Trevor blinked. “I’m confident I can recognise a living person when I see one, Sergeant.” Motaung cleared her throat and clipped her eyes at him in reproach. “He was still lingering on the lawn where this lady herself had been sitting before he cornered her. I left him there and went back to the front desk.”
“And what was he doing there?”
“I can’t say exactly.” Frowning, Trevor shrugged. “Like, he was just standing there. Like he was looking at something in the distance.”
Ncubane sighed. “At what exactly?”
Under the razor eye of his boss, Trevor did his best to bite back a retort. “I really couldn’t say. It was late and very dark; he was by the trees near the boys’ quarters. It could’ve been anything. Maybe he was simply getting some fresh air and calming down after being …” he glanced at Vee with the tiniest of smiles, “woman-handled.”
“Did you see this purple scarf she claims she left behind? On the lawn?”
Trevor thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I didn’t see a scarf anywhere nearby. But she didn’t have it with her when she left. I didn’t notice anything like that on her when she left the gate.”
As Motaung shared a quiet word with Trevor before dismissing him, Ncubane turned to Zintle. “Sisi, now I’m going to ask you some questions neh, and I want you to tell me the truth. Don’t try to be clever and just change things nje and think I won’t notice.” Zintle kept her eyes on the ground. Tiny bumps prickled up on the skin of her arms and collarbone. “Do you hear what I’m saying?” Ncubane barked, making Zintle jump. “Don’t bullshit me, my girl, or there’ll be serious consequences. You understand me?”
Lovett, silent and observant with nothing save his usual slight frown, exhaled loudly. Vee narrowed her eyes and put a hand on the maid’s arm. Why did black people in authority still feel the need to treat each other like this, belittling each other publicly to flaunt how inflated their chests were? Trevor the Snide had breezed through his interview burn-free, but clearly he wasn’t black enough to incite such nonsense. Even Motaung grimaced, pivoting on her heels to shoot Ncubane a frosty glare.
“Let’s watch our tone, shall we, Sergeant,” she intoned. “My staff have been very cooperative so far, and we’d like to keep the atmosphere as pleasant as we all can manage during this unfortunate event.”
“Hhmph,” came the policeman’s reply. “Do you know this woman?” He jabbed a finger at Vee so violently she took a step back.
Zintle looked confused. “Yes.” She nodded furiously. “Yes.”
“Eh-hehh. How do you know her?”
Zintle’s confusion doubled. “From the hotel. I met her here. I told you.”
“Nxc! Just answer me what I’m asking. Tell me again what happened this morning.”
Zintle cleared her throat. “I came in for my shift this morning at five o’clock. After I changed into my clean uniform, I dumped the dirty one into the laundry trolley and pushed it outside for the guys who load the laundry truck to find it. While I was outside, I saw Lwazi and Thomas talking between themselves like something was wrong.”
“Those are the two groundsmen?”
Zintle nodded. “They said they found a dead body, a white guy, who was hanging by their quarters. We went to look.” She swallowed hard at the memory. “I didn’t want to but we did. None of us recognised him, but we can’t know all the guests. We started discussing what to do. I told them to go call the police and I would find someone who could help. So then I went across and called this lady, Ms Johnson, and she came with her friend. They waited with me until you guys came.”
“Oh-ho-o-o. So you don’t know this lady from anywhere? Yet of all the people at this hotel, you went all the way across the fence to fetch her? Before you even told your manager?”
For a moment as Zintle hauled in a gigantic lungful of air, lips blowfish-puckered, she resembled a desperate molecule, sucking in every drop of ambient energy to boost her own force field. Eyes closed, she said in one rushed breath: “I met her outside last night when the guests were arriving for the party. I was admiring her dress and she was nice, she told me where she bought it. We talked a bit.”
“Oh? And did she also tell you she and her colleague were gate-crashing a private event?”
Zintle barely paused. “I work here, I don’t question the guests. What I remembered is she mentioned they were investigators. At first I thought she meant they came to check the hotel, like an audit, but she said they look into crimes. I thought she meant like private investigators or with the police somehow, that they would know what to do if there was a murder. That’s why I went to her.”
Good girl, Vee exhaled along with her. Well done.
Ncubane snorted and flailed an arm. “Hhayi mhani! They are investigative journalists! Those ones who look into stories and then write it for the newspaper. They are not private and for sure they don’t work for us. They don’t open or close police investigations. Now our case will be spread all over the papers! You –” His face was a thundercloud; he looked on the brink of spewing something akin to ‘bloody stupid cow’. Ms Motaung raised her eyebrows again and he spluttered to a halt.
“She said investigation.” Zintle pulled a sullen face, crossing her arms tightly. “All I heard was she could do investigations. So I called her.”
Lovett broke in with a low chuckle. “I beg your pardon Sergeant, but this sounds like a misunderstanding overblown. If we could just take this somewhere private and wrap it up …”
“My office,” Motaung crisped, striding toward the door.
Chlöe cooled her heels for another twenty minutes before they emerged. Lovett’s features remained inscrutable, but Voinjama’s gushed pure relief. Chlöe let herself breathe. Before they reached earshot, Lovett stalled Vee with a hand on her shoulder and a quick mutter. They both looked in Chlöe’s direction before descending into discourse so rapid and guttural that she could barely pick up any English in the mix. Chlöe sighed. They’d gone raw; she was out of the loop. Something was definitely up, but she’d have to follow that bunny down the rabbit-hole to Vee’s wonderland of secrets another time. They had bigger fish to fry.
“What’re we telling Nico?”
“Nothing but good news.” Vee’s tiredness cleared off with a smile. “Thank the good Lord for Trevor, and now another security guard on patrol after I left the grounds saw Berman too. My scarf may’ve gotten me into hot water, but that’s not enough to charge me with murder.”
“That and your ability to go from zero to Hulk in twenty seconds. I know you flip out when strange arseholes feel you up because …”
Vee’s face immediately folded into a snarl.
“… of the thing of which we never speak, that happened in the not-war that we never mention. Whatever, I get it, but you have to work on that. Seriously, choking the guy?”
Vee’s smile returned, sheepish. “I know. Sorry.” She fished her cellphone from her back pocket and eyed it a long time before slipping it back. “It can wait a minute. Food. There’s a demon hollerin’ in my stomach.
