They always take the cars. It doesn't matter to them if the drivers are honkies, Indians, Coloureds or Chinese. They just want the larneys' cars and they drive away with them after the attack. Just like that.' She snapped her thumb and middle finger together. 'They don't even seem to care that they might be caught, because the next week you see them doing the same thing. I suppose they pay the police to leave them alone.'
Coots let that pass. 'How many men do you think they've attacked?' he asked.
'I don't know,' Heidi shrugged. 'Maybe about ten while I've been walking this beat. Maybe more. I'm not sure, I've only been here a couple of years.'
'Do you see them here every week?' Coots asked here.
'No, not every week,' Heidi said. 'I used to see them here all the time. They always made a fire and braaied meat on a Friday afternoon. Other times I would see the three of them around town in Benoni and Boksburg, this place or that, sommer anywhere, before they stabbed that larney near the water. After they stabbed him, they seemed to stop coming here.'
Coots wanted a more detailed description of what Heidi had actually seen on the day Deon de Villiars was stabbed to death.
'Tell me exactly what you saw on the morning that he died,' Coots said to Heidi. He carefully took a hundred rand note out of his pocket and began smoothing it between his fingers. He could see her eyes follow the note as he folded it up into his palm. He took out another one.
'I wasn't here that morning, as I've told you,' Heidi said. 'It was too early. I spent the night at the shebeen in Reiger Park.' Her eyes did not leave the banknotes. 'I was there for business and it was just past sun-up when I saw these self-same men, the two skollies and the thin honkey, drive up to the shebeen in a white Mercedes Benz. They were the same men I had seen at Boksburg Lake, braaing meat and stealing cars from men they attacked.'
Heidi was warming to the topic. 'Sometimes they offered the drivers blowjobs, flicking their tongues in and out of the gaps between their teeth and laughing. I always watched them. Sometimes a larney went off into the bushes with them, and those who went in never came out again. I think they killed them and just left them there.
Then the two skollies took their keys and things and drove away in their cars, taking the skinny honkey with them. I could see what was happening from across the street where I waited for my johns.' Heidi looked intently at Coots.
'How many did you say again?' Coots asked.
'I don't know. About ten or so, I suppose,' she said, shrugging again. ' I didn't keep count, but I know a lot of guys die around here all the time. It's a real killing field.'

EXTRACT TAKEN FROM 'THE SHALLOW GRAVE$ AND OTHER TRUE CRIME STORIES'



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