“Then I’m going to Langa.”
The driver mumbles something in his native language, isiXhosa. A passenger slides the taxi door shut and the driver leaves the taxi rank. Almost immediately after departure, he puts the MP3-player on. The kwaito singer, Mandoza’s trembling voice flows through the sound waves of the music and fills the taxi. George shakes his head. An obese woman with tight jeans and a rather too big spaghetti top sits behind him chewing on a piece of bubblegum, making little bursting sounds. George turns red out of irritation. The taxi stops at a stand next to the road.
“You can get out now. We are here. Seventeen rand,” the driver announces.
George burrows in his back pocket and reaches for a handful of coins, counts the silver and bronze coins one by one until he has enough money and hands it over to the driver. He slides the taxi door open and gets out. A passenger immediately slides it shut again and the taxi disappears down the road.
The smell of burning tires and the sight of poverty overwhelm the oldest designated suburb for black Africans once resistant to apartheid. In the distance stands a tall monument marking the massacre where seven people had been killed - the same day as the Sharpeville massacre in Johannesburg in 1960.
George stands on a little hill overlooking the erected shacks housing 52 000 people buried in poverty. Goats, sheep, dogs and chickens run loose. Small children walk around naked covered with a layer of dirty, ashy ground.
George makes his way to shack 1845, the house of Lindiwe where he had visited many times when dropping her off after work especially when she had no money for the taxi fare. He lurks around the corner of the shack and hears voices. George peeps through a little hole in the corrugated zinc behind the shack. Lindiwe and T stand talking to each other. Silently George sneaks behind a few bushes until later the evening until the two leave the shack. Out of desperation he waits without quenching his thirst or rumbling stomach.
The zinc door opens with a squeaky sound.
George hears it and quickly makes his way to the back of the shack and watches Lindiwe and T walk down the dusty, rocky terrain road. He looks around to see if anyone is watching him - no one. He then follows the two from a distance until they reach a designated, dirty alley between a tavern and a dilapidated building nearly burnt down to the ground. Beer crates and dumpsters full of trash decorate the stinky alley. George crawls up to behind one of the dumpsters and hides. While sitting on his haunches he jumps upright when a rat crawls over his foot. I need to remain cool, he thinks to himself.
Lindiwe and T walk up to a vagrant dressed in ragged clothing pushing an old Shoprite trolley filled with cardboard boxes and other livelihood items. A street light flickers in the distance as the night falls, the sound of a vehicle approaching echoes through the alley. It comes to a standstill across the road.
“You, come here!” Lindiwe orders the vagrant.
He does not obey her order and tries to make a run for it. T instantaneously runs after him, grabs him by the collar of his brown ragged shirt which was once white and pulls him to the ground. Lindiwe approaches. She reaches for something in her blouse – a needle. She bends down to the pleading man and injects a substance into his bony arm. She pulls the needle out after injecting him, throws it on the ground allowing it to roll under a dumpster.
The vehicle starts its engine and backs up into the alley.
“Come, reverse faster. We don’t have a lot of time!” T orders the driver.
Once the white panel van stops, he rushes for the doors, opens it. Lindiwe and T grab the unconscious vagrant by the head and feet and shove him into the van, slamming the doors shut.
George’s eye catches four letters, Mort, written in black bold writing on the side of the van; Mortuary? He thinks to himself.
“I’ll get you guys at the location. I need to do a few things. Tie him down when you arrive,” Lindiwe tells the driver.
The panel van speeds away leaving skid marks in the dirt. George waits until Lindiwe leaves and crawls to the dumpster where under the needle rolled. He reaches for a piece of tissue paper and picks the needle up, smells it. The smell of chloroform hits his nostrils, making his eyes tear. He throws the needle in the dumpster and tails Lindiwe down a dirt road into the darkness of the night to where she enters a shanty not too far from the alley. He waits until she enters and closes the door behind her shut and then takes cover in the boma – a fire making place built from bush. While sitting on his haunches lurking around the corner of the boma, a stray dog approaches George and starts barking. Instinctively he grabs a hand full of dirt, stands up and throws it at the dog, hoping to scare it off. It doesn’t work. George then runs for the nearby bushes across the road. He waits until Lindiwe leaves the shanty. He knows that she will probably go to the mortuary because of the van having Mort written on the side.
The shanty’s door opens with a squeak. George sees Lindiwe leave with a backpack strapped on her shoulders. He waits until she passes him before knocking on the shanty’s door.
On arrival he sees a small sign on the door – Prof. Majji Mwoto & Associates cc. Prof Majji, hailed as the herbalist of the year in 2009 and 2010 consecutively.
He knocks on the door.
A small man with colourful beads in his Rasta hair and traditional clothing opens.
“Yes, may I help you?” he asks while nearly undressing George with his eyes.
George pauses before speaking.
“Yes, I see that you are an herbalist. May I please get a list of the services you offer?”
The man smirks.
“Sure, come in. Have a look at the board. There you will see all the services I have to offer at a very low cost of course,” he informs George, rubbing his eyelid.
George walks in, takes his shoes off and has and has a seat on the bean bag. The man brings the little board to George. He takes it and starts to read:
Body parts and Muti required:
Severed hands: Makes the owner wealthy.
Breasts: A source of “mother luck,” which gets used in potions to bring good fortune.
Genitals: Both genders are in demand. It is used by sangoma’s to boost virility in men and fertility in women.
Adam’s apple: Silences a person – doesn’t allow you to speak.
Skull: Enemy’s head - protects tribes.
Eyes: Confers farsightedness.
Tongue: Smooth the path to a girl’s heart for a lover.
Body fat: Taken from the stomach as a source of a good harvest.
Sperm and urine: A source of good luck.
Atlas bone: Regarded as a powerful Muti because the nerve system runs through it.
Brains: Confers intelligence.
Special Spells:
Be My Valentine Spell: Helps to bring that special person closer to you.
The Luck Spell: You can instantly change your luck.
Master of White Magic: Once he makes the psychic connection with you, your life will never be the same.
The Ramah Spell: If you have a pure heart, you could be blessed with riches.
End Regret Spell: It’s time to put the past behind you and continue on with your life.
Forgive Me: If a past mistake is haunting you, preventing the two of you from reuniting, don’t give up.
The Wealth Spell: Let the Wealth Spell position you to reap the financial as well as romantic windfalls you so deserve.
Warlock Lover Spell: It is possible to win back your lover’s heart and many more…
George makes his eyes big as to what he is reading. He grabs his shoes and leaves the shanty.
In the distance, George sees Lindiwe walking. He follows her down the same dirt road to the Langa State Mortuary.
Langa State Mortuary is written on a big white wall. George carefully stares at the three words.
“Good evening, Markus,” Lindiwe greets the guard.
George watches Lindiwe enter the premises, walking a few metres behind.
I need to find a way to ent
er this place, he says to himself.
George walks around the block to the back of the building. He crawls through the waterway going underneath the fence into the mortuary’s premises. The loud sound of turning air coolers becomes clearer as he walks up to the brown brick building. He sees the white panel van standing parked in the parking bay.
T must be here too, George mumbles to himself.
He slowly crouches to where the air coolers are. He hears voices. The yellow fluorescent lights shine through the windows making shadows visible on the outside. George slowly lifts himself with his back up against the wall and turns to look what’s happening inside. On a silver slate of steel, George sees the vagrant lying without moving. Next to him are two other corpses. He looks a little to the left and sees T cutting a woman open. His eye catches more trolleys in the corner. He decides to peep through the other window to see who those corpses are. George starts to shake as he recognizes the person on the slate. It’s Max, and Anna, and both his parents. He legs start to wobble and he is forced to sit.
“Cut nicely, T. We want everything. The heart, brains, genital organs, tongue, ears, and eyes,” he hears Lindiwe tell T.
T puts on gloves and walks over to the vagrant.
Lindiwe follows after with a kidney bowl. T starts to make an incision in the unconscious vagrant and removes the genital organ and places it into the bowl.
George stands up, shakes his head out of disgust and looks through the window once again.
Anna, my Anna, he cries out to himself.
George buys a newspaper from a local tuck shop and walks to the children’s fun park situated across the road from the mortuary. He sits, waiting for Lindiwe to leave. He opens the paper and reads:
South Africa has a dirty little secret. Muti takes its name in the isiZulu form from the word medicine. There is a phenomenon that sangoma’s utilize human body parts as an ingredient in many miraculous medicinal effects. Body parts from corpses work just fine for this purpose, but the best is to harvest organs from the living. People from neighbouring counties go to hospitals to buy organs i.e. tongues, eyes, legs, lungs and arms just to name a few. This is described an ‘open secret.’
After reading the paper and checking the time on his watch, he notices that Lindiwe leaves the mortuary with her backpack slung over her shoulders.
It’s half past six. Where are you going, Lindiwe? What is in your bag? he thinks.
He stands up from where he is sitting and decides to follow Lindiwe. Down the same dirt road they walk as before. George sees that she enters the same shanty where she had been the night before. She enters. George creeps up to behind the shanty and peeps through a hole in the corrugated zinc.
“I’ve got organs for us – many. Ten thousand rand and you get the bag,” she says.
George blinks his eyes very fast, shakes his head and peeps through the hole again.
The sangoma opens the bag and empties the items onto a piece of plastic lying on the floor.
Silence fills the shanty.
“Good. You have good stuff here. Wait for me,” he says while putting the organs into the plastic bag, packing it into the freezer.
The sangoma walks to the back room, behind a curtain and comes back with a little silver case.
“We have hearts, brains, genital organs, tongues, ears, and eyes. Here is the ten thousand,” he hands the money over to Lindiwe.
Lindiwe gratefully takes the money with a smile on her face and cautiously counts it before leaving.
George walks out behind away from the shanty.
Lindiwe is an organ harvester. Anna, Max and my parents were inside the mortuary. Are Lindiwe and T working with the killer to gain organs to sell? George thinks to himself, confused.
George follows Lindiwe to a nearby spaza. She, however, does not enter. In the distance, hiding behind a sheep kraal, George sees Lindiwe walk to an unbranded vehicle with dark tinted windows.
“Here is the money. The job is done,” she says and hands the money over to the person in the vehicle, keeping a few notes for her. The vehicle speeds off.
Chapter 16
The Ear
It is a wet Friday. Detective Williams and Mr. Jacobs, the pathologist, are in the Brackenfell Morgue to identify who the Jon Doe’s ear belongs to.
“How are we going to identify who this ear belongs to?” Detective Williams asks Mr. Jacobs curiously.
There was a very uncomfortable silence in the morgue because it is not every day that a police officer would ask how they are going to identify to whom the ear belongs to. A police officer, especially a detective, should know. He should know the A to Z.
“The ear is cut off with a very blunt object. Half of the tissue got damaged but we will do a DNA test and run it through the system until we find a hit.”
Detective Williams stands with his hands in his pockets beside the metal table with the ear resting on it.
“Thank you. Please let us know if you find something.”
After a few minutes of staring at the ear, Detective Williams walks out of the morgue being beat up in the air about to which the ear might belong to.
A few hours later, sitting behind his desk with the dockets of all the deceased persons, he gets a call.
“Hello,” he answers with a strong voice.
“This is Mr. Jacobs, the pathologist. I just want to inform you that after our DNA test, we could still not find a match as to who the ear might belong to. But rumour has it that it might belong to a Mrs. Claire Jewish, an informant told me.”
Detective Williams doesn’t answer. His eyes have grown big.
“Thank you. Hopefully she is still alive,” he announces and ends the call.
This time, six years ago, Detective Williams remembers there was a similar case just like this. A little boy went missing in a very posh area in Cape Town and was never found alive. The accused, Joachim Kroll’s neighbour in the block of flats where he had stayed, regularly complained to him that his toilet was blocked; he then apparently replied with a mere ‘it is full of body parts.’ The neighbour did not know what to make of it until a plumber came out to see what the cause of the blocked drain was, when they discovered the boy’s organs and three different ears with the earrings still dangling from it.
Kroll was sentenced to nine life imprisonment sentences but died of a heart attack in prison on 1 July 1991.
Why is Barry doing this? Why is his M.O. frequently changing? Is he copying the once infamous serial killers, if so, when will he stop, if ever?
Chapter 17
The .22 And the Transient Drifter
It’s been a month of Sundays since George was happy, since he had a family with who he could spend time with. What happened is like a millstone around his neck. He had burnt the midnight oil many times, trying to figure out who this Barry person is and why did he target his family, but no success. Barry knows his onions.
George made his way back to his parents’ house on the outer skirts of Durbanville. The doors had been marked with a police-do-not-cross tape.
He sits on the sofa near to the window in the lounge, sipping away on a hot steaming cup of Brazilian coffee.
George places the cup down on the coffee table and starts to ponder. He wonders who the person was who Lindiwe met in the vehicle by the spaza.
He is scared and has much ado about nothing really because he is innocent. He is thankful to still be alive and kicking.
He has a bee in his bonnet to trace this Barry guy and to either take revenge or prove his innocence.
It was just after eight at night when George looked at the clock hanging on the wall above the TV unit. He wants to go sleep, but the insomnia is overwhelming. He can’t stop thinking about everything which had happened. He decides to have a shower. Making his way to the bathroom, a chill travels down his spine. The passage light starts to flicker, maybe an electrical fault, George thought and did not worry.
After showering and getting dressed in his favourite sweatshir
t and jeans, he makes his way to the lounge. Upon entering his eye catches shiny glass shards lying on the floor by the front door.
Someone broke in; the thought rushes through his mind. He walks closer on the carpet floor with his bare feet and sees that a brick had been thrown through the window. Without even looking further or rather thinking further, George runs to the kitchen for a weapon – a knife to protect himself if the intruder is in the house.
He searches the house in and out, in every possible nook and cranny but there is no one.
Gosh, he sighs and takes a seat on the exact same sofa where he was sitting earlier.
The telephone rings.
George does not move for a moment, but soon decides to stand up, walk to the telephone sitting on the side table and answers.
“Who is this?”
A long pause of silence breaks out once again.
“Ha-ha-ha, Georgie Porgy boy, how are you doing?” the person asks with a chuckle stuck in its voice.
George becomes frustrated.
“Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
A random humming tune starts to float through the telephone.
“You look very nice tonight. I like the new look. That black sweatshirt and blue jeans is quite a nice taste. Don’t worry; I’ve decided not to kill you. I want you to tell the story,” he says.
“What story?” George stupidly asks without thinking.
“The killings, let my legacy live on. I’ve left you a little something in your parents’ room.”
Before George could even answer, the call had been dropped.
Without thinking any further, George instantaneously walks to the room where his beloved parents once used to spend quality time. Upon entering the room, he sees a brown leather bag lying on the bed – the bed where his father had been lying and underneath his beloved mother. Slowly he zips the bag open and freezes. He sees a shiny .22 gun resting at the bottom - with it is a note and the infamous white rose. He takes the note out and sits on the stool by his late mother’s make-up table. He unfolds the red piece of paper and reads.
Georgie,
Mystery of The White Rose Serial Killer Page 8
