'I want to call my lawyer.'
'Call him, Willie. Tell him to come to Green Point station. Because this is a warrant for your arrest, and this is a warrant to search these premises. I will be bringing smart people, Willie. Auditors, computer boffins, guys who specialise in white-collar crime. You stole Adam Barnard's and Ivan Nell's and who knows how many other people's money, and I'm going to find out how you did it and I'm going to put you and Wouter away, Willie, and that fucking Frankenstein lawyer of yours won't be able to do a thing about it. Or is he also a part of your little scheme?'
Benny Griessel pushed the man through the front door of Caledon Square. His full beard and hair were trimmed short, neat, plain brown turning prematurely grey. He looked fit and lean in denim shirt and khaki chinos and blue boat shoes. It was only the handcuffs on his wrists that showed he was in trouble, his face was expressionless. Vusi was waiting in the entrance hall.
'May I introduce you to Duncan Blake?' Griessel asked, with great satisfaction.
Vusi looked the man up and down, as though measuring him against newfound knowledge. Then he applied himself to Griesselwith a worried: 'Benny, we will have to bring the Commissioner in.' 'Oh?'
'This thing is big. And ugly. We will have to send a team to Camps Bay, to a hospital. A big team.'
Only then did a shadow of emotion cross Duncan Blake's face.
17:47-18:36
Chapter 48
They sat in the station commander's office - Griessel, Vusi and John Afrika.
'I just want to say I am proud of you, the Provincial Commissioner is proud of you. The Minister says I must convey her congratulations,' Afrika said.
'It was Vusi who cracked it,' said Griessel.
'No, Commissioner, it was Benny ... Captain Griessel.'
'The SAPS is proud of you both.'
'Commissioner, this thing is big,' said Vusi.
'How big?'
'Commissioner, they smuggled people in, eight at a time, through Zimbabwe. Somalians, Sudanese, Zimbabweans ...'
'All the trouble spots.'
'That's right, Commissioner, people who have nothing, who want to make a new start, who will do anything ...'
'They must have charged bags of money to bring them to this honey pot.'
'No, Commissioner, not much.'
'Oh?'
'We thought it was just illegal immigrants at first. But Barry Smith, one of the guides, told me the rest. The hospital, the whole thing ...'
'What hospital?' John Afrika asked.
'Maybe we should start at the beginning. Benny talked to Blake, Commissioner.'
Griessel nodded, scratched behind his ear, paged through his notebook and found the right page. 'Duncan Blake, Commissioner. He is a Zim citizen, fifty-five years old. He was married, but his
wife died in Two thousand and one of cancer. In the Seventies he was part of the Rhodesian Special Air Services. For thirty years he farmed the family farm outside Hurungwe in Mashonaland- West. His sister, Mary-Anne Blake was a surgeon at the hospital in Harare. In May Two thousand, the leader of the Veterans' Movement, Chenjerai 'Hitler' Hunzvi, occupied Blake's farm. Apparently, Blake's foreman, Justice Chitsinga, tried to stop the squatters and was shot dead. For two years, Blake tried to regain possession of his farm through the courts, but in Two thousand and two he gave up and he and his sister moved to Cape Town. He brought Steven Chitsinga, his foreman's son, with him and started African Overland Adventures. Most of his staff were young men and women from Zimbabwe, children of dispossessed farmers, or their workers. De Klerk, Steven Chitsinga, Eben Etlinger, Barry Smith ...'
'And the Metro man you shot dead? Oerson?' the Commissioner asked.
'That's another story, Commissioner,' said Vusi. 'Smith said Oerson was with Provincial Traffic. Two years ago he was working at the weighbridge on the N-seven, at Vissershoek, and he pulled one of their Adventure lorries off the road. It was overweight. Then he began hinting, they needn't pay the fine, and de Klerk was immediately ready to pay something under the table. Oerson took it and let them go. But he began to wonder why the Adventure people paid so easily and so much. He thought about it. They came from the north, through Africa, and he was sure they were smuggling something. He waited for them to pass through again a month later. He pulled them off again. He said he wanted to have a look in the lorry and the trailer, in all the cavities. Then de Klerk said that wouldn't be necessary, how much did he want? And Oerson said, no, he wanted to look, because he thought they had something to hide. De Klerk kept offering him more and Oerson said open up. De Klerk said he couldn't and Oerson said: "Then cut me in, because I smell big money." So de Klerk phoned Blake. And they put Oerson on the payroll. But on one condition, Oerson must apply to Metro, because they needed another man to keep an eye on the Somalis and Zimmers who had already donated organs and were all in the city ...'
'Donated organs?'
'I'm getting to that, Commissioner. Lots of the people who have already donated have opened street-vendor stalls in the city with the money they were paid. There were a few who threatened to talk if they didn't get more money. It was Oerson's job to shut them up.'
'As in permanently?'
'Sometimes, Commissioner. But never personally, he had other contacts for that. Other Metro people too ...'
'Jississaid John Afrika and folded his hands in front of him. Then he looked at Vusi. 'And the organs?'
'Blake started the Adventure business, and he and his sister bought the old Atlantic Hotel in Camps Bay in Two thousand and three, and fixed the place up and started a private hospital. She is the "director" now ...'
'A hospital?'
Vusi had an idea. 'Excuse me, Commissioner,' he said and pulled the keyboard on the desk towards him, then the mouse. He turned the computer screen so that he could see better, clicked on the web browser icon and typed in the web address.
Google South Africa read the screen.
Vusi typed in the word 'AtlantiCare' into the box and clicked on Google Search. A long list of choices appeared. He picked the top link and a website slowly loaded on the screen. It showed a white building on the slopes of the Twelve Apostles, with a banner headline: ATLANTICARE: Exclusive International Medical Centre. Another photo appeared - the building from behind, with the Atlantic Ocean stretching to the horizon.
'This is the place, Commissioner.'
John Afrika whistled. 'Big money.'
'Steven Chitsinga said they were big farmers. They owned and rented a lot of farms, there was cattle, tobacco, maize. Big business. There were some investments ... But the thing is, Commissioner,' Vusi shifted the mouse to a link that said Transplants, 'they do organ transplants.' Another web page opened up with the same white building in the banner across the top. Underneath it the heading: Transplants you can afford. Vusi read out loud to them. 'The average cost of a heart transplant in the United States of America is three hundred thousand dollars. A lung transplant will cost you two hundred and seventy-five thousand, an intestine almost half a million dollars. Impossible to afford without health insurance, but even if you are covered, there is no guarantee that you will receive a donated organ in time. For instance, the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the USA has more than fifty-five thousand people on it...'