Free Cobra by Deon Meyer

What was wrong with an old pair of tracksuit pants and a T-shirt? But when he put on the new pyjamas and stood there in front of Alexa like a moron, she said, with a big, appreciative smile, ‘Come here, Benny,’ and she held him tightly and kissed him until his knees buckled . . .
    What would it help to share it all with Doc?
    That’s why he avoided all mention of the Big Problem. He could never tell Barkhuizen about that. Or anyone else, that was the big fuck-up. He would have to sort it out himself, but he couldn’t, not at all – he didn’t even know where to begin.
    And as if that wasn’t enough to complicate his life, Alexa added another dilemma this afternoon.
    When he had showered and was putting on fresh clothes in their bedroom, Alexa had come to sit on the bed, excited, as though she couldn’t keep the ‘surprise’ to herself any more. She said bass guitar player Schalk Joubert was going to perform with Lize Beekman at Die Boer in Durbanville next Friday night. ‘But Schalk has to rush to New York for a gig, and I said to Lize, what about Benny? He knows all your music off by heart and he’s not only a master detective, he’s grown amazingly as a musician. And then she said that’s a brilliant idea. Benny, you’re going to play with Lize Beekman – I’m so proud of you . . .’
    At first he felt relief that it was not the surprise he had suspected.
    And then the knowledge dawned on him: he was not in that league, no matter how hard he practised with Rust, his foursome of amateur-veterans. They did covers of time-worn hits, played every now and then at golden and silver wedding anniversaries in front of middle-aged audiences. But this was Lize Beekman, the singer who, the one or two times he’d been in her presence, had left him tongue-tied and dumbstruck by her immense talent and her quiet beauty and her aura.
    What was he to do? Alexa sat there in joy and expectation, waiting for his response to the great gift. He had forced a smile and said ‘ Sjoe ,’ an innocuous exclamation that he fokken never used. He said: ‘Thank you, Alexa, but I don’t know if I’m good enough,’ and knew exactly what her reaction would be.
    ‘Of course you are good enough. I didn’t start singing in bands yesterday, Benny. You’ve grown so much in your music the past year.’ One of her typical artistic expressions that he struggled to handle. ‘Lize is emailing me the repertoire, and you have to go and rehearse a few times, but that’s only next week, you’ll be able to arrange that with work . . . Put on your new blue shirt, you look so good in it.’
    So he put the blue shirt on.
    He was fucked. In at least two ways.
    He found his team members at IMC, the Hawks’ Information Management Centre.
    ‘You look a bit better, Benna,’ said Cupido when he looked up from the computer screen he was staring at, along with the other Violent Crimes detectives. ‘Nice shirt, partner . . .’
    The whole room gawped at him.
    ‘We got the two-oh-five subpoena quickly,’ said Captain Philip van Wyk, IMC commanding officer, referring to the Hawks’ responsibilities according to article 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act when obtaining cellphone records. ‘Seems like this has really caught the attention higher up . . .’
    ‘’Cause why, it’s a foreigner,’ said Cupido reproachfully.
    ‘. . . But it’s the data from three cellphone towers that’s relevant,’ said van Wyk. ‘And weekends are prime time in Franschhoek. It’ll take time to analyse everything.’
    ‘And I can tell you now, there are going to be lots of international calls,’ said Cupido. ‘Half of those wine farms are in the hands of foreigners.’
    ‘The logs of the Internet service provider to La Petite Margaux show there were seven computers and three iPads on that IP address since Friday. We’ll have to identify and isolate the computers and traffic belonging to the farm personnel before we know what Morris’s activities