Stolen Lives (27 page)

After a few minutes of futile wrestling, he realised the answer to that question was no. Rubbing his throbbing palms, David realised he’d have to go and buy a crowbar, call a locksmith, make another plan. Seething with frustration, he gave the stubborn door a hard, angry kick and turned away.

Then, to David’s utter astonishment, he heard a key rattling in the lock. He spun round as the door flew open and gave an involuntary gasp when he saw Naisha standing there.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and black streaks of mascara had tracked their way down her cheeks. Her lips looked swollen, too. She was in her work clothes, but they were crumpled and creased, and she had make-up stains on the collar of her blouse.

“Naisha, what …?” David felt the blood drain from his face— his first and immediate impression was that she’d been raped. He took a tentative step towards her.

“Go,” she cried. “Just go away.”

“I can’t go.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

She tried to close the door but he grabbed the handle, yanked it back open and pushed his way inside.

“What …?”

David yelled as his wife’s nails raked savagely across his cheek. Before he had time to back away, her bunched fist connected with his jaw. His head snapped back and he tasted blood as he bit right through his own tongue.

Jesus, she’s gone insane, he thought. What had happened?

Before Naisha had a chance to hit him again, David managed to grab her wrists. Her arms felt as strong and thin as steel cables as she struggled against him and he had to twist sideways when she aimed her knee at his groin. He heard a ripping noise as her efforts tore the seam of her skirt.

“What is it?” he shouted. “Naisha, stop this! Stop trying to hurt me and tell me what the hell is wrong.”

She looked up at him wordlessly. Then the fight went out of her and she sagged in his arms.

“You’ve killed Kevin,” she whispered.

“What?” David roared out the word in panic, as if the volume of his own voice could drown out what she had just said.

Naisha started to cry.

“They’ve got him. They’ve got my little boy. And they told me no police, or I will never see him alive again. No police and particularly not my husband. They said if I contact you, if I tell you anything at all, Kevin will die.” Her breath was coming in harsh, rapid sobs, a sound that David had heard many times from victims and their families at murder scenes, shootings and violent robberies, but had never expected to hear inside these pale yellow walls.

“And now you’ve come here, and I’m sure they already know, and that means it’s too late now, because they will have killed him.”

David stared at her, open-mouthed.

“But you … ” he began, in a voice that sounded strange and didn’t seem to belong to him.

Then, in his pocket, his cellphone began to ring. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he pulled it out and answered.

“Mr Patel.” It was the school secretary. She sounded relieved; happy, even. “There’s nothing to worry about. I spoke to your wife a few minutes ago and she said she kept Kevin home from school today because they’ve both come down with a bad cold. I do apologise for the scare earlier. Francina must have made a mistake.”

“I see,” David said, unable to contradict her. “Thanks for letting me know.”

At that point, Naisha’s knees gave way. Feeling strangely disembodied, David lowered her gently onto a chair. She slumped onto the table and buried her face in her arms. For a short while the only sound in the quiet space was her gasping cries.

34

David crouched down beside Naisha, stroking her shoulders and murmuring words of comfort that, even to him, sounded hollow.

Meanwhile, his mind was racing.

Kevin had been abducted. And he’d been targeted deliberately. Naisha had been ordered not to call the police, and specifically not to call David. So Kevin’s captors had done their homework. They knew who he was and who she was.

By knocking on Naisha’s door, had David already signed his own son’s death warrant?

The thought made him feel physically ill. He clung to the hope that the kidnappers’ words were only a threat, and that Kevin’s captors, whoever they were, didn’t have anybody watching Naisha’s house. After all, his coming here was entirely due to a series of coincidences—the forgotten maths book, the traffic delays, the domestic worker noticing the unfamiliar car.

When Kevin was younger, one of Naisha’s relatives had given him a hamster in a cage. The tan-coloured Brownie had proved to be a wayward animal. It bit both Kevin and him on numerous occasions and was prone to fits of frantic activity, where it would climb onto its wheel and run for hours, spewing wood shavings and fine yellow dust all over the desk in Kevin’s bedroom.

Brownie hadn’t lasted long. The hamster had escaped after giving Kevin’s thumb a well-timed bite as he was taking it out to clean the cage. Despite its aggressive personality, David privately hoped that the small animal had gone on to live a happier life outdoors.

Right now his thoughts too were going round and round, in a frantic and repetitive sequence.

Who had taken Kevin? Why had he been snatched? Would his captors follow through on the threats they had made?

Dear God, let it not be so.

Naisha’s wailing had calmed down to a rough, intermittent sobbing. David got to his feet and tore off a couple of sheets of kitchen paper. He handed them to her, then helped her up and led her outside into the small, walled back garden.

They sat down on a bench in the shade of the eastern wall and in a croaky, halting voice, Naisha told him her story.

She’d received the phone call on her way to work after she’d dropped Kevin at school. A private number which she nearly hadn’t answered because she was wary of being caught on her cellphone while driving.

“Mrs Patel?” A man’s voice, soft and cold. “We have your son.”

At first she hadn’t understood. Then she hadn’t believed him. He’d warned her not to phone the school, not to phone anyone, or it would mean instant death for the boy. He’d told her he was sending an mms image from a sim card that would be discarded as soon as he’d ended the call. A moment later, her phone had beeped. She’d stopped at a traffic light outside the Home Affairs building and peered down at the screen, and there it was—a picture of Kevin, in his school uniform, his eyes closed, with a copy of that morning’s
Beeld
on his chest. She’d driven past a street vendor and noticed the headlines just a few minutes ago.

“Why are you doing this?” she’d asked her unknown caller. She’d been on the point of tears, but somehow managed to control herself. At first, she’d suspected that this had something to do with one of David’s cases. It was a scenario she’d always feared; that she and Kevin would become victims as a result of one of his investigations.

The man’s reply was short and sharp. She’d interfered with something she had no business in. She was to take the day off work but, before she left the building, she was to reactivate all the passwords that she had disabled yesterday in the security clampdown, so that “business” could go on as usual. If she did this, Kevin would be returned to her, safe and sound, at the end of the day.

“Don’t go anywhere,” the man had warned. “Stay home all day. You can expect another call on your landline later.”

Someone had hooted behind her, signalling that the light had changed, but, gasping in shock, she’d stalled the car.

This wasn’t about David. It was about her. It was about what
she
did.

She’d started to curb the activities of the criminal syndicate that she’d suspected was operating within the Home Affairs building. But already, it seemed, the syndicate was biting back.

No police, the man had warned. Tell nobody. Not even your husband. If you do, your child will die.

After the man had hung up, Naisha noticed two missed calls, one from David and the other from Devon Downs College. The school secretary had left a message to say that a domestic worker had seen Kevin leaving the school grounds in an unfamiliar car.

Panic had crushed Naisha like a lead weight. She’d sped through the underground parking garage, tyres squealing on the smooth floor. Then she had rushed up the stairs and into her office. Heads had turned as she’d run through the open-plan admin section.

Who was involved in this? Which of the people watching knew that she had just been coerced, in the most dreadful way, into letting them continue with their crimes?

How was she ever going to face any of them again?

Unable to fight her emotions anymore, she’d started to cry uncontrollably. People would notice; she must think of an excuse. She’d logged on, reactivated the passwords and then gone straight to her boss’s office and lied. She’d just had news that her sister had been involved in a serious car crash, and was being rushed to hospital. Naisha had to leave the office immediately to be with her. She’d be back as soon as she could, but she would like to apply for a day’s leave.

Of course, her boss had said, looking at her tear-streaked face with concern. Of course. Go straight away. What are you waiting for?

She’d reactivated the passwords, Naisha had told him, so that the issuing of passports and id documents could continue in her absence.

“I appreciate that,” her boss had said—and he was surely not one of the people involved in the syndicate, because if so, he would have prevented her from disabling the passwords in the first place. Knowing that he trusted her, that he believed her, had made her cry even harder. “Call me if you need anything at all,” he’d said. “We’ll carry on with the security clampdown when you’re back.”

She’d stumbled out of the building and, when she got home, called the school and told the secretary another, different lie.

She’d been pacing in her bedroom, weeping hysterically, when, to her horror, she’d heard David banging on the door.

Think, David urged himself. Think.

But looking at his wife’s anguished face, he couldn’t form any coherent thoughts except for the obvious one—that all this was his fault.

He had begged Naisha to turn down the overseas job. He had pleaded with her to take the position at Home Affairs’ head office in Pretoria. He’d done it all because of Kevin, because he didn’t want to be parted from his son.

Now, if Kevin ended up being hurt or killed, David would have only himself to blame.

He couldn’t stay at Naisha’s house any longer. He needed to leave, for Kevin’s sake, and hope that nobody had seen him arrive. But he did need to stay in touch with Naisha.

David scrolled through the menu on his cellphone and diverted all his incoming calls to Jade. She would be able to handle the situation. In a crisis, there was nobody he trusted more.

Then he handed his phone to Naisha.

“I don’t know if they’re watching this place or monitoring your calls,” he said, “but this phone’s transmission is scrambled, so you should be ok if you use it outside. At least it’ll give you a safe means of communication. I’ll get a new one and sms you the number. When I do, go outside and call me immediately.”

He wished he could stay with her, but it was too risky. At the time when she most needed his support, he was powerless to offer it. Guilt tore at his heart.

“I’ll speak to you soon,” he said. “Be strong. We’ll get Kevin back. I promise you that. Whatever happens, we will get him back.”

Checking nervously around him, he hurried back to his car and drove away.

35

Edmonds checked her watch for the third time that hour. Then she glanced out of the window, pushing aside the blue blinds and peering down through the rain-streaked glass to the building’s entrance. She could usually spot the people who were arriving on business as they strode purposefully past the slow-moving groups of tourists, but on this rainy morning all she could see were a couple of umbrellas, bobbing black boats in the river of the street.

She flipped the blind back into place, her hand hovering over the telephone, ready to snatch it up as soon as the call she was expecting came through.

Edmonds had never thought they would get another potential witness for this case, but that was exactly what they had.

Last night, the Yorkshire police had raided a brothel in Brad-field. The test purchase officer who had investigated the place three weeks earlier had reported that there were seven women working there, none of whom ever seemed to leave the premises unless they were accompanied by the brothel owner. Without a doubt, they were trafficked workers. But when the raid had taken place, they found there were not seven women inside. There were eight.

The Yorkshire police had swiftly established the identity of the eighth woman, a relatively new arrival.

Her name was Fariah Sidibaye, and she was the victim who had been sold on from Number Six.

Edmonds had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a phone call from Mackay telling her the news. She’d been so hyped up after hearing it that she’d found it almost impossible to get back to sleep. Eventually she’d dozed off, and she had dreamed of the running man.

She’d seen the accident in perfect slow-motion, just as it had happened on the night of the raid, only more clearly. The swipe of the windscreen wiper flicking the rain away. The slow turning of the man’s head, his sideways stumble, the heart-stopping bang as his hand had slammed against the car’s swerving bonnet.

And then his body, rolling away across the tarmac.

In her dream, the man hadn’t got up. She’d climbed out of the car and rushed over to him, skimming over the road the way one could only do in dreams, and she’d suddenly known that this was Salimovic, that they had him at last.

Then he had pulled back his hoodie and staring down in shock, Edmonds had realised it wasn’t Salimovic after all. Under the black hood, she had seen the face of Xavier Soumare, staring at her with cold, dark eyes.

“Who are you?” she’d asked him. “Why is Amanita lying about you?”

Xavier hadn’t answered. He’d just smiled, his lips stretched open all the way to his ears, exposing huge, jagged teeth in a shark’s grinning mouth.