Daddy's Girl by Margie Orford Page B

trying to protect.’

    Riedwaan picked them up. So small in his hand. No dark family secrets to reveal, just bullets crashing through young lungs, stopping young hearts.
    ‘I’ll show you.’ De Lange unlocked the computer room. Inside, the air conditioning hummed, cooling the four large computers standing on a scuffed square of linoleum. De Lange tapped a keyboard.
    ‘Here.’ He pointed to the close-ups of cartridges,the six grooves distinct where the bullet had spun down the barrel. ‘Six perfect matches. Same gun fired all these shots. Ibis went into orbit over these.’ He’d called up the International Ballistics Information System on his computer.
    ‘So, what were those?’
    ‘That gun’s been out of action for a while, but it has been used before. Five cases came up on the database.’
    ‘Let me see them,’said Riedwaan.
    De Lange downloaded the files. No arrests, but a record of all the bullets that were found at the murder scenes. De Lange kept track of them all, trying to find patterns in the shootings that terrified people living on the Flats.
    ‘Gang violence?’ asked Riedwaan.
    De Lange nodded. ‘Turf war.’ He opened a map of the Cape Peninsula. ‘A dealer in Heideveld, a couple of gangsters,a mother going to church in Mitchell’s Plain – she was a witness to the first shooting, apparently. And a kid reading a story in bed to his little sister caught a bullet in the head.’
    ‘Where?’ asked Riedwaan.
    ‘Edge of Maitland.’
    ‘Okay, but that’s four,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You said five.’
    ‘The fifth case is this one.’ De Lange opened the last file. The same detailed close-ups of thebullets found in the bodies, and the casings sprayed across the crime scenes. ‘That triple murder near Paarl. Mother, grandmother, a little girl. The women were farmworkers. The little girl just happened to be there.’
    ‘Graveyard de Wet,’ said Riedwaan.
    The name cooled the room as effectively as any air conditioning.
    ‘A general in the 27s, last time he was inside,’ De Lange said. ‘Itwas one of the cases I gave expert testimony in. You sent him down. No weapon ever found, but the judge didn’t care. Life without parole. This gun was only ever used where Graveyard de Wet was involved. This is his gun.’
    ‘I know, Shorty, I know. You said so at the time,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But what have those two schoolgirls got to do with a long-dead turf war?’
    ‘Nothing, that I know of,’said Shorty. ‘But this gun knows.’
    ‘Guns and gang wars,’ Riedwaan was thinking out loud. ‘The last time I looked, that lowlife de Wet was in jail.’
    ‘You’ve checked?’ asked Shorty. ‘There was the president’s prisoner amnesty so that he could free all his buddies who are in jail for corruption. He let out a few other lowlifes to make it less obvious.’
    ‘No one got amnesty if a weaponwas involved. Members of parliament, fraudsters, shoplifters, embezzlers, yes. But no gangsters, no rapists, no killers.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘I saw the list,’ said Riedwaan. ‘New legislation. They have to.’
    ‘You know who those girls were?’ asked De Lange.
    ‘Identified at the scene. Father, brothers, uncles all clean. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some gangster movinghimself up the ladder.’
    ‘You should check it out yourself, Faizal. I’m suspicious. It’s my job. It’s been a long time since that gun was used. And now it’s back.’ De Lange paused. ‘The same day your daughter goes missing. The day you get suspended.’
    ‘I’ll check it out.’ Riedwaan scrolled through his phone for his contact in Correctional Services. He gave him the name – Graveyard de Wet.

    Five minutes, and he called back.
    ‘And?’ Shorty asked.
    ‘Graveyard de Wet’s not been using that gun,’ Riedwaan said. ‘He’s dead. No relatives want his body, so there’s a pauper’s funeral on Friday.’
    ‘That’s good news, then.’
    Riedwaan took out a coin. He tossed it: heads.