Death Dealing

by Ian Patrick

  ‘Ag, sorry, Fiona. But you obviously don’t know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ added Ryder. ‘You’re not going to tell me, Piet...’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Jeremy,’ replied Cronje. ‘It’s not a game you want to watch.’

  Ryder looked devastated. No prospect yet of the Sharks recovering their form.

  ‘He’s telling lies, Detective Jeremy,’ said Mavis Tshabalala. ‘Sergeant Piet there is lying. You’ll like the game. I watched it this afternoon. Our team was brilliant.’

  ‘Yissus, are you also a Sharks fan, Mavis?’

  ‘Yet another thing you don’t know about Mavis, Koeks,’ interjected Pillay. ‘Yes, she’s been a supporter of the Sharks for a long time.’

  No-one would divulge the score.

  The Ryders did their farewell hugs and kisses and high-fives, and all the guests started moving off to their cars, which were parked in a long line behind one another on the driveway. As they did so, sirens could be heard.

  They all paused and looked up toward the King Cetshwayo Highway, little more than a hundred metres up the road. They saw the flashing blue lights of two police cars hurtling down the highway toward Durban.

  Nyawula looked at his watch as he spoke.

  ‘Just on midnight. Another day in Durban. Maybe you shouldn’t take your phone off the hook, after all, Jeremy. Lots of devils still out there for you to deal with.’

  Laughter. Final farewells. Final wisecracks. The guests got into their cars and drove off, leaving the Ryders alone. They watched the last car drive away up the hill, then sat down on the edge of the patio, looking up at the full moon.

  Sugar-Bear hobbled out very slowly, in obvious pain, and stood between them.

  ‘Good dog,’ said Fiona, putting her face into the dog’s furry neck.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Ryder, tweaking his ears gently.

  A third police car hurtled down the highway toward Durban, its siren sounding and its blues flashing.

  Sugar-Bear barked once, very softly, almost to himself, as if encouraging the vehicle. Then he sat down. The Ryders smiled at each other. Then each of them reached out an arm to hug the dog.

  The three of them sat in the moonlight.

  The sound of the siren faded away until it was swallowed in the dark underbelly of the city.

  GLOSSARY

  ag - ah, oh, well

  aikona - no, no way, not there at all (see also haikona)

  amaBenzi - referring to the drivers of Mercedes Benz cars, flashy and ostentatiously wealthy people

  amaIntellectuals - the intellectuals

  amaNdiya - the Indians, used pejoratively (song by Mbongeni Ngema, theatre practitioner)

  amaphoyisa - the police

  babelas - hangover

  bakgat - great, excellent, fine, good

  bantoe - corruption of bantu, associated with racist usage

  bhuti - brother

  blerrie - bloody

  bliksem - hit, punch, strike

  boere - (referring variously to) farmers, Afrikaners, policemen

  boet - brother, male friend, dude

  bok, bokke - buck, bucks (bokke as in Springboks)

  boykie - boy: diminutive, little boy

  bra, my bra - brother, my brother

  braai, braaivleis - barbecue

  breek - break

  broer, bru - brother

  bulala - kill

  charra, charro - slang term for person of Indian ethnicity, often racist

  china - friend, chum

  chune - to tell someone

  daarsy - there it is, there you are, that’s it, dead right

  deagle - desert eagle

  dis reg - that’s right

  donner - hammer, hit, beat up

  doos - box (lewd, meaning vagina), fool, idiot

  dop - alcoholic drink

  dronkgat - drunkard

  dwaal - in a daze, lost

  eekhoring - squirrel

  eh-heh - yes, affirmative

  eina - exclamation expressing pain

  eish - interjection expressing disappointment, regret

  ek sê - I say, I’m telling you

  Engelsman - Englishman

  fok - fuck

  fokall - fuck-all, nothing

  fokken - fucken, fucking

  fokoff - fuck off

  gatvol - fed up

  geld - money

  gemors - mess, disarray

  gif - poison, marijuana

  hayi - no, no way (see also tchai)

  hayibo - no, no way

  haikona - no, no way, not there at all

  hau - expression of surprise (what? hey? oh?)

  heita - hello, howzit, how is it?

  helluva - ‘hell of a’ (as in helluva long time)

  hodoshe – (Xhosa) carrion fly that lays its eggs in dead bodies, nickname for hated prison warder

  hunnert – hundred

  impimpi - sell-out, informer

  ja – yes

  ja’k stem saam - yes, I agree (ja, ek stem saam)

  jeez - jesus (exclamation of surprise or frustration)

  jirra - exclamation of surprise derived from ‘Here,’ Afrikaans for ‘God’

  jislaaik - expression of astonishment (see also yissus)

  jong - young man, friend

  jou - your, you

  jy - you

  kak - crap, shit

  kêrels - guys, chaps, police

  kif - great, cool, nice

  klaar - finish

  koeksister - (lit. cake sister) braided dough sweet delicacy

  laaitie - lighty, young one

  laduma! - score!, celebrating a goal scored in football

  lanie - fancy, posh

  lank - long, a lot, very

  lekker - great, nice, tasty

  likhipa inhlanzi emanzini - it takes the fish out of the water (i.e. ‘it’s so hot that it takes...’)

  madala - old man

  mal - crazy, mad

  mampara - fool, dolt, idiot

  manne - men

  mBenzi - singular for amaBenzi

  mense - men, people

  mina - me

  mfowethu - brother

  moer - murder, kill, beat up, also the moer in (‘fed up with’)

  moerse - large, big time, huge

  moegoe - idiot

  my bra - my brother

  nè? - not so?

  nee - no

  nek – neck

  nooit – never

  ntombazane – girl, young woman

  ntombazane, ngifuna ukudla nawe – girl, I want to eat (with) you

  nyaope - street drug (see also whoonga)

  oke, ou, ouens - bloke, blokes

  oom - uncle

  ouma - grandmother

  ou toppie - old man, father, old person

  pallie - diminutive for ‘pal,’ friend

  poep - fart

  praat - talk

  reg - right

  Seffrika - South Africa

  shaddup - shut up

  sharp, sharp-sharp - OK, yes, quick-quick

  shibobo - fancy footwork (sweet moves, like nutmeg) from football

  shweet - sweet, cool

  sies - sis, expression of disgust

  sisi - sister, young woman

  skabenga - crook, criminal, no-good

  skelm - thief, crook

  skollie, skollies - crook, gangster (from the Greek skolios: crooked)

  skrik vir niks - scared of nothing

  snoeks - little fish, term of endearment

  sommer – simply

  sosatie - kebab

  soutie, soutpiel - derogatory term for English South African (salty penis)

  spookgerook - (lit.) ghost-smoked, stoned to the point of paranoia

  struesbob - as true as Bob

  sug - care (‘you think I sug/care?’)

  suss - to have suss - to be sharp or streetwise

  swak - weak, broke

  tchai - no, no
way (see also hayi)

  thula wena - shut up, you

  tjaila - time to go home

  tjommie - chum, good friend

  toppie - see ou toppie: old man, father, old person

  tokoloshe - evil spirit from Zulu mythology

  trap - stairs, staircase

  trek - pull, leave, exit

  tronk - jail, prison

  tsotsi - gangster

  twak - nonsense, rubbish

  uclever - the clever one

  uitlander - outlander, alien

  umlungu - white one, white man (vocative: mlungu)

  val - fall

  vragtig – truly, yes, really

  vrek - die, dead

  vrekked - died

  vroeg - early

  vuvuzela - plastic horn noisemaker, prominent at football matches

  warder - South African term for prison guard or correctional officer, not to be confused with warden used in other countries, and which in South Africa would refer to a much more senior officer.

  wat? - what?

  weet - know (jy weet? - you know?)

  wena - you

  wena ungowami – you are mine

  whatchamacallit - what you may call it, thing, object, whatever it might be

  whoonga - slang for nyaope

  woes - angry, ‘the hell in’, incandescent

  yebo - yes

  yini? - what?

  yislaaik - variation of yissus

  yissus - expression of astonishment, derived from Jesus

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ian Patrick writes full-time from his home in the United Kingdom. After working as an actor, director and teacher in theatre, film and television, he turned to an academic career and for some years published scholarly essays in a range of international academic journals.

  ‘Not particularly page-turning stuff,’ he says. ‘Then one day the editor of a journal with a slightly more commercial and business-oriented focus, who had solicited an essay from me based on my scholarly research, asked me what my fee was. I had never considered the possibility that anyone might want to pay me for publishing anything I wrote, so I suggested that he pay me whatever he thought appropriate. He did so. After the resulting pleasant surprise I considered that there might be another dimension to writing.’

  He believes that his years as an actor and director now play a modest part in his writing, as does his past experience in scholarly research. ‘My fiction is based to the best of my ability on research and fieldwork. I have to believe every word my fictive characters say, every action they undertake,’ he says.

  ‘I endeavour to make my fiction plausible and authentic. This requires exhaustive work and detailed research, and friends on occasion express surprise that it takes me at least a year of full-time work to write an eighty thousand word crime thriller. In my view, however, although it is clearly desirable to arrive at one’s destination by bringing a work to publication, it is the journey that is the really exciting and enjoyable part of writing. I can only hope that readers will also enjoy the journey of discovering my characters and their foibles, their actions and their experiences. I hope, too, that they will inform me about and forgive me for any lapses in my work or any errors of detail.’