Stolen Lives (12 page)

Green eyes, Jade saw. Just like hers.

The portrait was a shock, because it could have been of Jade herself. Elise Delacourt, or de Jong, had the same slim build, the same pronounced cheekbones, the same determined angle to her jaw. Even her mother’s hair was the same shade and length as her own.

At the bottom, Jade found one of Elise with a tiny, crimson-faced baby in her arms. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the tender smile on her mother’s face, the expression of utter love in her eyes. On her left hand, curled protectively around Jade’s white-swaddled form, she saw the engagement ring her dad had told her about. Silver, with a clear green stone—the stone that she’d had been named after.

Jade slipped the photos back in their sleeve. What would their relationship have been like, she wondered, if her mother hadn’t died soon after she had been born? Would she have grown up any different if she’d had a mother?

Perhaps they would have been best friends, with the type of giggly, let’s-share-make-up-tips closeness that she’d seen a couple of her friends enjoy. Or would Elise have been more distant, more authoritarian? She didn’t think so.

In that photo of her holding Jade, she looked so gentle.

Jade wondered what Elise Delacourt had thought about living the hard, uncertain life of a police officer’s spouse.

At the bottom of the box, Jade found a hand-painted coffee mug she’d decorated for her father as a school crafts project, and a couple of ancient, hardcover Nancy Drew stories. The books’ dust-jackets had long since disintegrated.

She smiled as she remembered the obsession she’d developed as a young girl with the fictional detective Nancy Drew. Her father had bought her the entire series of books—a few new; most of them from second-hand shops, dog-eared and smelling of mildew. He’d bought her other books, too—books written for younger readers “explaining” how to be a detective. How to hide behind a tree without your shadow giving you away, how to search for evidence in a criminal’s hiding place, how to spot a character behaving suspiciously.

Her father had taught her some basic judo throws and defence moves, and they’d even shared a secret language, a coded method of communication to be used in an emergency, or a combat situation.

“Marseille” meant “dodge”, “Toulouse” meant “drop”, and “Lyon” meant “duck”.

Jade had spent hours practising the moves, and had been fascinated by the unfamiliar words, which at first she hadn’t known were the names of cities in France.

“Why did you decide on French words, Dad?” she’d asked, when she had found out. “You don’t speak French, do you?”

He’d smiled, but his voice had sounded sad.

“I didn’t choose them, Jadey,” he’d said. “They were taught to me, too.”

When she was much older, Jade realised that this secret language must have been something that her mother and father had shared.

Keeping the sleeve of photos aside, Jade carefully repacked the box. She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw she’d spent far too long looking at the pictures. She needed to get going. She’d better try to take Bonnie home again. Surely, if she took a spade with her, it would be possible to push the dog through the hole under the fence and block it up again behind her.

Then she’d drive to Pamela’s house, check that everything was in order, pick out some clothes and toiletries for her, and get back to The Seasons.

The microwave hadn’t done the pita bread any good at all. It had cooled to the approximate hardness of a brick, so she tipped it into the bin. The orange Nando’s sauce was still pooled on the plate. It would be a pity to waste that. Jade wiped a finger through the sticky mess and licked it off, enjoying the distraction of the hard, hot burn.

Elise Delacourt had married the cop she’d loved. At the moment, Jade couldn’t even get David to spend five minutes in her company, and seeing they couldn’t even sort their issues out in English, she guessed sharing a secret language was definitely out of the question.

15

October 26—Afternoon

The shrill, piping sound of the pennywhistle being played on the staircase outside Lindiwe Mtwetwa’s second-floor office in central Pretoria could mean only one thing.

She had more business coming her way.

Another customer. Would they never stop? It seemed there was no limit to demand. When she’d first set up shop she’d sometimes gone weeks without a sale. Now, people were in and out, in and out, their numbers rising steadily. Glancing at her with shifty eyes as they handed over their wads of crumpled, grimy banknotes. Treading dirt into the pale beige carpet that she’d had installed last winter, and which was her pride and joy.

She often complained her office was busier than the Bree Street taxi rank, even though, to be truthful, the most she’d ever seen was five people in one day.

Lindiwe rocked forward in her reclining office chair and wearily lifted her braids off her shoulders.

She’d had the coarse artificial hair in all winter. She’d been meaning to get it removed, get her hair relaxed and cut in a short, chic style for mid-summer, but the sudden heat had taken her by surprise. Now, in the early afternoon, the sun was blazing through the window behind her.

Her office was cooler than the two down the corridor, principally because its windows were unbroken and shaded by creamcoloured blinds that blocked out the view of the building across the road, with its crumbling balconies and colourful rows of washing.

The electric fan propped on the desk in front of her, and aimed squarely at her face, also played a role. It hummed valiantly, doing its best to make the temperature bearable, but on summer afternoons, even with the blinds closed, her neck and back usually ended up dripping with sweat.

Lindiwe watched the security gate, listening for the sound of the penny-whistle, but she didn’t hear the tune again.

That meant she could expect only one arrival.

During apartheid, the clear, happy tones of this instrument had become one of the most famous sounds in the townships. It was traditionally played by young men on street corners to alert residents drinking and gambling in the illegal shebeens to approaching police, allowing them to make a safe and speedy getaway.

Apartheid was over now, but Lindiwe used the same system for her business. The instrument was played by Veli, her youngest nephew, who positioned himself in the building’s stairwell and kept a lookout for her. She needed no electric doorbells or cameras, which was just as well, because in Pretoria’s dilapidated inner city, power cuts occurred on an almost daily basis.

If there had been two men, Veli would have played the tune twice. For three or more, he would play it a third time. A simple system to forewarn her of the numbers coming up the stairs in case a returning visitor knocked at the door while his companions hid out of sight.

She never admitted groups, not even two people together. The inner city was a dangerous place, especially for someone who regularly accepted large amounts of cash. The Muslim clothes hawker, whose warehouse was downstairs from her and who also ran a cash business, had been robbed more than once.

To make matters worse, Lindiwe had come to realise that most of the customers she dealt with were nothing but common criminals. Scumbags. People she wouldn’t ever risk turning her back on.

Because of this, she had a rule. Only one person in her office at a time. And if Veli thought the arrivals looked dangerous, she had told him he must run down to the Muslim trader’s shop and call the security guard who now worked there full-time.

He’d taken that precaution a few times, although there had never been any incidents—probably because she was the last resort for the people who knocked on her door. They might be scumbags, but they were desperate ones. They had nowhere else to go.

Lindiwe tugged her blouse straight, glanced over the pitted surface of the wooden desk in front of her, and brushed away the crumbs from her lunchtime sandwich. The contents of the desk were entirely innocuous. Just an old calculator and a couple of invoices for the transport business that was a front for her real setup. For this there were no documents or stamp pads on view. No official forms or receipt books. No incriminating evidence at all.

That was all concealed in a locked filing cabinet in the small room that led off the office.

Lindiwe heard footsteps, and a moment later she saw her new client appear on the other side of the security door.

The man was of average height and slightly built, wearing a formal-looking jacket and black trousers, holding a leather briefcase in his left hand. Too dark-skinned to be a South African, she thought, as she assessed him with a swift, experienced glance. Nigerian, probably. Well-dressed; his clothes looked expensive. Clean shoes, too, so no need to worry about her carpet this time.

The little till in Lindiwe’s head went “ka-ching!” as she took another look at those shoes.

“Good afternoon,” the man said in a hoarse voice. “Are you open for business?”

He looked, and sounded, older than her average customer. And more polite, too. Quite the elderly gentleman.

Most importantly, he was not a policeman. Policemen didn’t dress like that, not even plainclothes ones, which meant the biggest danger was out of the way.

The electricity was working, so she didn’t have to get up to unlock the door. She simply reached for the button under the right-hand side of her desk and buzzed him in.

“Sit down.” She indicated the single chair on the opposite side of the desk.

Close up, she saw the man was very thin. His cheeks were sunken and the whites of his eyes were yellowish and unhealthy-looking. He sat, placed his briefcase on his lap, and simply waited, lacing his swollen-looking fingers together as he looked round the small office.

“So. What do you need?” she asked.

Now the man stared directly at her.

“Tikukwazisei,” he said, in his hoarse-sounding voice.

Lindiwe blinked, trying not to look shocked. The man had given her this formal greeting in fluent Shona, her native language. Certainly it had been spoken within these four walls before, but she had always been the initiator in such circumstances.

How did he know she was from Zimbabwe?

“Kw—kwaziwai.” She stammered out the formal reply, suddenly terrified that her gut instinct had been wrong and this man was in fact a policeman. “How did you …?”

He didn’t answer. After a brief pause, he carried on in perfect English, as if he’d never used Shona at all.

“I understand you can help me with certain documents.”

Lindiwe clasped her hands together tightly. Calm down, she told herself. He had recognised her accent, that was all. Her English was good, but even after five years in South Africa, she didn’t sound like a local.

She’d had a few Zimbabwean customers who had sat in that chair and cried, and called her sister, and begged her to get their id books at a reduced price. No matter their circumstances, her answer had always been no. So perhaps, despite his wealthy appearance, this man was hoping to do the same.

Well, he could keep on hoping. Lindiwe carried on in English.

“I can get you the South African identity book and the passport. One hundred per cent genuine, and officially registered with Home Affairs.” She jerked her head in the general direction of Home Affairs’ head office in Waltloo, east of the inner city. “I take cash only, and no discounts.”

Then she folded her arms across her substantial bosom and waited for the man’s next question. She was sure she knew what it was going to be, because they all asked the same questions. First, how much? Then, how genuine?

There were a couple of other suppliers that offered low-quality fake documents, so badly done that even a child could tell the difference. You’d never get out of the country with one of those passports. You wouldn’t even get past a police roadblock with the id book.

Thanks to Lindiwe’s connections, she was able to supply authentic documents of many kinds. The document holder would have their name listed on the computers and their fingerprints put onto the system. They would become a South African citizen with a valid, legal identity number. Lindiwe had recently started offering a very popular service—for an additional fee, a code eight driver’s licence could be printed on the correct page of the identity document for those individuals who didn’t want to go to the trouble of actually passing a test.

Nobody else could offer what she did. The only other supplier Lindiwe knew of, a pawnshop owner, had stopped doing business last year after she’d reported him to the police.

The man cleared his throat. “What is the cost?”

Lindiwe glanced down at his smart leather briefcase. She loved window shopping in the expensive malls—Menlyn Park, Sandton Square—and she recognised luxury goods when she saw them.

Ka-ching
,
ka-ching
.

She decided to double her price, just as she had done a fortnight ago for the drug dealer who needed a new identity in a hurry, and some time before that for three of the bodyguards employed by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. They had wanted South African passports and identities as a fallback plan in case their boss ended up losing the presidency in the country’s upcoming elections.

Thanks to the money that Lindiwe had charged them, she’d been able to buy the two beautiful diamond rings which she now sported on the middle and pinkie fingers of her right hand. She’d got them from a fence at a bargain price—considering the size and glittering clarity of the stones—and both were a perfect fit.

Lindiwe had chosen not to burden herself by worrying about how these pieces had been separated from their original owners. Such things were surely beyond her control.

What she did know was that the seller had shown her a lovely diamond pendant; their perfect partner.

In all likelihood, that piece of jewellery would still be available at the weekend.

“Four thousand rand per document,” she said.

The man’s mouth twitched.

Lindiwe waited for the next question, but it didn’t come.

Instead, the man asked, “How long will four passports take?”