Devil Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 1)

by Ian Patrick

  ‘Ja! You got that, Captain.’

  ‘Speaking of him. I see he’s coming alone. No partner.’

  ‘Looks like it. Maybe we can put him together with Sergeant Pillay. They’re the same size.’

  Nyawula looked at him. Koekemoer and Dippenaar arrived as Cronje elaborated while gathering up the papers.

  ‘Height, I mean. Not weight, of course. Pillay...’

  ‘Let it go, Sergeant.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Cronje left, winking at the two new arrivals.

  ‘Afternoon, men. Thanks for coming back. I just need you to do one more thing before you wrap up today.’

  ‘Sure, Captain,’ they chorused.

  ‘I’d like you both to get to the warehouse at Overport. Forensics have finished and I’d like you both to go over the place to see what you can find. One thing that bugged them is that the corpse had car-keys but no ID and no wallet and no cell-phone, and no car in the parking lot or around the back of the building responded to them using the remote on the key ring. Not really their job, of course, but they had a quick look around for the car. I want you to get over there and see what you can find. Check with buildings in the area, find anyone who might have known what the dead guy got up to in there, and that kind of stuff.’

  ‘OK, Captain,’ said Koekemoer. ‘Dipps and I have already had a word with Navi and with Jeremy down at the hospital. We went there as soon as we heard about the action. Piet told us they had been taken there to get patched up. They gave us a quick run-down. We told them we would be checking in with you before we went down to the place to have a look. We were going to get out there anyway, to see what we can find.’

  ‘Thanks, men. One step ahead of me as usual. I appreciate that. Pillay and Ryder OK?’

  ‘They’re doing great,’ said Dippenaar, ‘Navi’s raring to go but the doctor won’t let her. She lost a bit of blood. Jeremy’s fine. Got a plaster on his head and a bit of a bump, but he’s OK. He boasts a lot about the thickness of his skull. Claims to be the head-butting champion in Durbs.’

  ‘Thanks, guys. Let me know what you find in Overport. I’ll be here late if you want to pop in before you wrap tonight. Otherwise just call me. I’ll be here until I hear from ballistics: their top guys have promised me Speedy Gonzales work on testing the Desert Eagle they picked up from the scene today. We think it might match the weapon that put Trewhella down. They need a few hours on the case, so they’re doing me a big favour with their top woman working into the night. If things pan out, then it looks as if Pillay might have put down Trewhella’s killer today. Small compensation for Ryder, but it would be something, at least.’

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar nodded their agreement, and exchanged a look. Koekemoer spoke for them both.

  ‘If that’s the case, Captain, then it’ll make Ed’s funeral just a little bit easier. We hear it’s on Monday?’

  ‘That’s right. Not sure of the exact time yet, but Monday afternoon. Thanks, both.’

  The two detectives nodded and left the room.

  17.15.

  Thirty-six thousand rands. Each pack had contained thirty notes. Six thousand rands. Six packs. Thabethe had stowed the money, apart from two packs, which he pocketed. Twenty-four thousand rands in a tin, buried in a spot unknown to any but himself. Impossible to find. His little emergency fund. For the future.

  He sat in the corner of the restaurant, finishing his meal. He hadn’t eaten real steak for more than a year, and he had never previously paid nearly two hundred rands for a steak. Ever. He had peeled off two bills to pay for the meal and the drink, and had pocketed the change. All of it. No tips for the bitch that had served him. She had given him that look that said you’re not my class, so don’t try it on with me. He sat, thinking through what had happened since he had met the young Afrikaner yesterday morning.

  The Afrikaner had been right about these guys. I’m working with these guys. I meet them each time at Suncoast Casino. They pulling big money... hunnerts of thousands… Big money. Not just thirty-six thousand. There was more out there. Much more. Thabethe needed to find out how to get to it. You remember Dirk? You met him once, right here. The fat guy. My friend…

  He worked through the possibilities, sipping the remainder of the wine. Then, as if only now remembered, he reached into his pocket for the cell-phone from the Mercedes. He switched it on. No password. Straight to the menu. He opened the contact list. No names. Message list. No messages. Then he clicked recent calls received, so that he could scroll through. No calls. Probably all deleted. Same with calls made.

  He decided to call voicemail. One message. He listened. Then listened again. Then again.

  ‘Tony. Vic. I found Dirk. He’s in Addington. Call me. Now.’

  Thabethe pondered for a moment. Then he tried speed dialling. He pressed each number in turn and got nothing until he pressed number seven and held it. The screen lit up as the call started connecting, showing three letters.

  ‘VIC.’

  And a cell-phone number.

  He hung up before the call was picked up. There’d be time for that, later. He sat, deep in thought.

  17.20.

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar found the Mercedes immediately. They approached the Overport address the same way Tony had, and having the particular vehicle in mind was a great help. As they crested the hill there it was, alone, the only stationary vehicle at the kerbside. All other kerbside vehicles had moved for a good reason: the signs indicated no parking at this time. It stood isolated and begging for a traffic cop’s ticket, but there were no traffic cops in sight. Just traffic. The passing drivers cursed the vehicle as they went by because with two lanes tightly squeezed together for peak hours there was the unavoidable funnel as they saw the Mercedes and had to swing out.

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar attracted their fair share of hoots and bellows and curses, too, as they stopped behind the Mercedes and added to the congestion. There was no doubt in their minds that this was the vehicle that forensics had wanted to match to the keys they had taken off the corpse. They could also see, at a glance, that the passenger door had not been returned to a fully closed position. They quickly put out the red triangles and went to work on the car. Within minutes they had stripped back luxury carpets and stylish panels and high-quality rubbers and door sill panels with stainless steel inlays and… and that’s where they found something.

  Tight little rolls of two-hundred-rand notes. Hundreds of them: a quick and casual estimate, at a glance, of over one hundred thousand rands in cash. New notes, crisp, rolled in tight packs.

  ‘Daarsy! Bliksem,’ said Dippenaar, as he reached forward to pull out some of the rolls. Before he could say anything else, his phone rang. It was Nyawula.

  ‘Yes, Captain. We’ve found it. In the road a little way up from the warehouse, and guess what? Lots of cash hidden away in the sill panels. Yes. Yes. No. Definitely. Good idea. Ja! We understand. OK, we’ll do that. OK.’

  He hung up and turned to Koekemoer.

  ‘Nyawula says take photos of the hidey-hole and the money, showing exactly how much money, so there’s no come-back on us later.’

  ‘OK,’ replied Koekemoer. ‘Let’s do that.’ They got down to work.

  ‘Not like the old days, hey, Koeks? Nyawula is cleaner than anything that was above us in the old days. No messing with him, that’s for sure.’

  As Dippenaar spoke he was preparing his iPhone and then snapped as many photos as he needed to cover the whole area stuffed with cash. Then they pulled out the cash, laid it alongside the empty panels, and took more photos. While snapping, they continued talking.

  ‘Remember the old guys we reported to?’ continued Dippenaar. ‘Nyawula couldn’t have been dirtier than any of them if he tried.’

  ‘That’s the thing with reporting upward, Dipps. What do you see above you when you report upward?’

  ‘Arseholes.’

  ‘You got it. This guy’s different. He puts us all above him, where he can see us,
and where he can check what we’re doing. He’s the one watching the arseholes, and making suggestions, asking questions. To make sure they don’t screw up. Good guy. Hope he goes far.’

  ‘His problem is that he still has to report to one of the old arseholes.’

  ‘Old Swannie? Ja! And a fat one, at that.’

  ‘Ja. Very fat.’

  They finished the photos, then set about counting then stuffing the money into a bag that Koekemoer fetched from their own vehicle.

  They called in for a tow-truck, and waited for it before moving down to the warehouse. They sat in their own vehicle, Dippenaar behind the wheel and Koekemoer with the bag of cash on his lap.

  They traversed a bit of history while they waited. It was one of those conversations that, by the nature of their relationship, involved no disagreements or contrary views or contradictions or modifications. They found social intercourse easiest when it was peppered with Ja! Exactly! and you got it just right, oke! and Ja, for sure! and Ja’k stem saam! and Strue, my china!

  They concurred. Trewhella and Ryder. A great team. Bloody good, in spite of the fact that they were Engels and couldn’t speak Afrikaans to save their mothers. Trewhella genuine English because he had been born there and had only spent a few years here. Ryder just half-and-half, because he had been born in Seffrika and was here to stay, but he had spent a lot of time in England and spoke like them. A genuine soutpiel. In spite of all that, they were still both good guys, and blerrie good detectives. Got on well with the manne. Didn’t get involved with the politics. Even when they came into contact with some of the old guys from Wentworth and Brighton Beach that time, and the Kings Rest crowd – those guys were tough Afrikaners and also good detectives but they were gatvol at the changes that had side-lined them and some of them had supplemented their pension pots with some shady deals with gangsters and tsotsis. When Trewhella and Ryder met those guys they made it clear that they themselves were not on the take. You could trust them. They were good at their jobs, but the old Wentworth guys preferred to steer clear of them. Didn’t invite them to any of the old regular reunion braais.

  Sad that Trewhella’s gone. He was a really funny oke. Tough on Ryder. He lost Frikkie van der Westhuizen that time, and he also lost that Detective Ntshaveni oke. Now Trewhella. But he’s damn good. Wonder who they’ll put him with? Maybe get in a new guy from Durban North or somewhere. Another English guy, maybe. Or maybe someone like Frikkie. He’ll have to be good, to team up with Ryder.

  ‘I hear Ryder’s doing the main speech on Monday,’ said Dippenaar.

  ‘At the funeral?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Rather him than me.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  They went on for another half hour, chatting animatedly and reminiscing about the good guys and the bad guys, the good old days and the bad old days, pensions and politics. How the old station commanders had run their operations. The relations between uniforms and detectives. What Nyawula had said that morning. Then on to the corruption scandal with the head of the provincial Organised Crime Unit supposedly accepting bribes from those illegal casino operators. The years of lawsuits and countersuits over that. Clever lawyers and corrupt lawyers. Then the overturning of the charges. The allegations about corruption and gambling and kick-backs. The big stuff with the supposed hit-squad. The public starting to scorn the police.

  Then the changes that had come in. The clean-up operations. The scramble for jobs and promotions. The old fat farts like Swannie getting promoted so that they could move him out and away. The arrival of new guys from other provinces. The arrival of Nyawula. The change in attitude. The growing efficiency. The arrival of Ryder and later on Trewhella, both from Johannesburg after serving time in England.

  Eventually the tow-truck arrived. They helped them hook up the Mercedes, then watched the truck turn across the road and disappear back up the hill, almost colliding with a little red Mini coming in the opposite direction. Then they retrieved their triangles and drove down to the forecourt of the warehouse.

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar spent half an hour going through the warehouse. Forensics had done what they could. They moved through the place carefully. Found nothing. Looked with particular interest at the marks and tapes in the downstairs room where the action had been. Then left the building, got into their car, and went back to the station with the money, before heading home to their families for dinner.

  19.10.

  Thabethe sat in the Mini, about three hundred metres beyond the forecourt, as the night crept in around him. Traffic had almost completely disappeared. A dog scavenged in the gutter in front of him. Newspaper, plastic bags, and dust drifted past as a gust of wind came in.

  He thought back through the last hour and more. He had crested the hill coming down to the warehouse and had nearly smashed into the tow-truck doing a U-turn and towing the Mercedes. He had slammed on brakes with his heart in his mouth, instantly recognising the towed vehicle as the one he had broken into earlier. The driver of the tow-truck had glared at him as he drove past, as did the two guys standing at the edge of the road watching the truck leave.

  He had driven on, watching the two guys in the rear-view mirror, but they lost interest in him the moment he passed, and had got into their car. He slowed down as he passed the forecourt, looking both in at the warehouse and back in the rear-view mirror. He watched as the two men followed in his direction down the hill, and then he saw them turn into the forecourt. He continued a little up the hill, and then pulled over. He got out of the Mini and walked over to the other side of the road, from where he had a view of the door to the warehouse. He watched the two men go up to the door, lift the police tape, fiddle at the door for a few seconds, and then enter the building. He stood, watching.

  Half an hour later he watched the men leave. He then left his car where it was and walked back down the hill. As he came up to the entrance he saw that the police had put a heavy bolt and padlock on the door, probably in the afternoon after all the action, and had removed the Yale lock. He lifted the tape, picked the lock very easily, and entered the building. Ten or fifteen minutes later he returned. Nothing. Whatever had been in the building had been removed. Either by the police team that had arrived at midday, or sometime in the afternoon, or by the two guys he had just been watching. The place offered no clues. Except for the chalk-marks and tape on the floor of the second room downstairs. From his former experience as a constable, he knew that there had been some action in that room, leading to a death.

  Thabethe turned on the ignition. Revved. He was about to pull away when something struck him. He paused. Sat for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, thinking. Then he switched off the ignition, pulled out the cell-phone, and thought for a moment. Then he pressed the seven for speed dial. Three rings, then:

  ‘Where the hell have you been, Tony? We can move into the Argyle Road house. Entrance in Tenth Avenue. But I need you to set it up. First thing tomorrow, and bring back the box from Overport.’

  Silence from Thabethe.

  ‘Tony, What the…’

  Silence. Then the line went dead.

  Thabethe looked at the screen for a moment, then clicked off. He sat, contemplating. Then he switched on the ignition, turned on the lights, and pulled slowly away from the kerb, going up the hill.

  The Argyle Road house. Entrance in Tenth Avenue. I need you to set it up. Thabethe tried to connect the clues. Tony, the voice had said. The dead guy, maybe. Argyle Road. These white bastards. They refuse to use the new names. They probably don’t even know what Sandile Thusi did.

  Thabethe suddenly swung the wheel, tyres screeching as he did a U-turn. He would go there now. Have a look at it. Sandile Thusi. Entrance on Tenth Avenue. Not far. Maybe he could learn something by just checking where the place is. Maybe this Vic is the big guy. The casino money guy, maybe. If he talks to Tony like that, then Tony is – or was – a smaller guy. A smaller guy with thirty-six thousand rands. Maybe this Vic guy is worth more than
thirty-six thousand rands.

  19.15.

  Vic pulled the iPhone away from his ear, rapidly. He clicked the off button. His pulse thudded through his temples. He stopped breathing. Stared at the phone in his hand. He was ice cold with fury. Then he flung the phone against the wall. It shattered into countless pieces, but that provided no reason to stop him from smashing the heel of his shoe down onto the wreckage, again and again, screaming in fury as he did so.

  He paused, breathing heavily now, sweat gathering in the lines of his forehead. He stumbled out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and found his way down the passage then down in the elevator. Then down and out across the hall then through the mass of gamblers, young and old, crowding around slot machines and tables. He walked in a daze, his huge bulk bumping into strangers, ignoring a member of staff who offered him a drink, pushing through the crowds, finally making his way out of the casino into the centre itself, and then down the passage until he reached fresh air.

  He gulped the fresh air as if he had emerged from water. He filled up his lungs and stumbled out into the car-park. His mind was racing. Who? How? Where was Tony? What next? He had to get on top of this disaster, and he had to do it quick.

  19.45.

  Thabethe had driven round the block a few times, parked the Mini and walked in both directions, checking the house from every possible angle. He had also chosen his moment to clamber over the wall. He firstly threw a heavy rubberised mat from the back of the car over the barbed wire attached to the top of the wall. Then he clambered up and sat for a moment before dropping into the garden on the other side. He paused in the garden and then, peering through the windows, he was persuaded that it wouldn’t be the right time to break in. It looked as if the house was empty, with minimal furniture, and waiting for someone to move in. No point in breaking locks or windows before they moved in. Wait for them to stash whatever goods they were dealing with and come back another night. Even though one of the window-catches appeared to be loose and almost inviting to any burglar. He peered through that window, the moonlight helping, and saw that the room was completely empty.