Nowhere by Roger Smith

Author:Roger Smith [Smith, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, International Mystery & Crime, Thrillers & Suspense, Crime, Crime Fiction, Noir
Amazon: B01AY6DJWU
Publisher: Tin Town
Published: 2016-02-22T11:00:00+00:00

TEN

“You’ve fucked up, Colonel. Big time,” Shanelle Filander, the Western Cape premier, said, slinging a photograph across her desk at Joe Louw who had not been invited to sit.

He caught the glossy print as it was about to fall to the floor and flipped it to see the dead features of Mercia Booysen.

Louw had been preparing himself for something like this, but did he succeed in keeping his guilt from shining like a beacon from his broad face?

“And who is this, Madam Premier?” Louw said, dragging his eyes from the photograph to Shanelle Filander.

“Come on, Colonel, don’t fuck with me.”

When he said nothing she shook her head, a few twists of frizzy hair escaping her bun and standing away from her head like a manifestation of her anger.

She sighed and sat back and took a while to light a smoke, the toasty smell reaching him and setting his nerves even more on edge.

“Okay,” she said, exhaling, “let’s do it your way. Her name’s Mercia Booysen. She worked in the kitchen at Genadendal. You interviewed her yesterday.”

He forced himself to look at the photograph again, as if trying to breathe life into the dead face.

“Ja, I remember her now. What happened to her?”

Filander scratched at her head and freed more barbs of hair. “You’re really going to fuckin insult me like this?”

“I’m not with you, Madam Premier.”

She closed her eyes and exhaled, then fixed him with a very cold gaze and he saw exactly why she occupied this chair. “What did she tell you?”

Louw shrugged his tense shoulders. “Nothing. She was at Genadendal that night but left before the murder. She had nothing for me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s just some coincidence that she winds up dead the same night she spoke to you? Dead in a so-called taxi shooting? Along with seven other poor innocent bastards?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

She shook her head again and stubbed her cigarette dead with an act of sudden violence.

“Okay, I’ll tell you something I know about. I know these people, Jesus Christ I am these people. They still trust you Afrikaners more than the blacks, even now, years later. She caught you in private, didn’t she? Told you what she’d seen?”

He shook his head. “She told me nothing.”

“Christ, I can fuckin hear her, whispering to you in some corridor or in the garden: ‘Meneer, meneer.’” Filander was that girl from the ghetto for a second, her impersonation of the dead woman pitch-perfect.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“That never happened.”

“You’re a shitty liar, Colonel.”

Louw remained impassive, saying nothing, but he felt an overwhelming desire to unburden himself, to tell her the truth, until he flashed on Bungu talking about Leon in the hotel room that morning and he kept his mouth shut.

“It was smart making it look like the taxi wars, I grant you that,” Filander said. “Problem is, things have been quiet for a while. The rival factions in Paradise Park seem to have settled their differences, so this comes out of the blue . . .”

“It’s always volatile, Madam Premier.

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