A Sailor's Honour Page 5

  Sandy had held her tongue throughout but couldn’t any longer. A teacher by profession, she knew the consequences of smacking a child. It was serious enough when it was your own, but smacking someone else’s child meant imprisonment.

  ‘If we get caught, you’ll get an extra three years for that,’ she said. ‘And I thought you said we shouldn’t hurt her. That those were our orders.’

  ‘It was just a spanking,’ Zirk Bester said. ‘And for your information, Miss, I don’t intend to get caught.’

  Wednesday, 17 June 2009 6

  The day had not started well. He had hardly slept and the troubles had started before he’d had his breakfast.

  Detective Inspector McCarten called while he was still at home.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’ she asked.

  ‘Like what?’ he asked defensively.

  ‘Like marital problems,’ she suggested.

  De Villiers was lost for words.

  ‘Perhaps child abuse,’ she added.

  ‘You know very well, DI McCarten,’ he said, speaking slowly and deliberately to control his rage, ‘that child abuse is a predominantly Maori problem and factually and statistically nonexistent in the South African immigrant community. White, brown and Indian.’

  ‘That’s not to say that isn’t what happened here,’ she interrupted. ‘Statistics mean nothing. The case fits the pattern. Child disappears. Man without an alibi. And I have yet to hear you deny it.’

  De Villiers lost his temper. ‘Listen, you stupid bitch,’ he shouted. ‘It’s your job to find my daughter, not to harass me with this crap. Now get off your fat bum and investigate.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing,’ she said calmly. ‘Exactly what I’m doing.’

  De Villiers kept quiet. He wondered how you go about finding a missing child. God knows, there is so much that could happen to a child, even in a place as safe and orderly as New Zealand, with a range from the ridiculously ordinary to the most devastatingly cruel. From sleeping over at a friend’s without telling the parents, to being abducted by a sadistic paedophile. From getting lost, to drowning in a drainage pipe while trying to retrieve a ball.

  He knew that none of these applied, but still didn’t know how you would go about looking for the child when nothing is known apart from the fact that the child is missing.

  Except that he knew more.

  ‘Well do your job then,’ he said. ‘But I’m telling you here and now that you’re wasting your time looking at me.’

  He cut the connection. She’s probably going to report me for calling her a bitch, he thought.

  He waited for the call that would allow him to speak to Zoë, but in vain. Eventually he left for his office in town and there he broke the rules. He called his most trusted junior to the office and gave her the numbers of all three his cellphones. ‘I want you to put a trace on each of these numbers and to tell me as soon as you know from where any incoming calls were made.’ Detective Sergeant Vaishna Veerasinghe nodded and left the office.

  Then he sat back and waited. They want something from me, and they’ll come to me, he said to himself. He expected them to call, but when the phone rang, he jumped with fright. He had expected them to phone on his BlackBerry, but it was the phone he carried on the thong that rang. He fumbled with the small buttons. When he put the phone to his ear, he was just in time to hear a man’s voice saying, ‘Say hello and give the phone back to me immediately.’

  There was a small pause, and then Zoë’s voice came through. ‘Hello, Dad.’

  De Villiers tried to speak but had lost his voice. He regained his composure just in time to hear the man’s voice again. ‘And that’s how much you’ll hear until I am convinced that you will do exactly as we say.’

  The line went dead.

  DS Veerasinghe phoned when he was on the motorway approaching the Khyber Pass glide-off. The connection was poor. ‘We’ve traced their call to the tower near Kawarau,’ she said.

  When he and Emma had first arrived in New Zealand, they had taken a three-week holiday and had driven the length of New Zealand in a cheap rental car. Thirty-five dollars a day had taken them all the way north to Cape Reinga and all the way south to Bluff. And everywhere in between.

  Kawarau he remembered as one of the in-between places, with nothing to offer except the bridge from where the first commercial bungee-jumping operation had been launched. De Villiers had jumped too, and stood in the queue waiting for his T-shirt, video and photograph. He’d smiled when the man in front of him had said, ‘It’s like first-time sex. All that anticipation and then nothing. It’s over before you know what’s happened.’

  But De Villiers wasn’t smiling now. Kawarau was near Queenstown, on the South Island. It takes at least three days’ driving to get there, so the kidnappers must have taken Zoë by plane. The small airport at Queenstown must have a record of all flights landing and taking off. He knew that by law all commercial flights would have to file their passenger lists at the airport. And private flights would have to record the registration number of the aircraft, pay the landing fees, and provide the pilot’s licence details. There was a possible lead here, and De Villiers wasted no time following it up.

  The Khyber Pass glide-off loomed and he fought his way across to the left, narrowly missing a truck trying to muscle its way towards the right-hand lane. De Villiers had to change gear and get both hands on the steering wheel. In the process, he dropped his BlackBerry. It fell between the seat and the centre console. He made it onto the glide-off and turned right into Khyber Pass Road and right again to get back onto the motorway. Half an hour later he was at Auckland Airport, his BlackBerry still wedged between the seat and the console. He made it onto the flight to Queenstown with minutes to spare.

  The flight was bumpy as a result of very strong winds coming across the Tasman Sea. The mountains were beautiful to look at, with their snowcapped peaks and dark valleys, but they made for swirling winds on the Pacific side. The landing was precarious, the small aircraft running on one set of wheels for a distance before the other side settled on the runway.

  ‘Kawarau? You mean the bridge?’ the young man behind the counter asked when De Villiers asked for directions from the car-hire desk.

  ‘No, the town,’ De Villiers said.

  The young man shook his head. He could hear from the accent that De Villiers was not a native New Zealander. ‘Are you looking for the bridge to bungee jump?’ the desk clerk asked. ‘In that case, it’s better to take a taxi into town. The bungee people have a shop in the centre of town and they run a shuttle service to the bridge for tourists who want to do a jump.’

  ‘No, the town,’ De Villiers said a second time. ‘Kawarau.’

  ‘There is no such town, sir,’ the desk clerk said. ‘The river is Kawarau, but the town is Frankton.’

  ‘Do you have a map?’ De Villiers asked.

  The map showed Frankton on the banks of the Kawarau River. De Villiers searched for his cellphone, but his pockets were empty.

  ‘I’ve wasted a whole day,’ he said to himself as he boarded the same aircraft for the return flight.

  When he came out of the airport in Auckland, he found two uniformed policemen at his car.

  ‘Who are you?’ one asked.

  De Villiers pointed at his car with the key. ‘This is my car. What are you looking for?’

  ‘I asked who you were,’ the policeman said. He was firm but polite.

  De Villiers produced his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector de Villiers,’ he said. ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Constables Lam and Reid.’

  ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ De Villiers asked.

  Constable Reid swallowed twice before he spoke. ‘We were told to watch the car until the Child Protection Unit arrives. Sir,’ he added belatedly.

  ‘DI McCarten, is it?’ De Villiers asked.

  They nodded.

  ‘Well, phone her and tell her to hurry up, please. I
have work to do,’ De Villiers said.

  Constable Reid turned away and made the call. ‘She wants to speak to you, sir,’ he said. He handed the phone to De Villiers.

  ‘Where have you been?’ DI McCarten demanded. ‘We’re looking for your child and you disappear without telling anyone where you’re going and you don’t answer your phone.’

  De Villiers had made a fool of himself, he knew, but he also knew that he couldn’t tell DI McCarten what had happened without getting himself and DS Veerasinghe into trouble.

  He handed the phone back to Constable Reid. ‘It’s your phone,’ he said. ‘You talk to her.’

  He had to lean deep into the car to retrieve his BlackBerry from under the passenger seat. Its battery was flat and he had to charge it while driving home.

  ‘Where were you?’ DS Veerasinghe asked when he phoned her. ‘I could hear you, but you weren’t responding.’

  ‘I dropped the phone,’ he said. He had no reason to pretend with her. He explained what he had done.

  ‘Kawerau,’ she said. ‘Not Kawarau.’

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The other side of Rotorua, just before Whakatane.’

  De Villiers would have to look at a map. ‘How long to get there?’

  ‘Three hours, I should think.’

  ‘How big is the town?’ he asked.

  She knew what he was thinking. ‘Too big for a house-to-house search.’

  ‘We’ll have to find another way, then,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘Be careful, sir. DI McCarten is after you,’ Vaishna said.

  DI McCarten is the least of my troubles, De Villiers thought. Compared to the people who are really after me, she’s a little pussycat. But she caught up with him faster than he had anticipated. He didn’t recognise the caller ID when his cellphone rang.

  ‘DI McCarten here,’ she said when he answered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I want you and your partner to come in for a recorded interview,’ she said. There was no please, by your leave or if its suits you.

  ‘I’ve told you what I know,’ De Villiers said. He wasn’t sure why, but she irritated him immensely.

  DI McCarten ignored his tone. ‘I want you to come in so that we can record an interview to be broadcast on the news tonight. I want you to look the camera in the eye and speak directly to the kidnappers and call upon them to bring your daughter back.’

  It was a trick and De Villiers knew it. ‘That’s never worked in the past, and I assume you have no reason to believe it will work now,’ he said.

  Her answer must have been rehearsed it came so quickly. ‘So may I record then that you refuse to cooperate in the investigation of the disappearance of your daughter?’

  De Villiers was about to say, ‘Yes, because I’m going to conduct my own investigation while you sit on your backside and harass me,’ but got the better of his temper. ‘I don’t believe that people who abduct children will ever heed the kind of call you want to make.’

  ‘So you refuse to help?’ she asked. ‘Is that the message you want to convey?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The message I want to convey to you, and which you may convey to the media, is that I am leaving the matter in your capable hands.’

  But he had no intention of doing that. There was too much of the soldier in him.

  In stark contrast with the relative luxury of the Range Rover Sport taking Zoë to the safe house in Kawerau, Liesl Weber was being transported in the steel-and-aluminium cage of the back of an old Land Rover. Her resolve not to cooperate in any way had caused some consternation in the beginning, and her abductors had the strictest instructions not to hurt or harm her in any way. Handling a recalcitrant prisoner without inflicting some pain is not an easy task at the best of times; much worse when the prisoner is a woman who bruises easily.

  After two days of indecision, the orders came to bring Liesl Weber to the Third Force lodge. They strapped her to a stretcher and carried her into the back of the Land Rover. They drove in the deep of the night along hundreds of kilometres of back roads with their blindfolded passenger sliding from one corner to the other behind them. Through coastal KwaZulu-Natal, Zululand, Swaziland and the eastern escarpment. It took twelve hours.

  When they arrived at the lodge, Liesl Weber was semiconscious, dehydrated and bruised all over. But unlike Steve Biko, another ab-ductee of the Third Force, she had survived the trip.

  Wednesday, 17 June 2009 7

  It was late but there was still time. De Villiers used his new cellphone and rang each of the names on the list of numbers Telecom New Zealand had provided. He had the names and they had the numbers. The dialling codes suggested the general localities where these sixteen soldiers now lived. All but two were at home and came to the phone. Each time De Villiers said that his cellphone was ringing and that he would call again. When he had finished, he had crossed fourteen names off the list. He eyed the other two names and rang the first for the second time.

  A woman answered at the first ring. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s me again,’ De Villiers said. ‘Could you please tell me where he is and when he’ll be back? This is really important.’

  ‘Are you Sandy’s boyfriend?’ she asked.

  De Villiers hedged. ‘Sandy?’

  ‘Yes, Sandy’s boyfriend.’

  De Villiers played for time. ‘I know Sandy, but she’s not my girlfriend.’ He elaborated on the lie as he progressed. ‘At least, she doesn’t think so.’

  The woman started crying. ‘He’s having an affair with Sandy, I’m sure. He said he was going pig hunting in the Ureweras, but I know he’s with Sandy.’

  ‘How do you know?’ De Villiers asked.

  She sniffed. ‘I spoke to her school and they said she’d taken two weeks’ leave. That’s exactly what he’s done. Taken two weeks’ leave.’

  They expect the operation to take two weeks, De Villiers thought. That is atypical for the recces, who specialise in surprise attacks and quick exfiltrations. There were Special Forces operators involved in Zoë’s abduction, but they were not behaving like typical recces.

  He was forced to lie again. ‘Do you have the school’s number for me, please? I had it but I’ve dropped my phone and now it’s not working.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But it’s in the book. St Peter’s College.’

  ‘Thanks,’ De Villiers said. ‘Did he say that he was going with someone else?’

  ‘He always goes with Mooikats,’ she said. ‘And he also cheats on his wife. With Sandy’s sister.’

  ‘Mooikats?’

  ‘Yes, his surname is Britz. Hendrik Britz.’

  De Villiers didn’t have to write the name down. It belonged to the next number he was going to dial. De Villiers was now certain with whom he was dealing. Mooikats was the nickname of a legendary recce operator who, according to the legend, went about barefoot on operations in the bush as well as in urban counterterrorism operations. While it had never been formally admitted, not even to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mooikats was credited with a number of assassinations both inside and outside the country.

  The next lie came seamlessly. ‘Do you have a cellphone number for him? I need to talk to Sandy, but I lost her number when my phone broke.’

  ‘So you are her boyfriend.’

  ‘Not really,’ he lied again.

  ‘Hold on,’ she said. He could hear her fiddling with something and guessed it was her handbag. ‘Here it is.’

  She repeated the number to make sure he had it down correctly. ‘And let me know if Sandy is with him,’ she said. ‘He’s in for a big surprise when he gets home.’

  De Villiers took a chance. ‘And the number for Mooikats, if I don’t get through to your husband?’

  She readily obliged. ‘They’ve been friends since their army days, and they always cover for each other.’ Recces to the death, De Villiers thought, even here, ten thousand kilometres from the theatre of war.

  De Villi
ers looked at his watch. It was too late to catch Sandy’s school principal at work. He phoned him at home and lied.

  An hour later he had four cellphone numbers. According to the principal, Sandy and her sister Cathy, a nurse at Auckland Hospital, had taken leave together to go hiking: tramping, in the vernacular. It had been a rather sudden affair and he had had quite a problem to find a locum PE teacher to stand in for Sandy.

  One of the cellphones was on Telstra and the other three on Vodafone. He called DS Veerasinghe. She was the latest addition to his team and he was glad to have her. She was always first to arrive in the morning and last to leave. At the selection interviews, she had impressed him with what she called her father’s philosophy. ‘Never leave your desk in the evening until you have done all the work on it.’

  Her husband called her to the phone. ‘I’m going to put your father’s philosophy to the test, Vaishna,’ De Villiers said. ‘I have another job for you and it’s urgent.’

  He gave her the list. ‘I need the phone records for each of these numbers for the last three months.’

  He waited for her to read the numbers back to him. ‘And then find out which cellphone towers are nearest to their current locations and, if they are moving, where they are heading.’

  ‘Is this still about your daughter’s case, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll get to it immediately.’

  ‘But this is off the record. I don’t want this to be logged in the investigation diary,’ De Villiers said. ‘This is part of something far bigger than my daughter’s case.’

  She had children of her own. ‘Nothing can be bigger than the case of a missing child,’ she said without fear of contradiction.

  ‘Get on with it,’ De Villiers said. ‘And please keep me informed.’

  Thursday, 18 June 2009 8

  The secret phone rang. De Villiers pulled it by the thong from under his shirt. He maintained his speed in the middle lane of the motorway.

  ‘Johann?’

  The caller ignored the question. ‘Speak to your daughter. Don’t try any tricks. You have one minute. We are listening in.’