The First Rule Of Survival (7 page)

De Vries wearily lets his head laze back on his neck, then he snaps it back.

‘Shit! You don’t understand, Don. This is what happened before. No evidence, no information, nothing. He’s going to get away with it again.’

*   *   *

John Marantz’s house is high on the lush southern face of Table Mountain, where rains pour day and night for weeks on end, the sun’s pale white winter rays absent behind the monolith. The trickling brooks swell to torrents and the mountain runs with foaming waterfalls. In the summer, the trees are lush and green, cool and dense, providing shade against the blasting sun; the same sentinels now protect the inhabitants from the South-Easter winds, and all is calm, the air scented and filled with fecund birdlife. He is high above the city here, his little house sitting at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac along from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, as high on the mountain slopes as you can build. No one calls at his door, no neighbours bother him. He is just as he wishes to be: alone.

He lies floating on the surface of his dark rectangular lap pool, his body the shape of the crucified Jesus, his hands relaxed, fingertips breaking the surface tension of the water. All he hears is the low hum of the pool pump from below him, a heartbeat in his head. The tiny current drifts him slowly outwards until he is high over the mountain slope, his head inches from the infinity edge. At the other end, his dog – a glossy-coated Irish terrier – sits, front paws aligned, eyes blinking slowly in the afternoon sun. The dog cannot discern that John Marantz is crying, cannot imagine that he feels as if he is floating in a huge well of tears, dark and bottomless.

Marantz is home, but it is not his home. It is his chosen prison. Home would be back in London with his wife and daughter, but they have been taken from him and he has been forbidden ever to search for them. Now, he drifts alone, sometimes self-motivated to move, more often stirred by outside forces. He knows that he could break free from London, from his past career, be born again, yet something inside him hopes that there will be new instructions, even commands. It is as if ritual is all he has to keep him from crying all day long, forever.

*   *   *

De Vries sits unmoving in his dimmed office. He feels the weight of his responsibility bear down on him and wonders whether he can still shoulder it. There is no breakthrough; Don February’s warehouseman knew about polythene, but had no ideas, no insights.

He meets with Director du Toit, an interview marked by long silences. He sits alone in his office, all through lunch and into the afternoon, smoking heavily, examining every angle he can think of – and still he has nothing.

His wife, transferred two years previously to Johannesburg, calls him. A weekly commute became fortnightly, then monthly – and now she returns only to retrieve more clothes, personal belongings. They say nothing to one another. De Vries wonders why he stays silent, wonders why he feels content that she is leaving.

Today she sounds happy, stimulated, feigning – Vaughn senses – concern for him and the reopening of the abduction case. She talks as if she is interviewing him. Seven years back, Suzanne de Vries had been a news reporter; she lived through the original investigation almost as much as he. Now, he suspects she only wants an inside opinion. He knows that she has bought an apartment in Jo’burg; his younger daughter has told him, but she has not. He knows he will not broach this subject now; knows that their marriage has ended, but she says nothing to him. When he tells her that he has no information about the case, she ends abruptly and hangs up. Intense, destructive frustration fills him. He has found acceptance; her cowardice disgusts him. In his dreams, he used to see her. Each night she appeared to him, smaller and smaller, further and further away. Now, in his dreams, she is not there. His daughters are present but out of sight; no one else in his extended family exists any more.

A knock, his door opening. Don February, clutching two sheets.

‘I have run all the names Somerset West Police gave us for people stopped by the roadblock leading to Sir Lowry’s.’

‘Yes?’

Don arranges the two sheets on the desk in front of de Vries. He taps the first.

‘Robert Ledham, fifty-seven, arrested and charged with kidnapping and sexual abuse of two minors in Johannesburg in 1997 to 1998. The second kid got away after forty-eight hours, went straight to the police. Ledham served six years. He went to Port Elizabeth, stayed there until 2009 – but the journey is easy enough. Nothing since he arrived in Cape Town in 2009.’

‘Ledham wasn’t a name that came up in 07,’ de Vries says, glancing back at the desk-high stack of files on the floor behind him. ‘In any case, if he was living in PE, he wouldn’t be abducting kids in Cape Town.’

‘He is a convicted paedophile.’

‘I’m halfway through reviewing everything we collected over seven years and there’s nothing on a Robert Ledham.’

‘So why is there no record of him on our database?’

De Vries opens his mouth, like a goldfish. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe if there had been, he would have been considered?’

‘But he wasn’t in town.’

‘As far as we know.’

‘As far as we know. This is stretching it, Don.’

‘Okay,’ Don goes on, charged with his news. ‘This second guy, Deepak Tineer, forty-six, came to Cape Town from Durban in 2004, immediately got noticed by police because he was running what he called “prayer and meditation” classes: everyone – and this was mainly young men – wore loincloths. A lot of laying on of hands. There were complaints to the council, accusations against Tineer for indecent behaviour with children.’

‘Don. Our guy is white, not Asian.’

‘Why? I thought that was just a theory because of who he took, where he operated. Tineer could be educated, integrated.’

De Vries leans back, then remembers that his chair has recently developed a dislike of such a manoeuvre.

‘Look, this is good. Let’s talk to both of these guys. I can’t say I’m optimistic, but it’s better than anything else.’

‘Bring them in?’

‘No. Find out where they are. We’ll go to them. Gauge reactions – it might save us a lot of time.’

Main Road in Claremont used to be a little taste of Africa in the Southern Suburbs; street-stalls and hawkers, kiosks at the entrances to dark, hollow mini-malls, the incessant honking from taxis plying their trade, men stretched out of the side windows, screaming their route, importuning passengers.

Now, at the Newlands junction, sparkling office blocks, slick shop units and a gym for the beautiful slim have replaced dilapidated but characterful terraces of shops. The independent trader is out, and the big names have moved in. It’s tidy, Don thinks, but dull, just the same as everywhere else. De Vries, who normally lets Don drive, screeches into a Waiting Zone, and applies the handbrake heavily. They are right outside ‘Kingdom of Beds’.

‘It’s a bed shop,’ de Vries says, waiting for Don to close his door, looking up at the gaudy sign. ‘Not a fucking kingdom.’ He locks the car and turns towards the smoked-glass doors. ‘You do it.’

Deepak Tineer stands very straight. He is wearing a narrow beige suit over his skinny frame, a striped tie in toning browns, tortoiseshell spectacles, and dusty light-brown plastic loafers. He speaks calmly, in a high-pitched voice; perfect, slightly accented English.

‘Nothing was proved against me. No charges were laid. I was an innocent man. I have certificates proving my credentials: I am a listed practitioner of my craft.’ He lowers his voice, his eyes scanning the shop-floor. ‘Why are you asking me this now? That incident was many years ago. I am a hardworking man and a respectable citizen.’

Don February says: ‘Do you remember, in 2007, the abductions of three children from around here, shortly after you moved to this area?’

‘Of course. It is all over the papers – the bodies you found. It was you people who did not solve the crime in the first place.’ Tineer curls his hands onto his chest.

‘Why were you driving over Sir Lowry’s Pass last Tuesday morning at ten forty-five a.m.?’ Don asks him.

‘I was visiting a client.’

‘Where?’

‘In Hermanus. He is a gentleman who moved from Claremont to Hermanus to retire. He and his wife have always bought their beds from us and he wished to do so again. He has two other bedrooms. For three beds, the manager sent me to his home personally. I considered it an honour. You can check if you like.’

‘I will do that, sir. Did you drive directly from your home?’

‘Yes. I took my own car.’

‘You returned at . . . ?

‘I was back here by three p.m.’

‘Did you stop anywhere on either journey?’

‘You know I did,’ Tineer responds indignantly. ‘You people stopped me at one of your pointless roadblocks.’

‘Anywhere else? A garage, a café?’

‘No.’

‘You are sure, sir?’

‘Yes, quite sure. What is this?’ He points at de Vries. ‘Who is he?’

De Vries raises his eyes upwards.

‘What do you want?’ Tineer persists.

Vaughn turns away.

‘From you,’ he says, loudly enough for Tineer to hear even with his back to him, even walking away. ‘Nothing.’

‘You honestly think,’ de Vries asks Don once they are moving again, ‘that the Somerset West traffic guys could stop a guy with two day-old bodies in the boot, and miss it?’

Don says: ‘Depends whether they are awake, or sick at being stuck out on a main road, pissing off the innocent general public.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Perhaps I would discount this altogether, but you know that trap before Sir Lowry’s? You are in it before you see it.’

De Vries says nothing until they reach the M3 freeway down to Muizenberg and Kalk Bay.

Then: ‘By the way, Don – tip for you. The general public: they’re never innocent.’

He’s pat; Don chuckles.

Robert Ledham lives in a gated community just outside the formerly grand seaside resort of Muizenberg. The estate is set well back from the beach, even from the inland lakes, next to some rough sandy ground and a busy local road. The complex is surrounded by a high wall, topped with razorwire. At the gate, De Vries shows his warrant card to the security guard.

‘Robert Ledham, number sixteen.’

The guard looks at it, and says: ‘Mr Ledham, yes?’

‘Number sixteen,’ de Vries repeats, reaching for his card, revving the engine. The guard turns away from the car and towards his wooden gatehouse. De Vries opens the car door.

‘What are you doing?’

The guard turns back. Says: ‘I have to call through. All visitors are announced.’

‘What?’

‘I am calling Mr Ledham, to check that he is at home.’

De Vries walks up to him and snatches his card from the man’s hand. ‘I don’t want you to do that.’

The guard looks surprised to be challenged. ‘Those are the rules, man.’

‘Never mind, just don’t call him. This is a surprise visit.’

The guard turns again.

‘Hey!’ De Vries shouts.

‘I am calling my supervisor.’

‘You—
wait
.’ De Vries checks himself, so much frustration waiting to burst from him. ‘Listen to me. I am the police. If I tell you to break the rules, you break the rules, okay? Do not call Mr Ledham. Do you understand?’

The guard looks blank.

‘Do not call him, that is an order. In five minutes, you can call your supervisor if you want. I’ll put him straight later. Now let me in.’

The guard looks past de Vries to Don February, sitting silently in the passenger seat of the car, staring straight ahead. The guard sneers and then he raises the gate. De Vries calls back, poking his finger out of the window: ‘Don’t make me make trouble for you.’

He accelerates up the short drive, takes a hard turn left and pulls up in the small car park of a large close of modern detached houses. The houses are modest, uniform in style, boasting a large garage with a pitched roof, and each with a little deck at the back and a tiny yard. Vaughn reckons that the view from the deck is probably the tall, solid, razorwire-clad wall.

‘Like a fucking prison.’

Don looks at de Vries; for six months he has worked with this man. He has never seen him so disconsolate, so depressed.

‘Come on, Don,’ de Vries says. ‘Let’s meet another innocent member of the general public.’

He stomps over the pink brick pavement and up to the small frosted-glass porch. De Vries’ knock is thunderous.

A shadow appears, casting more shadows in the mottled glass. The voice is whiny.

‘There is a bell, you know.’

‘Don’t trust ’em.’

‘What do you want?’ The voice is just behind the flimsy front door.

‘Police, Mr Ledham. We need to talk with you. Open your door.’

A chain and two locks are undone, and the door opens.

‘I wondered if I’d get a little visit.’ Ledham smiles unpleasantly and ushers them inside. The living room is airless and hot, stale cooking-fat lingering in the air.

De Vries recalls the little stoep. ‘Maybe we can go outside?’

‘And let my neighbours hear your questions? I don’t think so.’ Ledham sits in an old burgundy velvet winged armchair, at an angle to his sofa, where he points his visitors.

‘How did you know we weren’t a neighbour, when we knocked?’

‘I don’t choose to socialize with my neighbours. That’s the point of this estate; no disturbances.’

De Vries stands up and faces Ledham.

‘You were crossing Sir Lowry’s Pass last Tuesday morning. Where were you going?’

‘I know you think that because of what I did, I’m public property, but I am a free man. I only have to notify you when I choose to move house.’

De Vries is studying him. Ledham is pasty and running to fat. His clothes are loose and faded; he is wearing elasticated trousers, his plaid shirt tucked in the waistband. Vaughn observes a gold crucifix flopping over his collar; long, thin fingers at the end of skinny wrists, Ledham’s thumb and forefinger rubbing constantly.

He smiles patiently. ‘It’s a simple question, Mr Ledham. Just answer it.’

‘You found the bodies of two boys, I know, at that farm-stall. And they were the boys abducted from here. Well, I was visiting an old friend in Knysna then – I was there for ten days in all. I remember reading about the abductions in the newspapers. On Tuesday I was driving to Greyton to visit that same old friend. He was staying at Greyton Lodge. I spent the night there and came back the next day, and I haven’t been anywhere since.’