by Ian Patrick
They caught a taxi, and whispered together in the back of the vehicle as they tried to work out options.
19.55.
Nxumalo and Mashego met in front of their two cars, which were parked next to each other in the parking bays at the end of Lagoon Drive where the Umgeni River pours into the Indian Ocean north of Durban. They shook hands warmly, then followed up with a hug.
‘When you said we should meet here, I thought immediately of course, Nights Mashego, creature of the night. Why would he meet in a cafe or restaurant or bar where there are lights all around? Cats like the dark, not so, my old friend? Panthers don’t like light. Especially black ones.’
‘How are you, Zuluboy? Colonel Cat. Old Zulu warrior. You calling me a cat? I thought you were the cat. Mkhatshwa. Cat Nxumalo. Descended from the royal line.’
‘You’re still a disgrace, my old friend. You speak six or seven languages but your Zulu still stinks. When you finally speak Zulu like me only then will we be able to meet in a proper place, have a proper drink, converse in Zulu instead of English, and tell good stories. Mkhatshwa! I’ll have to teach you how to pronounce it properly. Mkhatshwa! You old Limpopo warrior. How’s your wife?’
As they talked they ambled over to the edge of the parking area to face the waves crashing onto the rocks.
‘We don’t talk much, Cat. I send her money every month. And I hear from her sister. She’s OK. And your wife?’
‘Not good, Nights. She still feels it. Like me. She looks old. No mother should bury her son.’
‘No father should bury his daughter, either.’
‘Sorry, Nights. Yes. Of course.’
‘Why are we meeting, Cat?’
‘I’ll come to that, my friend. I’ll come to that. But first I want to know more. Not family things. We won’t speak about family. I want to know how it is at work. I saw the Mercury on Tuesday. I didn’t see it the day before. But I saw Tuesday. It was more about that Ryder man than about you. But when I saw your name mentioned there I thought about you. I wondered what you were doing these days. And I realised I haven’t seen you for so long. Good for you, getting those guys on the beach.’
They stood, each of them with one foot up on the low wall facing the sea, looking out at the dark water and hearing the crash of waves against the rocks below. They traversed a bit of history. What ever happened to so-and-so? Did you hear about that one? You can’t be serious! Can you believe it, he finally got married.
Finally there was a moment where they both knew that the small talk had dried up. Nxumalo spoke a little more quietly than he had until this point.
‘Nights, I want to ask you something.’
‘Yes, Cat. How can I help?’
‘Have you heard of a guy called du Plessis?’
Mashego hadn’t. His friend then broached the subject very carefully. Without mentioning either his son’s fate or his daughter-in-law’s, or Mashego’s daughter, he began to spew out his anger at the failures of the criminal justice system. He quoted case after case, statistics and reports, hearsay from friends and widely-known established facts and figures. He painted a picture of crime out of control.
‘Why are you telling me all of this, Cat? I know all of this. What do you want me to do about it?’
‘Nights, this guy, du Plessis. He’s trying to do something about it. I want to tell you what’s happening.’
Mashego didn’t like what he then heard. He wished that his old friend had just kept it to himself. He was by no means concerned about the morality of it or about any ethical position. He was, simply, a man who preferred to keep his feelings and his actions and his thoughts to himself. He felt that Nxumalo had somehow crossed a boundary with him. Good boundaries made good friends, he thought. He had no concern at all about Nxumalo’s actions, but Nxumalo should not have told him.
It was not the various kills in the past that Nxumalo was already known to have to his credit that were of concern to Mashego. As he rattled off the cases since he had executed his son’s killers - he did not dwell at all on that first case - Nxumalo felt that Mashego was comfortable with what he was telling him. He was correct in that surmise. Mashego couldn’t help thinking through each of his own very similar actions against evil criminals as his friend rattled off details of the different executions he had undertaken. What gave Mashego pause was Nxumalo’s sudden foray into the execution of the two taxi men on Wednesday.
‘Wait! Wait, my friend! No. I don’t want to hear anything about that! That was you?’
‘It was me, Nights. It was me. Listen to me. Listen, I want you to listen.’
Mashego shook his head and tried to walk away, but Nxumalo grabbed him by the arm and held him back. Reluctantly, the bigger man calmed down and let him have his way. Nxumalo faced him. Eyeball to eyeball he told his friend why it was important that he was doing this. Mashego made another move to walk away when Nxumalo said that du Plessis wanted more men like him. But he allowed himself to be restrained, and despite his instincts he decided to hear out the man he knew to be one of the finest cops he had ever met.
And that fine cop then told him that barely three hours ago he had been handed two envelopes. One of the envelopes contained photos and profiles and evidence about three men who were worse than any murdering bastards that he or Mashego had ever come across, with the exception of the bastards that had destroyed each of their two families. These three men were dangerous. They were evil. They had to be removed from the face of the earth. He, Mashego, would find himself agreeing once he read the files. He had to do it. This was his friend asking him. And there was another envelope that offered both of them the chance to be paid a reasonable wage for this work. Work that everyone would hail as something that needed to be done. Something that must be done.
As Nxumalo reached the end of his exhortation, he realised that he had been shouting above the waves and the wind. He felt that his voice had been rising inexorably to a crescendo. But he felt that he had won over his giant friend. He felt that he had got through to him, at last.
The wind came up strongly, as the two men faced each other. The waves crashed behind them on the rocks.
They talked further. At great length. And shouted at each other, from time to time, above the sound of the wind and the waves.
20.40.
As Nxumalo and Mashego left, in two cars, the man known as Frankie, sitting in his car three parking bays away, called du Plessis.
‘It’s Frankie, boss.’
‘You followed him, Frankie?’
‘He met with the guy you said he would probably meet. Must be him. Must be two metres tall. And a heavyweight. No two guys in this town are that big. He’s even bigger than Colonel Catman.’
‘You think the big guy will join him?’
‘Boss, the Colonel told me when I handed him the stuff that he had a friend who he thought would join him. He told me that he had arranged to meet the guy at eight o’clock. The guy arrived on time. Even a few minutes early. The guy seems keen. I couldn’t hear anything, but it looks like they ended with a deal of some sort. He showed the guy the file. They looked at the photos together. They were discussing the targets at some length. And they parted as buddies.’
‘I knew it. Those two worked together a couple of years ago. Both of them had bad stuff happen to their families. Both of them then went off and wiped out the guys who did it. I was on the inside then. We all knew that IPID brushed both those cases under the carpet. Everyone agreed at the time that the guys they had taken out were dirt. Lower than flea-shit. Then when I read the stuff on Tuesday about Umdloti beach - where they corrected the stuff about the detective in charge - I knew that this guy Mashego was up to some stuff. I bet Colonel Cat saw the same report, and when he thought of finding someone to help him with the next hit, I knew he would think of the big guy. You sure, Frankie, you sure it looks like he’ll join the Colonel?’
‘Trust me, boss. They left with hugs and high fives and everything except kisses, I tell you. These gu
ys are partners, boss.’
‘You think they’ll make the hit tomorrow, Frankie?’
‘That’s what I told the Colonel, boss. I told him that the conditions would be ideal, and that they wouldn’t have a better chance than if they went for it tomorrow.’
‘OK, Frankie. We’ll wait and see. Well done.’
Frankie pocketed his phone and drove slowly away into the night.
6: FRIDAY
06.45.
Police sirens were converging. People were running around and screaming. Curious onlookers were gathering and trampling on the crime scene in their efforts to get a good look at the carnage.
The first responders arriving on the scene were to state in their preliminary report that the hit on the three men standing next to their three minibus taxis parked together in Maphumulo had been quick, efficient, and brutal. There had been very few people around. There were contradictory eyewitness reports about what had happened, but there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that once again this had been an assassination. One of the most brutal in the ongoing taxi wars over the KwaDukuza routes.
Nothing had been stolen from the vehicles or from the persons of the three dead men. One of them had been carrying a licensed revolver. It was fully loaded and he had not had time to draw his weapon. In one of the other taxis a concealed weapon had been discovered, also fully loaded. The driver of that taxi had not had a firearm licence. The third taxi driver carried an illegal flick-knife.
All three men had been shot twice, according to the first responder report. Later in the day, after proper examination of the scene, it would be reported that in fact two of the men had received three bullet wounds and the third man had received two. It would be only in the following week that ballistics reports would indicate the weapon or weapons that had been used in the attack.
A homeless man who police did not consider to be an entirely reliable witness said that he had seen two men attacking the taxis. He seemed more interested in whether there was a reward for any witness testimony, and after questioning him at length police concluded that his statement would merely be noted for the record. His testimony was contradicted, in any case, by a young woman who seemed more reliable and who said she had only seen one man firing a weapon. A third witness, a young boy, had started running away as soon as he heard the first shot being fired. He thought he had seen two men, one of them walking away from the taxis and the other running away in the distance. Both the young woman and the young boy had described the men they saw as tall black men.
Within an hour of the massacre police had identified the three deceased men as well-known members of a taxi syndicate that had been growing rapidly in the area. All three men had served significant time in prison at an earlier stage in their lives, and all three men had appeared in court on numerous other charges in recent years, all of them leading to acquittal in each case.
The rumour mill was turning faster than it had ever done. Rumours about police involvement, business interests, personal rivalries, and even government links, were rife. What had made this particular incident so unusual was that it appeared to be the work of one or two men. Not the usual gangland attack with the hit-men screaming off in a taxi sporting false number-plates. It had appeared to be the calm collected work of a person or persons with cool and calculated methods. There was no sign of a struggle. Just brutal efficiency.
The first responders handed in their reports and the Crime Scene Management team took over. There would be no available forensics people for some time because of many other commitments across the province that day.
09.15.
Thabethe was excited as he called Mkhize. He had just read the morning newspaper and seen the report on Wednesday’s shootout at Virginia Airport. He was less interested in the facts and details and suppositions of the reporter regarding an assumed connection with the other shootout on the beach at Umdloti on Saturday night. Instead, two things grabbed his attention.
First, Detective Captain Nights Mashego had been the first person to arrive on the scene after the action at the airport and had provided some comment about what had taken place. Second, and much more important, was the closing sentence of the article. This provided the further information, in the form of a comment from Detective Mashego, that the funeral of the deceased constable would only take place in ten days time, because the family were arranging a nine-nights traditional series of events in accordance with the wishes of the father, who was Jamaican. But this Saturday afternoon friends, family, and well-wishers would be attending a major ceremony on the farm near Izingolweni where Thandiwe was born. Mashego noted that he and other friends of the murdered constable would be in attendance at that event.
Thabethe was ecstatic. he knew the Izingolweni area like the back of his hand. He had plied his trade there over many years, and had sold many packs of nyaope between Izingolweni and the Mpenjati Nature Reserve, and along the R61 between Palm Beach and Trafalgar. He had also spent many nights in the bushes up and down the coast in that area.
Mkhize had also seen the report. He became as excited as his companion as Thabethe sketched out a plan for how they might proceed. Mkhize, in response to a question, said that he knew two men who, he was sure, would ask ten thousand rands for a hit on a cop. They would probably call on others to help, but then the price would go up. Maybe as much as twenty thousand in total. Thabethe thought it was worth it. He and Mkhize had a hundred thousand rands between them. They could each contribute ten if necessary. Yes, Mkhize said, he could set up a meeting with the two hit-men. Himself and Thabethe and the two guys. Yes, he was sure they would accept a deal with half up front and half to follow after the hit. Yes, these guys were good at what they did. No, they would never talk to others about such a contract. There would be no problem.
Thabethe and Mkhize agreed that they should meet with the men once Mkhize had made the initial contact. He would call Thabethe back once he had put something together. Probably late afternoon or even tonight, he thought. It might take a couple of hours to find them.
‘Who knows, bra Skhura? Maybe these are the same guys who hit those three taxis this morning at Maphumulo? You hear the radio about that one?’
‘I heard that one, Spikes. No, bra. If those are the same guys then we won’t use them. They will be dead men, soon. Those taxi guys. They find out quick. Then they come hunting. You watch. Those Maphumulo guys will hit them back.’
‘I’m thinking you right, Skhura. OK. I’ll call you when I get my guys.’
As he pocketed his phone, Thabethe contemplated a few of the nuances. How was this going to work in relation to Ryder? Ryder was unlikely to go all the way to Izingolweni for the ceremony. But if they could focus on Mashego and set up Pullen for some action, which was not yet clearly formulated in Thabethe’s mind, then perhaps they could drag Ryder’s name into a conspiracy of some kind. On Tuesday Pullen had seen Mashego threatening to punch Ryder outside the Durban North Police Station. There was clearly bad blood between them. If Thabethe could play on that, with people knowing that there was a problem between the two detectives, then it was a good opportunity to weave a plot that incriminated Ryder.
Thabethe’s mind was racing. How could he use Pullen in all of this? And what about Mashego? Mashego was not the kind of guy to mess with. He had seen him in action. And had heard him, at Umdloti. He shoots rather than takes prisoners. If ever he was to encounter the giant detective he would have to remember that. It would be a fight to the death. No prisoners. Ryder, he had heard, was different. He, too, would take a guy down without flinching, but he wasn’t quite the same as Mashego.
Thabethe was shocked out of his thoughts with the phone blaring in his pocket. He grabbed it and saw the number calling him. Only one person knew his number. Mkhize, calling back, already. What’s the problem?
‘Speak, Spikes!’
‘Skhura, bra. You won’t believe.’
‘What?’
‘I got that guy already. One time.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, bra. I just finish talking to him. I’m telling him to wait, I’m calling him after ten minutes. So I’m checking now with you it’s alright then I’m calling him back again. He’s waiting.’
‘Good work, Spikes. Tell me what.’
‘Skhura, this guy he needs the money bad, so no problem. But when I’m telling him what we want he’s saying he needs money for him and also four friends.’
‘Five guys? Why five?’
‘Eish, Skhura. I tried him and he says no, for sure, he will do it only with four friends. They done it before, together. They know what to do, they got knives...’
‘How much, Spikes?’
‘He is saying because it’s amaphoyisa it must be twenty thousand. Five guys. Four thousand each. I think we must take it, bra. This man he is saying that the five of them, they work together. They done this before. With knives. They cut the guys and they run. They never been caught. No guns to trace. No bullets.’
Thabethe knew Mkhize well enough to know he would have haggled as far as he could, so he agreed to the price. They agreed, too, that they should meet as soon as possible with the men. Mkhize wasn’t sure that all five men would be able to get together for that meeting at such short notice, but the key guy was a man named Mgwazeni and…
‘You joking, Spikes?’
‘No, Skhura, I’m not joking. That one his name is Mgwazeni. I’m not knowing if it is his real name, but I known him long time and his name is Mgwazeni. Maybe he has ‘nother name, and maybe he takes this name because he was stabbing someone at school, I am hearing, when he was thirteen. I’m knowing him since he was fifteen and he was always even that time called Mgwazeni. The one who stabs. Funny, nè, Skhura?’
They both laughed, and agreed to meet as soon as possible with Mgwazeni. Mkhize would ask him to bring the other four men along, too, if he could.
