Читать книгу Counting the Coffins - Diale Tlholwe - Страница 9

“He is an interesting individual, for sure. If only because he is such a common type today, almost normal,” Ditoro said quietly.

“Vicious, vain, vulgar and ignorant, and the people love him,” Thekiso said in a whispery monotone, as distant as if it was coming from the next room.

“But he has brains and is as slippery as ten sewer rats,” Ditoro, who knows about sewer rats, continued. He had been chasing them for much of his former life as a policeman. Although he spoke quietly, he was a big man whose presence inspired respect and apprehension. On his off days he sometimes broke out in bright colours and a joyful liveliness, but here at work he slumped into dark, shapeless clothing and something like hopeless gloom.

We were sitting in Thekiso’s office, where he was inspecting his favourite wall for fresh and interesting blemishes. Wednesday is never a good day here for starting new business. People want to get on with what they were already doing and hopefully conclude before the weekend. But I had requested this meeting and I think they were glad that I was showing a bit of the old enthusiasm, and were therefore willing to accommodate me.

“I thought it would take you a few days to take it all in,” Thekiso said with none of the same haste he had urged the day before.

“I knew some of it beforehand. It was a hot topic in certain sections of the media for a few days or weeks, then died down.”

“That’s right. So what do you do now?”

“I wanted to know if you could give me some background about the people involved here, especially Nkosi. I will then have my old comrade, the friendly journalist with the Jozi Journal, tell me a few things that were not in the public domain, things they did not publish. The rest I can find out by going into their back copies online.”

“You still see her?”

“In the normal course of my duties, yes.”

“As I have said before –”

“I know,” I interrupted him. “We should never trust journalists completely. They can turn around and make us their big story. But I want to look at everything from all possible angles.”

He grunted and shrugged, like the damage had already been done. Disconcerting, but I let it pass.

“All right, let me get on then,” Ditoro said with some impatience and got to his feet. He disliked the repetitious arguments that went on between Thekiso and me. “He was a common street thug in his youth. He is forty-four now. Married but separated.”

“Separated?” I asked sharply. “That woman who was there when Lesego . . .”

“That was her,” Thekiso said softly when I faltered. “She is a mother. They have lived apart for some years now and she’s not part of this.”

“Then why not divorce?”

“I can’t answer that; there are many other couples in the same situation and their reasons are all different. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I told them and my trembling inner self.

“Anyway,” Ditoro jumped in, in a rush to get over the awkward moment, “he had two known living children – one is now dead – and four others unacknowledged. A thief definitely, a rapist probably, and maybe even a murderer. Some suspect he was an informer for the previous government, but nothing can be proven. He was definitely arrested a few times but was never charged. He always seemed to be able to slip through the prison bars.”

“A slippery individual,” I said encouragingly. I was free to hate the man being described.

“He reinvented himself though, together with many others, just before the change of government. He became a loud noise in the street marches and political rallies,” Ditoro went on.

“No one said anything, questioned his past?”

“What was there to say and who was to say it? It was in the middle of the liberation euphoria. The release of prisoners, return of exiles and so on. It was the time of forgetting and forgiving. He’s smart. But he got involved in some crooked deals all the same, like a shady pyramid scheme that collapsed, as expected. He managed to get away from that one while his partners got arrested – very intelligent.”

“He is not intelligent,” Thekiso objected from his solitude. “He has only grasped the basic tools of surviving in a particular society at a particular period in history. The animals we keep as pets can do the same. It’s no indicator of intelligence or even foresight.”

“Maybe of animal cunning,” I said aloud, going along with Thekiso. Seeing how we humans have mismanaged our affairs so far, it might not be such a bad thing to have a bit of animal cunning, as a backup.

Ditoro ignored us and paced the room as if matching his words to his heavy steps.

“Anyway, he re-emerged as someone new a little time later. Had a lot of money from sources unknown but probably from his share in the pyramid scheme. He became the benefactor and patron saint of his community.” He stopped, cleared his throat and followed Thekiso’s gaze to the wall. “The local-bad-boy-does-good type of thing,” he continued in his usual unflappable tone. “Built small parks for children, Christmas parties for them and the aged, feeding schemes, a few bursaries here and there, but still finds time to run a nightclub that serves as a late-night strip joint and brothel.”

“He never changes,” I said with grim satisfaction. “Remind me. How does this pyramid thing work?”

“Why should he? It works for him. He had been so successful that naturally he began to believe in his own special star,” Ditoro said with unusual vehemence and resumed his pacing. “About the pyramid scheme, some call it the Ponzi scheme. Don’t ask me why.”

“Charles Ponzi,” Thekiso said.

“What? Who is he?” both Ditoro and I asked almost simultaneously, wondering if a new figure was about to be added to the mix.

“He was an American conman who did something similar there in the 1920s. At least, I think he was American. But continue.”

“Anyway, it’s really very simple –”

“It’s all very silly, you mean. You invite people to invest money and promise them outrageously high returns on their investments – far higher profits than anywhere else and in a ridiculously short time,” Thekiso interrupted in exasperation, probably at people’s unending folly.

“People are greedy,” Ditoro observed, looking through the window that offered a brighter view.

“And gullible,” I said. “They are just two of the most common human failings.”

“You pay old investors out of the money you get from new investors – that’s the short and long of it,” Thekiso concluded and consulted the wall for confirmation of his pessimism about humanity.

“Now I remember,” I said.

“Of course you do, there have been so many of them,” Thekiso said. “And this obviously can’t go on indefinitely.”

“At some point the organisers default on the payments. And they are gone,” I said. They nodded at me like I was the brightest kid in the class.

“Anyway,” Ditoro turned to face me, “come elections and he got in, collected a seat in the local council. Refused to be given any position and stepped aside but placed his stooge in there.”

“Smart talk and clever arguments,” I echoed.

“Clever as a cobra, that’s for sure. No doubt about it. He was praised for being unselfish. But of course everybody knows who the real boss is. The real council meetings are held at his home before anything can be decided at the so-called official council meetings.”

“But he must have rivals – it goes with the territory. People who could bring all this to light,” I protested weakly, a bit bored by this mischievous political nonsense that benefited no one but the politicians. It was like listening to a tale about wilful children who, having gained a much-yearned-for toy called freedom, were now taking turns listlessly kicking it to pieces. My seat suddenly felt too hard but I shifted position instead of standing up as I wished to do.

“One or two did raise their heads, made a fuss, were slapped down and soon sank into obscurity.”

“Uses intimidation perhaps? Threats, blackmail and so on?” I hazarded.

“No one is saying anything. Then of course the big mall thing came in. It was bigger than anything he had attempted before. It was also rumoured to be just a taste of bigger things to come. The irony is that there was money enough for everyone if it had been honestly and properly handled. But I suppose their greed got in the way and the results are there for all to see.”

“As they always are in the end,” Thekiso murmured obscurely.

Ditoro looked at him blankly for a moment before continuing. “Of course, the same old story,” he said. “The problem is this: this thing goes much higher than Sandile Nkosi and his cronies.”

“How high does it go?” I asked, waking up.

“It was far too big for a former street hustler, however many times he may have changed his colours. And the political muscle behind this . . . Because there must be. Who put him in contact with these foreign investors? And vouched for him?”

“Who was it then?” I asked.

He ignored me and went on with his own train of thought. “They are 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.”