Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) (10 page)

She blurted all of this out very
quickly, and she now demanded of Mkhize that he immediately telephone the
police and report these men, because she was convinced that they were the three
who had killed those constables on the R74.

Mkhize did the wrong thing trying to
deal with this demand from his mother. His first reaction was to shout at her
and tell her that she was a fool for suggesting something so outrageous as
going to the police. He didn’t complete the sentence but had to pull the phone
rapidly away from his ear as the barrage of words from his mother spewed out at
a volume that
 
sent crackling
distortions through the speaker in his cell-phone.

‘
Wena!
Hey,
wena! Wena,
isigebengu! Shaddup,
man
.
This here your mother talking. You don’t say to me like that! You
shaddup, wena!
’

The
twins listened to the barrage of words that accelerated from their
grandmother’s mouth as she got into her stride. Within seconds she had numbed
Mkhize into acquiescent silence and then went on to berate him for every major
disappointment he had brought to her life since he turned fifteen and ran away
from school. She shouted into the phone about his laziness, his drugs and
drinking, his women, his stupid wife who was not even fit to be a mother and
who had run away to Johannesburg because she wasn’t a proper mother, and how
she, the real mother, who knew her responsibilities, had to take over and at
her age she now had do it all over again with her granddaughters and work her
fingers to the bone with no thanks from anyone and how he, her only son, had no
respect for her or for anyone but himself and his drugs and his drinking.

‘Vilapha,
wena!
Do some real work for once!
Landela mina!
You listen to your mother,
wena!
Skelm!
This family will
talk
to
amaphoyisa
when
amaphoyisa
ask us questions, and we will
report
skollies
and
tsotsis
to
amaphoyisa
when we see bad things happening in our streets, and you
lalela
, or there will be trouble! You
think you too old to have discipline in your life?
Ngizo shaya wena!
’

Eventually
she calmed down and by the time she hung up she had got Mkhize to accept that
the way to deal with this problem was to let the police handle it, and to take
note that if those three men came back she would beat the living daylights out
of them with the knobkerrie she kept behind the kitchen door, and he, Mkhize,
better take care because the next time he came here it was not beyond her to
take the knobkerrie to his head, too.

The
twins weren’t sure whether they were more terrified of
uMamamkhulu
or the three gangsters. They helped her without
uttering a word as she prepared dinner, her pots and pans and dishes being
clattered and clanged far more loudly than they had ever experienced it. But
the food, as always with
uGogo
’s
cooking, was delicious. By the end of the meal the old woman had calmed down
considerably, and was placated by the knowledge that the meal had been one of
her best and that her granddaughters might inherit some of the bad qualities of
their father but at least they would never be able to blame her for their
nutrition. They still had a chance to grow up, unlike their no-good mother, she
proclaimed, as good girls.

20.20

Thabethe and Mkhize sat in the
latter’s room round the back, behind Nomivi’s Tavern, drinking beer.

‘You want ‘nother car, Skhura? I
gotta 1974 Ford XLE only one hundred and twenty-five thousand kilos. Four-door,
paperwork all good with license. I got from this guy in Phoenix. He fixed it up
good. Very fast. Needs painting but good car. Twenty-five thousand rands only
for you,
bra
. Or ten thousand rands
rent for one month and also for down payment on full sale if you want to buy
after one month.’

‘No thanks, Spikes. The
boere
they looking for me. Better I use
taxi. For now. Maybe ‘nother time.’

‘Sharp,
bra
.’

Thabethe finished loading the
magazine with fifteen rounds, and Mkhize was passing him an additional small
carton.

‘Is another fifteen in there,
Skhura.’

‘Thanks, Spikes. Thanks. Good. How
much, Spikes?’

‘Skhura, my friend. I been thinking.’

Thabethe thought, here it comes, some
reason for an extra-special high price. Spikes will argue that things are bad,
he needs money, and didn’t like to do this, but Skhura would understand.

But he was wrong. Mkhize had
something else on his mind.

‘Skhura,
my bra
. You know me. Spikes is
skrik vir niks,
you know?

‘I know that, Spikes.’

‘But Skhura, I gotta problem. Maybe
you can help. Then the bullets they free.’

‘Talk, my friend. Speak to Skhura.’

‘
Eish
,
is bad, Skhura.’

‘Easy,
broer
, easy
my bra
. You
can tell Skhura. Tell me what you thinking.’

‘You remember that one time, Skhura.
I’m saying to you, I’m saying I know when I’m having trouble with guys then
Skhura can sort them out,
nè?
’

‘Is right, Spikes. Is right. I tell
you then, that time, that you just call me and I will fix you up. I remember.’

‘
Eish
,
Skhura. Is my daughters. Jessica and Nobuhle, you know? They in trouble, my
friend.’

‘They pregnant?’

‘
Haikona.
Not them. They not pregnant, you know. No, is bad guys wanting to
bulala
my girls.’

‘Talk, Spikes. Tell Skhura.’

And Mkhize filled Thabethe in on the
details. First the twins seeing the shooting. Then the three men going to his
mother’s home in KwaDukuza, looking for the twins, and asking her questions not
only about her granddaughters but about her son. About him, asking questions
about Mkhize himself! They had asked her all these questions. Like what was
Mkhize doing, as a father, to allow his girls to talk to the
boere
? Speaking to the enemy of all the
local people. People who were just trying to get on with their own lives. What
were these girls doing? Trying to get all these people in trouble with
amaphoyisa
? Where were the girls now?
What was the name of the detective they talked to? Where was this detective
based? KwaDukuza? Central? Or where?

Thabethe listened to Mkhize’s story,
calming him down as he got more and more agitated about the interrogation of
the old woman. He learned that the grandmother had deflected attention away
from the twins. She had given the men some story about the twins being taken to
Gauteng by a relative to be interviewed for college. The men had left, very
angry, warning her that if the girls or Mkhize talked to the police again there
would be trouble.

‘
Fokken
moegoes!
Skhura,
bra
, these guys
they big trouble for me. I must get them. I must take them out one time. I
finish them one shot. They big trouble.
Skollies
.’

‘Big trouble. Is true, Spikes. Big
trouble.’

Thabethe was only half-aware of the
anguish underlying his friend’s bravura words. He was busy thinking ahead. His
mind was racing as he deliberated how much he should tell Spikes. He had no
doubt, now, that the three men he had seen in the bush on Sunday night were the
same three men looking for the Mkhize twins.

20.45

Themba, Mavuso and Macks drove away
quietly and entirely unnoticed from the house in Isithupha Close. News reports
the next day would carry the story of another dead cop. They would sing the
praises of Sergeant Lucky Dlamini from the Folweni Police Station. They would
mention the fact that he had been in a relationship with the murdered Constable
Lindiwe Xana. They would express the view, based on the first superficial
police report, that it was a tragedy that the highly regarded policeman had
gone home from work, sat down in his
favourite
armchair and taken his own life by shooting himself in the throat with his
service pistol.

The three perpetrators had waited in
silence after Themba had fired the single shot from Dlamini’s own cherished
private weapon, his beloved Desert Eagle. As Dlamini’s body slowly slumped in
the chair where they had forced him, at gunpoint, to sit, the three of them
each rushed to a different window to lift a corner of the curtain or, in one
case, the blind, to see whether there was any response to the single shot from
across the street or from the adjacent properties.

Nothing.
Neighbours
were doubtless engaged in their own entertainments. From the house opposite
came the loud thumping rhythms of techno rave, the throbbing beats exhibiting
the proud owner’s out-of-date quadraphonic speakers, distorting the sound but
providing ideal cover for the three intruders. From the house next door on the
left came some competition with someone playing on better equipment and at top
volume a Durban Poison remix of
Made U
Look
.

Having attracted no attention with
the single shot from the Desert Eagle, the intruders were emboldened. Themba
tucked Dlamini’s prized possession into his own belt in the small of his back
then removed the luckless sergeant’s
Vektor Z88 from its holster on the bed, where he had carelessly tossed
it on entering the house. Pushing the Vektor into the edge of the mattress on
the bed, Themba fired a single shot into it, parallel to the floor, aiming from
the foot to the head of the bedding. He checked the damage, decided it was
minimal, then pulled the sheet and blanket back into place to cover the hole.
Then he wiped his prints off the weapon and placed it into Dlamini’s hand,
taking care to avoid the pool now forming from the blood dripping slowly down
from the chair onto the carpetless floor.

‘Is
good, Themba. Let’s go,’ said Macks.

‘Wait,
comrades. Let’s check. Maybe good stuff to steal.’

‘
Hayi
, Mavuso. We came for the gun. I got
the gun. Let’s go. This guy’s got nothing here,’ said Themba.

Mavuso’s
protests were cut short, Macks agreeing with Themba, and the three of them left
by the back door, taking care to check anything that might have given away the
evidence of their intrusion. Mavuso was last, and he took advantage of that
fact to hang back as the other two made for the exit. He quickly lifted the
flap of Dlamini’s jacket and took the dead man’s wallet. He stuffed it into his
back pocket and walked quickly after the others.

They
walked from the back door, around to the front and down the road to their car.
Casually, attracting no attention from anyone.

20.55

Thabethe decided to play his cards
close for now. There was nothing to be gained by telling Spikes what he knew
about the three men. Instead, he reassured his friend that he would make it his
business to find out who they were and to do what he could to take the heat off
his daughters.

They shared a few more beers, and
talked further. Thabethe asked more probing questions around what the twins had
told Mkhize about the ambush on Sunday and the grandmother’s experience with the
three men that afternoon. Then he remembered something specific that Mkhize had
said to him earlier.

‘Spikes. I want to ask you one
thing.’

‘Is what, Skhura? What one thing?’

‘You say to me just now. You say to
me that when these guys are talking to your mother, they say to her what is the
name of the detective who the girls talked to. You were saying that your mother
she is telling you that these guys they want the information about this
detective.’

‘Is correct, Skhura. That is just
what she says to me.’

‘And she give you the answer,
bra
? She tell you if she told those guys
who was that detective?’

‘
Hayi
,
Skhura, she doesn’t tell me the name of the detective. She just tells me they
ask his name. I’m not knowing if she tells them his name. I can find out if she
tells them, if you like.’

‘See if you find out, Spikes. You
tell me if the old
gogo
she told
those guys, OK?’

‘OK, Skhura. I call her and find out.
But not tonight, hey
bra
? That old
woman she’s mad. She’s not talking to me tonight. Is too late for her. I phone
her tomorrow. Then I phone you and tell you. Is OK?’

‘Is OK. You phone me tomorrow. Tell
me if she told those guys the name of that detective.’

‘
Yebo,
bra
. I do that. I phone tomorrow and tell you.’

‘
Sharp
,
Spikes. I must go now.’

They took leave of each other,
nodding and punching fists and laughing at a few of Spikes’s customary lewd
comments. Thabethe checked through the windows to see that the street was
functioning exactly as it should on a weeknight after dark. Then he left,
wondering how he might use some of the information he had picked up.

He wondered specifically how he might
find out the name of this detective that was investigating the case. If that
detective was looking for the three men who hid in the bush at Blythedale, then
he would be looking for the three pistols, and if he found the men, he would
find two of the pistols. He would then start looking for the third pistol.