Stolen Lives (26 page)

The British detective had also attached digital photographs of the two men. Salimovic looked thuggish and brutal with his thin lips, narrow eyes, and stubble-short dark hair. Rodic was plumper, but otherwise not unlike his cousin in appearance.

David got hold of his contact at immigration at seven-thirty that morning, and the man called him back half an hour later to confirm that Rodic’s passport had indeed been used to enter South Africa on the twentieth of October. He also told David he would flag the passport number immediately.

Pleased with the immigration official’s fast turnaround time, David hit the Reply button on Richards’ email, and relayed the good news to Scotland Yard. Now, if Salimovic tried to use that passport again, he would be arrested on sight. If David had his way, the next plane the man would be taking would be a British Airways flight back to the uk, securely handcuffed to his seat, and under police guard.

“Gotcha,” David said, staring at the unsmiling faces of the two criminals on the computer screen with some satisfaction.

32

It was well after eight when David finally sprinted down to his car and set off for Pretoria, worried that his preoccupation with his morning’s work might cause him to be late for his son yet again.

The main road leading to the Pretoria highway was clogged with traffic. He sat, frustrated, in his car, watching the hawkers threading their way through the queues backed up at the traffic lights, selling knock-off perfumes, dodgy-looking biltong and cheap sunglasses.

If they’d been selling coffee, David might have been interested.

Perhaps he should buy a pair of sunglasses, though. His trusty pair of Ray Bans had lost a lens the day before. Now, he had to squint against the bright morning sun without as much as a layer of tinted glass between it and him.

He was about to beckon the salesman over when his phone rang.

The caller was Moloi, and he sounded concerned.

“Superintendent, do you have a minute? I need your advice urgently.”

“Fire away.”

“I’ve just got to Heidelberg City Clinic, where Tamsin Jordaan was supposed to have regained consciousness this morning.”

A stab in David’s heart. Tamsin’s name made him think of Pamela and then, immediately, of Jade.

Then Moloi’s words hit home.

“Supposed to regain consciousness?” he asked, surprised. “What went wrong? Is she still in a coma? Is she dead?”

The motorist behind him hooted, but the noise wasn’t directed at him. It was meant to attract the attention of the roadside newspaper seller, who rushed over with a copy of the morning’s paper in his hand.

“She’s not Tamsin Jordaan,” Moloi said.

“What?” David’s voice was so loud that a passing hawker stared curiously into the car.

“She’s not Tamsin Jordaan. She is a woman of similar age and similar appearance called Raquel Maloney. She does not know Tamsin, has no obvious connection to her, and cannot explain how she ended up at a petrol station on the
N
3 highway when the last thing she remembers is having coffee alone at Hyde Park Centre.”

“What the …? Piss off, for God’s sake!” David waved an impatient hand at a hawker who was brandishing an array of cellphone devices at him through the car window.

“Sorry, is this a bad time?” Moloi asked.

“No, no, carry on, I was shouting at somebody who’s trying to sell me a bloody hands-free kit for my phone.”

Usually, Moloi would have laughed at a scenario like that, but he was too rattled.

“I made a huge mistake, boss. I assumed we had the right girl.”

“I thought you said she had id on her.”

“She did. She had Tamsin Jordaan’s handbag with Tamsin Jordaan’s id inside. The photo looked similar enough that our officers didn’t question it. Young slim girl, brown hair. Oh, and she was wearing a diamond pendant around her neck which Pamela Jordaan recognised when we described it to her.”

“Does Mrs Jordaan know what’s happened?”

“I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet, but she should be here any minute. She’s coming to visit Tamsin. She still thinks she’s safe and sound.”

“She hasn’t had any requests for ransom?”

“I’ll check when I speak to her, but I’m sure if she had, she would have notified us.”

“Look out for something like that.” David felt his forehead crease into the familiar folds of a frown. So, Tamsin was still missing. Abducted, or possibly kidnapped. But why would somebody have grabbed her and then gone to all the trouble of substituting another girl in her place?

To buy time.

That was the most obvious answer. Whoever had done this had known that Tamsin would be reported missing and had arranged for a near-identical girl to be found so that the search would be called off. But called off before what?

“Look out for a ransom demand,” David said again.

Kidnapping happened fairly frequently in South Africa, and occasionally a high-profile case would make media headlines. The most common form of kidnapping, though, was to snatch children or teenagers and demand a relatively small ransom. These cases happened far more often than statistics showed, because many parents chose to pay up without informing the police, hoping it would guarantee their child’s safe return. In most cases it did.

Moloi thanked him and rang off.

David rubbed his temples, feeling the throbbing beginnings of another headache, and closed his sore eyes. The darkness offered him momentary relief from his fiery prison.

He opened his eyes again, and a movement at his window made him turn his head sharply.

Another hawker, this one offering sunglasses.

David buzzed his window down and hot air rushed into the car.

“How much?” he asked.

“Fifty rand.” The shabbily dressed black man jabbered out the words, eager to close the sale instantly, before the lights changed and his potential customer was gone. “Only fifty rand for you, sir.”

Before David could blink, the man had thrust a pair of mirrored shades into his hand. “These very good, these ones. Big, too. The right size for you.”

“No, goddammit, I’m not walking around wearing those, I’ll look like a gangster. Give me a plain pair. Just a pair of ordinary dark glasses. Yes, those ones, the ones with the steel rims.”

David pulled out his wallet, glancing in his other wing mirror to check that nobody was approaching the passenger side wielding a brick or a spark plug. Smash and grabs were common at traffic lights, and hawkers provided a useful distraction, allowing the lurking robbers to strike.

He handed over a fifty to the salesman and put on the glasses. The relief from the sun was instant and they were a good fit. He leaned his finger on the window buzzer and got it back up as fast as he could, before the man selling the hands-free kits could come back.

Half an hour later he was outside Devon Downs. A couple of late arrivals were hurriedly dropping off their kids, not even bothering to park properly. David saw children trotting down the long, paved walkway towards the school buildings, bags bouncing on their backs. They broke into a run as a school bell sounded in the distance.

David tried to call Naisha to ask her where Kevin’s classroom was so that he could surprise his son by giving him the book in person, but her number was engaged.

He headed for the admin office—a white, double-storey building that faced onto a courtyard with a fountain in its centre. Easier to leave the book there than trying to find Kevin among all those small, blue-uniformed children in a school whose grounds occupied roughly the same area as Lesotho.

But in the admin office, the secretary’s attention was occupied by a distraught-sounding domestic worker who had rushed into the office as David had been climbing the outside stairs.

Wishing he could have been ten seconds ahead of her instead of ten seconds behind, David waited, glancing at the clock on the wall with increasing impatience, tuning out the uniformed woman’s anxious explanation.

Until he heard the words “Kevin Patel.”

He didn’t recognise the domestic’s face, but now he looked at her more carefully, her pink smock was familiar. He’d seen her the previous day, walking home with the boy that Kevin had said was his new friend Riaan.

A knot of dread formed in David’s gut and began stretching out long, cold tentacles. He stepped up to the counter.

“What’s this about my son?” Now he could hear the stress in his own voice, too.

“Mr Patel? Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Perhaps you can explain.” The school secretary’s greying perm bobbed as she looked up at him. “Francina says she’s just seen Kevin leaving the school grounds in an unfamiliar vehicle. We’ve checked, and he’s not in class today. I’ve been trying to get hold of his mother, but she isn’t answering her phone.”

“I don’t know anything about this,” David said. “He should be at school today. I was just bringing his maths book in.” He stared down at the brown-covered book, realising that his hands were cold and sweaty.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen before.” The secretary was on the point of tears. “I’ll be glad to help any way I can. Would you like us to send somebody round to Mrs Patel’s home, or her work? Perhaps she’ll know where he went.”

“No.” David’s mind was racing with plausible, happy-ending scenarios—Kevin had been sick, he hadn’t gone to school, Francina had made a mistake—but his gut told him differently.

“I’ll take a drive to the house right now, and see if he’s there. I’ll call you as soon I know what’s going on.”

The detective in him kicked belatedly into action. He turned to the domestic worker. “Francina, please could you give the secretary a full description of the car you saw, and the occupants. Anything you can remember will be helpful.”

David sprinted out of the office and raced back down the walkway to the car park, now deserted apart from his vehicle. He started the engine and accelerated through the exit gates, his foot flat on the pedal and the tyres wailing in protest, driving as fast as he could, but still unable to outrun his fears.

33

David sped along the main road in the direction of Faerie Glen, sick with worry. Every few minutes he tried redialling Naisha’s home, work and cell numbers, but no one picked up.

Why? Had something happened to her, too? Or was she in a meeting at work, phone on silent, unaware of the nightmare unfolding around her?

Ahead of him, a yellow Audi indicated to pull out into the fast lane.

If I get past the driver before he changes lanes, Kevin will be safe.

Mashing his foot down on the pedal, David shot towards the car. The driver hadn’t noticed his last-minute acceleration, and began pulling out regardless.

David swerved into the emergency lane. The tyres squealed and he felt the car start to skid. The concrete barrier loomed on his right, so close his wing mirror was almost scraping it, but he felt no fear. Avoiding the crash seemed easy compared to facing what lay ahead.

Hands tight on the wheel, he managed to accelerate out of the skid and swing back into the fast lane ahead of the Audi.

The blare of its horn soon faded into the distance behind him.

Don’t do it, David warned himself, breathing hard. Don’t start indulging in superstitious behaviour. It can’t change what’s already happened. All it will do is get you killed.

Even so, he found himself attempting the same dangerous action a few minutes later.

Children disappeared all the time. Some were taken for muti medicine, most commonly young children in the townships. They were killed, cut open and carefully dissected. Each organ had a special significance. Even their flesh had value.

Children were also easy prey for kidnappers, and his blood ran cold as he recalled the conversation he’d just had with Moloi. Kevin was attending a wealthy school, although if a kidnapper did his homework he would quickly realise that Kevin was a bad choice, because his parents were among the poorest at Devon Downs.

Even so, if money was involved, David knew he would do anything to get a ransom together and bring Kevin safely home.

Anything.

Children were stolen for sex. He didn’t even want to consider that possibility, but a good-looking young boy like Kevin would surely fetch a high price if he was sold to …

Don’t think about it.

He’s bunking school, he’s at a friend’s house. Please, please let it be something like that.

A few minutes later he parked outside Naisha’s flat and sprinted to the front door. Her little house looked so peaceful, so normal. The white-painted security gate was shut and locked, and so was the door. He hammered with his fists on the varnished wood.

“Kevin!” he called. “Kev, are you there?” He listened carefully. Nothing, no response. “Naisha?”

His son wasn’t there. The truth hit him with a punch, even though he’d known, deep down, that Kevin was missing, not sick, not skiving off school. And Naisha must be at work, where he would now have to go to break the dreadful news.

As David turned away, he noticed a familiar-looking red vehicle in the residents’ parking area. He stopped and frowned at the little Nissan Micra. From here he could just make out the number plate.

No, he wasn’t hallucinating. It was Naisha’s car.

Bemused, David strode through the narrow ribbon of garden to the back of the house.

He’d warned Naisha repeatedly that it was pointless having a front entrance with a state-of-the-art security gate when her kitchen door had no protection at all. It was a standard wooden stable door with a flimsy, low-spec lock that any half-skilled criminal could pick in less time than it would take to phone the Flying Squad.

It was time to put its flimsiness to the test.

David peered through the kitchen window, which was bordered by cheerful yellow curtains. No point in breaking the door down and running straight into the muzzle of a gun.

But the kitchen was neat, tidy and empty. Next to the sink, a coffee cup and two cereal bowls were drying on the dish rack. Clearly Naisha and Kevin had had their breakfast. Then something had gone wrong.

He stared at the kitchen door, assessing it. It opened outwards, so not even the strongest and most dramatic rugby-tackle would force it inwards. Could he pull it open?