Thirteen Hours

know where he keeps his pistol. You are the only one I can trust. Tell me who knows him that well.'

'How can you say that? He was shot in his house ...'

'No, he was shot somewhere else. Maybe not far from here, in the street. We found his shoe. And his cell phone.' He saw that surprised her and it gave him satisfaction.

'Then they took him to his house and carried him up the stairs and put him down there ... Who knows about his wife, Natasha? Who knows about the pistol? The Geysers?'

She adjusted her skirt and brushed her hair back over her shoulder before answering. 'No. I don't think so. I don't think they have ever been to his house. Adam was ... ashamed of Alexa. A few times she'd ...'

'What?'

'Made a scene when he took people to his house. He lived here. From morning to night. He would go home about seven o'clock, but he would come back, often. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, then he would work till twelve ...'

'So who would have known that?'

She considered before she answered. 'I really can't say.'

'Please. Take a guess.'

'A guess?'

'Speculate.' 'I knew about his wife ...'

'Who else?'

'Willie and Wouter and Michele ...'

'Who's Michele?'

'She's been sitting in there all morning. She does the PR.'

'I thought Willie Mouton did production and promotion?'

'Yes, but she does the PR. Promotion is when we pay for something. PR is when the papers write about stuff, or someone is on TV or radio and you don't pay for it.'

'Which one is Michele?'

'She's the oldish woman who was sitting with Spider and Ivan ...'

He had a vague recollection of an older woman between the younger men. 'And she knows Adam well?'

'They've worked together for years. From the beginning. She went freelance about seven years ago but she still does our PR on contract.'

'She went freelance?'

'You know, she set up her own agency. For artists who don't have a label, or for minor labels.'

'Did she and Adam get on well?'

'They were like brother and sister .. .'There was a hint that this wasn't the whole story.

'What does that mean?'

'They say Adam and Michele were lovers. Years ago.'

'How many years ago?'

'It's just rumours.'

He gave her a look that said, 'Drop the shit.'

'From when Alexa began drinking, apparently. He went and cried on Michele's shoulder. She was married herself then ...'

'Fuck,' said Dekker.

She looked at him with disapproval.

'Damnit, sister,' he said indignantly. 'My list keeps getting longer.'

Mat Joubert walked back through the kitchen to the hall where Griessel and Vusi were watching him expectantly. He shook hishead. No rucksack. He watched Benny process the information silently. Joubert waited patiently until he knew he could speak.

'You know about the blood out there?' he asked Griessel, watching him while he said 'yes'. Benny was standing still, head tilted sideways, right hand reaching unconsciously for his head and the fingers scratching in the thick, unruly hair just behind his ear.

A feeling of compassion swept over Joubert for this colleague, this friend, this man he had known for a lifetime. Griessel's frame had always been too small for all his energy, so that sometimes it seemed to vibrate, shock waves of passion pulsing through it like a tsunami. That face - twenty years ago it had an elfish quality, the mischievous cheek of the court jester, with an infectious laugh and a preposterous witticism perpetually crouched behind those bright Slavic eyes and wide mouth, ready to take off in full, unstoppable flight. You could barely see it now - life had eroded it away in a network of tiny furrows. But Joubert knew that in that brain the synapses were firing now. Griessel, sent from pillar to post all morning, was trying to get his head around the puzzle. When he succeeded the sparks would fly. Benny had the brain of a detective, always faster and more creative than his. Joubert had always been slow, methodical and systematic, but Griessel had instinct, natural flair, the sparkling fly half to Joubert's plodding front ranker.

'It might be drugs,' said Griessel, but to himself. 'I think the ... the rucksack ...'

'Benny, the panel van was in the Metro pound,' said Vusi.

Griessel stared into nowhere:'... the girls ... no, I don't know. Maybe they stole the drugs. Or took them but didn't pay ...'

Joubert waited quietly, till he saw Benny focus on him and Vusi. Then he asked: 'Is it the girl's blood?'

'No.' Then Benny focused sharply on Joubert, with sudden insight, and he said: 'It's someone else's blood, not Rachel's, it's the blood of one of those fuckers.' He grabbed his phone.

Joubert said, 'Benny, let me phone the hospitals.'

'No, Mat, let Caledon Square do it,' and he called their number and gave the order to the radio room Sergeant: 'Any young man between the age of, say, eighteen and thirty-five, any colour, any race, any language, Sarge, every young fucker with blood on him, I want to know about.' Then Griessel looked at Vusi and said: 'Metro's pound?'

'That's right. The same Peugeot, same registration. It was stolen, and Metro recovered it in Salt River. It has been parked in the pound since October, because the owner died of a heart attack and the estate is frozen. I'm going, Benny. I'm going to find out what's going on there. How did they get it out of the pound?'

Joubert saw a flicker in Griessel's eyes, a momentary realisation. 'What?' He knew the value of Benny's intuition.

Griessel shook his head. 'Don't know. Something. Jissis, I have to sit and think, but there's no time. Vusi, excellent work, go and find out, let's get the van, because that's about all we have ...' A sudden intake of breath. 'Wait,' he called Ndabeni back. 'Vusi, I want to make absolutely sure, the man from the deli, did he look at the pictures of Demidov's people?'

'He did.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing.'

'OK. Thanks.'

Vusi jogged away and Griessel hung his head while Mat patiently stood and watched him. For a long time. In silence, so that the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the study could be heard. The two of them were the dinosaurs of the SAPS, he thought, an endangered, dying breed. Political global warming and racial climate change should have taken their toll long ago, but here they were still, two old carnivores in the jungle, limbs stiff, teeth blunt, but still not completely ineffective.

Griessel scratched audibly at the bushy hair behind his ear. He grunted: 'Hu ...' turned and went outside. Joubert followed tranquilly across the little doormat and the veranda, past the bougainvilleas and down the slate pathway. Griessel opened the garden gate and went and stood in the street. He turned to face Lion's Head. Joubert stood behind him, looking, seeing the rocky dome rising above the city, feeling the wind, watching how it ruffled Benny's hair even more. This day that had dawned in such perfection, was being overtaken by the southeaster. Tonight it would howl like a demon around the side of Table Mountain.

'Before six this morning, up there,' said Griessel, pointing at Lion's Head, 'she told a woman to call the police. Those young men had been chasing her since two in the morning. At eleven at the deli there, she told her father over the tickey-box that she couldn't talk to the police ...'

Tickey-box, thought Joubert. A prehistoric word.