Random Violence Read Online Free PDF Page B

perfume. They passed a pair of men in dark suits and striped ties striding along importantly. Jade thought they must be managers. They had that look.
    “This cold is terrible, isn’t it? Just unbearable.” Yolandi pushed open another security door. Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “I can’t give you much time. We’re all going into a meeting at two.”
    “What business are you in?” Jade asked.
    “We manufacture plastic kitchen goods.”
    “And Annette worked in accounts?”
    “Together with me.” Yolandi turned her distraught face to Jade as she unlocked an office door. Her hands were trembling.
    If Annette had worked with state secrets or been involved in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, Jade might have wondered if her murder was linked to her job. However, managing accounts for a firm that made bowls and scrapers didn’t seem to be a high-risk occupation.
    “I do hope that you manage to find the people who killed her,” Yolandi went on. “We’ve all been shaken by this. It’s a dreadful thing. But then, crime in this country is out of control, isn’t it? My two daughters are both in Canada where it’s safe. They worry about me here. I get phone calls from them almost every day. I’d go too, but it’s so expensive to emi-grate and I just don’t have the funds.”
    Presumably, in Canada the cold wasn’t terrible or unbear-able. For an uncharitable moment Jade wondered whether her daughters had emigrated to find a better life, or to get away from their mother’s complaining.
    “This is our office.” Yolandi pushed open the door and Jade followed her in. The room contained two desks, two high-backed office chairs and two flimsy steel chairs for visitors. One desk was piled high with papers. A computer keyboard and monitor were wedged into the remaining space. The other desk was empty.
    “How long had Annette worked for the company?”
    “Twelve years.”
    Jade took the seat that was offered to her. It was the kind of chair that made people glad to be standing. It was like sitting on gravel. She faced Yolandi across the cluttered desk and wondered what it must be like to spend twelve years of your life working for one company, in one place.
    As a child, she had traveled with her father wherever his investigations had taken him. When Commissioner de Jong spent time away from home, his daughter went with him. Jade had spent long hours in planes and cars watching the landscape speed by and listening to the detectives discussing whatever case they were busy with. She was used to being locked in a hotel room with a selection of books, a box of bis-cuits, and firm instructions not to open the door to anyone unless it was her father.
    She had to crane her neck to see Yolandi over the towers of paper. “Did you know Annette well?” she asked.
    Yolandi adjusted the clasp on a string of plastic beads that hung around her drooping neck. “As well as anyone. She kept to herself. I considered myself her friend, you know. We’d worked together for years. You’d think there’d be no secrets between us. I’m an open book, myself. But Annette hardly ever spoke about her personal life.”
    “Did you notice any change in her behavior in the last month or so?”
    Yolandi thought for a while. She stared at a spot on the wall so intently that Jade looked too, to check whether she had noticed something interesting. She hadn’t.
    “No change, really. She was stressed about the move. Pre-occupied. But that’s natural when you’re packing up house, isn’t it? And she was working hard. Working late some eve-nings. This was going to be her last month here. She wanted to get everything finished before she left for Cape Town.” Yolandi glanced at the empty desk.
    “Her husband told us she was looking for a private investi-gator a couple of weeks before her death.”
    Yolandi nodded. “Yes. I knew about that.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She asked me if I could recommend