'I can help you,' said Vusi.

Barry sobbed, making his whole body shake. Then he began to talk.

Dekker sat opposite Mouton. He said: 'I know you didn't shoot Adam Barnard. I know about the girl and the four guys chasing her.'

'Five,' said Mouton, and then looked as if he could bite off his tongue.

'Five,' said Dekker in satisfaction.

'I want to phone my lawyer,' said Mouton.

'Later. Let me tell you what happened. Barnard phoned you, last night, just after nine. You knew we would find a record of the call, that's why you volunteered it so easily ...'

Mouton's Adam's apple moved, he wanted to say something, but Dekker silenced him with a hand. 'Adam didn't phone you to tell you how silly Ivan Nell's accusations were. He was worried. Nell told me Barnard was disturbed. He wasn't himself. He had a suspicion. He had a feeling, he knew someone was fucking with the money. I don't know why yet, but I will find out. In any case, Adam said he wanted to see you. Did he tell you to come to the office, you and Wouter? Or was it your suggestion - keep trouble away from home? So you came in here, probably very worried, because you are guilty. What time was that, Willie? Did he tell you to come at eleven so he could look at the figures first?

I know he worked on his computer last night. He was so upset by what he saw that he never turned his laptop off. It was still on this morning. Maybe he loaded all the records on a CD so that you couldn't go and fiddle with them. You sat here, or maybe in his office, and he confronted you. Did you deny everything, Willie? How am I doing so far? Never mind, let me finish. You argued and fought from eleven o'clock to half past one in the night. Barnard must have said something like; 'Leave it, we'll talk more tomorrow.' He must have been tired. Thinking of his drunken wife at home. And you and Steenkamp followed him out into the garden. Argued some more. You went in just when the girl arrived. You got lucky, in more than one way. Because if you had been standing there, you might also have been shot. But then they shot Adam. Problem number one solved. There you two were, looking out the window at the body, and you thought: what now? Your big problem was Ivan Nell. Because, whatever you did, if Ivan came and told us there was a snake in the grass, you were in trouble.

'So you wondered how you could make it look different, as though you had never been here. Give someone else the blame. Then you remembered about Josh and the Big Sin. And Alexa and the pistol. Fucking brilliant, Willie, I have to tell you. So you carried Barnard to the car. If he was in your or Wouter's car there will be blood and hair and fibres and DNA, and we'll find it.

'Now, I must say, I couldn't figure out the shoe and the cell phone. Until about half an hour ago, when I put the whole story together. The shoe came off when you picked up Adam to carry him to the car. You must have picked him up by the feet. And the cell phone was in his hand when he was shot. So you picked up the phone and you remembered that he had phoned you. So you deleted his call history. And you put the cell phone in the shoe and the shoe in your pocket, or on top of Barnard, we will probably never know. And then when you reached the car and opened the boot, you put the shoe on the roof of the car. Just for the mean time. And then in your hurry you forgot about the shoe. You drove off, Wouter in front with Adam's car and you following.

Something like that. And up there on the corner, as you turned, the shoe falls off and you don't even know it. How am I doing, Willie? I'm telling you, I had a really hard time figuring out that shoe, until I went up there to the corner again. It came to me in a flash. Fucking brilliant, let me tell you.'

Mouton just stared at Dekker.

'You and Wouter carried him up the stairs and you put him down there with Alexa. And you went and got the pistol out of the safe that you installed in the house. Somewhere you fired off three shots. I'm guessing you couldn't do it in the house. Even if you used a pillow or something to reduce the noise, you were too scared of waking Alexa, drunk or not. You must have driven somewhere, Willie. Up the mountain? Somewhere that it wouldn't matter. Then you went back and put the pistol down there. Clever. But not clever enough.'

'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 Griessel with 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 ...'