The October Killings (6 page)

“I can't really say,” she had told him. The truth seemed so unlikely and was so difficult to explain.

“You want to see Marinus van Jaarsveld, but you won't say why. Forget it, Abigail.”

It was mid-afternoon when Johanna returned, looking both stunned and triumphant. “We've only tracked three so far. And they all died on October 22. How did you know?”

7

When Robert Mokoapi got home around eight o'clock, his wife was sitting in one of the easy chairs in front of the French windows which she had left closed. The apartment had been in darkness until he switched on the light in the hall.

“And this,” Robert said, “sitting alone in the dark? Something wrong?”

Abigail waved a hand in a gesture that, while avoiding the need to speak, was intended to tell him that all was fine.

The gesture did not work. Robert put down his briefcase, threw his jacket on a sofa and came over to her. He dropped to his knees in front of her and reached out gently to take her in his arms. Abigail held back for only a moment before allowing him to embrace her. “I think you'd better tell me,” he said.

He was a good man. Abigail appreciated that fact almost every day of her life. She sometimes felt vaguely guilty that such a good husband should be saddled with someone as opinionated and ready for a fight as she was. On the other hand, she sometimes thought that, in her, Robert had a pretty good deal too. She was not all arguments and volatility.

To her intense irritation she found herself sobbing in Robert's arms. “Hey?” he said. “What's this?”

“It's nothing. I had a hard day.” Her voice came out in little snatches between the sobs. The little-girl sound of her voice irritated her intensely.

She tried to free herself from Robert's arms, but he was holding her too firmly. “Tell me about it,” he said. “I'm your friend, remember. We're the ones who listen to each other's problems.”

When she stopped sobbing Abigail made an attempt to speak. “I like you,” she said.

“I should hope so,” he told her, and they both laughed, he with real restraint and she with tears in her eyes.

When the sobbing eased, Robert released her and started across the room. “I'm going to pour us both a drink, a stiff one.” Abigail did not protest when he poured whiskey into two glasses. He placed the glasses on either side of the sofa, then led her to it so that they could sit next to each other. “So what happened today? Did that little weed of a deputy DG do something?”

By now Abigail had composed herself. “Today I met someone I knew long ago. He was good to me then, but now he's in trouble.”

“An old boyfriend?”

Abigail knew that Robert was aware of the Maseru raid and that she had been present, but she had never told him anything about that night and she had never told another soul about Ficksburg. Abigail was determined that she would never in her life tell anyone about either. She could share every other aspect of her being with Robert, but not this. There were some things that Abigail had buried deep and that she preferred to leave that way. She shook her head in answer to his question. “He's a white man who was a policeman of the apartheid regime.” Robert was a newspaperman and not easy to surprise, but it was clear by his face that this surprised him. “He saved my life.”

“In Maseru?”

“He shielded me from one of the others who would have killed me.”

“Where did you run into him?”

“He came to see me today.”

“So what's he need—money?”

“No.” She looked intently at Robert's face. “He thinks there are government agents trying to kill him.”

“Ah, bullshit.” Robert's disgust for the old regime and all those involved in it was showing. He shook his head. “These guys, they'll believe anything bad…”

“Some of the soldiers who were in Maseru seem to have been murdered.” Abigail had already decided not to tell Robert about the matter of October 22. She loved him, but he was newspaperman and you did not tempt newspapermen with some things, even if you loved them.

“You believe this?”

“Some of them have been murdered. That much is true.”

Robert needed more than that. “Do you believe a government agency is responsible?”

“No.”

“Good. I'll drink to that.” He held his glass toward her and they clinked them. “Let's take your friend to lunch and reassure him.”

“I don't believe a government agency is involved.” She was watching his face as she spoke. “I believe Michael Bishop could be.” Abigail closed her eyes and rocked back as if she had been struck. Until that moment she had not even admitted that belief to herself. It had been lurking somewhere deep within her in the place that conscious thoughts avoid. If she truly believed that Bishop could be involved, it was only now that she knew that she did.

“Michael Bishop.” Robert was searching his memory for an identity to match the name. “He's the one they called the Ghost. Are you sure he's real? I always wondered if he wasn't a myth.”

“He's real all right. Yesterday they held a meeting at work to honor him.” That was not all. There was much else, but that would be enough for Robert. Or enough for her. At least, enough for now.

“Really?” Already his curiosity was becoming a problem.

“Listen, Robert, this is not a story. This man may be in danger. I need to help him. I owe it to him.”

“Tell me why you suspect this Michael Bishop.”

“I can't.”

“You can't or you won't?”

“I can't.”

Robert had both of her hands in his. “Listen, pal. I'm on your side, remember?”

“I can't. I can't now.”

“Will you be able to later?”

“No. Maybe. Perhaps…”

Robert smiled faintly. “A good maybe is almost as useful as a sturdy perhaps.”

“I had dealings with him in the old days, during the struggle. I don't believe anyone else could have done it. Most of all, I don't believe anyone else would have wanted to do it.”

“And you won't tell me more?”

“I just can't.”

“You're a bit tough on your allies, pal. But all right, you tell me what to do for this Lourens. If he saved your life, I'll do whatever I can to lend a hand.”

But for the moment there was nothing Robert could do. She had no option but to leave him with the idea that what she had told him was based on nothing more than the meandering thoughts of an old apartheid-era soldier and her own hunches.

Then there was the bedroom and this time there was no chance of Robert falling asleep in time to save her. But there was his puzzlement, almost hurt, and soon his asking, demanding even, to know, “What is it? Has it got something to do with the money?”

And a long moment in which she wondered what he was talking about, before she realized. “No, it's not the billion.”

“Half billion,” he told her.

“No, of course it's not that. It's just that it's upset me and…”

Then he was striding around the room, wearing only his sleeping trunks. “I'm a Zulu man. I need sex the way other men need food.”

It was not possible though, especially not now, not since she had admitted her fears to herself. Eventually he did sleep and she went back to the French windows. By the lights in the neighboring garden she could again see the bull terrier ferreting among the shrubs. A female figure walked by in the street, carrying a shopping bag. Probably a domestic worker going home to one of the townships, she thought. Immediately the bull terrier surged toward the garden gate, snapping and biting at the steel bars to get to the woman outside.

Jesus, she thought, do we have to put up with these reminders of apartheid days? In those days many a domestic servant had been savaged by a dog belonging to the employer or the employer's neighbor. Very few had ever been compensated in any way.

As the domestic worker moved away, the dog's growling slowly died down, then stopped altogether. She sank slowly into the chair she had used the previous night. From the position where she was sitting she looked out into a night in which the black of the sky glowed vaguely gold with the reflected lights of the city.

She tried not to think. She also tried not to remember. Maseru had returned to her more strongly than at any time in the intervening years. It was too late to do anything about it, but perhaps she could keep the door closed on Ficksburg. She could leave it as a dark cave in the vault of her memory. But it was a cave that was haunted by the insubstantial figure of Michael Bishop … the Ghost, as Robert had called him.

8

Monday, October 17

Yudel Gordon, former senior psychologist in the Department of Correctional Services, drove through the Pretoria Central Prison complex. Over the last thirty years he had traveled the road many times.

He passed the main section where most of the prisoners were kept, the administration block where the year before a bored bureaucrat had mislaid the files of four prisoners and as a result had kept them inside for an extra two months, the houses of the warders where uncomplicated men and their families lived in a world that was becoming increasingly complex, the sports field where the prison officers' soccer team competed with more enthusiasm than finesse, and the recreation club where off-duty warders spent time when the need to escape female disapproval was upon them—all of it as immaculately maintained as the prison itself.

Yudel considered how faulty the impression of order was. Prisons throughout the country were filled beyond capacity. Having five prisoners crowded into a cell intended for three was normal. It was a situation inherited from the apartheid government eleven years before, and had not improved since then.

In some years, the department's budget ran out before the year did. Room was sometimes made for new prisoners convicted of relatively minor offenses by releasing others whose crimes were far worse. This too was a method inherited from the old regime. In recent months two convicted murderers, serving twenty-five-year sentences, had been released before the end of their fifth year and within months had been rearrested for further killings. A third prematurely released murderer had been arrested for multiple rapes.

There had been a time immediately after the first democratic elections when the new authorities had seemed to think that the guilt of anyone convicted of anything during the apartheid years had to be in doubt. Tens of thousands of prisoners were released early in those days, temporarily easing the overcrowding in the prisons. Most were back inside within six months, and the situation returned to normal.

These releases were in addition to the politicals, who had all been freed regardless of their crimes, the official position being that none of them would have committed their crimes in a normal society. While apartheid had certainly produced an abnormal society, Yudel was not sure what a normal one looked like. And he would not have released all the politicals who had been freed. They had been imprisoned by the old regime for setting off bombs in public places, shooting at and occasionally killing policemen and civilians, planting bombs on country roads and of being enthusiastic members of the necklace mobs which burned to death informers, witches, spies, boycott breakers, scabs and other traitors to the revolution.

Many years had accustomed Yudel to dealing with criminals, but he doubted that he would ever grow accustomed to the sanctimony and self-satisfaction of the politically motivated killer. You don't understand, he had been told many times. You have to see it in context. We did it for freedom. It's easy for you. You've always been privileged.

Among the politicals who had fallen under his care and been released was Simon Mkhari, who had burned to death a woman of sixty. Her crime, in Mkhari's eyes, had been that, during a boycott of white shops, she had bought a small packet of groceries from a shop owned by a white man. Yudel had felt that Mkhari was an opportunist who had found, in the country's political situation, a morally acceptable reason to kill. Yudel remembered eyes that held a wild unruliness and an inner tension that distorted the area on either side of his mouth, an uncontrollable restlessness that went beyond the reach of discipline. Yudel had seen those eyes as the product of a life that had taught him that there were no friends to be found anywhere and only temporary allies. Men had to be subdued by force and women taken in the same way. He had opposed Mkhari's release, believing that he was more than likely to kill again. As he had expected, he had been overruled without discussion. Recently, Mkhari's name and photograph had appeared on police “wanted” posters. He had not possessed the skill or education to make use of the opportunities offered by the new South Africa, and the wild unruliness was still a part of him.

There had been other releases with which Yudel had agreed. The Grysbank Six, as the media had called them, had been part of a mob that had beaten, kicked and finally burned to death a female schoolteacher by the name of Maggie Twala, who was rumored to have been the lover of a policeman. Those had been extraordinary times … none of them had ever before been found guilty of any crime, but had been swept along by mob passions in the heat of a political upheaval such as the country had never seen before. They were not likely to kill again.

Yudel was aware that many people, perhaps most people, would sneer at his opinion of political killers. After all, he had stayed in the employ of the prisons department throughout the apartheid years. It was true that his actions and his sympathies in those years had removed any possibility of promotion, but still he had never resigned. He had been aware of the beatings and the torture dealt out by the security police, sometimes in the prisons, and he had objected officially. He had once tried unsuccessfully to have a senior security policeman arrested for rape and murder. But when nothing came of his protests, he had stayed in the department's employ, telling himself that he was doing good. Not everyone had agreed.