Death Dealing (27 page)

Ryder skidded to a halt on the
opposite side of the road, on sand and gravel. He leaped out of the car and saw
immediately that Thabethe had crawled from the wreckage and decided to take his
chances on foot. He was clambering over a flimsy wooden garden fence as Ryder
dashed across the road toward him. Ryder paused fractionally to check on
Mgwazeni. He needed no more than two seconds, because he saw at a glance that
the man was dead, his neck at a horrific angle to his head and clearly broken.
Mgwazeni had died instantly.

Ryder followed Thabethe over the
fence as if it were the last hurdle in the hundred metre hurdles he had run
frequently at high school. He found his adversary standing, back against a wall
of the house, facing him. He had a garden pick in his hands. It was a
lethal-looking device, just short of a metre long with a mattock design and
hickory handle, and a heavy duty forged steel head, sharpened to a point at one
end.

Ryder and Thabethe faced each other,
each waiting for the other to make the first move. The last time they had done
this, each holding a pistol in a clearing on the south coast, Ryder had
prevailed. On that occasion he had hoped that Thabethe would raise his weapon.
Ryder was not a cop who executed people in cold blood. He had needed the
adversary to make the first move, and then he would have had no hesitation in
shooting to kill. But Thabethe had known that there was no way he could prevail
over Ryder. The detective was sharp, and fast, and clinical. Thabethe knew, on
that occasion, the game was up. He would never win in a shootout against Ryder.
He had succumbed meekly and Ryder had put the cuffs on him and taken him away.

He had then spent three months in
prison before breaking out with his two companions. Three months of hell in a
place to which he swore he would never return.
A hell about
which the South African public had no accurate knowledge.

This time the confrontation was
going to be different, Thabethe thought. There was no way he was going back.
The
amaphoyisa
could cut him to
pieces if they wanted to, but there was no way they were taking him. He would
face everything this cop could throw at him and he would never succumb.

They both heard the police siren in
the distance, drawing nearer.

Thabethe stepped forward one pace.
Ryder retreated one pace. Thabethe stepped forward another pace, slightly to
the left this time. Ryder mirrored him, taking half a pace backward to his
right. Thabethe moved again, also slightly left. And Ryder mirrored him again.
Each pace moved them diagonally to Ryder’s right. One more step. Then suddenly
there was an audience behind Ryder’s back. The spectators on the road had run
from the upended car to the wooden fence over which the two men had clambered,
and were peering over the fence at the action.

With seven or eight faces peering
over the fence, and bodies pressed against the thin wooden planks, the
structure suddenly gave way, most of the spectators falling with it into the
garden. The collapsed fence revealed further spectators beyond. They included
two uniformed constables who had run from the nearby Westville Police Station. In
the distance was another Westville cop, running toward the scene. She was a
detective known to Ryder.

Two of the fallen spectators
screamed as they struck rocks and hard ground in the now-exposed garden. Ryder
was distracted for an instant, and Thabethe chose that moment to strike. As he
did so, one of the spectators screamed as the lethal point of the pick curved
in an arc aimed at Ryder’s head.

Ryder stepped in toward the incoming
blow. He went in much lower than Thabethe expected and much faster, and landed
a massive punch to his solar plexus. With the extraordinary power behind the
punch, the intended blow from the pick fizzled out and the lethal instrument
curved inward to the ground, embedding itself in the hard earth at one end,
with the sharpened point projecting directly upward.

Ryder knew that a punch to the solar
plexus was one of the best ways to disable an opponent, because an
appropriately aimed blow would paralyse the complex network of nerves there,
along with a shock to the diaphragm that would cause instant loss of breath.

There was also an additional
dimension to the punch. As Ryder unleashed it, he had embedded in his memory
the sight of his beloved Border Collie lying immobile on the front lawn of his
home, a deadly needle protruding from its body, with his distraught wife
weeping hysterically over the animal. As Ryder punched, he had psyched himself
to a point at which he was landing a blow aimed at the most evil force he had
ever encountered in his career in law enforcement. He was dealing death to the
devil himself. The power behind the blow was driven by more than mere physical
strength. He was striking out at every evil force that had ever loomed in upon
him. He was punching through the thin veneer of ethics and justice and law and balance
and equilibrium that he had thought, until then, governed his precarious moral
being. He was taking out the devil.

With someone as wiry and as lean as
Thabethe the damage was even more profound, because there was virtually no fat
or muscle to absorb the blow.
Thabethe’s diaphragm went into instant spasm and he
buckled. As he did so, his right foot stepped forward into an indentation in
the garden that caused him to lose his balance.

Thabethe fell face first onto the
garden pick. The upended point went into his right eye socket and through the
back of his head.

The spectators screamed. The police
constables gasped, as did the local Westville detective, Warrant Officer Mpho Mphe,
who had arrived just in time to see Thabethe swing the weapon. Ryder spun
around and addressed the detective.

‘I’m leaving, Mpho.
More action at home.
My wife and family.
Get hold of me there.’

The detective nodded, speechless for
a moment, and then she blurted out.

‘Yes, of course,
Jeremy.
Go. Go, man. I’ll take
care of this. Go! Go, Jeremy!’

The spectators scattered again.
Ryder sprinted across the road to his car and took off with the engine
screaming and tyres skidding wildly on loose gravel before finding traction and
lurching forward onto the tarmac. As he burned his way down Jan Hofmeyer Road
he was suddenly overcome by a feeling of the utmost dread. He had seen
Sugar-Bear immobile and stretched out on the lawn with the horrendous bicycle
spoke protruding from him. Fiona had shouted
Get them! We’re OK
. What had that meant? Did she mean that she and
the boys were OK? Or had she meant that she and the dog were OK? Did this mean
that in the heat of the moment she hadn’t stopped to think of the boys? How
were the boys? How could she have meant that she and the dog were OK, when the
dog was clearly dead, with a grotesque metal spike pinning it to the ground?

He couldn’t eradicate the image of
the devastated parents he had encountered in Glenwood. He thought back on the
sight that had greeted him at the Khuzwayo family home. Would he, too, lapse
into traumatic immobility like the Khuzwayo parents, following the gruesome
discovery of butchered children? Would he finally topple over the edge, like Kwanele
Khuzwayo? Like Nadine Salm? Would he find his wife traumatised and his sons
murdered by the most evil man he had ever encountered? Would he finally succumb
to the crime that permeated the country to which he had committed himself?
Would he finally surrender and say that justice was a lost cause in this
country, and that it was time to pack and head for the Emerald Isle?

Ryder’s worst fears were growing
into nightmares as the car careened off Rockdale Avenue Bridge and around the
bend into Essex Terrace. Seconds later he felt a sob erupting in his throat as
he turned the corner at the top of Cochrane Avenue and saw, ahead of him,
spilling out of his own driveway, a crowd of people and cars and uniformed
police constables. He skidded to a halt in the middle of the road and sprinted
up the driveway.

15.20.

They came from everywhere. Once the
call was sent out it went viral. Tweets, emails, texts, and phone messages. Pagers,
cell-phones, landlines and radio calls. People popping into local cafes and
shops with
have you heard
?
Do you know anyone who can help
? Within
minutes it seemed to onlookers that every Westville-resident surgeon or
consultant or vet or nurse had rushed over to the Ryder home.

They came from as far away as
Cowie’s Hill. Cars were abandoned in the street up and down from the Ryder
driveway. On the front lawn there were a dozen people who knew exactly what
they were doing, and for every one of them there was someone who didn’t know
what they were doing. Another dozen individuals stood back on the driveway
watching, agitated, and deeply concerned. Every face sported moist eyes and
many of them cascaded tears.

All of them had one thought in
common. The life of the black and white bundle of fur on the lawn had to be
saved.

Fiona Ryder and her two sons were
clinging on to each other as if their own lives depended on it. An enormous
German
Shepherd
from the K9 unit at Durban Central sat
obediently next to his handler on the lawn, but he was extremely agitated and
was whining in sympathy with the grievously injured Border Collie. His whines
were punctuated every now and then with a gentle encouraging bark directed at Sugar-Bear,
who could hear nothing.

Neighbouring children were crying in
anguish: Sugar-Bear was well known in the street, and parents were doing their
best to provide comfort to their young ones.

The main veterinary surgeon, from
the Westville Veterinary Hospital, who lived only four houses away, had been
one of the first to arrive. He was issuing instructions and receiving willing
assistance from any number of hands, including those of one of the country’s
top vascular surgeons, also a local resident who lived in the very next street,
and who was happy to play second fiddle to the vet who knew exactly what he was
doing.

Uniforms started arriving, along
with Forensic Services and medics. Respecting the anguish of the crowd,
constables nevertheless started ushering them gently back behind cordons.
Inside the house, another cordon was being erected around the area containing
the body of Wakashe.

Ryder came running up the driveway.
Fiona and the boys rushed over to him, meeting him halfway down. The four of
them clung to each other as Fiona blurted out the news.
No-one
was sure, she said, whether Sugar-Bear would pull through, but the best people
were working on him and everyone was willing them on.

Ryder felt himself caving in,
inside. Relieved as he was at the sight of his family, none of them sporting
any wounds or physical damage, he couldn’t imagine losing Sugar-Bear. The
desperate anguish of his sons and wife made it even harder to bear. The four of
them stood, huddled together, desperate.

Forensics had called for
photographers, who now arrived and made their way directly inside the house to
join the team working around Wakashe’s body. A uniformed police constable was
barking a report into her iPhone. Neighbours were dashing back and forth
offering help but being ushered back by other constables. Extra cordons were
being erected and people were now being pushed more forcefully back behind
them.

The minutes ticked by as the crowd
waited for news. More people came and went, asking for information, being
briefed by those who knew, and corrected by those who knew better.

Apparently...

I
heard that...

It
seems that...

Ja,
and apparently...

The opinions flowed back and forth.

Suddenly a cheer went up from the
crowd on the lawn. It travelled like a ripple of water down the driveway. It
burst from there like a flood and bubbled up and down the street and into the
houses next door and opposite and further along. The excitement and joy mingled
with tears of relief.

The vet had made a pronouncement.
The dog would make it. He would pull through. They had saved his life.

Children wept with joy and ran off
to tell their friends and families. The German
Shepherd
seemed to pick up the new mood and started barking hysterically. His handler
had difficulty restraining him. The Ryders rushed up onto the lawn. The vet and
the doctors and nurses had stood up and were slapping one another on the back
and pumping away with ecstatic handshakes. The Ryders collapsed on their knees
next to their beloved pet. Ryder felt like burying his face into the dog’s
neck, but restrained himself to look instead with concern at the grotesque
expression on Sugar-Bear’s face.

‘He’s still out for the count, sir,’
said the vet’s assistant who was swabbing away the blood and cleaning up around
the wound. ‘He’ll come around soon, but he’ll be terribly sick when he does.’

Sugar-Bear lay there looking
anything but peaceful. His tongue protruded, his teeth were bared seemingly in
a vicious snarl, and his eyes were slightly open, almost as if he could see and
register what was happening. But he couldn’t.
No-one
knew whether the dog was off somewhere in his imagination chasing criminals or
herding sheep or merely imagining delicious chunks of his favourite cheddar
cheese.