Of Cops & Robbers

by Nicol, Mike;

  ‘It’s something,’ said Fish. ‘I thought …’ then stopping himself.

  Daphne Appollis in the background saying, ‘Pa, Pa, that’s enough now. Stop bothering Mr Pescado.’

  ‘I’ve gotta go, Mr Fish,’ said Samson Appollis. ‘Ma calling me, you know. But we’s just wanna say thank yous, Mr Fish, wes know this’s because of you.’

  Fish hanging up, thinking he should go back to Lord, teach him something about making amends.

  Fifteen thousand rand! Fifteen thousand rand is an insult. The sort of figure Mart Velaze would hit on. Too little to be useful, but for Ma and Pa Appollis something to be grateful for.

  Fish shook his head. Bloody Mart Velaze.

  Now Fish sits on the grey sea thinking of Vicki. Of kneeling beside her on the floor, holding her hand, the dark stain of blood leaking out of her. Talking at her: ‘Stay with me. Vics, Vics, Vics keep with me. Tell me your name. Tell me where you are.’ Holding up his hand. ‘Count my fingers.’ Vicki in and out of it. Fish thinking he’d lost her each time her eyes closed. Remembering his neighbour Flip Nel with a gun in his hand, saying the man was dead. Not to worry, she’d be alright, his girlfriend. The weirdness of the scene. Paramedics. Cops. Men in suits. Getting into the ambulance. Sitting in the hospital for hours till they’d operated.

  Till they told him, ‘Go home, Mr Pescado.’

  To his empty house, the bloodstains on the floor. A call from his mother.

  Estelle triumphant.

  ‘I’ve done it, Barto. Took a couple of meetings but I’ve done it.’

  Fish at the kitchen window staring at the boat. Was standing there for long minutes, not thinking, not feeling. Numb. Not with it. Not wanting to face cleaning up. ‘Done what?’

  ‘The mining deal. The Chinese investment. Prospect Deep. They’re coming out. Mr Yan and Mr Lijun. This is amazing. I’m coming with them.’

  ‘Mom,’ said Fish, the phone clamped to his left ear, holding up his right hand. ‘Mom, Vicki was shot.’

  Silence.

  ‘Vicki? Your Indian girlie?’

  ‘Vicki, Mom. Here in my house.’ He lowered his arm.

  ‘Killed.’

  ‘She’s on life support.’

  ‘Oh, Barto. Bartolomeu, how dreadful. Why? How? You’re not hurt?’

  ‘Long story. No, I’m not hurt.’

  ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘I’m coming out. Next week. Oh, Barto, I am so sorry.’

  ‘Coming out?’ Fish frowned. ‘Why’re you coming out?’

  ‘With Mr Yan and Mr Lijun to see the mine. I told you.’

  ‘Mom,’ said Fish. ‘Didn’t I …’

  ‘I know. I know what you said about the empowerment people. Warning me off them. But they’re nice blacks, Bartolomeu. It’s the Indians you’ve got to watch out for. They’re the crooked ones.’

  Fish closed his eyes. Wanted to sigh.

  ‘Get new locks, Bartolomeu. And a security gate. I hope she makes it, your friend.’

  She was gone. Fish thumbed off the connection, stepped over the bloodstain, heading for the bedroom.

  Since then there’s been Daro’s funeral, the grief of Georgina and Steffie. Georgina’s questions: ‘Who was he, Fish? Who was the man I married?’

  There’d been a day in the Maryjane fishing with Flip Nel. The cop minding his own business. Fishing, catching Hottentots, a couple of snoek.

  Until he’d said, just dropped it in while he was baiting up: ‘You ever heard of Dommiss Verburg?’

  Fish’d turned towards him, said, ‘No.’ Thought: Where’s this going?

  Flip Nel had cast his line with a casual throw, let the reel spool out to a fair depth. ‘Man I used to know in Port Elizabeth. Nice guy at a braai, always telling bad jokes. Awful jokes. He was security police. They did scary ops, those okes. The sort of doings you didn’t talk about. Anyhow, he’s supposed to have shot himself in the head. Thing is he had this bullet in his pocket: .22 cross-hatched. Thing is that’s what they found on Daro Attilane, clutched in his hand. A bullet like that: .22 cross-hatched.’

  Fish had looked over the sea towards Cape Point, the bright and dancing sea, had said, ‘What’re you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m an ordinary cop. Was an ordinary cop those days, too. Murder and robbery. That’s what I’ve always been. All I’m saying is there’s the bullet.’

  They’d gone backwards and forwards on that bullet until Fish’d said, ‘I’ve got a picture of some men. A photostat, actually. It’s poor quality but maybe you can check if your friend’s on it.’

  And Flip Nel had. And had pointed out Dommiss Verburg.

  None of this Fish told Georgina. What was the point? She was still on the question of why Daro’d shot Jacob Mkezi. What was he doing there? Why’d he gone missing for all those days?

  Asking the questions over and over, till Fish fixed her a joint. That pushed the pain back. He left her two bankies, told her to go easy on the stuff.

  Now he’s sitting on Daro Attilane’s board about to catch a wave in. Breakfast at Knead, double helping of French toast, slide it down with a cappuccino. Joke with the waitress to get flashed her pixie smile. Then Vicki. Sit beside her bed while she lies there looking at him with those still and mysterious eyes. Neither of them talking, holding hands. Grateful.

  Fish thinking, forget all the questions, the connections. The warnings of Mart Velaze. Let it go. She’s alive.

  Recalling that Flip Nel had said to him about the picture with Dommiss Verburg, ‘Doesn’t prove anything. Doesn’t say anything.’

  ‘Except they’re all together.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘They’re an icing unit,’ Fish had said, putting the page into a file.

  ‘We don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Admittedly,’ Fish says out loud, paddling onto the swell, getting up as the wave takes him. The kick of that surge going through his veins. ‘We don’t know for sure.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The killings conducted by the Icing Unit are loosely, very loosely, based on real events.

  The murders of Dr Robert Smit and his wife Jean-Cora occurred on 22 November 1977 in their rented house in Springs, outside Johannesburg. Both were shot. Jean-Cora was also stabbed fourteen times with a stiletto. Smit was due to stand for the ruling National Party in a coming by-election. Speculation has it that he had information about bullion held in foreign banks and planned to go public with this information which would have been damaging to some senior members of his party. Because of this it is believed the government contracted the hit. The letters RAU TEM were sprayed on the couple’s kitchen wall. No one knows what or if these letters have any meaning.

  The murderer(s) were not caught. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission into apartheid crimes investigated the incident during the mid-1990s and concluded that it was politically motivated. During that investigation the Smit’s daughter received death threats and was offered money to keep quiet.

  In 2006 three security branch men were fingered as responsible for the hit. One, Phil Freeman, committed suicide in Cape Town in 1990. A second, Dries Verwey, was found dead in Port Elizabeth. He had been shot in the left side of his head. Although it looked like a suicide he was right-handed and investigators believed that he’d been killed. The third man, known only by the initials RA, lives in Australia. No application has been made to extradite him.

  The killing of the three men on a farm alludes to the murders perpetrated by a death squad under the command of Eugene de Kock – nicknamed Prime Evil – that operated on Vlakplaas, a farm near Pretoria during the 1980s. In 1996 De Kock was sentenced to two hundred and twelve years in prison for crimes against humanity. The eighty-nine charges included six counts of murder, as well as conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, assault, kidnapping, illegal possession of firearms, and fraud. De Kock is serving his sentence in the C Max section of the Pretoria Central Prison.

  A unit known as the Ci
vil Cooperation Bureau, a government-sponsored hit squad, conducted killing missions in the countries around South Africa, including Swaziland, during the latter years of National Party rule. In his testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, General Magnus Malan stated: “During my term of office as Head of the South African Defence Force and as Minister of Defence instructions to members of the South African Defence Force were clear: destroy the terrorists, their bases and their capabilities. This was also government policy. As a professional soldier, I issued orders and later as Minister of Defence I authorised orders which led to the death of innocent civilians in cross-fire.”

  The incident on the mountain pass in the Eastern Cape where the Icing Unit intercepts a car refers to the assassination of the Cradock Four: Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli. On the night of 27 June 1985, security forces set up a roadblock to intercept their car. They were murdered and their burnt bodies found later near Port Elizabeth.

  The assassination of the character Amina Kahn was based on the murder in Paris of Dulcie September in 1987. She had established a strong anti-apartheid lobby that argued for sanctions and disinvestment and had become a threat to the apartheid state. In March of that year she was shot five times from behind with a silenced rifle as she opened the ANC offices. In 2011 the state denied September’s family access to documents related to her.

  The character of Dr Gold was somewhat based on State President Nico Diederichs in that during his tenure as finance minister he moved South Africa’s gold holdings from London to Zurich. Allegedly he was paid a small commission on any gold sales. Speculation had it that the bullion was regarded as an emergency war fund should the Nationalist government be forced into exile. Because of his involvement Diederichs was referred to as Dr Gold.

  There is a brief reference to the Numbers gangs through the character, Seven. The Numbers gangs (the 26s, 27s, and 28s) have been a feature of South African prisons for more than a hundred years and owe their origins to Jan Note who had been unfairly incarcerated for stealing a horse. The injustice of his jail term led him to found the Regiment of the Hills – a formally structured gang for men who had fallen foul of the law. By the 1920s their influence extended throughout the prison system.

  A Human Rights Watch book on conditions in South African prisons states: ‘Each of the gangs has an elaborate quasi-military command structure, involving up to thirty different ranks; each rank has specific hierarchical duties, and internal discipline is strictly maintained. Promotion, particularly to the higher ranks, may be obtained by committing acts of violence on persons outside the gang. The gangs themselves are distinguished according to their aims and activities: the 28s are regarded as the senior gang, and are distinguished primarily by their organised system of “vyfies” [literally little wives] or coerced homosexual partners; the 26s are associated with cunning, obtaining money and often goods by means of fraud and theft; the 27s protect and enforce the codes of the 28s and 26s and are symbolized by blood.’ - Africa Watch Prison Project, Prison Conditions in South Africa, Human Rights Watch, New York, 1994.

  Two informative books on the Numbers gangs are:

  The Small Matter of a Horse by Charles van Onselen (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1984)

  The Number by Jonny Steinberg (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Cape Town, 2006)

  See also an interview on YouTube by the British journalist Ross Kemp with John Mongrel, the highest ranking member of the 28s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q27xtHbgXcU

  During the war that was fought along the border between Angola and Namibia during the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the rhino and elephant populations in the region were decimated. UNITA troops which were supported by South African forces, ‘traded rhino horn and ivory for weapons with South African Defence Force senior personnel, thereby contributing to the almost complete annihilation of rhino in southern Angola,’ according to authors Richard Emslie and Martin Brooks. In an IUCN survey they write: ‘It also appears that authorities in the former apartheid regime in South Africa turned a blind eye to ivory and horn smuggling from the rest of Africa through South Africa, as the smugglers provided valuable military intelligence.’ Emslie, Richard and Brooks, Martin (editors), African Rhino: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan, IUCN Publications, Cambridge, 1999

  As far as I can tell the last Miss Landmine beauty pageant was held in Angola in 2008. http://miss-landmine.org/

  Some Jim Neversink songs:

  Zooming out of Life: http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=65692724&ac=now

  Western World: https://soundcloud.com/jim-neversink/01-western-world

  Always Dreaming of You: https://soundcloud.com/jim-neversink/12-always-dreaming-of-you

  ALSO BY MIKE NICOL:

  PAYBACK

  KILLER COUNTRY

  BLACK HEART

  Copyright

  First published in 2014

  by Old Street Publishing Ltd

  Trebinshun House, Brecon LD3 7PX

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Mike Nicol, 2014

  The right of Mike Nicol to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–908699–61–9