'Yes, Inspector.'
'And when I say 'go', you run back through the shop, out through the front door, until you get to me. Ask that guy with the apron exactly where they ran, then you follow the same route. You understand?'
'Yes, Inspector.'
Kaleni walked around the outside to the wooden door. She waited- until she could hear the Constables' footsteps in the alleyway on the other side of the door.
'Are you right next to the door?'
'Yes.'
'Don't touch anything.' She checked her watch, waited until the second hand was close to the twelve o'clock mark.
'Are you ready?'
'Yes.'
'When I say go ...' She counted down from five to one, then barked 'Go!' She heard them take off, feet echoing off the restaurant wall. She watched the second hand travel five, ten, fifteen, twenty, then the two Constables came around the corner. Twenty-four seconds to reach her.
'OK. Now, I want you to start from this door, and run down the street, as fast as you can.'
They looked at her, out of breath, but willing. They took off.
'No, wait!'
They stopped and turned back. They weren't smiling now.
'I will say 'go' again,' she said, her eyes on the watch. She Waited for the twelve mark again, counting down, and shouted 'Go!' They sprinted away and she kept an eye on them and the watch. The young man had said the attackers had pushed him over. Add one second for that, maybe two. They might have run outside and, not knowing in which direction she had gone, stopped and looked up Upper Orange and to the right down Belmont. Another two or three seconds.
She marked the Constables' progress at twenty-four and thirty seconds, then yelled at them, 'OK!', but they were out of earshot and kept on running, two blue uniforms in full flight down the long hill.
'Hey!' she tried again, to no avail.
Rachel Anderson heard the sirens racing up the street only twenty metres from where she lay in the bougainvillea bush. She knew they were for her because the man in the restaurant would surely have called the police. And she could hear how the wailing stopped nearby, just up on the corner.
She lay still. All the thorns were out now, only the stinging of her wounds remained, Her breathing was normal, the sweat dried in the deep cool shade. They wouldn't be able to see her, even if they walked past down the street, even if they came into the garden.
She would wait until they stopped looking. Until they went away. Then she would decide what to do.
Mbali Kaleni walked to the corner of Upper Orange and Alexandra Avenue - more or less the twenty-four second mark. She walked slowly across the road to the opposite pavement.
The girl must have turned left here into Alexandra. That was why the men couldn't see her.
Something wasn't right.
She stared up Alexandra Avenue. The slope. A very tired girl. This morning early, before six, someone saw her high up on Lion's Head. Just after ten she was down here in Oranjezicht. She had come a long way, but she was on her way down, to the city. So would she get here and choose a street that led away from her destination? It was uphill, steep; it would be hell' on tired legs.
But if you are afraid and your pursuers right behind ...
Deep in thought, Kaleni rested her hand on the white picket fence of the single-storey Victorian house on her left. She looked for the two running uniformed idiots. Yes, there they were, walking back, chatting happily.
A block further on was the Molteno Reservoir. But that was more than forty seconds from Carlucci's, even if Rachel Anderson could run as fast as two fresh, fit constables. No, she had to have turned this corner. Or ...
Kaleni considered the Victorian house, looked at the fence. It was the only house in this part of the street without high walls or fences - the only alternative.
That's when she saw the damage to the flower bed. The ground cover was scraped away in a broad swathe. She took off her dark glasses. The palm prints were there, the footprints beyond, three of them before the edge of the lawn. She judged by sight the distance between the fence and the damage. Could someone climb over here? And land
She walked on, looking for the garden gate, and found it. She jogged over to it, an odd, hurried figure with a handbag over her shoulder, pistol on her hip and dark glasses in her hand.
'I'm not white enough for her,' Fransman Dekker said when Griessel concluded his call with Vusi.
'What?' said Griessel, his attention still on the phone. 'Sorry, Fransman, I have four more messages ...' He put it to his ear again. 'Melinda?' he asked.
'I can't talk to a man ...' Dekker said, in falsetto sarcasm.
'I'll be finished soon ...' Griessel listened. 'It's John Afrika ...'
Dekker took two steps down the passage and turned. 'But it's because I'm a
'John Afrika again ...' Griessel shook his head.
'Such a great Christian,' said Dekker.
'I have to phone the Commissioner back,' Griessel said apologetically. 'The girl... She phoned her father. In America .. . Commissioner, it's Benny ...'
Dekker stopped at the studio door, pressed a palm against it, leaned on it and bent his head.
Griessel said 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' over the phone, until at last: 'I'm on my way, I'll be there now.' He switched off the phone again.
'She won't talk to you because you're coloured?' he asked Dekker.
'That's not what she says, but it's what she means.'
'Fuck that. She can get a lawyer, and she can ask for a woman to be present, those are her choices ...'
'You tell her.'
'That's exactly what I'm going to do,' said Griessel. And then the lights went out.
Chapter 20
Ndabeni was restless. He drank the last of the tea, put the cup on the tray and pushed it away. How long would it be before the people arrived, before Petr had his staff awake and on the go? What was Mbali Kaleni doing with his case up at the restaurant? That was where the action was; there was nothing going on here. Perhaps he would wait another ten minutes. If no one had arrived by then ...
Then the big room went dark, everything eerily quiet, even the air conditioning off. Another power cut. Yesterday it had lasted for three hours.
Pitch black, he could see nothing.
He had to get out. He felt for his cell phone, pressed a key to light up the screen and turned it so the light shone over the table, picked up his notebook and pen and got up. He walked carefully between the tables and chairs, down the passage. A faint yellow band of light shone out of Galina Federova's office. He walked over to it, saw she had lit a candle and was busy pushing another into the neck of an empty beer bottle.
'Hi,' he said.
She jumped, said something that sounded like 'Bogh' and nearly dropped the beer bottle.
'I'm sorry ..
'Eskom,' she shrugged.
'What can you do?' he asked, rhetorically.
