Chapter 3 - Breathe, while you can

Mel sat at her desk staring at a blank screen. She hadn't  had the heart or the stomach to go into the conference room to see everyone and their shock. Her mind was spinning, she couldn't possibly concentrate on anything.
She kept going over the events of the night before, was there anything that linked? More importantly was there anything that would make them think she had done it? She knew full well that she was innocent, she could never have killed another human being. But would they see it that way when it turned up she was likely the last witness to see him alive and had at least ten strangers witness her very vocal threat of killing him? What was she going to do?

"Mel!" a head popped around the corner pulling her out of her thoughts. "What are you doing here still?" asked the floor manager.
"Oh hi Mark." She glanced up smiling at her coworker "What do you mean?"
"Didn't they tell you, the cops want to question those he was working closest with, that includes you, since you were his PA" He said matter-of-factly.
"Right, makes sense. No one told me, when and where am I supposed to go?" She looked at him and hoped her expression showed confusion and not guilt.

She had been sitting in the police station for over an hour, realizing just how different from the movies South Africa's police force really was, with dingy and dirty walls, too much paper work all over the place, and too few computers so there was a queue for officers and detectives to get to their business. It didn't help that the power had just gone out, so they were all trying to get the back-up power on before any work on the computers was lost. The smell though was what had hit her the worst, it was a mixture of second-hand cigarette smoke, beer breath, day old urine and old sweat was about the closest she could get to explaining it, and it made her nauseous.

"Dumbass boss was found dead this morning by the pier. I'm in police station for questioning. This place stinks. Hope your day is going better. Mel" She hit the send button to Jen.
The reply came almost instantly 

"Just the usual meds that make me feel like crap. Took a stroll through the forest this morning, got some awesome pics of spiderwebs with dew drops.

OMG what the hell??????? You a suspect? You would never kill anyone! Need bail?"

"Nope, just coz I worked with the guy, so they going to question me about his work life. If they ever get to it, looks like power is cut in here and computers & aircon are all down. Gotta go, here comes a cute guy in uniform" and she pocketed her phone as the uniformed officer approached her with a bottle of water.

"Miss," he said "you've been waiting here so long so I thought I would bring you a bottle of water. Has anyone seen to your interview yet?"

"Thank you so much officer" she smiled sweetly at him and seriously considered playing the damsel in distress card, but decided against it. She knew she was better than that, so instead she said "No, I have not been interviewed yet, but I'm really keen to get it over and done with."

She was glad when the officer had kindly reminded the detective that the interview could still be done, even while waiting for the power to come back on. The questions had been the usual run-of-the-mill type: How long have you known Mr Chetty? What was his work ethics like? Did he ever mix work and family life? Did he have any enemies? Did she hear anything unusual when he was leaving the office last?

She answered as openly and honest as possible without actually telling hem that she was with him at Yolo's last night. They didn't ask her directly and she didn't want to give them too much information. If they found out about her being there, she wanted to be absolutely sure that she could prove it was not her first.

After the interview in the hot and stuffy station all she wanted to do was take a cool dip in the ocean. Thankfully she always kept her hot little black bikini and a towel in the boot of her car, so she headed straight for the golden mile. It was midweek and out of the holiday season, so the beach was quiet. After changing, Mel stopped by the lifeguards whom she knew by name and chatted to them a little, non-chalantly asking them if they had heard about the murder on the beach last night. They had indeed heard about it, it was another life guard, now off duty, who had found the slain man. Apparently the weird thing about the murder was nothing had been taken, he still had is wallet, phone, and even his gaudy gold chain necklace when he was found this morning. The word on the street was it was either a crime of passion, or a warning to others.

Faking morbid curiosity was easy, she had always chatted to the life guards when she came to the beach, she knew their children's names and even what schools they went to. It was always useful to be friendly with the type of people who did the day to day mundane jobs. She made most of her friends in adult life that way, cleaner ladies, garbage men, street sweepers, security guards. She would always go out of her way to greet them, thank them for the thankless job that they did, introduce herself, and find out their names. To tell the truth, the habit had come in useful more than a few times, it had gotten her some good information and out of sticky situations. And today was another of those days, thanking the life guards for what they always did to look after people, she headed into the sea.

After nearly an hour of swimming, she pulled herself out of the surf. She loved the sea, and the swim had been just what she needed. But she always held a deep respect for the ocean and knew better than to swim when she was tired. Strolling up to the local kiosk, she bought herself an ice cream, it was such a hot day for autumn. She was thinking his would be sure to be another shockingly cold winter for Durban. It had been hitting record lows every winter for about 5 years running now, each summer would seem longer and hotter and each winter sudden, short and cold. There was even speculation that it might just snow his year. Boy, that would be amazing,snow in Durban she mused as she begun licking the ice cream. She planned on taking a short walk on the promenade, she needed some "alone time" to do some thinking, and there was no place better than a busy public area to keep strangers out of your hair and away from talking to you.

She had wondered along aimlessly, considering the events of the past couple of weeks and especially the past couple of days. She wondered if there was any way for her to do a thing about the case she now felt she was a part of and seemingly could not escape from. She decided that she was going to attempt to conduct an investigation of her own.

When Mel eventually reached the end of the promenade at the lagoon she was shocked she had actually walked so far. The promenade and in fact the entire beach front always looked stunning nowadays. Ten years ago it had been a dodgy place for a single woman to walk along, but the city had upgraded the whole beach front a few years back. With regular security patrols for safety. It now looked like it was taken from a Hollywood set, the typical palm trees, the wide promenade with roller skaters and cyclists ambling along it, the tourists taking snapshots of the ocean, the blond surfer babes in their wetsuits and salt bleached hair. Starting to head back to her car she happened upon a group of tourists from Switzerland who stopped her asking if she would take a photo of them, she got chatting with them about Durban and its history after taking a few photos.
Before long one of the Swiss men who's name was Julian, asked her to please be their tour guide of the city for the next 2 days while they were in the city, they would pay her, and pay for her meals and activities. She thought about it for a moment. She had handed in her resignation this morning, she knew the city inside out, and it included free food.
"Ah, why not? Sure I will." She eventually answered them.
Cheers came from the group, and she smiled. Her smile faded when she realized this would interfere with her unofficial investigation in Avesh's murder. But too late to back out now she decided.
She arranged to meet the group at 8 the next morning in their hotel lobby for a typical tourist day in and around the city. They were a group of ten, 6 men, 4 women. They ranged from about 24 years old to to about 31 she figured. This would be fun she decided, just the "holiday at home" that she was needing. She took a few more photos of the group with their cameras and said goodbye until tomorrow, then started back towards her car.
Suddenly Julian was next to her, he handed her a 20 euro note, as well as a 200 rand note, and stated "This is for your trouble, I look forwards to seeing you tomorrow"
She wasn't going to refuse, so she politely thanked him.

Back at home, she turned on the air con, after taking a nice cold shower. It had been a hot day and she had been out in the sun in her bikini for much of the day. Flicking on her PC she went to get a cup of coffee while the computer warmed up.
Because she had been doing all of Avesh's work for the past 8 weeks, including paying his home bills, he had given her all of his passwords, so she had instant access to his work and private email accounts, as well as his bank accounts. It was time to do some digging and see if she could figure out what was really going on.

Logging in, nothing could have prepared her for what happened!