Devil Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 1)

by Ian Patrick

  Dirk, still on massive drugs to deal with the excruciating pain from his damaged knee joint, now supported in a hinged knee-brace resting on two pillows, was completely taken in by Constable Dlamini. The Constable told him to get into his dressing-gown because he was being taken back to the station for questioning. He then pulled out the bin-liner, stuffed the patient’s clothes into it, and swept the boxes of painkillers and anti-inflammatories – neatly prepared by the nurses in a way that suggested to Thabethe that this patient was in any case scheduled for discharge this very morning – off the top of the counter into the bag. Then he wheeled the patient out to the street. And all of this with not a single person stopping them or even offering a second glance.

  Dirk did not even flinch when Constable Dlamini handcuffed him, hands in front, and put him in the back of the Silver Honda Ballade, behind the front passenger seat, his braced leg stretched out and supported on top of the clothes stuffed behind the driver’s seat. And he did not even register the fact that when Constable Dlamini drove off, they left the hospital wheelchair in the middle of the parking bay adjacent to the one they vacated.

  Dirk dozed in the back of the car, the drugs having their effect on both his pain and his consciousness. Thabethe drove through the traffic, then north on the M4, past Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve, turned right onto the M27 toward Umdloti, turned right again toward Selection Beach, down South Beach Road as far as he could before turning right and then left and finally nestling the car right up against the path into the bush that he knew so well from previous visits. This was one of his favourite spots.

  The first hint to the half-asleep Dirk that something was not right was when the Constable pulled open the back door and thrust an oil rag into his mouth before Dirk could scream, and then tied on a gag. Thabethe checked all around for any witnesses. The coast was clear. With the coil of rope from Spikes Mkhize in one hand he used the other to drag Dirk by the collar of his pyjama shirt, forcing him to hop and whimper in agony as he tried to take pressure off the damaged knee. Dirk could not avoid putting some of the pressure onto the bad leg, even as he tried to put as much of his weight as he could onto the good leg. Within seconds they were in deep bush, and Thabethe allowed his victim to slow down, but he maintained a grasp on Dirk’s collar and they moved into the thick foliage. Eventually Thabethe stopped, and allowed Dirk to collapse, whimpering, on the ground.

  Thabethe uncoiled the rope and started tying the handcuffed prisoner, seated, to the base of a tree. Dirk was moaning in agony and fear. Thabethe finished and stood up over the wounded man. It was only then that Dirk was able to get a good look at his captor’s eyes. Those eyes. He froze in horror as he recalled meeting the same man, along with Jannie, that time in the shebeen.

  ‘You remember Skhura, white man? You and me. Today we talk.’

  But before doing anything else, Thabethe turned and walked back the way they had come, to the car. He was back within minutes, with the bin-liner containing Dirk’s things and having also stuffed his own clothes into it. He had also moved the car to an unobtrusive parking away from the pathway into the bush where it might otherwise have prompted curious passers-by to go searching. He pulled off his prisoner’s gag, sat down opposite Dirk, and made himself comfortable.

  ‘You and me, fat man, we spend some time together.’

  Dirk was terrified and in agony. It was going to be a long day.

  10.30

  Sergeant Cronje was cursing with more than usual profanity as he put down the phone, just as Koekemoer and Dippenaar came through the doorway.

  ‘What’s the problem, Piet? Still working out the seating plan for tonight?’

  ‘Ag no, Koeks, man. That’s bad enough, but no, not this time. That was my favourite, how you say it – gentleman caller – as Ed would say.’

  ‘Uh-oh! Major Swannie, again, Piet?’ Dippenaar chirped in. ‘What’s he want? Wants you to seat him next to some hot chick tonight, I bet. How about Pillay? They’re the same height. Should be fun.’

  ‘No, man. He’s just interfering again. Wants to know what’s happening with the guy from Montpelier Road, is he still in hospital, and stuff, and when’s he being taken back into custody, and stuff.’

  ‘Oh boy! You’re going to like this one, then, Piet,’ said Koekemoer.

  ‘Ja? What’

  ‘Tell him, Dipps.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘You can call the Major right back if you want, Piet. You can tell him that our one-legged star escaped from Addington just over an hour ago,’ said Dippenaar.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘No shit, Piet.’

  ‘Yissus. Does the Captain know?’

  ‘Not to our knowledge. That’s exactly why we popped in. We just heard ourselves and we dropped in to let the Captain know that we’re on the case – we’re going down to the hospital now to check it out. But you better let the Major know, I suppose, seeing he asked.’

  ‘I’ll call him right back.’

  Cronje touched redial and within seconds was talking to the Major.

  ‘Major Swanepoel? Sorry, sir, it’s me again, sir. No, sir, Captain’s still out, sir. He’ll be some time, I think, sir. No, he’s checking out details on a death – well, not really, but a death, you know, yesterday – in an encounter between our guys and a guy pulling a gun on them, clear self-defence case for us, but I – yes, sir, I just wanted – no, sir, but I just wanted to tell you – yes, sir...’

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar looked at each other, a despairing shake of the head from the former and a long elongated sigh from the latter. They moved in on Cronje, tickling him under the armpits as Cronje tried desperately to ward them off and maintain some semblance of seriousness as he continued.

  ‘’No Major, I just wanted to come back to you, sir, after your phone-call just now, and tell you – no, sir. Well we’ve just got news, sir, but we still don’t have the details. But the fact is, sir, that the Montpelier Road man escaped from the hospital ward, sir. Hullo? Major? Are you there, sir?’

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar stopped their business as Cronje slapped Koekemoer hard on the wrist with a resounding clap that sounded like a gun-shot.

  ‘Yes sir. No, sir. I thought the line had gone dead, sir. Yes. No, it wasn’t one of our guys guarding him. I think the Captain made an arrangement with – yes, sir. OK, sir, when I find out more I’ll let you know. Thanks, sir. No problem, Major.’

  He hung up. Dippenaar and Koekemoer looked at him, waiting for comment.

  ‘Ja. Well. No. Fine. He seemed OK with the news. Not such a big problem. I thought he would go ballistic. What a change. Maybe he’s thinking about the party tonight, and – you heard – he wasn’t even interested in me trying to tell him about Pillay and the guy she put down in Overport. Yissus! But you two guys give me a hard time, man.’

  ‘Sorry, Piet,’ said Koekemoer, ‘we’ll make it up to you tonight, and buy you a drink. If the Captain’s looking for us, tell him we’ve gone to get ball gowns for tonight, OK?’

  ‘So long, Piet. Call us if you need anything. We’ll try and find out more about Addington and what happened, and we’ll let you know what we find.’

  ‘So long, manne. Check you tonight if I don’t see you before.’

  The two detectives left and Cronje turned to the seating plan in front of him.

  He was irritated. Bloody Major. Always looking for someone to blame. Bloody top brass. Bureaucrats. Get a bee in their bonnets and just keep going at one thing. Irritate the hell out of us who do the real work.

  10.35

  Nyawula strode back to his office. He had been quick with the IPID people, and had given them the details on Ryder and Pillay at the Overport killing. That had gone well enough, for the moment anyway. Then back to base and immediately over to the HR people. They had been quite supportive for once. With the support of the top brass, things were going to be easier than normal, they said. There was also a lot of sympathy for him in the aftermath of the Trewhella shooting. He h
ad to bite his tongue while enduring the tick-box exercise, as they commented on Pillay. Found competent in training provided for the period 1 April to 31 March. No precautionary suspensions. Performance rewards. Progression to another salary notch. Employment Equity.

  ‘No problem there, hey?’ the clerk had chuckled. ‘Employment Equity. Two for one.’

  Nyawula didn’t react. The less he said, the better. He wanted this processed quickly so that he could get the hell out of there and so that both he and Pillay could just get on with the work. He had already endured the clerk reading out aloud – very slowly, with adenoids and a mouth that was too wet – the guideline that Positions are funded over a multi-year period according to predetermined targets of the total establishment, taking into account personnel losses. Vacant positions at a certain level or in terms of a specific business unit are therefore planned and regarded as funded only upon the date of advertisement… and then noting the agreement to waive advertisement in this case, and the extra note attached to the file and signed by various senior officers.

  Nyawula had finally escaped, having secured the agreement that the papers would all be ready for final signature on Monday morning, so that the formal announcement could be made at the funeral of Detective Trewhella.

  As he walked his mind traversed a range of things. Tonight’s function was a chore but he would grit his teeth and do the right thing. The stolen Vektors were becoming a bit of an obsession, he thought, but he needed to get on top of them. Three recovered. One still out there, probably still with Thabethe, the elusive bastard. Dealing with IPID, who had wanted more information not only on Trewhella and Ryder putting down the guys on Wilson’s Wharf, but also on Pillay and Ryder’s encounter with the victim in Overport. Getting Koekemoer and Dippenaar to support Ryder and follow up on the murders of the old couple at The Grove. Checking with Cronje on Swanepoel’s latest hassling. Updating the British High Commission, and getting Ryder on to that case while Pillay had her arm sorted out. Then following up himself with forensics on the cross-checking in Montpelier Road and Overport.

  The burden was enormous. But no, the system determined that a major activity for today was to attend to a seating plan for tonight’s party.

  As Nyawula approached his office, Koekemoer and Dippenaar appeared.

  ‘Bad news, Captain,’ said Koekemoer, ‘the guy with the leg, from Montpelier Road, he escaped from Addington this morning. We’ve just told Cronje.’

  Nyawula looked up at the heavens and leaned back against the wall. Dippenaar thought he was remarkably calm, given the importance of the Montpelier guy to the Trewhella case.

  ‘We’re going down right now, Captain, to check it out.’

  ‘Find out for me, men, who the constable on duty was,’ Nyawula sighed. ‘I know he wasn’t one of ours, that’s for sure. But I’d like to know how the hell this could have happened.’

  ‘Will do, Captain,’ said Koekemoer. ‘We’ll get down there now.’

  ‘Just one thing before you go, guys. Can you also find some time to follow up on Trewhella and Ryder’s work at The Grove? I’ve got Ryder doing some stuff for me on the beach murder, to satisfy the British High Commission who are hassling Cluster Command, but I don’t want The Grove to go cold. Check out with Ryder how far he is with that, and see what you can do to help and take it further.’

  The two detectives gave their assurances and left.

  Nyawula strode over to catch up on things with Cronje. Who would probably greet him with a dozen new messages unrelated to all of this. Then he would have to work out how he was going to manage all of it while handling the incoming news of a stabbing homicide, three rapes, a brutal armed robbery just around the corner, two disciplinary matters involving new constables, and rumours of corruption in Inanda, all within the last twenty-four hours.

  Apart from what was already on his plate.

  12.00.

  Ryder was on the beach at the site of Sunday night’s shooting. He had prevailed upon Pillay to obey the doctors and get all the necessary attention to her arm, and then to catch up on paperwork. He had left her pouting.

  He had spent the morning checking the movements of the British tourist, from his hotel to inside the casino, courtesy of a helpful hotel management and the CCTV from the casino. The cameras had picked up even more than he had hoped for.

  The tourist had overdone just about everything. He had stuffed himself with food and booze. He had played the tables and the slot machines. He had gone back and forth to the bar. When he was in luck at the slot machines, the waitresses plied him with more drinks. Same at the tables. He started buying drinks for others with his winnings. He started becoming attractive, as grossly obese as he was, to a few young women. At first he paid no particular attention to them but then, as the booze flowed, he started becoming more and more open to conversations with strangers. Then he had got the big win at Blackjack. Then the popularity of the man grew exponentially.

  Ryder marvelled, in his study of the visuals, at how it was almost possible to imagine the audio. Ryder could almost hear the guy saying, right near the end, yes, well OK, you are a persistent little lass, aren’t you, but is it safe? Ryder shook his head at the naivety of the man. The management’s camera technician and security officer both sat with him and could read the same things.

  ‘It’s so obvious, you can almost hear what the guy is saying to her, can’t you?’ said the technician.

  ‘Sure is obvious,’ said Ryder.

  ‘Happens all the time in here. We watch these guys get taken by the floozies all the time,’ said the security man.

  ‘Anything you can do about it?’

  ‘Not really. By the time we get someone down on the floor they’ve usually gone, or they deny doing anything wrong, or they say they’re good friends, and that kind of stuff. Then we watch them go off to their hotel or they leave to go down to the beach. From then on we have nothing to do with it.’

  Ryder managed to obtain hard prints of the last young woman who was with the tourist as he had left the casino and as they had then left the complex to go into the night. The external cameras showed them moving across the road into the dark, heading toward the beach. Then there were no other visuals.

  He wasn’t confident of achieving much, himself, with the photo of the young woman, but he kept the hard copy and arranged for the technician to scan a copy over to Sergeant Cronje. Then he called Piet and got him to do the necessary to put it into the system and see what they could find in the ether. Then he had gone down to the beach.

  He had arranged to meet Nadine Salm, the crime scene investigator who had been brought in on Monday morning to the beach scene, at the time he and Ed had been busy having their own fun at Wilson’s Wharf. She agreed to walk him through the scene as she had seen it.

  ‘Been doing this a long time, Nadine?’

  ‘Shoo, I suppoose soo, Jeremy.’

  Ryder couldn’t help thinking that the way she formulated a few of her vowels reminded him of an undergraduate student he had once met, from the University of Cape Town, who had also pursed her lips in the same way, like a native French speaker mouthing the informal tu. Whoever had said that there was no equivalent sound in English for the French u, he thought, had never met this particular UCT arts undergraduate. The student in question had had a habit of pronouncing know as noo and show as shoo and Cape as keep and table as teeble. She had told him that she had choosen to read philosophy and soocial anthropology, because it’s like, about real grooth and finding oneself, you noo? And it’s so cool studying in the shadow of Teeble Mountain, you noo? Nadine was not dissimilar to that student, he thought, as she continued. But as she did so, he filtered out of his consciousness the idiosyncratic diphthongs so that he could concentrate on what she was saying instead of how she was saying it.

  ‘I started on this stuff way back, after I graduated, you know, Jeremy? I started as a CSI here in Durbs – well, first as a technician and then only later as a full CSI – then I went to t
he DNA Project, then back to SAPS. I suppose it’s my life, you know?’

  ‘Do you focus on one aspect of it or do you do it all?’

  ‘Me? Well, as you know, we’ve got to be careful and avoid having the same person doing both the lifting of the evidence and the testing of it. Got to ensure cross-checking rather than conscious reinforcement of each other’s findings. Corroboration rather than reinforcement. That’s the theory. But in practice, with staff shortages and the number of cases, well, don’t tell anyone, but, you know, we slip a little now and then. Which suits me fine. I like nothing better than lifting and testing my own stuff. As long as I cover the bases if we have to go to court on it. Anyway, I started with a focus on firearm and tool mark examination and then got myself into all kinds of stuff involving the full range of collection, preservation, analysis and interpretation. I particularly like shooting scene reconstruction, and wound ballistic determination. I hate the expert witness testimony side of things, though. I just like to follow the trail and find the evidence and let others make up their minds about what actually happened, you know? Don’t see myself getting into trouble like a couple of the experts did way back during the Pistorius trial.’

  They moved slowly around the site and Nadine pointed out with incredible insight and precision the key features she had identified. She discussed the initial report on ballistics, and impressed Ryder with the wide range of knowledge and experience she brought to the task. He had always been impressed with people who had had experience at the DNA Project. World-class stuff, he thought.

  After just under an hour Ryder said he would be happy to walk further afield, alone, and think through what he had learned from her.