Stolen Lives Read online

  She flung the door open and hurried outside. As she rounded the corner, she almost collided with David. He had a big, brown cardboard box in his arms and was dancing frantically from foot to foot as Bonnie dashed back and forth behind him, barking furiously.

  “Jadey, your dog’s trying to bite me.”

  Jade spread her hands. “She’s not my dog.”

  “What’s it doing here then? Off!”

  “She lives down the road. She won’t go home. I don’t know what her problem is with you. She’s been very friendly with me.” Jade picked Bonnie up and held her while David hurried into the cottage. Then she shut the dog outside. The barking took on a forlorn note until Bonnie changed tactics and began to whine and scratch at the wooden door.

  “Oh, that dog from number twelve.” David placed the box on the kitchen table, almost upsetting Jade’s plate of food. “I remember it used to bark at me every time I walked past the house. It’s racist, I tell you.”

  “Not necessarily.” In response to David’s enquiring glance, Jade continued. “She”—she emphasised the pronoun just a little— “might just be a bit sexist.”

  David nodded in agreement, his expression grim. “Still bad news for me.”

  He rested his elbows on the box, which Jade saw was sealed with brown packing tape and had a musty, old-cardboard smell which was rapidly permeating the kitchen.

  What was inside it, anyway? For a moment Jade wondered whether David was returning all the stuff that she’d left at his place over the months. But there hadn’t been that much of it. A toothbrush, a couple of t-shirts, a book or two. She was sure it could easily have fitted into a carrier bag.

  “So, anyway,” he said. “I was passing by, so I thought I’d bring you this.”

  “Passing by?” Jade asked, raising her eyebrows. She knew perfectly well that David worked in Johannesburg city, that his home was now in Turffontein, and that his wife lived in Pretoria. To her knowledge, there were no suspected drug-traffickers or money-launderers living in her neighbourhood. That meant David had no reason to come this way, unless it was to see her.

  Not that he’d admit it. Not now, after what had happened between them a couple of months ago, when she had managed to stamp so hard on their fledgling relationship that she’d effectively squashed it to death.

  They’d been lying together on their stomachs on his extra-long double bed, his fingers stroking her hair, freshly made cups of coffee steaming on the table as they scanned the pages of that morning’s Sunday newspaper.

  “Look at this, Jadey,” David had said. “Rapper walks free after causing two deaths.”

  “Let me see.” She’d pulled the paper closer and read the story.

  A well-known South African rapper with a string of traffic offences to his name had lost control of his Hummer while driving home from a nightclub. Two pedestrians on their way to an early church service had died after he ploughed into them, and three others sustained grievous injuries.

  According to the report, the wealthy star had pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer had got him off on a technicality. No fine, no jail time, no compensation for the families of the victims whose lives he had destroyed. Just a meaningless five-year suspended sentence.

  Witnesses at the scene of the accident had confirmed that the man reeked of alcohol and appeared to be drunk. However, the police had been unable to breathalyse him because, for reasons that were unclear, the emergency services workers had already put him onto a drip. Jade had wondered whether the paramedics had been trying to protect the man because of his star status, or whether the rapper had paid one of them to get him out of trouble.

  The star hadn’t shown a trace of remorse for his crime. At the bottom of the article was a poorly worded, printed apology that had been issued by his agent because he was out of the country, performing at a concert in Kenya.

  Disgusted, she’d passed the paper back to David.

  “If one of those people who’d died or been injured was my relative, I’d kill him,” she’d said.

  She’d sensed the change in his mood instantly. He’d taken a slow, deep breath and then eased himself away from her, leaving a small, chilly gap between them in the winter-cold room.

  “Would you?” he’d responded, in a deceptively casual tone.

  “In a heartbeat. He’s an arsehole. He hasn’t learned from his mistakes. He doesn’t care what he’s done. He’s only going to carry on and do worse.”

  “And you think killing him will help?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be able to do it again.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Tell that to the people whose lives he’s wrecked.”

  “He was found guilty of culpable homicide. A revenge killing would incur a murder charge. So all you’d be doing is committing another, far more serious crime.”

  “Well, David, what else can you do when the guy’s obviously untouchable? He’s got the money, he’s got the fame, he can take his pick of the best lawyers in town. I’m sorry, but I think that’s wrong.” She’d propped an elbow on the unopened business section and turned to him so that she could look him in the eye. At that stage, she’d still thought that David sympathised with her beliefs, and that his counter-argument was him simply playing devil’s advocate. She’d honestly believed that they would talk it through.

  “You mean every word you’ve said, don’t you?” His voice was soft.

  “Yes.”

  David had stared back at her, his eyes like pale-grey laser beams. Too late, she realised she had walked straight into his trap.

  “How would you do it, Jade? Go on, share it with me. Tell me exactly how you would murder that man in cold blood. A drive-by shooting, perhaps? Is that how you’d try to get away with it?”

  “No!” Her denial had been instinctive.

  “How, then? I thought drive-bys were your speciality.”

  After those particular words, Jade had had to look away.

  “I don’t … ”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” David pushed the duvet aside, stood up, and grabbed his clothes, which were slung over the arm of a chair. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s any point in discussing this further. I’m going to work.”

  Jade had been about to remind David that it was a Sunday, and they’d made plans to drive out to Hartebeespoort Dam that afternoon, but looking at his face, she’d realised those plans were history.

  And so, it had transpired, was their relationship.

  They hadn’t spoken to each other again that morning. Jade had left soon afterwards, and walked the short distance back down the road to her cottage. Walked fast, head down, stomping her feet on the stony ground as if she could stamp out the sting of his words.

  I thought drive-bys were your speciality.

  She’d kicked at a stone and watched it skitter to the side of the road. And she’d shaken her head hard, trying not to think about how she had felt the first time she had killed. The night she had shot the man who’d murdered her father.

  How she had leaned out of the car’s passenger window, her hand steady as she’d aimed the Glock at her target’s head, sighting carefully as the corrupt police officer strode down the dark street, back to his lodgings.

  Why it had been so easy for her to pull the trigger? Jade hadn’t hesitated. She hadn’t felt a moment’s regret at what she had been about to do, although soon afterwards she had been sickened by guilt and remorse.

  “Damn it, David. He’s a criminal,” she’d said aloud, as she walked into her lonely little cottage.

  But so was she. David hadn’t been there to reply, but she knew that was what he would have said, and what he still believed.

  So was she.

  Now, watching him leaning on the big cardboard box, Jade wondered if David was also thinking about what had happened on that Sunday morning.

  She moved the plate of food off the table and put it on the kitchen counter. Then she picked up her mug. Pointless actions, but at least it gave her someth
ing to do.

  “Coffee?” she asked, but David shook his head.

  “The detectives have finished with Pamela’s car, so you can get it towed now,” he said. “Are you ok after what happened this morning?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “And Pamela?”

  “She’s safe, but worried. Her daughter’s disappeared now.”

  His eyebrows shot upwards. “First hubby, now the daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think it’s hereditary?”

  “Very funny.”

  “You’ve reported her missing, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if this has any bearing on the situation, but I found out this morning Terence Jordaan has a criminal record,” David said.

  “He does?” Jade felt her heart quicken. “For what?”

  “Human trafficking. A few years back, he was bust for employing illegal Slovakian workers at his club. He seems to have behaved himself since then, but who knows? He might have just changed his modus operandi to avoid getting caught again.”

  David rubbed his forehead. His hair was longer than its usual scalp-hugging crop, and Jade was surprised to see fine silver streaks in the rough-looking fringe.

  “I’ll ask Pamela about that when I see her,” she said. “I suspect she knows more about Terence’s disappearance than she’s telling.”

  “Mad Pammie.” David nodded. “Always been one for secrets and lies.”

  “How do you know her, anyway?” Jade asked, eager to learn more about David’s connection with her client.

  He mumbled something in reply, turning his head away as he spoke.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  David muttered, “My father’s girlfriend cleaned her house.”

  “And then what? Did she find Pamela living in a cupboard?” Jade started laughing, but stopped when she saw she was the only one enjoying the joke. She replayed David’s words in her mind again and, too late, realised what he’d been trying to say.

  “Oh. Oh … I see. Your father’s girlfriend cleaned Pamela’s house?”

  David nodded. “Apartheid days, Jadey. Cleaning was the best job she could get. She worked for Pamela’s family. When I spent time in Durban with my dad, I’d often go there for the day with her. Pammie was older than me, and she was as bossy as anything. A real prima donna. ‘Don’t touch this.’ ‘Don’t go into that room.’ ‘Have you washed your hands?’ She made my life an absolute misery when I was small.”

  Small? Jade had difficulty with the concept that David had ever been small.

  “Was her family rich?” Jade asked.

  “Not particularly,” David replied. “But Pammie always had an eye for the money. It might be cruel to call her a gold-digger, but she liked the good things in life. She hooked up and broke up with a series of boyfriends with increasingly fancy cars. She always did the hooking—’scuse the pun—and always did the breaking up, too. She left home and started working when she was about twenty. By then, her hair was already a different colour. Pumpkin, I think.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t called Pumpkin on the box,” Jade said. “Not appealing enough.”

  David snorted. “Trust me, nor was Pamela’s hair.”

  “What work did she do?”

  “Oh,” David said, “I thought she would have told you that. Or perhaps not, come to think of it. She was a stripper.”

  “A stripper?” Jade echoed. Her own eyebrows shot skyward as she tried to imagine the refined, blonde-haired woman with her legs wrapped around a metal pole, tossing her g-string to a baying crowd of men. “Pamela?”

  “Started out that way. Ended up doing a lot more than that.” David sounded serious. “I was way too young to know all the facts at the time, but when she stopped dancing, she went into business with one of her ex-boyfriends. Got involved in organising parties for men, private bashes where the women provided the entertainment. The girls were expected to be … well … extremely ‘accommodating’.”

  Jade shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Eventually the parties got a bit too wild. There were a couple of accusations of rape. Pammie closed up shop and went overseas. I heard from somebody that she’d got married and completely reinvented herself, but I didn’t see her again until she recognised me the other day in Lonehill’s Woolworths. Talk about a blast from the past. By the time she’d finished grilling me on my life history since we last met, I was wishing I’d decided to shop at Pick ’n’ Pay.”

  Jade smiled.

  “Anyway … ” David said. He didn’t complete the sentence. Perhaps he felt he’d said enough about Pamela. Or said enough to Jade. This was the longest conversation they’d had for a while. The longest they’d had since the one that had caused all the trouble.

  Jade took a mouthful of her coffee, noticing that it tasted suddenly bitter, in spite of the two heaped spoons of sugar she’d added.

  “What’s in that box?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Oh, the box.” David glanced at it as if he’d never seen it before. “I found it yesterday, in my house in Turffontein, when I was looking for Kevin’s cricket bat. It’s been in the back of the cupboard in the spare room for so long, I’d forgotten all about it. I should’ve given it to you when you came back to South Africa.” He patted its top. “After your dad died, I sorted out his house, you know.”

  “Oh.” Jade felt her face grow hot.

  After she’d murdered her father’s killer, Jade had fled the country and hadn’t returned for ten years. Sorting out her dad’s house before she left? She hadn’t even thought about doing that. All she knew was that it had been sold in her absence and, in accordance with her father’s will, the modest proceeds deposited into her bank account.

  “There wasn’t a lot of personal stuff worth keeping,” David continued. “But what there was I put in here. I thought if you ever came back, you’d like to have it. If not—well, I didn’t want to throw it away. There’s things in here that I know have sentimental value.”

  He didn’t say to whom. A small smile creased the corners of his mouth. It lit up his dark-skinned face, warmed his icy eyes. “I read one of your school reports from when you were six. It said you didn’t play well with others.” His smile widened.

  “Yes, well, I was only six, I suppose.” Now Jade’s face felt as if it was on fire. Her school reports. What else had he read? What other embarrassing documents were in that stupid box? She took another gulp of coffee to cover her confusion, hoping David hadn’t noticed her blush.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I only looked at a few.”

  Jade put the cup down again, adopting a business-like tone. “I’m sorry you had to deal with packing up my dad’s stuff. That was a job I should have done.”

  David shrugged. “You had other things on your agenda.” His long, elegant fingers tapped the top of the box in a brief, rhythmic tattoo.

  Another uncomfortable silence ensued.

  People never change. That was one of David’s favourite sayings, and for good reason, because as a police detective he’d seen it proved over and over again.

  He knew what Jade had done to her father’s killer, and why, because she’d told him. But perhaps he had been trying to convince himself since then that she was different; that she had changed.

  For a while, after that Sunday-morning conversation, Jade had considered apologising. She’d toyed with the idea of telling David that she had been the one playing devil’s advocate for the sake of a good argument, and that she hadn’t realised what effect her words would have on him.

  It wouldn’t have been the truth, though, and David probably wouldn’t have believed it anyway. And even if he had, was she prepared to live a lie for the sake of being with him?

  The answer had been no.

  And now here they stood, on a scorching, bone-dry summer afternoon, staring at each other over a musty-smelling cardboard box, the air around the
m thick with the debris of unresolved issues.

  “Well, thanks for bringing it. And thanks for looking up Terence Jordaan. Are you sure you won’t have a coffee?” Jade said.

  He shook his head. “I’d better be going.”

  “Right.”

  Jade picked the keys up off the kitchen counter and unlocked the door, but David didn’t move. He just stood there, leaning on the box, picking at the packaging tape with his fingertips, glancing over at the kettle as if he regretted saying no to Jade’s offer.

  Then he looked at his watch, heaved a deep sigh, and followed her outside like someone walking through glue. He didn’t kiss her goodbye, didn’t touch her at all. She stood in the shade of the wilting syringas and held the Jack Russell in her arms while David climbed into his car.

  She could feel Bonnie’s body quivering with anticipation. She was straining against Jade’s grasp, and uttering tiny growls. Clearly, all she wanted to do was to bolt across the driveway and launch herself at the tall police detective. Jade couldn’t blame the little dog. She wanted to do the same, but for different reasons.

  13

  “Detective work is ninety-nine per cent perspiration, one per cent inspiration. Just like genius, only more difficult.”

  Edmonds couldn’t remember who’d told her that, shortly after she’d been promoted to Detective Constable, but she’d soon discovered it was only too true.

  She was sitting in the front row of chairs in the small meeting room next to Richards, who smelled strongly of Brut. Perhaps she had plebeian taste, but Edmonds didn’t find the fragrance unpleasant. She rather liked it; it reminded her of the first lad she’d kissed, back in the little village of Corfe Castle in rural Dorset where she’d grown up.

  “Right, people.” Mackay called the meeting to attention, jolting Edmonds out of her reverie. “Operation Platypus. Let’s see where we are. What’s the update on Number Six? Edmonds, will you give us your latest?”

  Richards gave her a nudge and Edmonds scrambled to her feet, aware of the small sea of faces observing her. She suddenly felt flustered and disorganised despite her morning of careful preparation.