Thirteen Hours (14 page)

Her thoughts had stalled, trapped by a lack of alternatives,
the door to all escape routes slammed shut, except this single option, to lie
in this shade, a gasping, helpless fish on dry land.

She couldn't hear the voices any more. They had walked
uphill. Maybe they would see her footprints and follow them here. They would
look at the unfinished garage and realise it offered a hiding place and then
they would look behind the pine logs and one would grab her hair with an iron
grip and slash open her throat. She didn't even think she would bleed, there
was nothing left. Nothing. Not even the terror of that chunky blade; it did not
release the flood of adrenaline in her guts any more.

Oh, to be home.

It was a vague longing that slowly overcame her - a ghostly
vision emerging from the haze, the safe haven, her father's voice, far off and
faint. 'Don't you worry, honey, just don't you worry.'

Oh, to be held by him, to curl up on his lap with her head
under his chin and close her eyes. The safest place in the world.

Her breathing steadied and the image in her mind was clearer.

The idea took shape, instinctive and irrational, to get up
and phone her father.

He would save her.

If there was a murder or armed robbery in his area at night,
the SAPS members of Caledon Square had instructions to call the station
commander at home. But the more mundane affairs of the previous night had to
wait until he was at his desk in the morning and could scan the notes in the
register from the charge office. The SC was a black Superintendent with
twenty-five years' service to his name. He knew there was only one way to
tackle this job, slowly and objectively. Otherwise the nature and extent of
that list could undo you. So he ran his pen down the list with professional
distance, over the domestic violence, public drunkenness, the theft of cell
phones and cars, drug sales, disturbance of the peace, burglaries, assault,
indecent exposure and various false alarms.

At first his pen slid over the Lion's Head incident on page
seven of the register, but it hovered back. He read through it again more
carefully. The reluctant woman who had seen a young girl on the mountain. Then
he reached for the bulletin that lay to his left on the corner of the scarred
wooden surface. A Constable had brought it in only minutes before. He had
scanned it quickly. Now he gave it his full attention.

He saw the connection. At the bottom was Inspector Vusumuzi
Ndabeni's name and phone number.

He picked up the phone.

Vusi was walking down Long Street towards the harbour, on his
way to the Van Hunks nightclub, when his phone rang. He answered without
stopping.

'Inspector Ndabeni.'

'Vusi, it's Goodwill,' said the Caledon Square SC in Xhosa.
'I think I have something for you.'

Benny Griessel stood with his colleagues in one of the
examination rooms of the City Park Hospital Casualty Department. He had a
strong sense of deja vu.

Space was limited, so they were quite an intimate little
group behind the closed door. While Fransman Dekker talked with his habitual
frown, Griessel observed the people around him: John Afrika, District
Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence, in full impressive
uniform, his epaulettes weighed down with symbols of rank. Afrika was shorter
than Dekker, but he had presence, an energy that made him the dominant force in
the room. Beside Afrika was the fragile Tinkie Kellerman, her delicate features
overshadowed by her huge eyes revealing how intimidated she was by this
gathering. Then there was the broad- shouldered Dekker with his crew cut and
angular face; serious, focused, voice deep and intense as he talked. They said
he made women weak at the knees but Griessel couldn't see how. They said Dekker
had a beautiful coloured wife in a senior position at Sanlam, and that's how he
could afford to live in an expensive house somewhere on the Tygerberg. They
also said that he sometimes played away from home.

And Cloete, beside him, the liaison officer with tobacco
stains on his fingers and permanent shadows under his eyes. Cloete, with his
endless patience and calm, the man in the middle, between the devil of the
media and the deep blue of the police. How many times had he been through this,
Griessel wondered, in this kind of emergency meeting, the one who had to make
sure all the bases were covered, so that explanations higher up in the SAPS
food chain would be consistent. The difference now was that he, too, like
Cloete, was caught in a no-man's-land, his created by the mentorship that he
didn't think was going to work.

Dekker concluded his explanation and Griessel drew an
unobtrusive breath, preparing for the predictable conclusion.

'Are you sure?' Afrika asked and looked at Griessel.

'Absolutely, Commissioner,' he said. Everyone but Cloete
nodded.

'So why is the
doos
carrying on like this?' The Commissioner glared guiltily at Tinkie Kellerman
after the expletive and said: 'Sorry, but that is what he is.'

Tinkie merely nodded. She had heard everything by now.

'He was trouble from the start,' said Fransman Dekker. 'He
gave the Constable trouble at the gate, insisted on coming in. It was a crime
scene, sir, and I do things by the book.'

'Fair enough,' said John Afrika and dipped his head
thoughtfully with a hand over his mouth. Then he looked up. 'The press ...' he
looked at Cloete enquiringly.

'It's a major story,' said Cloete, on the defensive as usual,
as if he was implicated in the blood lust of the media. 'Barnard is a celebrity
of sorts ...'

'That's the problem,' said John Afrika, and thought some
more.

When he looked up and focused on Dekker with an apologetic
slant to his mouth, Griessel knew what was coming.

'Fransman, you're not going to like this ...'

'Commissioner, maybe ...' Griessel said, because he had been
the one who had control taken away from him before, and he knew how it felt.

Afrika held up a hand. 'They will tear us apart, Benny, if
Mouton puts the blame on us. You see, we were there, in her room . . .You know
what the papers are like. Tomorrow they will say it's because we put
inexperienced people on the case ...'

Dekker got it now. 'No, Commissioner ...' he said.

'Fransman, don't let us misunderstand each other; it happened
on
your
watch,' Afrika said sternly. Then
more gently: 'I'm not saying it's your fault; I want to protect you.'

'Protect?'

'You have to understand. These are difficult times ...'

They knew he was referring to the recent investigational
failures that the newspapers and politicians had pounced on like predators.

Dekker tried one last time, 'But, sir, if I crack this,
tomorrow they will write ...'

'Djy wiet dissie soe maklikie!'
You know it's
not that simple.

Griessel wondered why Cape Coloureds only spoke Cape Flats
Afrikaans with each other. It always made him feel excluded.

Dekker wanted to say more, his mouth opened, but John Afrika
lifted a warning finger. Dekker's mouth closed, his jaw clenched, eyes fierce.

'Benny, you take charge of this one,' the Commissioner said.
'As of now, Fransman, you work closely with Benny.
Lat
hy die pressure vat. Lat hy die Moutons van die lewe handle!
Let him
take the pressure, let him handle the Moutons of this world. And then, almost
as an afterthought: 'You're a team, if you crack this .. .'

Griessel's phone rang.

'... then you can share the honours.'

Benny took the phone out of his pocket and checked the
screen.

'It's Vusi,' he said meaningfully.

'Jissis,
' said Afrika shaking his head. 'It never rains ...'

Griessel answered with a 'Vusi?'

'Is the Commissioner still there with you, Benny?'

'He's here.'

'Keep him there, please, just keep him there.'

Tafelberg Road is tarred, and follows the contour of the
mountain, starting at 360 metres above sea level. It runs past the cable car station
with its long queues of tourists, but just beyond Platteklipstroom ravine a
concrete barrier keeps cars out, so only cyclists and pedestrians can continue.
From there on it rises and falls between 380 and 460 metres for four kilometres
or more around Devil's Peak before it becomes an increasingly rough dirt track,
eventually connecting with the Kings Battery hiking trail.

The observation point with the best view of the city bowl is
a hundred metres below Mount Prospect on the northern flank of Devil's Peak,
just before the path turns sharply east.

The young man was sitting just above the path, on a rock in
the shade of a now flowerless protea bush. He was in his late twenties, white,
lean and tanned. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a bleached blue shirt with a green
collar, long khaki shorts and old worn Rocky sandals with deep tread soles. He
held a pair of binoculars to his face and scanned the ground slowly from left
to right, west to east. Below him the Cape was breathtaking - from the cable
car sliding, seemingly weightless, past Table Mountain's rugged cliffs to the
top, past the sensuous curves of Lion's Head and Signal Hill, over the blue
bay, a glittering jewel that stretched to the horizon, to below him where the
city nestled comfortably, like a contented child in the mountain's embrace. He
saw none of this, because his attention was focused only on the city's edge.

Beside him on the flat rock was a map book of Cape Town. It
was open at Oranjezicht, the suburb directly below him. The mountain breeze
gently flipped the pages so that every now and then he had to put out an
absent-minded hand to flatten them.

Rachel Anderson stood up slowly, like a sleepwalker. She
walked around the long stack of logs and looked towards the mountain. She could
not see anyone. She walked out of the shadow of the garage and turned right in
the direction of the city, across the cement slab and stone paving, then across
the tar of Bosch Avenue to where it turned into Rugby Road ten metres further
on. She was drained, she could no longer run, she would go and phone her
father, just walk slowly and go and phone her father.

The young man with the binoculars spotted her instantly, his
lenses sliding over her, a tiny, lonely figure. The denim shorts, the
powder-blue T-shirt and the small rucksack - it was her.

'Jesus Christ,' he said out loud.

He pulled the binoculars back, focused on her to make
absolutely sure, then took out a cell phone from his shirt pocket and searched
for a number. He called and brought the binoculars back to his eyes with one
hand.

'Yeah?' he heard over the cell phone.

'I see her. She just fuckin' walked out of nowhere.'

'Where is she?'

'Right there, in the road, she's turning right...'

'Which road, Barry?'

'For fuck's sake,' said Barry, putting the binoculars down on
the rock and picking up the map. The wind had turned the page again. Hurriedly,
he turned the page back and ran his finger over the map, looking for the right
place.

'It's right there, first road below ...'

'Barry, what fuckin' street?'

'I'm working on it,' said Barry hoarsely.

'Just relax. Give us a street name.'

'OK, OK ... It's Rugby Road ... Hang on ...' He grabbed the
binoculars again.

'Rugby Road runs all along the mountain, you fucking idiot.'

'I know, but she's turning left into ...' He put the
binoculars down again, searched the map feverishly. 'Braemar. That's it ...'
Barry lifted up the binoculars again. 'Braemar ...' He searched for her,
spotted her in the lenses for a moment. She was walking calmly, in no hurry.
Then she began to disappear, as though the suburb was swallowing her feet
first. 'Shit, she's ... she's gone, she just fucking disappeared.'

'Not possible.'

'I think she went down an embankment or something.'

'You'll have to do better than that.'

Barry trembled as he searched the map again. 'Stairs. She's
taking the stairway to Strathcona Road.' He pointed the binoculars again. 'Ja.
That's it. That's exactly where she is.'

Griessel stood outside on the pavement with Dekker and Cloete.
Through the glass doors they watched John Afrika pacify Willie Mouton and his
soberly dressed lawyer. 'Sorry, Fransman,' said Griessel.

Dekker didn't reply; he just stared at the three men inside.

'It happens,' said Cloete philosophically. He drew deeply on
a cigarette and looked at his cell phone, which was receiving complaining texts
from the press, one after another. He sighed. 'It's not Benny's fault.'

'I know,' said Dekker. 'But we're wasting time. Josh Geyser
could be in fucking Timbuktu by now.'