Thirteen Hours (29 page)

It was dead still.

He checked the garden. Back to the house.

A waste of time.

Then the front door opened. A man appeared. Barry focused on him
and waited. An old man stood in the front door. Dead still.

Josh and Melinda Geyser were sitting close together at the
big oval table in the conference room when Dekker opened the door. They looked
at him expectantly, but said nothing until he was seated - one chair away from
Josh.

'Inspector Griessel and I don't believe you are suspects in
the case at this stage ...'

'At this stage?'

'Madam, the investigation has only just begun. We—'

'We didn't do it,' Josh said emphatically.

'Then help us to take you off our list.'

'Who else is on the list?' asked Melinda.

Dekker wanted to shut her up. 'We are trying to trace a
parcel.' He saw the fright on her face.

'What parcel?' asked Josh.

'I am not at liberty to tell you, Mr Geyser, but I am asking
you again: help us.'

'How?'

'Give us permission to search your house, so we can make sure
there is nothing that connects you with Barnard's death.'

'Such as?'

'A firearm. You can refuse, and we would have to obtain a
search warrant. But if you give permission ...'

Josh looked at Melinda. She nodded. 'Go ahead. There isn't
anything.'

Dekker looked at her intently. He saw only the decisiveness.
'Wait here, please. I will be back as soon as possible.'

When Mbali Kaleni walked through the double ground-floor doors
of AfriSound there were four white people standing in front of the black
receptionist, in animated conversation.

'Excuse me,' said Kaleni and held up her identity card.
'Police.'

All four turned to her. One had a camera slung around the
neck.

'Are you here about the Barnard case?' a young woman with
very short blonde hair asked.

'Are you from the newspapers?' asked Kaleni.

'Die Burger
,' the woman said. 'Is it true that
Josh and Melinda Geyser are being questioned in there?'

'I don't talk to the media,' she said and directed herself
towards the receptionist.

'Inspector Dekker.
Ngaphakathi?'
'Yes,
he's inside.'

'Please,' another journalist called out, 'are the Geysers
here?'

Kaleni just shook her head as she climbed the stairs.

'Izidingidwane.'

Rachel Anderson lay stock still, but she couldn't hear
anything.

Had he just opened and closed the front door?

She barely breathed.

There were footsteps, scarcely audible: one, two, three,
four.

Then silence.

'The policewoman told me you are an American girl,' said the
same voice she had heard earlier. She was startled by the abruptness and then
she tensed as she realised he was speaking to
her.

'I saw you when you jumped over the fence. I saw how scared
you were. And then, the men in the Land Rover ...' There was great compassion
in the voice, but the fear that he knew she was there paralysed her.

'The policewoman told me those men are hunting you, that they
want to hurt you.'

She breathed through her mouth, silently.

'You must be very frightened, and very tired. I suppose you
don't know who to trust. I will leave the door unlocked. If you want to come
inside, you are most welcome. I am alone. My wife died last year. There is food
and drink inside, and you have my word that no one will ever know you were
here.'

Emotion welled up in her. Self-pity, gratitude, the impulse
to leap up.

No!

'I can help you.'

She heard feet shuffling.

'I will be inside and the door is unlocked.'

It was quiet for a moment before she heard his footsteps moving
away again. The door opened and shut.

Then there was the roar of a cannon and her whole body jerked
in alarm.

Fransman Dekker stopped for a second in the passage of
AfriSound, deep in thought, one arm folded and the other on his cheek, staring
at the simple patterns of the long woven dhurrie on the floor. All the doors
around him were closed: the Geysers behind him in the conference room, Mouton
and his lawyer in the office on the left, the accountant Wouter Steenkamp on
the right.

He should phone Bloemfontein and find out what they had, he
must go to Jack Fischer and Associates, he must search Barnard's office, he
must talk to Natasha about Barnard's schedule yesterday. He didn't know which
of these to do next and he was not keen on Jack Fischer or Natasha Abader. The
detective agency was full of whites, all ex-policemen who loved to sing to the
press if they could show the SAPS in a bad light. Natasha was a temptation he
did not need. The story of Adam Barnard, womaniser, was a mirror held up to
him. He didn't want to be like that; he had a good, pretty and clever wife who
trusted him with her life.

The cannon roared the noonday shot from Signal Hill, breaking
his train of thought. He glanced up and saw fat Inspector Mbali Kaleni's stormy
face approaching through the reception area, or lounge, or whatever these music
people called it.

'Fuck,' he said softly to himself.

Benny Griessel heard the cannon as he crossed the threshold
of the Caledon Square police station and thought how it startled him every
time; he would never get used to it. Was it really only twelve o'clock? He saw
the long-haired photographer trotting across to him from inside, eyes
searching, with a pack of photos in his hand.

'Are you looking for Vusi?'

'Yes,' said the photographer. 'He's just missing.'

'He's gone to Table View. You're fucking late.'

'We had a power cut, how am I supposed to make copies without
electricity?' the photographer asked and angrily held out the prints to Benny.

He took them. 'Thanks.'

The photographer walked off without a word. Indignant.

Griessel looked at the print on top. Rachel Anderson and Erin
Russel, laughing and alive. Light and dark, blonde and brunette. Russel had the
face of a nymph, with blonde hair cut short, a small pretty nose, big green
eyes. Rachel Anderson was sultry, her beauty more complex, dark plait over her
shoulder, long, straight nose, wide mouth, the line of her jaw enchanting and
determined. But both still children, with carefree exuberance, eyes bright with
excitement.

Behind them, brooding, was the only other African iconic
mountain landmark, Kilimanjaro.

Drug mules?

He knew anything was possible, he had seen it all before.
Greed, recklessness, stupidity. Crime had no face; it was a question of tendency,
background and opportunity. But his heart said no, not these two.

She was torn between her fear of trusting anyone, and the
decency in the man's voice. She couldn't stay here, because someone knew where she
was; she couldn't go back to the streets, it would start all over again. The
knowledge that the door was open just a few steps away, offering a safe haven,
food and drink, overcame her and won every argument.

She got up slowly, heart racing, aware of the risk. She
picked up the rucksack and crawled on her knees, avoiding the thick, scratchy
branches higher up, to the edge of the leaf curtain.

There was a small stretch of paved garden path, a single
step, a low veranda, a brown doormat saying
WELCOME
and the wooden door, its varnish faded with age.

She hesitated there, considering the consequences one last
time. Then she crept the last few centimetres, blinking in the bright sunlight.
She stood erect, straightening legs stiff from lying so long. She walked fast
with long strides over the path, the step, the shaded part of the veranda. She
put her hand on the door handle of oxidised copper, cool under her palm,
breathed in and opened the door.

Barry wasn't looking through the binoculars. They were too
heavy to hold up permanently without a prop.

His head was turned a few degrees away, looking up the street
towards Carlucci's. He saw movement in the periphery, more than a hundred
metres away at the house. His head turned and he screwed up his eyes. He saw the
figure for an instant, small at this distance; the blue of a garment was the
shade he was looking for. He lifted up the binoculars, looked through them and
adjusted the focus.

Nothing. 'Shit,' he said out loud.

He kept the lenses trained on the front door. He could only
see part of it behind the baroque detail of the veranda, but there was no one
there.

Was he imagining things? No, he had seen it. He blinked,
concentrating. Small figure, blue ...

'Shit,' he said again, because it might have been imagination.
Up on the mountain he had thought he had seen her a few times; it had pumped
adrenaline in his veins, but when he adjusted the focus it was usually a false
alarm, optical illusions caused by hope and expectation.

He lowered the binoculars and looked at the house with his
naked eyes. He wanted to reconstruct the dimensions of that moment.

She had been moving there. Just there, right hand on the
doorknob? Left hand stretched back, holding something. The rucksack?

Binoculars up again. Where had she come from? For the first
time he recognised the potential of the bougainvilleas, the old overgrown
arbour. He studied the depth of it. 'Fuck me,' he said, the possibility slowly
dawning in his mind, the way she could have run, the fat policewoman inspecting
the flower bed on the left.. .

He reached for his cell phone in the pocket of his denims,
took it out without taking his eyes off the house.

It had to be her. It explained how she disappeared without
trace. He was almost certain.

Almost. Ninety per cent. Eighty.

If he made a mistake ... 'Shit!'

The house was quiet and cool.

She stood in the hallway and listened to her own breathing. A
classic piece of wooden furniture stood against the wall, with a large oval
mirror above it. Alongside were dark wood-framed portraits of bearded faces in
black and white.

One step forward. The floorboard creaked and she stopped. To
the left a large room opened up between two plain pillars; she leaned forward
to look inside. A lovely large table with a laptop almost lost between piles of
books and papers. Shelves against the walls crammed with books, three big
windows, one looking out on the street and the fence she had jumped over. An
old, worn Persian carpet on the floor in red, blue and beige.

'I'm in the kitchen.' The man's voice directly ahead was
soothing, but she felt frightened anyway.

Books. So like her parents' house. She must be safe with a
book person.

She walked in the direction of the voice. One of the
rucksack's straps dragged whispering across the wooden floor.

Through a white-painted door frame was the kitchen. He stood
with his back to her. White shirt, brown trousers, white sports shoes; he
looked like an aged monk with his thinning grey hair around the bald spot that
shone in the fluorescent light. He turned slowly from his work at the table,
wooden spoon in hand.

'I'm making an omelette. Would you like some?'

He was older than she had thought at first, with a slight
stoop, a kind face between deep wrinkles, loose skin above the red cravat
around his neck, liver spots on his head and hands. His eyes were watery, faded
blue, mischievous behind the over-large gold- rimmed spectacles. He put the
spoon down beside a mixing bowl, wiped his hands on a white dishcloth and held
one out towards her. 'My name is Piet van der Lingen,' he said, his smile
revealing white false teeth.

'Pleased to meet you,' she said automatically, a reflex, and
shook his hand.

'Omelette? Perhaps some toast?' He picked up the spoon again.

'That would be wonderful.'

'You are most welcome to hang the rucksack on the pegs at the
door,' and he pointed with the spoon to the hall. Then he turned back to his
mixing bowl.

She stood there, unwilling to accept the relief, the
anticlimax, the relaxation.

'And the bathroom is down the passage, second door on the
left.'

'I saw her,' said Barry over the phone, sounding more certain
than he felt.

'Where?'

'She went into a house just a block from the restaurant.'

'Jesus. When?'

'A few minutes ago.'