smart people too, these investors. Much smarter than Sandile Nkosi. Why are they silent then? They must have lost a lot of money. And who were they? All those who were previously mentioned now deny any involvement with that shopping mall project.”
“Those local subcontractors – surely they can’t be that hard to find.”
“You think so? You’d be wrong then. What with some of them falling off that building. Did they suddenly get dizzy and lose their balance? Were they thrown off or what? Those who are still around are not talking.”
“If nobody is talking, who approached you then . . . to investigate in the beginning? It does not say in the file. Or maybe a page is missing; there are odd gaps,” I asked, trying not to sound like I was accusing anyone.
“He is gone too.” Thekiso finally turned away from the wall and rejoined the briefing. “He is nowhere. He did not arrive for a meeting one day and is still running late. We looked for him but he was gone.”
“This is one big ugly mess,” I said.
“Sure it is,” Thekiso agreed.
“Who is going to pay for the investigation then?” This was for Thekiso, whose rigid gospel was simple: No money, no investigation. This whole affair seemed suddenly too big for me; and quite honestly, also a little frightening.
The two looked at each other silently. Thekiso raised his eyebrows and Ditoro merely shrugged and lowered himself back into his chair. Thekiso then looked at me with a calculating yet oddly sympathetic look.
“Maybe it’s best you don’t know that yet.”
“Why? That’s unfair. I can’t walk blindfolded into this. Besides, they might have important information,” I argued. Did we have a client in the first place or was unearthing this inactive file just a ploy to take me out of myself? It seemed not to matter, as I remembered Sandile Nkosi’s conduct at the crash scene. The way he had treated Lesego and me like worthless nobodies whose pain and loss did not count for anything. Besides his precious son, he had been more concerned about his wrecked new car than about us.
“Or misinformation,” Thekiso was saying. “Do what you said. Look at everybody involved with an objective, fresh eye. Often it does help, a new perspective. Sometimes our clients are . . . ah, as untrustworthy as the people they want investigated. Also keep in mind that all that our client wants is his money back, no publicity or legal wrangling. So we’ve got to step lightly around this one, but fast.”
That was true enough – for most of our cases, in fact. At least I now knew that the client was male. That might prove significant.
“You will help, of course,” I said after a few moments.
“Right. This is not a solo flight like that Mafikeng thing.”
I had resented his calling it the “Mafikeng thing” at first, but it was just his way, and he and Ditoro had been there for me afterwards. Anyway, he has his secret side and I have mine.
“Ditoro, will you look at this man’s arrest record for me? When and why he was arrested. What happened to those charges and so on?” I tapped the file with a finger.
He nodded.
“We will have to try an unusual approach. He will not catch on for some time, hopefully.” Even as I said it there was an eerie echo of “doubtfully” behind the “hopefully”. Their narrowed eyes seemed to bear me out. Ditoro’s were inscrutable and Thekiso’s were focused somewhere a long way above my head.
“But this client was not the only one who got burnt,” I said.
“Right, find out about the others. That’s somewhere to start.”
“With the journalist, I think.”
“Start anywhere.”
Chapter 5
It was only two days later, on the Friday, that I sat down to a very late lunch with my journalist friend, Tokoloho Mohapi, who was popularly known by the diminutive of Tolo. I had rushed straight from the hospital to this place, hoping to find her still herself. It was a dark, nameless bar and restaurant in Nugget Street, off route from where the trendy congregate to congratulate themselves with expensive drinks.
This lower part of Nugget has always had that indefinable smell that hangs somewhere between an African herbal emporium and a Middle Eastern bazaar. It comes from the innumerable stalls that stand in front of anonymous stores, where anonymous people sell anonymous bundles with their turbulent cries and squawks. Mumbling vendors wanting to lead you down stinking and slippery alleys with oily spills of stagnant water to show you something special, just perfect for you and only you. The accents and features of the hawkers may change, but the smells remain the same . . . pungent, everlasting, intoxicating and oddly dreamy smells. Of spices and incenses from distant lands and climes.
I bought two shrivelled apples from a malnourished-looking little girl standing near the door of the bar, and told her to eat them. She looked shocked at this novel idea and backed away from me, almost upsetting the box of fruit behind her. Well, I had tried.
Tolo preferred this bar because she could get steadily drunk here without anyone recognising her and making a fuss. The people here did not read newspapers, not in this bar. So print journalists like Tolo were safe. But I sometimes wondered about her private-school accent when she got drunk and spoke English exclusively. What did the dull-faced and dead-eyed patrons make of it? But the only thing they ever seemed to care about was the sport on the large-screen television at the back. They were now minutely re-examining every match of the last Soccer World Cup. And they knew all about it, from the global political climate, to who was in and who was out, their connection to the inner secret dealings of FIFA, the conspiracies with silent partners in the World Bank and the local transport industry, the diabolical manoeuvres of the international media . . . The speculations and permutations were endless.
They also never seemed to be in any hurry to get anywhere, like to jobs or homes. They just stuck around, both men and women. The owner-barman cast a forbearing eye on them all and only occasionally would he raise his voice in mild reproof. Otherwise he kept his own counsel.
I had just been brushed off by an editor when I first met Tolo. It was at one of those debauched parties that were held every day under the pretext of celebrating our new democracy. Back then she always wore jeans, chequered men’s shirts and battledress-style jackets and boots, like she was in uniform. But they were always different, so she must have bought a lot of them. Today she had softened into a cream pants suit. Silk? What do I know. She also wore elegant-looking black slip-ons that left her slim ankles bare. I was the one in scruffy jeans, a chequered shirt and boots, but without a jacket of any kind.
There were a few faces I always found in here, seated at the same small round tables, with seemingly the same number of bottles and the same number of butts in the ashtrays before them. They never said a word to us or to each other but had taken to nodding at me distantly whenever I happened to come in.
“They think we are a cheating couple. That you and I are having an affair,” Tolo had informed me gravely and tipsily one long summer afternoon a few years back.
“Well. I suppose we do look like a pair of no-goods to some people.”
“Don’t worry, baby. Let’sh play along,” she had slurred. “They shympathise, they are on our shide. They are also running from shomething or shomeone. Hushbands and wives are at the top of the . . . the shit lisht.” She had banged her glass on the table. “We could have a real hot affair, you know, you and me. There are cheap-cheap rooms upstairs, and nobody ashks questions.” She had pointed with a weaving hand in every direction but upstairs. She had been gone on the double whiskies on top of a bruising altercation with her editor that morning. She had never told me what it had all been about, but these run-ins with her editor had been growing in intensity, from the little I could gather. I had backed off from that particular mess and hadn’t pried, just as I had steered clear of her vague but apparently colossal marital problems. I shied away even more from