A Sailor's Honour by Chris Marnewick Page A

The police are pretty useless and I’ve decided to go private and look for my wife myself.’
    â€˜I agree that the police are pretty useless,’ Mazibuko said. ‘But you can afford the best private investigators money can buy. How about that cop who caught Leigh Matthews’s killer? I hear he’s retired now.’
    Mazibuko drank his tea like an Englishman. He held the saucer in his left hand and raised the cup to his mouth with the other. He looked at Weber over the rim of the cup. He wore rimless spectacles that reflected the light from the windows behind Weber and obscured his eyes.
    â€˜I need muscle as well as intelligence,’ he said. ‘And you have access to both. I need you to find my wife and bring her home, whatever the cost.’
    Mazibuko put his cup down slowly. ‘In money or lives?’
    â€˜Either or both, as the circumstances may require.’
    Mazibuko removed his spectacles and made a show of polishing them. ‘Mr Weber, you may think of me as a bank robber, as a man who shoots up the cash-in-transit vans, but I’m a businessman. What’s the bottom line? What’s in it for me? You’re obviously asking me to do something which is dangerous and illegal. So, I have to ask, what’s in it for me?’
    â€˜I’ve told Steph van Onselen that I’ll defend you free of charge on all the counts you currently face. It seems to me that there were four separate heists, one of which resulted in a charge of murder, and that there are numerous ancillary charges such as possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, theft of the guards’ weapons, car thefts for the getaway vehicles, malicious damage to property, resisting the police, bribery and corruption, all in multiples. All consolidated in one trial with multiple accused, where one man who turns state witness can bring the whole house down.’
    The recital had no effect other than to make Mazibuko smile. ‘I knew all of that before I came here,’ he said.
    â€˜Then there is the contention that this was organised crime, leaving you vulnerable to asset forfeiture and minimum sentencing regimes, including life imprisonment.’
    â€˜I already have an advocate,’ Mazibuko said. ‘And I’m quite happy with him.’
    â€˜I’m a far better advocate than Van Onselen, Mr Mazibuko. And by the sound of things, you are going to need the very best defence you can get.’
    â€˜A case like that could drag on for years. And witnesses die and disappear, you know. Or they no longer remember, or have reason to forget, or they change their story.’
    Weber was convinced that he had found his man. ‘You’re a businessman. You want to think about reducing your risks. You’re running the risk of losing everything,’ he said.
    â€˜I don’t take risks, Mr Weber. I’m never at the scene. The men who do the job don’t know my name and have never seen me or heard me speak. I always have an alibi, and there are loyal men – men who would rather go to jail than talk – between me and the men who wield the guns and drive the getaway cars. I am clean. The cops and prosecutors have nothing to link me to the crimes.’
    Weber started explaining again, but Mazibuko kept shaking his head and then said, ‘I can afford any lawyer I want. You’re expensive, I’ve heard, but your fees are peanuts compared to what I take home.’
    â€˜Will you at least think about it, Mr Mazibuko?’ Weber asked. It sounded like a desperate plea even to his own ears. ‘You have the contacts in the NIA and the police to be able to find her, and the men to bring her back unharmed once you have found her.’
    Mazibuko nodded slowly, as if unwilling to concede anything, and stood up. ‘Call me James,’ he said. ‘I just can’t get used to being called Mister.’
    â€˜James it is then,’ Weber said. ‘And I’m