Griessel stood up. ‘Static. Completely static at the same place?’

‘Yep. Phone’s on, but no calls or texts. Last call was made at fifteen fifty-two.’

Griessel walked to the computer screen. ‘How accurate is the plotting, the position of the phone?’

‘About fifteen metres. But because it’s been static, I’d say closer to ten.’

Cupido also came close. They looked at the screen, where Fiedler had Google Streetview open.

‘Those are flats there beside Brights,’ said Cupido. ‘On both sides.’

‘Could it be in those fl ats?’ Griessel asked Fiedler, and pointed at the screen.

‘Yes. Probably the one on the right.’

‘And it’s near the hospital,’ said Griessel. ‘Let’s go.’

They walked quickly to the door. Griessel stopped. ‘And the other phones?’

‘I’ll tell you in ten . . .’

‘Call me on this number,’ said Griessel and scribbled it down hurriedly on a page in his notebook, tore it out and passed it across to Fiedler.

They drove up the N1 with the siren on and the blue light balanced on the dashboard, from where it frequently slid off into Griessel’s lap.

Just beyond the N7, Fiedler phoned. ‘What you call Phone One has been off for the past two and a half hours, china. Plotting says it was all over the place today. Smack in the city, then the Waterfront, then all the way to Stellenbosch, then Bellville . . .’

‘What was the last location?’

‘The R304.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s the road that runs from Stellenbosch all the way to Malmesbury. Before it was switched off, the phone was about three kilometres from the R312 crossing. That’s the one running from Wellington to Durbanville.’

Griessel knew the area. ‘But there’s nothing there.’

‘That’s right, china.’

‘Do you have the call registry yet?’

‘Nope. But it’s coming.’

‘And Phone Three?’

‘Phone Three was on for just eleven minutes, about three hours ago. It made one call. From Somerset Road in the vicinity of the Cape Quarter mall.’

That was when Tyrone phoned Nadia in the hospital.

‘That’s it? Just the one call?’

‘Just the one. And then it was switched off.’

Cupido switched the siren and light off when they turned out of Mike Pienaar Drive into Frans Conradie.

Griessel said they would have to use the old trick to get into the fl ats without a warrant: tell the residents there was a very dangerous, heavily armed murderer in the area. He might be hiding in one of the fl ats at that very moment, they just wanted to secure everything.

‘Then we focus on the flats that don’t want to let us in.’

Bones grinned. ‘You old salts,’ he said, but with respect.

They paired off and went to knock softly on all the doors of the Darina apartment block in 12th Avenue, Boston. White and brown faces opened doors warily. The team displayed their identity cards, apologised for the inconvenience, and spun their tale.

Everyone allowed them in, wide-eyed, standing frightened at the door while their humble one- and two-bedroom spaces were searched, for Tyrone Kleinbooi.

Less than a quarter of an hour later they were back on the pavement in front of the building.

‘Maybe it’s that block over there.’ Mbali pointed at the flats on the other side of the big, red Brights facade.

There too, and in the rooms above the Boston Superette, they found nothing except shocked and anxious residents.

They called Dave Fiedler, who went through his computers again and said the phone was still there, right where they were.

It was Cupido, ever bold and impulsive, who looked at the long row of rubbish bins in front of the Brights steel gate and said: ‘He dumped the phone.’

None of them was keen to brave the minimal shelter of the facade’s narrow overhang, where the cold rain splashed down, to rummage in the contents of the filthy rubbish bins.

At 23.52 Mbali pulled the phone from the rubbish.

It was a Nokia 2700.

52

Griessel took his colleagues back to the DPCI headquarters, because Dave Fiedler said there was one call to Tyrone Kleinbooi’s Phone One

– the device that the Cobras most likely had in their possession now. The number had been active for sixteen minutes in Castle Street, and after that had disappeared off the air.

‘Go get some sleep, china. I’ll call you if there’s any action.’

They met Nyathi down in the basement and informed him of the latest developments.

The Giraffe gave them the photos of the five possible Cobras that were taken at O. R. Tambo Airport – not very useful, but better than nothing. ‘These are our five famous French authors. Take them with you. Maybe it will help.’

Griessel agreed with Bones, Cupido and Mbali that they would phone as soon as there was news. It was better to get some sleep. He was going home, his house was only five or ten minutes away from Fiedler, and he would let them know if there was any activity on the numbers.

Then he drove alone to Alexa’s house, mulling over the events of the past hour or two.

The pickpocket had deliberately left Phone Two, according to Cupido a ‘prepaid special’ that you could buy at any backstreet cellphone shop for a couple of hundred rand, in a rubbish bin at Brights. Still switched on. As if he knew someone was going to trace the number and try to determine the location of the phone.

It made sense. Tyrone knew they would find Nadia’s iPhone in the hospital and start analysing it.

So Tyrone was nobody’s fool. He knew what could be done with technology. And he wanted to make some kind of statement. ‘I’m in Bellville,’ perhaps?

Only to make the next call from De Waterkant?

Which was not too far from where Tyrone rented the room in Schotsche Kloof.

Did he go back to the city, to Bo-Kaap, because he felt at home there? Safe?

That’s what fugitives from the law often did when the heat was on, when the chase became too intense, and their flight chaotic.

And shortly after Tyrone had called Nadia, a new, unknown number had called Phone One, now with the Cobras.

Jissis , thought Benny Griessel. How many phones did the fucker have?

But then he realised the man was a pickpocket. He had as many phones as he needed.

And if you were negotiating with a team that walked into the Waterfront in broad daylight and shot dead five security guards in cold blood, you’d want to make doubly sure that they can’t track you down via cellular technology.

He felt a great sense of determination rising in him. He would have to keep his head, with all the phones, all the technological possibilities. He would have to show he had learned to be a modern-day detective. Even if Cupido called him an ‘old dog’, and Bones joked about the ‘old salts’.