Plain Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 3)
Page 24
‘Don’t give him ideas, Bongi,’ said Nyawula. ‘Jeremy’s a modest man. A plain-dealing modest man. Let’s keep him that way.’
‘Captain Nyawula?’
‘Yes, Nadine?’
‘I’ve told you before that your team are really nice people, but that they’re so, like, butch, you know.’
‘Yes, Nadine, I recall you saying that.’
‘Pauline and I are laboratory people, Captain. In future I think we prefer to meet your plain-dealing detectives over a desk, with a nice set of DNA results or statistics or ballistics reports. This stuff is not good for our health. We’re supposed to be studying crime, not taking part in it.’
‘And we’re sensitive types, Captain’ said Pauline, with her eyes very much on the shattered Mike Pullen, who was busy vomiting into the flowerbed. ‘This is very scary stuff. Your detectives are real hooligans. They treat criminals so badly.’
‘I know, Nadine. I know, Pauline’ replied Nyawula. ‘And I have to work with them every day. Bongi will tell you I find it difficult to go in to work every day. These are scary guys I work with.’
‘I think it’s the caffeine, Captain,’ said Mavis. ‘I remember warning Detectives Koeks and Dipps about the caffeine. But they don’t listen too much to me.’
‘Yissus, Mavis,’ said Koekemoer. ‘Give a oke a break, man. Annatjie is going to start taking you seriously if you carry on like that. She’s already a bloody tyrant with my diet.’
‘Actually,’ said Dippenaar, ‘Sannie and I...’
‘Jirra, ou boet,’ said Koekemoer, ‘there you go again, Dipps. Actually. Sannie, hierdie Dipps, jou man, he’s becoming a real soutie. Waarom praat hy nie Afrikaans nie? Actually this. Actually that. And he’s becoming so, like gentle, you know? I checked out that he punched his oke only once. Like a gentleman soutie boxer. What’s happened to the old Afrikaner, the old street-fighter Dippenaar, that I used to know?’
The Ryders were now arm in arm, enjoying the banter. Fiona clung on to her husband as if he had come back from the dead.
‘That moment when Sannie thought you were having a stroke...’
‘Sorry,’ Ryder replied, ‘I had thought cerebral palsy, not stroke...’
‘I know, but just for a moment… Just for a moment, I thought...I hope you never have a stroke, you bastard. You scared the shit out of me.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Just for a second, of course.’
‘Liar. It was longer. I really had you going, there.’
‘Nonsense. I saw through you immediately. I always see through you.’
‘I know. S’why I love you...’
‘Me too. Mandlenkosi Ryder. The plain-dealer. Hmmm. I think I like it...’
The police uniforms arrived, along with medics and hangers-on. Instructions were given. Questions asked and answered. Notes were taken.
Sibongile was concerned about Pullen. He was looking gravely ill. She went over to him and asked if she could get him something to drink. He accepted, gratefully, and gulped down a mug of water. As he handed the mug back to her, he spoke quietly to her.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’
‘No, of course not,’ she replied.
‘I heard you explaining some Zulu names. Mandla...’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Can I ask you to explain the meaning of a couple of names?’
‘Of course. No problem. What names?’
‘What does Mzenzisi mean?’
‘Mzenzisi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mzenzisi. Let me see… yes, OK. That means hypocrite, I suppose. That’s probably the closest. Maybe something like deceiver or liar. Someone who misleads you. Why do you ask?’
Pullen’s face was indecipherable. Sibongile couldn’t work out whether he was smiling faintly, remembering something, perhaps, or whether he had just seen a ghost or was about to throw up again.
‘Nothing, really. I… I just recently met someone who… what does the name Mlungisi mean?’
‘Mlungisi. That’s easy. Mlungisi means fixer, or someone who arranges things...’
‘And Mkhohlisi?’ Pullen had difficulty pronouncing it, but Sibongile asked him to repeat it a couple of times and then understood.’
‘OK. I’ve got it. Mkhohlisi means deceiver, or, perhaps, impostor. Someone who masquerades, someone who...’
‘Thank you, Mrs…’
‘Nyawula. No, it’s a pleasure...’
She broke off as Pullen turned quickly to throw up again into the foliage behind him. She decided to leave him to it and joined the others, who were starting to pack up.
The crowd of spectators had faded away. The banter started to wind down and the group of friends started collecting their things. The picnic was over. Time to close down for the day. They slowly picked up their belongings and all the refuse from the lunch, and packed things away.
‘Ja, ou Dipps. Nog ‘n dag in Suid Afrika. And so we go on, boet,’ said Koekemoer, as he strapped up his picnic basket, ‘guns drawn against the enemy, beating back the bastards.’
‘Ja-nee, Koeks. Another day. Another mugging. But no-one died here this afternoon. So actually, not too bad a day, hey?’
‘Yissus, ou Dipps. There you go again.’
‘What? What you mean there I go again?’
‘Actually!’ said Koekemoer.
‘What? What do you mean...’
‘What do I mean? What do I mean?!! I mean you said that blerrie word again.
‘What word?’
‘ACTUALLY!’ They all, including Sannie, called out in unison with Koekemoer.
‘Oh, ja, I see… Sorry, I...’
‘Blerrie soutpiel!’ said Koekemoer, punching him hard on the shoulder.
‘Eina!’ said Dippenaar, before returning the punch, equally hard.
And they all started moving slowly up the hill, chatting and joking and chuckling and teasing.
Shadows lengthened over the park, and leaves were left rolling in the breeze.
The sun dipped behind the hill.
As a police siren sounded in the distance from a car on its way down to the city, Mike Pullen was left alone with his thoughts.
GLOSSARY
ag - ah, oh, well
aikona - no, no way, not there at all (see also haikona)
amabhunu - the Afrikaners
amaphoyisa - the police
bhuti - brother
blerrie - bloody
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
broer, bru - brother
bulala - kill
daarsy - there it is, there you are, that’s it, dead right
dis reg - that’s right
donner - hammer, hit, beat up
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
gemors - mess, disarray
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)
hunnert - hundred
impimpi - sell-out, informer
impondo zenkomo
- horns of the bull
ja - yes
ja’k stem saam - yes, I agree (ja, ek stem saam)
jeez - jesus (exclamation of surprise or frustration)
jirra - exclamation of surprise, 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
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
mal - crazy, mad
mama - mother
mampara - fool, dolt, idiot
manne - men
mense - men, people
mina - me
mfowethu - brother
mkhohlisi - deceiver, impostor
mlungisi - fixer
mlungu - white person (umlungu = a white person)
moer - murder, kill, beat up, also the moer in (‘fed up with’)
moerse - large, big time, huge
moegoe - idiot
mgwazeni - stab him
my bra - my brother
mzenzisi – hypocrite
nè? - not so?
nee - no
nek - neck
nooit - never
nyaope - street drug (see also whoonga)
oke, ou, ouens - bloke, blokes
ouma - grandmother
ou toppie - old man, father, old person
poep - fart
praat - talk
reg - right
sawubona - greeting (lit: I see you)
Seffrika - South Africa
shaddup - shut up
sharp, sharp-sharp - OK, yes, quick-quick
shweet - sweet, cool
sies - sis, expression of disgust
siyanda - we are increasing
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
soutie, soutpiel - derogatory term: English South African (salty penis)
struesbob - as true as Bob
tchai - no, no way (see also hayi)
tjommie - chum, good friend
tokoloshe - evil spirit
toppie - see ou toppie: old man, father, old person
trek - pull, leave, exit
tronk - jail, prison
tsotsi - gangster
uclever - the clever one
umlungu - a white one, a white person (vocative: mlungu)
vrek - die, dead
vrekked - died
vroeg - early
vroumens - woman
vuvuzela - plastic horn noisemaker, prominent at football matches
wat? - what?
weet - know (jy weet? - you know?)
wena - you
whatchamacallit - what you may call it, thing, object, whatever
whoonga - slang for nyaope
wie’s jy? - who are you?
yebo - yes
yissus - Jesus (exclamation of surprise or frustration)
yislaaik - variation of yissus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After working as an actor, director and teacher in theatre, film and television, Ian Patrick turned to an academic career, publishing scholarly essays in a range of international academic journals. He believes that his years as an actor, director and researcher play a modest part in his writing.
‘My fiction is based to the best of my ability on research and field work. I have to believe every word my fictive characters say, every action they undertake,’ he says. Which explains why he has accompanied detectives to the front line, interviewed forensics investigators, and spent many hours scouring actual locations for his crime scenes: many of them based on actual events.
‘I endeavour to make my fiction plausible and authentic. This requires exhaustive work and detailed research. It takes me up to a year of full-time work to write an eighty thousand word crime thriller. In my view 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.’
At the very end of this Kindle book you will be invited to provide a star rating. This is simply for Amazon to understand your reading preferences for the purposes of recommending other books to you. For the purpose of REVIEWING this book for the benefit of other customers, however, please do so here
If you enjoyed Plain Dealing, try another book in The Ryder Quartet here
Read on for an exclusive extract from the thrilling action-packed sequel to Plain Dealing:
FRIDAY
17.50.
Two burly guards were not enough to bring the screaming prisoner down the passage into the cell. He collapsed, shouting and kicking, and clung to the railings as they tried to prise him off and drag him to the gate. The warder cursed and called for another two men. He added, almost as an after-thought: and send a needle and some of the stuff to calm him down.
The guards couldn’t prise the man’s fingers off the railings, so they sat on him and waited for the reinforcements. It was a matter of only minutes before two more men arrived in the company of a nurse. She was carrying her bag of goodies for troublesome prisoners.
‘I hope you have a double-dose in there,’ the warder said. ‘This bastard is causing grief.’
‘Triple-dose,’ she replied. ‘They told me it was Wakashe again. Or at least that’s one of the names he uses. Apparently they finally recorded his name on the file as Mofokeng, but I know the guy from this morning when he was still called Wakashe by one of the other prisoners who seemed to know him well. He’s a sneaky bastard. He’s been screaming and fighting all day since they brought him in. They handcuffed him to the fence outside from the moment he arrived, while they processed the others, so that they could hear themselves speak in the office. Then it took three men to bring him in from outside and make him stand still while they fingerprinted him. He was screaming that they had the wrong man and that it was the third time they had taken his prints. We told him he was having prints for the third time because his ten year sentence had just been changed to thirty years by order of his tribal chief.’
‘And he believed you?’
‘Yes. Idiot. For a few seconds. Time enough to get the prints done.’
Throughout this exchange the warder watched as she opened her bag, took out the phials, prepared the syringe and got ready for the injection.
‘We could see from the moment he arrived that he was going to be trouble,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting this. That’s why I’ve made it a triple. OK, guys. Get him into the cell.’
The two new guards wasted no time. One of them carried a short piece of metal piping in his hand. He gave the prisoner one chance only.
‘OK, Wakashe. Or Mofokeng. Or whatever you call yourself today. Are you going to let go now, or do you want your fingers smashed?’
The prisoner responded by whimpering and adjusting his hands to make his grip on the railings even more secure. The warder nodded and the guard responded by smashing the pipe over the prisoner’s right hand, fracturing the second and third metacarpals. This immediately loosened his grip on the railing with that hand. The horror of the blow and the excruciating pain along with the piercing scream did not, however, lead to a loosening of the left hand.
The guard looked again at the warder, received the nod, and immediately struck again. This time he broke the proximal phalanx in the left index finger and the distal phalanx of the left thumb. The prisoner screamed and let both hands fall to the ground. The man with the pipe then stamped on the left hand, adding a crushed carpus to the damage, along with screams that echoed down the corridor and burst into the holding area out front.
‘OK. That’s enough. Take him through. Looks like he won’t be having dinner.’
The four guards obeyed the instruction from the warder, dragged the man into the cell, and threw him onto the bed. Two of them held him while the woman followed up promptly and thrust the needle into him. She pumped in the full contents of the syringe.
They locked the cell door and the four guards started walking back down the passageway, the man with the iron pipe saying they had to get back to the east corridor to guard the dinner queues.
‘Thanks, men,’ said the warder. ‘See you later. Thanks very much,’ he added to the nurse. ‘Show only a single dose in your report, OK?’
‘Of course,’ she replied, and followed after the guards.
The warder then addressed the prisoner, who was murmuring, weeping in agony, and trying to find some way of positioning his mangled hands to alleviate the pain.
‘You’ll sleep it off. If you’re lucky you might even have your hands set by the time you wake up. Idiot. When will you guys learn? Next time, you obey me when I give you an order, and you won’t get any bones broken. Next time we’ll use electricity on you. Understand? Then you’ll have something to scream about, my friend.’
As the warder walked down the passage he caught, momentarily, the gaze of one of the two prisoners in the cell opposite the newly incarcerated man. It was only a very brief contact. This was a prisoner whose gaze had unnerved the warder when the man first arrived at the prison, and he now felt unnerved again. The guy’s eyes were weird, the warder thought. He did not pause but walked on down to the gate.
Skhura Thabethe waited for the warder to turn the corner before he spoke to his new neighbour across the passage.
‘Hey. You hear me? Hey! Wena. You hear me?’
‘Yini?’ The man uttered his response from the deepest wells of pain. He couldn’t even focus on the direction of the voice that was addressing him.
‘You listen to me, wena.’