Devil Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 1)

by Ian Patrick

  ‘OK boykie,’ she said, standing in front of the downed man, and panting. ‘What was that you were saying about girlies not messing with you?’

  Ryder was on the phone to Dippenaar as Pillay brought the hapless Ben back down the track, to the jeers and jokes and sporadic applause of the workmen, who had been told briefly by Ryder, when they questioned him, that they were cops arresting a couple of no-goods.

  Ben’s face seemed to have turned arctic white on the sides – a combination of whitewash and terror – and it sported a deep and nasty graze that oozed blood from his hairline, straight down over the length of his nose and across his chin. Looks like the Cross of St. George, thought Ryder. A bit of a scar there, no question. He turned to face the guy, having closed the call with Dippenaar. The cleaners were on their way, and Koeks and Dipps would come with them to help Ryder and Pillay wrap up. Koeks would put in a call to the Westville Police Station to brief them.

  The workmen crowded around Pillay as she arrived, and they didn’t hold back on either the compliments to her or the jeers at her prisoner.

  ‘Well done, detective. Your fellow detective here tells us that you also do martial arts. Is that true?’

  ‘Fantastic job, detective. You going to run in the Olympics?’

  ‘Yissus, my china. You always get women to chase after you like that?’

  ‘Why you paint your face red and white, boykie? You look like a blerrie Engelse rugby fan.’

  ‘Is that what you call a one-arm bandit, chasing people down like that?’

  ‘I tell you, Usain Bolt is going to poep himself for the next Olympics when he hears about her.’

  Pillay responded to the cheers and jeers and laughter and back-slapping with a mixture of irritation and gratitude. They all crossed the road back to the house with the fugitive, before the workmen eventually drifted away back to their tasks.

  As they re-entered the house, Ryder began to have a closer look around. Pillay manacled her captive to the security gate on the front door, and undertook a quick inspection of Big Red before sitting down on the sofa, from where she continued the discussion with Ryder, who moved quickly through the rooms and called back down the passage to continue the dialogue.

  ‘Looks like masses of whoonga, Navi. Have a look at the bags in the corner. Looks like Red Rooster makes his living from some interesting stuff.’

  While they waited for the cleaners and the ambulance and the detectives, they managed to scare the terrified Ben sufficiently to elicit further information from him. Yes, Red dealt in nyaope and other drugs. Yes, he had been planning to take masses of the stuff back with him tonight to the boat. Yes, he was planning to sell the stuff abroad, because he had a commission to take some guy to sea so he thought why not use the opportunity to sell abroad. No, he wasn’t sure where exactly it was but he thought from something Red had said that it was somewhere up the coast in another country. Maybe Zanzibar. Maybe Maputo. No, he himself wasn’t part of the boat thing. He knew nothing about that, he said. He was just a friend of Red’s and looked after his house for him while he was away on business. Yes, he had a licence for the gun. No, he hadn’t used it before, except on a firing range.

  Ryder searched quickly but thoroughly as they both threw out questions at Ben.

  By the time the clean-up operation was taken over by the uniforms and the medics, with Dippenaar and Koekemoer being their normal helpful and efficient selves, Big Red had recovered consciousness. He was going to have one helluva headache, the medics reported. He was put in the ambulance under guard and taken off to be processed. Dippenaar handled the formalities and it was decided that the Westville Station would be the first port of call for him and his companion. But they would be dealt with separately, the big man obviously needing hospital.

  ‘OK, guys,’ said Ryder, finally. ‘We need to get back to the unit and brief Nyawula, and make a few adjustments to the strategy for tonight. Now we know that we have the rooster and we know the ship won’t be sailing, we’ll re-think exactly how we prepare for Swanepoel.’

  As they started winding things down, Ryder, Pillay, Dippenaar and Koekemoer laughed and joked their way across the street. Ryder held them back from going to the two cars for a moment, because he said he wanted to point out to K and D the school athletics track and give them a quick run-down of what had happened. He ignored Pillay’s protest, and they all walked across to the floodlit field. Pillay made the initial sounds of protest, but she went along with it because, she would only partly admit to herself, she actually felt quite good about it. She hadn’t run like that for a long time.

  ‘I clocked you, you know, Navi?’ said Ryder, as they surveyed the newly whitewashed tracks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I clocked you doing the hundred metres with the guy pacing you.’

  ‘Piss off, Jeremy.’

  ‘Serious. I’m afraid, though, that young Mr Barrington still has the school record. I clocked you at only 11.5 seconds.’

  ‘Rubbish man. There was a wind against me. I definitely did it in at least 11.2, and I was running one-handed, anyway. Barrington didn’t have his arm in a sling. So make that a flat eleven seconds from me.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable to me. Guys?’

  Agreement from K and D. Laughter and teasing, and further insults.

  ‘OK. Let’s go, team,’ said Ryder.

  20.50.

  The last panel van had left more than an hour ago. Maybe that had been it: maybe the final one. There hadn’t been a gap of more than twenty minutes between any of the vans until now.

  He had counted thirteen arrivals in total since the first one he had observed. How many there had been before that he couldn’t know. They comprised a mixture of different shapes and sizes. A Mercedes Sprinter with what Thabethe estimated to be about a two-ton payload, a smaller Volkswagen Caddy with about a half-ton payload, an Opel Movano with a carrying capacity of maybe one and a half tons, and other vehicles whose make and model he didn’t know. The only thing they had in common was that they were all enclosed vans. Some of them had been the same van returning from an earlier visit, but each of them was handled in the same way. Arrive, door opens, into the garage, ten to fifteen minutes in there, then out again. Wait. Then the next one. A glance at the height of each vehicle above the brick-paved apron as it entered the garage told Thabethe, as it would any observer, that the vans all departed in a much heavier state than that in which they had arrived.

  What had been of particular interest to Thabethe was something that occurred in only two of the instances. On about the fourth arrival he had observed, and again on or about the ninth or the tenth, the van had in each case been accompanied by a car, which had parked outside while the van went into the garage. In both these cases, when the van had emerged a man had come out onto the apron. Not the fat Afrikaner. This was a man who looked twice the weight of the Afrikaner. His extraordinary obesity was magnified by the fact that he was also incredibly short, and he waddled. On each of the two occasions he waddled over to the driver of the accompanying car, spoke briefly, and was handed a bag. In the first instance it was a brown paper bag. In the second it was a large manila envelope. On each occasion he looked over his shoulder, and up and down the street, tucked the received article under his arm, and walked back to the garage door as the cars pulled away, leading their respective vans, turned left into Sandile Thusi, and disappeared into the traffic.

  ‘Cash,’ thought Thabethe. ‘Must be. Big one. Afrikaner boy said they pulling big money. Big man, big money. For Skhura.’

  He assumed that in each of the other instances the driver of the van had handed over the cash, if it was indeed cash, inside the garage and away from possible observers. In the two instances in the street they had handled the transaction separately from the driver of the van, for whatever reason. Whether or not he was right about this, Thabethe was convinced that money had changed hands each time in the course of the afternoon’s transactions.

  It was time to check the hou
se.

  21.50.

  Pillay, Koekemoer, and Dippenaar were being briefed by Ryder about the impending midnight raid on the yacht.

  ‘Nyawula has been speaking to the commander at Point Road, guys, and the Harbour team are also set up for the raid at exactly midnight. He’s also been talking to Durban North and they’re providing a couple of plain-clothes along with a narcotics specialist. We’ll have all their names soon.’

  ‘Aren’t you and Navi going to be there to harpoon the whale in person, Jeremy?’

  ‘No, Koeks, not unless we get a call that he’s actually evaded everyone and made it to the yacht without being spotted. In that case the Harbour guys will let us know the moment he arrives and Navi and I will drop everything and be there like a shot.’

  ‘Jeremy knows that I want to be the one to read him his rights, Koeks,’ said Pillay. ‘That’s something I’m looking forward to, big, big time.’

  ‘We don’t expect Swanepoel to make his move until a couple of hours after midnight. With Big Red already out of the picture and the boat not capable of sailing without him, Nyawula says there’s no chance of Swanepoel slipping out to sea. So he doesn’t want the four of us just sitting there waiting for the next four hours when something big could go down elsewhere. I think he’s right. The vessel’s scheduled for sailing at 4.00 am, and we assume Swanepoel’s going to hide out until the very last moment before he arrives at the wharf. But by then the Harbour guys will have taken over the vessel, taken the crew in for questioning, and be set up in place for Swanepoel’s arrival sometime an hour or two after midnight. Navi and I will get down there only after midnight, if nothing has happened before then, so that we can be in place to bust the Major when he arrives.’

  ‘If Jeremy and I are wrong in our assumptions and he arrives earlier than the crew guy told us this evening,’ Pillay added, ‘the Harbour team have the go-ahead to call us immediately and wait for us to get there, but to secure the boat if there’s any panic.’

  ‘What do you want me and Koeks to do, Jeremy?’

  ‘Thanks, Dipps. Captain says he’d like the two of you to be here, riding free like me and Navi, until whatever action goes down actually starts happening. I hope that’s OK.’

  K and D gave their ‘no problem’ assurances.

  ‘It’s only if Swanepoel evades being spotted by any of our guys in the next couple of hours and if he actually makes it to the wharf before midnight without any of us being alerted, that Navi and I will hit the gas and join the Harbour team.’

  ‘So they’re there really only to cover the base and nail him in case he slips through our fingers and arrives earlier than you expect him to?’

  ‘That’s it, Koeks. So, to recap, the Harbour team will hit the boat at midnight and take the crew into custody. Two plainclothes will be on hand to welcome Swanepoel if he arrives early, with another two in the shadows, and the bust will be videotaped in its entirety from two different cameras that are being set up as we speak.’

  ‘Shit. It’s hard sitting and waiting. I want to go whaling.’

  ‘Patience, Navi. All good things come to those who wait,’ said Koekemoer. ‘Want some coffee?’

  22.25.

  Thabethe dropped silently from the tree onto the soft ground. After scouting around outside in the darkened garden, pausing for some time in the hydrangeas, checking in each window, and refraining from entering through the window with the damaged latch, he had chosen the tree. He had been up there for what seemed like a much longer time but was in reality only about an hour. He had sat immobile, straining every sense to identify how many people might be indoors.

  He moved like a cat, light on his feet, and quickly opened the window. The latch was still loose. No-one had checked it. He slithered like an eel through the window and into the room, and stood, silent for a moment. He paused, listening, straining to hear even the slightest sound from either inside the house or outside in the street. Then he moved a couple of paces to the left of the window, and stood again for a moment, ears again straining to hear anything from the interior of the house.

  He waited, as he had done the night before, for his eyes to adjust. Then he moved across the room, threading his way through the mixture of empty wooden crates and unpacked boxes lying open, discarded sheets of industrial plastic and shattered planks lying on the floor, bent nails and torn labels and discarded stickers strewn about, until he stood behind the door. He listened at the hinge of the door, and heard distant muffled voices. He slipped quickly into the passage and into the next room. The same. Empty crates and boxes and detritus. Probably the same in the kitchen and garage.

  Then he heard the voices, distinctly nearer. They were coming out of the room at the end and about to enter the passage. Then the voices stopped. Nothing. Silence. He waited. And waited. Then he heard someone entering the passage and moving away from him, toward the kitchen. He heard the kitchen door close. Then nothing. He waited. Then in the distance he heard the outside door, leading from the kitchen into the back area and then to the garage. The back door appeared to have been slammed shut. He waited. Nothing. He moved slowly down the passage. He put his hand on the kitchen door handle. Before he could open it, he felt the rush of air behind him and stepped aside to his right just in time to avoid the worst of the crushing blow that had been aimed at his head.

  Dirk smashed the heavy wooden stool onto Thabethe’s left shoulder, screaming as he did so.

  ‘Vic! I got him. Now, Vic!’

  Swanepoel ripped open the kitchen door and barged back into the passage. But Thabethe was too quick for him. His left arm was useless, numbed from the blow to his shoulder, but he had the presence of mind to kick out at Dirk’s damaged knee, eliciting a piercing scream and doubling his assailant over right into the path of the advancing Major. It brought him an extra two seconds as he scrambled up to his feet, and it allowed him time to draw the Z88 from the small of his back where it was tucked into his belt.

  Dirk watched in horror as the enormous three-hundred-and-fifty-pound bulk of the Major engulfed Thabethe and they both fell to the floor, the Major’s hands clutching at Thabethe’s throat and Thabethe’s left leg smashing horribly at a devastating angle against the upended stool, the calf muscle crushed under the weight of his adversary. But his gun hand was free and the massive abdomen of the Major was pressed directly against the Z88. Thabethe’s wide-open staring coal-black eyes were two inches from those of the Major as he pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, four times, then paused, and as the Major stared at him in agonised horror Thabethe pulled the trigger again. And again. And again. His black eyes stared back in hatred at the fat man as the Major realised what was happening. Dirk stared, frozen in horror for a moment. Then, as Thabethe struggled to get out from under the mountain of flesh, Dirk, unable to get to his feet, scrambled backward arse-first into the room from which he had emerged, slammed the door behind him, reached up in agony for the bolt and slid it into place. Then scrambled away from the door in case Thabethe pumped bullets into it.

  But Thabethe had another focus. He stood up, his left leg and left arm almost paralysed with pain. He stood over the Major and put an eighth bullet into his forehead. Then aimed at the fat man’s throat and pulled the trigger. Click. Again. Click. Nothing. He looked at Dirk’s door. Looked back at the corpse. Let the Z88 slip from his hand onto the floor. Then he hobbled in agony over Swanepoel’s body, through the kitchen, and out the back door. He stumbled outside, through the garage, out into the road, and made his way to the white Ford Escort van.

  22.40.

  The calls came in from every source imaginable. iPhones, pagers, land-lines, car-phones were ringing all over. Shots fired on Sandile Thusi. Neighbours, passing cars, patrons from local restaurants. They were all on their phones tweeting and texting and calling.

  Cars soon streamed down Margaret Mncadi, Pixley ka Seme, Stalwart Simelane Street, some came from Berea, some chose Umgeni Road and others rounded the Greyville Race Course. From all o
ver they came. Detectives and uniforms, medics and private tow-cars. Word was out, and it was confusing. The messages ranged from fire to shooting to stabbing to theft to rape. They built on one another. One person said he had actually seen the shooting.

  Well, not actually seen, but, you know, it was like so, you know, there! Like right next to me. Over the wall there.

  His message was passed on, and elaborated in the passing on. This is a big one. You should get over here.

  The crowds gathered. The sirens approached.

  22.45.

  Thabethe retrieved the key balanced on top of the rear right wheel. Fighting the waves of pain in both his left shoulder and his left leg, he unlocked the door to the Ford Escort. Dragged himself, in agony, behind the wheel, battled to find the ignition, started the vehicle, took off, and tore out of the parking spot and into the night. He careened across the inside lane on Sandile Thusi, flung the wheel over to the left, then lurched into the right lane. He could hear sirens in the distance behind him, and could see the faint glow of blue lights in the rear-view mirror. He was going to make it. He screamed in anger and frustration as he floored the pedal. He was convinced that the door behind which Dirk was hiding contained a stash of cash, and here he was running away from it. But at least he was not going to be caught. He was going to make it.