Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (9 page)

The
weapon was a titanium gold Desert Eagle Mark XIX.

14.30.

Ryder and Pillay had left the scene
of the homicides and had driven in separate cars the short distance to
KwaDukuza where they had a simple takeaway pie lunch together in Cato Street
before making their way to the KwaDukuza Police Station on Chief Albert Luthuli
Street. The twin sisters had already been fetched from their home nearby on
Haysom Road by a local constable who took them to a room at the station for
their 2.30 appointment. Here, they had been told, they were to be questioned by
two detectives from Durban.

Jessica and Nobuhle sat in
trepidation. They had been severely reprimanded by their father for having
reported what they witnessed on Sunday, but they had been equally reprimanded
by their grandmother for listening to their father’s nonsense. From the old
woman’s point of view her son was a no-good
layabout
and his advice was the worst possible advice they could receive. She told them
it was their duty to report bad things to the police, and she was proud of them
for having done so. It was equally important, she had told them, that they
should now go further and give the
amaphoyisa
the details so that those
tsotsis
could be caught and thrown in jail where they belonged.

By the time Detectives Ryder and
Pillay walked into the holding room the twins were nervous wrecks.

‘Nobuhle? Jessica? Hullo. Hey. Nice
braids. Very smart. I’m very pleased to meet you. Thank you for coming to talk
to us. I’m Detective Jeremy Ryder. This is Detective Pillay.’

‘Navi Pillay. Hullo. Which one is
Jessica?’

‘Me, I’m Nobuhle.’

‘Me, I’m Jessica.’

After the handshakes and a bit of
phatic chatter the detectives started some gentle probing. Pillay had the
folded sheet of flipchart paper the forensics people had given her at the R74
scene. She unfolded it and laid it out on the single table in the room. The
twins and the detectives then went painstakingly over everything they had told
the officers the previous day at the crime scene.

‘Can you tell us what the men looked
like?’ Ryder addressed his question at both of them.

‘The man driving the Mazda, he was
fat.’

‘That’s very good, Nobuhle. Very
good. Thank you. That kind of information is very good for us. Very helpful.
Can you describe the other two?’

‘No,
Mr
Jeremy, I’m sorry. I’m not remembering.’

‘
Hau
?
Wena?
’

‘What’s wrong, Jessica?’ Pillay
responded as Jessica lightly slapped Nobuhle’s hand.
 

‘Sorry,
Mrs
Pillay. It’s nothing.’

‘No, tell us, Jessica. Everything you
say is important. Don’t worry.’

‘Sorry,
Mr
Jeremy. I was thinking only that… you know, Nobuhle she was teasing me on
Sunday. That one man, that other one that was in the front of the car there
next to the fat man, he was the tall one. He was the skinny one.’

‘Oooh! Yes. Right. I forgot that,’
Nobuhle said.

They could extract little more than
that by way of descriptions of the three men. Describing the third man was
beyond them. They couldn’t think of anything to
characterise
him. Just that he looked like a gangster. A
skelm
.
Which didn’t help the detectives very much.

It was also not possible to identify
which were the two men that had run into the bush chasing after the constable.
With all the bullets flying, and some of them coming dangerously close to the
sisters on the hill, they hadn’t had time to register anything further about
the three men. Nevertheless, they were able to point out directions and angles
on the rough diagram on the flipchart paper, and in response to a question from
Ryder they felt that they might indeed be able to identify the three men if
they were to see the three of them together.

The detectives eventually called the
constable in charge to tell him that they had finished and that the girls could
go back home. They then gave appreciative farewells to the twins, letting them
know that it was possible they might visit them again for further information,
but that for now they had been very helpful and could go.

The detectives went out to their cars
for a conversation before heading back to Durban. Nobuhle and Jessica left
considerably more at ease than when they had arrived at the station.

15.05.

Koekemoer and Dippenaar pulled away
from the Folweni Police Station.

‘That Dlamini
oke
is a good cop, Dipps.’

‘
Ja’k
stem saam
, Koeks.’

‘That story about the Freckles
ou
rings a bell with me, but I can’t
think what it is, you know?’

‘
Ja
,
old Dlamini was holding back something there, I think.’

‘Think so?’

‘No question. But he seems a good
guy.’

‘
Ja
.’

They drove on in silence for a minute
before Koekemoer returned to the subject.

‘If I was one of those psychologist
types,
ou
Dipps, I would say that
Dlamini should be put on leave or something.’

‘
Nooit!
No way. A guy like that needs to be at work. Have the other
okes
around him. That
ou
is in a bad way, man. That Lindiwe
must have been something else, hey? He couldn’t stop talking about her. If he
sits at home all alone thinking about her he might just top himself. If I was
the commander there I would take his gun away for a couple of weeks and make
sure he was in the office every day, talking to the other
okes
.’

‘
Ja
.
Maybe.’

‘No maybe about it,
boet
.’

They had to pause above the
Mbokodweni River for a traffic snarl-up caused by a broken-down truck while
they continued their conversation. Dippenaar continued on the subject of Cst.
Xana.

‘She was only twenty-six, hey? Two
merit awards, and bloody good looking, from those photos.’

‘Ja, and all the
okes
there raved on about her. Seems like she was hot stuff all
round.’

‘Did you hear that bit, Koeks, about
the bad things these guys had to handle in the past? That constable who took on
the bad
oke
from Phoenix Station,
that detective who went bad and started robbing stores? Apparently old Dlamini
was supposed to be in that store at that time, but he had a flat
tyre
and the other cop took the bullet instead and
vrekked
. It was from that time that they
called Dlamini
Lucky
.’

‘
Jirra
,
Dipps. I get so
woes
when I hear
about these cops going bad. Put them in my sights, I tell you, and...’

‘
Ja
,
Koeks. Me too, hey?’

‘Like that Thabethe bastard. Nyawula
wants that
oke
more than anything.
Jeremy too. He hates a bad cop more than anything, old Jeremy.’

The traffic cleared and they started
making better progress, returning to the subject of Dlamini and their concerns
for his welfare.

15.15.

The three men were heading south on
the M35 as Koekemoer and Dippenaar were heading north. Had the occupants of
either vehicle been aware of each other’s existence they might have glanced
over to the opposite side of the motorway as they passed by Isipingo Hills and
seen their two cars both crossing the same imaginary line before continuing in
their opposite directions.

The red Mazda 323 still had the false
number plates. Thirty minutes earlier they had left the grandmother of the twin
girls Nobuhle and Jessica Mkhize. The girls had not been there but they had been
left a very clear message.

‘That old bitch better tell her
moegoe
son. I kill that old bitch next
time. Fat cow! Talk to me like that! Call me fat. That old bitch she is two
times fat.’

Macks and Mavuso were laughing
hysterically at Themba’s fulminations.

‘Next time you can have that one,
Themba! You can
steek
that old
gogo
. Me and Mavuso we like the young
ones,
nè
, Mavuso?’

‘Is right,
bra.
Is right. We like the meat young, you and me. Not Themba. He
likes the old ones.’

‘
Eish!
I hate that,’ Themba continued, ‘when women shout like that, I want to
steek
them big time. They shout at me I
steek
them. I get a spoke and I
steek
them good.’

‘
Hau
!
Bra
Themba!’ exclaimed Mavuso.
‘Sorry,
my bra
. Me and Macks we
making a big mistake. We thinking when you say
steek
, we thinking you want to
naai
the old bitch.’

‘
Ja
,
Mavusies
! We can help Themba
steek
the old bitch but we not going to
help him do that other one too! No way!’

‘No,
bra
Macks. That one, no way. That one, you do that
and she talk and shout and complain
while you
naaing
her.’

‘
Ag,
fokoff
, you two.
Shaddup
now, we
must talk about one thing. Serious.’

‘OK,
bra
Themba. We good, me and Macks. We good. What you want,
bra
?’

‘That old
gogo
. She was saying one thing to me.’

‘What was she saying,
bra
Themba?’ asked Macks.

‘She tells me, that one, she told me
one thing that I’m thinking. She told me that some Detective Rider was going to
be asking some questions. Some Jimmy Rider. Like horse rider. Or maybe James
Rider. Or Jiminy Rider. Or someone like that. Some detective. Some one big-shot
detective. He is going to handle the case, she says.’

‘So what you say, Themba?’

‘I’m thinking, Mavuso. I’m thinking.
Maybe I’m thinking we find where this detective he is living,
nè?
I got a friend there in Durban
North, Maishe, in the police station there by Durban North, he can tell me what
detective is working what station anywhere in KwaZulu-Natal,
nè?
Also, comrades, he can find the
records and tell me the houses, the streets, where they live, these detectives.
Maybe we can visit this Detective Jimmy
Rider there by his house and we can see what he is finding out about us three,
nè?
And we can stop him from finding
more stuff about us.’

Sniggering and agreement from the
other two.
Bra
Themba was not too bad
when he was sober, they were thinking. He had some good ideas. They exclaimed
like children watching an old Hollywood western as they pointed and fired
imaginary revolvers using their fingers and thumbs, as they boasted about what
they would do to this Detective Jiminy Rider when they had him in their sights.

‘Look. We here.’

They were approaching the Mbokodweni
River as Themba quickly brought them back to earth. The car fell silent.

They had assumed that Lucky Dlamini
would be at work at the SAPS station in Folweni. They were hoping that an easy
break-in at his house at the end of Isithupha Close would give them the Desert
Eagle that Themba wanted so badly.

Themba slowed right down and took the
turn for Philani Mall, but then turned in the other direction and made his way
toward Amehlo before turning into Isithupha. He slowed right down as they drove
slowly past the house that he identified as Dlamini’s. He stopped, turned
around, and came slowly back. All three of them looked at the windows of the
house for any sign of someone at home.

They stopped and waited. Nothing.
No-one at home. Then they moved the vehicle down about twenty paces from the
house, assured themselves that the coast was clear, got out, and made their way
quietly around to the back of the house.

Themba found the flimsy yale lock
easy to pick.

18.35.

The twins were terrified. Jessica was
crying. Nobuhle was trying to comfort her, but she was just as afraid as her
sister. They cowered in their bedroom in their grandmother’s house in Haysom
Road. It was just down the road from the police station, but they were still in
fear of every sound they heard outside.

Their interview at midday with the
two detectives had been reassuring, and they had felt much better when they
were on their way home. They were convinced that their grandmother’s advice was
better than their father’s. Better to do what they could to get these evil men
behind bars and make the streets safer. The two detectives had been very
helpful and had explained very carefully what would happen next. The detectives
had driven off leaving them much happier than they had been since Sunday
evening before the terrible event.

But since this afternoon things had
escalated. Their grandmother was hysterical when they returned home at 3.30.
She was right now on the phone to their father and they were having a massive
argument. She had been trying to get him on the phone since 3.00. Where had he
been? She had been visited by three
skabengas
this afternoon, she told Mkhize. Thank Jesus the girls were not there because
they had been at the police station. The men had threatened her and told her
that her son and his daughters were
impimpis
and that they wanted to talk to him, the son, and also to the twins.