by Ian Patrick
The Major’s strategy was to crowd into Ryder and keep him close. He sensed the power in the detective’s fists and was determined to keep him too close to deliver any effective punch or kick. If he could collapse them both to the ground, with himself on top, he stood a chance. He rushed forward, arms initially wide, and then drawn down rapidly to smother the detective’s incoming right uppercut. The weight and momentum of his three-hundred-and-fifty pounds sent them both crashing through the flimsy counter with its tea, coffee, kettle, jug of water and the rest of the crockery and condiments, and smashing into the Xerox Phaser 7100V Printer, destroying it beyond repair, then spinning around twice before falling onto the floor and skidding through the door into the bathroom, with the fat man on top.
Luck didn’t favour Ryder in the fall. He ended up wedged under the twin basins. He took two seconds longer than the Major to extricate himself. Which gave the fat man the chance he needed. He hauled himself up and out of the bathroom, smashing his weight against the door and locking it, with Ryder inside. He knew that the door probably wasn’t strong enough to keep the detective occupied for more than a minute, but that was all he needed to make his escape, slamming the main door behind him as he left the apartment.
13.40.
Dirk was agitated. The dispatches were due and Vic was nowhere to be seen. He had had another pizza and two-litre coke delivered to the side door and he had derived comfort from it. He had been through the lists that Vic had given him, and he had counted and re-counted, and checked and re-checked the stock.
He had broken up some of the wooden crates to confirm their contents, but had left alone the ones covered in thick plastic. They were identifiable. Those that were neither covered nor boxed were the ones that had not been imported but had been confiscated from illegal operations and stored for months in warehouses before being somehow, miraculously, claimed by Vic and shifted to alternative venues and then finally delivered here to the Argyle house. Vic was a genius, thought Dirk. The guy had so many contacts. He knew exactly who was who in the business. He knew how to do business, and he had promised Dirk an extra bonus tonight, for taking on Tony’s work as well.
Who knew where Tony was? Who cared? It was almost over. Vic had said they should all lie low for six months to a year and he would then find them and start a new project. Maybe in Zimbabwe, Vic had said. Maybe in Mauritius. He wasn’t sure. He had advised Dirk to head for Gauteng. Lie low. The cops were still looking for him. It wasn’t safe in KwaZulu. Vic himself was thinking of dropping out for a while. But he would make sure that Dirk was looked after.
Where was Vic? The first dispatch guys were going to arrive.
I can’t do this without Vic.
13.45
The Major drove like a maniac. He had reached the elevator just as it was – miraculously – about to close for its downward journey, with no-one inside. He had made his way through the lobby without steam-rollering into anyone, and he had got into the car, then lurched out of the parking and through the control point, without a single hitch or pause or queue. He tore around the corner onto Sandile Thusi, controlled the vehicle as it hit top speed, and had his foot flat as the road became the M17.
He had to get to the Argyle house. Ryder would be on his tail, probably no more than a minute or two behind him. The cops had no way of knowing anything about the Argyle house operation. Once he was there and away from CCTV cameras he and Dirk would be safe from prying eyes.
They would spend the rest of the day simply clearing the stock through the garage entrance point and receiving piles of cash in return. By tonight there would be no trace left of him or the operation. There would be nothing but cash. Dirk would be paid in cash, and he would go his own way.
Then he would make his own move after midnight. The cops would be watching everywhere. There would be road blocks. Ryder must already be free and he would have already put out the alert. Every cop in town would be looking for him. They all knew what he looked like. Unmistakable. There was no possible disguise for someone like him. He had to stay low. He had to get to the house.
The first dispatch was scheduled for less than an hour from now. At 2.30 pm. Then on from there, all through the afternoon and into the evening at meticulously scheduled times. If he could stay off the cop radar for eight hours he would make his way down to the harbour after midnight. With the cash. A million and a half in cash. No-one would expect him to make his escape by sea. He had planned this for a long time. Andre Stander had planned his own final escape from the country by yacht more than thirty years ago. It had been his own dream to do the same, but to succeed where Stander had failed. Before dawn he would be doing exactly what Stander had planned to do. Everyone was briefed. Everything was a go for an hour before dawn.
He screeched to a halt, abandoned the car in Clarence Road and waddled his way, breathlessly, down Tenth Avenue to the house, to join Dirk.
*
Ryder cursed as he dragged himself up off the bathroom floor. He knew, even before he could recover from the awkward position into which he had fallen, that the Major would be locking him in. The bastard had had a few seconds advantage, and had taken it. Ryder kicked at the door to no avail. It was solid. He searched wildly around the bathroom for something to smash against the window. The best he could find was the metal trash-can. Hopeless against the thick glass. Last option was to shoot out the lock of the door. He pumped a couple of bullets into the door catch before it weakened sufficiently for him to kick again and break his way through. His first thought was for Pillay, but a quick look showed that she was already recovering. She looked OK. It was a tough choice to leave her but he took it. He ran.
By the time he reached the closed elevator door he realised that the stairs would be quicker. He took the stairs four, five, six at a time. By the time he hit the car-park he knew he must be more than a minute behind the Major. Then an old woman going home after her Saturday fling on the tables created a jam at the exit point by boasting about her good fortune to a disinterested gate-keeper, and by the time he reached the road he knew he was fully three minutes behind his prey, and now he had no idea what direction the Major had taken.
Ryder pulled over and hit the iPhone. Within seconds he had given Cronje instructions. First, get the medics to the hotel to check on Pillay. Next, every available source was to be used to track the Major’s direction. Traffic cameras, witnesses, GPS trackers, anything he could find, had to be called in. The Major was a priority suspect on the run. He was the priority suspect.
Ryder hung up. He had to get back to Pillay.
14.05.
The office was a hive of activity. There was a cacophony of shouts and calls and people entering and leaving the main office and the inner office. Cronje, Koekemoer and Dippenaar were frantic. Each of them was on a different phone. They were calling in extra hands from Durban North and Westville, supported by station commanders who had been instructed from higher up the chain. They had people checking CCTV cameras all the way from Suncoast through to Overport. Cronje had been called by Cluster Command and hassled by someone seeking updates on what he called ‘the Ryder mission.’ Everyone was trying to get hold of Captain Nyawula. Medics had responded instantly and Cronje had his intern Mavis Tshabalala reporting on progress in that quarter as well as screening reports coming in from comms.
The intern rushed up to Cronje and whispered in his ear. He in turn called out to the others.
‘Navi’s OK. The medics are with her. Bump on the head but OK and no concussion.’
There was relief all around. The unspoken thought had been the possibility of another Trewhella disaster. That would have killed off the spirit and the energy that had been building all day since the news had broken that a move had been made on the Major.
The relief was palpable. The office returned to a hum of quiet and efficient business as calls were put and received, and the telephones worked overtime.
14.10.
The medics had got there in record time. Pilla
y was already receiving treatment by the time Ryder got back to her. He could hear her swearing and cursing from the moment he stepped out of the elevator and as he stepped through the door he could see at a glance that she was OK, but that she would soon be sporting a bump on the head even worse than his own.
‘Jeremy! Oh my god. Report me to the Captain. Go on. For me to get stymied by a big slob like that is just unforgivable. What an idiot. I didn’t see it coming. The slimy bastard.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yes, dammit. I’m fine. Just wanted a bump on the head so that everyone could identify me as your partner. These guys tell me the glass didn’t crack, but they’re not so sure about my skull. I told them they must be mistaken. My skull is thicker than that slab of glass, any day. What an idiot!’
‘She OK, guys?’
The medics grunted in the affirmative, confirming that they had checked her thoroughly. No concussion, no problems. Just a strip of Elastoplast necessary. They’d cleaned the wound. No problem at all. Except, one said, they had no cure for her foul language. They had never seen a case quite as bad as that, he said. He felt that the only treatment for the language problem was surgery. Which elicited another response from Pillay.
‘And fuck you too, doctor. Fuck you very much. Did you get him, Jeremy? What happened? Where’s he?’
‘Nah. After you and he had your little disagreement I just decided to step out for a moment and leave the two of you to go at it together. I don’t like violence, as you know. I just went downstairs for some ice-cream until the two of you had sorted out your differences.’
‘Shit. I’m sorry, Jeremy.’
‘Rubbish. I didn’t see it coming, either. Fat bastard moves faster than I thought he was capable of doing. We’ll get him. Cronje’s all over the case. Alerts are out. We’ll pick him up. Guy with a body like that can’t really go into disguise, can he? Take it easy, Navi. Let’s get you settled with a cup of something.’
The medics finished their business, muttered their goodbyes, and left the two detectives to it.
‘Coffee?’ said Ryder.
‘Please. Yes. No. Wait. Some of that ice-cream you mentioned sounds better right now.’
‘OK. Good idea. On me.’
15.30.
Thabethe thought he must have missed a couple of loads. He had arrived at his viewing spot next to the palms across the street from the house, just as a panel van emerged from the garage. It turned left toward Sandile Thusi, as the garage door descended behind it. The van paused at the end of Tenth Avenue, turned left again and disappeared into the traffic.
If it was emerging from the garage that meant the stuff in the garage had already been cleared. They had already been at it. For how long? How much had already been moved? If the van was parking inside then they might already be clearing the kitchen, or maybe they’ve done most of the stuff there, too, and are already at it in the front room? When did they start? How much had he missed?
Thabethe wasn’t sure whether he should get over the wall in broad daylight, risk being seen, and have a look through the windows. Maybe up in the tree? In broad daylight? Maybe he should wait and see what happened.
He waited an agonising fifteen or twenty minutes and was about to go for the wall option when he saw another panel van coming from the top all the way down Tenth Avenue toward him. He remained in the shadow of the palms and watched.
There were two people in the van, the driver and a passenger. It was a non-descript panel van, like the one that had just gone. Thabethe was quite good on the makes and models of cars, but neither the first nor this one could he identify. Sommer ‘n van, jy weet? he could imagine Spikes saying. Who cares, if it’s got wheels! The driver hooted. Thirty seconds passed, then the garage door opened. The van reversed in. Ten minutes passed. Twelve. Thirteen. Then the door opened and the van came out, turned left, turned left again and disappeared up Sandile Thusi.
Thabethe waited.
15.35.
On arrival back at the station, after the initial expressions of concern and the round of well-wishing, Pillay and Ryder were teased mercilessly. Jokes about Moby Dick predominated.
‘Ja, okes,’ said Dippenaar. ‘I told the guys that Navi was the perfect Captain Ahab. Now she’s obsessed. Has to catch the big fat albino whale. Except she should have her leg in a sling, not her arm. Couldn’t you have done better research before going whale hunting, Sergeant Pillay?’
‘Who was that harpoon guy? Queer something? That’s you, Jeremy, according to Dipps. Pillay’s harpoon-man.’
‘Thanks, Koeks. I think you mean Queequeg, as I recall.’
‘Daarsy. That’s him. Bloody tough guy, that one, old Dipps told us.’
‘Thanks, Koeks. Very kind. I appreciate the compliment, Dipps.’
‘We were all saying how you two make a good team, okes.’
‘Yissus, Dipps. You Afrikaners are always so bloody tough on both us charras and Engelsmanne,’ said Pillay. ‘Don’t you know, guys, that Jeremy and I are the ones who built this country. You guys were just farmers. We’re the ones who invented business and entrepreneurship in this country. Me and my cousins from India on the sugar farms and Jeremy and his guys with the help of their empire. This country would be nothing without us. Nothing but boer wars and zulu wars.’
‘I don’t know what you guys are talking about,’ said Cronje. I never read that whale book. My boet told me when I saw Jaws that that was it, and I didn’t have to read the book.’
Cronje’s intervention succeeded in creating a pause in the babble of conversation, so he continued.
‘Jeremy, that phone number you gave me, written on the back of that chemist’s cardboard box for those tablets...’
‘Yes, Piet. What about it?’
‘I got the guys to follow up as you asked, and they’ve now come back to me to say something like they got triangles or something from the cell-phone company...’
‘Triangulation.’
‘Daarsy! There’s it, thanks Jeremy. That’s exactly what the oke told me. So they followed these triangles and came up with a very interesting spot where they say the guy with the cell-phone was at today.’
‘Where’s that, Piet.’
‘Well, they eventually lost the signal for some reason, but they were able to, before that happened, they were able to find out that it comes from the Royal Natal Yacht Club there by Wilson’s Wharf.’
‘How very interesting.’
‘Ja. I thought so, Jeremy. So anyway the guys tell me they were able to have a really close look at the spot their machines and equipment and stuff took them to, and then they couldn’t understand why it all ended up in the water there, then they had another look and they said it must have been on a boat, there in front of the Yacht Club.’
There was a babble of excitement, capped by Pillay.
‘Looks like Captain Ahab is on the right track after all, Koeksister. Looks like we might be getting onto a whaling boat to go and find some fat whales.’
‘Yissus, Navi. It looks like it. Want me to come along with my harpoon, too? It will be my pleasure to serve with you.’
It didn’t take long for them to haul out a laptop and do a quick google-earth search and then for Ryder to announce a line of action.
‘OK, guys. Here’s the thing. I think Navi and I should go and take a look at the boats around there and see what we can come up with. Piet, are your guys still tracking the phone?’
‘Yes, Jeremy, but they’re saying it might be switched off or something, or their equipment is just not handling it properly, but they haven’t got any track on it right now. They say the fact that it stayed in one place down by the boats for more than an hour might be worth something for us to think about for now, but they’ll keep on trying and will let me know if they pick it up again.’
‘You’re going to be hanging around here, Piet? What will your wife say?’
‘Ag, Jeremy, you know her. She’s like Fiona, man. She wouldn’t mind. But I have to tell y
ou anyway, it’s her birthday today and I do have to get home for dinner with her and her mom and dad, you know. But I told the guys in comms that they could call me anytime on my cell-phone. So if they call I can escape the dinner and get back here, no problem.’
‘Thanks, Piet, but no need to come in here. Just call me and let me know if they give you anything more. We can take it from there.’
‘OK, then. Will do. But, guys, really, there’s no problem if you need me, hey? Just give me a call and I’ll be here.’
16.25.
A pattern began to emerge. The vans were arriving outside the garage in Tenth Avenue almost exactly every twenty minutes. Thabethe began to do sums in his head. He thought back on the red box. He tried to remember the exact figures scribbled on the paper but he couldn’t. He started estimating how many slot machines a van could carry, and how much one might pay for each of the machines. Then he remembered how different some of them were. There were those with every ornament and colourful accessory imaginable. There were others that were plain boxes with a few lights and numbers. He remembered the machines he had experimented on in the casino. He remembered the faces of the old men and women all shoving hundred-rand and two-hundred-rand notes into the slots to reload their casino cards.