Blind Spot Page 5

  Sara placed the leather thong around her neck and lay down. She intended to put herself into a deep trance and take a psychic journey into the past of Gerrit Vos.

  Vos and Nicole lived in a thatched cottage just south of Wokingham. The place boasted views over open countryside – a feature that Vos seldom got to appreciate. Even in summer, he usually arrived home in the dark. By the time he and Nicole were driving through the Berkshire countryside, the scenery was little more than shades of black, blue and grey. When they got home, Vos parked in their converted barn – downstairs was now a garage, upstairs served as a warehouse for Nicole’s surveillance equipment.

  Also upstairs, concealed between the joists under a loose floorboard, was a small bag of fine white granules. The package could have been mistaken for any number of Class A drugs, but it was more dangerous than any of them. The bag contained thallium sulphate, a salt derived from the metal thallium. Ingesting even a small amount would affect almost every tissue in a body and leave its victim permanently disabled. A slightly larger dose – say, a quarter of a teaspoon – would be enough to cause a lingering and painful death. The bag under the floorboards held enough of the tasteless, odourless substance to dispatch its target within a day or two.

  Thallium sulphate was illegal in the United Kingdom, but working for an international arms firm had its perks. Vos has acquired the powder a few years previously, in those darkest of days when he had planned to kill himself.

  He had devised his exit strategy carefully. Thallium poisoning was by no means a pleasant way to go. Its symptoms included vomiting, weakness, numbness, confusion, convulsions and often, just prior to death, coma. However, it had one benefit – it was hard to diagnose. Few labs were equipped to test for it, and deaths by thallium poisoning were so rare that their cause was often attributed to some other disease, such as encephalitis brought on by a viral infection. Even at Vos’s lowest emotional ebb, it had been important to him that Nicole not know he had killed himself. A sudden misfortune she could get over; his suicide would cause her distress for ever. For Nicole’s sake, he had been willing to endure a couple days’ worth of convulsions.

  Vos had never actually changed his mind, and made the decision not to die. Rather, days had simply slipped by and he had found himself still alive. Not a great deal happier, perhaps, but at least continuing to breathe. Maybe it had been the grim thought of Nicole finding him coated in vomit and writhing in agony that had stayed his hand. Whatever the reason for his inaction, Vos had eventually concealed the package in the barn. He’d taken some solace from the fact that it was still so close to hand. He felt that same reassurance even to this day; it was a comfort to know that a relatively quick and easily concealed suicide was always an option.

  Vos and Nicole entered the cottage through the back door. Nicole dashed away to answer an urgent email as Vos climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Shrugging off his clothes, he stepped into the small en suite. He turned on the shower and made it as cold as he could stand. He needed the jolt – his own personal reset button.

  Even the freezing spray could not rinse away his whirring thoughts. Jamie Harding seemed OK; Vos had promised Andy Turner he’d look after him personally, rather than fob him off on one of his executives. Vos had researched Harding’s background and had already decided there might be something he could do with him. Enough to keep Andy happy anyway. But the wild card was going to be the guy’s partner – this Sara Jones woman. Vos was put on edge by her; she had seemed rather cold. Judgemental. He had hoped that the fact she was Rhodri Jones’s sister, as well as Andy’s friend, would endear Thorndike Aerospace to her – but she had spent the evening shooting wary glances at her partner.

  Vos shivered, and turned off the shower. He shoved open the folding glass door and plucked up his bath sheet. He knew far more about Sara Jones than she could possibly realise. Including something that might damage her reputation considerably. He’d keep that in his back pocket. A man never knew when he’d need an ace-in-the-hole.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Nicole said from the bedroom doorway. ‘A query from a client.’

  Vos grunted, and towelled himself with swift, violent motions.

  Nicole watched him, and her expression turned to one of concern. ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You look tense.’

  Vos smiled grimly. ‘You always say that.’

  Nicole raised a finger – wait here – then moved to her dresser. She plucked up a glass bottle. ‘Lie down,’ she ordered. ‘On your stomach.’

  ‘I don’t want a massage,’ he sighed.

  She put on her cutest stern face. ‘You’re an arsehole,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Lie down.’

  Vos huffed, but crawled obediently onto the bed. Nicole uncorked the bottle and slathered him with oil that smelled like a bordello bathtub. A moment ago, she’d been wearing leggings, but when she straddled his thighs, he felt only bare legs.

  Nicole’s fingers were remarkably strong, and she worked them into muscles in his back he hadn’t realised were sore. It was soothing, he admitted. His mind began to drift. He had not imagined that he would ever need to use the information he’d gathered about Sara Jones. It was just a routine part of getting to know about people he’d been forced to deal with … but after the vibes he’d got from her this evening, who could say what he’d need to do?

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Nicole asked.

  Vos opened his eyes and stretched his neck. ‘Sex,’ he whispered.

  ‘Are you having trouble at work?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The conversation I’m having with your back.’ Nicole dug a finger into his shoulder muscles. ‘This isn’t what sexy thoughts feel like,’ she said.

  He grunted.

  ‘I’ve helped you before,’ she reminded him. ‘I’d help again.’

  Vos chuckled. ‘You don’t work for Thorndike anymore.’

  Nicole began to pummel his shoulders. ‘I’m sure it’s like riding a bicycle,’ she said. ‘If you need me to do something – anything – all you have to do is ask.’

  After a while, Nicole’s massage softened. Finally, her hands stilled. Vos smiled.

  ‘Sometimes I forget how strong you are,’ he said, adding, ‘I’m sorry I’m such an arsehole.’

  Nicole rubbed the oil from his back with the wet bath sheet. ‘Oh, you can’t help it,’ she replied with affection. ‘It’s your job. You’re a professional arsehole.’

  Back when Sara had suffered from migraines, they would arrive in clusters. She might sail along for months, head as calm as a summer lake, before a whole storm front of pain would wash in and roil, in sickening waves, for weeks. These tempests had always left Sara feeling as though she were stricken with sea-sickness. She would be queasy for days. Dr Shapiro had given her a prescription for zolmitriptan, but had also suggested the real cause of the storms was stress. ‘You’re tense – holding your muscles all wrong,’ he had said. ‘You don’t need drugs. You need to learn to use your body better.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ she countered. ‘I have a tense job.’

  He had laughed. ‘You do the same job as me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she had countered, ‘but you don’t chase Satanists with the Metropolitan Police in your off-hours.’

  Dr Shapiro had suggested that Sara study the Alexander Technique, a system designed to improve health by learning to adopt better posture and ways of moving. It had taken Sara years to follow his advice. Before she finally did, her only defence had been to pop a pill and lie still – eyes closed, mind unfocused – in a darkened room. It wasn’t always an effective ward against the headaches … but in retrospect, it turned out to be superb training for psychic visions. The techniques were the same: blot out distractions, be still and open the mind. When Eldon Carson had first shown her how to see visions beyond her own time and place, he’d made her focus on a series of random coordinates, as if she were studying an imaginary map.r />
  ‘Miss Sara, here is your target,’ Carson would say. ‘The coordinates are four, nine, five, six, one, three, two … now, go and explore.’

  Sara had come to understand that these coordinates were less about locating her actual target than about clearing her thoughts. Although Carson’s voice repeating random coordinates often came unbidden to her mind, simply following her old procedure for easing a migraine worked just as well. As she relaxed, Sara would find images drifting into her consciousness. At first, they would be the sort of fragmented psychedelia that could flash across anyone’s mind just before sleep – but soon they would coalesce into complete, three-dimensional scenes of what was happening, or had happened, or would happen to someone, somewhere.

  As Sara sank into a trance on this Wednesday evening, the movie in her head – the events of four years ago, suddenly happening here, now, before her – starred Gerrit Vos.

  FIVE

  Gerrit Vos squints against the glare of the South African sun, and pulls out his Ray-Bans. ‘Rhodri Jones started out in marketing, right?’ he asks, as much to himself as his companion. ‘How did a marketing guy end up CEO of this company?’

  Vos likes views, panoramas – likes to see the Big Picture. He’s at the top of the Magaliesberg mountains, with the Transvaal spread before him. His companion, a pudgy forty-something named Levi Rootenberg, had seemed surprised when Vos asked to ride the cable car up this mountain. Vos knows what this local was thinking: such a touristy thing to do. But Vos doesn’t care much what other people think – so long as they’re useful to him.

  ‘Mr Jones is a smart man,’ Rootenberg replies cautiously, his comb-over dancing in the wind.

  ‘No, he’s a moron,’ Vos counters. ‘Only a moron would buy a fucking platinum mine.’

  The former Bekker mines – now renamed Thorndike Platinum – lay somewhere below them, out towards Rustenburg. Thorndike’s new CEO had engineered a share swap that left the aerospace subcontractor owning a controlling interest in the mines. Rhodri Jones had assumed Thorndike’s throne simply crackling with Big New Ideas for his company, and his first manoeuvre left Bekker’s staff, Rootenberg included, answering to the British.

  ‘Thorndike’s ownership is the reason I’ve done well in this company,’ Rootenberg says. ‘They like the fact that I have experience in both mining and aerospace.’

  ‘A double threat,’ Vos says. ‘That’s why you’re with me now, matey.’

  Rootenberg smiles. ‘There was a logic behind Mr Jones’s decision to buy this company,’ he says. ‘Your manufacturing divisions rely on platinum. It coats your airfoils, it’s in your fuel nozzles and heat exchangers. Owning the Bekker mines guarantees supply.’

  Vos studies the pudgy man. The reason Rootenberg is here has nothing to do with his understanding of airfoils. Together, Vos and Rootenberg are going to save the company.

  ‘For what your hole-in-the-ground costs us,’ Vos says, ‘I could coat Head Office in bloody platinum. Right now, half of South Africa’s mines are haemorrhaging money – including yours.’

  Rootenberg grins. ‘It’s not my mine,’ he corrects, ‘it belongs to you English folk.’

  Vos scans the flat land stretching below him. ‘Did you know this place was a battlefield during the Boer War? The British garrison lay under siege here for months.’ He peers at Rootenberg through his smoky lenses. ‘Probably by your great-great-grandfather. And now, guess what? We’re all under siege again.’

  Vos is referring to the strike: an industry-wide conflict that’s gone on for many unprofitable weeks. South Africa’s two major mining unions have insisted on a one hundred per cent increase in wages, against the mining companies’ counteroffer of ten percent. The industry has pointed out that union demands would require a near-doubling of platinum’s price per ounce, a scenario that is unlikely at best. For Thorndike Platinum, whose most reliable customer is its own British parent, the breakdown in negotiations makes things even more desperate. Without an affordable deal, the whole company could sink into Rhodri Jones’s loss-making metal pit.

  ‘There’s one more thing ownership requires,’ Vos adds, staring far across the Transvaal, ‘and that’s a workforce you can control.’

  ‘You’ll control them,’ Rootenberg says.

  Vos peers at the man. ‘You sound confident.’

  Rootenberg laughs. ‘I have to be. Neither of us wants to end up in Pollsmoor Prison, do we?’

  Rootenberg drives Vos towards Rustenburg in a company Jeep. Flat grasslands roll past them on either side, under an enormous expanse of sky.

  ‘How long have you worked in mining?’ Vos asks.

  ‘Since the early nineties,’ Rootenberg says. ‘Back then, it seemed a better bet than aerospace.’

  Vos chuckles. ‘Funny how your past can prove useful again.’

  As they leave the highway, they’re joined by a heavily armoured vehicle staffed with four combat-ready private security officers. ‘Bloody hell,’ Vos mutters, ‘do we need all that firepower?’

  ‘We are swinging past the site, yes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then I guarantee you need all that firepower.’

  Soon, the two-car motorcade is kicking up dust along a wide dirt track bordered by electricity pylons. The track leads to a shanty town of breezeblock-and-corrugated iron shacks overshadowed by the chimney of a Thorndike smelter. Today, it bellows no smoke, and the nearby ribbons of conveyor belt stand idle. There are very few men here, but women tote water from communal pumps and hang washing on slack cords. Children play in weeds and rubble. Some glance up as the vehicles pass, but there’s little to see. At Thorndike Platinum, armoured cars are the stuff of everyday life.

  But when Vos and Rootenberg round a corner, it’s a different picture. In the distance, several hundred men occupy a rocky hillock. A ring of police surrounds its base, handguns at their hips, and a few cradle assault rifles in the crooks of their arms. When the miners spy the cars, they rise and bellow, and even within the cocoon of the upholstered Jeep, their roar is formidable. The miners raise sticks in clenched fists, and wave clubs overhead. Police tense and drop their hands to their holsters.

  ‘Stop the car,’ Vos orders.

  Rootenberg looks wary. ‘It doesn’t pay to taunt them.’

  ‘What are the cops for?’

  ‘If it comes to violence, they’ll err on the side of caution. They got into hot water for killing some strikers a couple of years ago.’

  Vos snorts. Everyone knows about that massacre; it set back labour relations more than anything since apartheid.

  ‘The police have been pretty careful ever since,’ Rootenberg adds. ‘That’s why, if you want to control these people, you need to use unorthodox methods.’

  Rootenberg stops a couple hundred yards from the strikers. Their roar intensifies, and the security men behind the Jeep leap from their vehicle, semi-automatic assault rifles raised. Vos squints at the crowd. ‘Is Kgatla up there?’

  ‘I doubt it. Security should have taken him to the hotel by now.’

  Vos frowns in concern. ‘Hope nobody saw him leave.’

  ‘No chance.’ Rootenberg tilts his head towards the armed men in the vehicle behind them. ‘These guys are careful.’

  On the hill, the crowd parts suddenly. A powerfully built man with mirror shades descends along the newly formed pathway, trailed by a posse of younger lads. Down at the cordon, he selects an armed officer, and places a meaty hand on the cop’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s Mathaithai Bakone,’ Rootenberg says, ‘the local union boss.’

  Vos’s interest sharpens. This man, whose physical strength belies his late middle age, is a controversial figure in these parts. A former Communist organiser and ANC soldier, Bakone inspires devotion among some, obedience among most, and the hatred of a sizeable few. It is Bakone and his small coterie of lieutenants who keep these strikers in line – and although this labour dispute extends far beyond Thorndike Platinum, Bakone is Vos’s personal Public E
nemy Number One.

  Vos and Rootenberg watch as Bakone leans forwards and speaks. A moment later, the police officer’s gun lowers as though it were wilting.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Vos mutters.

  The union leader applies soft pressure to the policeman’s shoulder, and the officer moves aside like a well-oiled gate. Police on Bakone’s other side step back as well, making a wide opening. Bakone and his boys begin to toyi-toyi, jogging in step, and the protesters on the hillock take up the dance. Bakone leads the rebellious conga past the police, heading straight for the Thorndike vehicles.

  Behind the Jeep, a security man takes quick aim. ‘Stop there!’ he shouts.

  At the fractured cordon, policemen tense. One raises his own weapon and aims it at the Thorndike guard. ‘Holy shit,’ Rootenberg mutters.

  ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ Vos hollers.

  Bakone looks straight at the Thorndike Jeep and locks his gaze on Vos. He smiles wide, toothy with triumph. Even through his mirror shades, the man’s stare is overpowering. Vos drops his gaze and lurches around to the security men behind the Jeep. He gestures wildly. ‘Lower your weapons!’ he shouts. ‘Get back in your vehicle!’

  Rootenberg has already thrown the Jeep in gear; it judders, and they fishtail away in a geyser of dust.

  ‘Sara?’

  The dust from the Thorndike Jeep grew thicker, clouding Sara’s vision until a tan swirl was all she could see. The roar of the toyi-toying mob faded into a single, hushed voice. It was whispering, ‘Sara?’

  She eased open her eyes, and could just make out Jamie’s form entering the darkened room. Instinctively, she reached around to the back of her neck and eased the pendant over her head. She gripped it in her hand, and slid it under the duvet.

  ‘What time is it?’ she mumbled. ‘Is there a problem?’