Ring Ring [fiction]

A few years ago, our Honda Ballade car was stolen in broad daylight from a parking bay in a main street in a Cape Town suburb. Despite remaining in contact with the police department over a number of years, it was never recovered. 

One morning, Jeanette was sitting with her coffee reading the local Table Talk community newspaper. I don't look at the papers much, so she tends to be my contact when it comes to the news. Then she locked on to a report of a high-speed chase in which a gang of policemen chased a suspicious looking gang of scrummonkels down a suburban residential street at speeds exceeding the freeway limits. Apparently, the Hollywood-type episodes ended with the score Cops-4  Robbers-Nil. The cops had shot out all four tyres on the robbers' car, which made it difficult for the getaway driver to do much getting-away. That applied to his pals as well. Their vehicle came to an abrupt halt, and the crooks were forced to make the rest of their journey on foot.

What happened to them is not important to Jeanette's story. Standing there in a Summer Greens side-street as a piece of white metal with four flat black wheels! And here in the newspaper was a photo of the crime scene, including a photo of Inspector Gary Bierman, some of his co-cops and the flat Honda Ballade, which seemed no worse considering its recent ordeal. The car had been stolen earlier that day, the report stated.

If you sit on our duckpond verandah and observe the traffic flowing past our home on a main street, it would not be at all strange to see up to half a dozen white Honda Ballades of that shape pass by in a couple of hours. So, it was as common as the Volkswagen Beetle or Ford Cortina used to be!

So what? It could be our stolen Ballade? Naaaw, I told Jeanette - what are the chances. In any case, the Summer Greens incident happened more than a week ago, so the police would have contacted me by now. Surely?

I dug out my Grand Theft Auto Report (actually called simply Stolen MV) and found the number for Inspector Engelbrecht, the officer-in-charge. I dialled carefully and waited with bated breath. The tension started building up once more - I was starting to feel like a Bruce Willis, but probably came across more like a Mr Bean.

The phone kept on ringing. I slammed the phone down in anger, indicating that I meant business, that I wasn't prepared to dilly-dally in this important matter. I had banged the thumb of my left hand with the instrument and the rock pigeon sitting on the railing outside the window didn't even bat an eye-lid at the sudden noise, so I guess my show of strength wasn't that impressive. There was a slight hint of blood between the nail and the cuticle. Drat.

I sucked my burning thumb, and hit the turquoise "redial" button. Again, the ringing continued. Then, like magic, out of the blue so to speak, came the voice of Marietjie (Afrikaans for ‘Little Mary’, pronounced “mir-reek-key”) the last of the Afrikaans telephonist girls-friday, answering in her broken accented English, and in-quiring of me how she could be of e-ssistence. I explained, and she transferred my call.

Ring Ring. This was a bit like a stalemate game of go back to go, and start again. After a while, I got to speak to Marietjie again, Ring Ring, and later again Marietjie. She was sounding as if my repeated request was starting to pee her off ever so slightly. More ring ring. I think that Marietjie had pushed some other button, because it just kept on ringing. I felt that I couldn't hang up now, after all the effort that Marietjie had put into her job today. More ring ring. Then I realised that I had no real loyalty to Marietjie -- it didn't really matter if I slammed the receiver down now. How would Marietjie know, and, I asked myself, would she really care?

Wait. The ringing stopped.

It was Thombasola. Thombasola was a girl. A girl policeman, that is. For those not familiar with our African culture, if it had been a guy, it would have been Thombasolo - like Thabo -- if it ends in an -o, then its masculine, and those ending in an -a are feminine: I confess, and apologise for my white dishonesty, I've just manufactured that law of Black grammar, but I think they should use it, if it is true. By the way, "white" dishonesty has nothing to do with race -- it is the act of telling white lies. I've just invented that law, too. I'd better be careful, or I'll end up sounding like the late Dr Piet Koornhof!

Anyway, Thombasola sounded female. I think. No, I'm sure she must have been female, because she gave a short giggle, like a girl. No, she couldn't help me with any queries, she giggled.

I think she giggled.

Now, what on earth made me this that this girl policeman would be able? I didn't know for sure that she was a policeperson - she may just be a telephonist, like Marietjie, or even a cleaner. Of course, on the other hand, given our equal opportunities policy, she could also be the station commander. Anyway Ms Thombasola explained that none of the detectives would be able to come to the phone until further notice, because they were all helping to move the desks, the filing cabinets and the countless boxes of case dockets from the front offices across the way to the row of vacated cottages, from where they will be operating in future. Jeanette had also read something about the Milnerton detective branch being relocated, so I reckoned Thomba was probably being truthful.

Did she think they would still be very long? Yes, she thought they would. On account of the fact that there is a lot of stuff to move, on account of the fact that the stuff is heavy and its quite a long way to carry all the heavy stuff, and also on account of the fact that some of the officers have called in sick when they had heard of the furniture-carrying lark, and on account of the fact that they were short-staffed before they started in any case. She had also heard that three of the remaining four detectives, who were busy struggling with the long big table at the corner in the passageway, were discussing their decision that they should put in for three days' leave.

No, seriously, Thomba was reasonably certain that they should be finished moving most of the heavy stuff by the end of the week. She wasn't prepared to guarantee the deadline, but she thought that Friday was a reasonable estimate. Good grief! We were only on Monday now... Tuesday...

If you like you can play a bit of music, or go make a cup of tea now. That's to indicate that two weeks are passing between the paragraph above this sentence, and the one below.

Two weeks later.

I dial the Milnerton police station, in search of Inspector Gary. Somehow, in my bones, I have this lucky feeling. It's called optimism. The stuff fools live on. There is a different Marietjie on desk duty this time. Curt to the point, and not even a "going through!" call.

Ring Ring. I understand that this is the secret code by which the Milnerton detectives can deduce that there is someone dialling their number. Heaven help members of the South African public if they are in desperate trouble and in imminent danger at the hands of desperate dangerous criminals and they are hanging on the line waiting for the cops to answer the phone. What am I saying! This is exactly what happens each and every day. Isn't it strange that we put up with the lack of service. We should stop paying our taxes. As if that will change anything.

A miracle! What a miraculous miracle of biblical proportions! I cannot believe it! Inspector Gary himself! The man of the moment.

I relay my sad tale of woe, and my plea of "What-about-the-white-Honda-in-the-newspaper". End of miracle. Inspector Gary is no miracle - he obviously never attended those psychology classes where public servants get instructed in using tact to get people to think that the officer has their interests at heart, or how the training sessions that teach them how to handle and soft-soap traumatised members of the public. Maybe he did attend some of those classes, but I think he got an "F".

No, he replied after giving the matter a certain amount of deep thought and consideration - all of five seconds. No, if that had been my car, then the Kuils River yard should have sent them a fax message by now, because it is the Kuils River yard's job to check all the recovered vehicles against the database of theft reports, to marry up the cases and then to fax the reporting station.

Again my optimism. Something Inspector Gary has obviously not heard of -- not, a I'll-contact-Kuils-River-and-get-back-to-you. Not a perhaps-if-it-is-your-car-I'll-let-you-know. Nothing. No fax no recovered car, it was that simple, in his book. When I suggested, somewhat in jest I suppose, that perhaps the fax had been out of order, or someone had not plugged it in after the move, or maybe it was out of paper, again Inspector Gary showed his total lack of optimism.

Shame on him. If I give him the docket number, won't he just take a quick look? Yes! He said he's write down the docket number. Now that I think of it, that's what he said; he didn't say that he would do anything further. After all, what did I expect him to do? Find my car? What sort of miracle worker did I imagine he was? Certainly not an optimistic miracle worker, I guess.

He wrote down my case number. Like an optimistic fool, I believed that he wrote it down. I asked whether I should hang on while he looked it up. Good heavens, No, Mr Optimism, he explained. He would have to go down to the records department, and that could take quite some time. I could believe that. And he would have to fill out a T728A form in duplicate for records, and that could also take some time. And then he would have to draw the docket and that could take some more time;

Yes, yes, yes, I wanted to know more. My brain hungered for police-style education, forensics, target practice, apprehend and arrest, stand and deliver. I needed to know all the gory details! Yes, yes, and...? He droned on in his non-optimistic monotonous sing-song voice; And then he'll have to look into it. Apparently, he didn't know if that would take a long time. But, there's only one single solitary foolscap page all on its lonesome own in the docket! How much looking could it involve? No, thought the detective, it would be better if I leave this matter up to him and his colleagues. He will give the matter his personal attention and he will phone me as soon as he has some news.

That was two weeks ago. I suggest that we should have dinner or go to bed or something, to indicate a much longer wait. I expect roughly for.... forever.

I hope that this is not....