The October Killings Page 11

  “Yes, he was in, God help us.” Ndlovu reached under his makeshift bed and pulled out a bottle of cane spirits. He took a quick swallow and waved the bottle in Abigail’s direction. A quick shake of the head indicated her refusal and the bottle was again tucked away. “I never wanted him. He was not a soldier. I don’t know what he was. He never asked how the movement worked. He never asked about our policies or our goals. He came for his assignments and, as far as I know, he worked alone. And there was another thing … Christ, I don’t want to talk about this again. I’m finished with all that.”

  “What other thing? What was the other thing?”

  “Leave it alone, young Abigail. Go home and leave Michael Bishop alone.”

  “The other thing?”

  “To my knowledge, he never failed once, but once or twice we sent other men out with him. He came back alone each time, but the job got done.”

  It took a while for Abigail to absorb this. When she turned her attention back to Ndlovu, he was drinking from the bottle again.

  “You never really got to know him then?”

  “No one did. He worked alone and he had no need for comfort. Once, when we sent him on an assignment, he lived for six months in an old roofless ruin in the Magaliesberg hills to the west of Pretoria. It must have been the mansion of a rich farmer long ago. It was in the old Cape Dutch style, one of the first buildings to be put up by a settler in the Pretoria area. Bishop wouldn’t sleep in the ruin of the main house. He said it reminded him of bad things from those years. I never believed that though. He slept in one of the little cells where the farm laborers, our people, had to live. Even that only had part of the roof left, but he didn’t care. And he did nothing to close the hole in the roof because, he said, someone might notice. If it rained he just slept on the side where there was still some roof.”

  “Will you show me where it is?”

  “I’ll draw you a map, then I want you to go. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Good. There are also other hideouts he used. I know five of them. None of them provided a decent roof over his head. Discomfort was nothing to him.” His head shook angrily. “Now you go. You go and don’t come back.”

  But Abigail was not yet finished with Jones Ndlovu. “Will you draw me a map so that I can find the old house?”

  “It was on what was left of an old farm called Vyefontein. If I draw you a map, will you go?”

  “Yes, I’ll go. Please draw me the map. And can you draw me maps to the other hideouts too?”

  “I’ll draw all the maps you want, but rather you go home. I knew your father and mother and I don’t want to hear from you on this matter again. Your hear me? Don’t look for Michael Bishop. You don’t want to find him.”

  “One last thing. Were there any relationships? Girlfriends?”

  “No relationships, no friends, no human loves, no pleasures. He never spoke about himself or his past. In fact, he never spoke much at all. There was no woman. I think he went to the whores in Lusaka, but I’m not even sure of that.”

  “No human loves?”

  “Go, young Abigail. Why have you come here to fuck me up?”

  “What other kind of loves did he have?’

  “No loves, not any sort of loves. But he could handle animals. He could make them do anything he wanted.” He was stopped in mid-stride by a returning memory. “He did seem to love European classical music, especially opera.”

  “He loved Italian opera?”

  “No, I don’t think it was Italian. It was English—music of the composer Handel, I think. There were some old LP records of his that I kept for him. Sometimes when he was in Lusaka he would play them. He played Handel often. His favorite was Samson, the one from the Bible. There were others too, but I don’t remember their names.”

  When she left, the two young township detectives were still standing guard over her car. Now they looked like a pair of poor township kids. The threat she had seen in them an hour earlier had disappeared. She tipped them each five rands.

  16

  Leon Lourens had left the door of his workshop open, just as he did on most days. It was a warm day and he wanted to let in as much natural light as possible and also allow the air to circulate.

  The car he was working on had run its right front wheel-bearing, a condition that was not surprising since, as far as he could see, the bearing had never once been lubricated. There were even traces of rust along the edges. The owner of the car, a landscape artist, had told him the car was making a funny rumbling sound. He had suggested hopefully that it was probably just a small fault, not likely to cost much, perhaps a tiny hole in the exhaust.

  “If you bring it in for a service regularly, it’ll cost you a lot less,” he had told the artist.

  The night before, he had moved his family to his wife’s half-brother’s home and he would be sleeping there too for another five nights, until the twenty-third, when it should be safe to come home. But there was no avoiding coming to his workshop every day. There was not much money and the oldest of the kids had started high school. Taking a week off work was out of the question.

  Leon had no doubt about what was happening. He did not know who was doing it, but he assumed it must be someone in the government. That some others had died was sure and so, for his family’s sake, he had to take precautions. He had gone to see Abigail Bukula. She was an important person now and she felt indebted to him. He had been relieved that, when he visited her, she had been friendly to him. If it was someone in the government, she would surely be able to stop them. She was a good person. He could see it.

  But, after all, why would they come for him? He had never mistreated any blacks. His parents had been poor. They had made no money from the black man’s labor. They never even had a domestic servant. His mother had done the housework herself, and he and his brother had chores they had to do. His father did the garden, growing vegetables for the family and mowing the lawn with an old-fashioned mower you had to push.

  It was true he had been in the police for years, but he had always tried to do the right thing. After the Maseru raid he had been called in by his commanding officer to a meeting at which Captain van Jaarsveld was present. When he saw van Jaarsveld he thought he was going to be court-martialled for what had happened, but the commanding officer only told him that he was being transferred to the workshops in Pretoria. “Commando work is not for you,” he had said, looking down at his hands while he spoke. Before he was out of the room, Captain van Jaarsveld had said, loud enough for him to hear, “That one hasn’t got it.”

  That was good, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t want whatever it was Captain van Jaarsveld had. He would do his job in the workshops and that was that.

  And he had done just that. He had never fired his gun at anyone, black or white. The closest he had ever come was when he pointed his firearm at Captain van Jaarsveld himself. There was no reason they should come for him. And Abigail Bukula would help.

  The new bearing went in quite easily. He greased it well, knowing that whatever the artist said, he would probably not service the car as often as he should, probably not at all.

  He had just put away the grease gun and was wiping his hands on his overalls when the shadow of a man cut across the light from the door. In a moment the tire lever that he kept in his overalls for emergencies was in his right hand. If they were coming for him, he was not going to make it easy for them.

  The alarm only lasted a moment. Then he saw that it was a white man, not very big or strongly built. Also, he was wearing a police uniform. Leon relaxed and slipped the tire lever back into his overalls.

  * * *

  The note that waited for Abigail on her desk was from the deputy director-general. It said that she should contact him the moment she came in, by the minister’s order.

  Just like him, she thought, to find someone else’s authority to make use of. “He looked very pleased with himself when he came in here,” Johanna had said.
“I think you should go.”

  “How’s the conference getting on?”

  “Making progress, but I can’t sign authorization for the suppliers.”

  “Where are the requisitions? I’ll sign them now.”

  “I’ve got them.” Johanna’s hands had been massaging each other. “I’m doing it all alone, you know.” The reproach in her voice was unmistakable.

  Abigail put a hand on her shoulder. “I know, but what I am doing is so important. If I’m not successful someone may die. I have to rely on you for the conference.”

  “But what if I mess it up?”

  “You won’t.”

  “How do you know? Please tell me how you know.”

  “I know because I know you and you will not let me down.” Johanna did not look convinced. “Now have the requisitions on my desk for signature when I come back. Will you do that?”

  Abigail started to move away. “Aren’t you going to help me at all?” Johanna’s voice had burst out as if, having been forcibly restrained, it was suddenly freed.

  “Not much,” Abigail said.

  “Oh my,” Johanna said. “And my cousins have been phoning all afternoon.”

  “Your cousins?” Abigail reacted absentmindedly.

  “It’s because of my car. It’s the first time that anyone in our family has had a car and my mother has been phoning all seven of her sisters to tell them how hopeless their children are, because none of them has a car like me. Now they’re all cross with me.”

  “Be glad that you have cousins,” Abigail said. “I don’t have any.”

  “But they’re all angry with me.”

  “We all have a cross to bear.”

  Johanna remembered the deputy director-general. “You’d better go to see what the little man wants.”

  Yes, everything has limits, Abigail told herself. In the civil service, any civil service, you could only take ignoring your immediate superior so far. She left her office to face the inevitable.

  The inevitable turned out to be more a nuisance than a disaster. The deputy director-general wanted her to take a visiting Canadian dignitary to lunch. The visitor had arrived early for the conference so that, in her own words, she could get a feel for the country.

  After little more than an hour, Abigail excused herself on the basis of all she still needed to do for the conference. Back in her office the requisitions were on her desk as Johanna had promised. Abigail signed them without reading their contents. Johanna had also left her a note to say that she had gone to the conference venue to check that everything was in order.

  Another attempt to see Mandla Nyati to try to enlist his aid proved fruitless. “He’s still in Cape Town,” his assistant said. “I think there’s something big going on there.”

  Then a beep from her mobile phone told her that a message had come in. It was from Robert. “I won’t be home tonight, sweetheart,” the familiar voice said. “I’ve been called to Cape Town to be briefed on something. Something big, I’m told. I’ll call you from there.”

  She wondered if Robert’s “something big” was the same as Mandla’s something big. Their work had nothing in common, unless perhaps what Mandla was there for was such a news-making event that the editors of newspapers were gathering near the action. And yet Robert did not know what it was all about. Had he known, he would surely have told her.

  17

  One of the reasons that Yudel was sitting opposite Rosa in the Le Rendezvous Restaurant was that, although progress had been made on the stove, it was not yet functional. Rosa had decided that the only way to spur Yudel into decisive action was to insist on eating out until the stove, every part of it, was working again.

  Yudel had forgotten the fuses until late in the afternoon. Their local hardware store had promised to have them by lunch the next day. “It can’t be a very new stove,” the assistant had said. “It’s some time since they last used these. You should think about a new stove.”

  “I will,” Yudel had said.

  “Your wife will love you for it. Women love the latest in stoves.”

  “Just get me the fuses.”

  The chairs and tables of the restaurant were arranged around the trunks of two palm trees in a small courtyard. By ordering the prawn cocktail hors d’oeuvre at 35 rand, veal piccata at 65 rand, tutti-frutti delight at 24 rand and a bottle of Kanonkop dry red wine at 230 rand, Rosa was making a point about hurrying the repair of the stove. Yudel had ordered calamari, a small portion for the just-peckish at 30 rand, and coffee at 15 rand.

  The waitress, a soft-eyed young woman, had told him, “We usually only do the just-peckish portions at lunchtimes, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Yudel was an unusual man in many ways, not least in the sort of female attributes that he found stimulating. For more limited men, their admiration of the female body never gets beyond a discussion of breasts and legs. Others, marginally more perceptive, include such obvious characteristics as hair, lips and eyes. Yudel was a third kind of man who appreciated in a woman such subtle signs of sexuality as softly rounded balls of the feet, elegantly sculpted fingertips, well-upholstered thumbs, the gentle filling of the groove between ankle and Achilles tendon, even the soft pink lines at the back of her knees.

  By far the greatest part of Yudel’s excitement at these attributes had been enjoyed resentfully, at a distance. During the many years he had been married to Rosa she had only once caught him in an act of unfaithfulness that had disturbed the harmony in the Gordon home. He had arranged to meet her at a music shop and, while he waited, had listened to a Toscanini recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Business was quiet and the shop assistant, a girl of eighteen or nineteen, had fetched a second set of earphones and joined him. When Rosa entered the shop they both had their eyes closed, in a state of transport, coupled together via the electronic circuitry of the amplifier and Beethoven’s Ninth. It took her a month to forgive him.

  The waitress’s attraction, for Yudel, rested principally on two features. First, he noticed her downy upper lip. Immediately after that, his eyes came to rest on her concave temples. To Yudel, although he could not recall the association, this was a sign of uninhibited sexual energy. She also had a sun-washed skin color and lean, but nicely padded fingers and thumbs. More than any other attribute, her forearms fascinated him. They were light and well-shaped, puffed out tantalizingly just below the elbow. The sudden, neat swelling of muscle had drawn his attention as she handed Rosa the menu, her arm passing within a few centimeters of his face.

  “The Sephardic congregation is getting a new Torah,” Rosa was saying. Lately, after an absence of many years, she had taken to attending shul again and was trying to interest Yudel. “Rachelle has invited us to the induction ceremony.” Yudel used a small part of his faculties of attention to listen to what his wife was saying. He wondered where it was leading and whether there was any possible way he could reply intelligently, or at all, without upsetting her. “It has been written on scrolled parchment. A special silver and gold case has been made for it. The Rael family sponsored its manufacture.”

  “Do you know what the Torah is?” Yudel asked. He had given up the idea of replying intelligently.

  “Don’t be facetious, Yudel. Of course I know what the Torah is. It’s the law. And it’s high time you started taking an interest in such matters. I know at least as much about the scriptures as you do.”

  “How many books of the prophets are there?”

  “You’re trying to annoy me. You can take that supercilious expression off your face. I won’t be drawn into your silly games. You don’t know how many books of the prophets there are either.”

  It was true. Yudel did not know. He was saved from the need to reply by the return of the waitress. She had Rosa’s 35 rand prawn cocktail and, probably out of pity, a few slices of Melba toast for him. Again that lovely, light forearm—lean, but swelling beautifully, passed just below his nose. He watched its progress as it came past, carefully positioning t
he toast in front of him, lingered unnecessarily for a moment, then withdrew. He looked up into her face and she smiled warmly at him in anticipation of the tip to come. Light reflected on a tiny, barely perceptible, golden line along the down of her upper lip.

  Perhaps it was some memory awakened by the sight of the waitress’s young hips rolling as she skipped between the tables on her way back to the kitchen, or perhaps it was only the warmth of an early summer evening or most probably the two glasses of wine she had already consumed, but Rosa’s mood changed. “I’m glad the stove broke,” she said. “It’s too long since we last did something like this.”

  With the disappearance of the waitress Yudel’s thoughts turned to the sort of things that usually occupied them. He thought about the conversation with van Jaarsveld, if you could call it that. There were things that van Jaarsveld had said that, of those present, only Abigail had understood. This was a problem to Yudel. He wanted to understand. In everything, all his life, he had wanted to understand. This was no different.

  Rosa was still talking. He tried briefly to follow the direction of her conversation. “What a wonderful night. Look at the stars through the palm fronds. I have the feeling, the exhilarating feeling, that nothing bad can happen on a night like this. Just feel this air.”

  Her remark directed his thinking to many nights, much like this one, each on October twenty-second when death had come suddenly via a wire garrotte. He wondered about the killer, and he had no doubt that the killer was just one person, a man, no longer young, and obviously skilled in his frightening art. He also wondered how it was that two people as different as van Jaarsveld and Abigail would know the killer’s identity, and why Abigail would not tell him. His thoughts moved on and he wondered what thoughts, on this lovely night, were occupying the minds of van Jaarsveld and the murderer that Abigail was seeking.

  “Yudel, say something. Don’t just sit there. I try to make this marriage work. I’ve always tried, but you don’t communicate with me. I never know what you’re thinking.”