An Ordinary Day
TREVOR R.
CORBETT
An
Ordinary
Day
To Wanda, Kyle and Reece
Published in 2010 by Umuzi
an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd
Company Reg No 1966/003153/07
80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
PO Box 1144, Cape Town 8000, South Africa
[email protected]
www.randomstruik.co.za
© 2010 Trevor R Corbett
Trevor R Corbett has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN
978-1-4152-0082-7 (Print)
ISBN
978-1-4152-0232-6 (ePub)
ISBN
978-1-4152-0233-3 (
PDF
)
Cover design by mallemeule
Text design by klavierstemmer
21 OCTOBER 2000
Most of the kids who hung out at the mall after school were just as crazy as she was, so in Aliyah’s teenage world, the pink-framed sunglasses were cool and fun, and she felt captivating in them as she admired herself in the bus window. As the two o’clock weaved its way through the afternoon crowds stocking their baskets for the Sabbath meal, she smiled at her Dad, an arched eyebrow questioning his paranoia about her safety. But she was not embarrassed by him: her Dad was cool. It was a bonding time for them where he caught up with her on the complexities of being a teenager in a low-grade war zone, where a trip to the mall could be as dangerous as playing hopscotch in a minefield. She felt safe with Dad; he was her hero, her prince. He put up with all her teenage nonsense and eccentricities, and he always tactfully disembarked when the bus reached Jaffa Road.
The bus never reached Jaffa Road.
1
6 MAY 2002
Being a housebreaker is more challenging than most people realise, thought Kevin Durant as he hoisted himself onto the first-floor balcony of the house and a rusty nail on the outside of the balustrade punched a hole in his forearm, instantly spilling blood onto the lining of his jacket. Resisting the urge to swear loudly, Durant quickly ducked into the shadows and waited for the pain to subside. After thirty seconds it had got worse, but it was time to move; he could already hear his partner’s quick breaths below. Breaking into a house in South Africa was particularly demanding. Layer upon layer of physical protection was supposed to deter housebreakers by breaking down their resolve as each barrier presented a new challenge. To Durant, the nail had proven to be the greatest deterrent. Durant had overcome the perimeter fences, the dogs, the passive sensors and beams and the alarm system, and climbed eight metres vertically to reach the entry point. The owner obviously had a lot to protect.
He had elegantly and professionally penetrated the layers of security with an apparent effortlessness gained only from weeks of careful planning and preparation and years of wisdom in the craft of breaking and entering. The nail a carpenter had negligently failed to flatten on the outside of the balustrade was the first serious obstacle Durant had encountered since he had scaled the perimeter wall fifteen minutes earlier. The palatial house in Morningside was unoccupied, the two dogs had been tranquillised minutes earlier by a painless dart and his associates were monitoring the street outside. Durant still felt that same sense of fear he always felt once he was within the perimeter of a target property. He had entered this zone dozens of times over the past fifteen years and the fear was always there – that almost paralysing fear of being apprehended or taking a bullet from a zealous security guard.
His focus had to be on the next carefully planned step, and fear had to be transformed into action. The indeterminables in the planning stage were still fresh in Durant’s mind; those factors which no amount of creative planning could neutralise. Breaking into homes could be meticulously planned and professionally undertaken, but it remained an imperfect science. The life of the honest thief was a dangerous one.
Durant looked back over the balcony for a few seconds and saw the outline of the plush houses and apartments silhouetted against the western sky. He narrowed his focus. The house’s balconies and walls jutted out along the length of the structure and reached back twenty metres to a courtyard where a fountain lazily dribbled water into a koi pond surrounded by an immaculately kept lawn. Atmospheric garden lights highlighted various plant features and threw eerie shadows all the way back to the two-metre perimeter wall. To the east, the orange lights of Africa’s busiest port flickered and flashed in their syncopated rhythm. Durant thought of the stacks of shipping containers at the harbour depot and remembered how Ali had made his money. Ali’s home mortgage was being paid from a crooked attorney’s trust fund fed by the proceeds of crime.
Sweat ran into Durant’s eyes and sent cold streams down the back of his shirt. Why had he worn the thick black jacket? It gave him a false sense of invincibility. It protected him from the cold, but the blood trickling from the nail wound on his forearm reminded him that it wouldn’t stop a bullet. He could die tonight if any of the safeguards built into the operation failed. And some had failed already.
The window on the first-floor balcony slipped open easily, encouraged by a nudge from the screwdriver and a tap from Durant’s palm. It was amazing: Ali had spent thousands on security, but hadn’t bothered with burglar bars on the upper-storey French doors. Criminals never considered themselves targets of crime, Durant reflected; crime was something
they
did to other people.
Durant slipped over the windowsill and dropped to the floor. His small torch quickly scanned the cavernous room. Expensive but tasteless furniture. Paintings: originals, not prints. The marble floor gleamed eerily in the torch beam and Durant felt like he was in a museum rather than a bedroom. ‘Nightmare to keep clean’ was his first thought, replaced quickly by a sudden terror as the torch beam momentarily reflected the bizarre image of a madman – a desperado and freak – standing less than a metre from him. Durant realised he was seeing himself in a huge, gold-framed mirror set against the wall. He was clad in black from head to foot, a beanie on his head and wide eyes staring out of a face glistening with sweat. He wouldn’t have to shoot anyone if confronted; they would die of fright if they saw him.
‘Clear?’
The headset crackled to life and Durant was quick to respond. ‘Clear.’
Durant calculated that they were still six hours in credit.
Ali and his wife were attending a business awards dinner which would not finish early. To make sure he and his team weren’t disturbed, Durant had kindly arranged accommodation for the Alis at a luxury lodge close to the event. At exactly 1 a.m., an unfortunate power surge would knock out the gate motor and not allow any guests to leave until … well, until Durant was ready.
Mike Shezi appeared at the window, hesitated for a second, and then tumbled inelegantly into the room. Hefting a canvas bag, he moved swiftly, awkwardly, across the room, crouching down as if out of courtesy to an audience watching a movie. Shezi was out of breath – partly because of all the climbing, and partly because of fear. He was tall and thin, and his round, wire-rimmed glasses gave his face a school-boyish appearance that belied his age. A black beanie was pulled over his shaved head and his collar was turned up on his jacket.
‘Should we take everything, boss?’
Durant grinned. ‘Ja, Mike. Just leave the paintings.’
Shezi closed the window. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine – you didn’t find a nail on the outside balustrade, did you?’
‘No, why?’
‘Okay, it’s still embedded in my arm then.’
‘Let’s start, chief,’ Shezi said urgently. He was scared; he didn’t want to be in the house longer than he had to be. He had bad memories of prison cells and didn’t want to go back to one.
Durant and Shezi slipped out of the bedroom door and down a passage to a sweeping staircase which wouldn’t have looked out of place on the
Titanic
. Durant led the way to a door on the eastern side of the house, close to an entertainment area.
‘This one,’ Durant said, quickly consulting a miniaturised plan of the house which had been laminated and sewn into his sleeve. ‘Passage, left, there’s the main reception area, guest suite – so it must be this one,’ he whispered. He took his right glove off and reached into his pocket for a key. ‘Let’s see if we wasted our money or not.’ The domestic worker who had provided an informer with the key number had charged them r1000. The key slipped in easily enough, but wouldn’t budge left or right.
‘Sure it’s the right key?’ Shezi asked, his voice clipped.
‘It’s the right key – it’s the only key – it just doesn’t fit.’ Durant was turning the key as hard as he dared without breaking it off in the lock.
‘What now?’ Shezi asked.
‘Now the mission’s just become a lot longer,’ Durant replied, slipping a small lock-picking kit from a pouch on his belt. ‘Damn, I hate picking locks; I haven’t got the patience for it. If it’s more than a three-lever lock, we’ll have to …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge that months of planning, replanning, reviewing and accessing all relied on an illiterate housekeeper getting a key number right.
Durant had barely slipped the tensioner and pick into the lock when a tinny female voice whispered in his ear: ‘Groundcrew, Kiteman, copy?’
‘Go ahead, Groundcrew,’ Durant spoke into his radio mike without taking his focus off the keyhole.
‘Roger, Kiteman, approaching security guard. Will give a minute update. Go radio silence, copy?’
‘Copy that.’
Anja Naudé’s radio call sign was ‘Groundcrew’, but Durant often referred to her as ‘Roundcrew’ because of her shape and size. Nonetheless, as a surveillance officer, Anja was the best Durban had. Professional, dedicated and alert – the qualities her colleagues really appreciated while they were trespassing on other people’s properties.
The early evening had been uneventful. She’d enviously watched Durant and Shezi slip across the street. Durant was Kiteman, but she would always only be Groundcrew. She felt like the wartime gophers whose only role in the mission was to make sure the plane flew. The real heroes were the aviators who flew them. She felt like she was always on the brink of an adventure, but not really in it. She hid the disappointment by being the best backup any Kiteman could hope for: the first line of defence, the early-warning system which kept Kiteman flying safely.