Death Dealing

by Ian Patrick

  The detectives followed her out of the house and they gathered together in a semi-circle facing her on the front lawn as she addressed them.

  ‘OK, guys. What do you think?’

  11.00.

  Thabethe, Mgwazeni and Wakashe approached the cash dispenser more in hope than in confidence. They tried all of the bank cards. All of them had been cancelled. They beat a hasty retreat in case there were alarm systems of which they were unaware. Thabethe tossed the remaining wallet into the nearest refuse bin and they hailed a taxi to put as much distance as possible between them and the bank.

  The turning off of such an easy source of cash was not too much of a concern for Thabethe. They had pulled just under ten thousand rands from the various bank accounts of the two prison guards, and the trade in whoonga was now rolling out better than they might have hoped. The very profitable sale to those six youths the day before had prompted among the three friends some optimism about the future of their business. Thabethe thought back on how he had grown the business a few months ago, before he was taken down by the interfering Detective Ryder. He was not going to let that happen again. He was going to be very careful this time.

  To Wakashe it seemed that Thabethe was so well known that the suppliers were almost begging him to take their product. This was a man to stick with, he thought. For a long time Wakashe had preferred to work alone, but he felt comfortable with these two new acquaintances.

  11.55.

  Ryder and Pillay remained to take care of the Glenwood murder scene. Koekemoer and Dippenaar had left the scene much earlier in response to a call from Piet Cronje: two detectives were needed at a new crime scene. A break-in and burglary on the Esplanade, he told them.

  The ambulance eventually departed with the daughter, the medics leaving the mother with a more optimistic prognosis for the teenager than most surgeons might have provided. The driver of the ambulance, on the other hand, held out no hope whatsoever. He had seen cases like this and as far as he was concerned the girl would probably be dead before they got to the hospital. But he kept his view to himself while his colleagues were busy lying to the mother.

  The forensics team were still at it, cameras clicking and laptops humming and different coloured plastic markers still being placed throughout the house. Nadine Salm was patrolling, issuing instructions, and occasionally speaking into a hand-held recording device. She had taken a moment to come over to Ryder and Pillay and tell them that her team had finished their work in the living room, where the parents were, and that they could now use that room for any interviews they wanted to conduct with the parents, as long as they remained outside the taped area.

  The Chaplain remained with the parents until after the bodies of the two boys had been taken away. He had warned them about what to expect, and had explained that they shouldn’t read anything into the apparent disinterest of the mortuary men as they moved the bodies. They were doing this kind of thing all day, every day, he told them, and it was their way of dealing with the difficulty of the job. He wasn’t sure his words provided any comfort at all. He had never himself got used to the apparent cold disregard as mortuary workers carried bodies to their van, conversing about everything under the sun rather than the bodies they were handling, as if they were carrying lumps of wood rather than once-living creatures.

  The Chaplain’s words provided no comfort. The mother ignored his request that she should turn her back on the stretcher-bearers and face him instead, as they carried out her dead sons. She resolutely refused to do so, and fell to her knees, facing the bodies as they passed directly in front of her. The Chaplain hung his head and gritted his teeth as he tried to shut out the resultant unbearable howl of anguish and utter desolation.

  The father remained inscrutable, staring ahead into nothingness.

  The Chaplain told Ryder he had done all he could for the moment. He had advised the parents on what to expect next regarding the police procedures and the other activities in the house, the coming funeral options, and the need for formal identification, in due course, of the bodies. He wasn’t sure that he had reached through to the father. After examination by forensics, the man’s wound had been cleaned by the medics and his head had been bandaged, and the original diagnosis of a fracture had been reversed. But he had remained like a zombie throughout, the Chaplain said. The mother had begun to settle down, he whispered. It was going to be a struggle for both of them, but he thought it would be OK now for the detectives to put a few questions to the mother.

  Ryder and Pillay thanked him, and he left. To go across town to a similar case, he told them. The two detectives went over to talk to the mother.

  The two parents sat in the living room staring at nothing in particular. The father remained as he had been when they had first seen him a couple of hours earlier. The mother stood as the detectives entered.

  ‘Detective Ryder? Detective Pillay?’ she said in a tremulous voice, as they approached her. ‘You can talk to me. The Chaplain told me what to expect from you. You can talk to me now. Not my husband. As you can see...’

  She covered her face with both hands, and the tears came fast.

  Ryder and Pillay prepared themselves for what they saw was going to be a difficult session, but she recovered almost immediately.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Detective Ryder. I can’t...’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Ryder. ‘OK. Really. Don’t worry. There’s no pressure. If you would rather...’

  ‘No. No. I’m OK. We can talk. I want to talk… I want to… I want to help you get these...’

  The detectives were taken by surprise as she suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Ryder by the lapels of his brown leather jacket, twisting them in her hands as she blurted out her words.

  ‘You must catch these… these things, Detective Ryder. Please. You must catch them. These evil men. They’ve killed us. They’ve destroyed this family. They’re animals. You must...’

  The tears spurted from her eyes, and the anguished howling began again. Pillay quickly stepped in and put her arms around the woman as she buried her head into Ryder’s chest, the agonised wail being swallowed up into a choke. Ryder and Pillay both stood, uncomfortably, with their arms around her.

  Suddenly her husband stood up. The movement was sudden and noisy, as he knocked over the small table next to the sofa. It was enough to make his wife step back from the detectives, and she turned to him as he stepped forward to address Ryder.

  ‘You have children, Detective?’ he said, wildly.

  ‘Yes, sir. I do, sir. I have two sons. Teenagers. Boys.’

  Ryder knew that this was not the best possible response under the circumstances, but he could think of no other.

  ‘Take them away, Detective,’ the man said, pointing his finger right into Ryder’s face, an inch from his nose. ‘Take them away, out of this city. Out of this country. Take them out of this jungle. This is no place for children.’

  His wife tried desperately to calm him down. She held on to his right arm in an attempt to break the hostility of the gesture, and when that failed, as he held his arm rigid, she threw her arms around her husband and started the howling again. That worked, and they both melted into sobs in each other’s arms. It was as if a dam wall had cracked open, and the man wept freely, though quietly.

  Ryder and Pillay allowed them to let it out and after a few seconds the man managed to prise himself away from his wife, and addressed the two detectives in a subdued voice.

  ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m sorry...’

  Ryder and Pillay murmured their reassurances together, and guided the two of them back to the sofa and got them seated together, holding on to one another. Then the detectives drew up chairs for themselves and sat down to face them.

  It was one of the most difficult sessions Ryder and Pillay had ever experienced in post-trauma interviews. But after nearly an hour of gentle enquiry and coaxing and checking and double-checking, they derived from the couple a picture of what had taken plac
e. This was at the expense of a growing sense of the horror of what had transpired, as the couple relived each stage of their traumatic experience.

  As they were drawing to a close, two pieces of news arrived that provided, if not comfort, at least some respite from the trauma. First came the news, via one of the constables sent in by Nadine Salm, that the doctors were now confident the daughter would pull through. This led to cascades of tears from the parents. And some from Pillay too, Ryder noticed. And some from Ryder too, Pillay noticed.

  Second came the news, a few minutes later from the same constable, that the woman’s sister and her husband were outside on the driveway. They had come from Pietermaritzburg to fetch the couple and take them home with them.

  This news helped all four of them, the detectives included, and they all stood up to make for the front door. Ryder and Pillay were relieved that the couple would have someone to look after them. Ryder took the woman’s hand in both of his as he spoke to her.

  ‘Thank you for speaking to us, Mrs...’

  ‘My name is Hlengiwe Khuzwayo,’ the mother said, wiping her tears away with a small handkerchief clutched in her free hand. ‘My husband’s name is Kwanele.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Khuzwayo...’ Ryder began.

  ‘Hlengiwe, please.’

  ‘Hlengiwe. OK. Thank you, Hlengiwe. Thank you, too, Kwanele. My name is Jeremy.’

  ‘And please call me Navi. Navi Pillay.’

  The Khuzwayos each in turn shook Pillay’s hand, too, and then entwined their arms around each other, as Ryder continued.

  ‘Thank you, both, for speaking to us. We know it hasn’t been easy. Navi and I won’t rest, we can assure you, until we get these men...’

  The man broke free from his wife again, and grabbed the lapels of Ryder’s jacket. He spoke nose to nose with the detective, with the tears coming fast and running down his cheeks.

  ‘Please, Detective Ryder. Please don’t rest. I beg you. Don’t stop. Get these men. Get these evil… These men have to be dealt with…’

  It seemed to all four of them that there was not much to add. So they all nodded, as if this was some secret pact among the four of them. This would happen. The deal was sealed. The four of them had agreed. These men would be caught. They would be dealt the appropriate punishment.

  Ryder and Pillay watched from the front door as Hlengiwe Khuzwayo’s sister and brother-in-law hugged the two damaged parents and all four of them burst into tears before getting into the car and driving away from the hell that had once been a family home.

  12.30.

  Dippenaar and Koekemoer questioned more than a dozen local residents on Esplanade Avenue and in the vicinity of Victoria Lodge. They had a quick look at the break-in scene at the Lodge and set things in motion for a case file to be opened and for the residents to make an insurance claim when they returned from holiday. Nothing out of the ordinary. A burglary involving the loss of about eight or nine thousand rands worth of goods, which the owner would doubtless upscale, in her report, to about thirty thousand rands so that the insurance company would get a Loss Adjustor to bring it down again to eight or nine thousand. All square, Dippenaar remarked. Everyone wins. Especially the burglars.

  Following the inspection of the burglary, they went walkabout. They learned from the locals that break-ins were frequent in the neighbourhood, and insurance claims were the exception rather than the rule, because most of the locals couldn’t afford insurance. They had found it cheaper to band together as a vigilante group and beat the hell out of any kids caught stealing. This hadn’t always worked as they had hoped. In one instance the unsolved murder of one of the neighbours had prompted rumours that a local gang had decided to send a strong signal to would-be vigilantes.

  Despair and pessimism. The two detectives felt themselves spiralling downward into the mire of negativity exuded by all the locals they questioned. Then along came the day-shift security guard at Victoria Lodge. An ageless man, with more wrinkles on his face, Koekemoer later said to his partner, than Dippenaar’s scrotum. The detectives estimated him to be about eighty years old, his grizzled grey hair looking almost arctic white against his ebony skin. He immediately lifted the detectives out of their gloom.

  ‘Ja, madala. I heard from the other guard that you were coming on duty at midday today. How are you, my friend?’

  ‘Yes sir. Is Inspector Koekemoer or Inspector Dippenaar?’

  ‘I’m Koekemoer, my friend. Detective, not Inspector. This is Detective Dippenaar.’

  ‘Me, I’m Joseph, Inspector. The guard from this morning, the one you spoke to, she is Henry.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dippenaar. ‘Henry told us that he’s your son and that he works nights mostly and that you work days mostly, and that you got him the job at Victoria Lodge and that you’ve been the main security man there for more than fifty years.’

  ‘Is right, Inspector Dippenaar. Henry, she is a good boy, that one. Me, on January 14 I’m being there fifty years. The madam she gave me a birthday cake.’

  The detectives exchanged glances before Koekemoer continued.

  ‘Henry says he found the burglary this morning and he doesn’t know how they got inside.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector Koekemoer, I’m talking to Henry just now. She calls me on my cell-phone. I came to look for you but you went the other way so now I’m finding you. I’m wanting to tell you something.’

  ‘What’s that, Joseph? What do you want to tell us?’

  ‘I’m not the police inspector, you know, Inspector Koekemoer, but I’m thinking maybe I saw something just now, only ten minutes.’

  ‘What did you see, Joseph?’ asked Dippenaar.

  ‘Inspector Dippenaar, I see these two young men. They are black men. Maybe twenty years. Maybe twenty-two. I see them walking there on Margaret Mncadi Avenue when I am coming to work. And I’m thinking right away one time that these men are skabengas. They are walking and looking up Esplanade Avenue and laughing and I am thinking that maybe they are the ones who are stealing from the flat and they are coming back to laugh at the people. You see Henry she is phoning me on my cell-phone and telling me there is a robbery and the police are there and they are looking, and I see these two men they are laughing. They are talking isiZulu. I’m hearing them say bad things about amaphoyisa and then they are saying bad things about some other girl they were hitting early this morning, and then, when I am passing them in the street, I’m looking at their arms and I’m seeing scratches on the one man’s arms and the other man’s face and they are saying bad things like some girl was scratching them and they have the blood there but they are also laughing. The one man he is biting the matchstick, and he is playing with the matchstick in his mouth. I don’t like those men, Inspector Koekemoer. Inspector Dippenaar. I’m thinking these are bad men.’

  Koekemoer and Dippenaar leaped into action. They bundled Joseph into their car and within minutes they were driving up and down each side street leading into or away from Margaret Mncadi Avenue. Then they widened the search area and that’s when Joseph identified the men.

  ‘There, Inspector Koekemoer. Those men. Those men.’

  ‘OK. OK, Joseph. You sure?’ said Dippenaar.

  ‘I’m sure, Inspector Dippenaar. I’m sure. You see, they are going to Albert Park. Lots of skabengas there.’

  ‘OK. OK, Joseph,’ said Koekemoer. ‘Can we let you out here? Are you happy to walk back to the Lodge from here? We don’t want people with us when we stop these men.’

  ‘I’m understanding, Inspector. Hau! I’m sorry. Detective. Not Inspector. But you can come and ask me the questions at Victoria Lodge if you want me, Inspector.’

  The detectives let him alight and they both thanked him profusely before winding up their windows. The old man watched them as they drove slowly up the road keeping a safe distance behind the two men as they turned into Diakonia Avenue.

  13.45.

  Ryder and Pillay were in Nyawula’s office, bringing him up to speed with the details of the att
ack on the Khuzwayo family.

  ‘What explains such barbaric action, Jeremy? So they hacked the children to pieces but left the parents relatively unscathed. What’s that about?’

  ‘Navi’s been speaking to Fathima, Sibo. She counsels most of the stations in the Cluster. Navi? You want to share what you told me?’

  ‘That’s right, Captain. I gave Fathima only the broadest of outlines about what we saw this morning, and she was at pains to tell me she couldn’t provide anything definitive without much closer study. But from what I told her she said that although these guys were probably high on a whoonga fix, there must have been something else at play, too. She thinks that the nyaope would have put them in a frenzy once they started, but she also says they probably went for the kids because of sheer envy. They saw the Khuzwayo lads as rich kids with rich toys. They attacked the home early, before the kids left for school. They saw them dressed in smart school uniforms, playing computer games on some fancy equipment in their bedrooms, and something probably snapped. She said the ferocity of the machete action is probably also explained by...’

  The Captain’s phone rang, and Sergeant Cronje shouted through the inter-leading door.

  ‘Sorry, Captain. It’s Detective Koekemoer with an urgent call for Jeremy.’

  ‘Fine, thanks, Piet. You can put it down. Hullo, Koeks, I’m passing you over to Jeremy.’

  Nyawula handed over the receiver and Ryder took the call.

  ‘Yes, Koeks? What’s happening?’

  ‘Jeremy, sorry. Your cell-phone is obviously switched off for your meeting. But Dipps and I thought you should know this right away. We’ve been busy since we left you to check out the scene on the Esplanade this morning, and now we’ve got something for you.’