“Fooock.” Rung plaited his fingers behind his head, and his biceps swelled impressively. “What about diamonds?”
“I thought about that. He imported antique furniture from Namibia, so it would fit, but stones are too small.”
“But valuable. Lots of dollars.”
“Could be.”
“Durbanville feels more like stones to me. Drugs aren’t a Boer thing. But show a white Afrikaner a diamond…It’s in our genes.”
It was a good argument. He couldn’t deny it. But he didn’t want to change gears: the lack of sleep lay between him and new thought processes. He wanted to hang on to drugs, the packets of white powder that, in his imagination, lay on the shelves in the safe, neatly stacked, filling Jan Smit’s hiding place so tidily.
“Just presume for a moment that it was drugs. Who would’ve been the local players in those years?”
“Hell, Van Heerden…” Hand over the face, an odd, unconscious mannerism. “Sam Ling. The Fu brothers. Silva. It’s a long time ago.”
“Where can I find Sam Ling?”
Viljoen laughed, a phlegmy, rattling sound. “The life expectancy of those guys doesn’t exactly have insurance agents rushing for their forms. Ling, they say, was fed to the fish in the harbor. The Fu brothers were shot in a gang war in ’eighty-seven. And you know what happened to Silva. You’re looking for shadows. Everything has changed. It’s almost twenty years.”
“And if it’s stones? Who do I speak to?”
Viljoen smiled slowly. “You could try the detectives at Gold and Diamonds. But if I were you I’d pay the Horse a visit – if you can get past the gate, of course.”
“The Horse?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Ronald van der Merwe?”
“I’ve been…somewhat out of circulation for the past few years.”
“Must have been, because there wasn’t a policeman south of the Orange River who didn’t gossip about Ronnie. And if you quote me, I’ll say you lied like a trouper.”
Van Heerden gave a quick nod.
Viljoen drew his palm over his face, slowly, from forehead to jaw. Van Heerden wondered whether he hoped to heal the damaged tissue. “Ronnie. Colorful. Big guy. Was at the Diamonds branch for years. Calls everyone ‘Horse.’ Always greets everyone with a ‘Hi, old horse.’ Likes big American sports cars. Drove a Trans Am while he was still a sergeant, and everyone wondered how he could afford it and there was always gossip, but his arrest record was good. Very good. Captain, later. And about two years ago Ronnie resigned and the news was that he’d bought a house at Sunset Beach, a castle with three garages and a high wall and electronic gates that open by remote control. And now he doesn’t know any policemen.”
Van Heerden said nothing.
“They said his ship had come in. All the way from Walvis Bay, if you know what I mean.”
Lonely?
Beautiful Natasha wants to listen
Call her now at
386-555-555
He drove from the city on the N1, then north on the N7, the sun breaking through cloud, the green of the wet Cape glowing in the bright light.
His head was dancing the rhythmless dance of the sleepless, thoughts jumping, unfocused, without depth. It was going to be a long day. A shallow tiredness pervaded his body. Why had he phoned the fucking number again? He knew the humiliation would scorch him, as it had before. Why had they pushed the fucking pamphlet under his windshield wiper? Another great lie, just one more great lie like all the other lies to extend and tighten the world’s web of deceit.
That first time. Lord, he had phoned the number with so much expectation, so much consuming loneliness because
He sighed.
And Johannes Jacobus Smit. What the fuck was his lie, his deception?
He knew his leap from one scrap of dollar-wrapping paper in a walk-in safe was very big. Too big. But why do you build such a safe? If you were a normal, law-abiding citizen. You might buy a small gun safe or a jewel safe. Law-abiding citizens didn’t bother with false identity documents. Smit-whatever-his-name-might-be was a man who wanted to hide a great deal. Who he was. And whatever the fuck was in the safe.
Not stones.
Stones are small.
Stones are hot. You get them and you sell them fast. You don’t amass them in a small town with a steel door.
Not drugs. Drugs weren’t a Boer game.
Not weapons. Weapons were too big.
Documents?
Dollars?
Documents.
What fucking kind of documents?
Secret documents.
Secret. God knows this country has enough secrets to fill a warehouse. Documents of death and torture, of chemical weapons and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and murder lists and secret operations. Documents of deceit. People deceiving one another on national and international levels. The Great Deceit. Important documents. Documents that would make people commit murder with an attack rifle and a blowtorch.
Documents…
But the dates of Smit’s new identity and the hiding of secrets didn’t work. If Smit had been Secret Service or BSB or MI or whatever unholy acronym it might have been, the nineties would have been a good time for a new identity.
Not the early eighties.
Documents?
An M16 and a blowtorch?
Not your standard “Kill a Whitey and Steal the Television Set.”
On the Modderdam interchange to Bothasig. Middle-class. Police suburb.
He remembered the route vaguely, found it easily. Mike de Villiers’s house. He stopped in the street, walked to the front door. The garden was simple, neat. Knocked at the front door, waited. Mike’s wife opened, didn’t recognize him, a wide, waddling body, dishcloth in her hand.
“Is Mike here, Mrs. de Villiers?”
Broad smile, a nod. “Yes, he’s busy at the back. Come in.” Put out her hand, a woman satisfied in her home.
“Are you well?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He followed her – the house was shining and neat and smelled of cleaning materials, laundry on the table – out of the back door.
Mike de Villiers stood in the backyard, screwdriver in his hand, next to the lawn mower, wearing his blue police overall, his bald head reflecting the sunlight. He looked up, saw Van Heerden, showed no emotion, as usual, shifted the screwdriver to his left hand, wiped the right hand on the overall, extended it.
“Captain…”
“No longer, Mike.”
“Superintendent?”
