Jigsaw Lovers (21 page)

The pieces of jigsaw continued to come, one per day. It was with the arrival of the fifteenth piece of the jigsaw that John Smith, in a spare moment thought he would see if they fitted together and if so what they might reveal.

He had only looked at them individually as he threw them into his drawer, some he hadn’t even taken out of their envelopes, all of which were marked ‘Personal, Private, and Confidential’.

He spread them out on the desk top and found that a number of the pieces fitted with the ones he already had. The scene showed a naked leg, very definitely female and part of a naked buttock, very definitely male. There was something vaguely familiar about it, as though he’d seen it somewhere before. Just then his telephone rang.

‘Your eleven o’clock appointment is here Mr Smith,’ His secretary stated.

‘Show him in.’ As the door opened Smith swept the pieces of the jigsaw back into his top drawer and forgot about it.

Ackermann International had interests and investments in many diverse areas of business other than its main public relations activities. In Johannesburg and Cape Town they had provided indirect and extremely discrete finance, which had helped to establish several minibus taxi operations.

These taxi operations were run with a ruthlessness which stamped out all competition almost before it had begun. The owners were very grateful for the help they had had in their early days from their benefactor, and were only too happy to help him out from time to time, when he too had a problem that needed solving, using methods in which they were particularly adept.

Ackermann’s man had arranged to meet his contact from the taxi organisation in the back of a taxi, parked on the Grand Parade. He handed him an envelope containing ten thousand rand in cash.

‘There’s a security van that delivers small amounts of cash to a jewellers on Strand Street, at eleven every Thursday morning. They only use two guards. One has a shotgun, the other a sidearm. We would like them seen to next week.’

‘And the money?’

‘If you can get that as well, keep it as a bonus.’

‘Consider it done, man.’

Smith had to attend a banking convention all the next week, so it wasn’t until the following Monday that he was back at his desk catching up on what had gone on in his absence. His secretary had attended to all his mail with the exception of seven envelopes marked ‘Personal, Private, and Confidential’. It turned out that each of these contained another piece of the jigsaw. The last having a type-written note stating ‘
TWENTY-TWO OUT OF THIRTY
’. Having a full appointment schedule all morning Smith put these in the drawer with the other pieces intending to look at them later.

It wasn’t until after the Bank had closed for business that day that he remembered the jigsaw. Clearing his desk he retrieved all the pieces from his top draw and began to see which ones fitted where. He had all four corner pieces and three out of the four straight sides were complete, although there wasn’t much revealed along the edges. It was as the inner pieces were joined together that his heart missed a beat and he broke out into a cold sweat.

The picture was Diana’s bedroom. Of that there was no doubt. The leg was Diana’s and the body around which the leg was wrapped was surely his own. Even though the photograph had been cut up to turn it into the jigsaw the quality of the image was extremely high. Everything was in sharp focus.

He put the pieces into a large envelope and locked them in his personal wall safe. He noticed his hands were shaking, that his collar felt tight and sticky about his neck and that his pulse was racing. For the first time in his life he thought he needed a drink.

Over the next seven days seven more pieces arrived. Smith found himself waiting for the post with a strange sense of morbid curiosity, as though there must be some mistake, that the picture would turn out to be something completely innocent when all the pieces were there, and that he must be suffering from an over-active imagination, and maybe a sense of guilt brought on by his affair with Diana.

On the eighth day the final piece arrived. Now there was no doubt whatsoever. He could no longer pretend to himself that it might be anything other than what it was.

The image on the thirtieth piece was his face, mouth open in ecstasy as he obviously reached orgasm, looking almost directly into the camera. Also enclosed in the envelope was a print of the entire picture, on the back of which a label had been stuck which bore the enigmatic type-written message, ‘
JUST IN CASE YOU’VE MISLAID A PIECE
’.

The armoured van
pulled up outside the jeweller in Strand Street, just after eleven. The two guards jumped out of the van. One carried a pump-action shotgun, held at the ready across his chest, the other a cash box.

As they walked towards the entrance of the shop two men climbed from a nearby parked car. Each carried an AK47 assault rifle. One fired a short burst, in a sweeping movement. Both guards were hit. They and the cash box fell to the ground.

Other pedestrians and passers-by also fell to the ground. For a moment there was silence, then someone started to scream. The guards moaned in agony. One had been shot through the spine; he felt no pain and was unable to move. The other had been hit in the stomach and leg; he was writhing in agony.

The two gunmen approached the disabled and defenseless guards. They lowered their weapons and fired a dozen rounds into each guard. The bullets tore through the bodies and ricocheted from the pavement below, back into the flesh. Particles of concrete also entered the wounds, making them jump in one last lifelike spasm, although death had already claimed them as victims.

One of the gunmen knelt to pick up the cash box. As he did so he didn’t notice the two men, drawing pistols, come out of the shop next to the jeweller’s entrance. He died as two 9mm hollow-point bullets blew the top of his head to pieces. The second gunman was just turning in response to the sound of the shots, which had killed his companion, when he too was hit by four rounds, which tore into his head and body, fragmenting on impact and shredding his vital organs. He was dead before he even began to fall towards the pavement.

By the time the police arrived on the scene, a few minutes later, the two anonymous citizens who had shot the robbers were no where to be found.

Smith sat back in his chair, holding the complete photograph in front of him, studying it, trying to understand and assess the implications it might herald.

The fact that somebody had been able to take the photograph amazed him. How could anyone have taken such a photograph without them knowing? It was taken from the doorway. Surely they would have seen or heard someone, even in the height of their passion. Then he realised he was being stupid. There must have been a hidden camera in the room. But that couldn’t be possible. Diana wouldn’t do something like that. She was in love with him. No, he was convinced that she knew nothing about this.

Maybe the aunt had installed the camera for some reason, such as a security measure, and somebody who knew about it had stumbled upon them by chance, and was now trying to use it to their advantage.

He wondered if there were any more pictures; whether this was a one-off, or if his frequent visits to her apartment had all been photographed.

Then he began to wonder about the manner in which the photograph had been sent to him. Rather than just post him the photograph whole, somebody had gone to a considerable effort to produce a highly finished professional-style jigsaw puzzle. The image was on thin card. The pieces fitted together perfectly. They had been stamped out, not cut out with scissors.

Then the pieces had been sent to him, one by one. What was the motive behind that? At first he had thought it was a commercial competition or advertising gimmick, and hadn’t given them much thought. Then when he had put them together and recognised Diana’s bedroom he realised that it wasn’t a promotional stunt, and could think about little else. During the last week he had been on edge, waiting for the post to bring him another piece, and then another until he had final confirmation that it was what he thought it was.

It was a most unnerving experience. He found it difficult to concentrate on anything else. He had dreamt about the pieces, several nights running, and had woken up in a cold sweat, unable to get back to sleep again. He was even more irritable at work than usual and this morning he had even shouted at his children for no good reason.

It was as if someone was playing a cruel game with him.

He wondered about the identity of the sender and their ultimate objective. He had no doubt that he was going to be blackmailed. Perhaps he should go to the police. But what could they do? He had just received a photograph of himself, admittedly in a somewhat compromising position, but that was all. There had been no demand for money or any threats, as yet, but he felt sure they would come eventually.

It worried him. Whoever had taken the photograph also knew who he was and where he worked. How had they discovered that? He had to speak to Diana. She should be returning in two-days time, but he felt he couldn’t wait that long. If only he could contact her. The telephone number in England she had given him had been unobtainable every time he had tried it since she left. He had tried to obtain the number from international directory enquiries, but they had found nothing for a Diana Johnston for the address he had. He also remembered that she had said it was an unlisted, ex-directory number, so he wouldn’t be able to get it from the operator anyway. He should have been more careful when he wrote it down. Also there was the possibility that perhaps now that she had sold her house the telephone number no longer even existed.

He had also written several letters to her in the past few weeks, and was rather disappointed not to have had any reply to these as well. He knew she was going to be very busy tying up all kinds of loose ends, but he thought she could have found the time to scribble a few words on a postcard.

Perhaps he should try not to worry until the worst happened. He should just wait and see what the blackmailers demanded and then decide what to do from there. Not that he was in a position to give them much. He had very little money saved and many expenses. There was a mortgage bond on the house, the children’s school fees, and very little spare cash.

Maybe it wasn’t blackmail. Maybe his wife had found out about his affair with Diana, and had sent someone to spy on him, with a view to divorcing him. Maybe the picture had been sent to him instead of to her by mistake. But then that wouldn’t explain why it had come in pieces.

If only Diana were here now, she would surely be able to think of something. She was always in control. He couldn’t wait for her to return so that he would have someone to share this burden with; someone to discuss it with and get some advice as to how to proceed.

There was no one else in his life that he felt he could turn to for help.

When Diana had left the previous month, she had said she would telephone and let him know her flight details and arrival time. He had insisted that he would drive out and meet her at the airport. She hadn’t telephoned, and on the day of her scheduled arrival back in Cape Town, there had still been no call.

Smith had dialled her telephone number several times in the morning, on the off chance that she may have arrived very early and gone straight to her apartment by taxi. It just rang and rang.

Every time his telephone rang he snatched it up in the eager anticipation that it would be Diana. But it wasn’t and he became more and more edgy.

He was short tempered with his secretary for the whole of the morning, and those clients who had the misfortune to have appointments with him in the hope of borrowing money or negotiating overdraft facilities derived little joy. In fact with some he was openly rude, and several long-standing customers, that day, closed their accounts with the Bank.

By lunchtime there was still no answer to his telephone calls, so he decided to walk around to her flat and see if she was back. Maybe the telephone was out of order, or she was sleeping through it.

Grabbing his raincoat and umbrella he left the Bank, just after one o’clock. It was a short walk to Diana’s flat, through the Gardens to the Planetarium, then into Queen Victoria Street and the imposing, recently renovated apartment block on the corner. He pushed open the glass swing doors with their highly polished brass handles and finger-plates and started to walk across the marble atrium. It had been just over a month since he had last been here but it seemed like only yesterday. The fountain bubbled and trickled to the right of the security desk, and he caught a glimpse of the fish swimming in the pool below it. As he headed for the lifts on the far side he heard a voice shouting authoritatively at him from behind.

‘Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?’ He turned to see a burly security guard, his uniform shirt tight across his ample stomach, a pistol and baton hanging from his belt, whom he hadn’t noticed on his way in, beckoning him from behind his desk. It wasn’t the usual guard, Hendrik, who had always been on duty during Smith’s previous visits, and with whom he had become familiar.

‘Oh yes, I’ve come to see Miss Johnston.’ he answered.

‘Which apartment is she in, sir?’

‘Number sixteen, eighth floor,’ he said. ‘Hendrik having the day off, is he?’

‘You might say that, sir. He was shot last week during a robbery in Strand Street.’