Plain Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 3)

by Ian Patrick

  ‘Wow,’ said Pauline. ‘What have they got?’

  ‘Footprints. Seven clearly identified pairs. Separated out from the footprints of the first responders on the night. And semen. Five different guys. Bastards. And only two of the traces match the DNA from our four guys.’

  ‘Only two out of our four,’ said Pauline. ‘Meaning that each one of the other three guys who had their share on the night is still out there somewhere.’

  ‘Genevieve said that they’ll handle the media side of it, and asked us to keep it in family until tomorrow. So I’ll let Jeremy know, Mavis, and you can share it with your guys in the office, but just ask them all to keep it inside for now. Genevieve said that the Colonel in charge wanted coverage in the press tomorrow to help flush out more witnesses. So by tomorrow it will all be out there.’

  ‘Yes, Nadine,’ replied Mavis.

  ‘I wonder what Detective Mashego’s team would have done if they had cornered all seven of them?’ mused Nadine, more to herself than to her companions.

  17.10

  Pullen was excited. He had spent the last three hours pulling up records of various police cases in which the names Mashego, Ryder, or Pillay were mentioned. He was constructing a profile for each of them that matched exactly what he had expected to find. He had made his assumptions before he had started the research, and each of those assumptions was now vindicated by the material he had found.

  He discarded a few extraneous pieces of information that didn’t seem to fit with the picture that was emerging. The rationale he gave himself was that he wanted to keep the picture as simple and as straightforward as possible. These were dangerous people he was looking at.

  Pillay, the journalist decided, was nothing less than a thug. In the last two months alone she had committed acts of violence that horrified him. She had put some guy in hospital with grievous injuries to his leg, apparently jumping on it and deliberately torturing the man. She had killed another man in Overport by jumping on his throat. She was truly violent. In both cases she used the excuse of self-defence. There had been only one witness to the killing of the man in Overport. That witness was none other than Detective Jeremy Ryder.

  On Ryder’s part, also within the same short period of six or eight weeks, he had shot down a man in cold blood at Wilson’s Wharf. The only witness was a detective colleague by the name of Trewhella, who himself shot dead two people in the same incident. The two detectives were witnesses for each other’s actions! Then Ryder appeared to have smashed various people to a pulp in different incidents.

  As for Mashego, it seemed to Pullen that even with just a quick scan he was able to tell that the detective had numerous killings to his name. All of them without witnesses.

  The thing that most disturbed Pullen was that all three detectives had always been cleared after investigations by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate.

  Pullen’s imagination ran riot. He saw conspiracy all over this. Ryder and Mashego and Pillay had connections higher up in the SAPS. Hadn’t the Editor told him that Ryder’s alibi was that he was at a top-brass SAPS party on Saturday night? These were violent people. They were dangerous people. And they were working together. And they had friends higher up in the SAPS.

  He was feverishly excited as he pursued his research.

  20.40

  ‘Ryder.’

  ‘Hullo Detective Ryder.’

  ‘Nadine Salm. What a pleasure. My second favourite woman in the entire world.’

  Fiona sighed, with a bored expression, muted the television, and sipped her tea as her husband continued.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, Nadine. Where does the surname Salm come from? I knew a Salm once whose family originated from Portugal and went to Mozambique. Are you Portuguese?’

  ‘Not me, Jeremy. As far as I know we derive from somewhere in the Ardennes in the eleventh century, with roots in various principalities in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, you name it. And we have distinguished connections, or dubious connections, depending how good a detective you are, with the Holy Roman Empire.’

  ‘Well, Nadine, I’m quite a good detective, they tell me, so I’ll explore that connection sometime. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘It’s because you’re such a good detective, Jeremy, that I thought you might like to have an update on some information regarding the Sugar Cane Road affair.’

  ‘Oh? Are you working on that one, too?’

  ‘Not really, Jeremy. The only connection is the four guys from the beach at Umdloti. Pauline and I are working with one team who are handling them, while another team are handling Sugar Cane Road. But now there’s even more of a connection than there was before, so the two teams are putting their heads together.’

  ‘What have you got for me, Nadine?’

  Ryder mouthed his apologies to Fiona. She read him as saying Sorry. This is going to take longer than I thought, and she made signs with her hands indicating that that would be no problem. She turned her attention back to the now silent television documentary they had been watching, and stroked Sugar-Bear’s ears with her bare feet as the phone conversation proceeded. The dog groaned with pleasure.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Jeremy. The pathologist reports are now in on the rape on Sugar Cane Road. There were five different counts of semen.’

  ‘So there’s one more guy out there?’ Ryder immediately thought of Mashego’s story. Was Thabethe then in fact part of the group? Were he and Navi wrong to disbelieve Mashego’s story? It was only for a moment that he held on to this thought before it was dashed by Nadine’s response.

  ‘Too quick, Detective. Wait for it. No, there weren’t five guys. There were seven.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In addition to five bastards raping her, the footprint analysis of the scene shows that there were two more people involved. Seven pairs of footprints. The team was careful to screen out the extra footmarks of the cops and medics. They’ve got very clear evidence of seven perpetrators involved in the fracas. And this is the part you’re going to find interesting. And that Detective Mashego will doubtless also find interesting.’

  ‘What’s that, Nadine?’

  ‘The five strains of semen. Only two of them were matched against the four corpses from the beach.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘Yup. So there are three more guys out there, all of whom raped the poor girl, and all three of them are going to be running scared as a result of seeing their four dead friends on the front page of the Mercury. Colonel Nene, as you know, is leading on the case. He’s now got the names of the four dead guys and the Editor has agreed to run the four mug-shots again tomorrow with the names. I think the Editor feels he owes the cops something, so he didn’t hesitate to agree.’

  The two of them discussed further the various strands of work that were being picked up on the case, and said their goodbyes. Just before they hung up, Ryder had a further thought.

  ‘Just one thing, Nadine, sorry...’

  ‘What’s that, Jeremy?’

  ‘Any sign yet of the weapon? I take it from all we’ve heard that there were no bullet-wounds so I assume the only weapon is a blade?’

  ‘That’s right. Genevieve says they’re looking for only one blade. Notwithstanding the unbelievable savagery. She says that one could be forgiven for thinking that half a dozen pangas were used on her. But they’ve boiled it down to one blade only.’

  ‘Which suggests that one guy, in particular… No. What am I saying. All of these guys are complete savages. But the blade guy is probably the real lunatic.’

  ‘Probably, Jeremy. It’s unbelievable what he did to the poor girl with what Genevieve’s team think is a single dagger. They’ve scoured the scene and there’s no sign of a blade. And the four guys that Mashego’s team took down on the beach at Umdloti carried no blades.’

  ‘So someone out there is carrying it. If he has any sense he’ll dump it on a truck going to Cairo.’

  ‘These guys usually don’t ha
ve sense, Jeremy. With any luck he’ll eventually be taken down still carrying the dagger.’

  ‘We can but hope, Nadine. That will give a lot of people some closure. OK. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.’

  As he closed down the call, Ryder turned to Fiona and filled her in on what he had just heard. The two of them went to bed in some depression. The details of the horrific crime hovered over the Ryder house until they both fell asleep. Even Sugar-Bear sensed the mood, and whined a few times before dropping off to sleep.

  22.45

  Mashego drove slowly from Umdloti down South Beach Road past Selection Beach to the end, where he had to turn right up Sixth Avenue and left into Newsel Road. Then he retraced the last section of the journey, driving slowly back again. At the end of Sixth Avenue where it turned into South Beach Road he got out of the car, switched everything off, and walked onto the beach.

  He made his way down to the surf, past the rocks where he now knew his witness had hidden himself, and down to the point at which he thought the man had made his way back to the bush. He followed the route he had taken on Monday morning and moved slowly, like a cat on the prowl, through the bush.

  Mashego was no stranger to walking in isolated spots late at night. He derived comfort from the silence. He carried no torch, this time, relying only on the moon.

  He wasn’t in search of anything. He was convinced that he had already found whatever remained of the presence of the man who he was sure had been hidden in the rocks on Saturday night. Nevertheless, he made his way back to where he had discovered the Addington garment and the SAPS constable uniform in the bush. He stood there silently in the dark, soaking up the atmosphere and listening to the hum of insects. It was as if he thought that by simply being there he could, by osmosis, absorb the presence of, and even enter the mind of the man who he would now love to encounter.

  He persuaded himself that if indeed he could harness such a process of osmosis he would be soaking up, right now, the thoughts and feelings and intentions of a man who was, in some way, deeply malevolent. He sensed evil in the bush all around him. He could not rid himself of the thought of evil men constantly around, within striking distance. Men such as those that had once brutally attacked and destroyed someone more precious to him than life itself.

  He suppressed the thought, turning it instead into the image of a colony of vagrants living in bushes just like this up and down the coast. People who lurked in the foliage, waiting, like animals, for a chance to emerge and prey on innocent people.

  Creatures of the night. Friends had teased him. He, too, they said, was a creature of the night. He liked to drift around, looking for those who were lurking in the shadows and up to no good. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Find them. Hunt them down. Nights Mashego. Like a hunter in the night. He was revered among his fellow cops. He would find dangerous people wherever they might hide. He had an uncanny knack for it. Almost as if he could sniff out evil. And eliminate it when he found it.

  Mashego returned to his car and stood for a moment looking out at the sea to the east. All around it was black and silent. Nothing moving but the water and whatever might lurk beneath. The clarity of Saturday night’s moonlit sky was replaced now by a dead leaden colour. The moon hid furtively behind massed clouds. He looked south-westward in the direction of Umhlanga Rocks some five miles away as the crow flies. He wondered what might lurk beneath the amber glow of its lights reflecting in the night sky, and in the dark bushes bordering the shoreline that stretched out between him and the Umhlanga Lagoon.

  He turned and got into his car, started up the engine, and drove slowly away, back north toward Umdloti.

  22.55

  Had Mashego only known… At that very moment in those same bushes he had been imagining, more than halfway to the lights of Umhlanga Rocks, the man he was thinking about sat naked on the ground less than five miles from him. He was drying off after his quick swim in the cold waters in front of the Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve. Thabethe was drawing the toxic fumes of whoonga into his lungs.

  Neither of the two men knew the other was thinking of him. The sounds of the night encircled Thabethe. He waved his hand, occasionally, at the few mosquitoes that braved the nyaope fumes. Now and then he would curse and slap as one of them sank its syringe into him in search of blood.

  He thought through what he had seen on Saturday night. Sunday morning. That big detective. A ruthless man. Big man. Dangerous. Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him. He had calmly executed those guys in the water.

  But now that detective would probably be wondering why some witness to the shootings had named Detective Jeremy Ryder as the guilty party and not him. He would know from the newspaper report that that witness must have been there on the beach. In the rocks. The description Thabethe had given the journalist was detailed. Even though not all the facts had appeared in the newspaper report, there was enough there to show the cops that someone had seen exactly what they had done on the beach. Would they panic? Would they start a search for whoever that witness had been?

  Thabethe persuaded himself that there was no way anyone could ever trace him as the witness. Ryder would be furious. He, too, would want to know how he had come to be identified as the man in charge. Even if, following the retraction by the newspaper, he would not now be interrogated by his superiors, surely at least questions might be asked? More journalists would be asking questions about him. He would spend hours and hours trying to defend himself.

  Thabethe grinned at the pleasure he was deriving. The bastard Ryder had destroyed his business. This was the beginning of his revenge. He would do more. He would nail the cop. And then he would start up his business again.

  Where was his friend Mkhize?

  The mosquitoes were becoming too much for him. He got up and walked over to where his clothes were drying on the branches. He needed to find somewhere else to spend the night. The waters of the lagoon were not a good idea. Too many insects. He needed to head for the city.

  And tomorrow work out what to do about Mkhize. And about the money buried in the ground at Nomivi’s.

  4: WEDNESDAY

  06.35.

  The day was mercifully cooler than yesterday. The wind had played a part, they were saying on the news now emanating from the battery-operated radio. Some timer had kicked in and switched on the damned thing. How was one to sleep with it going off like that?

  High pressure region. Low pressure area. Stiff breezes over there. Pockets of this. Pockets of that. Mkhize didn’t understand such things. What the hell did that stuff mean? All he knew was that it was definitely cooler today.

  He gradually got to his feet in the cramped quarters. The man who had offered him a mattress on the floor of his shack in return for a couple of joints last night lay unconscious on the only bed in the place. Mattress for the night, the man had said. Some mattress, Mkhize thought, as he felt every muscle ache with the effort to sit up. Nothing more than a doubled-over blanket. But at least he had had transport and had been offered somewhere to sleep for the night.

  Mkhize stepped out into bright sunlight and blue sky. He urinated up against the wall of the shack and then lit up a cigarette. He remembered the drive in to the shack, late the previous night. KwaMashu Section K, just off the M21. What a dump, he thought, looking around. He needed to move up in the world. Enough of this struggle to make just enough each time to get by for a few days. Six weeks ago he and Thabethe had been on the edge of the big time. They were doing fantastic business on their nyaope deals. They were on the verge of a major expansion, and then they were bust by that cop Ryder. Bastard. They had had to run, leaving all their money buried in a tin near Nomivi’s Tavern.

  A hundred thousand rands just waiting for them. In a simple little tin buried in the ground at the foot of a tree. The temptation was enormous. Should he just sneak in one night, dig it up, and head back to Gauteng? But what if Skhura Thabethe was thinking the same thing?

  He pondered other options. What i
f he dug it up, with good intentions to give Skhura his half, and then Skhura found out before he could do so, and then thought he had done a dirty on him? How could he get word to Thabethe?

  Should he just take half the money? That would send the right signal to Thabethe, wouldn’t it? If Skhura found half the money there, then he would realise that his good friend was still to be trusted; that he was out there, somewhere, not betraying him but wanting to link up.

  But what if someone else found the money? Then he would lose both ways. Skhura would never believe that it wasn’t him who stole it. He would get the bicycle spoke from Skhura. A painful, horrible death.

  And why wait for nightfall, anyway? Every hour that passes means that someone else could find that money. Perhaps he should just go and dig up the tin and take all the money before it’s found.

  Mkhize lit up another cigarette and pondered further.

  07.25.

  Ryder, Pillay and Cronje were chatting in the sergeant’s office when Mavis Tshabalala entered from the inner office.

  ‘Captain busy, Mavis?’

  ‘Yes, Navi. He’s been on the phone talking to Station Commanders all over while I’ve been fixing his files for him. I also booked the meeting room for 11.30, like you asked, Sergeant Piet.’

  ‘Thanks, Mavis,’ said Cronje, and Mavis continued.

  ‘Everyone is talking about those Sibaya Casino men. The Captain was talking to Colonel Nene, too.’

  ‘He’s the guy leading the investigation, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Navi.’

  ‘I heard he’s got a big team on it, Jeremy,’ said Cronje. ‘Have you heard anything?’

  ‘Just as you say, Piet. The War Room has made it a priority. They’re cutting across Cluster Commands, Station Commands, picking individual people from one station and swapping them with people from another. They’ve got people from Hawks, from Empangeni, from Eshowe. There’s even a guy down from Mtubatuba. All of them are detectives with specific experience matching what happened on Sugar Cane Road. Unusual combinations, but I think the Commissioner is concerned about the media impact, because they’ve got television crews arriving from the UK, Germany, Belgium, you name it. The momentum is growing for programmes showing where South Africa is going with handling serious crime. So everyone’s in a panic.’