Rage (50 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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‘Your eldest son – his name is Sean. That's right, isn't it?'
Shasa nodded, he was no longer smiling either, and he was seized by a sudden presentiment.
‘You want to speak to me about Sean?' he asked softly.
Louis stood up abruptly and crossed to the window. He was looking down into the street as he answered.
‘This is off the record, Shasa. Not the way we usually do things, but there are extraordinary factors here. Our past association, your present rank—' He turned back from the window. ‘In the usual circumstances this would probably not have been brought to my notice at all, at least not at this stage of the investigation.'
The word ‘investigation' startled Shasa, and he wanted Louis to give him the bad news and get it over with but he controlled his agitation and impatience and waited quietly.
‘For some time now we have been troubled by a series of house-breakings. in the better-class suburbs – you have surely read about them. The press are calling the thief the “Cape Raffles”.'
‘Of course,' Shasa nodded. ‘Some of my friends, good friends, have been the victims – the Simpsons, the Westons. Mark Weston lost his collection of gold coins.'
‘And Mrs Simpson lost her emeralds,' Louis Nel agreed. ‘Some of those emeralds, the earrings, were recovered when we raided a fence in District Six. We were acting on a tipoff and we recovered an enormous quantity of stolen articles. We arrested the fence – he's a coloured chap who was running an electrical business in the front of his premises and receiving stolen goods through the back door. We have had him locked up for two weeks now, and he is beginning to co-operate. He gave us a list of names, and on it was one lovable little rogue named Rufus Constantine, ever heard of him?'
Shasa shook his head. ‘How does this link up with my son?'
‘I'm coming to that. This Constantine was apparently the one who passed the emeralds and some of the other booty. We picked him up and brought him in for questioning. He is a tough little monkey, but we found a way to open him up and make him sing to us. Unfortunately the tune wasn't very pretty.'
‘Sean?' Shasa asked, and Louis nodded.
‘I'm afraid so. Looks as though he was the leader of an organized gang.'
‘It doesn't make sense. Not Sean.'
‘Your son has built up quite a reputation.'
‘He was a little wild at one time,' Shasa admitted, ‘but he is settling down to his articles now, working hard. And why would he want to get involved in something like that? I mean, he doesn't need the money.'
‘Articled clerks are not paid a great fortune.'
‘I give him an allowance,' Shasa shook his head again. ‘No, I don't believe it. What would he know about housebreaking?'
‘Oh, no – he doesn't do it himself. He sets up the job and Rufus and his henchman do the dirty work.'
‘Sets it up – what do you mean by that?'
‘As a son of yours he is welcome in any home in the city, that is right, isn't it?'
‘I suppose so.' Shasa was cautious.
‘According to little Rufus, your son studies each prospective victim's home, decides on what valuables there are and pinpoints where they are kept – strong rooms, hidden drawers, wall safes and that sort of thing. Then he begins an affair with one of the family, the mother or a daughter, and uses his opportunities to let his accomplice into the home while he is entertaining the lady of his choice upstairs.'
Shasa stared at him wordlessly.
‘By all accounts it works very well, and in more than one case the theft was not even reported to us – the ladies involved were more concerned with their reputations and their husband's wrath than with the loss of their jewellery.'
‘Marge Weston?' Shasa asked. ‘She was one of the ladies?'
‘According to our information – yes, she was.'
Shasa whispered, ‘The little bastard.' He was appalled, and totally convinced. It all fitted too neatly not to be true. Marge and Sean, his son and one of his mistresses, it was just not to be tolerated. ‘This time he has gone too far.'
‘Yes,' Louis agreed. ‘Too far by a mile. Even as a first offender, he will probably get five or six years.'
All Shasa's attention snapped back to him. The shock to Shasa's pride and sense of propriety was such that he had not even begun to consider the legal implications, but now his righteous rage was snuffed out at the suggestion of his
eldest son standing in the dock and being sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
‘Have you prepared a docket yet?' he asked. ‘Is there a warrant out?'
‘Not yet.' Louis was speaking as carefully. ‘We were only given this information a few hours ago.' He crossed to his desk and picked up the blue interrogation folder.
‘What can I do?' Shasa asked quietly. ‘Is there anything we can do?'
‘I've done all I can,' Louis answered. ‘I've done too much already. I could never justify holding up this information, nor could I justify informing you of an investigation in progress. I've already stretched my neck way out, Shasa. We go back a long way, and I'll never forget the work you did on White Sword – that's the only reason I took the chance …' He paused to take a deep breath, and Shasa, sensing there was more to come, remained silent. ‘There is nothing else I can do. Nothing else anyone can do
at this level
.' He placed peculiar emphasis on the last three words, and then he added seemingly incongruously, ‘I'm retiring next month, there'll be someone else in this office after that.'
‘How long do I haver Shasa asked, and he did not have to elaborate. They understood each other.
‘I can sit on this file for another few hours, until five o'clock today, and then the investigation will have to go ahead.'
Shasa stood up. ‘You are a good friend.'
‘I'll walk you down,' Louis said, and they were alone in the lift before they spoke again. It had taken Shasa that long to master his perturbation.
‘I hadn't thought about White Sword for years,' he changed the subject easily. ‘Not until today. All that seems so far away and long ago, even though it was my own grandfather.'
‘I've never forgotten it,' Louis Nel said softly. ‘The man was a murderer. If he had succeeded, if you hadn't prevented it, all of us in this land would be a lot worse off than we are today.'
‘I wonder what happened to White Sword – who he was and where he is now? Perhaps he is long dead, perhaps—'
‘I don't think so – there is something that makes me doubt it. A few years ago I wanted to go over the White Sword file—'
The lift stopped at the ground floor and Louis broke off. He remained silent as they crossed the lobby and went out into the sunlight. On the front steps of the headquarters building, they faced each other.
‘Yes?' Shasa asked. ‘The file, the White Sword file?'
‘There is no file,' Louis said softly.
‘I don't understand.'
‘No file,' Louis repeated. ‘Not in police records or the Justice Department or the central records. Officially, White Sword never existed.'
Shasa stared at him. ‘There must be a file – I mean, we worked on it, you and I. It was this thick—' Shasa held his thumb and forefinger apart. ‘It can't have disappeared!'
‘You can take my word for it. It has.' Louis held out his hand. ‘Five o'clock,' he said gently. ‘No later, but I will be in my office all day right up to five, if anyone wants to telephone me there.'
Shasa took his hand. ‘I will never forget this.' He glanced at his wristwatch as he turned away. It was a few minutes before noon, and most fortunately he had a lunch date with Manfred De La Rey. He headed back up Parliament Lane, and the noon-day gun fired just as he went in through the main doors. Everybody in the main lobby, including the ushers, instinctively checked their watches at the distant clap of cannon shot.
Shasa turned towards the members' dining-room, but he
was far too early. Except for the white-uniformed waiters, it was deserted. In the members' bar he ordered a pink gin and waited impatiently, glancing every few seconds at his watch, but his appointment with Manfred was for twelve-thirty and it was no good going to search for him. He could be anywhere in the huge rambling building, so Shasa employed the time in cherishing and fanning his anger.
‘The bastard!' he thought. ‘I've allowed him to fool me all these years. All the signs were there, but I refused to accept them. He's dirty rotten, right to the core—' and then his indignation went off in a new direction. ‘Marge Weston is old enough to be his mother, how many of my other women has he been boffing? Is nothing sacred to the little devil?'
Manfred De La Rey was a few minutes early. He came to the members' bar smiling and nodding and shaking hands, playing the genial politician, so that it took him a few minutes to cross the room. Shasa could barely contain his impatience, but he didn't want anyone to suspect his agitation.
Manfred asked for a beer. Shasa had never seen him take hard spirits, and only after he had taken his first sip did Shasa tell him quietly, ‘I'm in trouble – serious trouble.'
Manfred's easy smile never faltered, he was too shrewd to betray his emotions to a room full of adversaries and potential rivals, but his eyes went cold and pale as those of a basilisk.
‘Not here,' he said, and led Shasa through to the men's room. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the urinal and Shasa spoke softly but urgently, and when he finished, Manfred stood staring at the white ceramic trough for only a few seconds before he roused himself.
‘What is the number?'
Shasa slipped him a card with Louis Nel's telephone number at CID headquarters.
‘I'll have to use the security line from my office. Give me fifteen minutes. I will meet you back at the bar.' Manfred zipped his fly closed and strode out of the lavatory.
He was back in the members' bar within ten minutes, by which time Shasa was entertaining the four other members of the luncheon party, all of them influential back-benchers. When they finished their drinks, Shasa suggested, ‘Shall we go through?' As they moved towards the dining-room Manfred took his upper arm in a firm grip, and leaned close to him, smiling as though conveying a pleasantry.
‘I've squashed it, but he is to be out of the country within twenty-four hours, and I don't want him back. Is that a bargain?'
‘I am grateful,' Shasa nodded, and his anger at his son was compounded by this obligation that had been forced upon him. It was a debt that he would have to repay, with interest.
Sean's Harley was parked down at the sports hall that Shasa had built as a joint Christmas present for all three boys two years previously. It contained a gymnasium and squash court, half-Olympic-size indoor swimming-pool and change rooms. As Shasa approached, he heard the explosive echo of the rubber ball from the courts and he went up to the spectators' gallery.
Sean was playing with one of his cronies. He wore white silk shorts but his chest was bare. There was a white sweat band around his forehead, and white tennis shoes on his feet. His body glistened with sweat and was tanned to a golden brown. He was impossibly beautiful, like a romantic painting of himself, and he moved with the unforced grace of a hunting leopard, driving the tiny black ball against the high white wall with such deceptive power that it resounded like a fusillade of rifle fire as it rebounded. He saw Shasa in the gallery and flashed him a dazzle of even white teeth and green eyes, so that despite his anger Shasa
suffered a sudden pang at the idea of having to part from him.
In the change room Shasa dismissed his playing partner curtly: ‘I want to speak to Sean – alone,' and as soon as he was gone he turned on his son. ‘The police are on to you,' he said. ‘They know all about you.' He waited for a reaction, but he was disappointed.
Sean towelled his face and neck. ‘Sorry, Pater, you've lost me there. What is it they know?' He was cool and debonair, and Shasa exploded.
‘Don't play your games with me, young man. What they know can put you behind bars for ten years.'
Sean lowered the towel and stood up from the bench. He was serious at last. ‘How did they find out?'
‘Rufus Constantine.'
‘The little prick. I'll break his neck.' He wasn't going to deny it and Shasa's last hope that he was innocent faded.
‘I'll break any necks that have to be broken,' Shasa snapped.
‘So what are we going to do?' Sean asked, and Shasa was taken aback by his casual assumption.
‘We?' he asked. ‘What makes you think that I'm going to save your thieving hide?'
‘Family honour,' Sean was matter-of-fact. ‘You'll never let me go to court. The family would be on trial with me – you would never allow that.'

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