Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD
It was a bitterly cold night. The kind where a chill seeps into the marrow of your bones and you think your body will never be warm again. Sitting in his car, Tiny Nortje let out a lengthy sigh; he had forgotten to wear a jumper for his vigil.
He was freezing his butt off outside a house with windows that glittered like a million dollars and a grass lawn that rolled like velvet to the forecourt, where a fountain tinkled like money – big money.
Matrimonial cases were a nuisance, Nortje muttered into numbing hands which resembled baseball mitts. Warm breath fanned his fingers, providing a brief, teasing thaw.
He chided himself for accepting the assignment to follow a woman believed to be cheating on her husband.
Such cases may be the bread and butter of detective novels and corny American television series, but to flesh and blood private investigators tracking errant spouses is depressingly dull.
“You sit around day and night doing very little but watching closed doors or trailing cars from one venue to another,” explained Nortje, a former captain in the South African police.
“It’s not like the movies where characters like Magnum [aka actor Tom Selleck] are always in dramatic action or high speed car chases. Most of what we do is cheque and insurance fraud or thefts from companies.”
So you can go months without any action? I queried.
“Most of us can go years without getting into any kind of violent situation,” he replied.
We had arranged to meet at his office in Judith’s Paarl, a Johannesburg suburb where danger seemed to lurk around every street corner. The square-built building, which Nortje shares with a private security company, showed signs of age bordering on the seedy.
A giant size man (1,97m) with thinning brown hair and the girth of a woman in her third trimester (127kg) stood conspicuously outside on the pavement. Obviously Tiny waiting to take me on my first assignment as a trainee dick.
His face was swarthy, large-featured and strongly lined across the forehead down to the smiling mouth. Sadly, his only Magnum-like attributes were height and a bushy mustache.
Within minutes we were driving along the N1 in his newish BMW (clearly business was not doing too badly) to interview executives at a multinational communications company in Midrand which had inadvertently purchased stolen cable wires.
The case only involved R100 000 worth of goods filched from a factory in Randburg (probably an inside job organised by a competitor), but it was a major project for Nortje’s one-man operation.
On arrival at our destination he introduced me as one of his operatives and we sat talking to two low-ranking executives. The conversation, which lasted about 20 minutes, was dull and technical. It amounted to a cul-de-sac in Nortje’s line of inquiry.
If this was the meat of private detective work, I would much prefer the fatty content of a juicy domestic squabble. But even those are few and far between these days.
During lean times Nortje, like most of his colleagues, dirties his hands with a spot of debt collecting. “It’s that or starve,” he said. “But I don’t break bones to collect, I rely on the legal process.”
“What if someone goes for you?” I asked during our ride back to the office.
“Then I show them this,” he said, pulling out a 9mm Baretta cushioned between left thigh and the car seat. “I’ve never had to use it, but it is a powerful peacemaker.”
The Baretta did not have a name (I would have christened mine the Persuader) and it has apparently not seen much action in the four years of Nortje’s stint as a private eye. An occasion when he came close to pulling the trigger was the night he and a couple of freelance operatives caught a gang breaking into a warehouse after a three-night stake-out.
One thief brandished a pistol (it turned out to be a gas one) and threatened to shoot. Nortje, an expert marksman, smiled casually. Baretta stood to attention and the crook backed down.
Nortje’s tiny office (the room appears toy-size when he uncurls from the desk) is up eight flights of stairs. Inside, the dirty light-blue walls are lined with mementos from his cop days – including decorations for involvement in the border wars.
He was particularly proud of his international bodyguard diploma “based on the British Royal Protection squad”, obtained from the local technikon. (Is that like taking classes in how to walk alongside someone?)
So can anyone just set up office and operate as a private eye?
“I suppose so,” he replied. “But the good ones are usually ex-policemen with experience of investigating crimes.”
Marco Collalto is a 27-year-old ex- police sergeant who now co-owns a rival firm. “You have to know how to pick up clues and follow leads in order to solve the case. Like if an employer suspects some of his staff are stealing, then you polygraph them and carry out surveillance on them.”
That was how he managed to catch a bookshop worker in Johannesburg who had stolen about R250 000 worth of books from his boss.
“We followed him one afternoon to Boksburg and found he had his own bookshop registered in his wife’s name, filled with the stolen books. The police were called and he was arrested.”
Well, that did not sound particularly difficult, I said.
“It was one of our easier cases, but it still took two days before the guy went to the [Boksburg] shop. And we had to follow him without letting him know,” replied Collalto defensively.
He said that one of the reasons for an increase in the number of investigations services in recent years is that people have lost faith in the police doing their job.
“We get asked to find stolen cars, investigate corporate frauds and occasionally even murder. People know if they pay for individual attention then they will get it, while the police are not just overworked but they are also incompetent.”
At prices ranging between R140 and R300 per hour plus expenses, hiring a private eye can be an expensive business. So expensive, Nortje said, that often people change their minds when they realise the cost.
He tells me that he used to model and appear in television commercials in the old days, when he must have cut quite an impressive figure before good living and time began to take its toll.
His face kept popping up on the screen so often that a colonel once inquired if he had permission to moonlight.
“I told him it was my brother but that people were always confusing us,” laughed Nortje. “And he believed me.”
Back on his watch over the cheating blonde. By 6am Nortje’s huge frame was growing stiff from nearly 12 hours squeezed into the car. His report would show that the woman spent the night with a man, not girlfriends as she had told her husband.
He thought of his wife of one year – the second Mrs Nortje – snuggled under a fluffy duvet.
“Why didn’t you go home at midnight and then return in the morning?” I asked.
“Because that would be dishonest. My contract with the client was to observe his wife. I could not take his money and only do half the job.”
Ah, an honest dick …