Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (5 page)

They were both distantly conscious of
the fact that their friend got up twice in the night to vomit just outside the
single door that was the entrance to the shack. He returned each time to his
space on the floor, rather than try and reclaim his bed.

Dawn had come. Dogs barked. Cocks
still crowed, infuriatingly, as if they had no clue as to what constituted dawn
and what constituted noon. Children laughed and called to one another.

By about midday the three of them had
given up on sleeping, woken by the incessant shouting of
neighbours
,
screaming of children, and clanging of pots and pans in the street outside and
in kitchens all around, most of the houses being in better condition than the
shack and therefore having some semblance of a kitchen.

As one of the men started stirring,
it was a sign to the others that there was no longer any likelihood of further
sleep.

‘
Eish,
ou babelas!
’

‘
Ja
.
Eina!
Is sore big time. Where’s
coffee, Themba?’

Themba was in no state to offer any
coffee. First, he had no way of making coffee in the shack. There was no
electricity, no kettle and no other visible means of providing anything to
drink other than what might lurk in one of the grimy vodka, gin and brandy
bottles on the single shelf in the room. Second, Themba was extremely agitated
by something else. He had discovered that his firearm was missing.

 
As he told them the other two
instinctively checked for their own weapons. And there they were, the two
pistols, on the shelf next to the liquor bottles where they had put them before
collapsing onto the bed.

There was deep consternation as the
three of them panicked. Hangover turned to something approaching sobriety as
Themba and his skinny companion rushed out to search the car, Themba shouting
over his shoulder at the third man as they did so.

‘Macks, check there under the bed.
Mavuso, wait for me, I’m coming. You gotta keys?’

Macks checked, and found nothing
under the bed, and nothing, either, under the blanket that lay scrunched up in
the corner. Within minutes Mavuso and Themba were back.

Nothing. No gun. The three of them
stared at one another.

‘We must go back to the beach,’
Themba said.

‘
Haikona!
No way! The
boere
will be looking for
us,’ said Macks.

‘Shit!
Fok
! You guys! Why you...’

‘Hayi!
No, my friend,’ interrupted Mavuso.
‘Is you, Themba.
Wena
. We carry you,
we don’t carry your gun. You don’t blame us,
wena
!’

‘OK. OK, guys. OK. Is right,’ said
Themba. ‘Is right. But we must think. Maybe that gun is not there anyway. Maybe
we dropped it when we were coming back to the car. Maybe on that path, maybe in
the bush, we don’t know. Maybe we just forget that one, now. Maybe we go get
that Desert Eagle from Dlamini.’

Within seconds they had agreed. No
point in going back - certainly not in broad daylight - to the bush where they
might not even find the SIG Sauer anyway. Write it off. Think ahead. Think of
the Desert Eagle instead. Themba in any case wanted to finish the job on the
sergeant who had humiliated him in Folweni, and he wanted that Desert Eagle.

But first, something to eat. They
decided on a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. They
 
spent a few minutes switching the
Mazda’s number plates with the false ones Themba kept behind the door. Then off
they went. Time to eat.

And time to plan the hit on Sergeant
Lucky Dlamini from Folweni Police Station.

14.35.

The
slope in Stellawood Cemetery was more crowded than anyone could remember.
Unusually, this time, plastic chairs had been laid out for the ceremony. From
the simple wooden platform at the graveside a sea of blue uniforms fanned
outward up the hill in two forty-five-degree wedges. The two wedges were split
by an improvised passageway in the middle. The blue wash was interspersed with
a few dark and
sombre
civilian outfits and the
occasional defiantly
colourful
hat, tie or skirt.

The
master of ceremonies called on Captain Sibo Nyawula to address the audience,
and the formal proceedings commenced.

Nyawula
walked down the slope between the two wedges, toward the microphone. The ranks
of uniform and non-uniform SAPS personnel hushed. Family members, friends, and
retired colleagues joined them in respectful silence. Nyawula’s rich, resonant
voice usually commanded respect whenever he spoke. On this occasion the
attentive silence was instant.

‘Friends
and colleagues.’

He
spoke without notes. He paused a moment while a gust of wind, rattling through
the public address system, passed.

‘Most
of you know that the South African Police Officers Memorial now numbers well
over six thousand courageous men and women who have died in service against
crime in this country. Those of you who have looked at the
Roll of
Honour
pages for the last couple of years will see that in each year our fallen
colleagues traverse the ranks from Constable to Lieutenant Colonel. The war we
wage against crime puts each and every one of us in the front line. The hail of
criminal bullets we confront on a daily basis does not distinguish among
ranking officers. We’re all part of the single line of
defence
against this savagery. From Constables and Sergeants to Brigadiers and
Generals. And Student Constables.’

His gaze moved steadily over the huge
audience, with each person having the uncanny feeling that the words were
directed personally at himself or herself alone.

‘Warrant Officer Ed Trewhella was one
of our finest detectives. He was with us for some years, doing work of the
highest quality. Last week we lost him in the fight against crime. And against
corruption.’

Ryder didn’t miss the slight pause
before the last three words. He wondered how many in the audience picked up the
nuance, subtly inflected by his Captain. He looked instinctively, as he always
did on such occasions, at his wife seated across the aisle to his left, behind.
Fiona returned his glance. She never misses anything, he thought, as Nyawula
continued.

‘Many of you will remember Detective
Trewhella as a witty
Uitlander
. An
Engelsman
. A
 
charming rogue. A man whose jokes
always, unfailingly, started with the line:
This
fellow, he walks into a pub
.’

A quiet and respectful murmur of
appreciation rippled through the crowd. Ryder, who was seated separately from
both Fiona and his colleagues in order to be placed with the other speakers,
glanced to his right and two rows back at the personnel who comprised Nyawula’s
central team, all seated together. Among them Koekemoer and Dippenaar, each of
them the frequent butt of Ed Trewhella’s merciless jokes and teasing, were
wiping a speck of assumed dust from an eye, simultaneously, as if they were
programmed twins responding on cue in identical actions. Pillay returned
Ryder’s glance, with an almost imperceptible smile and a sympathetic nod.
Sergeant Cronje was holding it together with some difficulty behind his dark
glasses, sitting stiffly and staring resolutely forward. Cronje’s intern Mavis
Tshabalala was blubbering openly next to him.

Ryder looked again, back and over to
his left, at his wife. Fiona was now a complete wreck. She could cry at a
heartfelt moment during even television commercials, so why would she be any
different now? She was sharing her tissues with both of Trewhella’s ex-wives.
Fiona had earlier
manoeuvered
the two bitter rivals
to keep them separate from each other, on either side of her. All three of them
were now far gone, tears streaming.

Ryder himself was not much better at
fighting to keep dry eyes. How was he going to manage this? Nyawula had told
him he was going to be brief in his introduction, and it sounded as if the
Captain was already beginning to wrap up.

‘Before I call on Detective Jeremy
Ryder, who first met Ed in England - and according to Ed was the reason he
eventually came out to South Africa -
 
before I call on Jeremy to say a few words about his partner and good
friend, I’ll ask you all to remember the words we subscribe to on our memorial
site. As we remember our officers who have fallen in the line of duty, take
heart in the fact that they dedicated their lives to those principles inscribed
in the memorial badge. They put their lives on the line in the interests of
honor and integrity. But take heart, too, in the knowledge that whenever an
officer falls our resolve is further strengthened. Detective Trewhella fell to
a bullet from one of the most hardened criminals this city has known, but
within twenty-four hours of that murderous act Ed’s colleagues had worked
around the clock to take that thug out of circulation and make the city that
little bit safer. Ed would have been proud of that instant response from his
colleagues. I now call on a man who was his closest colleague and friend.
Detective Ryder.’

Ryder hated doing this. He would
rather be on the front line right now. But he knew there was no escape. Fiona
had helped him the previous day to think through what he needed to say. Even
though she herself had had a massive speech of her own that she needed to
prepare for her own professional commitments.

He reached the microphone and looked
over the expectant crowd. His first words were barely audible and Fiona tensed
up immediately.

‘Thank
you, Captain.’

Ryder
looked extremely uncomfortable in a suit that was far too tight in the
shoulders. Fiona thought that the moment she got him home and out of that
jacket she would package it up and take it off to the Highway Hospice charity
shop in Pinetown, and get him a damned new one, one size bigger. Not that there
was an ounce of fat on him, she thought. It was all muscle. This current
mismatch had to do with his infuriatingly constant resistance to getting any
new clothes for himself.

He
stuttered a bit and coughed until he found the right distance from the
microphone and heard his voice coming back at himself. Then he settled in and
relaxed.

‘I
met Ed Trewhella at a crime scene in a little English village called Islip,
near Oxford, some years ago. That was a couple of years before he came out to
settle in South Africa. It was pouring with rain when I met him. Well, it was
England, wasn’t it? At that time my wife Fiona and I were over there for a few
years. After a fairly comfortable middle-class existence in Johannesburg Fiona
and I had the opportunity to extend our experience abroad, along with the
children, in England. It was there that I decided to change careers and become
a cop. So for a couple of years I worked my way through the British policing
system and by the time I met Ed for the first time we were both what they call
over there Detective Inspectors, with the Thames Valley Police.’

Fiona
registered the modesty in her husband’s brief account, and noted how he omitted
mention of the hard work that had been involved in their overseas experiment.
Responding to tantalizing newspaper adverts at the time, she had seized the
opportunity to apply for a position giving her the platform to develop a
formidable reputation as an architect in the greater London area. He had taken
the opportunity to abandon a flourishing but boring academic career and pursue
his previously suppressed ambition to become a police detective. By virtue of
his father’s birth his dual citizenship had made it easier. They had both
plunged in with gusto. She quickly rose to become senior partner in her firm.
He had quickly risen through the Thames Valley system, loving the work and
becoming a highly respected sleuth.

‘Captain
Nyawula is right. The first words I ever heard Ed utter were the words
This feller, he walks into a pub.
I
remember going home from the crime scene that first night with particularly
sore cheekbones. Smile muscles, that I hadn’t previously used very much. I had
never laughed so much in one night. Especially at a crime scene. A fairly
gruesome crime scene, too. After that first meeting Ed and I became best
buddies.’

Ryder
choked up a bit at that point, but checked himself and continued, feeling the
audience was with him and willing him forward, and he
realised
,
perhaps more than ever before, how popular Ed had been among those in the crowd
who had worked with him. He continued.

‘But
I’ve moved ahead of my story. Ed was actually in a bad way when I met him on
the second occasion. It was in late September 2007. Rugby World Cup season in
France. English rugby was in total disarray. You’ll recall - probably with some
pleasure - that South Africa beat England thirty-six nil in the pool stage of
the competition. That was the second night I met Ed. We watched the game on a
large screen set up in a pub. It was an excruciatingly painful night for him.’

There
was a ripple of affectionate tittering from the crowd, many of them knowing of
Trewhella’s passion for English rugby.

‘Of
course, there was only one way a guy like Ed could deal with such a devastating
loss. In England they call it the Guinness way. Three or four of us eventually
carried him out to a taxi and got him home, but by the time we poured him into
his bed, he had resolved to join me at the final of the rugby world cup on
October 20th at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris. Of
course, at that stage although I had tickets we didn’t know that South Africa
and England would be the two teams meeting again in the final. And so it came
to pass. Ed was no happier after that occasion, of course, though he was
pleased that his team did slightly better, going down only fifteen-six.’