Cobra (42 page)

The story was that Fiedler had emigrated here seven years ago from Israel, a former senior member of the Israeli army’s legendary Unit 8200. This unit not only produced, according to the rumours, the most sought-after technology alumni in the world, but had also developed much of the programming and apparatus that Fiedler now used to do digital detective work for private investigators, the security industry, and the public.

Nobody knew why he addressed everyone that lived and breathed as ‘china’.

‘Please, sit down,’ he said, and he pointed at the table. ‘There’s a fresh pot of coffee, so help yourselves. I hope you brought the doughnuts . . .’

They didn’t get the joke. He shook his head.

‘What’s with the posters?’ asked Cupido.

‘Have you seen the movies?’

Cupido read the titles:
American Pie
,
Blue Thunder
,
EDtv, Enemy of the State
,
The Bourne Supremacy
,
Minority Report
,
Cape Fear
,
1984
,
The Osterman Weekend
,
La Zona.

‘Some of them.’

‘What do they have in common?’

Cupido shook his head.

‘Surveillance flicks,’ said Fiedler. ‘And they all get it wrong . . . So the first thing I tell a new customer, if he wants movie tech, he should go watch a movie.’ He stood beside the table, clearly still not at ease. ‘This is very weird, but I’ll play along. What can I do for you?’

Griessel took out his notebook, and tore the page out. ‘We want you to plot these three numbers.’ He slid the page across the conference table. ‘We want to know where the phones are, and we want to know which numbers called them today.’

‘For starters,’ said Cupido.

Fiedler stared at Griessel with an expression that said he was waiting for the punch line of the joke.

When it was not forthcoming, he said, ‘You’re from the Hawks, it said on your ID.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ said Cupido.

‘And you want me to plot three numbers for you?’

‘Yes,’ said Griessel.

‘And you can’t ever tell anybody that this happened,’ said Cupido. ‘If we hear even a whisper that you mentioned this, ever, we will make your life a misery.’

Fiedler laughed, a short, deep guffaw. They didn’t react. ‘It’s the end of the world,’ he said. ‘God’s truth.’

Mbali made a disapproving sound.

‘You’re gonna pay me?’ asked Fiedler.

‘You talk money, you talk to me,’ said Bones. ‘What is your rate?’

‘This is real. This is actually real,’ said Fiedler, pulling up a chair and sitting down. He looked at the numbers. ‘Where are the IMEIs?’ He pronounced it in the trade lingo,
eye-me-eyes
.

‘We don’t have them.’

‘I should have known. Then it’s going to take a while, china.’

At ten thirty-five, Dave Fiedler spoke out, from behind one of his computers: ‘That second number has been static in Bellville since four o’clock.’

They sat around the conference table. They were familiar with the art of waiting. Each was busy with his own thoughts.

‘Where in Bellville?’ asked Griessel.

‘Boston. Frans Conradie Drive, about halfway between Duminy and Washington. Google Earth shows a place called Brights Electrical.’

‘He’s still there now?’ asked Cupido.

‘Yep.’

Griessel stood up. ‘Static. Completely static at the same place?’

‘Yep. Phone’s on, but no calls or texts. Last call was made at fifteen fifty-two.’

Griessel walked to the computer screen. ‘How accurate is the plotting, the position of the phone?’

‘About fifteen metres. But because it’s been static, I’d say closer to ten.’

Cupido also came close. They looked at the screen, where Fiedler had Google Streetview open.

‘Those are flats there beside Brights,’ said Cupido. ‘On both sides.’

‘Could it be in those fl ats?’ Griessel asked Fiedler, and pointed at the screen.

‘Yes. Probably the one on the right.’

‘And it’s near the hospital,’ said Griessel. ‘Let’s go.’

They walked quickly to the door. Griessel stopped. ‘And the other phones?’

‘I’ll tell you in ten . . .’

‘Call me on this number,’ said Griessel and scribbled it down hurriedly on a page in his notebook, tore it out and passed it across to Fiedler.

They drove up the N1 with the siren on and the blue light balanced on the dashboard, from where it frequently slid off into Griessel’s lap.

Just beyond the N7, Fiedler phoned. ‘What you call Phone One has been off for the past two and a half hours, china. Plotting says it was all over the place today. Smack in the city, then the Waterfront, then all the way to Stellenbosch, then Bellville . . .’

‘What was the last location?’

‘The R304.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s the road that runs from Stellenbosch all the way to Malmesbury. Before it was switched off, the phone was about three kilometres from the R312 crossing. That’s the one running from Wellington to Durbanville.’

Griessel knew the area. ‘But there’s nothing there.’

‘That’s right, china.’

‘Do you have the call registry yet?’

‘Nope. But it’s coming.’

‘And Phone Three?’

‘Phone Three was on for just eleven minutes, about three hours ago. It made one call. From Somerset Road in the vicinity of the Cape Quarter mall.’

That was when Tyrone phoned Nadia in the hospital.

‘That’s it? Just the one call?’

‘Just the one. And then it was switched off.’

Cupido switched the siren and light off when they turned out of Mike Pienaar Drive into Frans Conradie.

Griessel said they would have to use the old trick to get into the fl ats without a warrant: tell the residents there was a very dangerous, heavily armed murderer in the area. He might be hiding in one of the fl ats at that very moment, they just wanted to secure everything.

‘Then we focus on the flats that don’t want to let us in.’

Bones grinned. ‘You old salts,’ he said, but with respect.

They paired off and went to knock softly on all the doors of the Darina apartment block in 12th Avenue, Boston. White and brown faces opened doors warily. The team displayed their identity cards, apologised for the inconvenience, and spun their tale.

Everyone allowed them in, wide-eyed, standing frightened at the door while their humble one- and two-bedroom spaces were searched, for Tyrone Kleinbooi.

Less than a quarter of an hour later they were back on the pavement in front of the building.

‘Maybe it’s that block over there.’ Mbali pointed at the flats on the other side of the big, red Brights facade.

There too, and in the rooms above the Boston Superette, they found nothing except shocked and anxious residents.

They called Dave Fiedler, who went through his computers again and said the phone was still there, right where they were.

It was Cupido, ever bold and impulsive, who looked at the long row of rubbish bins in front of the Brights steel gate and said: ‘He dumped the phone.’

None of them was keen to brave the minimal shelter of the facade’s narrow overhang, where the cold rain splashed down, to rummage in the contents of the filthy rubbish bins.

At 23.52 Mbali pulled the phone from the rubbish.

It was a Nokia 2700.

52

Griessel took his colleagues back to the DPCI headquarters, because Dave Fiedler said there was one call to Tyrone Kleinbooi’s Phone One

– the device that the Cobras most likely had in their possession now. The number had been active for sixteen minutes in Castle Street, and after that had disappeared off the air.

‘Go get some sleep, china. I’ll call you if there’s any action.’

They met Nyathi down in the basement and informed him of the latest developments.

The Giraffe gave them the photos of the five possible Cobras that were taken at O. R. Tambo Airport – not very useful, but better than nothing. ‘These are our five famous French authors. Take them with you. Maybe it will help.’

Griessel agreed with Bones, Cupido and Mbali that they would phone as soon as there was news. It was better to get some sleep. He was going home, his house was only five or ten minutes away from Fiedler, and he would let them know if there was any activity on the numbers.

Then he drove alone to Alexa’s house, mulling over the events of the past hour or two.

The pickpocket had deliberately left Phone Two, according to Cupido a ‘prepaid special’ that you could buy at any backstreet cellphone shop for a couple of hundred rand, in a rubbish bin at Brights. Still switched on. As if he knew someone was going to trace the number and try to determine the location of the phone.

It made sense. Tyrone knew they would find Nadia’s iPhone in the hospital and start analysing it.

So Tyrone was nobody’s fool. He knew what could be done with technology. And he wanted to make some kind of statement. ‘I’m in Bellville,’ perhaps?

Only to make the next call from De Waterkant?

Which was not too far from where Tyrone rented the room in Schotsche Kloof.

Did he go back to the city, to Bo-Kaap, because he felt at home there? Safe?

That’s what fugitives from the law often did when the heat was on, when the chase became too intense, and their flight chaotic.

And shortly after Tyrone had called Nadia, a new, unknown number had called Phone One, now with the Cobras.

Jissis
, thought Benny Griessel. How many phones did the fucker have?

But then he realised the man was a pickpocket. He had as many phones as he needed.

And if you were negotiating with a team that walked into the Waterfront in broad daylight and shot dead five security guards in cold blood, you’d want to make doubly sure that they can’t track you down via cellular technology.

He felt a great sense of determination rising in him. He would have to keep his head, with all the phones, all the technological possibilities. He would have to show he had learned to be a modern-day detective. Even if Cupido called him an ‘old dog’, and Bones joked about the ‘old salts’.

When he got home, he phoned Dave Fiedler and said he also wanted a complete analysis and monitoring of the number that had called Phone One from Castle Street.

‘Sure, china, but the meter is running.’

‘Just let me know as soon as there is any activity on any of those phones.’

He walked through the cold, empty house to the kitchen. The rain drummed fiercely on the roof.

And suddenly he missed Alexa, her presence, her happiness when she saw him, her embrace, her chatter, every evening so intense and enthusiastic, as if he really mattered. As if she really loved him.

All this he saw and felt, now that she wasn’t here.

He took the Woolworths food out of the fridge – chicken and broccoli, his favourite, which she’d bought specially for him – with a pang of guilt about his relief earlier in the day, at the thought of having the house to himself.

He put the container in the microwave, pinged it on. Two minutes, thirty seconds.

What was he going to do, between the devil of his self-doubt and his inadequate rascal, and the deep blue sea of his attraction to her? And the pleasure of being with her. She was so . . . full. Full of everything. He sometimes wished her
joie de vivre
, her intensity, her naivety would infect him.

She was his perfect polar opposite. He didn’t want to, he dared not, he could not lose her. Despite, everything, he had begun to love her very much. And tonight, after he had regained a measure of relevance as a policeman, as a team member of the Hawks – for the first time in his career – he felt optimism. He
wanted
this thing with Alexa to work.

If he could just find a solution to his dilemma.

Griessel ate his supper.

When he had finished, rinsed his dishes and put them on the drying rack, he phoned the Louis Leipoldt Hospital. He asked to be put through to the ward where Nadia Kleinbooi lay, identified himself to the night sister, and asked how the patient was.

‘We gave her a sleeping pill, Captain. She’s sleeping peacefully.’

He thanked her and said she must see that the four constables got coffee regularly so that they were awake and alert.

The night sister said yes, she’d see to that.

He rang off.

At least he knew now that there were four uniforms on guard.

He went to shower, put on his pyjamas, which still smelled faintly of sex. He made sure both his cellphones were on. He set the alarm on the iPhone for seven o’clock, but he suspected Dave Fiedler would call him long before then.