Stolen Lives (19 page)

Moloi nodded sympathetically. “I am sure you will find Jo’burg Central Police Station safe enough,” he said.

Pamela lifted her chin. “May I call my lawyer?”

Don’t go there, Jade thought. Not with Moloi in charge.

Jade butted in before he had time to reply. “It’s just a routine interview, Pamela,” she explained. “In a case like this, the spouse is always under suspicion. The best thing you can do right now is to cooperate. I’ll come and fetch you the minute you’re finished.”

Pamela’s curls bobbed as she turned helplessly from Jade to Moloi and back again.

“All right,” she said.

Moloi stood back to allow Pamela to leave, and then followed her closely down the passage. With the tall detective blocking the way, Jade couldn’t even see the slender, golden-haired woman.

She felt like slumping down onto the hotel bed just like Pamela had done, and burying her face in the silk-covered pillow.

Instead, she left the room and pulled the door closed behind her.

Her client’s husband had been brutally tortured, and his table-dancing mistress murdered. And Pamela herself was in the hands of the police and under suspicion for these terrible crimes.

Could anything else go wrong today?

As if providing an instant response to that question, her cellphone started ringing. The number was unfamiliar, and so was the voice of the man on the other end of the line.

“Can I help you?” Jade snapped, aware that she sounded impatient, stressed and far from helpful.

“I’m returning your call, Ms de Jong. It’s Mike Pienaar here, from Peacetime Security.”

“Oh. Sorry. Thanks for calling back.” Jade walked out of The Seasons, narrowing her eyes against the brassy late afternoon sun. Moloi was already driving out of the gate with Pamela in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. Even through the tinted window glass, Jade could see the stubborn set of her jaw.

“What can I do for you?” Pienaar asked.

“I have a question. I’m doing a bodyguarding job for Mrs Jordaan, 12 Autumn Road, Sandton. I noticed that her place seems to be the only house in the street that doesn’t have any additional security measures, and I was wondering … ” How to phrase the question tactfully? Tact had never been Jade’s strongest quality and she felt particularly low on it right then. “I was wondering if there was a reason for this. If you’d ever approached her with regard to security.”

There was silence and then a disillusioned grunt.

“Well, I suppose it’s no secret,” he replied. “For years we supplied two armed guards in twelve-hour shifts, round the clock, to look after the Jordaans’ property. As we still do for a number of other homes in that area.”

“And then what?” Jade asked.

“Our contract was cancelled. Just a couple of days ago. No notice period—in fact, we’re going to be charging a month’s fees in lieu of that, but we were informed that the guards were no longer needed, so we removed our sign from the client’s gate on Tuesday. I assumed the home-owners had made alternative arrangements with another security firm.”

“Can you tell me who cancelled the contract?” Jade asked.

“Mrs Jordaan cancelled it herself. She spoke to me personally. Said our services were no longer required and basically told us to pack up and leave immediately. To be frank with you, she was pretty rude.”

“She didn’t give an explanation?”

“Nothing. Not a word.”

“I see,” Jade said slowly. “That’s all I needed to know. Thanks for getting back to me.”

Staring down at her cellphone, she shook her head. Then she started her car, drove out of The Seasons and headed home.

23

Lunchtime had been hot, but the late afternoon was almost unbearable. The sun’s rays blazed straight through the dirty windows behind Lindiwe’s desk, blasting past the cheap blinds as if they weren’t even there, turning the small room into a furnace. The pot plant on the cupboard near the door was wilting so fast that she fancied she would see it turn brown, wither and die in the next half-hour.

Lindiwe knew she should get up and water it, but she just didn’t have the energy.

Worst of all, the fan had packed up. An hour ago, the motor had started to grind and the blades had slowed. A few minutes later, with a resigned thunk, it died completely. Without the fan’s gallant protection, the air felt like treacle.

Her red blouse clung to her back and she felt sticky all over. She tried fanning herself with the invoice book, but soon discovered the effort of moving it was making her hotter instead of cooler. She dropped it back down on the desk and sat watching the hands of the clock tick over the endless minutes.

Although the office normally closed at six-thirty, she was going to leave at six, as soon as she had dealt with the dark-skinned man who’d said he would be coming back for his passports at that time. Then, if she hurried, and she was lucky with the taxis, she could get to the local Hyperama before it closed and try and buy a replacement fan.

She had warned Veli that he must run and fetch the security guard as soon as he saw the man arrive. She’d decided she wasn’t even going to let him into the office. Better to give him the bad news about his documents with a solid gate between them, and with the guard standing by.

She’d never had to do this before. This was the first time ever that she had failed to get passports for a customer in time.

The minute hand moved up toward the top of its circuit, and then ever so slowly down again. Lindiwe watched it complete another full circle as if she’d been hypnotised.

She jolted out of her reverie when she realised that it was six o’clock exactly.

Thank God. He hadn’t come, and now she could finally go home.

She put her cellphone into her bag, and pressed the button to open the security gate and let herself out.

But as she peeled her legs from the sweaty seat of her chair, a dark hand gripped the metal bars from outside and the gate swung open.

Lindiwe’s legs went weak. She fell back onto the chair again and watched in silence as her unwelcome client moved swiftly over to the desk.

Where was Veli? How could he have let her down at such a crucial time? The young man seldom missed out on sounding the alert for a new customer, and he had always taken any potential trouble as seriously as she did, but now he’d allowed trouble to walk straight into her office. What the hell was he thinking?

She wasn’t going to listen to her nephew’s excuses. He was out of a job. Family or not, she wasn’t even going to give him the ten rand for his taxi fare home.

“My documents, please,” the man said softly.

Lindiwe shook her head.

“They are not ready. We couldn’t get them done today.”

He moved a step closer and she tensed and took a quick breath, getting ready to shout for help if he tried to lay a hand on her.

“Why not?” he asked. His tone was serious, but not threatening.

For a moment, under the man’s unsettling gaze, Lindiwe found herself about to tell him what Eunice had told her earlier—that no documents could be done for at least a week because security had been drastically tightened. That the syndicate was scared and its members were keeping their heads down, praying that their transgressions would not be uncovered. That they were all living in fear of Mrs Patel, the new manager.

Then Lindiwe lifted her chin, reminding herself that people who came to visit her in this place were not customers. They were beggars, all of them, even this creepy man. They could go nowhere else if they wanted genuine documents.

“It is not your place to ask these questions,” she snapped. “The reasons are not your concern. You can come and try again next week, and if we cannot get you the passports by then, I will refund you.”

“You are wrong,” the man said. “It is my place to ask these questions, and the reasons are indeed my concern.” This time his tone was nasty and Lindiwe was gripped by the feeling that she was in a lift that was dropping too fast.

“Next week is too late,” he continued. “I emphasised that this was urgent. You gave me your word that they would be ready by the end of the day.”

“Well, I didn’t know they couldn’t be done. My contacts didn’t tell me.” Suddenly Lindiwe couldn’t bear to be sitting here any longer, in this suffocating heat, trying to placate a frightening man who seemed to think she could do the impossible.

“I am going home now,” she snapped. “Here is your money.” She took the envelope from the drawer where she’d put it after Eunice had told her there was no point in bringing it through to Home Affairs, and slid it towards him. “It is all there, except for the ten per cent deposit, which is non-refundable. You must try somewhere else, or come back next week.”

She slapped her hands, palms down, onto the desk, feeling her diamond rings knock against the wood. Glancing at the door, she opened her mouth to shout for Veli. He’d bloody well better come running, and take the man downstairs himself.

Before she could speak, the man dropped his hands to his sides. He didn’t seem to move fast, but before she could react, she heard two loud thuds. A second later, she felt two bolts of pain, raw and red, more sudden and more agonising than anything she had ever experienced.

Then Lindiwe found herself staring down at the two slim knives which the man had stabbed through the backs of her hands, their razor-sharp points deeply buried in the desk’s wooden top.

For a moment, she was paralysed by disbelief. This couldn’t really be happening; not to her.

Yet the pain was growing worse with every second that passed, and she saw, to her horror, that the wood was already starting to turn dark and wet from the spreading pools of her blood.

Lindiwe gulped in air, opened her mouth wide, and screamed. Screamed as loud as she could. Screamed for Veli, screamed for her life.

But no sound came out. The shock had rendered her voiceless.

She stared past the man towards the door, praying that she would see her youngest nephew arriving with the uniformed guard behind him.

But the doorway was empty. Nobody was there.

Lindiwe managed to raise her head and met his eyes. Dark, pitiless, inscrutable. He reached out a hand and Lindiwe gasped as his knotted fingers stroked, then pinched, her cheek.

Was he smiling?

No. His face had tightened in the same way it had done on their first meeting, and he snatched his hand away.

Dark shapes loomed at the edges of her vision and spread inwards. Sweat started to pour down her body, and she was hit by an overwhelming wave of nausea. She slumped forward as the blackness suddenly grew huge, crowding out the room’s four walls, but the movement caused one of her hands to push against the knife pinning it to the desk. The blinding pain that followed wrenched her back to full consciousness.

Abruptly, Lindiwe vomited down the front of her blouse. Retching and spitting, she stared up as her tormentor began to speak.

“Calling for help is useless,” he said. “Your little friend with the tin whistle is … incapacitated. A precautionary move, and a prudent one, it seems, since you have not fulfilled your side of the bargain.”

“I—I couldn’t. Not my fault.” Tears streamed from her eyes and she found she was shaking all over. She could hear her shoes drumming against the chair legs. She was struggling to keep her head upright, to keep her eyes off her hands. The blackness was still lurking at the corners of her vision, waiting to overwhelm her again, and the taste of bile was enough to make her gag.

“No. Not your fault, I agree.” He was speaking to her as if they were having a friendly discussion, as if he hadn’t just punched two knives through her living flesh. “But I still need your help. I need you to make things right.”

He was smiling down at her now, a cruel, twisted grin.

“Yes,” Lindiwe whispered, through lips that felt cold and numb. “Make it right.”

“I need names.”

“Names?” Her head was swimming.

“I need the names of the people you deal with. Your insiders, your contacts in Home Affairs.” His smile hardened. “We are going to have to take this, as the saying goes, all the way to the top.”

24

Back home, Jade found there wasn’t a cupboard in the cottage large enough to house the bulky cardboard box. She transferred the contents into an old suitcase and put the box outside, where its presence wouldn’t keep reminding her that, in terms of immediate family, she was now entirely alone.

She didn’t know how long Moloi would spend with her client, but she guessed that he would take a while. The black detective was thorough, and Jade had a feeling that, despite her pleas for Pamela to cooperate, she would not be an easy interview.

Suddenly, Jade longed for David to be here, sitting at the kitchen table, so she could speak to him about the disturbing complexity of the job she’d taken on. No doubt David would respond with some typically irreverent comments, but he would also provide a valuable perspective on Pamela and her circumstances.

She reached for her cellphone, and before she could think too hard about what she was doing, she dialled David’s number. He didn’t answer immediately, and she hung up without leaving a message.

Successfully Resurrecting a Relationship
by Jade de Jong. Definitely one of the shortest books ever written.

Jade wrapped a butternut in tinfoil and put it in the oven to roast. While it cooked, she did an hour of Pilates on the sitting-room floor and then had a quick shower. The exercise and the shower helped distract her from the unwelcome memory of the charred man’s ribs moving ever so slowly in and out again as he lay slumped on the baking hot tiles.

By the time she went back into the kitchen, the butternut was smelling delicious. She took it out of the oven and put it on a large plate. She’d eat it with butter, salt and Tabasco. Difficult to think of a more perfectly rounded, nutritious meal.

She just wished she felt hungry enough to do it justice.

As she unwrapped the tinfoil, her phone started ringing. She snatched it up, hoping that this meant Pamela’s interview was over. A glance at the screen showed that it was David, and her stomach did another of those annoying lurches.