The zol and the police helicopter

William was one of the hardest workers I knew. He simply loved working with his hands and believed it kept him young. He was always looking for extra work, was a sharp negotiator for the highest wage and I remember him cutting back the privet hedges of our home not long after Marion and I tied the knot and she came to live with me. The branches had grown to twelve feet in height and required a large saw. He slaved in that garden all day, pausing to gobble down the chicken pies and ice-cold Coke I brought out at lunch time.

A squat, bald man in his late forties (I think), William had few wrinkles on his face even when he squinted and grinned at me between mouthfuls of pie and drafts of Coke. He hailed from Soweto and he often proudly boasted of the home he had there.

“You know, Rod, people think I am only a caretaker for this place.” He waved dismissively at the Randburg townhouse cluster we lived in. “If they saw my home in Soweto, and how we look after money, people would not believe.” He shook his head, downed the last of the Coke, belched with satisfaction and picked up the clippers again to assault the privet in the dazzling January heat.

William also had a love for minding other people’s business. With his unsolicited aid I discovered that virtually all the homes around me in the townhouse cluster were occupied by people who grew and smoked marijuana. It explained why we regularly pulled the holy herb out of our flowerbeds and window boxes that were now overflowing with Marion’s cherished amaryllis and azaleas. Though I am not a regular partaker of pot I knew he had his eye on me: not so that he would report me to the police, but so that he had something more to gossip about.

One day off I nipped into one of my locals, Taffy’s, on Witkoppen road. The pub at the time was virtually falling down. (Dear reader, is it still there? I was last there six years ago.) I ordered a beer and got into conversation with the blokes, including a new chap, Bruce. He and I got into an amicable chat and it turned out he lived in a townhouse cluster near mine. We got on well, the beers went down like liquid heaven, he’d travelled a lot which made him interesting and so eventually I invited him home to join us for a sundowner. Bruce said yes, and then began to brag about the quality of the zol in his possession which he would love us to sample.

“Bruce was just going to join us for a sundowner and share a joint,” I announced when we got home, vaguely wondering about the grim look on Marion’s face as she eyed the slightly swaying Bruce. “Hell, I forgot the zol,” slurred Bruce, “I’ll go back to my bakkie.” Off he went. Though usually easy-going about unexpected guests, Marion looked at me sharply, was about to speak, but just then Bruce arrived back at the door and said he could not find his bakkie. I was surprised and realised he was more inebriated than what I had thought. “I know where your bakkie is,” I volunteered. “I will go get the stuff. Where did you say the zol was?” “In the ashtray. Maybe.”

I took his keys, strolled to his bakkie and looked inside the huge ashtray. There was a variety of odds and ends and loose cash in the ashtray and felt uncomfortable about sifting through it all. I decided to just bring him the ashtray and he could look.

As I arrived at the doorway Marion was standing there, arms folded. “I am not happy with that man in our home. There is something about him that makes me very uncomfortable. And for the life of me I don’t know why you can’t tell how much he has had to drink. He mumbled, Rod, mumbled about needing the loo and then disappeared into the gardens.” “Okay, we will lock all the doors and windows and maybe he will just go home. Which is just down the road, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, this is your home.”

We were preparing dinner a few minutes later when there was a knock on the door. Then there was a knock on one window, followed by a silence, and then a knock on another window. There was something now sinister about it all and Marion looked frightened. I grabbed my cellphone and called William who doubled as security.

“William. There is an intruder on our property. Please can you come look?”

“Okay, no problem.”

The knocking stopped and we heard our garden gate swing open as — we assumed it was William — came into the garden. There was the sound of him and Bruce muttering to each other and then silence. We both breathed a sigh of relief and thought the matter had ended there.

The next day I was working from home, as I ran my own business, when I heard a clattering from somewhere above. The sound grew louder and I realised it was a helicopter and it now sounded like it was above my roof. I could not hear clients on the phone and went outside to see.

As true as hens lay eggs, there was a police helicopter circling above my townhouse. Alarmed, I turned around to see a policeman dressed in combat gear, a bullet-proof jacket, helmet and a nasty looking rifle (are there nice-looking ones?) as he approached the gate of my townhouse. Shocked, I instinctively put my hands up and he grinned, “Don’t worry,” he reassured me, “I am inspector Viljoen”. He pointed down the pathway. “Do you know whose bakkie that is, or how it came to be here?”

There was Bruce’s large white bakkie still parked skewly in a parking bay. “No,” I instantly replied, mind racing. Maybe not a good answer, but I now wanted nothing to do with last night’s visitor. Who was he? A convict on the run? A deadly criminal? So I asked the policeman, “Officer, what is the matter? You guys are out here in force,” I asked, seeing several other cops through the trees, armed with what looked like WMD to my frightened mind. “That bakkie has been stolen,” he said, losing interest in me and walking back to the other police.

An unpleasant thought then dawned on me. A certain car ashtray was sitting on the coffee table in my lounge. Walking rather briskly now while I heard the inspector radioing in to his station, I went inside. Nothing that I wanted miraculously to change had changed. There was the ashtray, crammed with loads of loose change, mostly one-rand coins, stompies or joint-ends and so forth. I gingerly picked it up, thinking about my fingerprints. Then I froze as I saw inside the ashtray an immobiliser key. Surely the bakkie’s. For a moment I felt like I was in one of those absurd, fatalistic events in a Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie.

The swooping helicopter thundered again over my roof. So I did what any upright, responsible citizen should do. I carefully wiped the ashtray clean of any possible prints and went outside to put the ashtray into a dustbin. Feeling a sudden surge of cunning, I placed the ashtray in a rubbish bin that was not ours and did not seem to belong to anyone. I pulled some of the garbage inside the bin over it and sauntered back home, not looking up as the helicopter swept the area.

Being too curious, I could not just let the matter go. So I sauntered out again to see the cops lounging around their 4X4, laughing and chatting to one another and with William, who was wildly gesturing. Inspector Viljoen grinned at me again and said, “That oke must have had one helluva party.”

“Why?” I airily asked.

Viljoen looked at the broad black policeman next to him and they both burst out laughing. Viljoen then finished off the story he was telling the black cop, going back, as he spoke, into Afrikaans. “So when I phoned the owner of the car, ek kan hoor hy was lekker dik babbelas* ”. The other cop shook his head and chuckled, tears in his eyes.

“Yes,” said William. “I had to help him get to his bakkie, when your neighbour arrived to help.” With great drama and exaggeration William imitated Bruce’s floundering about the parking lot while the cops cackled.

“Ja so,” said Inspector Viljoen to me. “He got drunk somewhere, maybe in this complex, we don’t know, and the next-door neighbour took him home. When he woke up he had forgotten where his bakkie was so he reported it stolen and we found it because he has a satellite tracking device.”

“I see,” I said, “well all is well that ends well. Have a good day officers”. Just then one of the other policemen arrived with bags of crisps, Cokes and other snacks and they all lounged in or against the 4×4 with the music system cranked up. They were in no rush to leave and looked set to take an hour or more off from more demanding duties. As I walked back home I saw a car coming through the townhouse complex gate and immediately stepped up my pace to get home. Inside the car were Bruce and a woman.

From my garden I could just see him, dour-faced, getting into his bakkie with a spare immobiliser and the woman, furious, shaking her head. The 4×4’s music was almost blaring. Not once did Bruce glance in the direction of my home. That must have been because he could not remember.

I thought the matter was over. But the next day I was sitting writing on our porch table when William opened the gate, looked carefully around and walked up to me. “MacKenzie,” he said softly. “Yesterday was a very funny thing. You know, that man who tried to get into your house?”

“Oh what?”

“Your next-door neighbour is a thief. I think he maybe wanted that bakkie.”

“How so?”

William looked around a moment, far more enjoying the drama of the moment and the secret he was about to share.

“That man next door. He drove that drunken man home in his car. But this morning, when I went to take out the dustbins, you won’t believe what I found. You won’t believe!” I had an idea I was not in for any surprises.

William leaned closer, eyes glinting, and used a stage whisper. “There was this hidden car ashtray with the immobiliser key inside.” He glanced around again. “That is an ashtray for the bakkie and I know it was the key because that man who came back to get his bakkie complained that someone had stolen his ashtray with the immobiliser. But do not tell anyone. That is our secret.”

“Okay, sure. I will tell no one. Promise.”

Of course, being an equally upright, responsible citizen, William never mentioned the large amount of loose change in the ashtray he would have also found.

* For non-South Africans: roughly, “he had an awful hangover”.

Extract from another memoir in progress