A Sailor's Honour Page 3

  Maybe a little soft, De Villiers thought. He felt like strangling someone. He was sitting outside an office at the Howick Community Police Centre in Moore Street. Emma was being interviewed inside.

  Auckland, for all its greatness, has so many places to hide, so many places to run, so many places to melt into the crowd. Where to look for a seven-year-old child? There are too many places, so the police start at home. The parents are the usual suspects.

  When Emma came out of the office, her face was red from crying. She sobbed as she sat down next to her husband. De Villiers was called inside immediately.

  He felt like strangling someone.

  There were two police officers in the room. One sat behind a desk and indicated to De Villiers to take a seat across the desk from her. Mousy, slightly greasy hair. No make-up. No rings. Shirt with tie, not police issue. Detective Inspector Megan McCarten. Unsmiling. She probably doesn’t shave her legs, De Villiers thought unkindly. Child Protection Unit.

  ‘You know why we’re here,’ DI McCarten said.

  De Villiers nodded. A police officer may only be questioned by an officer of equal or superior rank.

  ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’ DI McCarten asked. She picked up her pen and looked up, ready to record the answer. ‘Start from the time you left your office.’

  De Villiers looked past DI McCarten to the second police officer. Small. Chinese. Manicured fingernails. Hair in a bob. Small earrings. Expensive shoes. Louis Vuitton handbag next to the chair. Probably not a fake, De Villiers thought. White gloves protruding from the handbag. For driving, De Villiers knew. With a matching hat, he expected. The Chinese women of Auckland protect their hands and faces from the sun. They don’t care that they might look like chauffeurs when they drive. She caught his eye and nodded.

  ‘I drove to Beachlands where I kept observation of a suspect. I came home. I went looking for my daughter when she didn’t come home. I called the police,’ De Villiers said. ‘The rest you probably know.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ DI McCarten said. ‘You know we need more detail than that, don’t you?’

  Prissy bitch, De Villiers thought, but she was right. ‘Ask me what you want to know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been in this position before.’

  ‘Let’s talk about your investigation,’ DI McCarten said. ‘Who went with you?’

  ‘I was alone.’

  She raised an eyebrow. De Villiers knew what she was thinking. Any interaction with a suspect should always be performed by investigators in pairs, just as DI McCarten and her partner behind her were doing. ‘The golf estate is near my home, and I decided not to waste resources by bringing DS Veerasinghe with me,’ he said. ‘I was just going to see what the man does and whom he meets.’

  ‘So there is no one who can verify your whereabouts, is there?’

  ‘My wife,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘We’ve already spoken to your partner,’ DI McCarten said. ‘And she can’t account for your whereabouts until much later.’

  De Villiers shrugged. ‘Of course. Only from the time I got home. At which time my daughter was still with her teachers. As you must know by now.’

  DI McCarten put her pen down. ‘No, Inspector, we don’t know that. As a matter of fact, her teacher can’t remember seeing her after 2 p.m. At which time you say you were in Beachlands. With no one to back you up.’

  So Zoë might have been taken earlier. The kidnappers might have had a start of two to three hours before he initiated the full-scale search by seven in the evening. Several agencies of the New Zealand government had sprung into action, including the Child, Youth and Family service, and the Advice Desk for Abused Women and Children. Within the police, the Child Protection Unit took over the investigation. De Villiers was immediately a suspect, because when a child disappears – especially a young girl – the father or an uncle is usually responsible. The junior detectives from CPU had listened to his story with ill-concealed scepticism and had made him walk and re-walk the route he had taken to fetch Zoë with them. The officers had knocked on doors and had spoken with the homeowners. They’d pointed to De Villiers at the gate. Here and there someone had remembered seeing De Villiers going towards the school and returning alone. ‘He came past twice,’ an elderly man had said. ‘Twice in each direction.’ The search had proceeded to the school, but eventually the detectives had taken De Villiers back to his house.

  De Villiers had considered telling the police about the phone call.

  Then they’d taken him and Emma to the Howick Community Police Centre.

  He looked at DI McCarten and wondered whether he should tell her that he’d returned home early to have sex with his wife. She’s probably never had sex before, he thought, and would never understand. She might even think of it as abuse.

  When he’d joined the force ten years earlier, there had been more than a hundred South Africans in the New Zealand Police already. The number was now closer to two hundred. He expected that each of them would make it their personal business to assist in the footslogging and paperwork accompanying a search of this nature. When a child goes missing in New Zealand, the whole community comes out to help. But Zoë’s abductors were not New Zealanders; that De Villiers knew. They were South Africans, and of a persuasion that made it unlikely for them to be in the police. They had probably served in covert operations for the SADF or SAP, and would likely still obey the orders of their former commanders.

  De Villiers maintained eye contact with DI McCarten but looked right through her. If Zoë had been taken at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, she could be many miles away by now. Whangarei to the north, Hamilton, Rotorua, Taupo to the south. Any of the islands east. Several airports including Auckland International. A boat out at sea. Or in one of the marinas. Any backyard in the suburbs.

  And here he was, sitting with an unsympathetic investigator answering routine questions when they should be out looking for Zoë.

  DI McCarten sat still. She tapped with her pen on the desk, not saying anything. It was a technique De Villiers often used. Say nothing. Look sceptical. Make the suspect sweat. And talk.

  He stood up. ‘You’re wasting my time,’ he said. ‘I’m going to look for her myself.’

  Behind DI McCarten, the Chinese detective caught his eye and nodded. She understands, he thought.

  ‘I’ll make a note on the file that I have warned you not to interfere with the investigation,’ DI McCarten said.

  ‘Very well,’ De Villiers said and left.

  He felt like strangling someone, but that was not the way of the New Zealand Police. Subtlety was their way. And compliance with the rules.

  De Villiers had no intention of being subtle or compliant. He remembered a story his brother-in-law had told him at a family gathering years before.

  An elderly Jewish couple had to care for their grandson for a week. Their son and daughter-in-law were overseas on a business trip. Crime was nonexistent in the affluent suburbs of Johannesburg in 1970, but their grandson was kidnapped in the street, his nanny pushed to the ground and kicked in the head. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of R200,000, enough to buy at least ten houses in the most opulent suburbs. The Shapiros didn’t have the money, nor did their son. The kidnappers had warned them not to go to the police. ‘If you go to the police, you will never see your grandson again,’ the voice on the telephone had said.

  Three days went by with the couple trying to raise the funds. The banks said no. Their friends wanted to know why, and what security was being offered. They had no answers. Eventually they were forced to go to the police. They were immediately referred to Brixton Murder and Robbery, a notorious but successful unit. ‘Don’t worry, oom,’ the head of detectives said. ‘We’ll give you the money and you can give it to them and then you will get your grandson back, guaranteed.’

  ‘But you mustn’t interfere,’ Mr Shapiro said. ‘Otherwise they’ll kill him.’ He choked on his tears.

  ‘Don’t worry, oom. We know how you feel. We’ll play
the game their way and leave you to do what you have to do to get your grandson back.’

  Late in the afternoon, Mr Shapiro was sitting with a briefcase full of banknotes on a bench in Joubert Park in Hillbrow. For half an hour, nothing happened. Were the kidnappers testing him? The park was busy: children played soccer with a tennis ball, a vagrant slept in a bed of cannas, a gardener in municipal overalls trimmed the edge of the lawn some distance away.

  A man came by on a bicycle and stopped in front of the park bench. ‘Do you have the money?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Shapiro said.

  ‘Show me,’ the cyclist said.

  Mr Shapiro opened the briefcase. The cyclist nodded and leaned across to take it. He flicked though the notes and closed the briefcase. He steadied it on the handlebars of his bicycle.

  ‘Where is my grandson?’ Mr Shapiro asked. He stood up.

  ‘All in good time,’ the cyclist replied. He put his foot on the pedal to ride off.

  The vagrant sat up suddenly. The gardener dropped his shears and pulled a gun from his pocket. More men dropped from the branches of trees. They surrounded the cyclist. The vagrant threw him to the ground and the gardener put his booted foot on the cyclist’s throat.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Mr Shapiro cried. ‘Oh, no! Now we’ll never find my grandson.’

  ‘No,’ said the head of detectives. ‘He’s going to tell us where your grandson is, and we’ll bring the boy home this evening.’

  The boy was home that evening. The kidnappers appeared in court two days later, the cyclist, his brother and a girlfriend. The cyclist complained that he had been beaten by the police. ‘I’ll make a note of your injuries,’ the magistrate said. ‘And I’ll refer you to the district surgeon and order the prosecutor to follow it up. You are remanded in custody.’

  The district surgeon noted the injuries on form J88. Three broken ribs. Fracture of the eye socket resulting in extensive bleeding. Dislocated finger. Complains of having been subjected to electric shocks, but no visible injuries on the penis or scrotum. Testicles swollen and tender.

  ‘Not justice according to law,’ Johann Weber had said. ‘But you know, sometimes you have to give the law a little push in the right direction.’

  On the way home, De Villiers stopped at the Countdown supermarket and paid cash for a cheap cellphone and prepaid airtime. He now had three cellphones: his police-issue BlackBerry, the phone he kept on a thong around his neck, and the cheap Nokia he would use for his own investigation.

  By midnight the Nokia had been fully charged and De Villiers had a list of every South African immigrant who had received military training before arriving in New Zealand. The IT specialist at Police HQ assured him that the database of the Immigration Service was accurate and up-to-date. At the press of a command button, his computer screen filled with the details of men and women who had served in the military back home. De Villiers scanned the list and decided to ignore all those who had served in the Navy or Air Force, but the list still ran into thousands, too many for an expeditious investigation.

  ‘Reduce it to those who held officer’s rank,’ he said.

  There were 431 names on the list. Still too many.

  ‘Can you identify their units?’ he asked the IT specialist. ‘Try the Special Forces Unit.’

  The computer responded immediately and spat out a list of seventeen names. De Villiers was number eleven on the list.

  ‘To which investigation do I log this?’ the IT tech asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet if there will be one,’ De Villiers lied. ‘I’ll let you know if there is.’

  He printed the list and sat down to study it. Ten Special Forces operators had arrived before him. They were spread across New Zealand. There were four on the South Island: two in Christchurch, one in Dunedin and one in Weymouth. Most of the North Islanders were in Auckland, but there were three in Wellington and one in Rotorua.

  He recognised five of the names. Two on the South Island. They were good men; men with initiative who would think for themselves and not blindly follow orders for the sake of obedience. An idea started growing in his mind.

  In Durban, Johann Weber was struggling to persuade the charge office sergeant that his wife had been abducted. ‘We don’t list a person as missing until forty-eight hours,’ the sergeant insisted.

  Weber returned to his office to consult a colleague who was reputed to have contacts high up in the police. He knew that a conventional police search and investigation would produce no result. Weber was advised at lunch time that the initial police investigation had revealed no more than that his wife had been taken away by armed police in riot gear. The deputy provincial commissioner had no idea what operation under his command might have led to Liesl Weber being arrested. The commander of the Special Investigations Unit had no information and suggested that the operation might have been conducted by a unit from one of the other provinces. ‘But in such a case,’ he added, ‘protocol requires that the Provincial Commissioner be advised in advance.’

  Commissioner Msani could not be raised on the phone.

  ‘The commissioner is at a conference in Budapest,’ his secretary explained. ‘He won’t be back for the next three weeks.’

  Johann Weber cancelled all his appointments and went home. He sat in his car and composed his thoughts. He knew that Pierre de Villiers had been involved in several covert operations during the apartheid years, some taking him far beyond the borders of the country, but knew very little of the details. De Villiers had been bound by an oath of secrecy, and there had been occasions when Weber had gained the impression that De Villiers was ashamed of some of the things he had done. When De Villiers had spoken of a mission, he never named any of the men involved. Everyone had a codename. The rank and file used nicknames. Rosie. Snickers. John Thomas. Officers were referred to only by their rank. The captain. The major. The general.

  The thought of a major’s involvement gave Weber an idea. He had met the major.

  He went inside and phoned Anton du Plessis, the deputy head of the National Prosecuting Authority, a classmate from university. They had dated roommates but had drifted apart after being posted to different provinces by the Department of Justice. Anton du Plessis was a career prosecutor and Weber had seen his name in numerous criminal cases in the law reports. Du Plessis was said to be incorruptible – an unusual reputation for a senior official in a department wracked by internecine squabbles for power and overspending on their budget – and fearless. After 1994, Du Plessis had prosecuted several of the powerful men who had facilitated South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons programme. Du Plessis now had to perform his duties with a bevy of bodyguards following him everywhere, but he acted as if they were not there.

  ‘No, we have no record of such a major,’ Du Plessis said, ‘but we are receiving rather curious intelligence of a bunch of hillbillies receiving paramilitary training and indoctrination on a farm between Hoedspruit and Phalaborwa.’

  ‘Are you in a position to make arrests soon?’ Weber asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Du Plessis said. ‘What I can tell you is that we are monitoring all traffic to and from the farm and all phone calls.’

  ‘They’ve taken my wife, Anton.’

  Du Plessis chuckled. ‘Let me tell you this, Johann. These people are wholly incompetent. Poor whites who are hardly literate and think they speak for the volk. They sing Nazi songs and wave an old flag around, but they couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. We’ll close them down in a month or so.’

  ‘Are you saying that I’m looking in the wrong place?’ Weber asked.

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘Where should I be looking then?’

  ‘I’ll phone you back,’ Du Plessis said. ‘I’ll ask the NIA if they know anything about your wife’s kidnapping.’

  When Du Plessis phoned back later, it was to say that the NIA had no intelligence on the matter and that, if they did, they were not telling.

  Tuesday, 16 Ju
ne 2009 4

  The phone rang at 7 a.m., twenty-four hours after the first call. Weber was still at his house in The Gardens in Durban North. In Auckland, it was early evening already.

  ‘Listen carefully because I am going to tell you once and once only.’ It was the same voice as the day before.

  Johann Weber listened without a word until the line went dead. Then he phoned Pierre de Villiers on his secret number.

  ‘Pierre, this is what they want. They want you to come to South Africa and then they want you to go to Hamburg with the major. You are to use your UK passport at all times.’

  How do they know I have a UK passport? De Villiers wondered. ‘What is there in Hamburg?’ he asked, but there was a nagging thought at the back of his mind. He had been to Hamburg before, with the major and others. The major had been running the operation and De Villiers had been just one small cog in the machine.

  ‘I have no idea. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions,’ Weber said.

  De Villiers made his decision quickly. ‘You can tell them that I’ll do whatever it is they want from me, but if they harm as much as a hair on Zoë’s head, I’ll come after them and wipe them out, every single one of them.’

  ‘Pierre, this is not the time to make threats.’

  De Villiers ignored the rebuke. ‘And there is a condition: I want to talk to Zoë every day. If they miss a call, I stop cooperating. This is non-negotiable.’

  ‘What if they say no?’ Weber asked. It was not an unreasonable question.

  De Villiers measured his words carefully. ‘Johann, there are three things you need to know about these people. First, they are men who understand negotiating positions and the value of a bargaining chip. They have Zoë and Liesl, but there is obviously something they want even more. And that is the reason they are putting pressure on me.

  ‘I want to speak to Zoë every day. This isn’t negotiable. And you should demand to speak to Liesl once a day, without exception. They have to know that we are not going to cooperate on the basis of vague promises.’