Random Violence Read online

  He fumbled with his crutches, threaded his arms through them, and swung away towards the door.

  “What the hell?” David asked. “Is he legal to drive with a leg like that?”

  “His car’s an automatic.” Jade turned and walked back up the stairs.

  “Oh, so you’ve been in his car?”

  “David.” Jade stopped on the step above him and turned towards him, infuriated. With the extra height it provided, she was almost eye to eye with him. “I have not been in his car. He told us the first time we met him at Piet’s place that he drives an automatic. What on earth is your problem with him?”

  David shook his head. He pushed past her and continued up to the second floor, his heavy footsteps echoing in the stairwell. By the time they’d reached his office, he’d brought his temper under control again.

  “Nothing. This case is getting to me, that’s all.” He pushed open the door. “Bad enough without having a human broad-casting system conveying information to the general public before my goddamn team even knows about it.”

  David had a fan heater in his office. Its gentle rattling and buzzing was the only noise Jade could hear as she followed him into the room and sat down again. She began staring at the wall again, and saw David staring at the one opposite. They didn’t speak. David’s stomach rumbled. In the tense silence, the noise sounded like Vesuvius erupting.

  They both jumped when the phone rang. David grabbed the receiver on the first ring.

  “Yes. Yes! Fantastic. Bring them along.”

  He slammed the phone down and turned to Jade, his ill humor forgotten. “That guy’s the best in the business. He’s on his way now.”

  The tech brought five A5 photo prints with him. He spread them out on the desk.

  “He’s very pale-skinned,” he said. “At first I thought I was messing up the color balance, but when I tried a normal skin tone, it looked like the shop had had a power failure, it’s so dark.”

  They looked down at the prints.

  The man’s jaw was massive and heavy. His lips were full and his nose looked twisted, as if it had been broken. His pale skin was blotchy, with reddish-brown scars on his cheeks and nose.

  “He’s no oil painting, that’s for sure,” David muttered. “What’s with the skin? Thandi said he had something on his cheeks. You can see it in that pic. On his nose, too.”

  “It’s some sort of pigmentation. Freckles, perhaps, or scar-ring from sunburn. I’ve sent the pics to a professor at Wits University to see if he has any other ideas.”

  “Looks bloody unhealthy.”

  “His hair is red, we think. With black and white footage, we can’t be sure. But red hair would match his skin coloring.”

  “His age? His height?”

  “At least six feet two. Between thirty-five and fifty years old. And weight probably around a hundred and twenty kilo-grams. He’s overweight for his size. Heavy but not obese.”

  “Thanks.” David clapped the man on the back. “Let us know more as soon as you know.”

  The technician must have called in some favors of his own, because he phoned back again later with more news. David put the call on speakerphone so Jade could hear the report first-hand.

  “About the scarring on his cheekbones and nose. The pro-fessor at Wits says it might be from burns. Scalding, perhaps. Probably also the result of long-term exposure to the sun.”

  David replaced the handset.

  “Sun exposure and a local accent. So our friend’s probably been in South Africa most of his life.”

  Jade realized what he was thinking.

  “He would have done national service.”

  “Yup. A compulsory stint in the Army, same as any other white guy. Army service was two years, right up until the late eighties. It was only dropped after the 1994 elections. So, if he wasn’t a draft dodger, and he grew up in South Africa, there’s a ninety-nine percent chance that he would have spent at least one year, probably two, in the Army.” His face broke into a triumphant grin. “Private Jade de Jong, since you enjoy spending long hours with strange men, I hereby volunteer you for the research task force.”

  27

  Defense Force headquarters had undergone one of the many name changes that had swept South Africa during the last decade. Sometimes Jade felt she had returned to an entirely different country.

  Headquarters, originally called Roberts Heights, was nestled at the foot of the hill where the Voortrekker Monu-ment had been built. In a fit of nationalism, the old regime had renamed the base Voortrekkerhoogte, or Voortrekker Heights. When the ANC came into power, that name had been discarded. The new name was Thaba Tshwane, which Jade personally thought sounded like somebody sneezing.

  Apart from the change in signage, the Army base looked the same as Jade remembered it from her few brief visits long ago. When she drove through the gates early the following morning, she was shown through to the office of the Chief Directorate of Human Resources. The director was a tall man with close-cropped hair and a ramrod-straight carriage. His voice was clipped and brisk with a surprisingly English accent that Jade had noticed when she had phoned him the previous afternoon.

  Once he’d heard her story in person, the director picked up the phone.

  “I need to access all staff records from 1974 to 1989. We’ll need two of you to help us search through the files. I’ll see you at the records office in five minutes.”

  He gestured to Jade.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  The lawns outside the admin center were the only place in the South African winter highveld that were emerald green and lush. Jade saw two soldiers weeding and trimming and another one moving a sprinkler around. In the Army, any-thing was possible, she supposed.

  The director gave two corporals the job of locating the paper files and carrying them from the vaults. He sat with Jade and got ready to search the computerized files.

  “We should start with height,” he decided. “What are our parameters?”

  “Let’s take everyone over six foot.”

  “Fair enough. That’ll weed out three quarters of them.”

  Jade was glad she’d come early, because the task in hand seemed endless, with record after record flashing up on the screen, and the two helpers running backwards and forwards with armfuls of files. She was pleased that they were also dili-gent about keeping her coffee cup refilled.

  They went through the first five years’ worth of files before lunch. The following ten after lunch went more quickly.

  “Were you already experiencing reduction in numbers?” Jade asked.

  The director nodded. “Every year you could see a difference.”

  By half past three the computer work was over. Jade looked at the massive stacks of paper files she would need to go through one by one and sighed.

  With the color photo provided by the tech as reference, she started searching through the records. Each file contained an identity photograph and a full description. She looked at the photos of the young men who had been forced to sign up for military service in the old South Africa.

  The men looked so young, so innocent. Wide smiles, guileless eyes, skin scarred with acne but otherwise smooth. She was sure that when the photos had been taken, the men had no idea what their future held, or the part they would play in enforcing the apartheid regime, like pawns in a flawed game of chess.

  At half past five she found the file she needed, although she didn’t realize it at first. The repetitive mechanical processing of paper had lulled her into a stupor. She flicked through its pages automatically. Then she stopped, went back, and looked again.

  The man was called Garth Whiteley and was from the 1976 intake. The records stated that his hair was red, his eyes blue. He’d squinted at the camera, unsmiling. In the black and white photograph his skin looked doughy and pale, blotched with grayish streaks of scarring over his cheeks and nose. He had a bulky jaw and a nose that looked identical to the one of the man in the hardware store photog
raph.

  “I think we’ve found him,” she called.

  The director came over and took a look.

  “Seems like a match to me. Whiteley. Let’s see what hap-pened to him.”

  He turned to the computer and typed in a couple of commands.

  “He spent three months in basics. Then he went through to intelligence. Obviously a clever boy.” He frowned down at the yellowed pages. “Looks like he spent three years in the army, and most of it under the command of my friend General Nel. I can call Nel if you like. He’s still around. Find out more about Whiteley.”

  “Thank you,” Jade said.

  The director got on the phone. He talked and listened, scrib-bling notes on his pad. Jade waited, looking at the pages that were completed thirty years ago. His identity number was there. His home address too, although she doubted he would still be living there. It was for a house in Townview, Germiston. Back then, it had been a place where working-class whites had lived. Now, Jade was sure it was close to being a no-go area. She wondered if Whiteley had wanted to do his national service. Being poor, he wouldn’t have had a choice. Rich boys who didn’t want to do national service had emigrated or pleaded that they were medically unfit. With the help of an obliging family doctor, any excuse could be fabricated.

  “Right. I’ve got some interesting information for you.” The director put the phone down. “Nel remembers him well.”

  “Fantastic. What was he like?”

  “From the Army’s point of view, he was a contradiction.” He glanced down at the paper. “Nel says he was orphaned just before he was called up. His mother, a single parent, committed suicide by drowning herself in the bath, apparently. Whiteley qualified for exemption because of that, but he chose to join up anyway. He was overweight and unfit. Barely made it through basic training. But he had a brilliant strategic mind.”

  “Hence the move to intelligence?”

  “Exactly. He performed well for a year, worked his way into a leadership position. They sent him to the border, then to Angola, where he ended up in charge of a unit after the com-mander was killed in a training accident. That was when the trouble started.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Theft of supplies. Theft of equipment. It happens from time to time, but this was on a serious scale. Looting of the surrounding villages. A couple of the troops in his unit must have been intimidated, because when we investigated they wouldn’t say a thing. Another couple of troops went missing. Suspected of desertion, but you never know.”

  “What did General Nel think at the time?”

  “At the time, he thought Whiteley was a poor leader, that he was letting his troops run riot. It was only later that he realized Whiteley was behind it all. Nel reckons he was selling equipment and supplies to the enemy, the SWAPO terrorists. Getting cash or diamonds in exchange. He didn’t have a shred of proof, so he couldn’t arrest him, but he got him recalled to Pretoria and discharged from the Army.”

  “Did he ever see him again?”

  “Never. But he wasn’t surprised when I said he was a suspect in a criminal case. He said Whiteley was a violent man. And a dangerous one.” The director paused and paged back through his notes. “But he didn’t call him Whiteley while we were talking. He referred to him as Whiteboy. A nickname, I suppose.”

  28

  David’s team was waiting for him outside the station at six the following morning. After checking Whiteley’s current details he discovered he still lived at the same house in Townview that had appeared on his Army records. He thought that was odd, since, according to Jade’s research, the man had spent most of his Army years enriching himself at his country’s expense. Perhaps he’d gambled his fortune away.

  They were all wearing Kevlar vests. Whiteley was a violent and potentially dangerous criminal. The tension in the car was tangible and David found himself driving in an unchar-acteristically conservative fashion, watching the road ahead with both hands tight on the wheel. He wished Jade was there to make a cheeky comment and ease his nerves. He knew how she felt about his usual driving style.

  Townview was an area of narrow streets and steep hills. Seeing the littered gutters, smashed windows and cracked paving, David thought that compared to here, almost any-where could be classified as a good neighborhood.

  They passed a couple of people hurrying along the pave-ment, looking cold. A young couple, dressed in the generic uniform of whatever chain store they were headed for to do their day’s work. A single girl with a pasty face and a grubby cream jacket, wearing a very short skirt. She stumbled on the paving in her high heels.

  David was sure she was on her way home, rather than on her way out. She had probably been dropped off at the main road by a client who, in contrast to his behavior the night before, wasn’t prepared to go all the way with her the morning after.

  He pulled over, parked on the pavement outside Whiteley’s house, and climbed out as the backup vehicle stopped behind him.

  The tiny house had peeling paint and a yellowing picket fence. He saw overgrown grass in the square of garden, dead branches hanging low over the fence, and a garage with a closed door. A dog kennel and a shed were crammed between the house and the fence. The dog kennel didn’t seem to be occupied, and the door of the shed hung half open.

  “You stay behind us,” he told the junior members of his team. “You come with me,” he told Moloi. The solidly built black officer walked by his side. Weapons ready, the other men took up positions to the left and right, where they could cover the front door.

  David walked the short distance from the car to the door, shoulder to shoulder with the other officer. He raised his fist and hammered on the door. The sound was as loud and heavy as a drum.

  There was silence for a minute. Then David heard footsteps inside the house. At the same moment he felt Moloi tense.

  The door opened. The man they’d seen in the hardware store stood before them, hands on hips. His head was inclined to one side, brows raised and full lips in a half-smile as if he was curious, but unworried, about the presence of four policemen outside his front door in the early morning.

  He wore faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt that stretched taut over the curve of his stomach and emphasized the pallor of his scarred face.

  “Mr. Whiteley.” David stepped forward. Whiteley was a couple of inches shorter than him, but the man carried himself tall. His bulk was intimidating. David straightened his back and squared his shoulders, and looked straight into the man’s eyes. “I’m Superintendent Patel from Johannesburg Central’s Serious and Violent Crimes Unit.”

  Whiteley met David’s stare. “Yes. Can I help you?” His voice was slow and toneless. His pale eyes were as emotionless as his voice.

  “We’re here because we have reason to suspect that you are involved in the murder of a Mr. Dean Grobbelaar.”

  Whiteley snickered.

  “What proof do you have, if I might ask, gentlemen?”

  “Sir, we have proof linking you to the purchase of an axe. A weapon which was subsequently used to murder Mr. Grobbelaar. We have warrants to search your premises and to arrest you.”

  Whiteley shrugged. “I bought an axe a week or so ago. I bought a lot of equipment.” He looked out at his dismal garden. “I was going to tidy the place up. I put the stuff in the shed.” He pointed to the wooden door that swung open in the breeze. “It was broken into, unfortunately. The night after I bought it. I reported it to the local police station in the morning.”

  He looked David in the eye and his puffy lips widened into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Aren’t the police shocking? Haven’t even had one cop round yet to take a look.”

  “Check that out,” David said to Moloi. He turned back to Whiteley. “Where did you report it?”

  “My local cop shop. Townview. Feel free to check. Assuming they haven’t lost the records. I dialed the emergency number first. That 10111 number everyone’s always talking about. Do you know, it didn’t even get
answered? I was glad I wasn’t being raped or killed or anything.”

  Whiteley’s smile stretched into a broad grin. From where David was standing, in the pale morning light, his face looked like a death mask.

  “Sir, I’m sorry nobody investigated your break-in further. We’ll follow that up. In the meantime I must ask you to accompany us to the station.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Whiteley raised his eyebrows. “Well, this is a first. My lawyer will have fun with it. Human rights and all. Am I allowed a phone call?”

  “At the police station. Not here and not now. Please get into the vehicle over there.”

  “Can I lock up my house?”

  “We’ll do that, after we’ve searched it.”

  “And if there are items missing when I come back? This is a dangerous area, you know.”

  Only when you’re in it, David thought. He kept his tone polite. “When our officers have searched the house, they will secure it properly. The keys will be kept until you are released.”

  “Kept by the police. Now that fills me with confidence.” Whiteley yawned and stretched. “Can I get my jacket?”

  “We’ll come with you.”

  They didn’t have far to go. The jacket was lying on top of a chair in the lounge. An old chair with a tattered corduroy cover and stuffing poking out of a hole in the cushion. It stood opposite an entry-level television set. Its scratched frame and old-fashioned buttons gave away its age.

  Whiteley slung the jacket over his shoulders. David stood alert while Moloi patted him down, checking the man’s body and jacket pockets for weapons. He found none.

  “Let’s go.” They walked across to the car. Whiteley tossed the house keys over to Moloi. It was a poor throw, and the officer fumbled the catch. Whiteley sniggered again as Moloi bent over and scrabbled for the keys in the ragged grass.

  David clenched his teeth. He didn’t like this at all. Not the man’s disrespect, he was used to that. What he didn’t like was the fact that he felt he was being set up. His gut told him that Mr. Whiteley was two steps ahead of the game. That he had in fact been waiting for them.