Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) Read online

  Gun Dealing

  Ian Patrick

  Text copyright © 2015 Ian Patrick

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact any resemblance to any persons living or dead is coincidental

  Cover designed by RGS

  DEDICATION

  To my brother, gunned down in front of his family. Just before dinner.

  OTHER BOOKS BY IAN PATRICK

  DEVIL DEALING

  PLAIN DEALING

  DEATH DEALING

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Preface

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Glossary

  About the Author

  PREFACE

  This crime thriller is the second in a series of four stand-alone books. Each can be read as an independent self-contained volume. Or they can be read in sequence or out of sequence as four related episodes in which the central themes and major characters reappear in other episodes, the intention being to provide an overall organic and cohesive narrative for the quartet.

  The four individual volumes explore moral and ethical choices made by police in their day-to-day confrontation with rampant and brutal crime in contemporary South Africa. The texts are fictional but based on field research and the author’s physical exploration of the local environment, including actual locations where different events take place. Interviews were conducted with detectives and forensics experts both currently active and retired, and with local observers and participants, including victims of crime. The action aims for authenticity and plausibility, and strives to be resonant of conditions on the ground. The research included detective-guided tours of front-line scenes in the war against crime, and of police facilities, protocols and procedures. Actual events are reflected alongside fictive events, although all characters are fictional.

  In the thoroughly absorbing task of writing this book and its related volumes during the course of a few years, I owe an inestimable debt to many people. Some of them prefer to remain anonymous. Others have graciously allowed me to name them. To all of them I offer enormous thanks and gratitude.

  First and foremost in the ranks of people to whom I am grateful are my family. As much as I value reading, and however indebted I am to the craftspeople of literature throughout history who have instilled in me a love of words, I cannot find language that will sufficiently express my gratitude to my wife and my two sons. They have tolerated with great patience my frequent retreats into the silent joys of research and creative writing.

  The detective who took me into KwaMashu in April 2015 to study some of his work on the front line, as he described it, had no idea that he would be taking me into the teeth of a dramatic xenophobic storm on that particular day. He allowed me to sit with him while we watched drug-dealers at work. He explained in meticulous detail exactly what was going down before my eyes, and how the team of children (for that’s what they were) played their individual roles in a sophisticated series of drug trades. We watched as the various role-players passed money and contraband on the street, as cars and motorcycles and pedestrians slipped past the youthful traders and quick sleight-of-hand saw packages and money being exchanged, unnoticed by most of the people passing in the road.

  After taking me to different locations to watch the kinds of crime that permeate society on many street-corners, it was time for the detective to return me to base. As he did so, we ran into a horde of people caught in the throes of massive action and protest. Violent action hit the streets and the country reeled in shock at what became media headlines for the following week about xenophobic violence. The detective ensured that I was returned safely to my base in Durban, and I wrote that night into the early hours of the morning, trying to capture the flavour of what I had seen that day. I begged my detective to allow me to identify him and thank him for his work, but he declined. Nevertheless, although he felt more comfortable remaining anonymous in this prefatory statement, he kindly allowed me to re-name after him one of my characters who appears in this volume. I am pleased to pay homage to this extraordinarily helpful detective in this way, and I thank him for his time, dedication, interest, and unwavering commitment in the mammoth task of South African police work.

  I am indebted to so many people for their willingness to correct my misconceptions, and to enable me to adjust some of the nuances in my writing in the interest of ensuring more authentic depiction of the day-to-day work of the police. Any remaining mistakes are entirely mine.

  I am grateful to Gerrit Smit for very helpful detailed conversations about police procedure and protocol. This ranged from day-to-day interactions among police both in the field and in the station office, to procedures and protocols and actions and behaviour at crime scenes. In particular he gave me wonderfully detailed descriptions about the work of police divers (who feature primarily in the next volume).

  My thanks go also to Captain Saigal Singh. The enormous wealth of his experience as both a detective and a forensics specialist were particularly exciting for me, having studied various courses on forensics and crime scene management. Having him hold up a mirror of extraordinary reality to what I had until then only studied academically, was most helpful.

  Penny Katz was helpful beyond any call of duty. Apart from referring me to front-line detectives she gave me insights into aspects of crime and policing that have proved enriching beyond what I had imagined possible. To interview victims of crime, and to go some small way toward understanding the pain and loss and trauma involved, has greatly affected my approach to research and writing. My personal experience of family trauma as a result of crime plays only a background role in my writing, but Penny allowed me insight into facets of this experience that I greatly value.

  Some potential interviewees chose to decline my requests for interviews, and of course I entirely respect their choices in this regard. In one or two other cases, after initial readiness to participate the contact went cold and emails and phone-calls were simply ignored. I suspect that this was not unrelated to me mentioning that I would also be covering police corruption in my work. But even in those cases willing and helpful comments were received from people working in the very same offices as those who ignored my calls and emails.

  I extend grateful thanks to many, ranging from police Brigadiers to Detectives and Constables both retired and currently active, from victims of crime to forensic investigators, and from family to friends and colleagues. Many of them don’t know how helpful they have been to me even in brief communications or by referring me to other sources. Hennie Heymans, a retired policeman in Pretoria, has done extraordinary work in preserving the historical record on policing in South Africa. He answered questions promptly with extensive knowledge of the past.

  For any shallowness, superficiality or mistakes that might remain in my text, I apologise to these sources. I can only offer the excuse that the act of writing transports me into realms of satisfaction and joy. Not a day goes by during which I do not marvel at my good fortune in being able to create characters both evil and understandable. I live each day with them, exploring their thoughts and actions, enjoying their deviousness, their energy, their joyfulness, and the excitement of their lives.

  I derive great pleasure from coaxing my characters out of the shadows and refining and polishing them in an attempt to reflect authenticity and plausibility. Some of them move me emotionally, and some of them are devilishly evasive and lying villains. But they all fascinate me
and I still carry them in my head. I want to know what makes them tick, and I want to know their counterparts in real life. I have gone out into the field to find my fictitious characters because I insist on plausibility and authenticity in fiction. Otherwise how will we learn about our lives?

  Ian Patrick, August 2015

  1 SUNDAY

  17.50.

  There is a rough and functional road that runs from KwaDukuza to the N2, from where one can turn north to Richards Bay or south toward Durban. The hills on either side of the R74 are grass-covered, hardly rolling, more brown than green, and covered in bracken, and they are unlikely to prompt in the observer any spontaneous lyrical singing. The grassland is thin and eroded. Once flourishing streams are now dry and rocky pathways. Too many cows and goats have fed unsupervised, and too many random fires have been started here. There is little care in these hills, and over many years people and land have been neglected.

  The Zulu name Dunguza, originally used to describe the area, meant, roughly, the lost person. In 1873 European settlers thrust that name aside and called their settlement Stanger, after William Stanger. The surveyor-general of colonial Natal. But in 2006 the town reverted to a version of its original name.

  KwaDukuza. Place of the lost person.

  On any given day along this particular stretch of the R74, halfway between the R102 and the N2, one might find a teenager or a twenty-something, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, sitting on the side of the road or up on one of the slopes. Apparently lost, watching passing vehicles. Watching life pass by. Not infrequently, such a person or persons might draw deep into their lungs the pungent fumes of nyaope or some other mix of herbs and chemicals, as they watch the sun set, and the world go by.

  There was no forlorn crying of birds this evening as the day ticked toward 6.00 pm. There was the frequent growl of traffic and the occasional thud of tyre against pothole. In the distance, on a clearer day, one might have glimpsed the warm waters of the Indian Ocean to the east. On such a day, to the west, one might have seen hill after hill, and beyond and behind the hills, all the way to the starker beauty of the Drakensberg.

  On this particular day, as dusk crept in, there was no such view for Jessica and Nobuhle Mkhize, twin sisters aged nineteen, experimenting with the drug about which they had heard so much. A drug they had also once or twice heard their father mention, but which they had never previously seen. Until this day. They giggled as they drew the foul concoction into their lungs, and coughed and wheezed as their senses became numbed.

  The sun had given up trying to warm the R74 and hid in shame behind the hills as the sisters saw the red Mazda 323 approach from the west and pull up some eighty metres opposite them, on the sand just off the verge. The two outer wheels were still on the road, requiring any cars travelling in the same direction to slow down and exercise care before passing by. Three men left the vehicle without locking it, and left the hazard lights flashing as they entered the bush close to the Mbozamo, virtually unrecognisable as a stream, let alone the gushing river it once was.

  The sisters joked with each other about the looks of the three men. One very plump, the driver, who waddled like a duck, would be just the right kind of guy for Nobuhle, said her teasing sister. He’s got fancy shoes. Must have money. A good husband, perhaps. Nobuhle slapped Jessica lightly on the wrist and retorted that both the very tall skinny one and the furtive one, the one who got out of the back of the car, who definitely looked like a tsotsi, both of them would make fine husbands for her.

  The two young women chortled, greatly amused, and drew more fumes into their lungs as they watched from across the road, seated up on the hill facing northward, unseen by the three men. Who appeared to be waiting, concealed in the bush.

  *

  The preliminary police report spanned no more than a couple of pages. Constable Lindiwe Xana was based at the Folweni police station when she died in the bush near KwaDukuza. The report indicated that she had been struck by seven bullets, all probably 9mm, probably from three different weapons. The bullet that entered just above her left eye had most likely been the one that had been fatal. The report also stated that Lindiwe had been sexually assaulted by two different men. There was a high probability that the blood patterns, body position, clothing and other indicators were suggestive of sexual violation after death, and not before.

  Cst. Xana, aged twenty-six, highly regarded at Folweni and winner of two SAPS merit awards, was unmarried at the time of her death. She had been with three friends, all of them women police constables, two of them from Isipingo SAPS and one from Durban Central, all returning from a family celebration in KwaDukuza. They had travelled together in a 4-door cream-coloured VW Velociti 1.4i. When they saw a red Mazda 323 parked dangerously on the side of the road, on the R74 halfway from KwaDukuza to the N2, they had stopped, apparently to see if they could provide assistance.

  According to two witnesses, identified as Jessica and Nobuhle Mkhize, twin sisters sitting together on a hill on the opposite side of the road, before the two policewomen in the front of the car could remove their seatbelts three men suddenly rushed forward from the bush on the edge of the road and opened fire on them. The two constables in front, one of them a student constable, were killed instantly, each with three bullets to the head.

  The constable next to Lindiwe Xana in the back seat managed to open her door and run six or seven paces into the road before she was gunned down by all three of the assailants firing shots across the road at her. The preliminary report described eleven bullets in her body, six of them in her back and the others in legs and arms. This constable’s action, coupled with the skidding of a passing car travelling west to east, with a loud hooting and squealing of brakes, had given Lindiwe Xana a few seconds during which she managed to open her door and run into the bush. As she did so, the driver of the passing car, trying to avoid the fleeing constable in the middle of the road while at the same time sustaining a fatal bullet wound to the left temple, somersaulted the car which then shuddered to a rest, upside down, off the verge on the opposite side of the road.

  All three of the assailants then ran after Lindiwe Xana. The report indicated that they caught her some twenty metres into the bush. The first responders, in their preliminary scene investigation, suggested that that was where they pumped the seven bullets into her.

  According to the two witnesses, various cars began pulling up to investigate what appeared to them to be an accident. Meanwhile the three men emerged from the bushes after some three or four minutes, got into the red Mazda, and sped off in the direction of the N2. Whether they had then turned south to Durban or north to Richards Bay or had driven straight on to Blythedale and the Indian Ocean was unknown.

  The identity of the deceased driver of the overturned car was unknown.

  Along with an attached note stating that formal autopsy, forensics and ballistics reports would follow in due course, this preliminary report would be delivered to the desk of Captain Sibongiseni Nyawula in Durban Central on Monday morning. The reason given in the note was that at the present time there was no available resource in KwaDukuza SAPS nor in any other nearby station to pick up this case. Besides, the student constable in question had been based in Nyawula’s unit. Her name was Sinethemba Ngobeni. She died at age twenty.

  The name Sinethemba is translatable as We have hope.

  18.15.

  The three men in the red Mazda tore down the road toward the sea. They turned neither north nor south onto the N2. They drove straight over it, on toward Blythedale and the ocean. They kept going until the R74 became Umvoti Street. They went as far as Umvoti would allow them, then they turned right around the traffic circle and down the road known simply as The Drive. They travelled as far as they could until the high-security fences and walls and gates of luxury homes converged into a cul de sac and kept them from going any further.

  They turned, retraced their route a short distance, then parked the car as far off the road as they could, under
dark overhanging foliage. They got out, locked the car, and headed across one of the last remaining underdeveloped plots for the beach, and then into the bush. Luxury homes behind them, and the sea before them. This is where they would stay until the dark enveloped them and the anticipated police sirens finally faded away into the night.

  Thirty paces into the thick bush, as they pushed through the foliage they did not notice the man sitting alone, quietly. He sat with his back against a tree, facing a gap in the thick vegetation that allowed him to look at the crashing surf little more than a hundred metres away. The man remained still. Only his eyes moved as he watched them thrust noisily through the bush, passing directly in front of him.

  Skhura Thabethe sat, frozen, the nyaope joint clasped lightly between thumb and two fingers as he watched the three men pass by without seeing him. The purple knots of the blood vessels in each of his eyes seemed more inflamed than usual, with the fumes of the joint drifting up across his face.

  His pupils were unnaturally large. If any of the three men had turned to look at him they might have deduced that they were in the presence of evil.

  They did not see him. They crashed on into the bush.

  2 MONDAY

  04.59.

  Ryder normally woke up first, but today Fiona had beaten him to it. She hadn’t woken him. That was left to the clock in his head. She had showered, and from the aroma permeating the house he knew that she had the coffee on. When his eyes flickered open, as usual, one minute before the time set for the alarm, his first reaction was to notice that the bed was empty next to him and that the bathroom light was on and the extractor was doing its work on the steam. He saw at a glance that the button on the alarm had already been suppressed.