Chapter 5

Mel parked her little black hatchback in between a row of boring black and white cars in the shipyard. For the first time since she had bought the car, she was glad it was black and blended in with the other cars around her, just another boring black car.

She had a good view of the ship in question from her parking, so decided not to even exit the car. With her camera zoomed in, she actually had a fairly good view of the dockyard goings on and the workers off loading the ship. She tried to locate the container with the number she was looking for, but it just did not seem to be that easy. Of course not, this wasn't those fictional movies or books, and she wasn't Nancy Drew, Mel told herself yet again.

After watching them for 30 minutes she had a pretty good idea of how the routine worked. The crane operator would offload containers directly onto trucks from the ship, the trucks would dive forwards to a checkpoint, there a guard would check that the paperwork produced by the driver matched the paperwork on the labels on the shipment. Then the truck would be free to go.

'What am I doing here or even hoping to accomplish?' Mel wondered 'There must be at least a thousand containers on that ship, looking for this particular one is like finding a needle in a haystack.' It was getting dreary and downright boring. She figured she would take a few more photos of the area and then leave, this was doing no good.

Just then she noticed something near the back of the line of trucks waiting to have containers loaded onto them. There was a big white SUV stopped next to an empty truck. Between the two vehicles looked like something shady going on. But from the angle Mel was at, she couldn’t quite see what was going on, she took photos anyway. There were two men there.

The men were standing, one with his face towards her looked like a Nigerian in his colorful abstract print full length dress and turban. She could even see his gold tooth sparkling in the sun, his scarred face telling a story of things he was willing to do to get what he wanted. He was holding a metal briefcase.

'Seriously?' Mel wondered, 'can I really be seeing this? Is that a briefcase of money?'

He handed it to the man whose back was to her. That man was wearing a cheap looking navy blue suit and sneakers; he was at least 6" tall and had a mop of unruly brown hair. She could have sworn he looked familiar, but she just couldn’t quite place him. With his back still to her, her placed the briefcase on the hood of the SUV and popped it open. She was sure inside there was at least R100,000!

Mel held her breath, was this for real? Was it really happening, and she was the unlucky person caught in the middle? What these men were doing, was this what Avesh was involved in?

The man in the cheap navy suit handed the Nigerian a clipboard with some papers on it. Mel was willing to guess those must be the papers that were later checked by security at the checkpoint. So this was what was going on. Then he handed over two boxes with plastic windows. The one was a cheap knockoff of a Barbie doll, the other a cowboys & indians toy gun. Why would they be exchanging money for that kind of rubbish, Mel wondered. It was just cheap Chinese junk. The men shook hands, and the Nigerian walked to the passenger side of the truck and climbed in, the driver gave a toothless smile at their new friend and closed the tinted window.

Then the man in the cheap suit turned around to get into his SUV, Mel saw his face and let out a gasp "It can’t be you!!"

She sat stunned with tears in her eyes. The betrayal and lies were unreal. How could he do this? But how in the hell did stupid Avesh fit into this lot? She was so confused and upset that she didn’t notice when the line of trucks moved, nor when the SUV disappeared around a warehouse.

Mel was brought out of the mind-fog she had been in suddenly by her phone singing Billy Joel's Piano Man in her pocket. She glanced at the screen; it was a number she did not recognize.

"Hello" she answered simply

"Is this Miss Cooper?" a quiet but urgent male voice came over the phone

"Yes"

"Miss Cooper, my name is Steven O'Brian. I'm a police officer; we met a couple of days ago when you came in for some questions. Do you remember?"

"Oh, hi Steven." she breathed a sigh of relief "Please call me Mel. What can I do for you?"

"Well, there is no easy way to put this. Miss Cooper, Mel, remember Detective Shabane who interviewed you? He has been working the case of Avesh Singh... I am so fired when they catch me..... um, well Shabane has been working with some really good tech guys. And here's the thing, they think you murdered him. They say there is evidence that points to you."

"WHAT?" she silently cursed. Maybe the SAPS were good at their jobs. Just not quite good enough to prove she was being framed. "But I didn’t do it"

"Well Mel, I honestly dont think you did do it. I believe you are innocent. And that is why I am calling you.... when I get caught I am so fired.... normally it’s a bad idea to run. Sticking around and fighting your innocence is normally the best way to do it. But Shabane has been looking for days now, and you're not only the best suspect, but his only suspect. He's tired and he's going to pin this thing to you. Mel, I'm sorry. But you either need to run now or you are going to end up in jail for at least ten years."

"Steven, are you absolutely serious"

"I wish I was joking. I liked you, and you seemed like a nice person. I've dealt with murderers often enough to know what a murderer's character is like. You're a strong willed woman, but you're no murderer. Shabane is on his way to the court to get a warrant for your arrest and to search your things. You have maybe an hour before he’s at your home."

"Thank you O'Brian. I owe you!" and she put down the phone as she was starting her car.

Trusting a total stranger she had only met once for ten minutes might be a bad idea, but she had bigger things to worry about and this time it was worth it to run, she knew he was right. She drove straight home, ran inside to grab her weekend bags that were already packed. She knew the cops would freeze her bank account as soon as they knew she had run, plus there was that huge and incriminating deposit that had come in. Fortunately she kept a few thousand in cash hidden in her apartment; she grabbed the cash, her passport and her laptop. Locking the door, she closed her eyes and wondered when, if ever, she would come back.

Forcing herself to walk not run, so as to avoid attracting attention, she got into her car and drove to the nearest busy shopping mall. Knowing that in a crowd it would be a little harder to spot a 27 year old in basic jeans and plain black t-shirt, driving a boring black hatchback.

She found a parking as far from the doors as possible and stopped to think what her next move would be.

If she headed straight for the border they would find her easily. She had about 2 days before they realized she had run though, and fortunately South Africa was big enough to hide in for a while. Her phone beeped, and she realized she had nearly forgotten her plans to send the weekend with friends. Looking at the screen it was a text from Jen.

"Looking forwards to seeing you. Chris phoned, he's coming here directly. So looks like you and Andre travelling together. I've seen how you look at him Mel, I'm not blind. Don’t let those feelings wreck our weekend! Love you and can’t wait to see you."

"Thanks Jen" Mel muttered to herself sarcastically. But she knew she didn’t mean it, she was so fond of Jen, how could she ever be upset with that sweet friend? Jen had been right too, but Mel knew she would never look at Andre that way again, never!

Actually it seemed like a good idea, at least stick with the plan for now. The plan was for Mel to pick up Andre at his work at 3:30 when he knocked off, he said he had packed and brought his bags with to work, and then they were going to take the two and a half hour drive up the coast to Jen's place. Mel looked at the time for the first time since arriving at the harbor earlier and saw she had just 15 minutes to go pick up Andre.

She texted Andre as soon as she was outside the building he worked in, and just a moment later he walked out with a duffel bag in his hand. Dumping the bag in the back of the car, he jumped in the passenger side.

"Is that all you're bringing?" Mel asked in surprise

"What can I say, I'm a guy." He responded with a grin.

What could she say? Mel just shook her head.

She turned off her phone, didn’t need the tech guys at the SAPS tracking her now she told herself silently, and put the car into gear.

They drove in silence, bar the Bryan Adams cd that was playing, until they got out of the city. Out on the open road, with sugar cane fields turning to pine tree forests, the road would curve every now and again enough for them to see a panorama of the ocean. Being a Friday afternoon, just before rush hour and out of holiday season, the road was fairly quiet. There were a couple of cane trucks and lumber trucks they passed, but generally it was just the little black car on the road. Mel loved the feeling of the open road. It reminded her of her dream to travel the world. In her teenage years she strongly considered doing her world travel alone, thinking it would give her more freedom to chop and change her plans as she pleased. But now, with the wisdom of years, she realized that despite being a loner, traveling alone would be terribly lonely. She had just never found anyone who wanted to travel with her, and now under her current circumstances it looked like she was going to have to run on her own.

"You seem pretty deep in thought, care to share" Andre pulled her out of her inner thoughts.

With so many things going on in her mind, she dared not even glance over at him. So she merely answered "Nope, just girl stuff"

He sniggered "If you say so. So you mentioned the other evening that you had a pretty annoying boss, what company are you working for now?"

She tried to prevent the emotions of the past week from flashing across her face and tried to steady her voice. She hated lying to her friends, so she kept her answer as true as possible but not giving too much information either by saying "He's a deadbeat boss. I resigned. Did a temp thing on Thursday as a tour guide. And when we get back, I'll be looking for another job." Wanting to direct the conversation away from herself she added "What about you? You've been working for Transcorp for 5 years now and I still don’t know exactly what your job description is?"

Andre didn’t expect that question, he stammered a little, looking for the right words "Well, I kind of deal with customs. I check incoming shipping loads at random, and I file the paperwork with the customs department on what type of load it is and what taxes they require. I then contact the owners of the shipment and send them the paperwork......"

Mel stopped listening and tried to just focus on the road ahead, the beautiful sunset colors in the sky all around them. She tried not to let the tears out. When she heard his voice stop all she could bring herself to answer was "That’s interesting"

"Mel, you haven’t heard a word of what I’ve been saying. You're acting so strange. What’s going on" Andre demanded ten minutes later, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She hadn’t even realized he had been talking all this time. The forests on both sides of the road were tall, the setting sun casting long shadows through the trees. She saw a little dirt road off the highway into the forest and turned off into it. Still not answering Andre, she drove a few hundred meters until they were well out of sight of the road and just on their own in the quickly darkening forest, the car bumping along the dirt road.

Andre trying to remain calm despite Mel acting so strange said "I know I haven’t visited Jen up at her new place, but I'm fairly sure she stays on a tar road in a little town, not on a dirt road in the middle of an eerie forest. Mel, you want to tell me what we are doing here?"