The October Killings Read online

  Yudel saw them start toward the house. They’ve probably exchanged e-mail addresses to expedite the exchange of dream vacation destinations, he thought.

  12

  For the second time that day, Yudel set out for C-Max. Abigail had left her car in the driveway of his home and was seated in the passenger seat next to him. “Thank you for this,” she said.

  Yudel nodded, but drove in silence until they entered the prison complex. “Are you sure you want to meet him again?” he asked eventually.

  Abigail was sure that she never wanted to see this man again. She was glad that he was being held in the depths of C-Max with no practical hope of escape. Of all human beings on earth, there were just two Abigail prayed that she would never have to face again. Van Jaarsveld was one of them. She had seen him only briefly and knew what he had done. His actions that night were a continuing nightmare that had been dimmed only slightly by the passage of twenty years. Seeing him again was something that she would never have chosen. But now, since Leon Lourens had entered her office two days before, everything was different. “I’m sure,” she said.

  “When we’re in front of him, you’d better let me start,” Yudel said.

  She nodded.

  They had to wait outside the pedestrian gate for almost half an hour before they were let in. A bespectacled man, taller than Yudel and lean, was waiting just inside. He was one of a kind of African man whose age is almost impossible to judge. Even to Abigail he could have been anything between thirty and sixty. The guard who had opened for Yudel and Abigail waved them in his direction. He held out a limp hand to Yudel. “I’m Patrick Lesela,” he said.

  Yudel introduced himself and Abigail. The academic, he thought. “You’re from UPE, I believe?”

  “I’ve spent some time there, fine institution.”

  “And now you’re the psychologist for C-Max?” Yudel asked.

  “And for Modder B, Central and Zonderwater.” His tone of voice revealed no enthusiasm. He had met Yudel’s eyes only momentarily. He averted them as he spoke.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. There aren’t enough of us.”

  They had started toward the inner wall, Abigail walking next to Lesela with Yudel a few steps behind. There was a passivity about Lesela’s manner that Yudel found disturbing. “Are you running any sort of rehabilitation program?” Yudel asked, wondering if Lesela knew what the commissioner was planning.

  “No. I’ve been dealing with prisoner complaints.” His head was tilted forward so that he seemed to be looking at a patch on the concrete path a pace or two in front of his feet. He had made no attempt to look back at Yudel as he answered.

  “Complaints?”

  “Conditions and so on.”

  They had practically no psychologists and one of the few spends his days listening to complaints? Yudel wondered about it. “Are you happy with that?” he asked.

  Abigail glanced back at Yudel. There was a pleading in her eyes that seemed to ask, Did we come here for this?

  “I understand we will soon be implementing the rehabilitation methods of an outside consultant. If I’m not mistaken, you are the consultant. I’m waiting for that.”

  So the commissioner had been talking about his new program before even getting Yudel’s agreement. I suppose he knew his man, Yudel thought. “My methods are partly based on Zimbardo’s prison studies. You’re familiar with them, of course?”

  Lesela answered in the same flat monotone in which enthusiasm would have been an alien intrusion. “I also agree with that study.”

  “Which study?”

  “That Zimbalist study.”

  Zimbalist? Yudel thought. An academic? Which academy? And they retrenched me for you. And now you are going to be my trusty right hand. This time he was silent though. Abigail had again turned to look briefly at him. The reproach in her eyes was unavoidable.

  Before they reached the inner wall they were joined by two armed warders. The group followed the same route Yudel had taken earlier in the day, gate after gate being opened to let them pass, then locked behind them. When they reached the section that had once been death row, Yudel led the way to the catwalk that ran over the top of the cells, with Abigail close behind and Lesela and the warders following. Below them the prisoners, one to a cell, sat on their bunks, paced, read or stood at the cell doors, talking to the man opposite. The walls between them were solid concrete and the ceilings open, but barred.

  The man they had come to see was standing in the center of his cell, his feet spread wide and looking up as if expecting them. The light from the fluorescent fittings reflected off the white walls so that the thickset man below in his green prison uniform seemed to be standing in a sea of brightness. He looked older than his sixty-five years. “Marinus van Jaarsveld?” Yudel asked.

  “Ja,” he said and then softly, more to himself than to them, “fokken Jood.” But he was not looking at Yudel. His eyes were fixed somewhere further back.

  Yudel turned to find that he was almost alone. Considering how well insulated he was from the man in the cell, he felt surprisingly vulnerable. Abigail had stopped as soon as van Jaarsveld had come into view, but she was the focus of his attention. The warders were behind her with Lesela still farther back and barely looking up, as if all of this had nothing to do with him.

  “If you’ve no objection, we’ll be coming down,” Yudel told the prisoner.

  “Come, then,” he said, his eyes still fixed on Abigail. To Yudel it was the look of a predator studying its prey.

  Van Jaarsveld was facing the door when one of the warders opened it. He was above medium height and had once been powerfully built, sloping shoulders ending at long arms with surprisingly delicate hands. A warder entered first, followed by Yudel and Abigail. Lesela and the second warder stayed in the corridor with the door open. Both warders had slipped the revolvers from their holsters.

  No one made any movement toward shaking hands. “Thank you for seeing us,” Yudel said.

  Van Jaarsveld said nothing. He was again staring at Abigail. His head moved slightly from side to side as if he was clearing the way for some distant memory. He took half a step in her direction. The slow beginnings of a smile were forming around his mouth and eyes.

  “Stay where you are,” one of the warders said.

  “We have a matter that we want to discuss. We think it may be of importance to you,” Yudel said.

  By now the smile was fully formed. It was an expression that suggested that he knew and there was no use denying his knowledge. Yudel glanced at Abigail over his right shoulder. She had stopped a pace behind him, but a little to the side to give herself a clear view of van Jaarsveld. The look on her face showed that whatever vulnerability Yudel had felt when they were up on the catwalk was nothing compared to what she felt now.

  “I know you,” the prisoner said to Abigail. His voice had the slightly jeering tone of one who had found them out. “You were in Maseru. You were smaller then, but I remember you. I let you go that time. You were lucky, very lucky that I let you go.”

  “You did nothing to let me live.” To Yudel’s surprise her voice was strong and even. It was also cold and she was moving forward. “Leon Lourens saved me. You wanted to kill me.”

  “You were lucky I was in a good mood.” He was nodding his head for emphasis. “If I’d been a bad mood you and that little wind-arse Lourens would both have been dead. I let you live.”

  “Like hell you did. You saved your own life.”

  “I was good to you. Not everyone was so lucky.”

  Abigail’s shoulders shook with a brief convulsion. It passed, leaving her shaken, but still closer to van Jaarsveld.

  “Stand back, Miss,” the warder’s voice carried the note of command that came with years of authority over other human beings.

  “Yes, stand back,” van Jaarsveld jeered. “What did you think you were going to do anyway?”

  “Stand back, Miss. Right now,” the warder ordered.

  Y
udel had her by the arm and was drawing her back. “Lourens was a comrade of yours in those days. We believe he may be in danger.”

  The disgust in van Jaarsveld’s face was visible. “Leon Lourens was never a comrade of mine. None of those bastards who kissed the ANC arse at that truth and reconciliation thing were comrades of mine. What I stood for then I still stand for now. I was protecting my people. I will not say, the way Lourens and all the rest did, that what I did then was wrong. Events have proven us right. Today the white man has been kicked out everywhere. We have lost our country.”

  “Listen,” Yudel said to van Jaarsveld. “We’ve come here because we are trying to help some of your old comrades, not just Lourens. You may not realize it, but some of the other soldiers that were with you that night when you saw Miss Bukula in Maseru, have been murdered.”

  “I may not realize it.” Now he was crowing with the pleasure that comes with superior knowledge. “My little Jew friend, I know as well as you that there are only two of us still alive. And I am in here.” He turned his attention to Abigail. “In five days your little friend Lourens will be dead.” He stopped and looked from Abigail to Yudel and back to Abigail, a look of genuine surprise appearing on his face. “You didn’t know? You didn’t know that we are all that are left? Do you also not know that they all died on the same day of the year? And that day is only five days away.” He smiled at Abigail. “Lourens is as good as dead,” he said with real satisfaction. “Your own people are doing it. I thought you came here to tell me something. But it looks like you came so that I can tell you something.”

  “Perhaps you do know more than we do,” Yudel said. Abigail was looking at him, wondering where he was trying to lead van Jaarsveld. “Perhaps you do know more. Perhaps you can help us. We’re not just talking about Lourens’s safety. There’s your own safety to consider.”

  “If you want to do something for me, my little friend, let them give me my freedom on the big day. Broadcast the fact in ANC party circles that I am out of prison. Give them my address too. Then let them come for me. Give me the chance to kill a few more of them to add to my score.”

  Abigail had to ask. She hated wanting to know, but she could not stop herself. “How many have you killed?”

  “Not enough.” His smile was again directed at her. “Some of them were very special ones.” Now his eyebrows were raised, as if asking her a question.

  Yudel was aware that there was something here that he did not understand. Abigail recoiled as if van Jaarsveld had struck her. He looked at van Jaarsveld’s self-satisfied face and knew he had to do something to stop his gloating. “What makes you think you’re safe? You exercise with the other prisoners. Even criminals have political feelings.”

  “I hope one of them tries. I can look after myself. It’s a long time since I last killed one of them. In any event, I know who’s doing the killing.” He was again looking at Abigail. “And so do you, meidjie. And he’s not in C-Max. He’s not in any prison, even though he’s killed far more than me.”

  Abigail was staring at him, an antelope trapped in the headlights of a car. It was not that he had used the Afrikaans word for a housemaid when addressing her. Yudel could see that something far deeper than van Jaarsveld’s gratuitous insult had affected her. “He’s not in any prison,” the old extremist had said.

  Out of the corner of her eye Abigail could see Yudel turn to look at her. She had given him only the broadest outline of the story. Without looking at him, she could feel the question: Who is he talking about? “What is this?” Yudel’s question was directed at Abigail.

  “It’s Ficksburg all over again, but on an even bigger scale.”

  Yudel also did not understand the reference to one of the South African towns close to the Lesotho border. “You mean Maseru?” he said.

  “Ficksburg.” It was said heavily, as if from a deep sense of exasperation. “You know fuck-all, my little friend. Ask your black lady. She knows all about Ficksburg. She was there.”

  Abigail could feel Yudel looking at her. “Abigail?” His voice was a whisper.

  “She’s not telling you everything, my Jewish friend. I’m the one who is telling you what you want to know. I can give you the name of every man and what year he died and I can give you the name of the man who killed them.” He laughed his humorless chuckle again. “But then, so can she.”

  13

  Yudel drove quickly through Pretoria’s late-afternoon streets, using side roads to avoid the commuter traffic. He was silent, pointedly avoiding even looking at Abigail. She looked at his face only once, saw the disapproval there and fell silent herself.

  Only when they arrived at his home, where her car was still parked in the driveway, did he speak. “How do you expect me to help you, if you hide what you know from me?”

  Abigail was expecting something of the sort and was waiting for it. “I only asked you to get me in to see van Jaarsveld. You’ve done that and I’m thankful. I’ll be going now.”

  “Where are you going from here?”

  “That’s my business.” She already had a hand on the door handle.

  “What did happen in Maseru? Who were the very special people he says he killed? And what’s Ficksburg got to do with anything? And he thinks you know who is committing these murders. Do you?”

  Abigail looked briefly at Yudel’s angry face. Every impulse within her was urging her to go and go now. The meeting with van Jaarsveld had been almost beyond her ability to endure. Now she wanted only to flee it all. It was past and should have remained buried, but Leon Lourens had brought her back to Maseru and to van Jaarsveld and even Ficksburg. And this unusual man, what was he? Abigail looked again into his eyes and she knew what he was. He was an ally.

  But he had served his purpose. “Thank you, Yudel,” she said. She pushed open the door and was out before he could object further. With the driveway gate closed, she had to wait in her car until he got out and stood looking at her, a strange man in a rumpled suit with a wild fuzz of poorly trimmed hair. For a long moment she thought he was going to come closer to try again to speak to her, but eventually he took a remote-control switch from one of his jacket pockets and, with an almost imperceptible movement, pressed the button that opened the gate.

  * * *

  It took Abigail just a few minutes to reach her office in the late-afternoon traffic. It was half past five, and only the twenty-four-hour security officers on the ground floor were still in the building. The staff had already left in the usual late-afternoon stampede to get out of government offices. Abigail waved her security card at them and entered the elevator.

  * * *

  When she entered her suite of offices, she was met by the one employee of the department who was still in the building. Johanna leaped to her feet as Abigail came into the room. The expression on her face was close to panic. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Those other men, we traced them all. They all died on the same day.”

  “I know,” Abigail said.

  “How?”

  “I spoke to their leader this afternoon.”

  “Van Jaarsveld?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God, Abby. What’s been happening? I’m so afraid.”

  “So am I.”

  “And they all got strangled.”

  “I know. And I’ve got the list of the others who were there.”

  “Shall I try to check them tomorrow?”

  Abigail considered the suggestion for only a moment. “No. I don’t think so. I think we already know the answer.”

  Johanna was looking down. “Your hands are shaking,” she said.

  “No, they’re not.” The response had been automatic, but now she also looked at her hands. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Mine too,” Johanna said.

  “You go home now. Nobody’s trying to kill you. Go home.”

  “And you? Do they want to kill you?”

  “No, of course not. Go home now.”

  “Can I?” />
  “Take a sleeping pill tonight.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes, do it. Go home now.” As Johanna turned to leave, Abigail remembered the other matter. “Have you found Michael Bishop’s contact details?”

  “I found that we never had them. We sent the invitation to Luthuli House. They said they would try to forward it. Maybe he never got it.”

  “Maybe not. All right, you go home.”

  “Right now?”

  “Immediately, and tomorrow get back onto the conference. One of us has to work on it.”

  Seated at her desk, Abigail studied the list of names, and the dates and places each man had died. She ticked off the ones that Johanna had already tracked down. Of those that remained, one stood out among all the others. While the rest had all died inside South African borders, this one had been killed in London. And it had happened while she was there, during her university years. There had been a lot of talk in the exile community about the murder of a South African businessman. She remembered the talk and she remembered her father showing her the place where he died. That he had been part of the raiding party in Maseru was a complete surprise. No one had said anything like that at the time. Perhaps they had never known. Or perhaps only a few had known. She filed away his name in her memory. It was possible that someone from the movement might remember something about the manner of Michael Whitehead’s death.

  Johanna had written a pile of notes to Abigail. It appeared that during the day every new discovery had excited Johanna so much that she had to write it down. A new note was written for every new confirmation that one of the men on the list had died, every discovery of a date of death and every time the means of death was revealed. At the bottom of the pile were a number of death certificates which, at a glance, seemed to confirm everything Johanna said. There was also a note in which Johanna anticipated her instruction, reminding her that the conference was drawing closer and that she, Johanna, would devote the next day to it.

  Abigail stuffed the pile of paper into her briefcase, along with her purse, her mobile phone and other assorted documents. On the way to the lift, the passages were as empty as before. The security guards were still maintaining their bored vigil in the lobby. Down in the parking garage, the bays were deserted except for the fleet of vehicles that belonged to the department. From the road, the traffic was still audible as Pretoria’s workforce struggled to get home for the evening.