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

04.59.

Ryder normally woke up first, but
today Fiona had beaten him to it. She hadn’t woken him. That was left to the
clock in his head. She had showered, and from the aroma permeating the house he
knew that she had the coffee on. When his eyes flickered open, as usual, one
minute before the time set for the alarm, his first reaction was to notice that
the bed was empty next to him and that the bathroom light was on and the
extractor was doing its work on the steam. He saw at a glance that the button
on the alarm had already been suppressed.

He remembered she had a big day
today. She was presenting designs and concepts and preliminary drawings to an
impressive audience. The prize was a contract worth millions. Her partners had
said it was now all in her hands. She was the best, they proclaimed, and they
were confident she would deliver.

He did his normal routine, the volume
of his atonal singing in the shower doubtless annoying the
neighbours
,
let alone his wife. By the time he got downstairs she had muesli and toast
waiting for him. Along with the best coffee. They hugged and kissed,
affectionately.

‘Big day,
snoeks
?’

‘Very big. I think I’ll take a
beta-blocker.’

‘Don’t. You don’t need it. You’ll be
great.’

‘We’ll see. What about you? Ready for
your speech? Yours is more difficult than mine, I think.’

‘As ready as I’ll ever be. Thanks for
your thoughts yesterday. They helped a lot.’

‘You don’t need any advice. Just
speak from the heart. It’ll be good. I’ll get there just before 2.30 pm. OK?’

‘That’ll be fine. I think they’ll
want me sitting with the Captain and the Brigadier, so we can’t be together.’

‘I thought so. No problem. Don’t
worry. It’ll be OK. I’ll have my own tissues.’

They smiled, grimly, before she
continued.

‘I’m off in a couple of minutes. Will
you check that the kids get off OK?’

‘No problem. I’m starting later than
usual. Got stuff to do down at Comms.’

They ate breakfast together,
comparing diaries and checking arrangements for the coming week while doing so.
They noted specifically that the mid-term would see the kids and the dog off on
Wednesday afternoon and away for the rest of the week until Sunday mid-day.
They checked
 
diaries, confirmed
chores, talked about her presentation and about arrangements for Wednesday’s
dinner. Then she kissed him and was gone.

Ryder drained his coffee, refilled,
and went over the various things he had to check arising out of last week’s
actions. Lots of loose strings to tie up, and doubtless more new stuff pouring
into the office even now.

He could hear the boys stirring and
the dog whining.

The week started.

07.15.

Detectives Koekemoer, Dippenaar, and
Pillay were helping themselves to coffee in Sergeant Cronje’s office. Cronje’s
intern, Mavis Tshabalala, was smiling nervously at the banter among the three
of them as they teased her. Cronje did his best to reassure her.

‘Don’t worry about these three,
Mavis. They always get hysterical at this time of the morning. They spend their
days chasing all the
skelms
with
their
whoonga
, and lock them up and
warn them about the dangers of
nyaope
,
but no-one ever accuses themselves of being far worse drug-takers than those
okes
. These three are always high on
caffeine. Especially in the morning.’

‘Can’t start the day without a fix of
caffeine, Piet,’ said Pillay. ‘When the Captain said he was launching his
early start early finish
experiment I
knew that my caffeine intake would escalate for a month.’

‘
Ja
,
Navi, you’re right, hey,’ Koekemoer added. ‘I can’t wait for this month to be
finished so we can return to normal working hours.’

‘What you mean, Koeks, return to
normal hours? You think we will?’ Dippenaar was genuinely surprised at what his
colleague had said, and continued. ‘I heard Nyawula say that the experiment was
going so well he was thinking we would stick with it as a permanent
arrangement.’

There was a chorus of protest from
the others, saying that there was no way they would be able to sustain these
hours and that the Captain had assured them at the beginning that coming in
early for one month and ending each day early was only an experiment. Dippenaar
added the observation that they had been coming in early but no way were they
ending early. Cronje calmed them down.

‘
Yissus
,
you guys. Take it easy, OK? We all agreed to an early start for one calendar
month only. Don’t jump the gun. There’ll be no permanent change unless we all
have a discussion like we had when we agreed to go with the Captain’s
suggestion. You see, Mavis, what coffee does to these
okes
? They get all out of control when they’re on caffeine.’

‘
Ja
,
Mavis,’ said Koekemoer. ‘You listen to uncle Piet. He knows best. I seen the
sergeant drink coffee and put smoke into his lungs out there in the car park
just about every day since I met him. He drinks almost as much coffee as
Detective Ryder, and that
oke
must
have the world record for the amount of caffeine he puts away each day.’

Mavis smiled shyly, her hands half-covering
her face, and Koekemoer continued.

‘You know what we talking about, when
we say caffeine, Mavis?’

‘I know caffeine, yes, I know about
it.’

‘You do?’

Given the opportunity, Mavis let it
gush out.

‘I know, Detective Koeks. Caffeine is
a - what you call it - a psychoactive drug. The people in Peru, there, they’ve
been chewing the coca leaves for one thousand years. Longer than a thousand. In
America the Food and Drug Administration people there say that caffeine
 
is safe because a
toxic
dose is more than ten grams for one adult person, so we can have twenty cups of
coffee before we reach that level.’

They
were all stunned into silence. Koekemoer especially, with his mouth still open.
Mavis paused only slightly before continuing.

‘Caffeine
is alkaloid, just like cocaine, nicotine, and morphine. It stimulates the
nervous system, and...’

‘
Fok
!’ said Koekemoer.

‘
Yissus!
’ said Dippenaar.

‘You
go
, girl!’ said Pillay.

‘
Jeez
, Mavis,’ said Cronje. ‘Where you get
all that stuff from?’

‘Me,
I’m studying at UNISA, Sergeant Piet, like I told you. I’m doing a BSc. I want
to do forensic science. So that I can work at the DNA Project one day.’

The
teasing immediately turned away from Mavis and they all focused instead on
Koekemoer. The humorous barbs came fast and furious, led by Pillay but with
Cronje and Dippenaar diving in with glee, as they teased him mercilessly about
his assumptions, his preconceptions and his lack of scientific knowledge, while
Mavis beamed. But Koekemoer took it in good spirit.

‘
Fok
, Mavis. When you’re working there at
forensics, and I come to you for advice, you gonna remind me of this day, hey?
Yissus
. I’m going to ask your scientific
advice next time I’m trying to decide between whisky or gin.’

‘That’s
good, Detective Koeks. I can ask you if you want to drink whisky with a ‘y’
only or with the ‘e’ and the ‘y,’ then I can tell you.’

More
laughter at Koekemoer’s expense as he looked nonplussed and Dippenaar had to
explain to him the difference, with lots of attendant jokes about the trouble
he might land in if he were to walk into a bar in the USA or Canada or Scotland
or Ireland.
 

High
fives all around for Mavis, and eventually the mirth subsided.

‘Speaking
of coffee. Where’s Jeremy. Piet? Is he
practising
his
speech for this afternoon?’

‘He’s
only getting here at about 10.00 am, Dipps. He’s following up on last week’s
stuff with that
blerrie
Thabethe
bastard. He’s seeing van Rensburg in Comms to check on how they’re going with
tracing him through his cell-phone. The Captain, too, is only coming in later.
About 11.30. He has reports to do at IPID about the stuff that happened last
week.’

‘And
Sinethemba, Piet? She’s normally here by now.’

‘
Ja
, you’re right, Navi. I was wondering
where she was. She’s usually first in. Have you heard anything from her,
Mavis?’

‘No,
Sergeant Piet. I was talking to her last on Saturday night. She was having a
party yesterday in KwaDukuza with friends. Maybe I should call her?’

‘
Ag
, no, Mavis, don’t worry. It’s still
quite early. I’m sure she’ll be here any minute now. Maybe she’s been writing
too many essays. Like you, hey, Mavis? I reckon students nowadays work much
harder than when I was a student. You guys have the internet and stuff. I hated
going to the library. I would have worked much harder as a student if I could
have done it at home with the internet and cigarettes and coffee.’

Further
discussion ensued about student life with some flattering observations about
the impressive young Sinethemba and what a model student constable she was. The
detectives learned that Mavis and she were much closer friends than any of them
had
realised
.

Cronje
thought how much better things were now, under Captain Nyawula’s command, with
the unit getting to know one another as friends as well as colleagues.

‘OK
, lissen
,
kêrels,’
he said, ‘some of us have to do some real work now so if
you don’t mind can I have my desk?’

They
all got down, in good
humour
, to the normal business
of the day.

09.40.

Ryder left the SAPS Comms team with
no answers. Technological wizard Van Rensurg had been very helpful but there
was no trace of the cell-phone that Ryder needed to track down the wanted
former cop, guns-and-drugs-dealer and murderer, Skhura Thabethe.

They had followed the phone that
Thabethe used, Van Rensburg told him. They had hoped to pick up the signal and
track him down. Skhura Thabethe. The unit’s most wanted man on the run.

But nothing. Van Rensburg’s people
pinged the instrument north of Richards Bay late on Saturday night and had got
excited. Then they got depressed when the signal passed through Mtubatuba on
Sunday morning, and before they could get a vehicle onto it the signal vanished
completely. The really bad news was that it then re-appeared briefly on Sunday
afternoon going into Swaziland on the MR9 from Piet Retief. It was now lost
somewhere in Swaziland.

Ryder had no way of knowing that his
quarry had slipped the phone onto a pantechnicon heading northward on Saturday
night while he then went eastward. The identified cell-phone was now useless in
the search for Thabethe.

Ryder headed back to the team.

10.05.

Cronje, Pillay and Tshabalala were
suffering. There had been yet another power outage. The fans weren’t working.
Jackets had long been discarded. Sleeves were rolled up. Buttons undone. The
few remaining cans of Coca-Cola and Ginger Beer had long ago lost their drops
of condensation and turned warm. There was no ice left in the cooler-box. The
water produced from the melted ice had been poured onto the suffering plants
and had already evaporated. Shirts were damp under the arms, and foreheads were
beaded with perspiration.

They were engaged in focused
discussion on one of Pillay’s cases when Ryder arrived.

‘Hi Jeremy. Any luck with the
Thabethe phone?’

‘No, Piet. Van Rensburg was as
helpful as he could be, but it looks as if they lost him somewhere in
Swaziland.’

‘Bastard. Captain’s not going to like
that.’

‘No, he won’t, Navi. He wants nothing
more than to nail Thabethe.’

‘You think it’s worth going back to
his friend, the guy who gave him the phone?’

‘Mkhize? No, Piet, not yet. I don’t
think so. Besides the fact that I don’t trust that guy as far as I could throw
him - which would be pretty far, I admit - we made it clear to Mkhize that once
he passed the phone on to Thabethe we would ensure that there would be no
trail
 
back to him. He seemed pretty
terrified of Thabethe.’

‘Unless Mkhize was spinning us a fast
one, Jeremy. Maybe he played us all the way and told Thabethe the phone was
bugged and Thabethe then dumped it. On someone going to Swaziland, maybe.’

‘Could be, Navi. That crossed my
mind, I have to admit.’

‘Want me to go and talk to Mkhize?’

‘Maybe, Navi. Maybe. Not sure we’ll
get the truth out of him if that was actually the way things went down. But
maybe we could shake him up a bit. Ask him who his
whoonga
supplier is, now that Thabethe’s left town. But let’s give
it a day or two. Van Rensburg said they would continue trying to pick up the
signal and would let me know as soon as they do. In the meantime I have to
follow up on the Musgrave Centre stabbing, and the assaults in Glenwood. Want
to join me? I’m going to Musgrave first, then Glenwood. Would be useful to have
a woman cop with me, especially for the Glenwood stuff.’