Thirteen Hours (40 page)

'I think so,' said Dekker, engrossed.

'... and now Adam must be paid, the German and his
publisher must be paid, but the independent says, no, we only made five
thousand, but he's lying, because there's no control over distribution, the
independents do their own now and nobody keeps track.'

'That's why the cheques are so big.'

'Then the bastard comes along and says we are bloody
cheating him.'

'Let him make his own CDs and we'll see. Let him pay
two hundred thousand for a studio out of his own pocket, let him cough up his
own four hundred thousand for a TV campaign.'

'Amen,' said Groenewald. 'Tell him about the passwords
and the PDFs.'

'Yes,' said Mouton. 'Ask Sakkie Nell if the
independent sends him a password-protected PDF.'

Steenkamp drew another star. PDF. 'There are only
three or four big CD distributors in South Africa. These are the guys who load
up the CDs and distribute them to the music shops around the country, Musica
and Look and Listen, Checkers and your Pick 'n Pay Hypermarkets. Adam started a
distribution arm, but it's an independent company now, AMD, African Music Distribution,
we own forty per cent. What they do is, like all the big players, they keep
sales records of every CD and every three months they send a password-protected
PDF file of every artist's sales to me. We transfer the money to the artist...'

'Before we get the money from the distributors,' said
Mouton.

'That's right. We pay it out of our own pockets. The
risk is ours. I email him the same PDF statement, just as I received it from
the distributor, complete, so he can see everything. Nobody can fiddle with the
statement because we don't have the password.'

'So tell me how can we rip them off?' said Mouton.

'Impossible,' said Groenewald.

'Because we're too fucking honest, that's the
problem.'

'But let him make his own CDs. Let him feel the
overheads. Then we'll talk again.'

'Amen,' his lawyer confirmed.

John Afrika had ranted and raved over the telephone:
'You phone the father in America, Benny, you phone him, fuck knows I can't do
it, how the hell, I'm on my way,
jissis,
Benny, how the fuck did it happen?' He slammed the
phone down and Griessel was left standing with his cell phone in his hand,
wondering whether Jack Fischer and Associates had a job for an alcoholic who
was stuffing up two cases in a single day. He felt like smashing his phone
against the wall. But he had just hung his head and stared at the floor,
thinking what was the use of being sober, he might as well get drunk. Then Vusi
ran in, breathless, and said, 'Benny, it was the delivery van that nearly hit us
- we have an eyewitness.'

So now they were on the pavement with a woman, dark
glasses, early thirties, a little pale and shy. At first glance she was quite
ordinary, unimpressive, until she began to talk in a soft, melodious voice that
seemed to come from the depths of her heart. She said her name was Evelyn
Marais and she had seen everything.

She had come out of Carlucci's on the way to her car
across the street. She pointed to a red Toyota Tazz, about ten years old. She
had heard shots and had stopped in the middle of the street. She spoke calmly
and clearly, without haste, but she was obviously not entirely comfortable with
all the attention. 'The first shots didn't even sound like gunshots, more like
firecrackers; only later did I realise what they were. Then I looked. There
were four of them carrying a girl out of there,' she pointed an unvarnished
nail at the corner of Belmont. 'They—'

'The girl, how were they carrying her?'

'Two had her by the shoulders, two carried her legs
here behind the knee.'

'Could you tell if she was resisting?'

'No, it looked like she was ... I think there was
blood on her hands, I thought maybe she was hurt and they were helping her to
the van, an ambulance ...'

'Was it an ambulance?'

'No. I just assumed. For a moment. Logical, in a way,
before the other shots went off. They were much louder. But I couldn't see who
was shooting, they were in front of the van. I only saw them when they came
running around it. One man, the driver, had a pistol with a silencer in his
hand.' This was the moment that Griessel began to suspect she was not just your
average eyewitness.

'A pistol with a silencer?'

'Yes.'

'Ma'am, what work do you do?'

'I'm a researcher. For a film company. And it's Miss,
actually.'

'Can you describe the men?'

'They were young, in their twenties, I'd say. Handsome
boys. That's why I assumed at first that they were helping her. Three were
white, one was black. I didn't notice their hair colour, sorry ... But they ...
three of them were in jeans and Tshirts, no, one was wearing a golf shirt,
light green, almost lemon, it looked quite good with the jeans. Oh, and the
other one was in brown chinos and a white shirt and collar with some writing
over the pocket. It was too far to see ...' Griessel and Ndabeni looked at her
in amazement.

'What?' she said uncomfortably, shifting her dark
glasses up onto the top of her head and looking back at Griessel. He saw
brilliant blue eyes, the shade of a tropical sea. The sight of them changed her
whole face from pale to lovely, from ordinary to extraordinary.

'You are most observant, Miss.'

She shrugged shyly. 'It's just what I saw.'

'The girl, Miss, it's very important, you said she had
blood on her hands?'

'Yes, her hand, wait a bit, her right hand and her arm
up to here,' she indicated her elbow.

'Nowhere else?'

'No.' 'But she wasn't struggling?'

'No.'

'Did it look as though she was ... unconscious?'

'I ... perhaps. No. I don't know. But she wasn't
struggling.'

'And the panel van?' Vusi asked. 'You don't know what
make it
was?'

'A Peugeot. But I must admit, I didn't know that. Only
when it drove off did I see the logo. The one with the little lion, you know,
rearing up ...'

Griessel just nodded. Fuck it, he wouldn't have made
the lion and the Peugeot connection. He looked at her eyes and thought, this
woman is a genius.

'A silver Peugeot, but quite dirty,' she said. 'I will
have to check what model it was ...' Before Griessel could say that wasn't
necessary, she added: 'And the registration number if you want it, of course.'

'You got the registration number?' Griessel was
astonished.

'CA four-oh-nine, then a little hyphen,' and she drew
a line horizontally in the air with her finger, 'and then three-four-one.'

The detectives plucked out their cell phones
simultaneously. 'Miss,' said Benny Griessel, 'would you like to come and work
for us?'

'In any case,' Willie Mouton said, standing up and
starting to wheel his chair back towards the door on its silent wheels. 'Adam
phoned me last night, some time after nine, to tell me about Ivan Nell's stories.'

'And?' Fransman Dekker asked.

'We laughed about it. Adam said, let him bring his
auditor, let him run up some overheads himself.'

'That's it?'

'Adam said he was going home, because Alexandra wasn't
well, he was worried about her. And that's where Josh Geyser was waiting for
him. I don't care what he's telling you. I'm not a detective or anything, but
you can see in that man's eyes he is capable of anything.'

'Vusi, we're working against the clock now,' Benny
Griessel told him at the garden gate. 'I've sent for Mat Joubert . ..' He
noticed Ndabeni's expression. 'I know, but fuck the Commissioner, we have to
get the girl. I want you to follow up on the Peugeot. It might be a false
number plate, but let's try. I don't care what you have to do, there can't be
hundreds of them in Cape Town. Forget about the scene, forget everything, the
panel van is your baby.'

Vusi nodded enthusiastically, fired up by Griessel's
urgency.

'Mat Joubert can deal with the scene, I'm going to get
her, Vusi. All I want to do now is find her. I just want to make a quick pass
through the house, see if there is anything significant, then I am going to try
and work out how they knew she was here. Some way or another ... I don't know
how, I want to find out who else she phoned ...'

'Fine, Benny.'

'Thanks, Vusi.' He turned and walked into the house,
trying to reconstruct the event quickly. In the hallway they had smashed the
leaded glass of the front door, opened it and gained entry. They shot the old
man here. On the left was a giant study, once a sitting room perhaps. The large
work table was covered with countless documents and a telephone. To one side a
chair was overturned. Had she phoned from here?

He walked down the passage, looking into all the
bedrooms. Nothing of note. On the way back he went into the guest bathroom. It
smelled faintly of recent use. He traced a finger along the bath. It was wet.
He sniffed. Soap. That meant nothing. He examined the inside surface of the
bath thoroughly. Hair in the plug, two long, dark strands. Rachel's? He went
out. She had taken a bath. She had time for that. That meant she trusted the
old man a great deal. He must find out his name.

He crossed the hall again and went into the kitchen.
Everything was immaculate. He spotted the open back door, ran out, careful to
watch where he stepped. He saw blood outside, a long trail over a paved pathway
and part of the lawn. Fear gripped his heart. He squatted down reluctantly to
examine the splashes.

God, had they cut her throat? The thought was a blade
in his guts.

No, not possible. He had asked Evelyn Marais if the
blood was only on her hands.

Yes, her hand, her right hand and her arm up to here.

Nowhere else?

No.

But the blood pattern outside told a different story.

Hoping she hadn't left yet, he jumped up and ran out
through the back gate, left in Belmont to where the growing crowd stood behind
the yellow tape on the corner, under the watchful eyes of policemen. His eyes
searched out the Tazz. There it was still, the woman seated inside, looking as though
she was about to drive off. 'Sorry, sorry,' he said to get through the crowd.
The Tazz pulled away, but he was just in time to slap the side of the car. She
looked up in fright, saw him and stopped. 'Miss,' he gasped, out of breath,
standing at her door while she wound down the window, lifted her dark glasses
and rested her right arm on the door. 'Excuse me,' he said.

'It's OK.' The blue eyes watched expectantly.

'The girl ...' He struggled to catch his breath. '...
are you absolutely sure about the blood ... just on her arm?'

She turned off the engine and shut her eyes. She sat
like that for about half a minute. Griessel curbed his enormous impatience,
wanting her to be sure.

The eyes opened. 'Yes,' she nodded decisively.

'There was no blood anywhere else?'

She shook her head from side to side, absolutely
certain. 'No, just the arm.'

'Not on her head or neck?'

'Definitely not.'

'Thank God for that,' said Benny. He picked up the
hand resting on the open window frame and kissed the back of it. 'Thank you,'
he said. 'Thank you, thank you,' and he turned and began to jog back.

It wasn't Rachel Anderson's blood.

Fransman Dekker's first instinct was to blame Mouton
and Steenkamp for his frustration, for the anger that was bottled up
inside him. He stood behind the closed door of Adam Barnard's
office and looked up at the framed photographs. He felt like grabbing one,
throwing it on the ground and jumping on it. It was the way Mouton had said
Josh Geyser did it, as though Dekker were an idiot. It was the way Steenkamp
leaned back in his chair, smug,
windgat
whitey ...