Cry of the Firebird

by T. M. Clark

  ‘Where are the children?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Hiding in the stables,’ Piet told them.

  ‘Lincoln, please go get the kids, get them back in the house. They must be terrified,’ Lily was instructing. Bessie stepped forward to take Diamond from Quintin, but the little girl cried to stay with him.

  ‘Leave her, Bessie, she’s fine here with me,’ Quintin said, taking her back and hushing her. Diamond put her head down on his shoulder and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. ‘Go tell Elise that everything is alright and check on her for us instead.’

  Bessie walked quickly towards Elise’s house.

  ‘What was he after? Why break into our house, but not come through our bedroom door? We were right there. Wasn’t he here to kill Lily?’ Quintin was firing off questions, adrenaline fuelling him.

  ‘He had these. He threw them under the police car and then pretended to be here to help. Sergeant Piet Kleinman didn’t get his master tracker’s name for nothing. Lucky he was here, as that crooked cop disabled the security systems.’ Khanyi proceeded to explain how Piet had tracked him down.

  ‘The plant book? Why would he steal that?’ Lily asked, taking her bound printout and flicking through the pages. ‘The laptop I can understand, but the book?’

  ‘That’s one more thing that the police will have to ask him after they treat him for poisoning at the hospital. I’ll go with them to make sure they don’t go easy on him, just because he appears to be one of them. A crooked one obviously,’ Khanyi said.

  CHAPTER

  40

  The police station was fully ablaze with all the lights on.

  ‘Where did you shoot him?’ Makoni asked, standing next to the man handcuffed to the bed, but in the loading dock of the police station, not in the hospital.

  ‘In his stomach,’ Piet said. ‘The poison has to go into muscle to work. And there is lots of muscle in the stomach area. It’s also easier to hit than a leg.’

  ‘Eish, glad I’m not the one to have to write that down in a report,’ Makoni said.

  ‘And I wish it wasn’t our police station having to record it either,’ Chetty complained as he walked to them. ‘You two are nothing but trouble. It’s four in the morning and I received a call from the Organised Crime unit to make sure that our police station was fortified sufficiently, in case the Dubazane gang came to claim one of their own, a dirty cop we are holding. Sithole. I take it this is him.’

  Piet chuckled. ‘The late Sergeant Natalie Hatch and I had already alerted Internal Affairs to Warrant Officer Sithole’s dealings, and his superior—Captain Arno Swanepoel. They are both suspected of being with the Dubazane gang and are being investigated. Their call was probably to make sure your police station is ready in case it becomes an all-out war on our premises.’

  ‘And?’ Chetty asked.

  Piet said, ‘We need this good-for-nothing trash to flip on the gang, and fast. I suggested that we did not take him to the hospital, that we got the information from him first. I have now explained to him that I have never had to shoot a man before, so I do not really understand how long it will take for the beetle poison to kill him. In the bush, an eland can take a day and a half, and a rabbit, a few hours, so I guesstimated less than a day before he dies without help. We do not need to rush him to the emergency just yet. He can answer questions for us first. We have time.’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t die too quickly, then. Capturing this criminal, and you two taking down whatever is happening, is going to look good for my office when I retire in a few weeks. Do what you have to do to get him to talk fast, then take him to the hospital. We can’t have a gunfight here. Repairing the police station is not in the budget.’

  Piet smiled and shook his head. ‘The odd thing is, it really does not look like he went there to kill Lily. He came out with her laptop and a homemade botany book. He had left the upstairs rooms when the security detail went in there. He did not try to hold anyone hostage, or harm anyone.’

  ‘A homemade botany book?’ Chetty said.

  ‘Ja,’ Piet said.

  ‘How soon do you think you can get him to break?’

  ‘He did not put up much of a fight when he was told he had poison in his stomach, so I think quickly,’ Piet said.

  * * *

  Piet watched Makoni sit on the carton of goods in the loading bay close by and open his laptop. ‘Ready.’

  Sithole lay on the ambulance trolley bed. A drip in one arm, and handcuffs on the other which kept him firmly attached to the trolley, preventing him from running away.

  ‘You awake?’ Piet asked with a deep poke in Sithole’s guts.

  ‘Eina.’

  ‘Do you have something you want to tell me? Or do I pull that drip out and let you die from the poisoning like you deserve, you waste of space,’ Piet said.

  ‘Wait till you have been on the force for twenty years and then pass judgement. Sometimes just helping someone out can get you into deep water,’ Sithole said.

  ‘I have been in the force longer than that. And I am still on the right side of the law. I am for the people, not for myself. I would never do what you have done. Are you going to talk to me? Tell me who sent you and why?’

  ‘You knew me right away at Dr Winters’s farm. How?’

  ‘You do not remember? We worked together in Johannesburg. Surely you did not work with so many San that you forget them?’

  ‘I don’t remember you. You couldn’t have been important, then.’ He turned his head away as if to snub him even now.

  The way he said the word ‘then’ had a venomous ring to it.

  Piet recognised that after all this time as a policeman, the face that had turned away from him had been devoid of any expression, even when caught lying. Although he was confronting the possibility of dying, Sithole was incapable of any emotional response. He was a psychopath. ‘Nee, I guess I blended in with the environment and was just another cop then, but your life depends on me now. If I keep you here too long, that poison from my arrow kills you. I have heard that it is a painful death for the animals. Hope you are looking forward to it. Are you ready to talk more about why you were stealing a useless book and a computer from Dr Winters’s house?’

  ‘I’m a dead man anyway. There’s nothing anyone can do about that. There is nowhere for me to hide.’

  ‘Glad you see it my way,’ Piet said. ‘You do not mind if I phone a friend, a fellow cop so he can listen too? He is really interested because he said you have statistics stacked against you, and numbers caught up with you.’

  ‘Do whatever you want,’ Sithole said. ‘I only have to answer your questions? Then you will take me to hospital?’

  ‘Ja, and answer truthfully. If I have to check your alibi and I find information given by you here today was wrong, then I hope your death is far from unpredictable, because to many it would obviously still have taken too long. You are a dirty cop and do not deserve any sympathy from me,’ Piet said as he dialled in Colonel Vaughan Smith and put his phone on speaker.

  ‘Why did you steal a homemade book on plants and a laptop?’

  ‘I was paid to steal it. And if I stole it, the contract on Dr Winters could be completed without her dying. She would finish her work and go home to Australia. Same end result: she would be gone from South Africa.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the book is valuable in the right hands, to the right people in the know.’

  ‘And who would that be?’

  ‘Ulwazi Dubazane and Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals. But there was going to be an auction for the book with the other pharmaceutical companies, too. It could go to the highest bidder.’

  Vaughan said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Something to do with San patents and plants that printed money,’ Sithole said.

  ‘Patents. Oh God. This is all about money in the end,’ Vaughan said.

  ‘Always,’ Piet said. ‘Do you know the contact at Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals who wants the book?’

 
‘Some big wig. I do not know which one.’

  ‘Then who do we ask?’ Piet said. ‘Tick tock, time is running out.’

  ‘Ulwazi Dubazane. It’s her contact with someone in Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals. Apparently, there was a deal with her that if she got the company the book, she would get a cut of all the profits from new medicines. But things went wrong, and doctors kept finding the darn book and carrying on writing it. Wanting to take it to a different publisher and give the secrets free to the world.’

  ‘Walk me through this. Ulwazi hears about a book on plants by a San. How did she find that out? It was not exactly public knowledge.’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know that part. She has her friendship bench, her whole plague of igundane, the women of the town who feed her all the information in her area. That is what she does, she trades in information.’

  ‘How did Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals come to be working with Ulwazi, then?’ Piet asked.

  ‘Don’t know that either. But now he works with her, he meets her in the bar, at Black Isle Shebeen on Florence Moposho Street, Alexandra. He’s a black man.’

  ‘Was it Ulwazi who sent someone to kill Dr Winters?’

  ‘Yes, she sent her son. But your partner shot him. And revenge was sweet for a while for Ulwazi. But you know this already, it is in your file—I have seen it.’

  Piet nodded. ‘You are confirming that Ulwazi Dubazane sent someone to execute Sergeant Natalie Hatch? She started a taxi war to cover a contract killing?’

  ‘You already know this to be true, so why are you asking me?’ Sithole said.

  ‘So Makoni here can type it up into your notes and we have it on file,’ Piet said. ‘Do you have the names of the people who undertook this job?’

  ‘What does it matter, they are dead. I killed them.’

  ‘I am not sorry they are dead, but I still need their names,’ Piet said.

  ‘Enzokuhle Ramathipela and Wekese Tsonga were the shooters. Dube Khoza and Jose Mabaso drove the taxis.’

  ‘Now that was not hard, was it?’ Piet asked, patting Sithole’s stomach with a little force. ‘Does your captain know that you are a dirty cop?’

  Sithole closed his eyes, not answering.

  ‘Worth further investigation, then. One more thing. Do you know anything about the contamination of drugs that is happening?’

  ‘No.’ He opened his eyes and looked at Piet. ‘I know a lot of things, and I know where many, many bodies are buried, but nothing about that.’

  ‘Best you start talking about those bodies fast, then, telling Constable Makoni here exactly where every single one is. Do not worry, he will ask you for a signature every few moments in case you die, so we have a legal statement. When you are totally finished, we will take you to the hospital. The nurses might have an antidote for you by then, or maybe not. If they do, you will be saved and made ready for when the Dubazane gang come for you for squealing. I wonder who will be faster, them or your captain to silence you. Me, I am in no hurry. Either of the three endings are fine by me, so keep talking, giving us this information. I know that soon you will get what is due.’

  Piet did not bother telling him that as far as he knew there was no cure for the beetle poisoning.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Piet rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. He’d been sitting in the meeting at the Johannesburg office of the Narcotics Enforcement Bureau for hours. Lily sat beside him, chewing the side of her cheek. A very bored-looking Makoni sat next to Lily, not because he knew what was going on, but because Piet had told him to observe all the people in the room.

  Noticeably absent from the gathering was their shiny-faced Acting Chief Chetty. When the Independent Police Investigative Directorate team had arrived, followed by a representative from the Narcotics Enforcement Bureau and Organised Crime unit in the Kimberley office, Chetty had guessed that Piet and Natalie had been onto something big. He had raked Piet over for going above his head, as Chetty had desperately wanted to be involved for his last hurrah.

  Piet thought otherwise but knew not to say it out loud. Makoni was not as diplomatic, pointing out that the acting police chief was about to retire in a few weeks, and received his first official warning from Chetty.

  Not one of the three units had accepted Chetty’s offer to accompany the men. He was not wanted. Only his team. Piet believed it was karma because Natalie had always said the way he treated people would be done back to him one day. Piet thought that at last, today was that day. He was just sorry Natalie was not around to bear witness to it.

  This was a critical moment in the narcotics investigation. The name of the drug company would go out into the police force during this meeting, and if there was a leak within the room, they might lose their element of surprise when they hit the company.

  Piet looked out the glass walls of the office and could see an unarmed Khanyi waiting patiently for Lily, staring into the room, not even reading a magazine, often moving in his chair, walking around, taking the pressure off his recently healed backside. Watching over his client, even though she was in a highly secure police facility.

  One day soon, Piet wanted out of the force, but he would hate to be private security. That wasn’t an option he would ever take. He admired that these men and women could do it, but for him, he knew the waiting around would kill him. They were better than good at their job; they had kept Lily alive so far, and he silently asked them to keep her safe a little longer, so once the drugs were sorted, he could be part of the task force to take down the Dubazane syndicate.

  Everything in its order.

  He looked into the room and brought his mind back to the meeting. In front of them, laid out across the boardroom table, were the results from the tests that Lily had commissioned on behalf of the World Health Organization. The eight police personnel around the table each read the reports, drinking coffee and silently working through the information before them.

  ‘Everyone finished?’ Colonel Vaughan Smith asked.

  There was a murmur of agreement, and then they all looked at their boss.

  ‘Drug contamination. Not new to us, but this is on a big scale,’ Vaughan said.

  ‘Yeah, no surprises there. Contamination and also defective drugs,’ Piet said. ‘Dr Lily Winters has World Health standing by while we work to stop this. They are saying that with the information we have, we now need to act to sort it out and issue the recall on all the affected drugs. They were stressing again this morning how important it is to have the untainted replacements for them. We will need to get onto the other South African companies and check their stocks of the drugs and distribution. Remember that the people out there are still taking these contaminated drugs, and we need to get them out of circulation, but do it in an organised fashion. We cannot have chaos when this news breaks.’

  ‘This is the proof we needed,’ Vaughan said. ‘If you look at the data Dr Lily Winters provided, on page forty-two, they have the name of the manufacturer and the pills that are involved from her sample. They’re all from Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals.’

  ‘Not only do we have proof of drugs which are nothing more than placebos, but there are drugs which contain bacteria and other pathogens to cause illnesses rather than heal the patients,’ Piet said.

  Vaughan was shaking his head, flicking the pages back and forth. ‘Children’s Panado has both a meningitis and a flu virus. HIV blockers have the meningitis strain of bacteria in them, flu viruses, Helicobacter pylori. Wow, even some of the drugs which they use for Alzheimer’s. As for the placebos … eish, all these people with dementia who rely on the drugs to slow down the spread of the disease, are spending money, getting worse, and racing towards the end where their pain medication costs a whole lot more and complications always arise. They’re speeding up people’s deaths. This is one deranged fucker who cooked up this plan.’

  ‘As per the report, Dr Winters believes that we’re on the verge of a national epidemic—one of the biggest drug cas
es in South Africa’s history,’ Piet said.

  ‘And she’s right, looking at these trajectory graphs in this report,’ Vaughan said. ‘What do we know about Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals?’

  ‘We made you a presentation on that,’ Piet said, nodding to Makoni. He clicked his computer, and an image appeared on the screen of the meeting room.

  ‘Thank you, Constable. This is their website picture of their manufacturing plant from the outside,’ Piet said. ‘Five years ago, Ayurprabhu Pharmaceuticals, a small but profitable family-run company, had a change in management. The daughter, Mishti Prabhu, took over from the father as CEO.’ There was a picture of her on the screen.

  ‘She floated the company on the stock exchange. Two years ago, they bought out another of our local larger drug manufacturers in Alberton, moved everything to that location, and they have rebranded all of the drugs as theirs. This company is now one of the biggest manufacturers and distributors of generic drugs in South Africa. Not only do they supply generic drugs, but they manufacture and supply the base components for the drugs, too, which other drug companies buy from them. However, less than a week ago this man, Reyansh Prabhu, her brother, took over as CEO when she was killed in a motor-vehicle accident.’

  Vaughan sat upright. ‘Convenient. Someone is cleaning shop.’

  ‘Hopefully, we can get to them before they destroy all other witnesses and evidence,’ Piet said.

  ‘We need to get in there—fast,’ Vaughan said.

  ‘If this tampering is in the base chemicals, it could now be across all locally produced drugs?’ one of the policemen on the left asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lily said. ‘The drug samples we tested were comprehensive—there’s a full list on page seventy-five. It was not across base chemicals at the time I took the samples, or the other brands would have been affected and shown up in the testing. It might be an idea to look at them when you enter the factory though. It’s possible that they are thinking bigger all the time.’