Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2)

by Ian Patrick

  It was only when she launched into a tirade about her own no-good son that Ryder finally managed to intervene.

  ‘Your son, he’s the one who lives there at the back of Nomivi’s Tavern? He’s the one they call...’

  ‘Yes, he is living there for many years. Many, many. That place. Where they do the drugs. I went there that one time. Only that one time. I went to give him a big hiding, yes he is a man but I still went there to - how you say there in the Afrikaner amaphoyisa - to bliksem him. Because he was leaving the girls all alone, you see, they were only fifteen years that time, Mr Jimmy, and they come to my place crying, to find me because they can’t find their father because he is with that terrible woman - no, I can’t talk any more about that one, hayi! But that one time I was there, and I see what they do there. They sell that nyaope thing there. Not there in the tavern, you see, I know that lady who she works there. She is like me. She chases all the skelms all the time, but there, outside, Mr Detective Jimmy, there where the young ones come. In the front there and in the back there. They sell the whoonga outside and then she can’t do anything. But she is calling the police. Many times, and they never come. Never. Never ever. Never. They do nothing! Nothing!’

  Ryder marvelled at the rapidity of the dozen or so slaps of her hands which accompanied this part of her tirade, with her hands sliding blisteringly fast against each other, up and down, almost as if she was slapping pizza dough.

  ‘Your son, he’s the one they call Spikes?’

  ‘Eh-heh. Yebo, Detective Jimmy. His friends they call him Spikes. Me, I call him, how you say, naughty! Very naughty one, that one.’

  At this point she screamed in sudden realisation that her sausage rolls were ready and Nobuhle sprang into action, with some relief, to get them out of the oven before they were scorched, while Jessica followed close behind to get the second coffee pot. Ryder could see the two of them giggling as soon as they were out of their grandmother’s line of vision.

  She reverted to her main theme about setting the country to rights while the sausage rolls and coffee were served by her granddaughters. But within a few minutes, as the old woman could see the genuine appreciation of the three of them tucking into her delicious rolls, she calmed down considerably, and something approaching a participative conversation started taking place. With numerous interjections from gogo about the competence of policing and the criminal justice system - which she referred to as the justice - he gradually enticed the twins into a free-flowing conversation and then gradually turned their attention back to Sunday evening.

  ‘Now, Nobuhle, Jessica, when Detective Pillay and I spoke to you on Tuesday, you remember we asked you if you could describe the three men?’

  ‘I’m remembering,’ said Jessica.

  ‘And me,’ said Nobuhle

  ‘And you told us that one man was fat and the other one was skinny. What I want to ask you, now, is this. Do you remember any of them wearing any special clothes? A shirt, or a hat, or...’

  ‘Shoes!’ the twins chorused together, immediately.

  Ryder smiled. They followed up, Jessica saying that the fat one had very fancy shoes, and Nobuhle saying he waddled like a duck in those shoes, and how they were bright and new and looked funny on his feet. Neither of them could remember anything else about the clothes, but with the Spikes connection and the fancy shoes Ryder had got what he wanted.

  The detective’s gratitude at the response from the twins gave the grandmother some pleasure. This, coupled with the fact that the scrumptious sausage rolls had been entirely demolished - neither Ryder nor the twins showing any reticence in reaching for more and more of them as they had conversed - and the coffee having been replenished twice and every last drop finished, had made her relax and moderate the volume and pace of her words.

  By the time Ryder eventually got up to leave, gogo was doing all she could to ameliorate any damage that might have been caused by the opinions she had expressed earlier. She knew that there were some good policemen in the country, she told him, and that there were some that worked very hard. But there were not enough of those good ones, and she would write to the commander at the station just around the corner to tell him that he must get more policemen like Detective Jimmy Rider.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Mkhize,’ said Ryder as he moved toward the door to leave. ‘My name is Jeremy, by the way. Not Jimmy. But it’s no problem.’

  ‘Hau! Me, I’m sorry, Mr Jeremy.’

  ‘No, really, it’s not a...’

  ‘Now I must telephone my son, that skelm, and tell him I told him the wrong name when he phone me on Wednesday morning and ask me your name. Not Jimmy. Jeremy.’

  Ryder paused.

  ‘Your son phoned you on Wednesday to ask my name?’

  ‘On Tuesday night I say to him on the telephone that I say to those men who came here looking for Jessica and Nobuhle that they better be careful because Mr Detective Jimmy will bulala them. That was the same day when the constable here at the police station was fetching the girls at two o’clock and I was saying who is going to speak to my girls at the police station and he is saying to me that they are going to have a meeting with Detective Jimmy Rider from Durban.’

  ‘So Spikes telephoned you the next day, on Wednesday, to ask you the name of the detective who was speaking to Nobuhle and Jessica?’

  ‘Eh-heh, and when I ask him why he wants to know, he tells me he was just talking to his old friend there at his place and that friend says he thinks that one detective talking to my granddaughters is another policeman friend of his and he just wants to check.’

  ‘So it was Spike’s friend who wanted to know?’

  ‘Yebo. So I say to my son, what old friend? And he say to me it is not mattering what old friend just tell me the name of the detective. So I’m saying to him then shaddup, wena! and I say to him then I’m not telling you the detective’s name. So then he tell me his friend’s name, and then I remember that same one friend from that one time when I went to Nomivi’s to find my son. That friend, he looked at me that one time with funny eyes, and I don’t like him because I can see he smokes whoonga, with his eyes like that, that time. Is funny eyes, and is also a funny name. So because he tells me his friend’s name, only because he tells me the name, you see, then I’m telling my son OK the detective’s name she is Mr Jimmy Rider. Because I’m thinking if his friend is friends with the detective then maybe he is all right. But he is still funny, that one man, I think.’

  ‘I don’t suppose, Mrs Mkhize, that you… um, well, what I mean is, well you said that your son’s friend had a funny name. I don’t suppose you can remember it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Jimmy. I mean, Mr Jeremy. Yebo. I remember that one name. That funny name. That name is Skhura Thabethe.’

  18.00.

  Thabethe finally found a public phone that worked. Mkhize initially decided not to take the call, as he didn’t recognise the number on his screen. But the caller dialled and re-dialled time and again, rather than leave a message when it clicked through to the answering service. Finally Mkhize had picked up, and the moment he realised it was Thabethe he apologised profusely. Thabethe cursed the fact that he had had to call so many times before getting a response. But he calmed down when he heard Mkhize’s reasoning.

  ‘Gotta be careful with the cell-phones, bra. The cops they clever, nè?’

  Mkhize moved away quickly from that argument to the news he had for Thabethe.

  Through two intermediaries he had finally got into contact with Big Red. The big mlungu had reluctantly taken the call, using the phone of one of the intermediaries, but then had immediately relaxed. Yes, he remembered Thabethe very well, and it would be a pleasure to pick up his old business with him. But he wasn’t going to pass over any phone number, and Thabethe should not think that he could call him on any telephone. What he was prepared to do was to set a time for Thabethe to meet ‘at the old place or somewhere near to that.’ Sometime over this weekend. If Mkhize was prepared to pass
on to Red his own phone number, then Red would call Mkhize over the weekend and set up the exact time and spot for a meeting with Thabethe. And, yes, he had a good supply. And, yes, again, he would give Thabethe a good price. For old times’ sake.

  Mkhize said he had agreed with Big Red that some time on Saturday Red would call him to establish the time and place for the meeting with Thabethe, to take place probably on Sunday. In the meantime, Mkhize would ascertain how much stuff Thabethe was interested in buying.

  Thabethe agreed. No problem. He told Mkhize to tell the big man he wanted to buy twelve thousand rands worth of nyaope. He would wait for a call from Mkhize some time on Sunday to tell him the exact spot for the meeting. Thabethe already knew where, more or less, that would be.

  Wilson’s Wharf.

  21.45.

  Nadine Salm was still in the lab when her iPhone rang.

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Didn’t think I’d get you this late on a Friday.’

  ‘Detective Ryder. What a pleasure. If I were you, and I was phoning young women this late on a Friday, I’d make sure that my wife was nowhere near her favourite skillet.’

  ‘I phone only with Fiona’s permission. She wasn’t happy that I should phone anyone at this hour, but when I told her it was you she said that was OK.’

  ‘She’s a fine judge of character, then. Should have been a cop.’

  ‘I have some news for you, seeing you were so kind as to phone me with some news at precisely this time last night.’

  ‘Oh? Really? Sounds interesting.’

  ‘I had a friendly chat in hospital this afternoon with that nice fellow Themba.’

  ‘Mr Themba Deagle?’

  ‘The same. He proved to be quite chatty.’

  ‘Really? Chatty, was he? With the fearsome Detective Ryder? Was he on medication?’

  ‘Possibly. But the real reason, I think, was that I had the fearsome Detective Pillay with me.’

  ‘That would explain it. I hear she was merciless in taking down two really bad guys last week alone.’

  ‘Three. She kicked the blazes out of two of them and ran the third one into the ground on a school athletics track.’

  ‘I’ve heard all about the things she gets up to. I’m surprised that Captain Nyawula puts the tough Detective Pillay together with a nice refined gentleman like you. Anyway, good that she made Mr Desert Rat talk. What did you discover?’

  ‘He knew the game was up and that we had everything we need on him - witnesses, the weapons, and the forensics. He was into trying to win time on his eventual sentencing, I suppose. Either that or he’s just lost the will to fight any more. His State-appointed Legal Aid friend was present throughout, by the way. But she had little interest in protecting him because he is, among other things, a sexist arsehole and treated her appallingly. So she let him ramble with only occasional attempts to help him. All of which he ignored. So we ended up having a nice chatty conversation.’

  ‘What a nice way to pass the afternoon.’

  ‘So anyway, he told us that he lost his SIG and his cell-phone in the bush on Sunday night. Strange thing is that both Navi and I concluded he wasn’t spinning us a fast one. Seemed genuine enough.’

  ‘It happens, Jeremy. Not enough, but it happens. When these guys see the game is up. Did you tell him we could place his fancy shoes both at Dlamini’s place and at the KwaDukuza scene?’

  ‘Oh. You remind me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I took the liberty of calling in on the twins late today, too, and they didn’t need any prompting. They remembered another piece of information that they hadn’t told me and Navi when we first met with them.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They remembered the shoes. The fat one of the three, they said. Our Mr Themba. They recalled that he wore bright fancy shoes.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘So, in answer to your question, yes, I did tell him that among the other things we had on him we also had his shoe prints all over the place. Apart from the fact, of course, that he was wearing the very same shoes when I took him down in Westville.’

  ‘So with all of that going against him, he sang to you.’

  ‘Sure did.’

  ‘So how did he come into possession of the Deagle?’

  Ryder then proceeded to tell her the information that Themba had spewed forth from the hospital bed. The fact that Lucky Dlamini had disarmed a young white thug two years ago; that he had decided to keep his Desert Eagle instead of turning it into the proper authorities; that he, Themba, had known about the weapon kept secretly by Dlamini; that he had once been humiliated by Dlamini and Cst. Xana; and that he had broken into Dlamini’s home with his friends, found the weapon, and waited for the sergeant to return home from work.

  ‘Fantastic, Jeremy. This brings a lot of things into focus.’

  Nadine’s thoughts were racing as she scribbled notes on all of this. Certain things were indeed clicking into place, but she needed time to map them out so that she could more clearly see the connections. Ryder helped her find the space to do this by bringing the conversation toward a conclusion.

  ‘Now I’m sure you’re getting ready to go home for your Friday nightcap, Nadine, so I’ve only got one more thing for you.’

  ‘Oh? OK, and you can guarantee that your wife isn’t listening to you say this?’

  ‘I can. This time.’

  ‘So tell me, Detective Ryder.’

  ‘Our charming Mr Themba Deagle didn’t only confess to losing the third SIG along with his cell-phone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He also gave us the number of the cell-phone.’

  23.20.

  Thabethe sat in the bush, leaning back against the tree, legs splayed out in front of him on the sand, eyes closed. He had been in the surf more than an hour ago, had dried off completely and had then got back into his clothes. He had finished a joint then leaned back against the tree, staring out at the sea, letting memory take him away until his eyelids gradually flickered, got heavier, and then closed completely.

  With his eyes no longer objects of interest to the insects and other nocturnals in the bush, the hum of nightsounds all around him gradually escalated in volume.

  He felt his heart beating steadily, slowing down gradually, and he concentrated on the pulsing rhythm of the blood coursing through his body.

  The hum of insects blended with the distant sound of some police siren. That sound then became transformed in his half-sleep to another siren, a different sound, calling prisoners to order.

  His memory forged a collage of images and he saw in distorted snapshots the jeering faces of prison warders. A jumbled narrative began to form. He had complained about the food he had been given to eat. The warders had laughed at him. Then four men came to his cell. He was stripped naked. They threw a bucket of water on him to enhance the work of the electric shock that was then applied. He screamed and the nightmare faded away into another day in the prison.

  Now he was being injected by someone, with the same warders laughing as they held him down, shouting at him the words psychotic and drugs to make you come right and next time you die. Then alarm bells ringing, and someone stripping off his clothes, and an enormous prisoner with biceps pumped up and arms thicker than Thabethe’s waist grabbing him. Someone else ripping off his clothes. Others laughing as the big man pushed him to the ground and turned him over as if he was a rag doll, and more screams and the insistent alarm as the big man mounted him. Was it a fire alarm? Or a police siren?

  He lurched forward, now suddenly awake, sweating, panting. The alarm was still going. How to stop it. Where…

  Thabethe realised the sound was coming from the cell-phone in his pocket. He reached for it without thinking, without checking the screen, wanting only to stop the sound. And answered the call.

  ‘Aweh?’

  Silence.

  ‘Yebo?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Spikes?’

  Nothing.r />
  He jerked the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. Unknown. Thabethe leapt to his feet in a panic, cursing himself. Idiot. He powered down immediately. Switched off the instrument. Threw it in disgust onto the ground. He walked around aimlessly, completely agitated.

  He was shaking in fury. Who was this? Did they know where he was? Was it just a normal wrong number?

  He paced back and forth, then suddenly decided he had to get away. He picked up the instrument and started hurrying back through the bush up to the street-lights in the distance. Maybe he was over-reacting. How would they know who he was, anyway? Whoever it was, they heard his voice. Didn’t recognise it. Refused to identify themselves. Maybe it was just a spam call. Maybe genuine. But, just in case, he would leave it switched off for the rest of the night. Safer. You never know.

  *

  ‘Jeremeee!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you bringing tea?’

  ‘Coming.’

  ‘Bed now. It’s late.’

  ‘Coming. Be there in a minute.’

  Ryder bent forward over his laptop and clicked to close the Skype call he had just made, and smiled. He powered down the laptop, got up from his seat at the kitchen table, and poured two cups of herbal tea. He switched off the lights as he went, primed the alarm, and arrived at the bedroom as Fiona was snuggling down.

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Just calling a friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know, actually. I have his number but not his identity.’

  ‘What did you talk about, then?’

  ‘He did all the talking. I just listened.’

  ‘So did you know him by the end of the call?’

  ‘Can’t really say for sure. I have my suspicions. but can’t say for sure. But one thing I do know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We both know the same guy.’

  ‘And who’s that?’