Hot Ice (15 page)

She turns on the pavement and walks back. ‘Look, I didn’t mean…’

The car shoots forward leaving her standing on the pavement. ‘Who gives a damn,’ she murmurs, feeling shabby. She can’t get her rudeness out of her head as she goes to bed.

Only when she is relaxed enough to feel sleepy does she consider the implications of what Khan told her. If she knew where Freeman was imprisoned, she could investigate those men who served time with him. But right now, she must face up to the truth: the only way forward is through Freeman and she will have to find him. But Freeman knows that she tricked him. ‘It can’t be helped,’ she whispers. She has no other leads.

‘The only way forward is via Freeman and I
must
find him.’

Chris senses that she is losing an argument she should never have begun. She marvels at her own stupidity in confiding in Rowan. Now he will block her because he never takes chances. She may take chances as long as she doesn’t tell Rowan, which leaves him in the clear. A novice to the age-old profession of information gathering, Chris is learning that her natural instinct to go out and fight for what she wants is no longer valid. Will she ever acquire the guile, the patience and the discipline to do this job well?

‘Absolutely not,’ Rowan is saying quietly. ‘Let’s not go through this again.’

From his tone she gathers that their meeting is terminated. She’s blown it! It’s not Rowan she’s cross with, but herself. What sort of a wimp is she?
Why did she ask him for permission to travel to Johannesburg, thereby neatly transferring responsibility for her safety onto Rowan’s shoulders. Of course he’d say ‘no’. What else could he do? She doesn’t need his permission. He laid down the ground rules at their first meeting: no questions, no restrictions and only one rule…win! She’s not winning and failure makes her insecure…but that’s
her
problem, not Rowan’s. If she doesn’t find Moses Freeman, she might as well resign. He’s the only one who knows what’s going on.

Chris’s resolution springs to attention. ‘That’s it then! Look. I’m sorry, but this investigation means a lot to me…for Ben…for Sienna…so I’ll just carry on and see where I get.’

‘And stick to normal business procedure.’

What’s normal about this business? Chris asks herself when she’s back in her office. She sits quietly, trying to clear her head of silly regrets. She has to go. She’ll book the first available flight. This is one call Jean can’t do for her, she realises, reaching for the receiver.

She’s in luck at last. There’s a last minute cancellation on a business class evening flight to Johannesburg. She must pick up her ticket at the SA Airways desk, Terminal One, later. She books into the Sandton Sun Hotel for one night only because she’s not sure of her plans, she explains to the agent.

Jim’s next on the list. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make lunch or dinner, Jim. Something urgent has cropped up.’

‘Whenever you say that, I get a sinking feeling. What’s going on this time?’

‘I can’t talk right now.’ She tries not to throw down the receiver, which is burning her hand. Why is everyone trying to manacle her?

‘Chris…listen…I’m thinking of pushing off…for a while at any rate. I’m pining for the sun, cheap booze and the beach.’ There’s more than a question in his tone.

‘Why not? If that’s what you want.’ She ignores a surge of disappointment.

‘We could meet tomorrow.’

‘I’m not sure. Probably not.’

Replacing the receiver, Chris notices that her hands are shaking. Jim knows that she’s going away and he probably guesses her destination. The truth is, Jim isn’t what he claims to be and this scares her. How can she feel like this without trust. But it’s not love, is it? It’s only lust.

A last minute hack into Prince Husam’s private mail would be helpful, Chris decides. A quick check from their IT room assures her that there is no further correspondence between Husam and Freeman.

‘I’ll be gone for a few days,’ she explains to Jean as she hands her two A4 pages of single-spaced instructions. She spends the rest of the morning
shopping for lightweight trouser suits and cotton shirts.

Telling Mum is the very last hurdle, to be tackled as she leaves.

‘But Africa!’ Her mother looks suspicious and shocked. ‘What am I supposed to do if you disappear? You never think about me. Where would I find you?’

Mum was becoming a practiced martyr, Chris thinks and then feels guilty for her disloyalty. ‘Johannesburg, for starters, but I’ll be moving around. Of course I’ll keep in touch.’

‘I suppose you intend to look for your father while you’re there.’

‘Only if I come across him in the course of my investigation.’

‘At your company’s expense!’ Mum’s face is screwed into lines of malevolence. Don’t lie to me. You’ve been searching for him this past month. You’ve no right to pry into the past…poking your nose into things that don’t concern you.’

‘He’s my father, so he concerns me.’

‘He’ll break your heart. Don’t say I didn’t…’ Her warning is muffled as Chris softly closes the door.

Guilt moves in like a cold front, chilling her. How does Mum know that she’s searching for her father? Has she read her mail? And why does Mum always try to lay a guilt trip on her? A surge of anger keeps her feet pounding the pavement as she hurries towards the station.

It’s almost a month since she contacted a Johannesburg Missing Persons’ Bureau in order to trace Dan Kelly, but apart from the fact that he is listed on the American Register of Chartered Geologists, no one seems to have heard from him for over four years. Goldfields reported buying a claim from him in October, 2000, and that was the last trace the bureau could find. So Chris lavished her savings on searches in Australia, Canada and the Far East, but without results. When last heard of, Dan Kelly was prospecting in Botswana, but since then he’s disappeared.

When she’s sitting in the tube, Chris calms down enough to think clearly. Is she clutching at straws? Does she really believe that Freeman will point her in the right direction? Does she have the guts or the brains to solve this case…or find Sienna? What exactly can she do in Africa that she can’t do in London? Find my father, whispers a guilty voice at the back of her mind.

Chris sleeps for most of the night as the jumbo jet flies into the Southern Hemisphere and on to Johannesburg. At seven a.m., after strong coffee followed by breakfast, she stumbles down the mobile steps and stands blinking on the tarmac, dazed by the glare, the space, the warmth of the crimson sun rising through oyster-grey vistas and the sparkling air. Fumbling for her sunglasses, she follows the passengers towards the airport building.

This is her first shock. Rising four storeys in granite and glass, Chris marvels at the sheer beauty of the architecture, like a potent symbol of the country’s riches and power. She shows her passport, retrieves her suitcase and sails past customs into a gesturing mob of taxi drivers touting for business.

By now the sun is burning her skin, the glare has intensified, her shirt is damp and she’s longing for a shower. A faint headache is the only indication that she is six thousand feet above sea level.

‘Sandton Sun Hotel,’ she says, settling back to enjoy the drive. Soon her taxi is speeding across a vast, flat plain, criss-crossed with modern highways, fly-overs and glaring road signs. Modern factories line the route, but shortly afterwards they are speeding past mile after mile of small, square, concrete homes, with clusters of corru-gated iron shanties here and there.

‘This is Soweto,’ the driver tells her with a grunt of disapproval.

Straight as an arrow, they speed on, but the view remains constant and then, far in the distance, she sees the first peaks of Johannesburg’s tower blocks, as if part of Manhattan has been dumped in a dusty plain. The homes became larger and more conventional, the gardens greener, there are trees and lawns with the occasional glint of blue from swimming pools. Strange, flat hills covered with stubbly brown grass appear from time to time.

‘Gold mine dumps,’ the driver tells her.

He swings left and soon they are by-passing the city, as the highway cuts past farms and occasional industrial complexes to reach the northern suburbs. Here swimming pools are the norm in modern, ranch-like homes set in lavish gardens, with high walls and wrought iron gates.

‘Here’s your hotel,’ the driver says, pointing ahead at a magnificent soaring structure in granite and glass. Moments later the taxi halts at the entrance, three uniformed porters rush to carry her luggage and she enters a vast, cool, sumptuous foyer.

Sumptuous, she soon discovers, describes everything she sees and touches. The hotel and the shopping centre surrounding it resemble a modern Aladdin’s cave, with every possible luxury item: from handmade silk carpets from the Middle East and China, and fashions from Europe to ski equipment, and antique African jewellery.

Chris longs to spend the day wandering from shop to shop, but she has a job to do. Returning to her room, she looks in the telephone directory for Tweneni, but there is no such entry. Not a common name, obviously. Perhaps Grace has retained her maiden name, but there is no Freeman listed in Soweto either. A call to directory enquiries proves equally unhelpful. Damn. She will have to drive out there on the off-chance of finding Grace at home.

Twenty minutes later she regrets coming so early. The taxi isn’t air-conditioned and the heat is
suffocating. She has left her sunglasses behind and the glare hurts her eyes. Glancing at her watch, Chris sees that it is noon. Staring out of the window she watches the air shimmer above the brown grass and parched earth. She leans forward to speak to the driver. ‘Why is it so dry?’

‘Rain in summer only, but it hasn’t come yet.’ Chris vaguely remembers from school geography lessons that they are in a summer rainfall region.

‘And all those green lawns?’

He laughs contemptuously. ‘Those whites can afford to waste water.’

‘But it looks as if a storm’s brewing.’ Along the eastern horizon, dense purple-black clouds are jostling, writhing and piling up for miles into the stratosphere. ‘Is that normal?’ she asks.

‘In summer, yes. Maybe the rain will come. Who knows!’

She shivers and looks away.

The comforting, middle-class homes of the northern suburbs have been left behind. They are driving into a meaner, harsher environment where thin, ragged urchins use the roads as playgrounds. Soon they are racing through mile after mile of uniform streets, where the houses are all exactly the same, square boxes of cheap, pale bricks with wire fences around. The sameness is depressing and it goes on and on, mile after mile, with occasional huddles of tin shanties put together on any spare piece of ground.

‘This is it,’ the driver says.

‘Can you wait? My friend might be out.’

‘Pay me first.’

‘No. Just wait a moment while I try the bell.’

The driver swears as she gets out and slams the door. Too bad! This is the worst possible place to be abandoned.

There’s no bell, so she knocks, but there’s no answer. After waiting for a few minutes, she walks back to the taxi. ‘She’s out, I suppose.’

The driver calls to a neighbour sitting on her doorstep and speaks to her in their language.

‘Mrs Tweneni is at work,’ he translates, which seems strangely brief after their long, loud conversation. ‘She gets back around seven. There’s nowhere for you to wait and you wouldn’t be safe alone here. This is no place for white people.’ He starts the car.

Returning to the city, Chris spends the day contacting the chief geologists at the various mining houses. Presumably some of them would know of her father, a few might know him well.

‘Don’t take it badly,’ a Goldfields’ geologist tells her on her third appointment. ‘Kelly was always a secretive guy. If he told anyone where he was working, every other prospector would be snooping around to see what he’d found. Must be something special to keep him hidden for so long. Let’s face it, he’s been missing for quite a few years.’

‘Four,’ she snaps.

‘Four is it? In this game, that doesn’t mean a thing. Don’t worry. You’re here alone, are you? There’s very little a woman can do alone at night in this city. Don’t try window shopping after dark. If you like, I’ll show you around.’

‘Thanks, but I’ll be working,’ Chris counters. ‘I’m researching a book on diamond smuggling.’

‘I can tell you a thing or two about that. South Africa is the draw for most of Africa’s gangsters…Nigerians, Tanzanians, Namibians and the rest. They’re well organised and sophisticated, and they swept down like a poisonous tide when the new South Africa was created. They’ve thoroughly infiltrated the mines in Botswana and Namibia. We’re still hoping to win here.’

The geologist is warming to his favourite theme. Chris stays as long she can, but he has little more to add that’s relevant. Nevertheless, she leaves in a thoughtful mood. Perhaps the diamond laundering is the brainchild of an African Mafia network. Either way, it makes no difference. Her brief is to discover how the diamonds are laundered, not the nationality of the launderers, she reminds herself.

It’s time to visit Grace Tweneni in Soweto. Chris buys a sandwich and calls a taxi. Soon they are driving past suburbs into the city, while she marvels at the magical Transvaal twilight. By the time they reach the outskirts of Soweto, dusk is falling, but
there’s still no relief from the heat. Storm clouds are battening down, clothes and hair crackle with static electricity and the pressure is intolerable. Chris feels restless and uneasy.

Soweto’s streets are pitch black. People hurry by, no one lingers except gangs of predatory youths who stare as the car passes. There’s the sound of a jazz band far away and nearer she can hear shouting and a cat howling.

They reach number 55 in Fifth Street, Block Nine. Lights are shining in the windows, so she pays the driver and walks up the gravel path. Chris has a moment of absolute panic. Murder statistics for Soweto are second only to those of Colombia. So why is she standing alone in the dark in the second most dangerous place on the planet?