stretched until his knuckles cracked. He laid his head back on the back of the chair. 'As soon as they start making good money.'
'In the beginning, with the first cheque, they come in here and it's 'thanks, guys,
'But it doesn't last,' said Steenkamp.
'They're not doing it for aaaart any more.'
'Money talks.'
'The more they get, they more they want.'
'It's a flash car and a big house and everything that opens and shuts. Then it's the beach house and the sound equipment bus with a huge photo of you on it and everything has to be biggerand better than Kurt or Dozi or Patricia's. To sustain all that costs a shitload of money.'
Groenewald nodded slowly in agreement. Steenkamp laughed again: 'Two years,
'Nell says—' Dekker began.
'Do you know what his name was?' Mouton asked, suddenly pushing himself off the wall and heading for the door. 'Sakkie Nell. Isak, that's where the
'Ivan Nell says he compared your figures with the amounts he made from compilations with independents.'
This time even the lawyer sang in the choir of indignation. Steenkamp leaned forward, ready to speak, but Mouton said: 'Wait, Wouter, hold onto your point, I don't want to miss the joke,' and he walked out into the passage.
Benny Griessel stood in the hallway, the urgency hot in him. He didn't want to get too involved with this part of the investigation, he had to focus on Rachel and how to get her back.
He pulled on rubber gloves and looked fleetingly at the blood on the pretty blue and silver carpet where the old man had been shot, the shards of stained glass on the floor. He would have to phone her father.
How the hell had they found her? How did they know she was here? She had phoned from this house.
How was he going to explain this to Rachel's father? The man who had asked him:
And he had said: 'Yes, Mr Anderson. You can trust me.'
How had they found her? That was the question, the only one that mattered, because the 'how' would supply the 'who', and the 'who' was what he needed to know.
Now. Had she phoned anyone else? That was the place to start. He would have to find out. He took his cell phone out of his pocket to phone Telkom.
No, phone John Afrika first. Fuck. He knew what the Regional Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence was going to say. He could already hear the voice, the consternation.
Griessel sighed, a shallow, hurried breath. That fucking feeling he had had this morning - that there was trouble brewing...
And this day was still far from over.
Mouton pushed his luxury leather desk chair up to Groenewald, sat down and said: 'Let the games begin.'
'Let me explain to you about a compilation first,' said Steenkamp, leaning over the desk, picking up a pencil and twirling it between his fingers. 'Some or other clown decides he wants to make money out of Valentine's Day or Christmas or something. He phones a few people and says: 'Have you got a song for me?' There are no studio costs, not a cent, because the recording has already been done. That makes a huge difference, because all he has to do is market the CD a bit, make a few TV ads that he gives to a guy with an Apple and Final Cut to cobble together, so really he's only paying for the airtime and he sticks it in the fifteen-second slots in
'He does his accounts on the back of a cigarette box,' said Mouton irritably.
'No overheads. We sit here with an admin department and financial department and marketing and promotions department. We carry forty per cent of a distribution wing, because we are a full-service operation - we stand by the artist for the long term. We build a brand, we don't just flog a few CDs,' said Steenkamp.
'Tell him about RISA and NORM,' said Mouton.
Steenkamp pulled a sheet of A4 paper out of the printer beside him and made a start with the pencil, writing RISA alongside. 'Recording Industry of South Africa.'
'Fucking mafia,' said Mouton.
'At least they present the SAMA Awards,' said Groenewald, and Mouton snorted derisively.
'They take twenty-five cents for every CD we sell, because they ...' he made quotation marks with his fingers,' 'protect us from piracy'.'
'Ha!' said Mouton.
'Do you think the independent making the compilation is going to keep score? Is he going to pay on every CD? Not likely, because it's work, it's a schlepp, it's expense and it's profit.' Steenkamp scribbled another star, wrote NORM on the paper.
'NORM are the guys who have to see to it that, if I write a song and you do a cover of it, I get paid. Six point seven per cent. But that's the theory. In practice it's only us big players who pay. If you're an independent, you have to put down your NORM money when the CDs are printed. So you print five thousand here and another five thousand there, but you tell NORM you only had five thousand printed, you show them the slips, and you pay only half. NORM is ripped off and the songwriter is ripped off and the independent is laughing all the way to the bank.'
'We have to pay NORM as the sales come in,' said Mouton, 'audited figures, everything above board. But then the artists complain: 'Why is my share so small?'' He mimicked Nell's voice again. 'Let me tell you another thing. Half of the hits in this country are German pop songs that have been translated. Or Dutch or Flemish or whatever. What Adam did - and he was brilliant at it - he had guys in Europe and as soon as there was a pop song that stood out they would email it in MP3 format and Adam would sit down with a pen and write Afrikaans lyrics. Forty minutes, that's all it took, and he would phone Nerina Stahl and—'
'That was before she left...'
'All her fucking hits were German pop, who do you think is going to get them for her now? Anyway, we sit with the whole caboodle, we have to administer it all. That money has to go to Germany, the songwriter and the publisher have to get their cut. But here comes this independent and he gets someone to do a cover of Adam's translation of this German song . . . you get it?'
'I think so,' said Dekker, engrossed.
'... and now Adam must be paid, the German and his publisher must be paid, but the independent says, no, we only made five thousand, but he's lying, because there's no control over distribution, the independents do their own now and nobody keeps track.'
'That's why the cheques are so big.'
'Then the bastard comes along and says we are bloody cheating him.'
'Let him make his own CDs and we'll see. Let him pay two hundred thousand for a studio out of his own pocket, let him cough up his own four hundred thousand for a TV campaign.'
'Amen,' said Groenewald. 'Tell him about the passwords and the PDFs.'
'Yes,' said Mouton. 'Ask Sakkie Nell if the independent sends him a password-protected PDF.'
Steenkamp drew another star. PDF. 'There are only three or four big CD distributors in South Africa. These