Random Violence Page 13
Whiteboy smiled, and another unfamiliar sensation swept over him. A warm, good, powerful one.
“And what do you do if he asks you whether I told you to say that?”
“I say no,” the boy cried, choking on his snot, clawing at the grass with his hands. “I say no. Please don’t hurt me any more. I say no.”
Whiteboy turned away from the fountain, grimacing. He didn’t like it at all. He would have filled it in when he bought the place, except it was useful for camouflaging sound. The damn thing gave him the shivers the rest of the time.
Jade took a winding route through the city and into the back streets of Turffontein to the area where she and her father had lived. She hadn’t been back there since she arrived in South Africa. But tomorrow was Viljoen’s release. Now was as good a time as any to revisit her past.
The neighborhood looked familiar. Small face-brick houses, tiny gardens, aging vehicles resting on withered grass or under makeshift corrugated iron carports. People in Turffontein couldn’t afford security fences or high walls like the rich folk in northern Jo’burg. They had to make do with cheap burglar bars welded to their window frames and chains to hold their rickety gates closed.
David’s old house looked more respectable than she remembered. It was neat and trim, freshly painted. As she cruised past, a car pulled into the driveway. A dark-haired woman in a crimson jacket climbed out and opened the gate. A small boy jumped out of the car and raced through before she could stop him. Jade smiled as she heard the mother’s loud admonishments. She continued to the end of the road, turned right and then right again into the road where she had lived.
Her house still looked the same, except the front wall had been repainted a hideous mustard yellow. The cracked tiles on the path were still there, and the red front porch hadn’t faded. The garden was still a withered jungle. This house resisted all attempts to groom its surroundings. God knows, her father had tried hard enough during his rare free time.
An old woman cocooned in a long brown coat was sitting in a cane rocking chair on the porch. In the afternoons, Jade knew, the porch was a suntrap. It was the only place in the house where it was possible to be comfortable in winter.
The white-haired lady turned and stared at her car. She looked at least eighty, and, from her face, Jade thought she must have spent the last fifty years smelling something bad. Then she turned back towards the front door and called out. Jade saw the flicker of a television set through the front window. Somebody was inside, glued to whatever the local channels had to offer. When she was young, few people in her area had been able to afford a television. Although TV had become a household essential, she was sure that most Turf-fontein residents were still a step behind as she couldn’t see any satellite dishes.
A blond teenager slouched outside. She sported a blank expression and headphones in her ears. Her short green jacket exposed a pale and flabby midriff.
The old lady had called for backup.
Jade climbed out of the car and walked to the gate.
“Hi there.” She waved, trying to look friendly and unthreatening.
The old lady glowered. The teenager walked down the steps with a somnolent slowness and strolled down the broken path.
“My ouma says what do you want,” she said. Her accent was thick with the inflections typical of southern Jo’burg.
“I used to live here. I just wanted to see the old place.”
“She used to live here, Ouma,” the girl yelled.
The lady shouted something back in Afrikaans, which had never been Jade’s strong point. While she was still trying to work out what it meant, the teenager helpfully translated.
“My ouma says you don’t live here any more and you must go away.”
Jade bristled.
“Well, you can tell her thanks very much for her politeness.”
The teenager looked embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she said. “She’s an old bat. I can’t let you in. She calls the police for all the strangers she sees.”
“Not a problem,” said Jade. “Thanks for your help. I don’t need to come in.”
She crossed the road again and watched the house from a distance before she braved the traffic-clogged drive home. Her bedroom had been on the corner. She could see the sash window where she’d escaped on the night he came for her. Perhaps this teenager used it to sneak out at night and go and meet her boyfriends at the neighborhood pub. Did places hold memories? If they did, Jade wondered whether the teenager had ever felt a trace of residual fear, an unwelcome shiver down her spine as she swung her legs over the ledge and dropped down to the tangled flower bed below.
Jade had only been home a few minutes when she saw the flash of headlights and heard honking. She looked anxiously out of the window, wondering if it was Robbie, with another gig lined up. To her relief, the man outside the gate was David.
There wasn’t time to take the gun off her holster, so she pushed it round to the back as far as she could. She didn’t want David to know she was carrying. He’d have plenty of ques-tions about where, and why, she had obtained her weapon. Questions she couldn’t answer. She fastened her jacket and walked outside. He was speaking to somebody in the car.
“Jade,” he called. “Come on over.”
He turned back to the car, a silver Jeep Cherokee. Com-missioner Williams was at the wheel.
Perched on the high leather seat, he didn’t look as short as Jade remembered. But he was rounder than he had been ten years ago and he had given up the battle with concealing his hair loss—or perhaps the bald spot had spread to a size where he simply couldn’t comb his hair over it any more. At any rate, his hair was now trimmed in a short horseshoe shape around his pate, which shone under the overhead light of the car.
“Jade.” He smiled, stubby teeth peeking out through his mustache.
“Good to see you again, Commissioner.”
The last time she’d seen him had been at her father’s funeral. Robbie had told her not to go. It could be dangerous, he’d said. But she’d insisted and so he’d insisted on taking her there. She’d told him to wait in the car but he wouldn’t. She’d hoped nobody was going to do anything to her at a funeral service with the bulk of the South African police force present. Apart from arrest her or Robbie, of course. That had been a real worry, but she’d risked it anyway.
At the funeral, Commissioner Williams hurried over to her, wearing a smart black suit with a white flower in the but-tonhole. He had frowned at Robbie for a moment, as if half-recognizing him, then turned to her.
“Jade. So sorry for your loss,” he said.
She nodded.
“You know Jacobs, the Redcliff cop who was up here helping us with the case? I don’t know if you’re aware that he was shot and killed last night.”
Wordless, Jade shook her head. She looked him in the eyes, unblinking, palms cold, heart accelerating. How much did Williams know?
“I’m looking into the situation. There are some glaring irregularities. It appears that the Viljoen brothers were bribing an officer to sabotage the case.” He leaned in closer. “My feeling is what happened last night might not have been a street mugging. I think Jacobs was their man, and for some reason the deal went sour and they paid someone to get rid of him.”
She squeezed her hands together tightly, relief flooding through her. Her nails were digging into her palms. Williams was looking in the wrong place for Jacobs’s killer. But he had given her some valuable information. The Viljoen brothers. Now she understood for sure.
“If my father was alive, he could have helped you.”
Williams sniffed. “That’s for sure. I’d have appreciated it right now, more than you know.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Sorry again, my girl. I tried to get hold of you for your input in organizing the funeral, but I couldn’t track you down.”
Jade looked around at the black-clad mourners, the flowers in the church, the plastic numbers slotted into the wooden holders indicating what hymns would
be sung. She hadn’t organized her father’s funeral, but in the circumstances she knew he would have understood.
“I haven’t been in touch with anyone recently.” Not even David, because he was in Durban for a fortnight, attending a conference. For the first time ever, she’d been glad he wasn’t around. She didn’t want to put him in danger, too.
“I understand.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Going overseas for a while. I need to be somewhere else right now.”
He nodded. “Always good to have a change when something like this happens. Well, best of luck to you for the future.”
He gave her shoulder another squeeze and walked away, leaving Jade to the awkward condolences and uneasy embraces of the other mourners.
20
Ten years later, Williams made no attempt to squeeze her shoulder. He simply leaned over and shook her hand, his tie slipping round the curve of his stomach.
“Circumstances could be better. But thanks for helping us out.”
She noticed the cuffs of his shirt were fastened by gold cufflinks. That was something else she remembered. Williams had always been a sharp dresser. Her father had joked that he’d only become a detective so he could wear a suit and tie to work each day.
“It’s my pleasure.”
He squeezed her hand harder. “Your father’s daughter. That’s what you are, all right. De Jong was a fine man. Filling his shoes hasn’t been easy. Especially with the problems we’re experiencing now.” His gaze was sharp and keen. “You should join the police service. We’d arrange you a special dispensa-tion. Get you into a detective unit in no time at all. We need people like you. High-caliber individuals.”
He hadn’t referred to David. Jade wondered whether his compliment to her was a backhanded insult to him.
“I’ll certainly give it some thought,” she said. “Although my father and I agreed a long while ago that my personality was more suited to private investigation than to public service.”
Williams laughed. “Either way, good to have you on board for this operation.” He withdrew his hand. “Well, I’ll be off. Good evening to you.”
He buzzed up the window and pulled away, engine roaring.
David followed her inside. He tossed an armful of scatter cushions onto the floor and slumped onto the couch.
Jade fetched him a beer. “Long day?”
He took it without opening his eyes. “Longer than you can know. As you saw, Williams gave me a lift home. I thought it was a kind offer, but it was just an excuse for a major telling-off. I’ve been dumped on from a dizzy height. Non-performance, corruption in the department, low solve rate. All my fault. We’ve got performance reviews coming up in a week’s time. I’ll probably be the first-ever superintendent to get a decrease. If I’m lucky and I don’t get a straight demotion. When he shook your hand I thought he was going to offer you my job.” He drained the can and crumpled it in his fist.
Jade got him another. “Maybe that’s his way of managing staff. Perhaps he doesn’t have people skills. He’s been in the department for ages, he’s part of the old school.”
“Let’s hope so.” David opened his eyes and sat up straighter. “God. This couch is like a bloody feather bed. So. Update on today’s activities.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“The body’s gone for analysis. It’s definitely Grobbelaar. His buddy ID’d him.”
“Any evidence?”
“Not so far. Apart from being butchered, apparently with an axe, there was no sign of a struggle. A couple of carpet fibers under his fingernails and a missing nail led forensics to believe he might have been transported in the trunk of a vehicle.” David shook his head. “Rocket scientists, that’s what I said. I told them they must be rocket scientists to figure out he was transported in the trunk and not sitting upright in the front seat waving at the traffic with all that tape wrapped round his head like the Bride of Frankenstein.”
Jade suppressed a smile as she imagined the confrontation between David and the luckless forensic team. David was noto-riously impatient and demanding when it came to getting pro-fessional opinions out of people involved in his cases.
“Whoever cut him up was tall and strong, probably six foot or more. And right-handed, according to the way the blows fell.”
“And the axe?”
“It wasn’t in the vicinity. We might never find it. I’ve put the word out in the surrounding area, got the local police on the lookout.” He pushed himself straight again. “I’m so bloody tired I can’t tell if it’s me or the sofa that’s the problem here. So, Jadey, that’s it as far as the body in the woods goes.”
He slid down onto his elbow. “That’s better. So what’s new on your side?”
Jade told him about her day. While she was talking, David pulled off his shoes and stretched his legs across the sofa. He didn’t look comfortable, but she thought he was too tired to care.
She wondered who had deliberately chopped Dean Grob-belaar to pieces. What kind of a person could raise an axe and send it thudding into a human body, then work it loose, shift the grip on the handle and bring it down again, and again? Was he a psychopath? Was he mentally ill? She wondered why he had gone to such lengths to torture and kill Dean. Was it because the investigator had tried to discover more about Ellie Myers? Where was Ellie? When would they find her?
“Oh, I got your message,” David said, eyes closed. “Since I’d only done twelve hours when I got back into town, I went round to check out 48 Forest Road. Couldn’t have Williams thinking I was taking a half-day.”
Jade curled her feet up on the chair opposite as David continued.
“Yup. Took me an hour in traffic just to get through Sandton. And why the hell did they fence off the whole of that bloody suburb? Took me another hour to find the entrance. It’s like Fort Knox in there, and I’m damn sure it’s illegal.”
“You can go back tomorrow and arrest them.”
David forced a smile. It looked out of place on his grim face and didn’t survive long, but it seemed to put him in a more jovial mood. “I spoke to one of the neighbors. Met her coming home and flashed her. My ID, of course,” he said, as Jade gave a snuffle of laughter. This had been an in-joke between them for as long as they had known each other.
“She didn’t know where Ellie was. But she did gossip about the area. I don’t know how accurate it was, but it was inter-esting. She was a chatty old bird. Especially when she saw my handsome face.”
Jade corrected him. “She was probably babbling in terror.”
“One fact’s clear, Jadey. As long as I live, I’ll never be able to afford property in Sandton.”
“Unless you start taking bribes.”
“Yeah. Well, they’d have to be big ones.”
“Tell me what she said.”
“Number 48 Forest Road was a triple-sized stand. Five hectares. They kept horses there. She told me she visited her sister in England for a couple of months and when she came back, she didn’t recognize the place. The Myers had sold it to a developer after some sort of trouble.”
“And then what?”
David peered up at her from his prone position. “Then the developer started going crazy. Now this lady knew the original house. She said it had some extraordinary number of bedrooms, an entertainment area, pool, the works. First of all, they put a garden fence around it and sold it off. Then the developer built thirty-two luxury cluster homes on the rest of the land. With five bedrooms each and their own pool and garden.”
Jade tried to imagine living in a luxury five-bedroomed cluster home like that. What would it look like? She suspected it would be similar to the out-of-town residences of the rich people whose families she had guarded. She remembered automatic gates, endless driveways, imposing front doors imported from Indonesia or Italy. Gold taps and enormous baths. Marble finishes everywhere. Great echoing empty spaces filled with nothing but antique statues on pedestals. She’d never felt comfortable in those homes.
“Then they built a whacking great wall round the whole estate and put in twenty-four-hour security. The houses inside sold for around six million each.”
“As good as printing the money themselves.” That was another favorite saying of her father’s, when he spoke about people who had made an unseemly fortune.
“The lady reckoned the developer made around fifty million.” David righted himself once more. “But there were hundreds of complaints from residents in the area, including them. Apparently the land hadn’t been zoned for develop-ment and there were by-laws preventing subdivision into sizes that small.”
“So the developer had greased a few palms?”
“Yeah. Might have channeled a few crumbs from all that profit in the right direction. The neighbors did get together to try and take him to court when they realized he wasn’t just putting up a garden cottage, but the case got delayed and by the time anything could be done it was a fait accompli.”
“What have the neighbors done since then?”
“They’ve been a busy bunch. The minute one develop-ment goes up, homeowners in the area start looking at the dollar signs and working out how much they can get for their own property. There’ve been a couple of other develop-ments started in neighboring roads. A few more that they’ve managed to put the brakes on. But in the meantime they’ve forgotten about number 48. Number 48 is old news now.”
Jade walked through to the kitchen and retrieved the heater. Then she went into the bedroom, unbuckled her gun belt and locked it into the bedside cupboard. She found two blankets in the wardrobe and brought them back for David. Then she sat down again on the chair opposite him.
“I wonder why Mark and Ellie Myers sold up.”
David sat up on the couch. He shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie. Jade wanted to walk over and wrap her arms around him. She didn’t. She sat and watched as he lay down again and pulled the blankets tight around him. “Yeah, I wonder. Probably saw a chance to fund their retirement. Perhaps they were emigrating. Or wanted lots of money and didn’t care about ruining the area.”