Деон Мейер - Cobra

The money was there.

He sent the text.

58

Benny Griessel made a fatal error.

The chaos of the morning was to blame, the many threads that he had to hold on to and manipulate like a puppeteer, the adrenaline and crazy pace of the chase, the determination to bring the Cobras to book.

He should have stood still for a moment and thought, but he didn’t.

Instinctively he shifted his service weapon into easy reach. And he stormed through the train carriage.

He had been standing at the window of the middle carriage, and saw where the rucksack was thrown out. Now he threaded his way between the people in the compartment, to get there, two carriages down. He didn’t see the notice stuck in big cartoon strips above the door.

Travelling between coaches is illegal.

Do not board train when full.

Do not hold doors open when train is in motion.

Nobody stopped him when he went from the middle carriage to the next. He saw the Cobra, the one from the photo, with the black cap and the blue windcheater, on the other side of the last door. He put his hand on the Beretta on his hip, pressed the safety off, focused on the man who was staring intently out of the window.

Griessel was unaware of the middle-aged ticket inspector approaching, only noticed him when the man reached him and said, ‘You can’t travel between coaches.’

‘I’m from the police,’ said Griessel so as not to attract attention, especially not from the Cobra.

Griessel walked past the ticket inspector. The train was noisy and he didn’t hear whether the man said anything in response. Griessel raised his left hand to open the door between the carriages.

The ticker inspector grabbed his right shoulder, to stop him. The man said, ‘You can’t go through there, it’s against the rules.’

‘I’m a policeman,’ said Griessel, loudly and impatiently this time.

The Cobra saw the movement, turned his head, looked at him.

Griessel jerked the door open with his left hand, pulled out his service pistol.

The ticket inspector shoved Griessel’s shoulder, pushing him off balance.

The Cobra was swift and practised. His right hand emerged from his windcheater, holding a pistol. He swung it towards Griessel as he moved forward. To the middle of the carriage.

The door began to close automatically again.

Time stood still. Griessel didn’t know how thick the glass was, he would have to shoot before the door closed, before the Cobra could fire at him, there was no time to aim. He jerked his shoulder forwards, and pulled the trigger.

The deafening shot boomed through the train carriage. People screamed. Blood exploded in a fine spray around the Cobra’s head and against the window behind him. The Cobra collapsed. The ticket inspector dived at Griessel and tried to wrench the pistol away from him.

Griessel aimed a punch at the man, the pistol was loaded and dangerous, what was the idiot doing? He hit the ticket inspector with an elbow somewhere in his face and the man fell. Griessel staggered forward, up to the Cobra.

The Cobra’s lower cheekbone and nose was a bloody, gaping hole.

‘ Fok! ’ He wanted to know where David Adair was, he’d wanted to question the man.

The ticket inspector tackled Griessel, and both of them stumbled over the Cobra.

Griessel lost his temper, but he pressed the catch of the Beretta so the weapon was safe. Then he hit the ticket inspector angrily across the jaw with the pistol. The man fell down again. Griessel straightened up. He jammed the pistol against the ticket inspector’s cheek. ‘Are you fokken deaf? I’m a policeman.’

‘Yes,’ said the man, clearly confused.

‘Yes, what?’

‘Yes,’ said the ticket inspector, ‘I am a bit deaf.’

Only then Griessel did notice the discreet hearing aid in the man’s ear.

Someone pulled the emergency cord so that Griessel completely lost his balance and fell over, on top of the Cobra’s corpse.

Mbali sat and waited. She felt no fear. There was just a tingling of adrenaline in her veins.

Her hand was firmly on her service pistol, the barrel pointing straight ahead, even if it was deep in her cavernous handbag. Even though Bones had phoned her and said Benny Griessel asked that she should just watch the Cobra who came to fetch the memory card. At Bellville Station, Captain Zola Nyathi and Ulinda Radebe were waiting. Don’t confront the Cobra. Identify him, watch him.

At Parow Station she looked out of the window, to see if she could spot a Cobra.

There were too many people getting in and out of her carriage.

Only once things had settled down, just before the door closed, did she become aware of him.

It was the one from the Waterfront. She knew it, because she recognised the baseball cap, the slender grace of his movement, the shape of his face, the café au lait complexion. It was the one they believed came from Mozambique, Joaquim Curado, currently travelling under the name of Hector Malot.

She admonished herself, inaudibly and in Zulu, to keep calm. Her heart began hammering in her chest, her hand perspired on the pistol butt.

He was the one who had shot five people.

The train pulled out of the station.

She watched him count the benches. He came over to her.

‘Could you move?’ he asked, and pointed at the empty seats on either side of her.

‘No,’ she said.

She looked into his eyes. She saw death.

She didn’t look away.

He hesitated. He stooped, his hands fumbling under the bench to the left of her. He straightened up. He moved to her right side, bent and searched again. He rose, and stood in front of her. ‘You will have to move. I lost something. I must find it.’

She sat, a female Buddha, deliberately motionless and stubborn. She sighed deeply, as if it were a great sacrifice. She shifted to her right, slowly.

He waited until she had the full weight of her body in the next seat. He bent down. He searched, until his fingers came to a stop.

She pulled the pistol out of her handbag in one smooth movement. She made sure it didn’t hook on anything. His face was down near her thigh, while he was feeling about. He saw the movement too late. She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the edge of the baseball cap, just above the man’s temple. She said, ‘If you make any movement, I will shoot you, because you are a killer. I am Captain Mbali Kaleni of the South African Police Services, and you are under arrest for the murder of five security officials at the Waterfront.’

He sat stock still, both hands still under the seat. She knew he had his hands on the chewing gum. Let him think the card was still there.

He said something, short and explosive, in a language she didn’t understand. She knew it was a swearword.

Mbali banged the pistol muzzle hard against Joaquim Curado’s temple. ‘Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that again.’

She pulled the handcuffs out of the handbag with her left hand. She stood up carefully, without taking her eyes off the man or taking the pistol away from his head. The handbag slid down to the floor, but she left it. She pressed her knee and her considerable weight against Curado’s back.

‘Put your hands behind your back. Very slowly.’

He didn’t listen.

She pressed harder with her weight, and her knee clamped him against the bench. She banged the pistol barrel hard against the back of his head.

He moved his hands behind him. She saw there was nothing in them. He would think the card was still there under the seat. She clicked the handcuffs first on his left wrist, changed grip and then on his right wrist.

‘You are not all that dangerous,’ she said, and bent to pick up her handbag. Time to report to her team leader, Benny Griessel.