She made sergeant only a month ago. She doesn’t know what she’s doing and she’ll get in the way.’
He saw Zangwa’s face change and swung round to see Mbotho standing behind him. She pushed past them, looking grim.
The meeting was in the section commanders’ office, used for everything from community liaison to storing junk. Stuffed into it were three desks pushed together to form a table, hills of backpacks, broken filing cabinets and an assortment of drunken chairs. Dirty cream walls featured huge black and white maps of every road of every community section in Cape Town central.
Schalk navigated obstacles and found himself a seat, cursing Zangwa under his breath. Ball-breaker, he thought. Most frustrating person I ever met. How many times had the two of them argued in the – was it really only one year – since she became his boss?
Another affirmative action appointment, Zangwa was about 40, uptight and strict. As soon as she arrived she labelled Schalk an Afrikaner thug. On his side, he’d picked her as a government plant, and he still wasn’t sure about that. She wouldn’t have been sent from Gauteng, wouldn’t be so clearly destined for glory, unless she had contacts. Nobody knew who those contacts were or what they had in mind.
So the first month or two were rocky. Lately, he had to admit, things had eased between them. She was starting to respect his skills and he acknowledged her political smarts. When he thought about what they could have been landed with, the crooks and incompetents driving other stations into the dust, he felt better.
Winnie Mbotho appeared at the door, shoulders hunched and radiating anger. She armed herself with coffee courtesy of the station PA, Tiny Qoma. Tiny and Mbotho were both Xhosa but that was where it ended.
Mbotho was a solid six foot, hair in a barbershop cut, short at the sides and bushy on top. She wore her usual black jeans, Doc Martens and a safari-style military waistcoat with pockets all over the front.
Tiny, on the other hand, was short and stocky. She had a range of wigs and today’s was a doll-like synthetic apricot. Her skirt strained over her thighs, not quite meeting a top that presented breasts like melons in a tray. They transfixed Sergeant Rajendra Jamal who stared open-mouthed as she leaned forward with a plate of biscuits, a Zangwa management initiative.
Tiny said sharply, ‘You put your eyes back in your head, Rajie.’
Jamal tore his gaze away. He saw Schalk watching him and grinned, then realised he’d caught Colonel Zangwa’s attention and busied himself with his papers.
Max Myerson was next to arrive. Maxie was overweight, shorter than regulation height, with a wide sloppy mouth, blue eyes and an ego as big as America. It was hard to know why he’d become a cop. He came from a prominent Jewish family and must have been the black sheep because you could count the number of Jewish cops on the fingers of one hand. Rumour had it he’d been kicked out of Medicine at UCT. Maxie was head of intel at Cape Town Central. He avoided leaving his desk as far as possible but when you put Maxie and information together you got something wonderful. He fetched coffee and three biscuits, winked at Schalk, hoisted up his jeans and sat down heavily.
Joepie Fortune, sunglasses on his head, was last. As usual, he was dressed way above his pay scale in a white open-collar shirt, leather jacket and black pants. Nobody knew how he did it. He took the chair next to Schalk, spun it round and asked, ‘Well? Did Nkosi bump you?’
Before Schalk could answer, Colonel Zangwa rapped on the table. ‘OK, good morning, team,’ she said. ‘Let’s keep this informal.’ She took up her papers. ‘I want to start with the main items on today’s agenda, the Pieterse investigation and the election.’
Jamal raised his hand like a schoolboy. Zangwa fixed him with a death stare and he retracted it. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued, ‘Petrus Pieterse. I’m sure you all appreciate this is a very public and politically sensitive case. Captain Lourens is in charge, working with Sergeant Mbotho. Captain Lourens, update us.’
Ignoring Joepie’s nudge, Schalk took them through what he already knew. Further down the table, Mbotho made notes in a shorthand notebook. She didn’t look up.
He said, ‘Pieterse’s wife gets back from Namibia tonight. Until we talk to her, our priority is to follow up Trevor Malgas, but I’m not convinced it was a farm murder or even a robbery. It doesn’t make sense. Pieterse wouldn’t clear the decks and turn off the alarms for someone like Malgas. We need to find out what Pieterse’s been up to lately and also if anything in his past’s come back to bite him.’
‘Jesus,’ said Maxie Myerson. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of digging. That dude got up to some serious shit. Black Friday, for example. I bet the families are all over the place now.’
Jamal was still sulking from Zangwa’s put-down. He said, ‘So what’s Black Friday?’
‘Didn’t they teach you anything at school?’ asked Myerson. ‘How can you not know about Black Friday?’
Winnie Mbotho pushed her notebook aside, leaned forward. She stabbed a finger on the table. ‘Black Friday,’ she said, ‘was a terrible atrocity against our people. It should never be forgotten. Have you heard of Kromrivier?
Jamal shrugged, grinning stupidly.
‘What about Vlakplaas?’
More grinning. ‘Kromrivier and Vlakplaas,’ Mbotho said, ‘were farms, places where the security police’s death squad did their dirty work. They killed people there, tortured them. Vlakplaas was in the north, Pretoria. Kromrivier was here in the Cape.
‘And that’s where Piet Pieterse and Brian de Jager, they worked there with askaris, who–’
‘He probably doesn’t know what an askari is,’ said Maxie Myerson, mouth full of biscuit. Jamal shrugged again.
‘An askari is what we call black Struggle fighters who were turned’ – Mbotho put turned into quotation marks – ‘were turned and became spies or soldiers for the apartheid regime. Pieterse and De Jager got their askaris to find eight young guys from the townships. The askaris told these guys they were from the ANC and recruited them to be anti-government activists. This was in the 80s, there were bombs, riots, everything.’
Mbotho’s eyes flashed. ‘They took them to Kromrivier and trained them to blow up a police van. The boys – some of them weren’t 20 yet – when they got to the place, the police and army were waiting. They ambushed them, shot them all dead. Even though they tried to surrender. Then they planted guns on the bodies and said they were MK terrorists.’
‘Why did they do such a thing?’ asked Jamal.
‘To get money,’ answered Colonel Zangwa, ‘and government support to back their cause. Thank you, Sergeant, this isn’t a history lesson. Captain Lourens, continue.’
Mbotho subsided, shaking her head. Schalk kept his face bland but his mind was buzzing. The last thing he needed, a fanatic. Did she have any personal connection to Black Friday? Meanwhile he realised how much that applied to him, too. Did anyone know? It hadn’t come out at the Commission, the photos didn’t show it. He saw Joepie looking at him quizzically, cleared his throat.
Colonel Zangwa broke in. ‘As I said, Captain Lourens will partner with Sergeant Mbotho–’
‘But if necessary, others will be involved.’ Schalk prepared for battle but Zangwa ignored him.
