Free A Sailor's Honour by Chris Marnewick Page B

know. It’s better for both of us that you don’t know.’
    Van Onselen asked anyway. ‘Does this have something to do with your wife’s disappearance?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Weber said. ‘Now don’t ask any more questions.’
    Van Onselen sat down and pointed at a visitor’s chair for Weber. Weber could see him wondering if this was a trap, some elaborate scheme by the Bar Council. But then he must have remembered the vigour with which Weber had defended him, to the extent of calling the chairman of the Bar Council a sanctimonious Bible-punching hypocrite without an ounce of mercy in his make-up.
    â€˜I think I have what you want,’ he said, and leaned down to take a lever-arch file from his briefcase. ‘James Mazibuko,’ he said and opened the file on his desk. ‘Serial cash-in-transit robber, often a fugitive from justice, the general who does the scouting and the planning and gives the orders, but is never seen anywhere near the action. Out on bail at the moment on a charge of robbing a cash van at Ballito while out on bail for two similar offences, one of them in Cape Town.’
    â€˜Does he speak English?’ Weber asked.
    â€˜Better than me.’ It was said with a smile. Van Onselen’s English was of the murderous variety and had become a joke amongst the legal fraternity after a cantankerous judge had shouted at him, ‘Mr van Onselen, I could give you a thrashing for the way you murder the English language!’
    â€˜How good is his intelligence?’
    â€˜He’s a very clever man, I think.’
    â€˜No, I mean his information. He must have a network of informants about shipments’ dates and times and places and so on.’
    â€˜Oh, I see what you mean.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜As far as I know, and he won’t tell me everything, he has contacts within the banks’ security and also in the police and NIA .’
    So the rumour he had heard was true, Weber thought. The National Intelligence Agency was staffed by erstwhile freedom fighters who were not averse to making some money on the side. It was rumoured that the section looking into organised crime was in cahoots with the cash-in-transit gangs and took a cut, a solid thirty per cent of the take, in return for providing reliable intelligence to facilitate the lifting of the money and afterwards to put the police off the scent by providing false intelligence reports.
    â€˜He should do,’ Weber said and stood up.
    â€˜What’s in it for James?’ Van Onselen wanted to know. ‘He’s going to ask me.’
    â€˜You may tell him that I’ll defend him free of charge on every one of the charges he currently faces.’
    â€˜That might do it,’ Van Onselen said. ‘He’s never had senior counsel on his side. On the prosecuting side, often, but not on the defence team. As you know, the judges here just don’t take me seriously.’
    Weber stopped at the door. ‘I need to see him sooner rather than later. And you’ll have to set it up so that he comes to see me with a proper brief from a proper firm of attorneys. After that, you and the attorney stay well out of it.’
    Van Onselen made a last effort. ‘You’re not going to tell me anything about it, are you?’
    â€˜No, because if I do, you will get struck off.’ Weber closed the door behind him before Van Onselen could respond. ‘Both of us,’ he said softly to himself.

Friday, 19 June 2009
10
    â€˜Mr James Mazibuko is here, a little early.’
    â€˜Offer him tea and make some for me too, please. I’ll come out in a minute.’
    He felt his secretary’s eyes on him. She was still at the door. ‘What?’ he asked.
    â€˜You’re in for a surprise,’ she said.
    â€˜I’ll be out in a minute,’ he said again.
    James Mazibuko was paging through an old copy of Christophorus , the official Porsche magazine.