‘Very successfully,’ Grace said. ‘You said you knew the man who may have abducted Toby Harrigan. What can you tell me about him?’
‘Andreas du Plessis. Yes, I do know him.’
‘If you know his name, you should call the police.’
‘He won’t be using that name here. He’ll be using false papers. I don’t know what his present name will be or where he can be found. If I did, I would have called the police straightaway. It’s more likely they’ll find him using the drawing they have. It’s a very good likeness.’
‘How do you know him?’
Brinsmead seemed to smile in that ruined face. ‘I’m going to have to destroy all the good impressions you have of me,’ he said. ‘I’m not a good man. I’m a very flawed man. But before I do, do you want to tell me something about yourself? What you do, for example?’
She laughed a little. ‘There isn’t much to tell. I have a dull job.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘I’m a public servant with the Attorney-General’s Department. I collate reports for the minister. It’s not very interesting.’
This description, as far as it went, was true. The reports were classified as top secret and dealt with issues of terrorism, gun running and terrorist financing but they were still reports. Grace worked mainly in intelligence analysis but also occasionally in the field on surveillance. It was nothing she could talk about, not even to Harrigan. If she had been asked why she did this work, she would have said it was to protect people.
‘You went from policing to something that was completely a desk job?’ Brinsmead said.
‘A lot of policing is paperwork. I have a background in law and criminology. I worked for the police because I wanted to have some practical experience.’
‘You make it sound very staid. But you don’t look staid.’
‘It’s just work. I was a singer once, in another life,’ she said. ‘I can sing but I wasn’t cut out to be a performer.’
‘Why not?’
‘You have to put yourself right out there when you perform and it’s always in front of strangers. I didn’t like doing that so I stopped.’
It was another simple sentence behind which lay a history of heartbreak and alcoholism and a worse memory: her old lover who, until recently, had stalked her; the man who had once raped her and given her the scar on her neck. She never spoke of these things, not even with her father and her brother, who were the only ones who knew the full story. She had hinted at the details with Harrigan but could go no further than that. She knew he had put at least some of the story together but had never tried to ask her any questions about it; she liked it that he hadn’t.
‘You wouldn’t be prepared to sing a few bars for me, just so I have an idea what your voice is like?’ Brinsmead said.
She laughed. ‘No, I don’t do that. Sorry.’
‘Another time maybe. I should get on with why I asked you here. There’s a fact we need to start with. I’m a gambler. It’s a fundamental aspect of who I am. I still gamble, although I don’t do it at the roulette table any more.’
‘Why is it fundamental to you?’
‘It’s how I see the world working. In the end, all life comes down to whether or not you’re holding the right cards. That’s true even for genetics. Someone has the gene for muscular dystrophy or Huntington’s chorea. Do they deserve to? No, of course they don’t, and who could make the judgement that they did? For each of us, it’s pure chance. If that chance goes against you, you can live badly and die violently. I’ve seen the world this way ever since I was thirteen and nothing has changed my mind. I’ve always had to play the odds. Mainly because a few years ago, I didn’t play the odds particularly well. I got involved with Jerome Beck and du Plessis. Or DP as he’s known to his friends, so called.’
‘How?’
‘About five years ago, I was working in London at a science research facility. I met Jerome Beck there. He was a financial manager. I recognised him when I saw his picture on the net after he was murdered.’
‘But you didn’t tell the police,’ Grace said.
‘No, I didn’t and you’ll know why when I’ve finished this story. I found out Jerome liked to gamble as well. We started going to casinos together. He knew I was badly in debt and getting deeper. He said he could help me. He was involved in a business venture of some kind, building infrastructure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If I was interested, I could use my ex-army skills to manage the project and I’d be very well paid. I would only need to be away for a matter of weeks, it was a fly-in and fly-out affair. I think we both accepted implicitly that his offer was a cover for something else and I always assumed it would be criminal in some way. But, as always, I went to the DRC as a gamble. I decided to do that even after I’d researched the country and discovered how dangerous it was. I thought, if this is where the possibilities are, I’ll follow them and see where we end up. God knows, I needed the money badly enough. What are you thinking?’
‘I was wondering why you’d be so open about yourself with me,’ Grace said. ‘I can understand you telling this story to the police but not to someone you’ve only met once.’
‘You used to be a police officer and you’re well known for your connection to another senior police officer.’
‘You’ve checked me out on the web.’
‘Yes,’ Brinsmead said. ‘You see, I’m not talking to you as a complete stranger. I’ve tried to find out something about you. We spoke for a little while at the launch as well. What you’ve said today hasn’t changed my impression of you. I think you listen to people and that you’re reliable. You understand what people are saying to you.’
‘I like to think my training has made it possible for me to do that,’ she replied carefully.
Brinsmead leaned towards her. ‘It’s something you do naturally,’ he said. ‘At one level, I don’t care who knows this story. To be honest, everything except the essentials has been burnt out of me. I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t talk with complete honesty about almost anything, including myself. Do you know anything about the DRC?’
‘I know it’s in a state of civil war and there have been terrible atrocities there. I’m sure it’s full of people who’d like to live ordinary lives but aren’t given the chance,’ she said. ‘What was it like for you to be there?’
‘Unimaginable. Not long after I got there, I realised I was involved with illegal diamond trading. I thought I could deal with that. Then I discovered I was the fall guy. I had no criminal history so I was going to be the mule. My problem was, there was no way out for me. The parts of the DRC we were in were very dangerous. The people I was with might have been vile but they were my protection. DP was one of them, he was the boss. Baass, the African mercenaries called him. It sounded almost like an insult. At one time, he and his mercenaries raped and killed a woman in front of my eyes. She was probably only twenty. Jerome didn’t involve himself but he didn’t care either. He laughed. “Let DP have his fun,” he said.’ Brinsmead stopped and closed his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that. I don’t want to bring it back.’
Grace waited.
‘The trouble is, there’s no way I can bring this to the law,’ he said eventually. ‘I have no evidence against them other than my word. At the time I was a debt-ridden gambler. I have no real names for most of them-we didn’t exchange email addresses and telephone numbers. DP was South African, you could tell that by his accent. He may have been in the army once. From the way they spoke to each other, he and Jerome were long-time partners. That’s all I know about any of them.’
‘How long were you there?’
‘I was with them for eighteen days. A lifetime. I learned there are events so serious, the only people who know what they really mean are the dead. The ones in the mass graves. If I say to you, you can’t know, that’s not an insult to you. You’re lucky you can’t know. Every day in my mind I replay what I witnessed there. It’s like being in hell.’