and client conferred under their breath and he wished he knew what was said. Just before Sangrenegra left the court, his eyes searched the public benches. Griessel waited until the Colombian spotted him. And then he grinned at him.
Sangrenegra?s shoulders sagged, as if a great burden had come to rest on them.
He was on the way to Faizal?s pawnshop in Maitland when Tim Ngubane phoned him.
?The blood in Sangrenegra?s BMW belongs to the kid. The DNA matches,? he said.
?Fuck,? said Griessel.
?So you?ll have to watch him very carefully, Benny.?
?We will,? he said and he wanted to add: if I am still on the case by tonight. He thought better of it.
?Tim, I have a suspicion Organized Crime have been after Sangrenegra longer than they let on. Just a feeling. I have just come from Beukes. He knows something. He?s hiding something.?
?What are you saying, Benny??
?I wonder more and more whether they were following Sangrenegra before he abducted the child.?
Ngubane paused before he answered. ?Are you saying they know something? About the kid??
?I?m not saying anything. I?m just wondering. Perhaps you can try and find out. Talk to Captain Louw. She?s from Domestic Violence, but she?s working on my task team. Maybe her loyalty will be to the child. Maybe she can find out.?
?Benny, if they do know something . . . I can?t believe it.?
?I know. I?m also having trouble with it. But see it from their point of view. They are messing about with Nigerian syndicates distributing crack in Sea Point when suddenly they come across something a hundred times bigger. Something that makes them look like real policemen. Colombia. The Holy Grail. There was a shithouse full of drugs in that storeroom. If it were me, I would have gone to the national commissioner and made a stink about jurisdiction. But they just sit there. Why? They know something. They?re busy with something. And I think they have been busy with it for quite some time.?
?Geeeeez,? said Ngubane.
?But we?ll have to see.?
?I?ll go talk to the captain.?
?Tim, the number of that shrink . . . do you still have it?? asked Griessel.
?The one who was down here from Pretoria? The profiler??
?Yes.?
?I?ll text it.?
35.
Faizal said the bass guitar was not in the market; the rapper from Blackheath had paid up and collected it. Griessel said what he was looking for now was a CD player, nothing fancy, just something for listening to music at home.
?Car, portable, or hi-fi component?? asked Faizal.
Griessel thought about it and said portable, but with good bass.
?Portable with speakers or portable with headphones??
Headphones would be better in the flat. Faizal took a Sony Walkman out and said: ?This is the D-NE seven- ten, it can also play MP threes, sixty-four-track programmable, but the most important thing is, it has an equalizer and bass boost, the sound quality is awesome, Sarge. Great headphones. And just in case you are chilling in the bath and it falls off the soap dish, it?s waterproof too.?
?How much??
?Four hundred, Sarge.?
?Jissis, L.L., that?s robbery. Forget it.?
?Sarge, this is brand new, slightly shop-soiled, no previous owner. Three fifty.?
Griessel took out his wallet and held two hundred-rand notes out to Faizal.
?Think of my children, Sarge,? groaned the shopkeeper. ?They must eat too.?
He stood in the street beside his car with his new CD player in his hand and felt like going home, locking the door and listening to the music his son had lent him.
Because they
going to pull him off the case. He knew it. It was too political to keep an alky in charge. Too much pressure. The image of the Service. Even though he and the other dinosaurs like Matt Joubert talked about the Force, it was the Service now. The politically correct, criminal-procedures-regulated, emasculated and disempowered Service, where an alcoholic could not be the leader of a task team. Don?t even talk about the fucking constitutional protection of criminals? rights. So let them pull him, let them give the whole fucking caboodle to someone else, one of the Young Turks, and he would watch from the sidelines as chaos descended.
He unlocked his car and got in. He opened the box of the CD player, shifted the plastic flap and pushed in the batteries. He leaned across and took the CD out of the cubbyhole. He scanned the titles on the back of the jewel case. Various artists performing Anton Goosen?s songs. He knew almost none of them.
Lord, that took you back. Twenty years? No. Thirty! Thirty years ago, Sonja Herholdt sang
