Death Dealing (21 page)

‘I called her just before everyone
arrived tonight, to check on the latest news. You were in the shower. Sorry, I
meant to tell you, but the guests started arriving so it slipped my mind.’

‘What’s the latest on Nadine?’

‘Pauline said she’d spent a couple
of hours with her this afternoon and she was making good progress. She was
going back tonight to spend a bit of time with her.’

‘Too late to call now, I suppose?’

‘I’d say so. If we were calling
Nadine herself I’d say no problem. She’s always been a night-owl.’

‘Maybe that was part of the
problem.’

‘I think that’s right. As long as
I’ve known her she’s burned the candle at both ends. We’ve joked about it in
the team. Anyone can call Nadine Salm anytime and she’s likely to be in the
laboratory or testing and re-testing some evidence somewhere. I spoke to one of
her colleagues not too long ago, a detective turned full-time forensics guy. He
told me he had once been a bit like her. Once evidence starts turning up and
points to something new, it’s like a drug. They become compulsive, he said.
Will work right through the night looking for connections, and then can’t sleep
as they think of possibilities and new links. He said he often got up in the
middle of the night and went to his desk to draw diagrams linking bits of
evidence and staring at them to see if there was something new.’

‘Can’t be healthy if it becomes too
obsessive, I’m sure,’ she observed. ‘Like you and Kaizer Chiefs.’

‘I’m sure. Or like you and the
Sharks, maybe. Hanging on in the vain hope that maybe one day your team will
actually win. This guy told me he hit a wall once, because he had been pushing
it too hard, like Nadine.’

‘Oh? What do you mean, hit a wall?’

‘He was saying he thought he’d seen
everything. Would be perfectly at ease dealing with slaughtered bodies, burns,
acid, bullet-wounds to the face, and all that. For years he never even blinked
at the stuff. With decomposing bodies he simply got used to wiping some stuff on
his nostrils to kill the smell of putrefaction and get on with the job. Nothing
got to him, he said, until one day it all just imploded.’

‘What happened?’

‘It wasn’t even the most gruesome of
scenes, he told me. One could hardly even see the wounds on the body, he said.
But it was this four-year old girl. The simple
fact that it
was this beautiful innocent little thing in front of him, looking like
an angel. That’s what did him in.’

‘Oh my God. How awful.’

‘It was the father, apparently. So
they wrapped up the case. Others took the body away. Someone else nailed the
father. Another person dealt with the family. This guy just went home.
Another day in the office.
Another death. Then, in the
middle of the night, he went crazy.’

Fiona said nothing. She just looked
at her husband and waited. He paused for a moment before continuing.

‘He told me he woke up in the early
hours of the morning and started tearing his own house apart. Throwing things,
kicking his foot through doors, punching his way clear through a window. His
wife and kids called ambulances and police and everyone they could think of. He
said he learned from his family much later that he had simply flipped and was a
complete and utter stranger to them. The medics finally took him off to hospital
and kept him there and then sent him home after a fortnight.’

‘What happened then? Did he go back
to work?’

‘Not immediately.
He was put on special leave. He told me he simply
went into a dark room with a bottle of whisky a day and didn’t come out for a month.
Then one day it disappeared. As if it had never happened. He went back to work
and pretty soon was back to full strength. He still worries that it lurks
around the corner and will spring out at him again one day. But he simply
couldn’t understand how it just floated away. He said he still occasionally
thinks of the little girl, but it’s more of a distant memory now, and he’s not
attached to the emotion… weird.’

He stared into nothing. She knew
that look so well. Doubtless, she thought, he was thinking of the many corpses
he had seen, and the many perpetrators he had put away.

She put her arms
around him and snuggled into his chest.

‘You won’t implode
on me, will you?’

‘Don’t think so,’
he said.

‘What could make
you implode?’

‘
Dunno
.
If something happened to you. Or the boys.’

The dog whined.

‘Or Sugar-Bear,’ he
added.

‘Wasn’t that
strange? Almost as if he knew you were leaving him out.’

‘Never. I include
him too.’

‘Implode, or
explode?’

‘Explode first, I
think. Then implode.’

They stood in the
middle of the room, arms around each other, swaying gently for a minute, before
she spoke.

‘Bed?’ she said.

‘Bed,’ he replied.

The dog, agreeing, went
and curled up in his box in the kitchen. They did the alarms, tweaked
Sugar-Bear’s ears, and started turning off the lights.

23.50.

The shebeen was
heaving. Loud young men were dancing and shouting. Some of them had removed
their shirts, ostensibly because of the heat but in many cases simply to show
off their torsos. Their bodies glistened with perspiration in the smoke-filled
room. The smell of marijuana permeated the place. Groups of men and women
gathered over drinks, shouting above the noise in an attempt to be heard by the
person next to them. People jostled one another in an attempt to find a space.
There were occasional moments of tension as people argued about being bumped or
pushed.
 
Violence hung in the air,
waiting for a signal.

Newcomers squeezed
into the tavern. As they arrived and felt the wall of heat hit them in the
face, they peeled off whatever superfluous external clothing they had on. The
defective sound system blared out a distorted version of
Die Antwoord
’s popular
Girl I
want 2 Eat U
. Men and women, most of them oblivious to the misogyny being
belted out through the room, swayed and bopped in time to the music.

Mavis and Ndileko
tried to the best of their abilities to appear focused only on one another
while checking, from time to time, on the three men. The drink flowed. Patrons
plucked up the courage to approach Thabethe, whose reputation as a supplier was
second only to his reputation as a man who shouldn’t be crossed.

From time to time a young man - they
were always males, she noticed - would approach Thabethe and whisper something
to him. Money would change hands, unobtrusively. Then Thabethe would accompany
the youngster outside. Thabethe would eventually return alone, and only after
five or six minutes would the young man also return and make his way back to
where he had been sitting or standing previously with friends. Meanwhile
Wakashe and Mgwazeni were getting to know each other a little better. They were
full of praise for their companion. Wakashe was animated.

There was a moment, however, that
sent a chill down Mavis’s spine. In one of her casual glances over at the three
men, she made eye contact with Wakashe. It was just a moment, but it was deeply
disconcerting. She thought the eye contact was accompanied by a lascivious leer
at her. She transferred her gaze immediately, back to Ndileko. A moment later
Mgwazeni guffawed loudly, doubtless in response to something Wakashe had said
about the eye contact with the woman in the corner.

Mavis felt very uneasy. Not only was
she attempting to do detective work when she was nowhere near detective status,
but if the captain or her colleagues found out they would think her reckless.
She was proud of her work ethic, and she had earned the respect of all of her
colleagues, yet here she was behaving as if she had never learned a thing in
training. In addition, she was putting Ndileko in danger. She suddenly saw the
gravity of the situation. She decided she should change gear. Instead of
pushing this any further right now she could report tomorrow to the Captain
that she happened to be at Mabaleng Tavern with a friend when she saw the three
men. The value of that would lie in the Captain then liaising with the KwaMashu
police and putting a watch on the tavern for the next week. In that way she
would have played a useful part, but simply as an innocent citizen. She
wouldn’t have endangered anyone…

Then Mavis’s plans changed yet
again. The three men suddenly got to their feet and started making for the
exit. It was almost as if they had got wind of a threat to their hard-won
freedom. They left very quickly, and Mavis got to her feet.

‘Come, Ndileko.
They’re going. Let’s follow.’

‘OK, Mavis.
But careful.
Let’s keep
back. Don’t let them see us. How far do you want to follow them?’

As they weaved their way through the
throng of patrons, Mavis heard a police siren in the distance. That explains
it, she thought. The three men had left the moment they had heard the sound.
That was the reason for their sudden departure. As she and Ndileko stepped out,
they could see the three men in the distance, walking rapidly into the shadows.
The men turned the corner at the end of the next building.

Mavis was slightly ahead of Ndileko.
She strode rapidly toward the corner of the building as she answered his
question.

‘I just want to see where they go,
Ndileko. We won’t follow them too far. I want to see if they go back to
Wakashe’s house in Dada Street. That’s where his mother lives. If they go there
then I can call someone and tell them that on the way home from Mabaleng Tavern
we saw them in the street and I recognised him and we watched them go into the
house, and…’

She was breathless as she whispered
while trying to catch up with the three men. As they turned the corner of the
first building the three men were already at the far corner of the next
building. It was almost as if they must have run, once they had turned the
corner, thought Mavis.

‘Come, Ndileko.
 
Quick. Let’s not lose them.’

They increased their pace from a
fast walk to a canter. Both breathless, whispering to each other, they ran
around the corner of the second building. To be confronted by the three men
standing shoulder to shoulder, facing them, this time speaking in English.

‘Sexy lady!
Sexy
lady from Mabaleng’s.
She is following me into the night. Into the dark
night,’ said Wakashe. ‘Me, the man she was looking at all night. Hullo, sexy
lady.’

‘
Ntombazane, ngifuna ukudla nawe
,’ said
Mgwazeni.

The three men guffawed, in
recognition of the line from the song, as Mgwazeni continued.

‘Maybe you are not speaking
isiZulu
? I am just saying, sister, I
want to eat with you.’

‘
Tchai
!’
retorted Wakashe. ‘Mgwazeni, he can say he wants to eat
with
you,
Ntombazane
. But
me,
I’m wanting
to just eat you.
Wena ungowami
. You are mine, sister. Come. Let’s have dinner, just
you and me.’

00.10.

Mavis and Ndileko froze in terror as
the three men sauntered toward them out of the shadows. The lascivious leer
from Wakashe was even more terrifying to them than the wolf-like eyes of
Thabethe, which seemed fractionally less threatening once they emerged into the
pool of light cast from the street-lamp on the corner.

For an instant Ndileko was rendered
completely immobile by the shock of running into the men. Then he started
trembling, violently, in abject horror at what lay in store. He couldn’t run.
He was paralysed with fear and couldn’t elicit a reaction from hands or feet or
head. He was rooted to the ground. Not so, Mavis. She paused for a second
before Navi Pillay’s face loomed into her consciousness as she recalled the
extraordinary class in which Navi had demonstrated to the gathered women
recruits the art of
kick-boxing
.

Mavis was aided by
a police siren in the distance
.
Was it the same vehicle that had hurtled past the tavern just moments before,
in search of some fugitive? Or was it yet another vehicle out on the hunt for
the endless line of hoodlums terrorising the neighbourhood? Whatever the
answer, the siren served to distract the three men for a moment. Mavis stepped
forward onto her left foot and lashed out high with her right foot, angled
perfectly straight and horizontal to the ground, as Navi had taught her. Mavis
had never, in any of those classes, kicked as high as she now did. Her foot
connected with Wakashe’s throat and he went down in an instant, gasping for
breath, clutching at his neck, trying desperately to relieve the pressure on
his windpipe, but unable to do so as his bandaged hands provided no flexibility
for the fingers.

Thabethe and Mgwazeni were struck
immobile for a moment and then reacted to the movement from Mavis by rushing
forward at her, but suddenly the street was flooded in blue light. The police
car came into view from behind the tavern, and suddenly all five of them were
bathed in light. Thabethe and Mgwazeni changed their minds instantly and
grabbed Wakashe, pulling him to his feet. The three of them ran. They hurled
themselves over the nearest fence and disappeared into the dark.

Within seconds two uniformed police
officers were with Mavis and Ndileko. Mavis could barely speak. She was still
shocked, not only at having run into the three men but also at her own
reaction. She hadn’t known that she would ever be capable of such a blow. She
recalled Navi Pillay’s tireless exhortations to the class to practice time and
time again
until the kick becomes as
automatic as lifting a hand to shield yourself from a tennis ball aimed at your
face
. She had done so, and had practiced the movement tirelessly, but had
never thought she would ever be in a position to actually employ it. For her,
the routine had been simply a way of keeping down her weight.

The police officers made no attempt
to follow the fugitives. They knew that in an area like this it would be
hopeless without reinforcements, and it was unlikely they would get
reinforcements quickly enough at this time of night. Instead, after a cursory
look around they stood next to their vehicle with the young couple,
who
they assumed merely to be the victims of an intended
mugging.

Mavis, still trembling from the
shock, was now in tears, and Ndileko started to thaw. They both knew they had
had the luckiest of escapes. Mavis had to think rapidly through the scenario
ahead of her. If she told the two policemen everything she knew about the three
men, she would have to follow through in the morning and confess that she had
violated all protocols. Taking upon herself the role of private investigator
and endangering an innocent citizen would not look good to Nyawula or Ryder or
Pillay. Cronje would go ballistic and would be terribly disappointed in her.
How could she play the scene?

Ndileko was one step ahead of her.
He recognised the dilemma instantly, so he led the way.

‘We were just in Mabaleng’s there,
me and my girlfriend,
you know, and we suddenly realised how
late it was. So we were in a rush to get back to my place in Sikwehle Road, and
then these three men they jumped out…’

Ndileko had given Mavis the cue, and
she grasped at it. She reinforced Ndileko’s story, and very soon the cops
offered to drive them back the short distance to Ndileko’s home. Ndileko gave
the officers the number of his address in Sikwehle Road, and they got into the
car.

As they drove off there was a
movement in the bush. The police car disappeared around the corner. Wakashe
stepped into the pool of light at the corner of the building. Thabethe and
Mgwazeni were just behind him. They had done a full circle in the dark to
re-emerge at the same spot. Wakashe had recovered his voice but still felt the
pain of the blow to his throat.

‘You hear what he said, comrades?
You hear what that
hodoshe
said to
amaphoyisa
? He told them where he is
living. He told those cops his address. Right there near my mother’s place.
These two,
they live in Sikwehle Road.’

‘You OK, Wakashe?’
asked Mgwazeni. ‘Your throat is OK?’

‘I’m OK. Is
all OK
. She was lucky. But I want that bitch. Come, let’s go
and get those two.’

‘You sure it’s OK,
Wakashe?’ added Thabethe. ‘If they’re going to Sikwehle Road, you sure it’s
safe? The cops they’ll be looking for you there.’

‘Not
now at this time, Skhura.
Not now. We won’t see
amaphoyisa
this late. If they’re asking questions there by my mother, that old bitch,
they’ll be asking in the daytime. Not now. Now it’s safe, I’m telling you. We
must just keep quiet, because all the neighbours there they are
impimpis
.
My mother,
too.
Those are the ones that are selling us out all the time.
Come
,
let’s go
. Now is a good
time.’

‘Before the rain
comes, comrades,’ added Mgwazeni, looking up at the sky. I’m thinking there’s a
big storm coming.’

‘Let’s go, then. I
want that woman. I’m going to teach her a lesson. I’m going to make her
boyfriend watch that lesson, too. Let’s go. Ten minutes to their place. Let’s
go.’

At Wakashe’s
urging, the other two followed him as he strode off rapidly. The black night
was hot and humid but despite the humidity the tarred roads, which had been losing
moisture all day, cried out for water. The skies were mustering the energy to
satisfy that demand, with clouds growing darker and more pregnant by the
second.

00.40.

Nonhlanhla, Mavis and Ndileko were
sitting in the living room. Nonhlanhla was still highly agitated. The other two
had calmed down and were comparatively relaxed about the incident. They all
cradled mugs of coffee as they spoke.

‘
Hau
!
I’m still shaking,’ said Nonhlanhla. ‘You two! How can you choose such
entertainment? I hate that place. The people who go there are scary, man. All
those guys are so sexist, all the time.’

‘
Hayi,
sisi
! It’s not that bad. The guys are just having fun. Most of them just
like to dance and talk and drink and make no trouble. Maybe sometimes they have
too much. It’s only when
skelms
like
these guys come along that there’s trouble…’

Mavis felt terrible. She was worried
that she had betrayed the trust of Nonhlanhla. The police constables who had
dropped them off were satisfied with their story and had left quickly. But Nonhlanhla
had arrived home half an hour before them and had been extremely agitated
because she had expected them to be home before her. When they finally arrived,
she was so relieved she had burst into tears.

‘I’m so sorry, Nonnie,’ said Mavis.

‘You should have seen her,
sisi
. She was so fast. She kicked this
guy before he could get her…’

Nonhlanhla was caught between relief
and surprise, as she listened to her brother. She would never have believed
that her long-standing friend Mavis could be capable of any physical action,
let alone martial arts.
Gentle Mavis, with whom she had
studied at high school.
Plump Mavis, too, in those days. She looked now
at her friend and saw a completely different person. Her tears turned to
giggles.

‘What, Nonnie? What?’ said Mavis.

‘
Hau
, Mavis.
I don’t know. You. James Bond. I can’t believe
it.’

They all chuckled.
Relief all around.
At least they were safe.

Then there came a sound
from outside the living room window that caused a complete cessation in the
merriment. All three of them froze.

00.41.

There was a distant roll of thunder,
drawing near. The black cloud lay thick and low, unbroken, stretching its
tentacles wide to the horizon like some gigantic spider embracing its prey
before injecting its deadly poison into the earth. The wind scattered plastic
bags and dust and empty cartons. It sped between the houses, creating eerie
sounds as it travelled across the mouths of the many bottles lying scattered in
backyards and alleyways.

As Thabethe looked up, the first of
the colossal raindrops began to fall. They exploded with dull thuds onto the dirt
tracks running between the houses. Where they fell into the dust they left imprints
as large as saucers. For the first two minutes the drops were five or six
seconds apart, spurting up dust and steam as they plodded into the still
over-heated earth. Then they came faster, racing one another to bury themselves
into the ground, cascading over one another to join and mingle and create
rivulets and puddles. Soon the drops transformed into sheets of water. The dust
turned to mud. Visibility fell to no more than a few feet as they approached
the house, Thabethe peering through the gloom beneath the window.

Suddenly a thunderclap, crisp and
crackling and angry, shattered the heavens.

‘
Eish!
’
screamed Wakashe, in a moment of shock.

‘
Thula
wena!
’ hissed Thabethe, trying to shut him up.

The three men crouched down low at
the window, turning their faces into the wall in an attempt to shield their
eyes from the wind-driven rain that was now attacking them from above at a
shallow angle to the ground, like the lances of an advancing cavalry.

Inside the house Mavis, Nonhlanhla
and Ndileko moved as one to the window to try and identify the sound they had
heard. The three men chose the very same moment to stand and peer through the
window, and at that precise moment the horizon exploded into a sheet of white
light behind them. Like the tangled arteries of Thabethe’s eyes, the lightning
forged a mess of jagged lines against the sky, silhouetting him against the
horizon. Somewhere in the distance a bolt of lighting hissed into the earth and
was expunged. It was followed two seconds later by an angry escalating roar of
thunder. It rolled out of the blackness toward the house, and encountered an
even more terrifying sound in the deep roots of Nonhlanhla’s primeval scream.

Nonhlanhla paused for a moment after
seeing the three figures, then screamed because she saw Thabethe. It was the
sight of his eyes rather than the mere fact of a man at the window that had
prompted her terror. With the thunder and lightning behind him, and the light
bouncing back off the window into his face, she would say later, it was as if
some evil
tokoloshe
had arrived to
take her away. Mavis and Ndileko would say, later, that for them it had not
been the sight of the three men that had terrified them. It had been
Nonhlanhla’s scream. It was a scream, they would both say, that chilled their
blood.

It was also a
scream that served a useful practical purpose. Coming between the cracks of
thunder, the sound penetrated through to neighbours on both sides and opposite.
Within seconds lights were being turned on in houses all around. Thabethe and
his two companions, also frozen into temporary immobility by the scream, initially
hesitated and then decided they had lost the initiative. They scrambled into
the dark, running headlong into the slanting rain, finding the tarred road, and
sprinting as fast as they could into the night.

01.45.

Mavis and her two friends
finally went to bed somewhere around one-thirty. Mavis lay there in the dark,
thinking through the events of the night.

The neighbours had
been extraordinarily helpful. They poured into the house after hearing
Nonhlanhla’s scream. Within seconds orders were shouted, volunteers stepped
forward, and four young men had immediately gone out into the pouring rain to
search for the intruders. They returned after fifteen minutes, drenched but
confident that the intruders had disappeared. They were nowhere in the
vicinity, the young men could guarantee that. Meanwhile the other neighbours
helped check the house and ensure that windows and doors were secure. They were
an efficient and organised group of people who seemed to know exactly what they
were doing. Mavis was thoroughly impressed by one sixty-something woman, in
particular. She appeared to command the respect of all of them, and functioned
as a cross between a matriarch and a battlefield commander, Mavis thought.