The Very Thin White Line

PREFACE

The Very Thin White Line is a hybrid of two actions. It suggests the broken white line on the road surface that becomes a solid thin white line at high speed; and it is a reference to a thin white line of cocaine on a mirror just before it is being snorted. The combination of the two can only spell disaster.

This novel is not for young readers. It contains explicit details, including sex scenes and gruesome discoveries.

THIS book, like so many others, is in remembrance of all the SAPS officers who have died in the line of duty, here in this beautiful land, South Africa. A large percentage of the proceeds of this book will be used in drug rehabilitation centres and for other God-inspired work!

One of the reasons for writing the book is that I have seen and had first-hand experience of things that people should never have to see.

It is very sad that some of the problems that occur in life are actually very easy to sort out. When you are reading this book, ask yourself some questions like: Is this me? Is it my partner, or maybe someone I know that is being affected in a negative way? How can I rectify the problem?

You can change your life and other people’s lives around you for good just by making some small changes.

I am not a guidance counsellor or anything other than a human being; a man who believes in God and who has compassion and love for you. It hurts me to see people suffer around me. I know if they just change their way of thinking and be positive in all the things they do, it will affect their lives in a positive way.

God loves you! So do I – through God. Although I don’t even know you in person, you are loved.

Go seek medical advice, or go to a Church Guidance Counsellor or even go to the Big Man himself, God your Father. Don’t leave things be, that make you unhappy or negative. You can change things if you want to − for good!

I am the biggest sinner in the world, but through God and by obeying his Word, I am given the opportunity to be forgiven for my sinful ways, because He loves me and I have given my life to Him. He can do the same for you. If you ask him to!

I am going to share with you just one of the small miracles that God has done for me, just with one short prayer which I meant with my whole heart. God came into my life and He took these particular sins away from me. Thank you, God! It does not mean I am not a sinner anymore. I am still a sinner but I ask for forgiveness each day and I rejoice in the fact that, through the blood of Jesus, my sins are forgiven.

I was an alcoholic. The AA people are set on making you say: I am an alcoholic. I was an alcoholic, but that old life has left me; so ‘I was’ works for me.

While writing this book, I stopped drinking alcohol after being a self-confessed alcoholic for more than eight or so years.

I would drink a bottle of whiskey or brandy and/or a case of twenty-four beers a day and/or two litres of wine. For thirty years I smoked twenty to forty cigarettes a day. With God’s help I stopped both on the same day: 20 November 2011.

It was not planned or anything. I just put all the booze and smokes that I had in the house in the middle of the bed and drank and smoked it all. When I awoke from my drunken state, I was sober! And that was that!

With God’s help, I will never need anything like that again. I don’t even think about booze like I used to. I could have killed for a drink when I did not have one. Other people can drink and smoke around me and I won’t even get a craving.

In actual fact, this is how the devil tried his stuff on me but … it did not work. Three or four days after I had stopped, a very close person bought me a box of cigarettes, thinking that I still smoked. He did not realize that I had stopped. I had not told anyone that I was quitting. I did not beg God. I just asked Him! Just with one short prayer, and He answered.

Now all my prayers are done in the same way and He just blesses me beyond all of my expectations. He has also given me a new, instant God-loving family. I thank God for this great gift He has sent me. He can do the same for you. Just ask!

Another thing, in the real world cops swear most of the time. ‘You are a rule unto yourselves’ − as someone once told me.

Nonetheless, we do work really hard to protect you.

This story is real! Names of places, people and identifiable information, have been changed to keep real identities as hidden as possible!

CHAPTERS

1. While on Vacation

2. The New life

3. Our Little Surprise

4.Family Members and Other Interesting Things

5. Miracles Do Happen

6. What the …?

7. Shit Happens

8. Coming Clean

9. What’s Luck Got To Do With It?

10. Some Direction in Life

11. Where’s The Trust?

12. Why?

1. While on Vacation

WHILE sitting on the end of my bed looking at my over-tired, long, sad face in the mirror, I was thinking of what I had gone through these past few months. Then, shrugging off those memories and getting mentally ready to go on a well-deserved, long-overdue holiday, I was thinking about what I was going to do with my time and where I was going to go, as this was an unplanned summer vacation which the bosses had deemed ‘necessary’!

Then Herman walked in.

"Am I your best friend, or what? We’ve been together for the last seven, hard years and now you just want to leave me. You’re going nowhere, buddy! I’ve tried to forget the things from the past. Not the drugs − they always get to me, you know that. But you’re supposed to be my ‘partner in crime’!

‘Good cop, bad cop’, remember? And now you just want to up and leave me, when you know very well that we belong together," he gushed, with a glum-looking face.

I think my time is up with you. I felt a small twinge in my arm, reminding me that Herman was part of me – almost physically. You’re like a pregnant camel running flat out in the desert, you moron! And you’re really starting to piss me off! Now take that fucking unloaded revolver out of my face, you dim wit, before I shove it up your ass!

It’s loaded, Herman said with a drunken slur.

I can see it’s not, you dim wit! I replied.

We had a well-practised, mock battle as we were pushing each other around the room. He was laughing with delight as I took the gun out of his hand and shoved him into the passage with little effort and quickly locked the door.

How could Herman just barge into my room, drunk out of his mind?

JUST over five foot, with shoulder-length black hair and a pock-marked, oval face, he had a heart of gold and a body of steel.

You just didn’t tickle his ass, as he did not play well with other children, and would get very worked up when people wouldn’t listen to him. That was just part of the reasons why he’d had about fifty or more girlfriends during the last seven years.

While Herman was a Student Constable, he got the nickname of ‘Hop-along-Herman’. His one leg was slightly shorter than the other. This was the result of a shooting incident in which he had been shot in the butt by a fleeing robber. He still ran after the guy and apprehended him. Herman now walks with a very minor limp.

He is one of the few, best, and hardest-working South African Police Service members that I have ever known or will ever know. Just don’t piss him off!

We both wore the same style of clothes – denims and T-shirts – for the simple fact that they didn’t need to be ironed. We both had shoulder-length hair, a couple of tattoos, and really bad attitudes.

We had a list of names from all over Africa of the incoming and outgoing drug trade that makes a telephone directory look like a kid’s birthday party guest list − from gun-slingers to users, abusers, pushers, pimps, hookers, gays, strays and cops who were, or still are, on the take, or using themselves. Unfortunately we couldn’t get them all at the same time, but they knew we were still after them.

We had just finished a very hard, slightly more than seven-year stint in an undercover Drug and Narcotics Unit. He’d had enough; and, quite frankly, so had I.

LET me rather start at the beginning.

We had been Street cops for a total of thirty years between the two of us, and had worked in Crime Prevention and Flying Squad. We both kept our noses clean, and had done more drug-related arrests in our respective precincts than any other in South Africa.

I was from Johannesburg and Herman from Cape Town.

Well, the Big Boss was in charge. One day it was decided that I go to Cape Town and Herman come to Jo’burg, for what reason I will never know or understand. Maybe, it was because we kept on arresting the same crowd of people, or we were missing something. God alone knows.

Well, I told them: No way! I would not go to that place, even if they paid me! To my absolute amazement, I was dismissed. Fired!

Who? Me? You can’t fire me. I quit.

It was made to look as if I had been forced to leave the police. Of course, you can’t work in the police force if you have a criminal record.

Well, that happened to both of us.

THIS is how I was dragged into this cesspool.

It all started on a miserable, cold, winter’s morning in 2003. I had about three layers of clothing wrapped around my body, thinking that, if someone tried to shoot me, all that clothing would probably be enough to act as a bullet-proof vest!

For the whole day nothing dramatically happened while on duty. The same druggies and pushers were going in and out of the new drug house in that crime-infested neighbourhood.

I was taking snapshots of overdressed bodies on this bitterly cold winter morning. I could barely see anyone’s face through the double-thick balaclavas and long, double-wrapped scarves.

Two prostitutes were standing together, waiting for their next fix on the corner of Primrose and Church Streets. They looked like shop mannequins in high heels and long, ready-to–snap-open coats. I had to stop myself from watching them because I was getting cold just looking at them, even though I was sitting next to a three-bar heater, which was, in any case, about as useless as a triangular-shaped teapot without a handle.

Our surveillance was done from a rented third-floor apartment in a very dodgy part of town. My job was to monitor the entrance of a new drug house that had started up; taking pictures of the people coming from and going into the building. I was looking forward to going home on this cold Wednesday night, when my replacement never pitched.

Now, working undercover, you only ever knew who was relieving you and no-one else. If your relief does not pitch, you’re fucked and you stay on duty. And you may not ask for another other replacement. It just won’t happen.

That meant I had to push a twenty-three-hour beat and I already felt broken from lack of sleep. I thought my toes and fingers were starting to get frostbite, my nose had gone numb hours ago, and I had brain freeze! I could not and did not want to really think much about anything.

So when my new relief eventually arrived, I was ecstatic that I could finally go home.

In this case, it was vitally important not to trust anyone else to give information to, because we had inside information that two or more cops from a precinct in a neighbouring town were heavily involved in a drug- and gambling ring. If they got a whiff of anything police-related, they’d move on or shut down. They were prepared for a fight to death if need be, as there was a lot of money at stake.

Therefore, when my new replacement arrived at about 23:00, I was simply happy to be alive and able to go home.

I climbed into my unmarked police car, and drove the thirty km towards home. This almost gave me time to thaw out. I stopped off at my regular bar that stayed open twenty-four hours a day − if you happen to know the owner.

I ordered a beer, and had a few laughs with Patrick – this overly-dressed-in-drag barman; then had a few more beers, and a light snack of a packet of crisps before going home.

However, I did not even make it to the garage down the road. There was a random road block, with my own massively overweight Station Commander standing in front of me, doing a breathalyser test on me.

He then loaded me into the back of a police van, saying under his breath, Sorry, but we have to take you out and off the case. They got to Mike, shot him in the head, execution style, and left his body at a church, with a note giving a description of some of the cops who are watching the drug house. That is why he never came to release you from your duty. We think they’re watching your house too. The safest place for you right now is where I can watch you all the time – locked up.

He sighed. Sorry, but today we’re closing in on the three of them, the Station Commander, a Captain and a Warrant Officer. So you did your job well.

I thought, obviously not well enough! Not if a good friend and colleague had died in the process.

You have to know that Mike was like a brother to me. I still remember his shiny, hairless head, small eyes in a long, happy face. He always had the biggest, laughing smile. His enormous hands and short arms, his slim build with those long legs, could never be mistaken. Almost Frankenstein-looking!

I openly cried when I heard of his death.

Then a young Constable obviously overheard me and said, Yeah, now you’ve been caught drinking and driving, you wanna cry? Too late, buddy!

Luckily the door of the van was closed; otherwise, I would have got out, and punched him lights out for being unsympathetic toward my mentor and best friend.

MIKE had been in the drug unit his whole adult life. For twenty-five years he had never known anything else, but the drug unit, although everyone who knew him well, thought he was a preacher, with his beautiful well-trained, black dog, called Davel.

Davel was the most beautiful, pure-bred Rottweiler you’ve ever seen. His head was the size of a soccer ball and his chest was the size of a beer barrel. He had strong, muscular legs, loving brown eyes and an overlong pink tongue. When you’d pat him, his skin would move and fold around your fingers. Davel had a sense of humour like no other. I have never known such a beautiful person … I mean, animal.

Mike always made jokes. If you don’t change your ways, I’ll let the Davel have you!

He’d always go around giving out Christian tracts, helping women and children, and getting involved in community work in the area. He was always helping people who were in need.

He never had a girlfriend, but once a year he went to Durban to get laid. I went with him on one of his yearly pilgrimages, and I was quite shocked to see this quiet-spoken man acting totally out of character. He really went wild when he had the chance.

I was his only real friend and his only go-between with the cops. He never trusted anyone but me. I was one of only two who knew about his real life at home. He never had any money of his own. He was always giving it to the needy locals. He had hundreds of friends who used to feed him, and he was never short of anything. He never drove around in a car; he always walked or grabbed one of the local taxis wherever he wanted to go. People always flocked around him, asking for his wise advice. He was well-loved by the community; some kids even called him ‘Father’ and he loved them as if they were his own.

SO here I was, arrested and convicted for DUI. The judge deemed fit to give me six months’ in jail just like everyone charged with ‘minor’ crimes, like murder (‘022’), hijacking, assault to do grievous bodily harm (‘011’), house-breaking and theft (‘014’), illegal possession of firearms, possession of narcotics (‘054’), or being an illegal immigrant; or, the biggest no-no of all, rape or some other sexual misdemeanour.

Most of these were practically a given on any suspect’s rap sheet for a normal court day.

It was like a home-coming party. All the convicts I had personally arrested heard that I was coming for a nice little visit, and they could not wait to get their hands on me.

I saw him first. Rodger! My big boy! You looked after me so well! Especially when you tried to cut my fucking head off! I still wonder where you got that fourteen inch sword from in prison. But getting you another twenty-five years in jail is justice in itself.

Prison was not so bad after that fight, where everyone got to witness how I fucked him up when he came to attack me.

What he did not know was that I had God on my side. God still has other plans for my life and I’m so far behind with His work, I might never die. Sorry − my sense of humour!

This turned out to be the second best fist fight of my life, although it didn’t last long. Just one punch! Not that the fight was not good, but the respect I got was what I needed.

They could see I had no fear in me at all, and that is what convicts admire.

I’ve had one fight better than that since. The spectator value on that one, though, would have been out of this world. I would have liked to watch it again myself some time or other.

‘RODGER the Dodger’

Yah, where do I start with this one? I suppose the beginning is the best! February 1991.

Usually the boss gets a call from a well-known informer in Pretoria that he uses. So when the guy needs money, he informs us about someone whom he hasn’t paid for a stash. That way he gets out of paying for the stash; and gets some information money, as well, once the case