Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (3 page)

‘The sex workers?
Ja,
OK. I’d like to help on that one. I
think you’re right. They won’t talk easily to a man alone. I’ll be very happy
to come and -
ag!
damn, no.’

‘What?’

‘
Ag
,
sorry, Jeremy. I forgot. Got to get my bandage and dressing changed. I have an
appointment in half an hour. I’m hoping they’ll let me get rid of the sling. I
can’t come to the Musgrave Centre but I’ll be able to join you in Glenwood
after that, if that’s OK.’

‘Tell you what. Let’s stay in contact
by phone and see whether the timing works. No problem if you can’t. It depends
on what the nurses say, I suppose.’

‘How’s the arm, Detective Navi?’
asked Mavis.

‘It’s not too bad at all, Mavis. Just
don’t ever get grazed by a bullet from a Desert Eagle, see?’

The three of them had a brief discussion
about Pillay’s brush with death the previous week, in which she had sustained
only a flesh wound, but a serious one, in a graze from a Desert Eagle bullet
intended for her heart.

‘Captain in, Piet?’

‘No, Jeremy, not yet. He’s only back
at 11.30 from IPID. He’s reporting on all the
gemors
from last week.’

‘And where’s Sinethemba?’

‘
Ja
,
well, to tell you the truth, Jeremy, Mavis and me and Navi were all wondering
about that. We think she must be sick, but her cell is on voicemail and her
mom’s phone at home is engaged all the time so we can’t find out. We’ll keep on
trying.’

‘OK, I’m off to Musgrave. Maybe see
you in Glenwood later, Navi?’

‘OK, Jeremy. I’ll call when I know
what’s happening.’

As the two detectives left, Mavis
reached for the phone again, and Piet went back to work on his computer.

11.10.

The power had come on again at the
top of the hour. They had been told that there would be no more load-shedding
for the day. Hopefully. Fiona Ryder strode through the open-plan office toward
the elevator, briefcase in her right hand and back-up memory-sticks clutched in
her left. She had never in her entire career needed the back-ups, but they were
a security blanket. If there was a technological disaster with any
presentation, she felt that at least she had some
fall-back
,
with multiple copies of the presentation available.

The trouble is, she thought, if
there’s another power failure in the middle of the presentation the audience
will scramble for the exit-doors. Without air-conditioning that room would be
unbearable.

Her assistant strode purposefully
behind her, rolls of poster-size drawings tucked under the right arm, briefcase
clutched in the left hand. The personnel in the office each called out,
variously, as they passed.

Good
Luck, Fiona.

Knock
them for six, Fiona.

Show
them the future, boss.

Blow
them away, Fiona.

Fiona smiled grimly and nodded in
acknowledgement. A great deal hung on her presentation. The future of the firm,
perhaps. The distinguished visitors gathering in the arena for her presentation
represented big financial backers who had their eyes on the future profits
available in one of the biggest envisaged design and construction projects this
city would see for a long time. Fiona and senior partner Mongezi were leading the
firm’s pitch for the design and planning work. Mongezi had done his bit, and
now it was all down to her, with the crucial nuts and bolts of the proposal,
and the vision and the magic that went with it.

By 12.30 it would all be over. Then a
quick sandwich lunch with the investors, who had a flight to catch at 2.30.
Giving her time to join Jeremy at the Trewhella funeral.

Fiona took a deep breath as they
entered through the huge double doors of the presentation arena.

11.45.

Sergeant Cronje knocked before
entering. Nyawula’s desk was covered in files, notes, post-its and scraps of
paper clipped together.

‘How are you today, Piet? All
organised
for the funeral?’

‘Yes, fine, Captain. I mean… well,
you know… what I meant to say was…’

‘I know, Piet. Don’t worry. Good
turnout expected, though?’

‘Yes, for sure. Everyone I know’s
coming.’

‘Sad day for all of us, Piet.’

‘Ja
, Captain, and I’m sorry but it
doesn’t get any better.’

‘Oh?’

‘Bad news, Captain. Really bad. This
report here is by one of the Stanger detectives...’

‘KwaDukuza.’

‘Yes, sorry, KwaDukuza. With the
trouble they’ve been having up there they’re short-staffed and all that, and
they made phone calls all the way up to the Provincial Commissioner who then
spoke to the Major General. He called while you were at IPID and he asked me to
say, because he’d be in meetings when you returned, that he has agreed with the
Commissioner that we should be asked to take over this case...’

‘And we’re
not
short-staffed?’

‘There’s another reason, too.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s all in the report here,
Captain. No autopsy or ballistics yet, but this is the preliminary report from
the KwaDukuza detective who went to the scene last night. Four dead. They want
to hand it all over to us.’

Nyawula took the report from him.

‘Us? Handling a KwaDukuza matter?’

‘One of the victims was Sinethemba.’

Nyawula froze in shock. Then hung his
head, as Cronje continued.

‘Four constables killed. One from
Folweni. Two from Isipingo. And Sinethemba. They were all friends coming back
from a birthday party. Ambushed. The Commissioner apparently said that because
one of them was ours, and because of the problems at the moment in the station
up there, we should take over, and the Major General agreed.’

Nyawula’s gaze ran quickly over the
brief document, picking up the key facts. He felt drained.

‘Thanks, Piet. Anyone in the team
know about this?’

‘I’m afraid so, Captain. In the
car-park. Mavis was called by a friend a couple of minutes ago, just after this
was delivered to me. She and Sinethemba were very close, and...’

‘Anyone else know?’

‘Navi’s with her in the car-park,
Captain. Mavis is in a bad way. Navi’s helping her.’

‘Call everyone in, please Piet.
Whoever you can get. Wherever they are. Call them back from whatever they’re
doing.’

‘Will do, Captain.’

As Cronje left the office, Nyawula
leaned forward and put his forehead on the desk.

11.50.

Thabethe sat in the back seat of a
crowded taxi on the M4 passing Umhlanga Rocks on the way to Durban. He had not
slept. He was clammy with perspiration. The passengers were morose and silent.
Everyone felt the searing heat as the sun baked down on the vehicle. The
air-conditioning inside was hopeless. It had been circulating warm air and
nothing more. The driver had eventually given up and told everyone to open the
windows. The incoming air was warm, but not as warm as the air in the vehicle.
Thabethe felt that a wrong word from any one of the passengers might lead to a
brawl. He sat slumped in the corner with his thoughts.

It was risky returning to Durban. The
police were after him. Yesterday the bush in Blythedale had seemed safe. He had
also spent the previous night in the bush, but at a different place fifty
kilometres
further south, also within sight of the surf. He
had not slept on Saturday night, either. Even though he had sent the police who
were hunting him on a wild goose chase by concealing his bugged cell-phone on a
truck going north. Then yesterday, early on Sunday morning, he had made his way
up the coast, on foot and by taxi. Painfully, because he was still stiff and
sore from the action he had been involved in last week. He had abandoned the
vehicle he used previously, knowing that the police would be searching for it.

He thought again through what he had
witnessed last night.

After they had passed by him in the
bush, he had followed the three men, picking his way carefully through the
thick foliage, until they had decided upon a place to settle. He had then
observed them at a distance before eventually creeping up closer to them. Then
he had watched them and listened for upward of four hours.

They were high on
whoonga
, and they passed around a bottle
of
Bain's Cape Mountain
Whisky,
pouring it into their mouths straight from the bottle. It was difficult for
Thabethe to put together the disparate strands of their conversation, but
eventually he started to make sense of it. They had just come out of some
action near KwaDukuza, where guns had been used. They were variously laughing
and arguing and cursing and cajoling one another. They boasted about having
killed someone. Two of them had raped someone. All three of them had pumped
bullets into someone.
 
More than one
person. More than two people. Maybe three. Or even four. There had been a car
crash. Maybe another death. There had been no witnesses. He learned that they
were out of bullets.

Their three weapons were lying
together on a rock to one side of where they sat. They looked like identical
weapons. All three.

It had crossed his mind to intrude on
the men, share some
whoonga
, perhaps.
Or, because they were very high on booze and drugs, perhaps he could just run
in, snatch their weapons, and run for the beach before they had time to react.
But Thabethe was not yet back to full strength. He was still limping. He
decided to remain hidden, and he listened. Carefully. Long into the night.

From their comments addressed to one
another he gradually ascertained their names. Themba. Macks. Mavuso. Themba,
the fat one with fancy shoes, seemed more drunk than the other two put
together. He was barely able to string together a full sentence. When he stood
to urinate against a tree he almost fell down, producing cackling laughter from
the other two. They spoke in a mixture of Zulu, Xhosa, English, Northern Sotho
and Afrikaans, sprinkled with slang derived from all five of those languages.
After spending some time struggling to understand them Thabethe assumed that
because of the deficiencies of Macks in Sepedi, which was the term they all
used in joking about his inadequacy with Northern Sotho, and of Mavuso in Xhosa
and of Themba in both Afrikaans and Sepedi, most of the dialogue ended up being
in English.
 

The snippet of their drunken bravura
babble that most captured his attention was when they referred to two places he
knew well. Intimately, in fact. He had spent some time in both places that came
up in their chatter. Folweni and Umlazi, two townships separated by the
Mbokodweni river and connected by the M35 motorway. He had supplied various
customers there a couple of years back.

And sitting in the taxi on the way to
Durban, perspiring in the oppressive heat, Thabethe could now replay in his
head the gist of their conversation last night.

‘
Hayi
,
comrade. She is living at Nkabise Place in Folweni, I’m telling you.’

‘
Haikona!
’

‘I’m telling you!’

‘And I’m telling you,
my bra
,
haikona!
’

‘
Moegoe!
What you talking now?’

‘I’m saying,
my bra
, she
was
living in
Nkabise Place. No more.’

‘
Strue
,
comrade
.
She
was
living there. Until tonight,
nè?
Just close there to Umbumbulu Road, the M35, there by
Folweni.’
 

‘Yes, yes,
my bra
. She
was
. Not
is
. No more, that one. That one, she is
dead.
Finish and klaar
.’

‘
Eish!
That one, she had no respect for me, I’m telling you,’ the man known as
Themba slurred in a drunken stupor. ‘She was shouting at me that once, big
time, in front of those people. There. Up there by Folweni Police Station.
Where she was working. I am asking her, you know, I am just asking her for a
date, you know, and she looks at me like I, me, I am dirt. I don’t forget that.
Not me.
Hayi!
Then her boyfriend,
that sergeant. That Lucky Dlamini. He tells me to
fokoff
and leave his girlfriend alone. I promised them then that
I’m going to shoot her, that one, and then I’m going to shoot him.’

‘Is good,
bra,
we helped you to kill that woman. Is good.’

‘No, no,’ replied Themba to this
interjection from the tall and skinny Mavuso, ‘is not
you
killed her. Is
me
. Is
me
. Is because of
me
, I’m telling you. Three bullets from
me, only two from you two. You two, times two, makes four only. But between two
of you. Two only. Each one, one time, two only. So me, I was the one.’