by Ian Patrick
Thabethe walked slowly along the wharf, trying to appear like a man with no purpose other than strolling in the sun. But his eyes were hard at work, scanning each vessel he passed, looking for any sign that might suggest the presence of the big man.
14.15.
The Ryders were watching the recorded Sharks match on television. Sugar-Bear was barking hysterically, because Fiona had suddenly leapt from the sofa and screamed in anguish as the Sharks knocked on yet again while scrambling toward the tryline a mere five metres away. Now she was on her knees in front of the television set, forehead on the floor, hands splayed out on the carpet before her. Sugar-Bear whimpered and licked her face, not understanding her distress but trying to resuscitate her. Ryder sat in the sofa, numbed and drained. Exhausted. Despairing. Both of them were distraught as they watched their team go down the tubes.
‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ she said, leaping to her feet. ‘Another beer?’
‘Please.’
‘I’m going to switch teams, I swear. I can’t take this. I’m going to be a Bull’s supporter next season.’
‘I’ll divorce you.’
‘You can’t expect me to carry on suffering like this.’
‘They’ll come right. Eventually.’
‘Not in my lifetime.’
She went to the kitchen. The moment she left the room the Sharks got an interception on their own twenty-two metre line and ran all the way up the field to score a try between the posts, and it was Ryder’s turn to leap to his feet and scream at the TV at full volume as he willed them on, all the way to the line - yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! - while Sugar-Bear went hysterical again. Fiona came running back with the two beers, just in time to see the spectacular flight of the player swooping over the line, like a dolphin in full flight, to ground the ball for a magical five points.
‘I can’t believe it! Just as I leave the bloody room. Re-wind, quickly. I want to see that.’
Ryder re-wound and hit the ‘play’ button, and they both admired the beauty of the moment as it played again.
‘Maybe. Just maybe,’ she said, as they both swigged from their bottles. Shall we call the boys to come and watch?’
‘No. They won’t.’
‘What? Why not? Where are they?’
‘They’re in their rooms. Recovering from the holiday. They won’t come. You know they don’t like the way you behave when the Sharks are playing. Don’t embarrass them.’
She punched him hard on the arm. But she knew he was right, so she dropped the suggestion and settled in for the rest of the match, snuggling up to him.
15.15.
Thabethe sat with Big Red, who looked even more like a giant in the constricted confines of the boat. Red counted out the cash and handed over the bundle.
‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you again, Mr Thabethe. I’m sure you’ll agree that I’ve given you a good price.’
‘Is good. Is not bad.’
‘You can more than double that on the street, yes?’
‘Maybe.’
‘In fact I think you can more than treble that on the street.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I hope you don’t mind that I worked through your friend and not you. I don’t like too many people knowing how to get hold of me. I’d rather get hold of them.’
‘Spikes is OK. My friend is OK. You can trust that one. But me you can trust, too. I don’t go to cops. You can speak to me instead of Spikes. If you want.’
‘If you say so. But no, thanks. I have to tell you that I don’t really trust other people. I’ve been let down too many times.’
There was a pause. Thabethe thought that the comment he had just made had some reference to the physical condition he was in.
‘What happened?’
‘What?’
‘What happened? Your face. You in a fight?’
Big Red would normally have been very angry with anyone speaking to him like this. But there was something about Thabethe that had begun to intrigue him.
‘Cops.’
‘How many?’
‘What?’
‘How many cops? You big man. How many cops do that to you?’
Red was flattered. But with the reminder of what had happened he also felt the anger returning.
‘Two cops. One of them got lucky. Big guy. He hit me when I was distracted.’
‘Must be very big guy.’
‘What?’
‘That cop must be very big guy. If he punched you. Must be big like you.’
‘Yes. Big guy. But he was lucky. I could take him apart any day.’
‘Where is this happening?’
‘Westville.’
‘This cop. His name is Detective Ryder?’
Red was shocked.
‘How the hell... how did you know... who the hell have you been talking to…?’
‘I talk to nobody. But I know this one cop. This cop he is the biggest cop I know. Except for one other black detective at Durban North called Mashego. I want to kill this cop. This Ryder. He is very bad for me...’
Red calmed down and began to see the implications of this.
Within minutes they had shared some experiences. Not all. Neither of them would ever do that. But they found immediate affinity with each other in everything to do with Detective Jeremy Ryder. Red pulled out a bottle of whisky. The drink flowed, as did the conversation.
15.35.
The Ryders were smashed. They had moved from beer to wine to whisky as the Sharks plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Sugar-Bear had given up, and was cowering in the kitchen. He didn’t understand this behaviour at all. His owners had screamed and groaned and cursed and shouted in fury at the television set, until they were completely and utterly exhausted. Sugar-Bear had crept out of the room and curled up in his box in the kitchen.
The children had popped in a couple of times and had left very quickly, despairing at the sight of their parents behaving like out-of-control hooligans.
Finally the humiliation was over. They had fast-forwarded through some of the more embarrassing moments in the hope of finding some glimmer of performance from their team. There had been a few signs of hope. Then unmitigated disaster.
They finally pulled themselves together and decided to take Sugar-Bear for a walk. The dog forgave them, immediately, and the three of them walked around the block.
16.10.
Big Red and Thabethe were well into the bottle of whisky. They had swapped stories, had guffawed at each other’s victories over the cops, and had entered a realm of bravado and recklessness that neither of them would have entertained had they been sober.
‘I told you earlier, Skhura, that I don’t trust other people. Because I’ve been let down too many times.’
‘Me too.’
‘But you, maybe, I can trust, hey?’
‘Me, Red, you can trust.’
‘Maybe we can do more business soon?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe you, then, should be the one I am in contact with?’
‘You want my phone number?’
‘I was thinking that if I can trust you then maybe you and I can be in contact.’
‘I give you my number. You give me yours.’
They exchanged phone numbers, clinked glasses, and downed yet another whisky.
9 MONDAY
11.45.
Nadine Salm was in Nyawula’s office along with the Captain, Ryder and Pillay, Koekemoer and Dippenaar, and Mavis Tshabalala. They had commenced with a discussion of Saturday’s funeral. Pillay and Nyawula’s observations prompted an indication from all of them of their intention to be present at the formal memorial ceremony, at a date still to be confirmed in the coming fortnight. Mavis expressed her appreciation for the sentiments all around.
Then the Captain brought them on to the matter in hand. He started by telling them he had asked Nadine to come in for an update on the various strands of her work for the unit.
‘As you all know, Nadine is incredibly busy investigating a whole raft of cases for Brighton Beach, Wentworth, Cato Manor, Umbilo, Point, Berea - you name it - not to mention a few stations in the Phoenix Cluster, right Nadine?’
Nadine merely nodded and shrugged her shoulders. Nyawula turned for a moment to Mavis.
‘I don’t know anyone quite as busy as Nadine, Mavis. Are you sure you want to move one day into forensics?’
‘Me, I’m sure, Captain,’ replied Mavis.
‘Actually, Captain,’ Nadine intervened, ‘while you’re on that point, I wondered whether Mavis might like to spend an hour or two with me this afternoon? Cato Manor have asked me to take a closer look at a homicide that took place on their doorstep on Thursday. The scene’s been scuffed over quite a bit since then, but I need to go out and have a look. I’ve been promised the ballistics report by midday today, so I thought that as soon as I have the ballistics I’d head out there at about three o’clock. If Mavis wants to look over what appears to Cato Manor to be a fairly straightforward hijacking scene, it might be interesting for her to check it out with me.’
There was no need for Mavis to reply. Her face said it all, and she was so excited she couldn’t find the words. Which produced laughs all around. Which led to the Mavis hands-covering-face routine they all found so endearing.
‘That’s a deal, then, Mavis,’ said Nadine. ‘Why don’t you ride with me when we finish up here? Then we can grab a sandwich, pick up the ballistics report, and head out to Cato Manor.’
‘Thank you, Miss Nadine.’
‘Great. Settled. Thanks, Nadine. Anyway, colleagues, Nadine asked specifically to see us this morning to try and pull a few threads together on a few of our own recent cases. Tell us your thoughts, Nadine.’
‘Well, Captain, as we all know, Detective Pillay had an interesting few days just the week before last, and I’ve been thinking how those events then in turn impacted on the events of last week. I refer specifically to two separate incidents on consecutive days two weeks ago, involving two separate Desert Eagles. Navi, I suspect you won’t be in a hurry to forget one of those Deagles because you took a graze from one of its bullets in Overport.’
‘How could I forget? I still have the bruises, and a chunk of flesh missing,’ Pillay said, rubbing her left upper arm more in memory than in any discomfort.
‘But you should have seen the other guy, Nadine,’ said Ryder.
Koekemoer and Dippenaar chuckled.
‘And that was the same weapon that had already taken out Ed Trewhella,’ added Nyawula, putting a bit of a dampener on the levity that was building. There was sombre acknowledgement from all of them as they remembered the terrible blow that had been struck only a fortnight ago with the shooting dead of their popular detective colleague. Nadine paused a moment and then continued.
‘On the day before you encountered that guy, Navi, on the Tuesday, you took down another guy with a different Deagle, in Montpelier Road. But you treated him comparatively lightly, I hear. He ended up only in hospital rather than the morgue.’
‘It’ll take a while to forget that one, too, Nadine. I still face IPID reports on both of those cases,’ she said, looking at Nyawula, who responded accordingly.
‘Just ensuring our cops don’t get too tough on poor defenceless criminals, Detective Pillay. IPID has to go through the motions in those two cases, too. But please don’t let it change your methods.’
‘Thank you, Captain. Anyway, both those guys were part of the same gang that we took down during the course of that week, Nadine, as you know, and they both had the same fancy Deagles. Mark XIX, titanium gold, both of them. Pretty guns. Must have been purchased as a pair, straight out of the box.’
‘Uh-uh,’ said Nadine.
‘What?’
‘Not a pair. Those two weapons were part of a trio. All purchased together in one attractive little package a few years ago, and that trio of guns can now all be traced to an interesting history of gambling, drug-dealing and homicides in and around Durban over the last few years.’
‘Take us through it, Nadine.’
‘Thanks, Captain. I start with the guy who purchased the attractive little package of three magnums. The same guy who Navi took down in Overport. Antonio Vietri.’
‘Tony Vietri.’ said Ryder and Nyawula in unison.
‘The same,’ said Nadine.
‘He bought all three of those guns as one package?’ asked Nyawula.
‘That’s right. Remember, Captain, ten days ago or more, you were kind enough to call me and say that you had been speaking to your forensics friends in Silverton? You said that our work on cracking the GSR and DNA on Vietri, which I had been able to do only once Navi had given him to me on a slab, enabled the Silverton guys finally to track back on Vietri’s other misdemeanours over the years.’
‘You’ll remember me telling you the same story, Jeremy?’
Ryder nodded. He remembered the Captain over a lengthy breakfast taking him through the history of Vietri’s involvement in organised crime.
‘Until then Tony Vietri had been pretty elusive,’ Nadine continued. ‘But once we could work back from the stuff I found on his corpse there was a string of matches thrown up in IBIS and elsewhere.’
‘As a result of which we could piece together a whole history of Vietri’s involvement with the underworld, going back years,’ added Nyawula.
‘But until the guy was dead and we could take off him the GSR and the DNA and the prints, we couldn’t match any of the stuff that had been sitting there on the databases, so thanks to Navi...’
‘Thanks, hey, Nadine,’ interjected Pillay. ‘But just to confirm, guys, I didn’t kill the guy because I was lus for his DNA. The bastard was about to kill me...’
‘We know that, Navi. But it was only because you took him down that Nadine could work her magic on his corpse, and then the floodgates opened.’
‘Dead right, Captain,’ said Nadine. ‘If you’ll pardon the expression. But it wasn’t just the stuff we could then put together on his past murders, assaults, rapes and robberies. Whenever I’ve had a few moments in the last week or so, I’ve tracked a bit further to look at some of the smaller stuff our interesting Mr Vietri got up to, and that took me to the two Afrikaner guys he appears to have worked with quite closely. So closely, in fact, that he gave them each a precious little present about three years ago. He gave each one of them one of the three Deagles from the fancy package he had bought, and he kept the third for himself. But what I’ve been looking into is a little more interesting than just matching up a trio of pretty Desert Eagles.’
‘Explain, Nadine.’
‘Well, Captain, I’ve been doing a bit of research.’
‘Really, Nadine? How unusual for you.’
‘Thank you, Detective Ryder. Always charming. What I mean, Captain, is that Jeremy said something interesting to me on the phone last week after the attack on his dinner party, and I’ve been doing some thinking about what he said to me then. Remember, Jeremy, you said that your charming friend Themba, who despite being a cop murderer was a visitor at your dinner parties at home and as a consequence ended up in hospital with broken arms, told you and Navi something really interesting from his hospital bed. Something about an incident involving Sergeant Dlamini from Folweni. An incident that took place in Umlazi two years ago.’
‘What Nadine is referring to, Captain, is that the perp I put in Addington Hospital after gatecrashing my party told me and Navi when we interrogated him on Friday that Sergeant Dlamini saw off some gangster a couple of years ago in Umlazi and in the process took his weapon off him. Dlamini, it seems, then broke a couple of Folweni police rules and instead of turning in the gangster’s weapon on that occasion he decided to keep it in his home as the spoils of war.’
‘The same Desert Eagle that our Addington patient then took possession of and used to shoot Dlamini,’ said Pillay, ‘and which he then ended up leaving on the floor at Jeremy’s dinner party the foll
owing night.’
‘Just so, Navi. So it was that bit of information, Captain, that got me going through various files,’ said Nadine. I mentioned to you on the phone the day after the Ryder dinner party that we had kept an open file on two Umlazi homicides from two years ago.’
‘Yep, so you said.’
‘Well, as I said to you then, and following on what Navi has just said now, we linked the Deagle to the old Umlazi cases, the Dlamini murder, and the fracas at the Ryder home. But there’s one further thing, that we’ve only been able to put together in the last day or two.’
All of the detectives were hanging onto her next words.
‘Deagles one, two and three were purchased by Vietri in one package. All of them gas-operated, with polygonal rifling. Six-inch barrels. With Picatinny rails. All of them coming together off the same production line, almost as if they had been stamped with consecutive badges, and all of them titanium gold Desert Eagle Mark XIXs. Navi took Deagle number one off the guy called Dirk in Montpelier Road. She then took down Tony Vietri in Overport, who was carrying Deagle number two.’
‘Which had also killed Ed,’ added Koekemoer.
‘And two years ago Deagle number three was taken by Sergeant Dlamini off a guy in Umlazi,’ continued Nadine. ‘A guy who must have been the third member of the Vietri gang.’
‘A guy called Freckles,’ interjected Dippenaar.
They all turned in surprise to look at Dippenaar, who then clarified.
‘You remember, Koeks, when we were talking to Dlamini on Tuesday, a few hours before he was attacked? He was telling us about the three white guys - the three guys that everyone used to talk about, the three guys with fancy guns in Umlazi two years ago.’
‘Yissus, ou broer! That’s right. Dipps is right, Captain. Dlamini told us all about that, and he talked about that Afrikaner white boy they all called Freckles.’
‘Koeks and I remembered, Captain,’ said Dippenaar. ‘Once Dlamini told us that, we then remembered this young Afrikaner kid who used to deal a lot there by Umlazi in the whoonga trade.’
