Death Dealing (17 page)

The same CTV camera
then caught him leaving the room. It showed him discarding the first magazine as
he walked and replacing it with the second, also containing fifteen rounds. By
the time he reached the ward containing the second of the six men, the pistol
was fully loaded. He went to each of the remaining five victims in turn. In
each case, it was testified by witnesses and by cross-reference in some
instances to different CTV cameras, Mr Khuzwayo spoke to the victims prior to
shooting them. All of them were shot in the face and in the face only. Whereas
the first victim had received fifteen bullets, each of the others received
either four or five bullets to the face.

Khuzwayo then made
his way to the top floor of the hospital, from where he forced a janitor at
gunpoint to provide him with access to the roof of the building. The janitor
escaped unharmed, and was able to testify that Mr Khuzwayo had then jumped to
his death in the street below.

The first
responders submitted their report, and the matter was referred for further
investigation.

14.45.

At Pillay’s
suggestion, on the way they had called Pauline Soames to ask whether they could
upgrade the coffee invitation and bring her some lunch. She agreed, and they
then stopped in to buy a few things. When they got to Pauline’s apartment Pillay
and Ryder rustled up an impressive lunch while they spoke to her.

By the time they
had eaten she was in high spirits. She was much better, Ryder whispered to
Pillay during a break when their host fetched more coffee, than he could have
hoped for given the circumstances of the early morning. As they left her
apartment Pillay and Ryder agreed that she seemed to be fully recovered and on
top of things. She would be visiting Nadine during visiting hours both in the
afternoon and the evening, and she would keep them informed if there were any
significant developments.

The two detectives
felt much better about the situation as they drove away.

‘Oh, look,’ said
Pillay. ‘I hadn’t realised. That’s the apartment block where Mavis lives. I
wonder if she knows she’s a close neighbour of Nadine and Pauline?’

‘I think she does.
I think I heard them mention it once.’

‘Lots
of people migrating up to the Berea and around here, from further down.
Funny how cities gradually move
their centre of gravity, and in so many cases the movement is northward.’

‘Not
so slowly, either.
I know lots of people who are moving away.’

They drove all the
way up Musgrave Road and turned down toward the city on the M17, following it
until it became Sandile Thusi Road. That was when Ryder received a call from
Piet Cronje.

‘Yes, Piet?’

‘Sorry,
Jeremy.
Bad
news. Captain said I should let you know.’

‘What, Piet? I hate
receiving calls like this from you.’

‘Mr Khuzwayo,
Jeremy.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘He topped himself
at lunchtime.’

Ryder hated the
expression. He answered Pillay’s enquiring look.

‘Khuzwayo has
committed suicide.’

Pillay was shocked.
Ryder continued with the call from Cronje.

‘How, Piet? Where?
Lunchtime you say?’

What Cronje had to
say next was enough to have Ryder screech to a halt and pull the Camry over to
the kerb. It was also enough for him to get out of the car and walk up and down
the pavement as he received all the details. Pillay also got out, and walked
next to him. She could hear from Ryder’s responses what had happened, but it
was only when he shut down the call to Cronje that he could give her more
precise information. They stood on the pavement next to the Camry and digested
all the details.

The two detectives
were mortified. They drove in silence back to Station Command.

16.05.

Thabethe and
Wakashe were sitting at a table tucked away in the far corner of the Mugg &
Bean in Musgrave Centre. Thabethe had told his two friends a few hours earlier
that he had a craving for one of the M&B’s famous Gourmet Burgers with
chunky fries. They had agreed with alacrity. He’d chosen the Black and Blue
burger and the others had both gone for Big Daddies. Having finished their meal
they were now finishing off with coffees. Mgwazeni had gone to the toilet. Thabethe
was scanning a newspaper while Wakashe was staring at two women at a table
nearby. The two women asked the waiter if they could relocate to a table on the
other side of the restaurant and Wakashe was now sneering at them as they
moved.

‘Durban
women, Skhura.
They’re stuck-up.
All of them.
They think they’re too
good for us.’

Thabethe grunted,
continuing to page through the newspaper.

‘Here comes
Mgwazeni. He looks like he wants to tell us something big.’

Thabethe looked up
and saw what he meant. Mgwazeni was in a hurry. He joined them at the table,
speaking animatedly.

‘I just heard
something, comrades. One guy was listening to the four o’clock news on the
radio on his phone there in the toilet. He told me. Big thing at Addington
Hospital.’

‘What big thing,’
asked
Wakashe.

‘Some guy, he walks
in with a gun and he kills six people. Dead. Finished. Then he’s killing
himself.’

‘He’s killing
doctors?’ asked Thabethe.

‘No. He’s killing
six patients in their beds. Shooting them dead. All of them.’

Thabethe shrugged.
It was not particularly shocking to him. He was interested simply because he
had once worked as an orderly in the hospital. He remembered the much-discussed
case of a woman’s body being found in the basement there. He would have been
much more interested had the man killed six doctors. That would have pleased
Thabethe, as he recalled with no fondness the bossy people to whom he had
reported at the time.

Nevertheless,
Thabethe became a little more interested with Mgwazeni’s next words.

‘This
guy in the toilet.
He’s telling me that the man who killed the six guys was the same man who was
robbed by the same guys on Monday. They broke into his house in Glenwood,
there, and they killed the man’s sons. Then the cops caught the guys and they
ended up in hospital. Then this father goes to the hospital and kills them.
Then he kills himself…’

Thabethe had risen
to his feet and the other two stared at him. Then they, too, an instant later,
understood what Thabethe had recognised. Within seconds they were sitting down
again, huddled in an excited whispered exchange. Thabethe was reminding them of
what the guy with the matchstick was saying to them on Sunday. They remembered
the venomous way he had spat out the name
Khuzwayo
.

‘That’s it!’ said
Mgwazeni. ‘The guy in the toilet was telling me that name. Khuzwayo. The man
who killed himself, on the news they were saying his name was Khuzwayo.’

‘I remember when
that guy, matchstick man, when he said that name I remember I was thinking yes,
maybe it’s true, the name Khuzwayo means
he
who is warned
. I was thinking then that someone should warn this man
Khuzwayo about old matchstick.’

They sniggered at
the thought. None of them was particularly interested in Khuzwayo’s fate, but
Thabethe did draw their attention to one further thought he had about the
matter.

‘You see why I’m
saying, comrades, it’s all right to sell
whoonga
but you shouldn’t have too much of it yourself. You want to burn your brains,
like matchstick,
then
smoke it. Me, I like just a
little bit to smoke. But I like much more to sell. These guys who smoke too
much, they are
moegoe
. I don’t have
anything to do with them. I’m not like them.
Whoonga
will kill them. Not me. Me, I’m too clever.’

They departed,
chuckling together in gleeful companionship.

16.15.

They were all
gathered around Nyawula’s desk. Ryder was leaning back against the wall, arms
folded. Pillay and Tshabalala were in the two chairs in front of Nyawula’s
desk. Nyawula was seated behind the desk. KoeksnDips and Cronje were all
standing with hands in pockets. All were in
shirt-sleeves
.
The two fans were circulating warm air. All were perspiring.

‘
Yissus
!’ exclaimed Dippenaar.
‘Those bastards.
Not only did they kill the two sons. Now
the family’s lost the dad.’

‘That’s not even
half of it, really, Dipps,’ said Pillay. ‘Mrs Khuzwayo and the daughter are
going to suffer for the rest of their lives.’

‘I wish I could
have been put in a room with the six guys, Captain. Me and a baseball bat.’

‘Then I would have
lost a good cop, Koeks,’ replied Nyawula. ‘So I’m glad we didn’t do that.’

‘What, Captain? You
think I couldn’t have handled those guys?’

‘The Captain’s not
saying you would have lost a fight against them, Koeks,’ said Cronje. ‘He’s
just saying that if you did that then you would have ended up in jail.’

‘That’s right,
Koeks. That’s all I meant. It would have been different if you’d taken them
down while they were resisting arrest. Then you could have used whatever weapon
you wanted to, even a baseball bat. As long as you could argue that it was in
self-defence or they pulled a gun on you, or resisting arrest, or…’

‘
Ja
. True, hey, Captain,’ he replied.
‘If only Jeremy had killed the bastards when he took them down,
instead of just putting them in hospital.
Old Khuzwayo would still be
alive today.’

There was a
horrified silence in the room as everyone, including Koekemoer, suddenly
realised the impact of that statement on Ryder. They all looked at Ryder.
He was stunned by the statement
, as if he had only just
realised the implications.

‘
Ag
, sorry, Jeremy.
I didn’t mean it like that, you
know. I was just…’

‘It’s OK, Koeks.
OK. Don’t worry. But you’re right, of course. Those six men were the lowest,
most vile… there would have been few people who would have wasted more than a
few seconds thinking about it if I’d put them down for good.’

He paused. Nobody
offered a comment. They all watched him. Pillay, especially, was deeply
concerned. She knew Ryder. There was that look again. He was travelling. Miles
away.

‘OK, everyone,’
Nyawula said. ‘The press will be all over this. I need to work on something to
give them.’

‘There was a
discussion on talk radio just as I was coming in, Captain,’ said Mavis. ‘They
were inviting people to call in and say whether, if Mr Khuzwayo hadn’t jumped,
he should have gone to jail or whether he should have been released. Not one
person was saying anything different. Every single caller was saying that if
that was the case then he should not have stood trial.
Everyone
said that he should have been set free. They were saying
an eye for an eye
and things like…’

‘Just what we
need,’ said the Captain.
‘A vigilante society.
Person
with the biggest gun wins. I wish these radio talk shows would slow down a bit
and arrange a more reasoned discussion… Anyway, please, everyone, just refer
all calls from the media to me. Let’s also do everything we can to respect the
Khuzwayo name.
No comment
is better
than any comment I can think of, at present. We need to work on something that
will satisfy people. But still tell the truth. Let’s go.’

They began
trickling out, Koekemoer once again trying to explain his remark, and Ryder
reassuring him. The Captain asked Ryder to remain behind so that they could
discuss a point of business that had cropped up.

Nyawula waited for
the others to depart and then closed the inter-leading door.

‘I can see you’re
still troubled by that remark from Koeks, Jeremy.’

‘No,
Sibo, not really.
I’m grateful to him, in fact.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, he hit the
nail on the head, didn’t he? Good old Koeks. Not one to finesse things. He just
speaks what’s in his head.’

‘How do you mean,
Jeremy?’

‘Well, he’s right,
isn’t he? Aren’t we complicit in some way? If we fail to remove Hitler when we
have the chance, aren’t we complicit in the deaths of a few million people? If
we release a guy on parole after his first murder and he goes straight out and
kills someone, are we innocent?’

‘That’s very
different, Jeremy…’

‘Is it? So tell me.
As I ran toward those six guys in Albert Park I had only one thought in mind. I
was hoping, wishing, virtually praying that the guys would pull weapons on me.
That would have justified me serving their heads up on a plate for Mr and Mrs
Khuzwayo. I actually had an image in my head of me ripping them apart and
putting them in a bag and dragging the bag up to Pietermaritzburg and handing
it over to the Khuzwayo family, or what remains of it. Instead, as I ran toward
the guys I got waylaid.’