The Serpentine Road (25 page)

He phones Don February, asks him to check whether Lieutenant Sam Nkosi appears in the mug-shots of officers from Cape Town Central SAPS. He waits, listening to Don rummaging in his briefcase, laying out the sheets, searching for how the pictures are arranged: by rank, alphabetically?

‘He is not here.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘The print-out from Central, it is dated October 2014. Nkosi told us he had only moved from Pretoria six months ago.’

‘Pretoria,’ De Vries says.

‘Sir?’

‘If I’m right about Nkosi, there’s a Pretoria link. A Major Mabena was talking to Director du Toit at his conference there, taking an interest in the Holt case, leaving messages for General Thulani. He’s some kind of attaché between the Police Ministry and the SAPS top brass.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘You want me to come back in?’

‘No. Get some sleep, Don. If Mabena and Nkosi are linked in some way, this just got even more serious than I thought. I don’t know what to do.’

‘You sleep too, sir.’

Don waits, hears nothing.

‘Sir?’

‘Won’t sleep,’ De Vries says.

Vaughn de Vries wakes to the sound of a vacuum cleaner, then a knock on his door. He looks up, sees a pock-marked black face looking expectantly at him. He struggles up, waves the man in. The door opens and the mechanical noise fills the room. He acknowledges the cleaner, stumbles out of his office, sees the squad-room empty. He stretches his shoulders, waiting for the elevators, and travels down to the main foyer, out onto the street. It is still early; his body is stiff and aching. He stumbles on the pavement, laughs at himself, keeps walking towards the coffee shop he knows will be open early. The sky is darker, the air heavy. This, he thinks, still slightly intoxicated, must be what it feels like waiting for rains on the great Serengeti plains.

He orders coffee and a cooked breakfast, knows that once he is engrossed in a case, he rarely finds time to eat. He uses the men’s lavatories to wash his face, tuck in his shirt. He sticks his tongue out in the grubby mirror, sees a cream-coloured coated surface to his tongue to go with the dark ringed eyes and dry lips. He blinks twice, finds his eyes harder to open again the second time; his jaw is tight. He pushes his tongue into the roof of his mouth, feels the tension ease momentarily, sees his hands shaking on the sink. He needs to be fit, needs to be well. Nkosi.

Don waits for him in his office. It is before 8 a.m. and there are still no other staff in the squad room. It smells like a bar the morning after a busy night. Don sniffs the empty mug on his desk, confirms what he thought; he jumps when he hears the voice.

‘You sleep?’

‘Not much.’

‘I know it’s him. I’ve been thinking about it all night. Thought about the way he was at the scene. It all makes sense. The perfect shot, his attempts to hide it. His visits to Taryn Holt to reassure her about security. Being on the scene first: any forensics are immediately compromised. He just says: “Of course I was there. I was the investigating officer until De Vries took over.”’

‘I will obtain a picture of him,’ Don says. ‘I can show the girl at the restaurant. If it was him, it links him to Angus Lyle too.’

‘It’ll be him,’ De Vries says, nodding to himself. ‘Fucking chicken takeaway. I knew you were going to humiliate me with that.’

‘Can we prove anything?’

De Vries laughs.

‘Of course not. Even if you tie him to Lyle, no one saw him at the park. He can deny everything. We have to work out why he did it. We have to ask ourselves why someone higher up wants to protect him.’

‘We report up to General Thulani?’

‘I don’t know. We can’t provide evidence. Thulani won’t do anything without it. Instead he may just poke around in Pretoria and alert everyone. I think this is down to us.’

‘How do we do this without alerting Nkosi?’

‘I don’t know that either. If he’s being protected from high up, even from the Police Ministry itself, there may be people who don’t want us finding out. I don’t know whether we want to be here at all.’

‘But we are.’

De Vries nods. ‘We are. Now, we have to decide whether to turn away or press on.’

‘Unfortunately, sir, I already know your answer.’

The investigation is officially wound down, the squad room emptied of extra staff except for De Vries’s regular team, and most have been given days off in lieu of the extra hours. The whiteboard is cleaned, notes and files brought together and stored.

De Vries ponders how he can investigate fellow officers without involving the Independent Police Investigation Department or, worse, David Wertner’s Internal Investigations Unit for the elite divisions. Despite being of lower rank, both Lieutenant Sam Nkosi and a certain Major Mabena in Pretoria seem out of reach.

* * *

At lunchtime, Don February shows Judy Miles four pictures, including one of Sam Nkosi. She immediately picks him out, then expresses doubt, suggesting that the man in the picture looks like the man she served the previous week, but she cannot swear to it. Don has seen enough witnesses to know that her original gut instinct is reliable. She recalls that she did not watch him get back into his vehicle, nor the direction in which it might have gone. De Waal Park is barely 800 metres away and Don cannot lose the image of Nkosi dropping down the mountainside, parking in one of the adjoining roads, walking the poorly lit side streets with the hot chicken in its box under his arm until he finds Angus Lyle, and beginning a conversation that would result, not long afterwards, in Lyle’s death.

Doctor Anna Jafari has called him. She has new information and, to conclude the phone conversation, she bids him goodbye. De Vries wonders how his behaviour towards her warrants this unusual pleasantry. He finds her by an examination table.

‘What is it, Doctor?’

She gestures for him to approach the bench. The body of Angus Lyle lies under the grim lights; De Vries thinks that his body seems bluer than the last time he saw it.

‘I spent many hours on this matter last night.’ She does not look him in the eye. ‘As far as blood, stomach and trace were concerned, there was no indication as to what might have caused the victim’s heart to fail. However, I was not satisfied with this, so I re-examined the body early this morning. I believe I may have found a possible answer.’

She passes De Vries a large magnifying glass. She indicates Lyle’s left foot, holds his big toe and second toe apart.

‘Please look here.’

De Vries bends down, focuses the image in the glass, squints.

‘You require spectacles?’

‘No.’

‘Your close vision seems impaired . . .’

De Vries straightens.

‘It’s fine, Doctor. What am I looking at?’

She takes the magnifying glass from him, places it on a desk.

‘I decided that interference may have taken place, but I wasn’t sure how that might have been achieved. Between his big toe and second toe, there is syringe mark.’

De Vries looks back down at Lyle’s feet.

‘In his foot?’

‘Indeed. If I wanted to hide an injection mark, that would be a good choice of location.’

‘What was injected?’

‘I can’t say for sure. It looks like an eight millimetre hypodermic needle was used as the delivery system, but I cannot be certain. His blood work suggests heightened readings of potassium. However, levels vary considerably over time. They may be an ambient level, or they might indicate that he was poisoned by an injection of concentrated potassium chloride. That, in turn, could lead to paralysis, heart attack and sudden death. The problem for us is that potassium chloride within the blood stream dissipates quickly.’

De Vries stares at the body, tilts his head.

‘It does,’ Jafari says, ‘seem far-fetched but, since there is no other explanation, I am inclined to consider this a possibility.’

De Vries wonders what makes her share this possibility with him.

‘How would that have panned out?’

‘Now you are asking me to speculate; my previous comment was based on unexplained evidence, but evidence nonetheless. Do you see the distinction, Colonel?’

De Vries turns from the bench.

‘All right. Let me ask you this, then: could the bruising you saw on Angus Lyle’s shoulder and neck . . . Could that have disabled him in some way?’

Jafari hesitates.

‘I don’t know.’

‘He starts eating. He’s hungry. His assailant disables him, then injects this potassium into him via his foot. Is that possible?’

‘It is possible. But it cannot be known.’

‘Never any answers . . .’

‘I have done my best.’

He looks up.

‘You have, Doctor. I didn’t mean that you do not give answers, just that people think that science can always provide the hard evidence, that the process is easy. You did exceptionally well to find those marks. Thank you.’

Jafari walks up to him. She is head and shoulders shorter than he is. She looks up at him.

‘So, let us be clear, Colonel, and leave personalities out of it. You may not like me, the discipline I bring to my working life or professional women generally, perhaps even Muslims. That is your prerogative. But do not doubt my professional abilities . . .’

‘I have never . . .’

‘Yes, you have. I will never tell a court that I am certain about something if I am not, nor reassure them that there is no doubt when, clearly and scientifically, there is. What you think about a suspect is irrelevant, and must remain irrelevant for justice to function. Justice is, I believe, something we have in common?’

‘There is no need . . .’

‘I worked on, despite the fact that I have my own modest life outside of work, because I felt, as I know you did, that what we saw before us did not seem right. You see, I bring more than just my qualifications to this job, as do you. But, what we bring is not the same. Not at all.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I respect you,’ she continues firmly, ‘for what you do – even if that is not always by the book – and, if we are to work together, you had better learn to respect me. All you have to do is suspend your prejudices.’

He opens his mouth to counter, produces no words. He nods.

She smiles thinly, nods back.

‘My report will be on your desk by the end of the day.’

He hears himself saying, genuinely: ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

Back in the office, Don February thinks of Taryn Holt’s neighbour – the teenaged girl, Lorna, watching from her bedroom window – and wonders whether she can place Nkosi at the scene at the correct time. She had said that the last time she had seen Holt had been the previous night, but it is possible that she has thought again. He telephones the house, is told that, reluctantly, they will see him before their supper, at 6.30 p.m., no later.

He looks for De Vries but, if he is in the building, he does not want to be found. He sits in the guest chair at the side of De Vries’s desk, writes up what he has found and what he suspects. In the late afternoon, he sees Julius Mngomezulu peering around the wall into the squad-room, looking towards De Vries’s office. It seems to Don that Mngomezulu cannot see him; that the single blind over the one window has provided cover. Mngomezulu walks into the squad-room, affecting nonchalance, glances down at the surface of the desks, up at the monitors, and scrutinizes the remains of the scrubbed writing on the whiteboard. Don stays motionless, breath held, as if witnessing the arrival of rare wildlife outside his window. He watches Mngomezulu approach his own desk in the far corner; he sees him flick through the pages in the pile, stop at one, look down for longer. Don wonders what he has left there to so enthrall Mngomezulu. Finally, the Lieutenant looks up and around, takes the sheet of paper and walks quickly but casually away.

Don waits a few moments then slowly rises from his chair and walks to his desk: one of the few with any written material on it. Atop the pile is a copy of the inventory of items found on Angus Lyle’s person. Don looks hard at the pile, tries to visualize where Mngomezulu had been looking. He flicks through the papers.

He is not sure that he left the sheet in the pile, but it is possible that he left a note to himself from the day before. It would have read: ‘Nkosi? Chicken from Woodsman’s Grill. Friday 10 p.m.’

Don curses under his breath, wonders to whom Mngomezulu will report, knows that if it is to someone connected to Nkosi, they – and then he – will know that one part of the investigation has not ended.

‘I used a contact I wasn’t supposed to know about.’

‘One of your people? Here, in Cape Town?’

Marantz looks up from the table. He is milling cannabis between his fingernails, flicking away the seeds. It is so still this evening, there is no danger of it blowing away.

‘One of yours.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Former SAPS.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘Connections. Leave it at that.’

‘I still don’t get it, and I don’t like it.’

‘Hopefully you will. He told me if he finds nothing, you’re not even supposed to know. If he does, you’ll meet him.’

‘I hate this cloak-and-dagger stuff. I like it simple. A to B, as few stops along the way as possible. It’s how I was taught.’ De Vries looks at the bottle: Silvertree Ale. He likes the label, like its contents.

‘Why do you do this, John? Why do you get involved?’

‘What else is there for me to do? I sit thinking all day, play cards at night. I need something to do. Your problems distract me.’

‘Why don’t you stop thinking?’

Marantz laughs, eyes forlorn.

‘I have never, ever been able to stop. I’m thinking until unconsciousness takes me, thinking when I wake in the night, thinking when I get up. It’s exhausting.’

‘I don’t even know how you live. Some kind of payment, pension from your government?’

‘Money? That’s not my problem. I can survive here on what I have. It’s not that. It’s whether I can live like this any more, Vaughn. I’ve tried, really tried to move on. If I knew they were gone, really knew for certain, maybe then . . .’

‘I thought you’d had news . . . ?’