6 a.m., December 31

Messages on Detective Zandile Cele’s cellphone come thick and fast. Zandile had set the incoming message alert to Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart. It’s her favourite song. But today is month-end and Toni Braxton’s voice means just one thing – another debit order has gone off her account. She switches it to silent and calls her colleague, Detective Gloria Ngcobo.

“My friend, how is it going at your crime scene?”

“I’m almost done,” says Gloria. “Nothing too bad; just some rich boy who wrecked a car.”

“These debit orders, my friend,” says Zandile, her voice sinking.

Gloria exhales pure stress. “They have taken so much I don’t know where to go for help this month.”

“Once I have paid the transport money for the kids I will have zero as my bank balance,” says Zandile. “I haven’t bought groceries yet, not paid for water and electricity. Same for the DSTV. Imagine a month without good TV?”

“You can say that again. I won’t have money for school stationery for my boy and nieces. My mom has called already asking for money,” says Gloria.

“I really don’t know what to do. I can’t ask my sister for another loan; I owe her too much as it is,” says Zandile.

“I am seriously thinking of pawning my gold chain,” says Gloria.

“Have you called Primo?”

“I have, but he is giving me excuses.”

“How can he?” Zandile barks into the phone. “Did you lean on him?”

“I did my best. He won’t budge.”

“Let’s go see him right now. He needs to pay up because we saved him from definite jail time. Let’s meet at my house in ten minutes,” says Zandile.

Zandile presses the accelerator pedal of the police van; Gloria does the same in her van. The two vans arrow forwards and arrive simultaneously, as if choreographed, at Zandile’s house. Gloria jumps into Zandile’s van. They head to Primo’s house.

“So how do we play this?” says Gloria, as they park outside.

“We’ll speak to him in the only language he understands.” A steely expression has appeared on Zandile’s face. “We’ll just arrest him.”

Primo, twenty-one, is a drug dealer. His house is a ‘blinged out’ Umlazi township four-room. Zandile, Gloria and two constables could not believe the riches they found when they raided Primo’s house six months earlier. His neighbours had complained of a chemical smell coming from the yard. The police discovered a drug lab at the back of the house.

Behind the high walls they discovered all sorts of excess. A TV spanning wall-to-wall, ostrich skin sofas, a cappuccino maker, authentic Persian rugs, sleigh beds, a kitchen fit for a mansion. Cash amounting to R67 000 inside an ice cream container in the fridge. The drug trade was good to Primo. He made a deal to pay the police monthly for a year, for his freedom, but honoured this deal for only three months.

Guns drawn, they approach the high walls of Primo’s house.

Zandile calls the two constables who were at the original raid. “We are at Primo’s. Meet us here in twenty minutes,” she tells them.

The gate is unlocked. Zandile and Gloria stand by it and listen. Faint music comes from the back of house. They creep into the yard. Gloria draws out her Taser to guard against an attack from Primo’s humungous pit bull. During the original raid the beast attacked a constable and bit off a chunk of his calf muscle.

***

Tell us what you think: Why are the detectives raiding Primo at this specific time?