Trackers (70 page)

A quarter to six, and Jack Fischer
was still in his office, papers spread out in front of him, head bowed in
concentration.

Joubert hesitated at the threshold,
fighting thirty years of SAPS conditioning not to disturb a senior officer when
he was busy. He shook it off. This was not the service.

'A moment, Jack?'

Fischer looked up. 'Of course, of
course. Take a chair.'

When he had settled himself in one of
the large chairs opposite Jack, he said: 'Jack, there's something here that
worries me.'

'Tell me.'

'What do we do if Tanya Hint doesn't
have more than 30,000 rand?'

'I thought you were nearly finished
with the case?'

'It might take a couple more days.
Maybe more. She has fourteen hours left, if I don't book any travelling
expenses. What do we do if it is not enough?'

Fischer leaned back, smiled at
Joubert in a fatherly manner. 'I told you, they always find the money.'

'And if she really can't?'

The smile disappeared. 'Of course she
can. How much money is in the account you discovered?'

'You know it could be months before
she has access to that money. If it isn't connected to a crime.'

'But it's security. And she has the
house, the cars ... Doesn't she have some sort of business too? What about
policies? If they have a mortgage bond, there must be a life insurance policy
on the husband. Come on, Mat, you know she'll make a plan.'

He considered Fischer's point of
view. 'I want to clarify the principle,' he said. 'Let's say she tries
everything, but still can't raise the money. Or she can only get it in a
month's time ...'

'She'll get it, Mat.'

'Jack, theoretically. Let's just
say.'

Fischer's patience was wearing thin.
'We don't work with theories. We select clients, we don't accept them if they
can't pay.'

'Has there ever been a single client
who said "I just can't carry on"?'

'I won't say there was never ...'

'What was the policy?'

'We handle each case on merit.'

'Jack, you're evading the question.'

Fischer threw his hands in the air,
his face reddening. 'You keep harping on this. What for?'

Mat Joubert leaned forward, his
shoulders loomed. But he kept his voice even. 'Because before I left here this
afternoon, Fanus Delport said, "Now don't you go making too much
progress". Because at morning parade ...'

'He was joking, fuck, Mat, where's
your sense of humour?'

'It's the context, Jack. You're the
one who wanted me to get her bank statements electronically so we could book
Fanus's hours too. "Double time", so we could milk her. It's the norm
here. At morning parade no one asked how any cases were progressing. It was all
"how much money did you make?" "Did you book your
kilometres?" ...'

'How the fuck do you think you run a
business?' Aggressive. 'This isn't a charity here. There are salaries and
infrastructure. Do you know how much the office rent is every month? And our
telephone account? You tell me, how do we pay for that if we just start working
for people for nothing, a bloody free-for-all? You tell me.'

'Free-for-all? Who said anything
about free-for-all?' Joubert felt his

own temper rising. He took a deep
breath, shook his head and said: 'That's not the point.'

'Well if you're so fucking smart,
tell me what the point
is'

It took him a while to regain
control: 'The point is, if I'm
this
close to a
solution after two days, and she doesn't have the money, I want you to tell me
to carry on. Finish the job.'

'You know as well as I do, "this
close" means nothing. What if the case takes another week or so? Or a
month? Where do you draw the line?'

'Jack, we're not fools. We know how
long something will take, we know how far or how close we are to a
breakthrough. And I'm telling you now, I need another three days for this.
Four, maximum. To either solve it, or to know it can't be solved. She can pay
for two days. Surely we can afford to give her two days free. Or on credit. Or
something.'

'Have you got a thing on with her? Is
that what this is about?'

Mat Joubert rose out of his chair,
ready to smack Fischer with the back of his hand.

What saved him was Jack's reaction,
suddenly rolling his chair backwards, raising his arm defensively, the
cowardliness of it.

It made Joubert stop, fight for
control, get it into his head that his whole future hung in the balance.

He stood there for a long time, then
turned and walked to the door.

Jack said nothing.

He was out of the office and halfway
down the passage when he stopped and went back. Fischer's hand reached out for
the telephone. Joubert ignored it. 'I left the Service because I didn't count
any more, Jack,' he said, his voice very quiet now. 'I felt it was unjust.
Because I believe we do count. All of us. Tanya Flint as well. Especially Tanya
Flint. Because she borrowed 30,000 rand to hire us. Not to enrich herself. Not
to go and buy some or other meaningless thing. But to do her duty by her
husband. And now it's turning out to be a hell of a painful process, but she
has more guts than you and I together, Jack.
She
wants to get
this done. And I'm telling you tonight, if Tanya Flint says she's tried
everything and she can't raise more money, then I will finish her case. For all
I care, you can subtract the cost from my salary.'

The first thing he did when he got
into his Honda was to phone Tanya Flint to find out if she was already at home.

'Our pistol is gone,' was the first
thing she said to him.

He asked what pistol.

'Danie's. I wanted to take it out of
the safe, after the break-in and the ... message. But it's not in the safe.'

'When did you last see it?'

'About a month or two before Danie
disappeared.'

'I'll be there in twenty minutes.'

He drove to Parklands. Tried to
concentrate on the meaning of the missing pistol. Had Flint taken it? Why?

But the thing with Jack occupied his
attention. In Otto du Plessis Drive he found he was handling the car roughly.
Angry. With himself. With Jack Fischer. With the whole fucking situation he
found himself in.

He should have known, because he knew
Jack. Granted that was fifteen years ago, before Fischer had been promoted to
Johannesburg, but the signs were there, and it didn't help saying time heals
everything. He should have listened to his police colleagues, Benny Griessel
and Leon Petersen, who both had the same reaction when he broke the news to
them.
Jissis. Isn't Jack Fischer a bastard?
those had
been Griessel's words.

He was right.

Because when he had told Jack how he
felt, told him the Flint case could be subtracted from his salary, Jack had sat
back in his chair and smirked at him and said, 'Well, then that's what we will
do,' and he had gathered up the papers on his desk and began reading again as
though Mat Joubert was no longer standing there.

No 'Sit down and let's talk it out'.
No reconsideration of his viewpoint, no measured, adult discussion of the
case. Just ignored him.

As though he didn't count.

And now?

Three days on the new job, fifty-one
years old, white, Afrikaner, what did he do now? He wasn't going to stay with
Fischer, and he couldn't afford to resign. There was no other work that paid
nearly as well, and he couldn't face shopping centre, or corporate, or neighbourhood
watch security, he would die before fifty-five. And with the housing market so
slow, and Margaret already having made an offer on the Constantia house, they
would need his income.

What did he do now?

He asked Tanya what kind of pistol it
was.

A small Taurus, she said, Danie
bought it so that she could use it too.

Could she shoot with it?

She had. At the shooting range.

Had Danie said anything about the
firearm, in the month or two before he disappeared?

Not a word.

Was it definitely in the safe?

Always.

So Danie must have taken it?

Yes. Her expression said she knew it
was confirmation of his opinion that Danie was involved in something.

He talked with Tanya again about the
money. He asked her about Danie's friends in particular, the possibility that
he might have met someone at the gym, in the neighbourhood, at a restaurant or
a bar, with whom he could have done business of any kind.

She insisted that she would have
known. All their friends were married, all the women loyal, if there had been
something, she would have heard about it. And besides, he almost never partied
without her. Sometimes, the exception, but mostly they were together, side by
side.

Now what, she asked.

He had to find the source of the
money.

How?

He would keep digging.

She just nodded.

He invited her again to stay over
with him and Margaret.

She thanked him, but said no thank
you again. Although the pistol was gone she had the house alarm, the panic
button, the armed response would react to that. She wasn't going to be
intimidated.

'I've been thinking about the
break-in,' he said. 'There are many ways to pass this message on to you. They
chose a specific modus operandi. A careful one. Almost half-hearted. That says
something. I'm not yet sure what...'

He met with Inspector Fizile
Butshingi at Milnerton Police Station. Butshingi made them tea in the kitchen,
which they drank sitting on either side of the battered government-issue desk,
piled high with dossiers.

Joubert told him about the
investigation, from beginning to end. He left nothing out. When he was
finished, he said, 'If you could look at cash-in-transit robberies, August,
September, October. Four hundred thousand rand, probably more. Something out of
the ordinary.'

'Let me try,' said Butshingi.

'And if you could help get Table View
to keep an eye on Tanya Flint's house tonight. I would appreciate it very
much.'

'OK. And maybe have our people patrol
her business.'

'Thank you very much.'

Then he looked at Joubert and shook
his head. 'Weird world, Sup ...'

'Yes,' said Joubert. 'And getting
weirder by the day.'

Margaret had always been sensitive to
his depression, read the signs easily.

'What happened?' she asked straight
away.

They walked through to the kitchen.
He told her about the dead end in the investigation. And his falling out with
Jack Fischer.

She did what she always did. Talked
to him, about inconsequential things. Asked him to pour them each a glass of
wine. While she applied her skills in the kitchen and made them
bobotie,
yellow rice
and sweet potato, one of his favourites.

In front of the TV she looked for
something to watch that he enjoyed, found a rerun of
Everybody
Loves Raymond
on a satellite channel. Leaned against him, head on his
shoulder, both of her hands wrapped around his.

In the night he lay thinking about
Danie Flint. Tried to follow the spoor as he had found it. Cheerful extrovert,
party animal, ambitious area manager with sports car pictures on the wall, lost
a father, somewhat self-obsessed, materialistic mother, married to a serious,
dedicated, driven woman.