Roadkill, page 15
“I was just saying—”
“And, Conrad, you can chuck that grin of yours out the window. We’re all in this together. One for all, and all for one.” Jakkals swallowed hard. Grimaced. “But Dippies is right about one thing: we’re racing ahead of ourselves.” He raised a finger, bringing Ferreira’s objection to a skidding halt. “I’m not saying we’re reckless or windgat. I’m saying we’re moving too fast. It’s become too easy. And when things become too easy, you have to be double alert to danger, otherwise you’re gonna land yourself in the kak.” Venter stared pensively into the empty cup. “Don’t forget where we’ve come from, manne. Don’t forget those times when things turned on their arse just like that.” He clicked his fingers.
“Like Operation Hyena, Jakkie?”
Jakkals winced, as if he needed the reminder. “Exactly, Conrad. Perfect example. You onthou how for three days straight we had the enemy on the run, like it was open hunting season. Track. Contact. Track. Contact. Every few hours, bam-bam! Bam-bam-bam, thank you, ma’am,” staccato’d Jakkals, picking off a group of blue-overall labourers struggling under the weight of a chest freezer. His voice dropped to a whisper. “And then what happened? Fok, I still get the night sweats over it.”
“Things went south, Jakkie.”
“That’s correct, Juan. Things went south. Out of the sky, the situation switches one-eighty degrees and we’re running for our lives, seeing our arses big time.” Jakkals sighed heavily. “Six good men. Gone. Forever … Anyways, who needs another dop?”
“I won’t say no, Jakkals.”
“Me two.”
“Me three.”
The mood in the Hummer had turned solemn. Jakkals lifted his cup. “To fallen comrades.”
Ferreira, Botes, and Dippenaar lifted their paper cups. “To fallen comrades.”
41
Tertius Smit was facing a serious dilemma: confess to a crime he didn’t commit or own up to the truth and face even worse consequences. Inferring from the blue riot boot pressing down on his cheek, of one thing he was certain: he was dead on either charge. One: The boot’s owner would not take lightly to a confession of sexual depravity with a blow-up doll. Two: Confessing to the alleged charge of murdering a diabetic jogger and burying the body on his farm was also out of the question.
Above him, the source of his pain shifted its weight. Flashes of white light strobed across Smit’s brain, and his crumpled face contorted further into something closely resembling a Shar Pei.
The policeman’s questioning had now entered its second hour, with no let-up in sight. For the past sixty minutes, Smit had not only bounced off the walls, and rolled and scrambled across the floor, but twice he had been trapped in the scrum without oxygen, and then punted over the pale. The man was now preparing to ruck him from yet another loose maul.
“Come now, Smittie, you must also do your bit for the team,” wheezed his interrogator, applying further pressure to the neck. A bubble of snot appeared at Smit’s left nostril, inflated, then popped like a balloon at a kid’s party. His eyes bulged. “You ready for some more, because this is just the curtain raiser, my friend.” With a feeble flap of his left arm – one of few limbs still capable of movement – Smit indicated in the negative. Again, his tormentor shifted position, bringing Smit nose-to-wiry-mass-of-black-hair sprouting from an inner thigh. A heady cocktail of overripe Camembert and stale urine descended from above.
Heaving like a bull, the policeman rolled off Smit.
Tertius Smit lay on his back, staring up at the water stain on the ceiling, unable to move, his body a broken sack of jelly, his bones crushed to powder. “Please, I’ll tell you anything you want.”
Sergeant Truter rubbed his aching knee. “I knew you would see the light, Smittie. You want to know why? Because you come from a good family. So … where’s the body? You can tell—”
Constable Delport was standing at the door, looking a lighter shade of his usual pale, his face not quite comprehending, as if unable to place the sweat-soaked scene on the raw concrete floor in the New South Africa.
“What the hell is it, Delport? Can’t you see I’m busy!”
“Sorry for interrupting, sir, but there’s someone here to see you.”
“So what! Tell them to fokken wait until I’m finished.”
“I don’t think they … he can wait. He says he’s an agent from Special Crimes Unit in Pretoria.”
It was Truter’s turn to switch a shade of pale. “Special Crimes Unit?” He attempted to stand up. “Help me, Delport; this bladdy knee of mine …” Pulling on Delport’s arm for leverage, Truter staggered onto his feet and straightened up. He tucked in his shirt and wiped the sweat from his face. “How do I look?”
“Fine, sir, except for … around your mouth. I have a tissue if you want?”
Truter accepted Delport’s tissue. “Is it all gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Special Crimes Unit, you say?” Truter ran a hand through his hair. “This is all I need. Where’s he now?”
“Waiting in your office. You want me to offer him a cup of coffee while you get ready?”
“Ja, whatever. Just … Just tell him I will be there in a few minutes. Tell him I’m busy on an important missing person’s matter … Do we still have those Lemon Creams?”
“I think we do, sir.”
“Feed him some of those to keep him occupied.”
“Good idea.”
Truter glared at his deputy. “So, what the hell you waiting for?”
“What about him?”
Truter had already forgotten about the interrogation. He turned to the murder suspect, who had in the interim crawled unnoticed into the far corner and was staring up at him like a traumatised nagapie. “I’ll be dealing with you later, Smittie, but let me just say one thing. If your dad was still alive, he would very disappointed in you. Very disappointed.” With a semblance of regained composure, Truter turned back to his deputy. “While you’re at it, Delport, give Smit here a cup of tea. With extra sugar.”
Truter’s brain was now looping back and forth, firing off questions like random anti-aircraft into the night sky. What the hell was SCU doing in Edendal? Internal investigation! What else could it be? Why else would they send an agent all the way from Pretoria? He suddenly remembered the pages he’d ripped from his charge book. Fok! What if the guy demanded to check the station’s records? How was he going to explain that one? These agents were a law unto themselves. They did as they pleased; they didn’t need a search warrant … His skin now turned cold. The hair on the back of his neck stood erect. It was the mountain of unsolved case files sitting on his filing cabinet – that’s what SCU had come for! Destroying evidence was one thing, but failure to perform one’s duty was a criminal offence. He let out a deep animal groan; the agent was digging in the files that very minute.
With no longer an inkling of doubt in Truter’s mind that this was a sting operation, the sequence of events was clear as day. One. Special Crimes had been tipped off about the bribery-and-corruption and professional negligence going down at SAPS Edendal. Two. SCU were here to do a forensic audit of the station’s finances, case files, and petty cash book. Three. His and Delport’s arrest would follow immediately after.
Things were not looking good. Not good at all.
42
Back behind the Hummer’s tinted windows, Jakkals Venter was now on a roll.
“Don’t get me wrong, manne, this op is a wet dream come true. We’re all making more bucks than we know what to do with. We’re driving new cars. We’re giving the wives overseas trips and fancy jewellery. We have holiday houses all over the country – Marloth Park, Stilbaai, Hartbeespoort, you name it. But we have to be careful. Ons moet paraat bly. Ons moet die disiplin hou. And … and we must learn our lesson from this Johnson boytjie. You all agree?” Ferreira, Dippenaar, and Botes nodded in unison from the back seat. “In ander woorde, we have to regroup and consolidate. Secondly, we must learn to put our feet up once in a while. The business isn’t going to sommer evaporate if we take our foot off the pedal. We’ve been going at this thing hard for how long now? Freddie?”
“You mean from the first client?”
“Ja.”
“Nearly ten years, Jakkie.”
“You hear that? Nearly ten years. For ten years the business model has been rock solid. We have a moerse good team with a great skill set. Our costs are under control. The profit margin is sitting at where? Freddie?
“Sixty-five per cent.”
“Sixty-five per cent! That’s way higher than even my white lion operation. We’re cruising, manne. So, please, I beg you, let’s not mess up by being slapgat. You agree, Connie?”
“Ja, Jakkie.”
“Hey, don’t give me that Ja, Jakkie, no, Jakkie, three bags full, Jakkie. I want you to agree because you understand what I’m saying.”
“I understand and I agree, but we also can’t lie around at home twiddling our thumbs.” Botes looked to Ferreira and Dippenaar for support. “We’ve all got bills to pay. You don’t want to know what my new place on the Vaal is costing every month. I’ll be sweating out my ring if the cash stops flowing.”
“You’re not listening, Conrad. Did I say the word Stop? Who heard me say Stop? See. Nobody. What I’m saying is we ease up and take hold of the situation.” Venter crushed the paper cup in his fist and jammed it into the Hummer’s mug holder. His jaw tightened. “Enough sweet talk. Let’s get one thing straight here. Until you find this boytjie, dead or alive, I’m pulling all further ops. For fuck sakes, where’s your pride! Lemme ask you something. Would you go hunting at Vaalwater, shoot a kudu, and then not track it? No, you wouldn’t. If it took you all day and night you would track that bastard until you found it. You wouldn’t just shrug your shoulders, reload, and take down another kudu. Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re right, Jakkals.”
“No diffs then with this latest situation on our hands. We keep looking until we get to the bottom of it; I don’t care how long it takes. Freddie, how much is the expected return on this one?”
“Five hundred and fifty grand, give or take a few for the next of kin. I must still work out the exact figures.”
Venter pushed back into the leather bucket seat and stared through the windscreen at the crowds starting to move in. “I rest my case. Five hundred and fifty thousand bucks down the drain if we don’t wrap it up.” He shifted his gaze to the rear-view mirror. “Anything else on the agenda? Freddie?”
“All good my side.”
“And you two? How did it go with client Henley and Mitchell?”
“Like a hot knife through margarine, Jakkals.”
“That’s more like it, Connie.”
“Except … a tiny thing with the predikant has come up.”
Venter winced. He had never felt good about this one: religion and business weren’t a good mix. “A tiny thing, what? You saying there’s a problem?”
“No problem. It’s just that they want to do a second autopsy.”
“What are you telling me? And who’s ‘they’?”
“Don’t worry, Jakkals, it’s under control. It’s just a formality. The family—”
“Fok, as if I don’t have enough worries on my plate. What you mean it’s under control? It’s only under control when he’s under six feet of North West earth.”
“Like I said, it’s just a formality. Sometimes the family wants a second opinion. I’ve got my buddy at State Pathology doing the paperwork. He’ll sort it out chop-chop and then we’re good to go again.”
“I told you we should have handled him the normal way,” muttered Dippenaar into his Martell.
“Here we go again. Do you always have to be such be a dipshit? I said it’s a bladdy formality. Even if they cut him open ten times, they wouldn’t find a thing.”
“Nice one, Con. Dippies the dipshit. That’s funny, hey, Jakkals?”
“Ja, fokken hilarious. I’ll take your word for it, Connie, but just make sure you sort it out pronto. Anyways, what’s the time?”
“Almost twelve.”
“Kak in a bucket! I have to work on my speech. We’ll finish this conversation before I head back to Brits later. In the meantime, I want you boys to chill out, have a koeksuster, enjoy the potjie, spend quality time with your wife and kids. Act normal! You especially, Dippies; you’re a bladdy overtight Hilux suspension spring about to snap.”
There was a reason Jakkals had always been a leader to others. Always would be, no matter where he found himself.
43
The cowboy hat and Wrangler denim jacket and jeans still didn’t match the picture Truter had conjured earlier in the interrogation room – a Men in Black agent wearing sunglasses indoors and a wire dangling from his ear. Instead, Pretoria had sent John Wayne to do their dirty work. Not that this made him any less uneasy about the SCU agent’s unannounced arrival.
His feet and Stetson on the desk, his coffee mug empty, Captain Johan Engelbrecht tilted back in Truter’s chair. “I’ll say one thing for your deputy here. He makes a damn fine cuppa.”
“How about another one, sir?”
“I’m good.” Engelbrecht dropped the chair forwards and pushed the mug and untouched plate of Lemon Creams to the side. “What also impresses me here, Sergeant, is seeing your deputy taking detailed notes.”
“If it’s not on paper it might as well not exist, is what I tell my staff.”
“Wise words, my friend.” Engelbrecht drummed his fingers on the desk. “Right, gentlemen, fire away. I’m sure you have tons of questions.”
Delport flipped back through his notebook. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I do have a few,” he said nervously. “There are some parts where I’m a bit confused.”
“What’s there to be confused about?” said Truter, eyeing the Lemon Creams.
“Go for it, Constable. Like I already said, this thing’s complicated.”
“Thank you, sir. My first question then is, how long has this been going on for?”
“Hard to say, but from what we’ve stitched together so far, minimum three years, maybe four. It was only end of last year that the life insurance companies sniffed a rat.”
Delport looked up from his notes. “If I’m understanding this right, the big life insurance companies, Santam, Momentum, Liberty Life, these big companies underwrite … Is that the right word?”
“Correct.”
“So these big companies underwrite the small independent insurance brokers when there’s a claim?”
“Yebo.”
“And these small guys are then basically agents earning commission from the big companies for selling their life insurance products?”
“Exactly.”
“But there must be hundreds of these small agents operating across the country?”
“More like thousands.”
“Easily thousands, Delport,” said Truter.
“And that’s why it’s so hard to track any fraud that might be going down?”
“You got it.”
Delport turned back a page. “There’s another thing I don’t quite understand—”
“Jissus, Delport, we don’t have all day—”
“Your man is asking the right questions, Sergeant. Keep going.”
“Thanks, sir. If I can then try sum it up, the process works like this …” Delport cleared his throat. “One. The insurance broker – that is, the agent – he sells a life insurance policy to Person A. Like you said earlier, someone who ticks the right boxes?”
“Ja, most of the time it’s some whitey who doesn’t qualify for full cover. Like your average middle-aged balie staring retirement in the face, who is now knuiping because he left his financial planning too late.”
Delport pressed on. “Two. To make an easy sale, the broker will offer Person A a deal he can’t refuse?”
“That’s right. And let me tell you something: you’d also snap up the offer if you were in Person A’s shoes. Because, just picture it … This gift horse comes knocking on your door, a respectable guy in a fancy suit and a fancy business card. Next thing, he’s offering you life cover with Momentum, or some other posh company, at an unbelievable discount. Not only that, he’ll make a few calls on the spot and sort out all the paperwork so you qualify for Comprehensive. Which idiot is going to say no to that?”
“What do you mean by ‘sorting out the paperwork’, Captain?”
“For starters, pumping up your non-existent income to high earner status. Or magically getting rid of your so-called pre-existing health conditions. Emphysema? High blood pressure? Diabetes? No problem, sir, we’ll take care of it. By the time the old balie has filled in the form, you’d swear he’s Hussain bladdy Bolt.”
Delport sucked on his pen. “Wow, sir, I see now what you mean by them making it easy.” He flipped the page. “Three. You said that when someone signs up for full cover, they also get a package of free benefits to go with it. What would these be?”
“Okay, so not only will your family be left smiling when you kick the bucket, but from the day you sign up you accumulate loyalty points for all sorts of prizes.”
“Like what?”
“Cellphones and airtime, fancy pens, bottles of whisky, pot-and-pan sets, holidays to Sun City, you name it. Too good to be true, hey?” Engelbrecht tilted back in the chair, allowing the police officers a breather. “That’s because it is.”
A field of frown lines had appeared across Delport’s forehead. “I think I understand it to this point, sir, but now I’m lost again. You said the broking agent subsidises the life insurance policy. Are you saying they help pay the client’s monthly premium, because that doesn’t make—”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
