He stood up and watched a magpie launching itself from a treetop.
All questions remain unanswered in the end, he thought. I devote my life to trying to catch and then put away crooks who are guilty of various crimes. Sometimes I succeed, often I don’t. But when I eventually pass away one of these days, I’ll have failed in the biggest investigation of all. Life will still be an insoluble riddle.
I want to see my daughter, he thought. I miss her so much at times, it hurts. I have to catch a black man missing a finger, especially if he’s the one who killed Louise Akerblom. I have a question for him I need an answer to: why did you kill her?
I must follow up on Stig Gustafson, not let him slide out of the picture too soon, even though I’m already convinced he’s innocent.
He walked back to his car.
The fear and repugnance would not go away. The finger was still pointing.
The Man from Transkei
Chapter Eight
You could hardly see the man squatting in the shadow of the wrecked car. He did not move a muscle, and his black face was indistinguishable from the dark bodywork.
He had chosen his hiding place carefully. He had been waiting since early afternoon, and now the sun was beginning to sink beyond the dusty silhouette of the suburban ghetto that was Soweto. The dry, red earth glowed in the setting sun. It was April 8, 1992.
He had traveled a long way to get to the meeting place on time. The white man who sought him out had said he would have to set off early. For security reasons they preferred not to give him a precise pickup time. All he as told was that it would be shortly after sunset.
Only twenty-six hours had passed since the man who introduced himself as Stewart stood outside his home in Ntibane. When he heard the knock at the door, he thought at first it was the police in Umtata. Seldom a month went by without a visit from them. As soon as a bank robbery or a murder took place, there would be an investigator from the Umtata homicide squad at his door. Sometimes they would take him in to town for questioning, but usually they accepted his alibi, even if it was no more than that he’d been drunk in one of the local bars.
When he emerged from the corrugated iron shack that was his home, he did not recognize the man standing in the bright sunlight claiming to be Stewart.
Victor Mabasha could see right away the man was lying. He could have been called anything at all, but not Stewart. Although he spoke English, Victor could hear from his pronunciation that he was of Afrikaner origin. And boere just weren’t called Stewart.
It was afternoon when the man showed up. Victor Mabasha was asleep in bed when the knock came. He made no attempt to hurry as he got up, put on a pair of pants, and opened the door. He was getting used to nobody wanting him for any thing important anymore. It was usually somebody he owed money to. Or somebody stupid enough to think he could borrow money from him. Unless it was the cops. But they didn’t knock. They hammered on the door. Or forced it open.
The man claiming to be Stewart was about fifty. He wore an ill-fitting suit and was sweating profusely. His car was parked under a baoba tree on the other side of the road. Victor noticed the plates were from Transvaal. He wondered briefly why he had come so far, all the way to Transkei province, in order to meet him.
The man did not ask to come in. He just handed over an envelope and said somebody wanted to see him on important business on the outskirts of Soweto the following day.
“All you need to know is in the letter,” he said.
A few half-naked children were playing with a buckled hubcap just outside the hut. Victor yelled at them to go away. They disappeared immediately.
“Who?” asked Victor.
He mistrusted all white men. But most of all he mistrusted white men who lied so badly, and made things worse by thinking he would be satisfied with an envelope.
“I can’t tell you that,” said Stewart.
“There’s always somebody wanting to see me,” said Victor. “Question is, do I want to see him?”
“It’s all in the envelope,” Stewart repeated.
Victor held out his hand and took the thick, brown envelope. He could feel right away there was a thick bundle of bills in there. That was both reassuring and worrisome. He needed money. But he did not know why he was being given it. That made him uneasy. He had no desire to get involved in something he knew too little about.
Stewart wiped his face and bald head with a soaking wet handkerchief.
“There’s a map,” he said. “The meeting place is marked. It’s close to Soweto. You haven’t forgotten the layout there?”
“Everything changes,” said Victor. “I know what Soweto looked like eight years ago, but I have no idea what it looks like today.”
“It’s not in Soweto itself,” said Stewart. “The pickup point is on a feeder road to the Johannesburg freeway. Nothing has changed out there. You’ll have to leave early tomorrow morning if you’re going to make it in time.”
“Who wants to see me?” Victor asked again.
“He prefers not to give his name,” said Stewart. “You’ll meet him tomorrow.”
Victor shook his head slowly and handed back the envelope.
“I want a name,” he repeated. “If I don’t get a name, I won’t be at the pickup point on time. I won’t ever be there.”
The man hesitated. Victor stared fixedly at him. After a long pause, Stewart seemed to realize that Victor meant what he said. He looked around. The kids had gone away. It was about fifty meters to Victor’s nearest neighbors, who lived in a corrugated iron shack just as dilapidated as his own. A woman was pounding corn in the swirling dust outside the front door. A few goats searched for blades of grass in the parched red earth.
“Jan Kleyn,” he said in a low voice. “Jan Kleyn wants to see you. Forget I ever said that. But you’ve got to be on time.”
Then he turned and went back to his car. Victor stood watching him disappear in a cloud of dust. He was driving far too fast. Victor thought that was typical of a white man who felt insecure and exposed when he entered a black township. For Stewart it was like entering enemy territory. And it was.
He grinned at the thought.
White men were scared men.
Then he wondered how Jan Kleyn could stoop so low as to use a messenger like that.
Or might it be another lie from Stewart? Maybe it wasn’t Jan Kleyn who sent him? Maybe it was somebody else?
The kids playing with the hubcap were back again. He went back into his hut, lit the kerosene lamp, sat down on the rickety bed, and slowly slit open the envelope.
From force of habit he opened it from the bottom up. Letterbombers nearly always placed their detonators at the top of the envelope. Few people expecting a bomb through the mail opened their letters the normal way.
The envelope contained a map, carefully drawn by hand in black India ink. A red cross marked the meeting place. He could see it in his mind’s eye. It would be impossible to go wrong. Apart from the map there was a bundle of red fifty-rand bills in the envelope. Without counting, Victor knew there were five thousand rand.
That was all. There was no message saying why Jan Kleyn wanted to see him.
Victor put the envelope on the mud floor and stretched out on the bed. The blanket smelled moldy. An invisible mosquito buzzed around his face. He turned his head and contemplated the kerosene lamp.
Jan Kleyn, he thought. Jan Kleyn wants to see me. It’s been two years since the last time. And he said then he never wanted anything to do with me again. But now he wants to see me. Why?