Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (21 page)

Ryder
marvelled
at the rapidity of the dozen or so slaps of her hands which accompanied this
part of her tirade, with her hands sliding blisteringly fast against each
other, up and down, almost as if she was slapping pizza dough.

‘Your son, he’s the one they call
Spikes?’

‘
Eh-heh.
Yebo
, Detective Jimmy. His friends they call him Spikes. Me, I call him,
how you say,
naughty
! Very naughty
one, that one.’

At this point she screamed in sudden
realisation
that her sausage rolls were ready and Nobuhle
sprang into action, with some relief, to get them out of the oven before they
were scorched, while Jessica followed close behind to get the second coffee
pot. Ryder could see the two of them giggling as soon as they were out of their
grandmother’s line of vision.

She reverted to her main theme about
setting the country to rights while the sausage rolls and coffee were served by
her granddaughters. But within a few minutes, as the old woman could see the
genuine appreciation of the three of them tucking into her delicious rolls, she
calmed down considerably, and something approaching a participative
conversation started taking place. With numerous interjections from
gogo
about the competence of policing
and the criminal justice system - which she referred to as
the justice
- he gradually enticed the twins into a free-flowing
conversation and then gradually turned their attention back to Sunday evening.

‘Now, Nobuhle, Jessica, when
Detective Pillay and I spoke to you on Tuesday, you remember we asked you if
you could describe the three men?’

‘I’m remembering,’ said Jessica.

‘And me,’ said Nobuhle

‘And you told us that one man was fat
and the other one was skinny. What I want to ask you, now, is this. Do you
remember any of them wearing any special clothes? A shirt, or a hat, or...’

‘Shoes!’ the twins chorused together,
immediately.

Ryder smiled. They followed up,
Jessica saying that the fat one had very fancy shoes, and Nobuhle saying he
waddled like a duck in those shoes, and how they were bright and new and looked
funny on his feet. Neither of them could remember anything else about the
clothes, but with the Spikes connection and the fancy shoes Ryder had got what
he wanted.

The detective’s gratitude at the
response from the twins gave the grandmother some pleasure. This, coupled with
the fact that the scrumptious sausage rolls had been entirely demolished -
neither Ryder nor the twins showing any reticence in reaching for more and more
of them as they had conversed - and the coffee having been replenished twice
and every last drop finished, had made her relax and moderate the volume and
pace of her words.

By the time Ryder eventually got up
to leave,
gogo
was doing all she
could to ameliorate any damage that might have been caused by the opinions she
had expressed earlier. She knew that there were some good policemen in the
country, she told him, and that there were some that worked very hard. But
there were not enough of those good ones, and she would write to the commander
at the station just around the corner to tell him that he must get more
policemen like Detective Jimmy Rider.

‘That’s very kind of you,
Mrs
Mkhize,’ said Ryder as he moved toward the door to
leave. ‘My name is Jeremy, by the way. Not Jimmy. But it’s no problem.’

‘
Hau
!
Me, I’m sorry,
Mr
Jeremy.’

‘No, really, it’s not a...’

‘Now I must telephone my son, that
skelm, and tell him I told him the wrong name when he phone me on Wednesday
morning and ask me your name. Not Jimmy. Jeremy.’

Ryder paused.

‘Your son phoned you on Wednesday to
ask my name?’

‘On Tuesday night I say to him on the
telephone that I say to those men who came here looking for Jessica and Nobuhle
that they better be careful because
Mr
Detective
Jimmy will
bulala
them. That was the
same day when the constable here at the police station was fetching the girls
at two o’clock and I was saying who is going to speak to my girls at the police
station and he is saying to me that they are going to have a meeting with
Detective Jimmy Rider from Durban.’

‘So Spikes telephoned you the next
day, on Wednesday, to ask you the name of the detective who was speaking to
Nobuhle and Jessica?’

‘
Eh-heh
,
and when I ask him why he wants to know, he tells me he was just talking to his
old friend there at his place and that friend says he thinks that one detective
talking to my granddaughters is another policeman friend of his and he just
wants to check.’

‘So it was Spike’s friend who wanted
to know?’

‘
Yebo
.
So I say to my son, what old friend? And he say to me it is not mattering what
old friend just tell me the name of the detective. So I’m saying to him then
shaddup, wena!
and I say to him
then I’m not telling you the detective’s
name
. So then he tell me his friend’s name, and then I remember that same
one friend from that one time when I went to Nomivi’s to find my son. That
friend, he looked at me that one time with funny eyes, and I don’t like him
because I can see he smokes
whoonga
,
with his eyes like that, that time. Is funny eyes, and is also a funny name. So
because he tells me his friend’s name, only because he tells me the name, you
see, then I’m telling my son OK the detective’s name she is
Mr
Jimmy Rider. Because I’m thinking if his friend is friends with the detective
then maybe he is all right. But he is still funny, that one man, I think.’

‘I don’t suppose,
Mrs
Mkhize, that you… um, well, what I mean is, well you said that your son’s
friend had a funny name. I don’t suppose you can remember it.’

‘Oh, yes,
Mr
Jimmy. I mean,
Mr
Jeremy.
Yebo
. I remember that one name. That funny name. That name is
Skhura Thabethe.’

18.00.

Thabethe finally found a public phone
that worked. Mkhize initially decided not to take the call, as he didn’t
recognise
the number on his screen. But the caller
dialled
and re-
dialled
time and
again, rather than leave a message when it clicked through to the answering
service. Finally Mkhize had picked up, and the moment he
realised
it was Thabethe he
apologised
profusely. Thabethe
cursed the fact that he had had to call so many times before getting a
response. But he calmed down when he heard Mkhize’s reasoning.

‘Gotta be careful with the
cell-phones,
bra
. The cops they
clever,
nè?
’

Mkhize moved away quickly from that
argument to the news he had for Thabethe.

Through two intermediaries he had
finally got into contact with Big Red. The big
mlungu
had reluctantly taken the call, using the phone of one of
the intermediaries, but then had immediately relaxed. Yes, he remembered
Thabethe very well, and it would be a pleasure to pick up his old business with
him. But he wasn’t going to pass over any phone number, and Thabethe should not
think that he could call him on any telephone. What he was prepared to do was
to set a time for Thabethe to meet ‘
at
the old place or somewhere near to that.’
 
Sometime over this weekend. If Mkhize
was prepared to pass on to Red his own phone number, then Red would call Mkhize
over the weekend and set up the exact time and spot for a meeting with
Thabethe. And, yes, he had a good supply. And, yes, again, he would give
Thabethe a good price. For old times’ sake.

Mkhize said he had agreed with Big
Red that some time on Saturday Red would call him to establish the time and
place for the meeting with Thabethe, to take place probably on Sunday. In the
meantime, Mkhize would ascertain how much stuff Thabethe was interested in
buying.

 
Thabethe agreed. No problem. He told
Mkhize to tell the big man he wanted to buy twelve thousand rands worth of
nyaope
. He would wait for a call from
Mkhize some time on Sunday to tell him the exact spot for the meeting. Thabethe
already knew where, more or less, that would be.

Wilson’s Wharf.

21.45.

Nadine Salm was still in the lab when
her iPhone rang.

‘Hullo.’

‘Didn’t think I’d get you this late
on a Friday.’

‘Detective Ryder. What a pleasure. If
I were you, and I was phoning young women this late on a Friday, I’d make sure
that my wife was nowhere near her
favourite
skillet.’

‘I phone only with Fiona’s
permission. She wasn’t happy that I should phone anyone at this hour, but when
I told her it was you she said that was OK.’

‘She’s a fine judge of character,
then. Should have been a cop.’

‘I have some news for you, seeing you
were so kind as to phone me with some news at precisely this time last night.’

‘Oh? Really? Sounds interesting.’

‘I had a friendly chat in hospital
this afternoon with that nice fellow Themba.’

‘
Mr
Themba
Deagle?’

‘The same. He proved to be quite
chatty.’

‘Really? Chatty, was he? With the
fearsome Detective Ryder? Was he on medication?’

‘Possibly. But the real reason, I
think, was that I had the fearsome Detective Pillay with me.’

‘That would explain it. I hear she
was merciless in taking down two really bad guys last week alone.’

‘Three. She kicked the blazes out of
two of them and ran the third one into the ground on a school athletics track.’

‘I’ve heard all about the things she
gets up to. I’m surprised that Captain Nyawula puts the tough Detective Pillay
together with a nice refined gentleman like you. Anyway, good that she made
Mr
Desert Rat talk. What did you discover?’

‘He knew the game was up and that we
had everything we need on him - witnesses, the weapons, and the forensics. He
was into trying to win time on his eventual sentencing, I suppose. Either that
or he’s just lost the will to fight any more. His State-appointed Legal Aid
friend was present throughout, by the way. But she had little interest in
protecting him because he is, among other things, a sexist
arsehole
and treated her appallingly. So she let him ramble with only occasional
attempts to help him. All of which he ignored. So we ended up having a nice
chatty conversation.’

‘What a nice way to pass the
afternoon.’

‘So anyway, he told us that he lost
his SIG and his cell-phone in the bush on Sunday night. Strange thing is that
both Navi and I concluded he wasn’t spinning us a fast one. Seemed genuine
enough.’

‘It happens, Jeremy. Not enough, but
it happens. When these guys see the game is up. Did you tell him we could place
his fancy shoes both at Dlamini’s place and at the KwaDukuza scene?’

‘Oh. You remind me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I took the liberty of calling in on
the twins late today, too, and they didn’t need any prompting. They remembered
another piece of information that they hadn’t told me and Navi when we first
met with them.’

‘Which is?’

‘They remembered the shoes. The fat
one of the three, they said. Our
Mr
Themba. They
recalled that he wore bright fancy shoes.’

‘How nice.’

‘So, in answer to your question, yes,
I did tell him that among the other things we had on him we also had his shoe
prints all over the place. Apart from the fact, of course, that he was wearing
the very same shoes when I took him down in Westville.’

‘So with all of that going against
him, he sang to you.’

‘Sure did.’

‘So how did he come into possession
of the Deagle?’

Ryder then proceeded to tell her the
information that Themba had spewed forth from the hospital bed. The fact that
Lucky Dlamini had disarmed a young white thug two years ago; that he had
decided to keep his Desert Eagle instead of turning it into the proper
authorities; that he, Themba, had known about the weapon kept secretly by
Dlamini; that he had once been humiliated by Dlamini and Cst. Xana; and that he
had broken into Dlamini’s home with his friends, found the weapon, and waited
for the sergeant to return home from work.

‘Fantastic, Jeremy. This brings a lot
of things into focus.’

Nadine’s thoughts were racing as she
scribbled notes on all of this. Certain things were indeed clicking into place,
but she needed time to map them out so that she could more clearly see the
connections. Ryder helped her find the space to do this by bringing the
conversation toward a conclusion.

 
‘Now I’m sure you’re getting ready to go
home for your Friday nightcap, Nadine, so I’ve only got one more thing for
you.’