Devil Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 1)

by Ian Patrick

  ‘Yissus, Skhura, man, I can’t pay that much. I'm swak, ek sê. That’s more than both guns you sold me last year, and Z88s are being replaced, anyway: they’re old and cheap.’

  ‘Hau! What you think, white boy? Is inflation. You think I’m sitting in jail with no inflation? I must eat. You not wanting guns, then you can use the bicycle spoke, like me. Cheaper. You not wanting to pay me, you fokoff! Tchai!’

  ‘OK. Jeez. OK, man. Take it easy. Just lissen for a minute. I’m working with these guys. I meet them each time at Suncoast Casino. They pulling big money. Not from the casinos, you know, because that’s all, like, controlled, you know, but from some other stuff involving gambling. Like, I mean, really big money. I’m talking hunnerts of thousands. There could be big money for you if you want to work with me and Dirk. You remember that oke Dirk? You met him once, right here. The fat guy. My friend. Here, check this, this photo: me and Dirk in the Drakensberg, man, after we scored big time geld with these guys. Remember him? You see the big smile there? Hell, man, he was happy that time, ‘cos we were paid big bucks. They handed over our money right there by Suncoast. Cash, man. We both working for these guys, and when we score they give us big money. That time we went to the mountains for a lekker holiday. These guys pay us well, and we going to get more big money soon. So if you give me the gun now for the same price as the last one, then next time ...’

  ‘Hayi! Fokoff, man! What you think? You think me, I’m stupid? You think I’m waiting for next year for you to win casino? You win casino money you can come then and look for me here, at Nomivi. Then, not now. Now, you give me money or I fokoff and no gun for you. Give me. Now, or I am going.’

  Jannie realised there was no room for bargaining any further. He pulled the wad of bills from his right trouser pocket as he spoke, and put it together on his lap, under the table, with the wad he pulled from his left pocket. He had calculated that he might bargain Thabethe down to about half the amount he carried on him, so he had kept half in reserve. He was wrong.

  ‘OK, man. Here’s the geld. But for that price I want bullets, too, hey?’

  ‘I got fifteen bullets for you. Sixteen. One extra. For testing. I know you. You like to test, huh? Sixteen bullets. No more. Is all I got.’

  Jannie cast his gaze around the darkened room before sliding the thick wad of cash across to him, along the length of his thigh. Thabethe snatched it and flicked through the two bundles, each held together with a thick rubber band. Jannie waited. Then, after the counting, Thabethe leaned across to him, fixing him with that stare that bothered Jannie so much.

  ‘You wait one minute. Then you follow. I give you the gun across the street. Around the corner. Big tree. You stay one minute now, or I fokoff and you are not seeing me.’

  Before Jannie could protest, he was up and making for the door. Jannie cursed, but waited. He knew that Thabethe would drop the deal instantly if he didn’t follow instructions, and maybe it was better, anyway. Not here. Outside. Once he had checked that the gun was still good, his first target was going to be this black bastard. Those eyes. I swear he’s mal, man. I’ll feel better when he’s vrek. He paused another few seconds, then slid out from behind the table and followed Thabethe.

  Jannie saw him turn the corner at the end of the street. He followed briskly, glancing around for any possible spectators. There was only an old woman walking in the same direction on the opposite side of the street with two kids – probably her grandkids – all three showing no interest in either him or Thabethe because of the more interesting sight of the grey cat that sat, imperiously, on the bonnet of a rusting Toyota Carina that was catching the warm morning sun. As he rounded the corner he saw Thabethe leaning against the tree, partly behind it and to one side. The side furthest from the street. Jannie joined him, looking around to see if anyone was watching. There was no-one in sight.

  Thabethe motioned him closer to the tree then he crouched momentarily, jumped, and with his left hand clutched a thin branch some ten feet from the ground, at the same time placing his left foot in a knot-hole about half-way up the trunk. Then he reached up with his right hand to the natural hollow created by three converging branches, and pulled the Z88, wrapped in dirty oilcloth, from its sanctuary.

  He passed the weapon to Jannie, who expertly checked it. Jannie knew that more than a hundred thousand of these had been through the SAPS but once it had been announced that they would soon be phased out in favour of the SP1 it had become harder to find replacement parts for any unauthorised Z88s. So any weapon that wasn’t functioning properly was a serious liability in any of the actions that he and Dirk would be planning on behalf of Vic and Tony. Including the business he had to attend to today. The fact that in his experience the Z88 was also prone to jams if not properly maintained made it doubly important that he check the weapon carefully.

  Jannie had lost his Desert Eagle two years ago. Mark XIX with the Picatinny rail polished lovingly to highlight the titanium gold. It had been Tony who introduced both him and Dirk to it some time before that. Get rid of the Beretta, guys, Tony had said. The Deagle is gas-operated. Polygonal rifling cuts back on the wear on the barrel. Easy to clean. Accurate like you can’t believe. Good for two-hand stuff. Here you are. Both of you. One for me, one for each of you. I picked up these three beauties in one pack. Three brothers, in matching titanium gold. Came off the production line together. Six-inch barrels. Just under eleven inches, the whole thing. You’ll love it.

  He did. For some months. Then he had lost it. In that action in Umlazi. Tony had been incandescent when he heard. Dirk still had his own, and Tony still had his, too.

  Jannie’s experience with the Z88 since losing his favoured weapon had not been good. It felt alien in his hand, and the slide was never easy, pretty soon showing the orange stuff that preceded rust. Like those that Skhura had sold him last year, which those idiots had lost yesterday at Wilson’s Wharf. They were not like the Desert Eagle. Anyway, this one seemed OK. Typical SAPS stock. Seemed good to go. He paused a moment. Thabethe was watching him, closely. He looked up at Thabethe and asked:

  ‘OK to fire a test round here?’

  Thabethe nodded perfunctorily and reached a hand into each of his right and left trouser pockets. With his right hand he withdrew a small cardboard box, while in his left hand he held a solitary bullet. He handed the box to Jannie and snatched the gun back from him as he said:

  ‘Here. One bullet, to test. You keep the box for later.’

  As Jannie pocketed the carton, once again looking over his shoulder to see if there was anyone in sight, Thabethe deftly loaded the single bullet, flipped the weapon around and, holding it by the barrel, handed it back to him. Then he stepped back against the tree.

  Jannie paused. Looked at the weapon in his right hand. Looked again, quickly, over his shoulder, then smirked as he raised the weapon, pointing it at Thabethe. No comment. No time to be funny or clever. Someone might come. Time to blow away the devil himself, and take back the money, into the bargain. He looked into the black wells of Thabethe’s eyes, paused only very briefly, and pulled the trigger.

  The dull empty click was possibly the most paralysing sound Jannie had ever heard. It was infinitely more devastating to him than the loud metallic click of a cell-door that he knew so well and hated so much.

  Before he could recover from the shock Thabethe was in his face, his evil eyes now only four inches from his own. Jannie felt a cold - inexplicably cold - sharp pain under the tip of his sternum. The cold seemed to penetrate upwards, and upwards, slowly, terrifyingly, as Thabethe rasped words over foul breath.

  ‘One bad bullet. SHAME. No FIRE? You FUCK with me, white boy, you DIE. I tell you use bicycle spoke, better than gun. You SEE?’

  He gave five powerful, inexorable thrusts, one on each stressed word then, finally, he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork.

  ‘Nice, hey? Wena uclever! You like? Fok jou, skelm.’

  The long sharpened spoke protruded only a couple of inches
from the lower part of Jannie’s torso. It was embedded all the way up from beneath the sternum, through the lung, finally penetrating the striated muscle in the upper third of the oesophagus with its rich blood supply and vascular drainage. Jannie’s mouth quickly filled with blood. The gun fell from his limp hand. He stared at Thabethe. Those eyes. Those black, evil eyes, they –

  Thabethe moved in again, quickly, before he collapsed, and held him up against the tree for a few more seconds as the life ebbed from him. Then he withdrew the spoke and let the body fall, slowly, guiding Jannie so that he ended up partly behind the tree, out of sight of the street. He looked around, quickly, then bent over the corpse. First to wipe the bicycle spoke on Jannie’s shirt. Second to retrieve the gun and the carton of bullets from his pocket. As he stood up, he saw the photo of Jannie and Dirk protruding from the dead man’s shirt pocket. He paused a moment, thought, then bent down and took the photo. Then he walked away, swiftly, the carton in his left trouser pocket, the gun tucked into his belt in the small of his back, and the spoke carried point down, flush against his right leg.

  He was almost at the end of the street when the grandmother and the two children came into view around the corner.

  08.05.

  Pillay had been interviewing neighbours, looking for whatever clues might help her in the search for Thabethe. It didn’t take long for five of the older women, gathered together over a few strands of meshed chicken-wire that served as the front garden fence of one of them, to link Thabethe to the local nyaope problem. Pillay rapidly learned that the drug was the single most important topic of conversation among the parents and grandparents in this particular street, and that it was inextricably tied into talk in the greater neighbourhood about devil-worship. Various brutal murders elsewhere in the country, in addition to high-profile cases that had made it into the newspapers more than a year previously, were resuscitated by one of them, who reminded the others and set them all off again, fuelling the gossip.

  ‘That very old woman, there near Jo’burg, it was her own grandson –’

  ‘ - for her pension money…’

  ‘ - no, because of the drugs, I’m telling you. Nyaope!’

  ‘Tchai! The devil! Satan!’

  ‘Ja! Like that child in Benoni with the axe. Fourteen years old!’

  ‘Hayi! Man! They steal for money because there’s no jobs. Then they use nyaope. Whoonga! Then they lose their mind. Then they kill for more. Is the drugs, I’m telling you!’

  Pillay had driven around the streets for the better part of an hour, stopping to chat to whoever was interested in talking to a cop. The story was the same. The Nigerians. The Zimbabweans. The Malawians. The reason for the xenophobia, and the attacks on foreigners. The young ones. The drugs. Nyaope. And Skhura Thabethe.

  She arrived at Nomivi’s tavern to see a commotion at the end of the street. As she got out of the car a group of people started shouting at her, beckoning her to come toward them. A distressed older woman with two young children clutching onto her dress was crying and being comforted by two other women.

  People were on their cell-phones, describing to friends or loved ones or colleagues what they were seeing, proud to be part of the first group of people on the scene, which they would elaborate and embroider later that day in discussions with friends and families over drinks and meals. By then their stories would escalate to include phrases like you can’t believe how much blood there was and I tell you, I seen dead people before but this one was scary, man and they say it was a bicycle spoke or something like that, but I’m telling you, I think it was some ritual killing or something and I heard it was, like, you know, Satanism – they say that the blood had been taken out of him in a tube...

  For now, the callers were just calling in the news, without the dramatic colouring. The elaborations would follow later. As Pillay ran toward the group one of the callers whispered into his Samsung Galaxy:

  ‘I’ll call you back. The cops are here. Want to watch this,’ and he stepped in front of Pillay. ‘There, officer, just around the corner, behind the tree, there. Terrible, man. The old woman found him. Do you want me to call the ambulance or something?’

  Pillay ignored the man and rushed forward. As she was about to turn the corner she became aware of the blue lights and siren flashing behind her. At a glance she recognised Trewhella’s car with two shapes in the front.

  ‘Tell those policemen to come up here,’ she shouted at the man with the phone. He was only too pleased to do so. It would flesh out his story later that day: The police asked me to help, like, so I was, you know, the adrenalin was pumping but I thought it was my duty, you know.

  Trewhella and Ryder, pausing briefly in front of Nomivi’s, saw the commotion at the end of the street and the man waving frantically at them. Trewhella floored the pedal. They lurched forward another hundred metres.

  08.30.

  Tony and Dirk sat across from each other at the innermost table in the Musgrave Centre Mugg & Bean. Dirk had the South African Farm Breakfast: fried eggs, grilled tomato, boerewors – without the salsa – hashbrown, back bacon, toast. Tony had plain black coffee.

  ‘Are we cool, Dirk?’

  ‘Yes, Tony. You can count on me. For sure.’

  ‘And after you’ve sorted that out I want you to clean the Montpelier Road house, too. We don’t know what else the idiot told that Trewhella cop in Addington before we got to him. In fact, I might even take Trewhella down if I can. He’s getting too close. And his partner, too.’

  ‘Jeez, Tony. Taking down a cop. I don’t know...’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Dirk. Leave that to me. For now, I want you to go over the place and remove any papers, old envelopes from the post, phone numbers that might have been scribbled down by either you or Jannie on scraps of paper, or on walls, behind pictures, that kind of thing. We want the place clean. No connections. No trace back to anyone or anything. We still want to use the house. Got some big stuff coming for dispatch to Gauteng and the Cape. We need the place. If they start looking at it we’ll have to move more things to the Overport place.’

  Dirk shifted his weight uncomfortably, but continued spooning the food into his mouth. Tony observed him with some disgust for a moment, then stood up and threw a hundred-rand note on the table.

  ‘Let me know when the house is clean, Dirk. Get over there as soon as you can.

  ‘OK, Tony. Thanks, man, I – hey I just want you to know...’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dirk. We’ll look after you. Big money coming through on the deliveries. You’ll get your share. Play it cool, that’s all.’

  Tony left. Dirk stared at his plate for a moment, then continued eating.

  09.45

  Forensics had got there in record time, so after the initial scan of the body and the surrounding area Pillay and the two detectives had left them to it and driven in Trewhella’s car the hundred metres back to Nomivi’s in the vain hope of some coffee. The cleaners were still at it, so they hung around outside instead.

  They had found on the body of the freckle-faced boy nothing apart from an empty wallet with a driving licence, a Suncoast Casino gold card, a branded Chinese Skull Knuckle Duster, and a seven-inch dagger inclusive of a three-inch blade, double edged and very sharp, with a black Micarta handle, highly polished.

  Pillay had not recognised the particular brand of knuckle-duster despite having taken many of the weapons off suspects over the years. And the dagger was fairly unique, too. High quality.

  ‘Let’s go and find some coffee, somewhere, guys,’ said Ed.

  ‘You mean bacon and eggs, buddy? Coffee sounds good, though. Want to join us, Navi?’

  ‘Thanks, Jeremy, but I’ll leave you guys to it. I want to get back to check on some stuff I was told by the neighbours around here about the nyaope deals going down in the last few days.

  ‘OK. We’ll grab some coffee and when forensics have finished we’ll follow up on this young guy, and see where he comes from. Nothing but the lice
nce to go on so far.’

  ‘And the knuckle-duster, and the dagger,’ said Pillay.

  ‘Sure,’ Ryder replied. He paused, looking at her. Sharp, she was, and getting sharper by the day. ‘Them too. We’ll look into those, too. Let us know what you get from the neighbours, Navi.’

  The three of them parted, the two men burning away down the street in Trewhella’s car and Pillay pausing a moment, watching them go, before walking to her car. As she opened the driver’s door and got in, a battered green Mazda 323 SL Sedan that had seen many better days crawled around the corner from the same direction as the departing detectives, and more slowly than any normal vehicle would travel in the normal course of business.

  Pillay sat for a moment, and watched. The driver peered into the gloom of Nomivi’s as he passed, not noticing Pillay in her car, the sun bouncing off her windscreen in a way that obscured any clear vision of the car’s interior. He went slowly half-way up the street and then came to a halt. Pillay thought it was because he could see the edge of one of the forensics vehicles at the end of the street, alongside the remaining cop car, one of them still with its blue lights flashing. The driver did a three-point turn in the Mazda and started slowly back toward the tavern.

  Strange, thought Pillay. Someone seeing a flashing blue light at the end of the street and having no interest in seeing what was up. She watched in stillness, her interest in the Mazda now piqued.

  She watched Dirk stop outside the tavern, get out, and walk to the door. He entered and she could see him in the gloom of the interior speaking to the Nomivi cleaners. She noted down the registration of the Mazda and decided to wait and watch. Three or four minutes later Dirk came out, and before going to his car he walked to a point just beyond it where he could look up the street to see what was happening with the blue lights. He paused then got into the Mazda and drove off.