Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (22 page)

‘Oh? OK, and you can guarantee that
your wife isn’t listening to you say this?’

‘I can. This time.’

‘So tell me, Detective Ryder.’

‘Our charming
Mr
Themba Deagle didn’t only confess to losing the third SIG along with his
cell-phone.’

‘Oh?’

‘He also gave us the number of the
cell-phone.’

23.20.

Thabethe sat in the bush, leaning
back against the tree, legs splayed out in front of him on the sand, eyes
closed. He had been in the surf more than an hour ago, had dried off completely
and had then got back into his clothes. He had finished a joint then leaned
back against the tree, staring out at the sea, letting memory take him away
until his eyelids gradually flickered, got heavier, and then closed completely.

With his eyes no longer objects of
interest to the insects and other nocturnals in the bush, the hum of
nightsounds
all around him gradually escalated in volume.

 He felt his heart beating
steadily, slowing down gradually, and he concentrated on the pulsing rhythm of
the blood coursing through his body.

The hum of insects blended with the
distant sound of some police siren. That sound then became transformed in his
half-sleep to another siren, a different sound, calling prisoners to order.

His memory forged a collage of images
and he saw in distorted snapshots the jeering faces of prison warders. A
jumbled narrative began to form. He had complained about the food he had been
given to eat. The warders had laughed at him. Then four men came to his cell.
He was stripped naked. They threw a bucket of water on him to enhance the work
of the electric shock that was then applied. He screamed and the nightmare
faded away into another day in the prison.

Now he was being injected by someone,
with the same warders laughing as they held him down, shouting at him the words
psychotic
and
drugs to make you come right
and
next time you die
. Then alarm bells ringing, and someone stripping
off his clothes, and an enormous prisoner with biceps pumped up and arms
thicker than Thabethe’s waist grabbing him. Someone else ripping off his
clothes. Others laughing as the big man pushed him to the ground and turned him
over as if he was a rag doll, and more screams and the insistent alarm as the
big man mounted him. Was it a fire alarm? Or a police siren?

He lurched forward, now suddenly
awake, sweating, panting. The alarm was still going. How to stop it. Where…

Thabethe
realised
the sound was coming from the cell-phone in his pocket. He reached for it
without thinking, without checking the screen, wanting only to stop the sound.
And answered the call.

‘
Aweh?’

Silence.

‘
Yebo?
’

Nothing.

‘
Spikes?
’

Nothing.

He jerked the phone away from his ear
and looked at the screen.
Unknown
.
Thabethe leapt to his feet in a panic, cursing himself.
Idiot
. He powered down immediately. Switched off the instrument.
Threw it in disgust onto the ground. He walked around aimlessly, completely
agitated.

He was shaking in fury. Who was this?
Did they know where he was? Was it just a normal wrong number?

He paced back and forth, then
suddenly decided he had to get away. He picked up the instrument and started hurrying
back through the bush up to the street-lights in the distance. Maybe he was
over-reacting. How would they know who he was, anyway? Whoever it was, they
heard his voice. Didn’t
recognise
it. Refused to
identify themselves. Maybe it was just a spam call. Maybe genuine. But, just in
case, he would leave it switched off for the rest of the night. Safer. You
never know.

*

‘
Jeremeee
!’

‘Yeah?’

‘Are you bringing tea?’

‘Coming.’

‘Bed now. It’s late.’

‘Coming. Be there in a minute.’

Ryder bent forward over his laptop
and clicked to close the Skype call he had just made, and smiled. He powered
down the laptop, got up from his seat at the kitchen table, and poured two cups
of herbal tea. He switched off the lights as he went, primed the alarm, and
arrived at the bedroom as Fiona was snuggling down.

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Just calling a friend.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t know, actually. I have his
number but not his identity.’

‘What did you talk about, then?’

‘He did all the talking. I just
listened.’

‘So did you know him by the end of
the call?’

‘Can’t really say for sure. I have my
suspicions. but can’t say for sure. But one thing I do know.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We both know the same guy.’

‘And who’s that?’

‘A guy called Spikes.’

09.10.

Ryder arrived for his meeting with
Van Rensburg and was introduced to three of what he assumed were the Industrial
Technician’s colleagues. Koos Van Rensurg looked like any other normal cop,
thought Ryder. His colleagues all looked like hobbits. Threadbare jerseys, long
unkempt beards, coffee breath, stained teeth, dirty shoes. But expert hackers
and geniuses, all of them. Ryder had never heard the word ‘algorithm’ used so
many times in one meeting.

It didn’t take long for the geeks to
explain to the detective the various ways they could do this task for him. They
explained what they needed to track the cell-phone whose number Themba had so
freely provided. The number that Ryder had tested on Skype.

Ryder then received a quick outline
lesson in cell-phone triangulation. There was also some discussion about how to
secure the cell-phone service provider’s co-operation, about central switch
tracking, and about the use of rogue towers. In addition, there was a separate
and quite detailed lesson on the relevant legalities. This part of the
discussion involved a few nods and winks and innuendoes among the hobbits, and
Ryder saw that in this kind of surveillance there was not only a tightening
legal framework but a concomitant growing expertise in how to circumvent the
legalities.

Ryder was intrigued as the geeks
rattled through the possibilities that were on offer for tracking cell-phones.

It was much simpler than inserting a
bug in a phone, according to the geeks. Just a week ago Van Rensburg had
prepared a phone for Ryder’s team, to be used in a tracking exercise. But that
had been done by Van Rensburg himself, because he happened to be geekless on
the day in question, with his guys all out on the road. So he decided on that
occasion to use his own initiative and he provided Ryder’s team with a fairly
outdated but usable bug, to be used not just as a homing device but as an
eavesdropping device as well.

The geeks now offered their own
views, and Van Rensburg took a back seat for a while.

‘There’s
a process known as multilateration,’ said Geek One.

‘Multiliteration?’
asked Ryder.

‘Multil
a
teration,’ said Geek Two.

‘Oh,’
said Ryder.

‘Yes,’
said Geek Three. ‘To put it simply, we measure the difference in the distance
to a couple of cell towers at locations we know that broadcast signals at given
times. We call this UTDOA, meaning Uplink Time Difference of Arrival.’

‘Or
we can use something we call AOA or Angle of Arrival,’ said Geek One.

‘Or
there’s EOTD,’ said Geek Three.

‘Enhanced
Observed Time Difference,’ clarified Geek Two.

‘OK,
thanks’ said Ryder. ‘I think I’ll skip on those. I think I get the broad
picture...’

The geeks now explained to Ryder how
they would set up a new trace for him, and they undertook to be in contact with
‘friends and connections’ in various service providers to try and find any
information on the movements of and usage of this particular telephone number
between Sunday evening and the present.

‘I suppose you won’t be able to do
that until after the weekend?’ Ryder said to Geek One.

‘On the contrary,’ replied Geek Two.

‘The guys that we know in this
business extend this kind of stuff into their weekend hobbies,’ added Geek
Three. ‘They’re on this full time. Of course we could, if you prefer, go the
formal route.’

Hobbit hobbies, thought Ryder. Maybe
he could get his children into this. Who needs Playstation 5?

‘No, not at all. I’m in your hands,’
he replied.

In a separate request, based on
little more than a hunch, Ryder specifically wanted to know of any details they
might obtain about the use of the particular phone throughout Wednesday, when
he knew that Mkhize and Thabethe had been in contact, according to the
information provided to the detective by Mkhize’s mother.

‘No
problemo
,’ came the chorused
response.

They asked Ryder a few more questions
and then he had the sense that they wanted him to leave them to it. Doubtless
because what they needed to do would not be observing strict protocols, thought
Ryder.

As he walked away, Ryder thought back
on Thabethe’s role in all of this. If the old
gogo
was to be believed - and everything Ryder had ever learned
about human nature suggested to him that she was entirely trustworthy -
Thabethe was interested in finding out more information about one Detective
Jeremy Ryder.

Why?

It could only be because Thabethe knew
from Mkhize that Ryder was the detective hunting him down.

Time to see Mkhize.

10.15.

Mkhize took a call from Big Red
himself. Another public phone. But Mkhize’s instinct told him this time that he
had better take the call.

The big
mlungu
wanted to know how much stuff their mutual friend was
interested in buying. When told that the deal was worth only twelve thousand
rands the big man expressed some consternation. He had been expecting a much
bigger deal than that, given the risk he was taking, he said, and appeared
ready to back out of the deal.

Within seconds Mkhize took a snap
decision and decided to join the deal. Thabethe would understand, he mused.
Besides, there would be a better price for both of them if they bought the
stuff in bigger quantities. Mkhize saw dollar signs ahead for himself.

The call ended with the agreement
that Thabethe would be bringing along fifty thousand rands in cash. Big Red was
taking no chances. He had not yet decided the time and place of the meeting. He
said he would call again, and hung up.

Mkhize now had to let Thabethe know
that the deal had just quadrupled. How would he take that? Thabethe never did
joint deals. Always acted alone, thought Mkhize. How would he take the news
that Mkhize had taken it upon himself to become his partner in a
whoonga
deal?

Should he break his rules on
cell-phone use and call Thabethe now, or should he wait until he had to call
him anyway with the details of the meeting with Big Red?

He decided to hold back. In the
meantime he would amass the cash from every one of the secret hiding places he
had in and around Nomivi’s Tavern.

11.35.

‘Jeremy?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Van Rensburg.’

‘Hullo, Koos. Don’t tell me you
already have something for me?’

‘That’s right, Jeremy. My guys are
damn good.’

‘I can see that, Koos. Are they
actually SAPS employees, or freelancers? I didn’t have a chance to ask you when
I was leaving.’

‘You thinking about the clothes they
wear, Jeremy?’

‘Well, no, not really...’

‘
Nee
,
man, they’re not cops, those
ouens
,
Jeremy. No one could really think so, hey, to look at them? But they’re often
in my area because we have an agreement with them. They’re private, and there’s
a, like, informal agreement with me that when they work for me they don’t have
to come in wearing smarts or anything.’

‘Oh. Yes. I see. Interesting, and if
any smartass visiting SAPS Brigadier pops in during the week? And asks
questions about who they are and about their interesting hairstyles and
stuff…?’

‘No, man, Jeremy, you should see
these guys, what they can do with hairpins. Amazing. They can look almost human
if they want to, you know what I mean?’

‘Anyway, Koos...’

‘Anyway, Jeremy, but let me explain
briefly how and why we work with these guys. There’s quite a bit of stuff we
could never do on our own. Resources and people, you know? You remember when
there was a lot of stuff going on about how we should work more with the
Community Crime Prevention
okes
, and
different towns and cities in the country were doing their own thing with
community surveillance?’

‘Yep. I remember the debates.’

‘Some SAPS stations in some towns
were just doing small stuff - dealing with car guards and community
marshalls
, and stuff like that. But others got involved big
time with the big business and community guys who were the hell in with crime
statistics, and who wanted to put their own money in to improve
 
things. So pretty soon there were a
whole lot of new professional security and surveillance companies paid not by
SAPS but by businesses and communities. Many of them using the really good
retired cops and paying them much more than they ever got in the SAPS.’

‘So I heard.’

‘
Ja
,
well, no. It all happened so fast that there was no way they could regulate it
properly. You couldn’t tell who was who in the zoo, you know? What was the role
of the National Intelligence Agency, and what was the role of the local SAPS
Station Commander, and stuff like that.
 
So it meant that the law was not clear, and the
okes
were just running in and spying on anyone without getting
proper warrants and stuff, you know? So the private security industry was all
over the place. They tried to set up proper co-operative partnerships with
individual police stations and business guys in towns, but what was really
needed was a country-wide agreement between private security firms and SAPS.
Instead there grew up a whole
gemors
where some things were out-sourced because it was easier to get around the law
on some things but not others.
There was a lot of stuff
centred
in one
office. They called it the ‘interception
centre
’
there in Jo’burg.’

‘Sandton.’

‘There’s
it, Jeremy. That one, and there was the National Communications Centre, where
they had
moerse
technology and
expertise and experience and those guys could tap into any citizen’s private
life, you know? Cell-phone and house-phone conversations, texts and emails
could all be intercepted by the guys.’

‘Who
did they report to?’

‘
Ag
. They worked for SAPS, the
intelligence agencies, the National Prosecuting Authority, the State Security
Agency, both domestic and foreign. Even the military crime intelligence guys,
and it was all supposed to be done in terms of RICA.’

‘RICA?’

‘Wait
for it, Jeremy. Only you
Engelse
can
come up with this wording. Regulation of Interception of Communications and
Provision of Communication-related Information Act. Act 70 of 2002, as I
remember. Only came properly on board a couple of years later. But since then
the law has tightened up big time. So now we often need judges signing off on
the work, and this is based on heavy evidence
before
the judge will be persuaded to issue what they call an ‘
interception direction
.’ But we still
manage to get around some of this stuff by using the kind of guys I work with.
The
okes
you met this morning. Don’t
tell anyone, hey Jeremy? We try our best, but sometimes we need to bend the law
a bit, you know?’

‘Don’t
worry about me, Koos. I think your guys are amazing. If they can get me what
I’m looking for...’

‘Let
me tell you what we’ve found.’

Van
Rensburg laid it all out. They had tracked phone number one, as they called it,
along the R74 on Sunday, and traced it to the Blythedale bush where it stayed
still for about five hours until around midnight. Then it went on the move,
slowly, as if on foot, for a few hours and then made its way a bit faster, probably
in a car, before midday to Durban. It was switched on and off a few times
during the day, but there was a call on Monday night at 21.30 to a second
cell-phone. The hobbits then traced that cell-phone number. Phone number two.
No name yet, but they were working at it. In the meantime they noticed that
number two called number one on Wednesday at 10.15 and again on Thursday at
exactly 13.00. But it was the Wednesday call from number two to number one that
was particularly interesting, because two hours later number one then called a
third cell-phone. Phone number three was an interesting one, Van Rensburg said.

‘Why
is that, Koos? What’s special about phone number three?’

‘We
were able to get some good help from the service provider, Jeremy. In the weeks
leading up to Sunday, phone number three was something of a
favourite
with phone number one, and vice-versa. The relationship between phone number
one and phone number two only started for the very first time on Monday night.
No contact at all between those two phones before then.’

‘Could
that be, Koos, because, for example, someone stole number one, or found number
one, and started calling an old friend? Number two?’

‘Could
be. Sounds just like that. But then why would he also phone number three, who
was an old
favourite
, if he didn’t know him?’

‘Testing,
maybe? Maybe number three was listed on the device as a
favourite
of his?’