ection>
Sifiso Mzobe
SEARCHING
for
SIMPHIWE
Short Stories
KWELA BOOKS
Dedicated to the sweet and loving memory
of my grandfather, Thandokwakhe Francis Mzobe.
Traveller, preacher, storyteller and gentleman.
Lady Justice
Messages on Detective Zandile Cele’s cellphone come in thick and fast. The incoming message alert is Toni Braxton’s ‘Un-break My Heart’ – her favourite song. But today is month-end, 31 December, and Toni Braxton’s voice means just one thing: another debit order has gone off Zandile’s account. She switches the phone to silent and calls her colleague Detective Gloria Ngcobo.
‘My friend, how’s it going at your crime scene?’
‘I’m almost done,’ says Gloria. ‘Nothing too bad, just a break-in with some things stolen. The owners were visiting family, not here, so no deaths or injuries. How are you?’
‘These debit orders, my friend,’ says Zandile, her voice sinking.
Gloria exhales pure stress. ‘They have taken so much, I don’t know where to go for help in January.’
‘Ke Dezemba has ruined us! Getting paid early in the last month is never a good thing. A tiny bonus doesn’t help when you have family to entertain and feed, and presents to buy. Now the debits are here, and I have almost nothing left,’ says Zandile. ‘I mean, we hardly get through a normal month with the pathetic salaries we earn, and December is the worst. I haven’t bought groceries yet, or paid for water and electricity. Same for the DStv, imagine a month without good TV.’
‘You can say that again. I won’t have money for school stationery for my boy and nieces. My mom has called already asking for money.’
‘I really don’t know what to do. I can’t ask my sister for another loan, I owe her too much as it is,’ says Zandile.
‘I am seriously thinking of pawning my gold chain,’ says Gloria.
‘You know, there is another option …’ Zandile lets her words hang in the air for a moment. ‘Have you called Primo?’
‘I have, but he is giving me excuses.’
‘How can he?’ Zandile barks into the phone. ‘Did you lean on him?’
‘I did my best. He won’t budge.’
‘Let’s go see him right now. He needs to pay up because we saved him from definite jail time. Let’s meet at my house in ten minutes.’
Zandile presses the accelerator pedal of the police van. She arrives at her house at the same time as Gloria, as if choreographed. Gloria jumps from her van into Zandile’s. They head to Primo’s house.
‘So, how do we play this?’ says Gloria when they park outside the Umlazi township four-room.
‘We’ll speak to him in the only language he understands.’ Zandile is steeling herself for the confrontation. ‘We’ll just arrest him.’
When they’d raided the twenty-one-year-old drug dealer’s house six months earlier, Zandile, Gloria and two constables could not believe the riches they found. His neighbours had complained of a chemical smell coming from the yard. The police discovered a drug lab at the back of the house.
Behind the high walls surrounding the property they also found all sorts of excess: a TV spanning wall to wall, ostrich-skin sofas, a cappuccino maker, authentic Persian rugs, sleigh beds, a kitchen fit for a mansion. And R67 000 in cash inside an ice-cream container in the fridge. The drug trade was good to Primo.
He made a deal to pay the police monthly for a year for his freedom but honoured this deal for only three months.
Guns drawn, Zandile and Gloria approach the high walls around Primo’s house.
Zandile calls the two constables who were at the original raid. ‘We are at Primo’s, meet us here in twenty minutes.’
The gate is locked. Zandile and Gloria stand by the gate and listen. Faint music comes from the back of the house.
‘Let’s attract his attention to the gate,’ Gloria suggests. ‘When he opens, we jump on him.’
Zandile lets out a loud whistle.
A dog starts barking. That must be Primo’s humongous pit bull. During the original raid, the beast attacked a constable and bit off a chunk of his calf muscle.
But the dog is not coming to the gate, which means he must be tied up.
Zandile whistles again. An eardrum-piercing whistle. Nothing. No movement.
‘I’m going over the wall,’ Zandile says. Gloria boosts her onto the top of the wall. Then Zandile pulls Gloria up. They jump off the other side and creep across the yard.
Gloria draws out her tazer to guard against an attack from the pit bull, just in case.
They inch ahead to the back of the house. The pit bull is locked in a cage. It gives a belligerent growl. Zandile and Gloria hasten their pace, moving past a brand-new C Class Mercedes Benz. It looks newly washed, a bucket of soapy water next to it. It is from this beautiful piece of German automotive machinery that the music comes.
In the shade next to the drug lab at the back of the house they find Primo and another man passed out on camping chairs.
Gloria and Zandile tiptoe around them and check inside the drug lab. There’s no-one inside.
‘Primo, police! Hands up! Primo, wake up!’ Zandile shouts.
Primo’s companion wakes up startled and falls off his chair.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ says Gloria, placing her knee on his back and handcuffs on his wrists.
Primo remains asleep, too deep in the blackout. Zandile grabs the bucket of cold water next to the car and pours it on his face. Primo is so far gone he just opens his bloodshot eyes and stares at Zandile like he’s coming back from someplace far away. Zandile handcuffs him and leads him inside the lab.
‘We haven’t heard from you in a long time, Primo. How have things been?’ Zandile mocks him.
‘Things are not going well, my sisters. Business is slow these …’ Primo pauses, his train of thought suddenly lost.
‘Shut your mouth, Primo! We are tired of your nonsense,’ Zandile shoves him towards a couch. Primo falls headfirst on the floor next to the couch.
The detectives search the drug lab. In the first drawer of a cabinet they find drugs that are not yet packaged – white powder in small heaps on a mirror, and plastic coin bags. In the next drawer they find cash – neatly stacked R100 notes. Zandile quickly counts it. R19 000.
Primo
