Episode 3: Nothing Obvious

Jonathan Whitfield never made it to his car.

By 22:10, he was lying dead on the pavement along the walkway leading from the restaurant. A security guard found him during his usual rounds and, at first, thought Jonathan was simply drunk.

He called out to him, but Jonathan didn't respond. He called again, louder this time, and still got nothing.

He was lying on his side with one arm stretched towards the pavement. His shirt was still tucked into his trousers, his wallet was still in his pocket and his watch was still on his wrist. There was no blood and no obvious injury. Nothing around him explained why a man who had been sitting in a restaurant less than an hour earlier was now lying dead on the pavement.

The security guard stepped away and called the police.

Start from the beginning: The prologue: Never Stay for Dessert

22:34
Detective Mulalo Mbedzi arrived twenty-four minutes later and slowly walked the route between the restaurant entrance and the parking area.
Something didn't add up.

The man had been found along a walkway that customers used every night, in a place where people could easily pass him without giving him a second look.
Mulalo looked down at the body.

There were no obvious signs of an attack. There was no blood, broken glass, weapon or visible struggle.
The paramedics were packing up when Mulalo approached them.

"What happened?"

One of them shook his head.

"We can't tell you yet."

"Heart?"

"Maybe."

Mulalo looked at him.

"Maybe?"

"There's nothing obvious."

Mulalo looked back at the man on the floor.
That was the problem.
There was nothing obvious.

At 23:17, the forensic team was still working along the walkway. They photographed Jonathan's body, the pavement, the restaurant entrance and the route towards the parking area. They checked the nearby bins and searched the spaces around where he was found.

They found nothing.

Mulalo had worked enough murder scenes to know that violence usually left something behind.

Already invested? Go back to Episode Two and see how Jonathan's story began.

The Restaurant
Mulalo started with the restaurants.

He had no idea where Jonathan had been before he died, so he moved from one restaurant manager to another, showing them a photograph and asking if anyone remembered seeing a man wearing a white shirt, dark trousers and an expensive watch.

Most of them shook their heads.
Then one manager stopped.

"I think I've seen him."

Mulalo looked up. "When?"

"Last night."

"Was he alone?"

The manager thought for a moment.

Mulalo asked for the CCTV footage.

There wasn't any.

The restaurant's cameras had stopped recording earlier that evening because of a technical problem. The manager said they had been waiting for a technician to come out the following morning.

Mulalo wasn't pleased.

Without the footage, he had no way of knowing when Jonathan arrived, who he had been with or when he left.

But then the manager remembered something else.

Jonathan hadn't been sitting in a quiet corner. He had been at one of the restaurant's better tables, close enough to the bar that several people would have seen him. According to the manager, Jonathan had spent part of the evening talking to someone who appeared to know him.

"Was it business?" Mulalo asked.

The manager hesitated.

Mulalo waited.

"He was asking about someone."

The manager couldn't remember the name. He only remembered that Jonathan had seemed irritated and had asked one of the other men at the table whether he was still involved with a particular property deal.

That changed things.

Mulalo looked at Jonathan's photograph again. The dead man wasn't just a property developer who had happened to collapse on his way to his car.

He had been asking questions.

And now he was dead.

06:42

By sunrise, Johannesburg had another story to talk about.

PROPERTY DEVELOPER FOUND DEAD.

By seven, the theories had already started. Some people thought it was a robbery. Others suspected a business dispute, while someone online was already calling it a hit.

Mulalo ignored most of it.

Until the post-mortem came back, they had very little to work with. There were no obvious injuries, no weapon had been found and nobody had seen an attack.

07:45

Meanwhile, Ndivhuwo walked into the office with her coffee and laptop.

Thembi was already at her desk, scrolling through her phone.

"Did you see what happened?"

Ndivhuwo put her bag down.

"What?"

"That property guy. Jonathan Whitfield."

Ndivhuwo looked over as Thembi turned the phone towards her.

Jonathan's face appeared beneath the headline.

PROPERTY DEVELOPER FOUND DEAD.

Ndivhuwo read the article quietly.

"Do they know what happened?"

"No. They're saying there's no obvious cause yet."

Ndivhuwo nodded.

"That's strange."

She turned back to her laptop.

Thembi continued scrolling.

Ndivhuwo opened her presentation and began working. She didn't ask where Jonathan had been found. She didn't ask what restaurant he had been at. She didn't ask who had been with him.

She didn't need to.

For now, Johannesburg knew Jonathan Whitfield was dead.

The police knew he had been at a restaurant. They knew he had been involved in a property dispute. But nobody knew what had happened to him after dinner.

And, more importantly, nobody seemed to know who had been sitting across from him that night.

That was exactly how Ndivhuwo liked it.

The Missing Hours

Mulalo stopped looking for the exact moment Jonathan died.

He was beginning to think the more important question was what had happened during the hours before it.

The property deal Jonathan had mentioned at dinner kept bothering him. Mulalo asked for the documents connected to it and found a name that appeared more than once.

Thabo Mokoena.

Thabo was a Johannesburg businessman who had been fighting Jonathan over a development in Rosebank. The disagreement had apparently become serious enough for lawyers to get involved, but there had been no threats reported and no police complaints.

Still, Mulalo had learned not to dismiss angry businessmen simply because they wore expensive suits.

Mulalo asked Thabo to come in.

He arrived at the station shortly after lunch. Thabo was calm, polite and visibly irritated by the questions. He admitted that he and Jonathan had been fighting over the development but insisted they had last spoken three days earlier.

"I had nothing to do with his death," he said.

Mulalo believed him. Or at least, he couldn't find a reason not to.

That was becoming the problem with Jonathan's murder.

Everyone had a reason to dislike him.

Nobody seemed to have a reason to kill him.

Job Complete

Ndivhuwo checked her second phone. The message was simple: Job complete. She deleted it, switched the phone off and went back to her workday. Jonathan Whitfield was just another task finished.