Thirteen Hours (30 page)

'You saw her?'

'I was lucky, I just caught a glimpse, but it was her. No
doubt.'

'A glimpse? What the fuck does that mean?'

They sat in the recording studio. Fransman Dekker wanted to
tell her about the Barnard case. Inspector Mbali Kaleni said: 'Just a minute,'
and shut her eyes. She wanted the American girl's case out of her thoughts; she
had been so sure she would track her down. Now she cleared her head and opened
her eyes. 'Go ahead,' she said. Dekker talked, gave her the details in a
businesslike way, cursorily, the scowling execution of forced labour.

Mbali was not surprised by his attitude.

She knew her male colleagues did not like her. The one who
liked her least of all was Fransman Dekker. But that didn't disturb her because
she knew why. Generally the men felt threatened by her talent and they were
intimidated by her ethics and her integrity. She didn't drink, smoke, or curse.
She didn't hold her tongue either. The SAPS was not a place for sweet talking;
the task was too big and the circumstances too difficult for that. She said
what she thought. About their egos, too often the axis around which everything
turned. About their incessant sexism and racism. About their lack of focus. Too
much 'Let's throw a chop on the grill', or 'Let's get a quick beer', like boys
that hadn't yet grown up. Too much talk in the office about sport, politics and
sex. She told them straight out it was inappropriate. They hated her for that.
But Dekker had an extra reason to hate her. She'd caught him out a few weeks
ago. He was in the corridor where he thought nobody could hear him. Cell phone
to his ear, whispering words of lust to a Tamaryn, when his wife's name was
Crystal. When he slunk back into the office she had gone and stood at his desk
and said: 'A man should be faithful to his wife.' He just stared at her. So she
said: 'Fraud comes in many different guises,' and left. Since then she had seen
the hatred in his eyes. Because she knew, and despised him for it.

But there was work to be done here. So she listened
attentively. She answered him only in English, although he spoke Afrikaans.
Because she knew he hated that too.

Rachel Anderson closed the bathroom door behind her, feeling
an urgent need to pee. She unzipped her denim shorts, pulled the garments down
to her knees and sat down. The relief was so great and the sound so loud that
she wondered if he could hear her from the kitchen. Rachel looked around the
bathroom. The walls were a light pastel blue, the porcelain fittings snow
white. The old restored claw-foot bath was suddenly tempting, hot foamy water
to draw out the dreadful fatigue and dull aching of her body. But she
suppressed the thought, a surrender she wasn't yet ready for. And the old man
was cooking in the kitchen.

When she was finished she bent over the basin, opened the
taps, picked up the soap and washed the dried blood and mud off her hands, all
the dirt from touching rocks and plants, walls and earth. She watched it rinse
away. She mixed hot and cold water in cupped hands and splashed her face. Then
she took the cake of soap, lathered it over her cheeks and forehead, mouth and
chin, and rinsed again.

The dark-blue towel was fresh and rough. She rubbed it slowly
over her face and hung it up neatly again. Only then did she look in the
mirror. In a habitual motion her hands reached for her hair and brushed it back
from her face.

She looked haggard. Dreadful. Her hair was a mess, strands
had escaped from the plait and framed her face, her eyes were bloodshot and
there were lines of fatigue around her mouth. There was a cut on her chin,
surrounded by a light purple bruise and another small graze across her
forehead; she didn't know where she had got that. Her neck was grimy, like her
powder-blue Tshirt.

But you are
alive.

She was filled with enormous gratitude. Then came the guilt,
because Erin was dead, dear Erin. The emotion washed over her like a tidal
wave, sudden and overwhelming, the awful shame that she could be glad at being
alive while Erin was dead. It broke down her defences and let her relive it
fully for the first time: the two of them fleeing in terror, Erin putting a
hand on the church wall and jumping over the sharp cast-iron railings. A fatal
error.

'No!' she had screamed, yet followed blindly, jumping over so
effortlessly. Erin had stopped on a narrow path in the churchyard, in the deep,
dark shadows between huge trees. Rachel realised they were trapped; she had run
on desperately looking for a way out. She intended to take the lead, show the
way around the church and thought Erin was following. She was already behind the
building, out of sight and away from the streetlights, when she realised she
couldn't hear Erin's footsteps. She turned around, feeling deadly fear like a
weight she was dragging along with her. Where was Erin? Reluctant and afraid,
she had run back to the corner of the church building.

Erin was on the ground and all five were around her, bending
over, kneeling, yowling like animals. The knife had flashed. Erin's desperate
scream, abruptly cut off. Black blood in the dark.

That moment was petrified in the synapses of her brain,
surreal, overwhelming. As heavy as lead.

She had run for her life. Around the back of the church. Over
the fence again. She had a bigger lead this time.

Relief. Gratitude. She was alive.

In front of the bathroom mirror it was all too much for her.
She could not look at herself. She let her head hang in shame, grasping the
sides of the basin in despair. The emotion was physical, a nausea rising from
her stomach that made her guts spasm and made her want to vomit, a wave of dry
retching. She bellowed once, and shuddered. Then she began to cry.

Vusi Ndabeni sat in the front seat of one of the patrol
vehicles between a Constable and an Inspector, both in uniform. Behind them on
the West Coast Road was another police van.

They had wanted to put the sirens and lights on but he had
said: 'No, please don't.' He wanted to arrive at J. M. de Klerk's house without
fanfare, surround it quietly and then knock on the door. The Inspector said he
knew where the address was, one of the crescents in Parklands, a new
residential area where the white and up-and-coming black middle classes lived
shoulder to shoulder in apparent harmony; the new South Africa successfully
practised.

At a set of traffic lights they turned right into Park Road.
Shopping centres, townhouse complexes, then left again down Ravenscourt, right
in Humewood. These were not the linear street blocks of Mandela Park and Harare
in Khayelitsha, but a maze of crescents and dead ends. Vusi looked at the Inspector.

'It's just up front here, first left, second right.'

Houses, townhouses, flats, all neat and new, gardens in
development, with small trees or none at all.

'We mustn't park in front of the house,' said Vusi. 'I don't
want to scare him.'

'OK,' said the Inspector, and showed the Constable which way
to drive. Eventually a road sign said 'Atlantic Breeze'.

Townhouses. The numbers on this side were in the forties, big
complexes behind high walls. 'Are they all townhouses?' asked Vusi.

'I don't think so.'

But Number 24 was. They stopped some way off. 'Let me get
out,' said Vusi. The Inspector opened the door and slid out.

There was a high white wall with spiky metal deterrent on top
and large painted numbers, a two and a four. In the centre was a large motorised
iron gate and townhouses behind in a countrified style, blue and green shutters
alongside plain- coloured window frames, and an A-frame roof. Yet another quick
property speculation that would become stale and uninspiring in five years'
time.

'Ai,' said Vusi. This was not the way he had visualised it.
He beckoned to the vehicle with the two other uniforms. They got out and
everyone came over to stand with him. 'The jackets,' he said. The Inspector
opened the back of the police van. The bulletproof vests were no longer in the
tidy pile they had been earlier. Vusi took one, pulled it over his head and
began to buckle it up. 'You too. Wait here while I have a look, and have the
gate opened.' They nodded enthusiastically. He crossed the street and walked alongside
the wall. There was a panel at the closed gate with a grid for a speaker, call
buttons, some with names alongside. He scanned them and saw no de Klerk. On the
top left was one labelled
Administrator.
He
pressed it. An electronic beep sounded. Then nothing.

He pressed again. No answer.

He looked through the railings of the gate. The drive ran
straight in - then turned ninety degrees to the left and disappeared behind a
block of townhouses. He could see no sign of life. He pressed the button,
without hope.

The speaker crackled and whistled briefly. A monotone woman's
voice said: 'What do you want?'

Sixteen storeys above the bustling crowds of Adderley Street,
the man stood at the window with his back to the luxury of the apartment behind
him. He looked out over the city. In front of him was the Golden Acre, to the
left the Cape Sun Hotel, behind that the tower blocks of the Foreshore area, a
miscellany of architectural styles against the horizon. The blue sea was
visible, though spoiled by the harbour cranes, two drilling rigs and the masts
of ships.

The man's hair and full beard were trimmed short, sandy and
prematurely greying - he didn't look fifty yet. He was fit and lean in denim
shirt and khaki chino trousers with blue boat shoes. In the reflection of the
high wide window the tanned face was expressionless.

He had one hand in his pocket; the other was holding a slim
cell phone. He shifted his gaze from the view to the keyboard of his phone.
From memory he typed in a number and held the instrument millimetres from his
ear. He heard it ring once before Barry answered. 'Mr B.'

The man nodded slightly in satisfaction at the quick reaction
time and the calm in Barry's voice.

'I'm taking control,' he said, his tone measured.

'Right.' Relief.

'Describe the house to me.'

Barry did his best, describing the single storey, the corner
site and the position of the front door.

'Does the house have a back door?'

'I don't know.'

'If it has, it should be towards Belmont Avenue?'

'That's right.'

'OK. I'm going to send Eben and Robert to cover that angle. I
am also working on the assumption that she has no need to leave through the
back door, because she does not know that we saw her. Is that a fair
assumption, Barry?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And she also does not know that we are watching the house.'

'Yes, sir.' 'Good. Let's keep it that way. I hear you saw
only one occupant, an old man.'

'Right.'

'No evidence of others?'

'No, sir.'

'Good. Now listen carefully, Barry. You, Eben and Robert will
have to be ready to move in case of an emergency. If you get the call, go in
and get her, no matter what it takes. Do you understand me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But that would be second prize, and only if she calls the
cops. We don't know why she hasn't called them yet, but it can happen at any
moment, and we will have maybe five minutes' warning. Which means you will have
to be very quick.'

'Right.' Anxiety broke through his voice.

'And whatever you do, get the bag.' 'OK.'

'And we don't need witnesses.'

'I don't have a gun.'

'Barry, Barry, what did I teach you?'

'Adapt, improvise and overcome.'

'Exactly. But it might not be necessary, because we are
working on first prize. It will take twenty or thirty minutes to put together,
to make sure it's quick, quiet and clean. In the meantime, you are my main man,
Barry. If we call, go in. If she leaves, get her. No mistakes. We can't afford
any more mistakes. Do you understand that?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are you sure? Have you thought of all the implications?'

'I have.'

'Good.'

As he put the cell phone in his pocket he saw the police
helicopter flying across Table Bay directly towards him. He kept his eyes on it
until it flew past, low over the city.

The uniforms stood outside with machine pistols and bulletproof
vests. Vusi alone was inside with the complex administrator. She reminded him
of bread dough, pale and shapeless; even her voice had no character.

'De Klerk is in A-six. He is not a renter; he owns. I don't
see him often. He pays his levy with a debit order.'

She had fitted out one room of her townhouse as an office.
She sat at a small cheap melamine desk. There was a computer screen and
keyboard in front of white melamine shelves for files, one of which was open
beside the keyboard. Vusi stood at the door.

'Is he here now?'

'I don't know.' A bald statement of an uninteresting fact.