Free Gun Dealing (The Ryder Quartet Book 2) by Ian Patrick Page B

!’
    They followed the main road with
Folweni on their left and pulled in at the police station on the far side of
the township.
    Koekemoer and Dippenaar encountered a
deeply depressed team in the station. The loss of Lindiwe Xana had hit them
badly. The detectives heard more about the popular young constable, at
twenty-six a rising star with two merit awards to her credit. She had been a
superb policewoman, fearless, disciplined, and also highly regarded in the
local community. There was widespread devastation at the news of Sunday’s
brutal homicides. Local residents were baying for blood, wanting retribution.
    The toughest part of the
investigation by the detectives was the interview with twenty-eight year old
Sergeant Lucky Dlamini. He was a very impressive policeman, in the opinion of
both Koekemoer and Dippenaar. He had been in a personal relationship with
Lindiwe Xana for a few years. They had been very happy together, and had been
planning to get married. He was deeply, deeply upset by her death. But through
his disjointed narrative, interspersed with occasional bouts of anguish and
tears, the two detectives pieced together a picture of the work of the station.
    Koekemoer and Dippenaar gained a
positive view of the camaraderie among the personnel at Folweni Police Station.
They listened attentively to the examples of past successes, and of bravery in
the line of duty. They were particularly moved by the 2009 story of the
courageous thirty-one year old Constable Ngwane, who had given his life in the
line of duty by confronting robbers, including a corrupt police detective from
another station, in a shootout in the Amagwazela General Store.
    Dlamini
painted a detailed history of the work of the local police. He shared a
personal highlight in relating his role in cracking a drug-and-gambling
syndicate, seeing off a young white Afrikaner gangster who had since not been
seen, going on now for a couple of years, and whose extensive criminal
activities in both Folweni and Umlazi sections Y and Z had been cleaned out by
the work of Dlamini and his fellow police officers.
    ‘Umlazi
Section Y and Section Z they’re clean now, Detectives. We at Folweni have
worked hard to clean up the places there across the Mbokodweni River, where I live. Lindiwe   lived on this side of the river, Nkabise
Place...’
    Dlamini choked up a bit on the
emotion as he recalled Lindiwe’s home. The detectives waited in silence as he recovered,
composed himself again, and continued.
    ‘There, too, where Lindiwe lived, we
cleaned up all the skabengas and tsotsi s. The people on both sides of the
river were happy. No more burglary. No more drugs. No more fighting. Folweni
SAPS did a good job all around here, and me and Lindiwe, we worked together all
the time...’
    He hung his head in despair.
Koekemoer stood next to him, and placed his hand on his shoulder as he sobbed.
    ‘OK, sergeant, OK. Take it easy, hey?
Don’t speak if you don’t...’
    ‘No. It’s fine, Detective. No, it’s
OK. We did good here. We keep those skelms away. The best one, the best time for me, was that Afrikaner white boy they all
called Freckles.’
    ‘Freckles,’ said Dippenaar, ‘that
name I remember. Young Afrikaans boy. Used to deal in whoonga .’
      ‘That’s the same one, Detective. Bad one
that one. Young. Always drugs and gambling, that one. He worked also with some
bad other guys. Two white guys. But Freckles, he was the one always here in
Umlazi and across the river. Always selling nyaope and always gambling and always showing his gun...’
    Dlamini paused and thought he had
said too much.
    ‘ Ja, I remember now, too,’ Koekemoer interjected in the pause. ‘I heard lots
about those three guys. They all used fancy guns, didn’t they? Magnums. People
used to talk about the three white guys in Umlazi with their fancy weapons.’
    ‘No, I don’t remember what gun,
Detective. But yes. That Freckles, that one he was doing drugs and gambling all
the