Devil Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 1)

by Ian Patrick

  ‘Ja, Piet, that’s right. Many of them did. But not all, hey?’

  ‘Yes, Koeks. Not all, and, as Piet and I know you’re thinking, not the Major, hey?’ Nyawula said.

  ‘My lips are sealed, Captain.’

  ‘Mine too, Detective Koekemoer.’

  They all chuckled.

  ‘But you must have heard the April Fool’s story back in 2010, Captain?’

  ‘No, Dipps. What was that?’

  ‘Well you remember the start of the new police ranking? It began on April Fool’s Day in 2010?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. That’s right. That’s the day it all took effect.’

  ‘Ja. Well, the joke among the okes was about what a coincidence it was. That was the same day that Swanepoel became a Major.’

  ‘Hmm! Yes, I suppose that would cause some mirth. But, men, I shouldn’t be talking to you about these things, you know.’

  ‘What did you think of the whole new ranking system, Captain?’

  ‘Oh, well, Koeks, since you ask, I remember thinking at the time that it was all a bit too much like the army.’

  ‘Ja, Captain, I agree,’ said Dippenaar. ‘The okes thought that it was like the Major saw himself as if he was on the battlefield with the rest of his men as the cannon fodder. Only he was on the phone all the time, not the battlefield.’

  Nyawula was thinking that someone up there had made a really idiotic decision in thinking that Swanepoel needed to be known henceforth as Major, when it was fairly widely considered among all who worked with him even back then that he was an incompetent and rather obese racist relic.

  ‘But serious, ouens, apart from the ranking, I think things got better very fast from 1994.’

  ‘In what ways, Piet? I’m interested in how you see it. You’ve been a policeman much longer than the three of us.’

  ‘Well, Captain, long story short, hey? I think there were some problems in the days when both the uniform okes and the criminal investigation okes had their own commanders at station level as well as district level. They had like – how do you say it – like separate controls. That was a good thing in some ways, but there was a problem with it, too, in my opinion.’

  ‘What was that?’ Nyawula prodded.

  ‘I think it meant that there was no more discussion or working together. You know, like the okes in uniforms and in plain clothes did their own thing and sometimes they were working around the corner from each other in the same neighbourhood and they didn’t know it. Uniforms bumping into detectives and saying what the hell you doing here, boykie?’

  Dippenaar and Koekemoer were energetically in agreement, each throwing in from their own experiences various examples of clashes and contradictions and missed opportunities. The three of them became quite animated. Nyawula enjoyed the passion with which they argued the case, and the friendly cursing and swearing at each other.

  ‘I tell you, manne,’ Dippenaar said, ‘it was much better when they changed the whole system and everyone came under joint command, with commissioners in charge.’

  ‘I agree with a lot of what you say, Dipps. But I’m not sure it was all so rosy. Community forums working with station commissioners sounds good in theory, but there were a couple of problems.’

  ‘What were those, Captain?’ Koekemoer asked.

  ‘All that consolidation stuff happened quite quickly. I wasn’t in the game then, but I remember reading that when it all changed there were lots of new senior posts going. But very few of the senior detective guys could compete successfully for all of those senior management posts that suddenly appeared. It was those uniform guys that were well positioned. They were used to working in hierarchies. But detectives are like cats, men, if you don’t mind me saying so. Hey, Piet? I’m sure you agree. They work alone or in pairs and they’re so bloody individualistic.’

  As the two detectives made to interject, Nyawula quickly continued.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I admire you guys. They’re very talented sleuths, aren’t they, Piet? But, hell, they haven’t got a helluva lot of experience in managing personnel. You know yourself, Piet, that the great detectives we have in this unit not only can’t be bothered with filling in forms. They don’t know how to even do it!’

  Cronje spoke the exact same last eight words in unplanned unison speaking with Nyawula, and all four of them laughed together about it. Then Cronje continued.

  ‘You’re telling me, Captain. Especially these two ouens, and Ryder and – God rest him – Trewhella. I’m like their bloody mother. Got to do everything for them.’

  ‘That’s why we appreciate you so much, Sergeant. So, anyway, at the time of the change all those talented guys were no match for the career professionals who knew office politics like the backs of their hands. The old uniforms, the station commanders, moved easily into so many of the new commissioner posts, and their underlings then rose through the ranks, too. So that’s how we got people like Swanepoel climbing upward, higher and higher, like, well, like stuff rising to the top of the barrel.’

  ‘Yissus. You can say that again, Captain,’ said Cronje.

  ‘Ja, I agree,’ said Dippenaar. ‘Once it became like the army you couldn’t, like, speak to some of the top brass without them making you feel like you had no right to bother them, you know?’

  ‘Yes, Dipps, I know what you mean. It’s the way one interacts with the guys just above you and just below you that determines how happy you are in your work.’

  Nyawula couldn’t vocalise the rest of his intended sentence: and therefore how easily one can be tantalised with bribes, and therefore how easily one can be corrupted. Instead, he paused, and felt for a moment that he had been preaching at them.

  ‘Sorry, men. I didn’t mean to go on at you like that. But it helps me think through things to chat to you.’

  They all protested together, Cronje’s voice rising out of the joint babble more prominently than the others.

  ‘Jeez. No, Captain. Not at all, I’m telling you’ said Cronje. ‘I told my wife the other night that I feel quite privileged, you know, after more than twenty years in the police, to have a boss who actually talks to us like this. So it’s my pleasure, really.’

  The other two heartily agreed.

  ‘That’s good to know. Thanks, men, and thanks for the chat, and for the info on the autopsies.’

  They all took the signal and started to leave.

  ‘Oh, one thing more, Captain.’

  ‘What’s that, Piet?’

  ‘I’ll need to bring you all the forms to sign off for the function tomorrow night, and there are some things to go through and decide so that I can clear it with my opposite numbers in the cluster. I’ll be back with it all at about 4.30, if that’s OK.’

  ‘That’s fine. We have to do it sometime.’

  The three of them went out, closing the door behind them. Nyawula stared out of the window.

  He was pleased with the people who worked for him. But he also realised that he was beginning to tire of the administrative burden that kept him away from the real task of leading a sharp team of investigators and sustaining their morale and energy and commitment.

  He had been promoted to his own current position at an important time, coinciding with the football World Cup when the crime agenda was crucial to the country’s image abroad. He remembered an international press report at the time, typically adapting and rendering sensational the much more accurate and detailed police report that it was based upon. About how just less than three thousand police weapons had been lost or stolen in a period of nine months, and about how four thousand replacement 9mm handguns from Beretta had been ordered, and how the recovery rate for stolen weapons was devastatingly low compared to the recovery of lost civilian weapons. He recalled insinuations in the media that the South African police were considered to be a major supplier of weapons to the criminal underworld. He remembered his dismay at the statement about how the murder rate in the country was one of the highest in the world for a country not at wa
r. He also remembered how he promised himself that he would regard his promotion as giving him a mandate to turn these figures around.

  All of which fuelled his incandescent reaction to the loss of four weapons from his own unit at the time Thabethe disappeared. Now he wanted to put that right.

  But what was he doing instead? Wasting time putting together his part in tomorrow’s police function in the stadium. Annual celebration. To celebrate what? To let some officers parade in uniform and others parade in their finest civilian clothes, with girlfriends kept in the background and wives putting on a show. People buying new suits and dresses for the special occasion. Hours wasted. Boring speeches. Awards to businessmen with dubious connections. Everything and anything to take him off the real work. He’d try and shift some of the load onto Cronje.

  Worst of all, he thought, was the news that Major Swanepoel had indicated his acceptance of a formal invitation to the event.

  12.50.

  Tony made the same crucial mistake that others had made. He assumed that although Pillay was probably stronger than most women – she was, after all, a trained cop – she was still, in any case, a woman, and small. With one arm disabled by the bullet. No match for him.

  Ryder was powerless. He could only watch as Tony advanced on her, the dagger expertly clasped in his right hand. He had clearly used it many times before. Pillay, her left arm hanging useless at her side and her right arm only marginally better, stepped slowly to her right and Tony matched her, moving to his right, circling, ready for the thrust that he would deliver and which would down her before he then cut her to pieces. Then her partner, after he had extracted the information he needed, knuckle by knuckle. Then he’d get rid of both of them. These two cops had to be eliminated, and he would burn the place down around their ears if necessary to ensure that.

  He lurched forward to test her reactions. She was watching every sinew in his upper torso to spot the signals. She could sense immediately that his lurch was simply a feint. She reacted less quickly than he had anticipated, deliberately slower than she would have done had she suspected the incoming thrust to be real.

  He registered the slowness of her response and immediately thought he had her measure. He shifted his centre of gravity, positioning himself for another apparent swing from the right, but then immediately adjusted for an upward stab from below. Pillay saw it in preparation a fraction of a second after he had made the decision. She stepped quickly to her right then immediately forward: one step onto her left foot to anchor her weight and then the right foot swinging as hard as any centre-forward might strike a ball, the shattering impact from her heavy boot onto his testicles producing a contorted gasp of pain from him as he dropped the weapon and fell to his knees, then rolled over onto his back with his knees drawn up to his chest.

  In his agony, and having lost the dagger, Tony still had the instinct to reach for the gun, now within stretching distance of his right hand. But Pillay was immediately back onto him. As he lurched and grabbed the gun and started swinging it up from the dirt to fire point-blank at her, her right boot, leading her full weight as she jumped on him, came down onto his Adam’s apple, thrusting down with brutal force, pushing muscle, sinew and cartilage through the throat and onto the bones at the back of his neck.

  The thyroid cartilage shields most of the internal mechanism of the larynx. Tony’s was able to protect neither his cricoid cartilage, lying just beneath it, nor the cricothyroid joint. Pillay’s weight turned the circular tube with its untidy pack of cords and joints and muscles and sinews into a tangled mess, instantly destroying any elasticity that might have returned it into position, and separating the cartilage from the trachea.

  Tony’s scream was cut off a split-second into this massive damage, the vocal chords now useless, and his huge chest heaved as it struggled to suck air through the now useless compressed windpipe. Pillay stepped back, joining Ryder in stunned immobility as they watched him panic and then slowly asphyxiate, his legs pumping like the dog she had seen as a child, having a fit that took it to extreme panic and then slowly recovering to relative calm.

  No slow recovery for Tony, and no calm. Foam started bubbling at his lips and his eyes nearly burst from their sockets with the strain to find air, his back arching upward from the floor with the effort. After what seemed an interminable struggle the panic faded away and they watched his final twitches.

  In the silence Ryder and Pillay looked at each other. She pulled the plug of rag from his mouth, grimacing with the effort to get her right hand working again. He spat out a couple of threads and the taste of paraffin, before speaking.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about Ed Trewhella,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Compared to you, I think Ed was actually quite a gentle soul.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Maybe Nyawula thought it was time I needed to be toughened up a bit. With a tougher partner.’

  She was still breathing heavily, and her good arm was trembling as the feeling started returning to her hand and the heat in the elbow dissipated. She shook her right arm to encourage the process of recovery.

  ‘Get me out of this,’ he said. ‘We need to get that arm of yours sorted.’

  ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘You need that skull of yours looked at, too. Let’s get the medics in.’

  ‘OK, and the cleaners for this guy.’

  She freed him with her good hand, using Tony’s dagger to saw through the nylon rope. Then they supported each other as they stumbled into the passage that led toward the front door.

  13.30.

  Thabethe had begun to drift off in the sweltering heat. Nothing had happened since the two cars had arrived shortly after the departure of the panel-van. Big white guy and small charra chick. More friends of the casino guy? No. Difficult to see at the distance, but he thought that the big guy was familiar. He had seen him somewhere, some time back. But he couldn’t quite place the guy. From his observation point it wasn’t clear to him but it looked as if they knocked at the door and waited, but no-one came. What’s the guy inside doing? They knocked again. Paused. Then they just went in.

  Thabethe waited. And waited. Nothing.

  The sun was baking down on the Mini. Thabethe started drifting, when suddenly he heard a cacophony of sirens and hoots and squealing tyres. He went ice-cold as police cars lurched around the corner from both directions. How had they traced him? His instinct was to rip open the door and run, get into the side-roads, leap over walls, escape from cops on wheels. His hand was on the door-handle as the first car swooped past him and screeched to a halt at the entrance to the forecourt, backed up a fraction, and lurched forward again into the parking area. Two cars from the opposite direction followed the first one in. As uniforms bundled out of the cars two figures appeared at the door where he had last seen the casino man. People were shouting. Orders were being given. Two cops ran inside. Another one got onto his cell-phone, and was soon shouting into it.

  Thabethe waited.

  Onlookers started arriving. Crowds formed behind police tape. Double cordon. Where was the casino guy? Thabethe decided to get out of the car and join the crowd. Other cars arrived. He had seen this before. Forensics guys. He began to piece it together. No help from the crowd. They all had their own little rumours. None of them lined up with what he had seen over the last three hours. He decided to melt away. Come back after dark. Let the action settle.

  As he walked back to the Mini, he remembered. The Mercedes. No-one seemed to be interested in the Mercedes in the road, up the hill. The crowd was far more interested in the action in the forecourt. It took him seconds to break in. It took him two minutes to do a thorough search. He found a cell-phone in the cubby-hole. Nothing else, other than papers for the car, service records, manual and standard warranty forms. He pocketed the phone, then stepped out of the car, squatted down, and started peeling back the carpet from under the driver’s seat. He made a thin aspirated whistle of surprise as he revealed the
prize beneath.

  Six neat stacks of crisp brand-new two-hundred-rand notes, each pack neatly wrapped, as if just paid over by the bank, in its paper band. He dropped the carpet back into place and quickly clambered over to see if the passenger seat also yielded such delights. No luck. He knelt on the driver’s seat and reached over to the back seat to check the carpets on both sides. Same thing. Nothing else. This was probably all of it.

  He pulled back the driver’s carpet again and stuffed the treasure into his pockets, into his underpants, and down his shirt, which he tucked more securely into his belt to hold the burden. Then he looked around, checking three hundred and sixty degrees before he slipped out of the car, and walked back to the Mini. He got in, with another casual look covering all directions, started the Mini, and pulled off slowly and unobtrusively.

  He looked at the action down in the forecourt as he made a three-point turn, faced the car in the opposite direction from the police barricade, and drove away slowly back up the hill. Then, as he turned the corner and moved out of sight of the action his heart started pounding and his breathing escalated in growing excitement.

  He went in search of somewhere to store his rich haul, and to find something to eat.

  16.30.

  Nyawula stood with Cronje leaning over the desk. They were looking at lists of names.

  ‘I’ll check with the other stations, and then when I get final agreement I’ll get the seating plan down to the Stadium tomorrow morning. Then they’ll ask you and me to do final checks and changes again tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Thanks, Piet. I’m sure you don’t need all this on top of the arrangements for the funeral. I appreciate it.’

  ‘No problem. Ed’s ex-wife – well, both his ex-wives – have agreed Monday for the funeral, so we’ve got some time there. I can wrap up those arrangements on Friday. Tomorrow is more difficult, with all the big guys coming.’

  ‘Big in more ways than one.’