Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (6 page)

There
was a round of unnecessary applause from the rugby fans, which meant almost the
entire gathering, along with some inevitable wisecrack in Afrikaans that
produced guffaws in the top rows.

‘It
was on the way back to England from Paris, after that memorable final, that I
gave Ed the news that Fiona and I would be returning to South Africa one day.
He in turn told me that when we did so he was going to follow us and come and
settle in South Africa
to see exactly how
we bastards learned to play rugby
, as he put it.’

Fiona
remembered the day she had met Ed for the first time, when the two of them
arrived back from Paris completely drunk, and how for the next year he and
Jeremy had worked together on Thames Valley cases, growing in experience and
expertise. And how Jeremy had thrown himself into his developing career in the
Thames Valley with such passionate commitment.

‘Fiona
and I then came back to South Africa but we stayed in touch with Ed until he
finally made the leap and came out here. I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase
out of the frying pan and into the fire
quite as much as Ed Trewhella did in those early days.’

As
the crowd chuckled Fiona reflected back on the years in England. With her
comfortable income providing the means for them to experiment, Jeremy had done
the obligatory two years as a policeman in uniform, and distinguished himself
in the various courses and exams that were required on the way to becoming first
a Detective Sergeant, then later an Inspector. At the time he had started
working with Ed, Jeremy had been heading inexorably for promotion in the Thames
Valley Police when both he and Fiona had fairly suddenly and unexpectedly
decided to return to South Africa. They had no difficulty in making the
decision. They had been considering it for some time. But when the opportunity
arose they moved quickly. In her case she was invited to become a senior
partner in a new firm of architects inundated with contracts as the result of a
massive expansion in the building and construction industry, while in his case
the murder of a relative in Johannesburg played a key role in his decision to
turn his crime-fighting expertise to work in the country of his birth.

Ryder
traversed a fair bit of ground for his audience, weaving the story of his
deceased partner and best friend, tracing Ed’s appointment firstly in
Johannesburg and then, after a few months, joining Jeremy in the SAPS in
Durban. With changes in the ranking system and the structure of the South
African Police Services from April 2010, and in the light of Ed’s status as a
relative outsider, he had operated at a rank considerably below that of his
experience and expertise.

Fiona
couldn’t help thinking that Ryder, too, despite his talents, had not only been
overlooked in the promotion game, but was widely regarded as being initially
appointed far below the rank warranted by his experience and expertise. This
was not only because of his atypical experience, coming back from years abroad,
but also because he refused to play the system. He liked the work. Hated the
politics. The result was a far more junior position than he deserved. He had
been fairly comfortable with this, given Fiona’s earning capacity and his passionate
commitment to the work. It was now fairly widely known that Detective Warrant
Officer Ryder commanded enormous respect throughout the SAPS in KwaZulu-Natal,
and none held him in greater esteem than his commanding officer, Captain
Sibongiseni Nyawula.

As
Ryder concluded his eulogy for Ed there was a massively appreciative response
from the audience. This was followed by brief speeches from Cluster Command,
from the Brigadier, and, via the reading out of a message, from Pretoria. Which
would have cracked up Ed, thought Ryder.

Then
the interment, and the heart-rending accompaniments. And the hugs and
handshakes, and claps on the back, and friendly soft punches on upper arms, and
kissing fists.

Eventually
the crowd melted away, and the wind gusted, and leaves blew over the scene, and
Trewhella was left in peace.

17.30.

Spikes
Mkhize was extremely agitated. He paced up and down and around in circles
outside Nomivi’s Tavern, shouting out aloud to no-one but himself. He had just
come off the phone to his twin nineteen-year old daughters,
Jessica and Nobuhle. He had screamed
at them on the phone and now they were hysterical. They had been witnesses to a
shooting on the R74 last night. To his horror they had given statements to the
police in KwaDukuza.

Idiots!
Moegoes!
Mamparas
!
The more he had
screamed at them the more hysterical they became on the phone. The police? What
on earth were they thinking? Speak to the police? Don’t they know? The people
they will kill you for talking to the police!
Impimpis! Never
talk to the police.
Hayibo!
Stay out of it. Nothing to do with you.
Haikona!
Why didn’t they just leave the
scene of the crime? Run. Get away. Nothing to do with you two, so go! Why get
involved?

Spikes smelt danger. Dead cops.
Whoever had done this would be hunted by the cops, big time, and if these
skabengas
heard that there were
witnesses to what they had done, those witnesses would be taken out.
Self-protection.
Struesbob!
Don’t
mess with the
skollies
.

His daughters lived with their
grandmother in KwaDukuza. Ever since his wife had run away to Gauteng, when the
twins were fifteen, he had arranged for them to live with his mother. So that
he could run his businesses the way he wanted to. So that he wouldn’t be
hassled by children. Now at the age of nineteen they were still causing him
grief. Speaking to the police! Hadn’t he taught them when they were young not
to have anything to do with the police?

Mkhize had to work this out. The news
would leak. The locals in KwaDukuza would soon be talking about the two Mkhize
girls.

Police
witnesses.

Imagine
what Spikes is going to say.

His
own daughters, talking to cops.

He could just see it. Word would
travel quickly.
That Spikes guy. Not to
be trusted. Him and his family. Hot line to the cops.

It was tough being a parent.

18.30.

The three murderers were extremely
agitated.

It was only while they had been
eating the KFC lunch bucket special that they discovered Themba’s cell-phone
was also missing. Macks and Mavuso could barely conceal their deep frustrated
anger. Having earlier abandoned the idea of going back for the gun, the
additional factor of the phone made them revisit the debate. They then argued
furiously over Themba’s new demand that they go back to the bush and retrieve
both the cell-phone and the lost weapon.

‘I’m telling you, comrades, again, we
must go back to the beach,’ Themba said. ‘Is gun and phone now, both. Is bad if
the
boere
find them.’

‘
Haikona!
No way! I’m telling you one more time, Themba, the
boere
will be looking for us right there. Better they find the gun
and the phone than they find us.’

‘Macks, man, you keep telling me
rubbish. I say we look. We’ll be careful. But we’ll
 
look.’

Would the added risk of the phone
being found by the wrong person put them in more danger? As he pondered this,
Mavuso eventually began to side with Themba, though reluctantly, and they had
eventually decided to chance it and go back.

They spent the afternoon combing
through the pathways and the foliage near the beach where they had spent half
the previous night. They debated the merits of calling the phone with either
Macks’s or Mavuso’s phone. They decided against it. No good if the cops have
found it and we then call. They could trace back and find us. Play safe.

They eventually found the precise
spot in the thick bush where they had drunk and smoked themselves into a
stupor. The place was evident from the detritus of their previous night’s
debauchery. They searched the area and its surroundings, and the paths leading
into the clearing where they had sat.

It was fruitless. After more than
three hours they had given up any chance of finding either the phone or the
weapon. On the way back to Themba’s place they eventually accepted that the
items were lost and they needed to put that fact behind them. They needed to
concentrate on plans for Lucky Dlamini.

They were listening to the thudding
rhythms of kwaito on the car radio and occasionally shouting snippets of
conversation at one another, rather than actually conversing. The mood started
becoming a little more upbeat, and by the time they were nearing Themba’s shack
there were jokes and guffaws and bravura and attempts to emulate the singers as
they writhed to the beat in the confines of the car.

Then, halfway through the classic
Nkalakatha
which all of them knew by
heart and consequently tried to outdo each other with loud toneless versions of
Mandoza’s
energising
rhythms and vocals, the song
quickly faded out as a news item was introduced.

It was an update on the murder of
four constables on the R74 on Sunday evening. It provided the new information
that police now had a lead in their investigation. They were questioning two
young women, teenagers, twin sisters, who had been witnesses to the entire
event.

Mavuso, who had been driving, brought
the vehicle to a juddering halt at the roadside. All three of them were
cursing, swearing, and shouting at one another as the news item faded away and
the Mandoza music began building its way back into prominence. Themba hit the
switch and killed the radio then screamed at the other two to calm down.

‘Shut up! Shut up, comrades! Wait,
man! Wait! We must handle this. We must find these girls!’

The other two paused only slightly
then the three of them launched off again in a cacophony of interjections and disagreements
about what to do about this disaster.

They eventually started working out
the plan. They would fan out separately, find out among the connections that
each of them had in KwaDukuza who in the local area might have any idea of the
identity of the witnesses. If they couldn’t get anyone to talk, or if the
police were keeping the witnesses under wraps, then at least they could start a
process of finding out who in the local community had twin daughters.
Teenagers. Probably older teenagers, if they were out on the hills at dusk.
Older teenagers. Twin sisters. Not too difficult. A process of elimination. And
then, once they found them, another process of elimination.

They set off again in the red Mazda.
No radio. The three of them were silent and contemplative as they drove through
the dusk back to Themba’s place. By the time they got to the shack they had
agreed on one thing. The hunt for the twins would start tonight.

20.45.

Ryder and Fiona were recovering
quietly at home on the sofa after dinner, sharing a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
The children were doing their homework in their rooms. The dog lay on the
carpet, jaw resting comfortably on his two front paws, watching them, content
that the four people in the world for whose safety he alone felt entirely
responsible were all safe at home where they belonged.

Sugar-Bear was a six-year old Border
Collie. His left eye was surrounded by white hair and the other eye was half in
white and half in black. This was occasioned by the line of black hair that ran
diagonally across his face, intersecting with the white precisely at the right
eye, thus fostering some sense of intrigue about his appearance. This elicited
two diametrically opposed reactions from people observing him, in the view of
both their teenage sons. If someone reacted timorously to Sugar-Bear, the boys
would then say that such a person was
lank
suspicious
. If they thought Sugar-Bear was cute, then they were
lank cool
. Neither of the parents had
ever had any reason to doubt the efficacy of this
judgement
as a rule of thumb.

Sugar-Bear observed them, one ear
comfortably relaxed and down, the other one alert and pointing upward in case
it was necessary to identify some unexpected sound. His eyes started to relax,
flickering between wake and sleep, as he began to accept that all was probably
well in the world.

Fiona had felt genuinely good about
her own presentation to the clients that morning. This was a rare phenomenon.
Normally she was extremely self-critical and pessimistic about any presentation
of her own. But she had felt the electricity in the arena during her
performance and the round of applause she had received at the end had said it
all. The financiers knew that they could give off no signals prior to their own
debriefing back in Johannesburg with the holders of the purses, but there was
enough going on over the brief sandwich lunch after her presentation for her to
know that everyone was feeling pretty up-beat. Now it was a matter of waiting
to see whether or not her firm would win the contracts involved.

Ryder had finally accepted her
positive assurances about his own speech at the cemetery, too. It had been
right on the nail, she had assured him. All in all, the two of them had had a
tough day but had come through it.