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when detectives from KwaDukuza assisted
by Hawks, ORS Durban Harbour and Kranskop all worked
together on the big bust at Kranskop?’
    There were nods all around.
    ‘The key to what happened up there
was one single unlicensed 9mm pistol taken off a suspect, that led to them
busting more than twenty people linked to a single house. The team took hold of
a cache of AK47s, LM4s and the rest of it including bullet-proof vests, and
there were links from there to lots of loose threads. Threads connected to taxi
violence all over the region. The week before that, the Ulundi PO team, working
with K9 and Crime Intelligence, bust another illegal arms group at Dongothule
and Matsheketshe. Around the same time Pietermaritzburg Public Order working
with Msinga Crime Prevention grabbed fifteen unlicensed firearms and arrested
nine suspects for illegal firearms. They then followed up with raids in the
area and pulled in a whole load of other illegal weapons, and I’m talking about
just a couple of weeks. It’s a war out there, team, and every illegal firearm
is a clue to bigger stuff.’
    Ryder couldn’t help connecting what
Nyawula was saying back to a report he’d read just a fortnight before the
Kranskop bust. More than nine thousand firearms destroyed on the day in
question by the SAPS, with the same report noting that in the last four years
more than a hundred thousand firearms and more than a million rounds of
ammunition were destroyed. How were they to stop this endless stream of illegal
weapons? As if reading Ryder’s thoughts, Nyawula continued.
    ‘The point being that ballistics and
fingerprints related to just one weapon can lead us to much bigger things. So
forensics and ballistics are crucial here. No single firearm in this game is
unconnected. There will always be links to other firearms. Let’s find the
links, guys.’
    There were sombre grunts and nods from all of them as Nyawula wrapped up by returning to the
business in hand.
    ‘Thanks, everyone. Here’s the
preliminary report for you to look over. Autopsy and ballistics will come in
due course, but have a look at the outline here. It’s not pleasant stuff.’
    He dropped the file on Cronje’s desk.
    ‘See you all at the cemetery at 2.30.
Then, tomorrow, let’s gather at 7.45 before you all go your separate ways, for
a brief catch-up on what else comes into the office today.’
    They all made affirmative noises as
Nyawula returned to the inner office. Then they all crowded around the desk to
have a look at the report.

 
    12.25.
    The three men had spent most of the
morning in a state of only partial consciousness. The effort of half-carrying,
half-dragging their partner through the bushes, throwing him into the car, and
then repeating the exercise in reverse order in KwaMashu Section M, which is
where Themba lived alone,   prompted
his two friends to make themselves at home by the time they got him there, and
fall asleep together on the single bed in the filthy one-room shack. They had
laid him out on the floor next to the bed, reckoning that he was in no state to
choose between the thin mattress and the floor anyway.
    They were both distantly conscious of
the fact that their friend got up twice in the night to vomit just outside the
single door that was the entrance to the shack. He returned each time to his
space on the floor, rather than try and reclaim his bed.
    Dawn had come. Dogs barked. Cocks
still crowed, infuriatingly, as if they had no clue as to what constituted dawn
and what constituted noon. Children laughed and called to one another.
    By about midday the three of them had
given up on sleeping, woken by the incessant shouting of neighbours ,
screaming of children, and clanging of pots and pans in the street outside and
in kitchens all around, most of the houses being in better condition than the
shack and therefore having some semblance of a kitchen.
    As one of the men started stirring,
it was a sign to the others that there was no longer any