Random Violence (10 page)

17

Jade’s cell phone woke her at five the next morning. It was dark outside and she could hear the chirps of the earliest birds above the insistent buzzing of her phone. She squinted at the screen, impossibly bright to her sleepy eyes, and recognized the number. It was David calling.

“Got a murder victim here, Jadey,” he said.

Jade turned on the bedside light, blinking as her vision adjusted to its glare. The events of the previous night seemed a lifetime away. Relieved she could focus on the case again, she ran through the list of possibilities.

“Dean Grobbelaar?”

“Well, we’ve still got to ID the body. But it matches his description. No shoes. A friend of Grobbelaar’s called in a missing person report yesterday. That poor bugger is standing by, waiting to take a look for us. It’s not a pretty sight, I’m told.”

“What happened? Where is he?”

“Out of town. In a wildlife sanctuary a couple of hours’ drive north of Jo’burg. I’m on my way to the scene now. Apparently he was tied to a tree and chopped up. With a panga or an axe, I’m guessing.”

Jade’s skin contracted into gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “That’s a terrible way to die. That’s just plain unnecessary.”

David gave the ghost of a laugh. “Why not shoot him and have done with it, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

“I don’t know, Jadey. But chopping somebody to death is brutal. Unnecessary, as you say.”

“What do you want me to do, David?”

“I’ve got a forensic team checking out Dean’s office. I don’t know if they’ll find anything except ashes and soot, but why don’t you head over there and see if you can fill in the blanks?”

Jade hung up. She walked across to the bathroom and showered. By the time she’d finished the frosted glass in the window was glowing in the light of the rising sun and the birdsong was a cacophony.

She was on her way back to the bedroom, wrapped in her towel, when she heard a distinctive rattle. The security gate was being opened from the outside.

She froze, thinking of shootings and stabbings and people who used axes to chop people to death. She didn’t have her gun with her. It was still under the pillow. There was no time to run to the bedroom. The front door swung open and the alarm started beeping.

To Jade’s astonishment, a domestic servant in a pink uniform and frilly apron strolled into the kitchen, humming to herself. She pressed the keypad and turned off the alarm. She turned back again, and saw Jade standing in the corridor.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling broadly.

“Morning,” Jade said. She was sure it would take a few hours for her heart rate to return to normal.

The maid started clattering dishes in the sink. Still coasting on a wave of adrenaline, Jade returned to her bedroom. She pulled on jeans and a black jersey and holstered her gun. Secure, private, safe cottage? Hah. Wait till she got hold of David.

On the way to Grobbelaar’s office, Jade called the hospital to check on Yolandi. A doctor told her that she was conscious and recovering from her ordeal. “She has no memory of the break-in, I’m afraid,” he told her. “Very common after this type of head injury. Her daughter is here with her now. Just arrived from Canada.”

Jade was glad that Yolandi would recover, but sorry that she couldn’t identify her attacker. She wondered whether she had been assaulted by the same thugs who’d torched Dean’s office. Did the thugs have a real motive for their actions, she wondered, or were they just hired help, paid to carry out jobs that the boss preferred not to do?

The little shopping center was a hive of activity when she arrived. A police car was idling in the parking area. A cop stood in the sun outside the shop, notebook in hand. He was talking to a store assistant whom Jade didn’t recognize. She supposed this man had a genuine identity book. He had ditched his shop-keeping activities in favor of the more high-profile occupation of being interviewed by the police.

The east wing of the office block was scorched and destroyed. Grobbelaar’s office had been gutted. She didn’t know what the forensic team could possibly hope to find beyond the obvious evidence of arson.

Jade walked up the stairs, coughing as the foul smell caught in her throat. On the landing, she looked out and saw Grob-belaar’s car. Once again, the old Toyota was covered in a layer of frost. It seemed to be sagging on its worn tires.

Two forensic officers in protective gear were combing through the room, stepping carefully over fallen beams and piles of ash. The wooden filing cabinet was gone, reduced to a heap of charcoal. She’d never know what had been in the drawer marked “Pending.”

She greeted the officers. They didn’t need any help and Jade started to feel guilty all over again.

“Can I check out his car for you?” she asked. It might not be constructive, but at least it would give her something to do. Save them some valuable time, perhaps, and make up for adding to the workload of the South African police service through her actions the night before. They agreed. Armed with a pair of rubber gloves and a plastic evidence bag, she set off.

As she walked down the stairs, Jade tried to picture the scene that had taken place when Grobbelaar was abducted. He’d worked in his office on his own. He must have been grabbed after the store closed, when it was fully dark outside.

If Jade had wanted to snatch him, she would have done exactly what she thought his killer did. Waited till he was about to leave and then shoved a gun into his face as he was stepping out of the office. She recalled the position of the shoes. Ready to go.

She was sure it would have taken two people to do this job. She didn’t think Grobbelaar would have submitted to a lone attacker. He worked in a tough industry, probably had some kind of police or military background. Like the shaven-headed ex-cop friend of her father’s who ran spe-cialist courses in self-defense and bodyguarding and had given her an intensive month’s tuition before she’d taken her first job.

“Never allow yourself to be forced into a vehicle,” Jade remembered the hard-muscled man saying. “The best time to fight is before they take you away, so make the most of it. Fight dirty. Scream to draw attention to yourself. What-ever the hell you do, however poor the odds of success seem, they’re almost always going to be better than when the bad guys drag you out again after the ride.”

Physically, she imagined Grobbelaar had looked a lot like her self-defense instructor. So why had he given in to his kid-napper? Jade didn’t know. She could only assume he’d been outnumbered and surprised. In which case, it was likely that his attackers also had a police or military background.

She remembered Annette’s bullet wounds. Accurate, effective, placed to kill. Her shooter had skill and discipline. The same skill and discipline, perhaps, that had allowed someone to tie up, gag and disarm a big, tough private detec-tive without a struggle.

So, one person to keep the gun trained on him. Another to remove his shoes. Or perhaps they’d told him to take them off himself. Then they’d secured his hands behind him. Forced the sock into his mouth to prevent Grobbelaar from drawing any unwanted attention.

Grabbed his laptop, leaving the power cable. Taken his cell phone. He would have been barefoot, so he couldn’t do any damage with his feet. Not to them, or to whatever vehicle they took him away in. Then a quick march out of the door, down to the car. Into the back. Game over.

The private car park on the other side of the building was accessed through a metal door behind the stairwell. It was locked and Jade had to ask the shopkeeper for a key. The door clanged as she opened it. She walked in.

Here there was a security system of sorts in place. It was guarded by a fence and a gate, both topped with coils of razor wire. The gate was padlocked from the inside.

So, the people who’d taken Grobbelaar for a long ride in their car hadn’t been able to access his vehicle. Or hadn’t needed to.

She walked over to look at the Toyota. The frost on the windows had melted in places and she could make out the car’s interior. A dusty dashboard. Cracked leather seats. She was sure it would have been about as comfortable as a broken armchair.

There were two beige folders on the passenger seat. They looked just like the others she had seen in the filing cabinet upstairs. Jade leaned forward, the icy glass pressing against her nose, and held her breath so it wouldn’t steam up the window as she tried to get a closer look.

The top file had spidery writing scribbled on the edge.

“Botha.”

Bingo.

Jade felt her heart start to pound with the familiar excite-ment of the chase. She straightened up and tried the car door. To her surprise it opened, creaking on unwilling hinges. Grobbelaar had obviously felt his car was adequately secured behind the razor wire and metal gate. Inside the car smelled musty, of old dust and cigarette smoke. There wasn’t even a radio. No wonder he didn’t bother to lock it. She reached across to the passenger seat and removed the file.

It was a thin folder. Thinner than Annette’s case file. There were only three pieces of paper inside.

The first was a printout of an e-mail written by Annette. It was short and to the point. “Dear Mr. Grobbelaar. Further to our phone call, I would like you to trace a woman called Ellie Myers. All I know is that in 1999, she lived in Bryanston and was married to a man called Mark. Please forward me your payment details and let me know when I can expect informa-tion. Many thanks, Annette Botha.”

This page was clipped to one of Grobbelaar’s ubiquitous client sheets. He had scribbled a couple of notes on it, but refrained from adding any lewd drawings.

The final page was a printout that looked as if it had been copied from an old voters’ roll. It contained a list of names, identity numbers and addresses, sorted by surname. Near the top, a strip of pink highlighter wavered across an entry labelled Myers, Eleanor R. Her identity number and address followed. 48 Forest Road, Bryanston, Johannesburg. Just below her entry was another slash of pink. This one illumi-nated the name of Myers, Mark J. He was a few years older than Eleanor and his address was the same. It looked as if Grobbelaar hadn’t closed this file yet. But at least Jade had something now. She had a place to start.

Grobbelaar’s burnt-out office was a world away from the tree-lined streets of Bryanston. As she drove north of Jo’burg, the highway became more crowded, the cars bigger and more expensive and the drivers increasingly aggressive. It took her more than half an hour to reach the exact place she wanted. She had to make a few extra turns and retrace her steps because part of the suburb had been barriered off and turned into a security-controlled area. By the time she’d found the correct street, Jade was cursing the rich.

This part of Bryanston was where the old money lived. The houses were graceful—what she could see of them, because they were set back from the road behind high walls, in treed gardens, with ivy covering the gateposts. Most of the houses had triple-stranded electric fencing on the tops of their moss-covered walls, a new addition. Others went a step further, with security cameras placed at intervals, and a guardhouse at the entrance. She wondered who lived behind those walls and how much it cost them every month to maintain their security systems.

Forest Road was lined with old oak trees whose branches met overhead. Jade drove through the tunnel of dappled shade looking for number 48.

It wasn’t there. She saw a number 46, and after it, a high Tuscan-style wall also topped with electric fencing. In con-trast to the others along the road, this wall looked new.

A guardhouse separated two massive gates. Problem was, the gates led into a large cluster complex. It was called Oak Grove, which was ironic seeing as the builders must have cut down the oak tree outside it in order to make room for the enormous gateposts that encroached onto the wide grassy verge. On the opposite side of the street, the last lonely oak stretched its branches across into naked sunshine.

Jade checked the piece of paper again. There hadn’t been any mention of a cluster home.

She parked in the shade of the lone tree and walked over to the guardhouse. A tinted window slid open and a uniformed guard appeared.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for an Eleanor Myers. She lives here.” Jade looked at the expanse of tiled roofs that stretched into the dis-tance, like an artificial mountain range, on the other side of the wall. “Somewhere,” she added.

The guard consulted a clipboard, turned a page, and frowned. He moved across to the other side of the room and looked through a printed register. Jade watched him through the open window. Then, the entrance gates swung open and a white Jeep drove into the complex. She caught a glimpse of immaculate paving, low-fenced gardens and double-story houses. As the entrance gates closed, the exit gates swung open and a yellow Porsche drove out.

The guard returned to the window.

“I’m sorry, madam. We do not have an Ellie Myers on our list. Or an Eleanor. Do you know what number she’s in?”

“No, I don’t. Do you have a Mark Myers living there?”