Death Dealing (13 page)

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘OK,
people.
I
know you’ve got lots of other stuff on your plates, but let’s see what you can
come up with. In the meantime, please, someone, find a picture of Thabethe and
put it over the dartboard in Piet’s office. I need some practice.’

As they moved out
of Nyawula’s office Ryder took Pillay aside and they walked outside into the
car park as he added snippets of information gleaned from his conversation with
the Westville detectives. Then they stood next to Ryder’s Camry as he spoke
further.

‘I’ve just thought
of something else, Navi. With all the confusion at Westville I thought I’d get
out to the prison myself and ask a few questions. Want to come along with me on
your way out to KwaMashu?’

‘Sure
thing.
What
do you have in mind?’

‘I was thinking. If
I were Thabethe and was breaking out of jail after being inside for a couple of
months, the first thing I’d need would be some cash.’

‘You think he might
have mugged someone in the vicinity? Should we check on local crime reports at
Westville SC?’

‘We could pop the
question, but Westville SC are in a bit of a panic so it might be better if we
don’t come at them from too many different directions. Mavis is going to be up there
checking on the identity of the third guy, so she could pick up the extra information
for us while she’s doing that. No, what I thought you and I could do is go
straight to the prison itself and ask a few questions.’

‘Sounds good.’

They hailed Mavis as
she, too, came into the car park, and Ryder asked her to solicit the extra
information when she was at Westville Command. Then he and Pillay drove in
separate cars out to the prison.

Within half an hour
they had obtained the information that Ryder needed. Yes, he was told in
response to his specific question, the prison management had checked on the
deceased guard’s possessions at the time of his death. Yes, indeed, they had
notified the family and checked with them about their own understanding of what
the man must have had in his possession on the day of the unfortunate incident.
Yes, they had subsequently agreed with the family that the absence of his
wallet necessitated someone contacting the bank and cancelling the related
debit and credit cards. The additional information obtained by Ryder was that
apart from the deceased guard another of the guards had also suffered a loss of
his wallet along with his briefcase, and he, too, had reported the matter to
his own bank. The only problem, the detectives were told, was that all of this
took a couple of days and the
bank cards
had only been
cancelled on Monday morning.

Before Ryder and
Pillay left the prison Ryder made a quick call to Piet Cronje. He provided the
various card details and arranged for the sergeant to follow up with the banks
concerned. He specifically needed Cronje to obtain any information that was
available on the possible use of the
bank cards
between Saturday morning and Monday morning.

Cronje told Ryder
that he would be
on the case like a
Sharks number eight onto a loose ball
. Ryder expressed the view that he
hoped Cronje could do better than that, and he and Pillay drove away from the
prison in their separate cars.

14.05.

Mavis Tshabalala
stood outside the Westville Police Station as the constable placed a plastic
chair against the wall for her. There was no available office or desk inside,
they told her, and she replied that she was quite comfortable to go through the
file outside and enjoy some fresh air while she made some notes. In her hand
was the file on the man who had escaped on Saturday morning with two prisoners
named Thabethe and Mgwazeni.

The constable who
helped her had been very attentive. As he positioned two upended milk crates
intended to serve as a desk she nursed the mug of coffee he had prepared for
her. He told her not to hesitate if she needed anything, and went back inside.
He said he’d get busy immediately on the other request she had made: a report
on local muggings in the vicinity of the prison since the break-out on Saturday
morning, especially any cases of people having had cash stolen from them.

Mavis sat down, made
herself comfortable, took a sip of coffee, and placed her mug on the makeshift
table. Then she opened the file on the prisoner known as Mofokeng.

14.10.

Detectives
Koekemoer and Dippenaar were at Addington Hospital. They stood in front of the
bed of the man they called
perp number
four
. The patient’s head was bandaged, as was his throat. His eyes were
puffed up and swollen, and when he spoke the sound was barely vocalised. His
words came out on a column of air, unvoiced, in no more than a forced whisper.

The man’s young
legal aid representative sitting in the corner of the room seemed very nervous.
The two detectives concluded after his inaudible and inarticulate introduction of
himself that he was probably on his first assignment. He kept quiet throughout,
emitting nervous coughs every few seconds.

Koekemoer and
Dippenaar did not, in any case, say or do anything that was likely to elicit
any protest from an inexperienced legal representative. They might have been a
little more careful with someone more experienced in the room, but they felt
that their presence had already intimidated the young representative even more
than they had intimidated the patient.

The detectives made
some subtle and some not-so-subtle references to the discussion they had just
had in the ward next door with the patient’s friend,
perp number three
, who, they said, had been very helpful to them.
Number four was confused and wary, not knowing how much the detectives knew and
weighing up the chances of him receiving a lighter sentence if he co-operated
with
amaphoyisa
.

‘So listen, my
friend,’ said Koekemoer. ‘Detective Dippenaar here is a very impatient kind of
man, you know? He’s the type who gets
the
hell in
when people in custody make things worse for themselves. Is that
not so, Detective Dippenaar?’

‘Definitely.
Vragtig!
Absolutely
right, Detective Koekemoer.
I get really
woes
, you know? When I hear people lying to me, or holding back on
the facts when they know I’m going to find out the truth, anyway, once I
question their friends. I get really angry because I can see their prison
sentences just getting longer and longer the more they lie to me, you know?
Then I have to…’

‘
Ja
, Detective Dippenaar.
You’re right there, hey? All
these guys in jail for so many years because the judge just got pissed off with
them telling lies, when they could have got half the sentence if they just came
out and told the truth. Just think of it. Twenty-five years in jail, and if
they had just told the truth the judge might have given them twelve years. Out
again for good behaviour after seven or eight years. But instead, they stay in
for twenty-five years. Shame, man. I feel sorry for the guys, you know?’

‘Not
me.
I don’t
care, you know, Detective Koekemoer? I just think what the hell, we’ll get the
information anyway so they can go on and get their longer sentences, what does
it matter to me?’

‘So, my friend,’
said Koekemoer, turning back to the man in the bed. ‘What’s it going to be,
hey? Are you going to tell me the same thing your friend next door has just
told me, or are we going to report that he told the truth and you told us
nothing, so, judge, can you give this guy here double the sentence of the other
guy, please? Are you going to tell me, just so that we can check your friend’s
story, where you got your
whoonga
from and who was the guy who sold it to you?’

Within minutes the
two detectives had obtained the information they needed. They now knew where
the six men had bought their
whoonga
,
what quantity, how much they had paid for it, where the deal went down, and who
the man was behind the sale. They were unable to elicit any names. It was clear
that the patient had not known the names of the men he had met. But the two
detectives knew immediately from the description exactly who it was that the
patient and his cronies had dealt with.

It was a man with
scary eyes.

14.15.

Pillay arrived in
Sikwehle Road in KwaMashu. The two constables who had been making enquiries in
the neighbourhood were supervising the tow-truck as it hitched up the vehicle
that had been stolen from the prison, and they briefed the detective on what
they had learned. The movements on Saturday of the three escaped prisoners were
not yet fully clear to her, but she was left in no doubt that the three men had
passed through this way. She also received from the constables a detailed report
on the stolen car, which had been thoroughly examined. Finally, they said, they
had asked a resident to request the woman who headed up the local Street
Committee to come down the street to talk to them while they supervised the
removal of the vehicle. They wanted to talk to her about any other possible
leads they might follow.

Pillay saw the
woman striding toward them, purposefully. At a distance she looked much younger
than her years. They had said she was sixty-something. Pillay had been
expecting someone with some wrinkles in the face and some lines of experience
reflecting the poverty that abounded in this neighbourhood. She expected a body
to go with that: perhaps a plump woman who walked with a cane, or at least a
limp, or someone who walked slowly, or who rolled as she walked. Not this
woman. She was thin and wiry and she strode as if she was marching to the podium
at an athletics meeting to collect her medal.

As she approached,
Pillay saw that there were indeed lines in the face, and the woman’s visage did
indeed bear the marks of a hard life. Her jaw was clenched in a way that
brought her nose into closer proximity with her chin than should be the case in
most women that age. As a consequence of this the lips appeared as very thin
straight lines, pursed together with a determined conviction.

She was introduced
to Pillay by the constables, who then both took a step back as if they knew
what was coming. Pillay managed to thrust out her hand in greeting and get a
few words out before the tirade started.

‘Hullo,
Mrs Xaba.
I’m
Detective Navi Pillay from Durban. We’re searching for criminals who broke out
of prison. I believe you are head of the Street Committee…’

‘I am the head,
yes. We do everything by ourselves in this street because
amaphoyisa
they are useless. They are lazy. They are stupid. They
are crooks. The courts they are useless. The judges they are crooks. Nobody
there in town can help us. We only, us, here, we can help the people who live
here. We keep our eyes open here…’

With the woman
speaking at top volume it was not long before neighbours started appearing at
their front doors or windows, or at their front-yard fences. People called to
family members within their homes, or called over fences to people in the
houses next door.
Let’s go and listen. Ma
Xaba is lambasting another policeman from Durban
.

She did so without
pausing, stringing sentences together in one long stream of consciousness that
drew upon every thought she had ever entertained about the
tsotsis
that were like a plague of cockroaches living off the good
clean-living citizens of Sikwehle Road. She lambasted Pillay as if she was the sole
person responsible for the failures of every policeman and policewoman in the
land. She expressed the opinion that every criminal should be handed over to
her team in the neighbourhood rather than be sent to prison. If they were sent
to prison, she said, they would only do drugs. But if they came to her instead,
she would teach them a lesson they would never forget. They would wish that
they had had her as their mother when they were children, instead of having the
no-good parents they must have had, because with one exception no child of hers
had ever stolen anything or done anything wrong. They knew that if they had
done so they would have had the hiding of their lives. She would have flayed
the skin off them and broken their knuckles so that those hands would never
have been capable of stealing anything. Only one time, she said, only one time
did one of her very own sons forget that rule, and he would never forget it
again, because first her good friend had beaten him for stealing something, and
when the son had come crying to her and told her what had happened, what did
she do? She gave him another beating. Then she had called the woman concerned
and congratulated her and thanked her for beating the hell out of the boy and
teaching him a lesson that was good for him; and she and that woman had been best
friends ever since. That woman, who lived in KwaDukuza, that Mrs Mkhize, was
just like her. The two of them ensured that the bad children in the
neighbourhood would be rooted out so that the good children could grow up
properly. What this country needed, she said, was some weeding. The bad people
needed to be pulled out by their roots. The country needed people like her and
Mrs Mkhize to keep the younger generation on the right side of the law.
 
It was time, she said, that the idiotic
judges in the land were also sent to her and Mrs Mkhize so that they could also
be taught a thing or two about what real justice was and about how to hand out
justice.