head: ‘Death toll rises to seven in billionaire mansion shoot-out’.
A nauseous sense of dread and apprehension clawed at Carver’s guts. He reached across to pick up the paper. Two minutes later, he was on the phone to Sonny Parkes, Wendell Klerk’s head of security.
‘It’s Carver,’ he said. ‘We need to meet. Now.’
77
Half an hour later, Carver was standing in the street outside Klerk’s mansion while Sonny Parkes talked their way past the police guard manning the barricades and crime-scene tape round the entrance to the house. One look at Parkes told Carver why Klerk had trusted him so much. Sonny Parkes had a prop-forward’s body, a boxer’s nose, a balding skinhead’s haircut and a redneck’s complexion. Plenty of men who look like that are no better than drunken thugs, and that’s on a good day. Others, though – the ones blessed with intelligence, courage and a sound temperament – are the warriors you want fighting beside you in the trenches. It’s a common enough cliche, but Carver had been there for real, and he knew just by looking at him that Parkes had too.
‘They pitched up just here,’ Parkes was saying, ‘at five-oh-two yesterday morning. Six of them, we reckon, with a seventh as the driver. The vehicle they used was one of those crazy bloody stretch Hummers: white, hired from a rental company on an account we’ve traced back to a shell company, registered in the Dutch Antilles. No way of knowing who owns it.’
‘My guess, there’s no need to ask,’ said Carver. ‘It’ll be Moses Mabeki.’
‘What, that ugly fucker from Malemba, the one who hangs around Henderson Gushungo? What’s he got to do with this?’
The puzzlement in Parkes’s voice was genuine. Klerk had involved his security chief in getting Justus Iluko and his kids the help they needed, but he hadn’t been let in on the rest of the Malemban operation. That was useful to know.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Carver. ‘Just go on with what happened here.’
Parkes shrugged. ‘One of the passengers, a young woman, gets out the car and comes over to the guardhouse over here, all giggly, flirtatious, pretending to be drunk: a real come-and-get-me act. We know this because it’s all on tape from the CCTV camera up there. She persuades the guys on duty to come round to the side and open up the communication hatch here. Then she walks right up and shoots them, cool as you like. Double-tap to the head, both times.’
‘The gun?’
‘Walther TPH, a real lady’s gun.’
‘Professional’s gun, too. Perfect for close-range work. No mess.’
‘True enough, and she was a professional all right, a real cold-blooded piece of work. She took out both guards before either of them could even get their guns out of their holsters.’
‘Or their thumbs from their arses.’
Parkes gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Exactly. Then she climbed through the window, over the bodies and went over to the control panel. Can you see it in there?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, that’s where she switched off all the cameras and alarms and cut the feed to XPT headquarters.’
‘So you weren’t running the actual security operation at the house.’
‘No, I was not.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why not?’
Parkes sighed bitterly. ‘Outsourcing. Cost-cutting. All the usual corporate crap. The theory is that the organization has a helluva lot of properties around the world that it needs to protect. Not just Klerk’s houses, but offices, factories, mines, you name it. It’s cheaper and easier to hire local contractors for each of them, instead of hiring, paying and looking after full-time employees. I’m responsible for keeping tabs on all the different companies we use in this part of the world. And I’ve got a separate team of my own. We provide close protection whenever one of the Klerk household is out and about.’
‘So XPT had plans of the house and the grounds?’
‘Ja.’
‘Who else?’
‘The house is only four years old, so there are the architects, contractors and sub-contractors who worked on the place; the civic authorities, planning department and so forth – a lot of people, man.’
‘And you think one of them gave the plans to whoever did this?’
‘Someone did, that’s for damn sure. Anyway, once the guards are dead, at least five people get out of the limo and come this way.’
‘How do you know there were five?’
‘You’ll see.’
Parker walked through the gate, gesturing to Carver to follow, talking as he went.
‘The gate closes behind them so no one outside can see what’s happening. The limo drives away. We know this because a local resident who’d been out for the night drove past at around five past five and he’s absolutely certain there was no white Hummer parked here.’
‘It would be pretty hard to miss.’
‘Exactly. Now, the five walk towards the house.’
As they came up the drive, Carver got his first proper view of the Klerk residence. It was a two-storey, flat- roofed modernist building, massed in a series of linked boxes. Plain walls of olive-grey concrete were pierced by wide expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass.
The geometric starkness of the construction was offset by the lush greenery all around it. Palms and other trees stood among impeccably trimmed hedges and brightly coloured flowers spilled from huge concrete planting boxes. The drive swept up to a formal entrance but Parkes ignored it and kept walking round the side of the building.
‘They came round here to the back of the building.’
Carver followed him to an expanse of flagstones, framing the turquoise water of the house’s swimming- pool. A set of steps ran from the pool area up to the back of the house. Parkes set off up the stairs. At the top, he stopped in front of a wall made up of wooden-framed glass panels, one of which had been smashed.
‘They got in through the lounge area here. Just shot a couple of holes in the glass and knocked the rest out with the butts of their guns.’
‘Must have made a helluva noise,’ observed Carver.
‘Damn right it must. But whoever they were, they didn’t care about that. I get the feeling they wanted Klerk to know they were there.’
‘Because they knew how he’d react?’
‘That’s what I think, ja.’
‘But how could they know that?’
Parkes shook his head ruefully. ‘I don’t know, man, not for sure. But anyone who knows Klerk knows he’s never, ever going to back down from a fight. They were probably trying to provoke him.’
‘And it worked.’
‘Oh ja, it worked all right. And now I’ll show you where he found them.’
78
The lounge led into a dining area. Sixteen chairs ringed a huge hardwood dining table. There were more David Shepherd water-colours and drawings of elephants on the wall – studies, perhaps, for the huge oil painting at Campden Hall – and another set of tusks on either side of a modern marble fireplace. The room looked completely untouched. Carver wondered when he’d get to the scene of the action.
