by Ian Patrick
But he hadn’t got as far as knocking on the door. He heard the ear-shattering sound of music coming from the garage at the top of the driveway. He walked toward the side door of the garage, which was wide open, and suddenly two young boys ran from the garage toward the back of the house. They didn’t turn. They didn’t see him. They disappeared around the back, so he quickly looked in at the doorway. There was a sound system, blaring out music that he couldn’t even identify. It sounded strange. Like nothing he had ever heard. There was nobody in the garage. These boys had run from the garage leaving their sound system playing music to nobody.
He looked around the corner at the back area of the property. No dog. The boys had left open the back door. He considered following them to the back door but then he thought better of it. If he were to be confronted by someone, what would he say? Why was he approaching the house via the back door? He changed his mind and retraced his steps back to the front of the house.
He walked onto the patio. The front door was open. No dog. He approached the door. He could hear the sound of some machinery. In the distance was other music. Not the same music that came from the garage, but something just as awful to his ears. Loud, screeching, mechanical sounds in the distance. Then he realised that the sound of the machinery was the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Someone was using the vacuum.
He decided not to ring the bell. Someone was in there, somewhere. They were cleaning the house. There was definitely no dog. He decided to re-join his companions in the car in the street. He reported back to Thabethe and Wakashe. It looked like Ryder’s wife and his two boys were the only people in the house, he said. No dog. Perfect. It was time to act.
Then, just as they were about to alight from the vehicle, a car appeared at the top of the road. They waited. The car turned into the same driveway.
Ryder.
The men seethed in anger. They couldn’t see this through. Ryder was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Wakashe disagreed. He wanted to take on the detective. There were three of them. They would have surprise on their side. If they could take out Ryder they would have his wife and sons. The other two argued against it.
Impasse. What should they do?
14.15.
Fiona Ryder switched off the vacuum cleaner for a moment, and asked Jeremy to pop out to the supermarket to pick up a few things for dinner. He was busy removing his jacket, pistol and shoulder holster, and was changing into something more comfortable. Having just arrived home he was looking forward to relaxing in front of the television. The afternoon rugby promised good things, and that was to be followed by a leisurely Saturday family dinner at home, for a change, during the course of which he and the boys would produce their presents for her birthday. They would include a suitably wrapped meaty bone from Sugar-Bear, which, according to the attached card signed with a paw-print, the dog would request her to cook for him and then share at lunch the next day.
Ryder was happy to run the errand. He needed to add some more beer to the supplies, anyway, before the rugby began. He put the pistol in its normal position, under a T-shirt in his wardrobe, then changed into shorts, a casual short-sleeve, and his old running shoes, and made for the front door.
‘Where are the guys?’
‘Didn’t you hear them? Banging away in the garage. Or maybe upstairs. I don’t know. They’re running between Jason’s room and the garage. They’re recording some sound-track of their own to lay over some computer game, or something. One moment they’re up in his room. The next they’re out in the garage. Been going on since mid-morning.’
‘And Sugar-Bear?’
‘Sugar-Bear’s depressed. You know how he hates it when I vacuum. He’s upstairs in Jonathan’s room with his paws over his ears. No sheep in sight. Noisy household. No-one wants to play with him. He’s very sad.’
‘OK. OK. I’ll give him a quick run when I’m back. I’ll have twenty minutes or more before the kick-off.’
He pecked her on the cheek and was gone. She resumed work on the carpets.
The noise of the vacuum cleaner permeated the entire house except in both bedrooms upstairs, where it had competition from two separate sound desks, one in each room. It seemed to their mother as if the Ryder boys were trying to outperform each other with the volume of their respective sound systems. She had the fleeting thought that perhaps the sound of the vacuum cleaner was actually quite soothing by comparison.
Outside, in the garage, there was another source of sound: the thudding beat of Candlebox’s Into the sun. All these sources of sound working together added to the depression of Sugar-Bear, lying upstairs in Jonathan Ryder’s bedroom, facing the window with his back to the door.
And all of this sound meant that neither the dog nor the boys nor Fiona Ryder heard the three intruders when they arrived.
14.30.
Ryder was very quick with the shopping. The list comprised only five items, which were all on display in abundance. He quickly picked them up, collected a twelve-pack of his favourite lager, and was back inside the Camry within minutes.
The traffic was flowing easily, so he managed to listen to barely one of his favourite Fleetwood tracks by the time he returned home. He only half-registered the battered white 1990 Opel Astra parked on the verge just down from his driveway as he turned into it.
Thirty minutes before the game started. He’d take Sugar-Bear for a quick twenty-minute run, get back home, and grab a beer just in time to watch the kick-off.
The double-length single-width garage was positioned at the back of the property, at the end of the long driveway. A hedge bordering the neighbouring property ran from one corner of the garage along the length of the driveway down to the road. On the other front corner of the garage the driveway gave access to a small paved area providing a route to the back garden, and at this corner there was a large clump of pampas grass, three metres in diameter, with flowering stalks approaching some four metres in height.
The Ryders seldom parked a car in the garage. It was too much bother. The garage was now home to bicycles and guitars and drums and other paraphernalia, so the two cars were usually left parked on the driveway in single file directly in front of the garage’s large remote-controlled metal door. Years back it had been necessary to park them inside because of opportunistic burglaries in the neighbourhood. Ryder had burglar-proofed the garage himself at that time, employing his particular brand of do-it-yourself skills. But burglars had then made themselves scarce, anyway, with the advent of Sugar-Bear. So the garage was no longer considered necessary to ensure security for the two vehicles.
Ryder parked the Camry directly behind Fiona’s car at the top of the driveway and made his way toward the back entrance of the house. As he rounded the corner and passed the pampas grass he saw that the side door of the garage was wide open. He decided to pop in and greet the boys who, he thought, were probably still playing music together.
Well before he approached the door he could hear music, obviously recorded and not live. The tortured sounds of some post-grunge number struck his ears, but it was not the only sensation that he was aware of. As he was about to enter the room he felt a rush of air from behind and instinctively jumped forward.
Thabethe cursed as the sharpened point of his bicycle spoke missed its target and thrust instead into thin air. Ryder’s rapid movement caused him to lose balance. The bag of groceries and the carton of beer went flying, and he fell sideways against a stack of wood as he turned to face the adversary, who he recognised instantly. Thabethe.
The panic in Thabethe’s eyes made them even wider than Ryder could have imagined was possible. The eyes bulged as if they were about to pop out of his head, and for an instant the detective froze in shock.
Thabethe knew he had lost the advantage. He immediately stepped back, slammed the metal door, and threw the outside bolt. As an extra measure he turned the key in the lock, withdrew it, and flung it away into the pampas grass. He paused, thought for a moment, and then bent down and pulled open the
door of the small metal box on the right of the door, outside. He reached into the box and threw off the main power switch, cutting off all electricity to the outbuilding. And rendering completely useless the power switch that operated the front door of the garage from inside.
Ryder threw himself against the door a second after Thabethe had thrown the bolt. He could hear the key turn in the lock. Then he could hear the hard metallic clunk as the power switch was thrown. He was plunged into gloom and the screeching sound of the music instantly disappeared. A moment of complete silence ensued.
There was still some daylight coming through the single window, high up and barred. Ryder didn’t even consider the possibility of breaking through the window. He had put those iron bars in himself, after their first burglary, and he knew they were as burglar-proofed as any bars across a window could be. He had reinforced with metal the concrete slabs that anchored the ends of the bars. He had overdone it, as Fiona had remarked all those years ago when he was congratulating himself on a job well done. What if, one day, you need to change the window? He had ignored her question and sulked. Why has she always got to find something wrong with my DIY? he had thought at the time.
He looked around frantically in the gloom. Various power tools, now useless. Only naked brute force could work in this situation, he thought. The side door was out of the question. The bolt and the key and the metal frame were completely tamper-proof. If there were to be any hope at all of bending metal, the larger expanse of the front door would be easier. Fractionally. Perhaps. With the right tools.
A small five-pounder hammer on the shelf in the corner. Too small against the thick metal of both the bolted side door and the power-operated main door. Nothing, anywhere, resembling a crow-bar. Hack-saws? Useless. What else?
Nothing except the large barrel in the corner. A barrel into which he had long ago poured wet concrete around a plastic tube balanced upright in the centre, so that it would set hard and leave a central hollowed-out core. So that he could thrust a large umbrella into it on windy days when the umbrella needed to be anchored. Another useless device, which had spent its last few years never anchoring any umbrella but serving as a shelf-space, simply taking up more room as another place to collect junk in the corner of the garage.
But there was nothing else.
Meanwhile, as Ryder swept off the junk and manoeuvred the barrel closer to the door, Thabethe strode from the now locked side door of the garage to the front of the house, his bicycle spoke at the ready.
As he rounded the corner he saw Mgwazeni confronting Fiona Ryder who had run out across the patio and down onto the lawn.
14.38.
Wakashe slammed the door to the bedroom on the upper floor, trapping Sugar-Bear inside. The dog barked hysterically, scratching at the door. The bark turned into a howl, as if the animal knew that its very reason for existence - to protect the Ryder family - had been placed in jeopardy. After scrabbling at the door in vain, and leaping up to the door handle, snarling and snapping at it to no effect, he stopped, paused an instant, and turned his attention to the window, left slightly ajar and hooked on the brass stay-fastener. He sprang up against it.
Meanwhile Wakashe turned on the two Ryder boys, who had dashed out of the adjacent bedroom to see what was happening.
Jonathan Ryder, at fifteen years, was no fighter. He was well built, a powerful swimmer and a superb surfer, but he had never engaged in any activities remotely approaching physical combat. Jason Ryder, at thirteen, was different. Much smaller than his older brother, although with biceps and shoulders and thighs also showing the effects of years in the surf and on the drums, he had found himself in countless scraps in the playground, to the consternation of his mother. Following the school’s routine post-mortem consultations with the parents after these events, she had on occasion come to his defence against what she described as a totally unreasonable headmaster. Jeremy Ryder’s completely unhelpful interventions on these occasions had consisted of nothing more than taking Jason aside, privately, after the events in question, to enquire about what blows he had landed on the other boy and how he might improve his performance on any future occasion.
But this time there was no difference in the two boys’ approach to the common enemy. What Jonathan lacked in playground experience he had gained through hours at the computer. He somehow managed to balance hours of video games - especially those involving hand-to-hand combat - with superb academic results at school, so his parents had dealt with his games obsession with little more than despairing shakes of the head.
As a consequence, when Wakashe stepped forward to slash at the Ryder boys with the machete, clasped only loosely in the uncomfortable grip necessitated by the disabled two fingers, he encountered two quick-as-lightning responses. Jonathan kicked out at his panga-wielding hand. He struck the partial cast of the right wrist at exactly the same moment Jason smashed his mother’s favourite vase against the full plaster cast of the assailant’s left hand with its still-healing recently crushed carpus buckling once again under the pressure. The panga went flying forward, over the balcony, and the Ryder boys, as one, kicked out at Wakashe’s legs, both of them striking each shin just above the ankle. The effect was to send both of Wakashe’s legs backward and off the ground at the precise moment his body weight was leaning forward over the balcony in a vain attempt to grab back the falling machete.
Wakashe plummeted over the balcony, landing on his head on the floor below, and lay completely still. The formal autopsy report would indicate spinal shock, and would state that his spinal cord had been transected at C4-5, leading to an immediate loss of nerve supply to the entire body, and sudden demise.
The boys immediately thought of their mother, and started for the stairs.
‘Jonathan! Wait!’ shouted Jason. ‘Sugar-Bear!’
He stopped and ripped open the door to the bedroom containing the dog. It was empty. The window onto the balcony was wide open. They turned and ran for the stairs. The boys had barely started when they heard their mother scream.
Mgwazeni and Thabethe had trapped Fiona Ryder in the middle of the front lawn. Thabethe held his bicycle spoke ready for an underhand thrust as he advanced on her from the edge of the driveway. Mgwazeni was advancing from the opposite direction, his dagger held in the right hand, prepared for an overhead downward stab. She was caught, with nowhere to go. All three of them paused. Then she suddenly broke forward, deciding to take her chances against the dagger rather than the more lethal-looking spoke.
Mgwazeni’s right arm shot skyward, with the gleaming Okapi blade held high.
14.40.
Ryder was desperate. He could hear screams from the house, and he could hear Sugar-Bear barking frantically in the distance. The screams seemed to inject superhuman power into his psyche and into his muscles. He planted his feet into the ground, braced himself, took a deep breath, and clasped the giant barrel laden with concrete. He raised it slowly above his head, muscles and tendons screaming at him as they burned with the effort, while veins and arteries bulged in his face, neck and arms.
As he strained, holding the enormous weight above his head, an image flashed into his brain. Ryder remembered that in the 2012 London Olympics the Clean and Jerk record for his weight class was slightly more than two hundred and twenty kilogrammes. This barrel, exceeding two hundred, was some twenty kilogrammes short of that, but it would have put Ryder well into the competition on the day. With all the strength he could muster he hurled the barrel against the door.
The barrel buckled the metal, causing the door to spring partly out of its tracks on the right-hand side. It gave enough for Ryder to work on. He kicked at it and caused it to spring further out of the rails. Another kick and he had forged a gap large enough to break through.
He threw his full weight at the door and it finally gave way on the right-hand side.
14.41.
As Fiona Ryder made her move, Sugar-Bear sprang seemingly out of nowhere, bursting through the flower-bed at th
e far corner of the house and onto the tiled strip below the patio. From there, without a moment’s hesitation, he leaped into the air like a dolphin breaking the surface of the water and flew across three or four metres of space. He bounced once on the luxurious bright green lawn as if it were a sprung diving board and from there hurtled up onto the attacker. He seized Mgwazeni’s wrist just as the lethal weapon was slashing downward onto Fiona Ryder’s chest.
The powerful jaws clenched like a vice on the target, the sharp teeth cutting through skin and blood vessels. The long vicious canines penetrated the scapholunate joint, fracturing the scaphoid bone and eliciting an agonising scream from Mgwazeni. The sharp curved teeth from both the upper and lower jaws locked together right through the assailant’s wrist. Blood spurted from the severed radial and ulnar arteries. He dropped the dagger instantly and swung the dog one hundred and eighty degrees through the air in an attempt to wipe him off against the patio wall. Sugar-Bear held on as if his jaws were welded to this enemy who had dared to harm his mistress. Nothing was going to make him let go.
Except the unexpected attack from behind.
Fiona screamed in agonised horror as Thabethe ran forward with his sharpened bicycle spoke and plunged it into the animal’s side. It penetrated deeply. So deeply that Thabethe lost control of the weapon as Mgwazeni’s spinning movement took with it both the dog still attached to his wrist and the spoke now protruding grotesquely from the animal’s body. As dog and spoke both struck the wall, Sugar-Bear’s jaw finally loosened its grip and Mgwazeni broke free. Both he and Thabethe paused for a second to see whether the animal would stay down. It didn’t. Sugar-Bear snarled, seemingly treating the bicycle spoke sticking out from his body as if it were no more than a mere splinter, and clambered ungainly to his feet for another attack. The two men ran.