‘Surely they don’t all want to fight? There’s always one child different from the rest.’
He sprang to his feet like a giant cat and stared into the rising sun. His face reflected only bitterness.
‘Yes, I was given five sons, but they were taken away from me. I was forced to leave South Africa and I will be imprisoned if I return there; I tried to start a union at the mine - a dreadful crime! I am the one who should be bitter, but my sons took my bitterness for their own. It is a long time since my wife died, but the memory of her death is still fresh to me, as it is to them.’
‘How did she die?’ Sam asked softly, almost afraid of the answer he might give.
‘She was murdered. She went to Maputo for the cause and worked with the white woman called Ruth First - I think you may have heard of her. Ruth had to go to Lesotho with my wife for a secret meeting, but Ruth became sick so my wife went alone. Neither of them knew it was a trap. She was killed by a bomb that went off in her hotel in Maseru.’
‘Oh, Tongogara - ’
‘A right-wing Lesotho political group was blamed for the explosion, but I did not believe this. For me it was a terrible blow, but for my sons it was the last straw. I had hoped that some of them might make it to university, but now they only live to fight. The South Africans must learn, violence begets violence. I refuse to degenerate to the level of the men who killed my wife.
‘Perhaps I am stupid, but I do not want to see our new state of Zimbabwe begun in a bloody purge. Our children need education so that they can rule with intelligence and understanding, so that our civilisation can stand proud amongst the others of the world. I am over forty, and my chief skill is the effectiveness with which I command my men and wield my gun. That is no way to live.’ Sam stared up at him, almost in tears.
‘I will tell the world your story, Tongogara. I will not try to escape from here, though I believe General Vorotnikov will try to kill you for rescuing me.’
‘Generals are good politicians. Vorotnikov is no different. He will see reason.’
The sun was now well above the horizon and already Sam could feel the intense heat of the coming day. Tongogara walked over to the sentry and talked to him for a few minutes, then he turned away towards the main camp.
Sam went back to her tent. In the distance the cliffs glistened. She understood Tongogara’s yearning. How terrible it must be to live, and yet not to have a country one could call one’s own.
Deon
It had been a typical Saturday night. The usual procession of people who had had too much to drink had been brought in and put to sleep in the cells.
Four reports of break-ins had been passed on to the Flying Squad - one of the calls had turned out to be a hoax and another had resulted in an arrest. Then there had been a shoot-out; no one had been hurt but the robbers had got away. Deon remembered having read somewhere that white South Africans were the most heavily armed people in the world. Well, he could believe it.
It was two o’clock in the morning, and he was sitting with Captain Pinkus Smit of the Flying Squad over a cup of putrid canteen coffee. They were just getting down to a good heart-to- heart on who would win the next Curry Cup rugby final, when one of his men came in with a report of a break-in taking place at an expensive home on Westcliff Ridge. It was all the excuse he and Smit needed. They’d both had enough of sitting around John Vorster Square - the Johannesburg police headquarters - at that time of the morning.
Moments later they were flying down the motorway, sirens screaming. A second car followed. If there were still robbers in the house, they weren’t going to take any chances.
Captain Smit was a fast driver and the car was one of the new BMWs they’d just bought for the force. They were outside the house in five minutes. The story was typical, the owners had gone to Cape Town for the weekend, a neighbour had heard glass breaking . . . Deon had told his men to switch off the sirens as they came into Westcliff. If the robbers were still in the house, they wouldn’t know that the Flying Squad was now outside.
While Deon took a statement from the neighbour, carefully listing all the details, Captain Smit and a junior officer began investigating.
Captain Smit had located the window where the burglars had entered the house: typical point of entry, the kitchen side- window. A professional job - they’d bypassed the burglar alarm system easily. Sergeant Venter went in first and Captain Smit followed. Before Smit could say anything, Venter was through the hall and heading up the stairs.
Smit saw the muzzle flashes as Sergeant Venter was thrown down the stairs. He landed on a glass table at the bottom which exploded into pieces. Immediately Smit swung the riot-pump shotgun up at the stairwell and ripped off two shots. His ears sang with the noise of the explosion, but he still heard the sound of breaking glass at the top of the stairwell.
He ran up the steps and jumped over the blood-soaked body of the man he must have hit. He looked out of the broken window and saw a figure running across the back garden towards the bushes. Dropping to a crouch, he aimed carefully along the barrel of the shotgun and squeezed the trigger.
There was a muffled scream and the man toppled over. Another man came into view, and Smit was about to fire again when he realised it was Major Deon de Wet. Smit shivered involuntarily and relaxed his finger on the trigger. God, that was close!
Lights came on in the surrounding houses. Smit wasn’t surprised, the riot-pump made one hell of a racket. He searched for the light switch and found it, bathing the hall in light. He’d hit the man on the stairs in the face, killing him instantly.
Sergeant Venter was lying still in a mass of glass shards at the bottom of the stairs. Smit walked down and felt Venter’s pulse. Two shots in the stomach, the poor kid hadn’t had a chance. He walked over and opened the front door to find the drive was filled with people.
Before he could stop her, a woman ran into the hall, and the next minute she was screaming her head off. Then Major de Wet appeared in the doorway and carried her out. Captain Smit watched as he addressed the gathering of worried neighbours.
‘I’m Major de Wet from the Murder and Robbery Squad. Everything is under control now, so I am asking you to please return to your homes. People have been killed here, it isn’t very pleasant. If you saw anything earlier that could help us with our enquiries and would like to make a statement, please contact me at John Vorster Square in the morning.’
Captain Smit admired the command with which Major de Wet always handled people. De Wet was a big man - he guessed he must weigh at least two hundred pounds. He admired De Wet’s dedication, his obvious belief that he had a mission to enforce the law. In the faint light cast by the lamps in the drive, he studied the face of his superior officer - a dark-skinned face, topped by a mop of brown hair. Individually the features might have been described as heavy: the hard jaw-line with the long, full lips above it; the prominent nose, the dark, hypnotic eyes recessed under huge bushy eyebrows, and the high, heavily lined forehead. On some occasions Captain Smit felt that de Wet looked more like a farmer than a police major. He certainly looked all his thirty-nine years.
Captain Smit watched the last of the people disappear into the darkness. Major de Wet turned to him.
‘Good shot, Captain Smit. Perhaps too good. The man in the back garden won’t be telling us anything.’
‘Unfortunately, Major de Wet, neither will the other man who shot at me in the house.’
‘And Sergeant Venter?’ Captain Smit nodded his head. ‘Damn.’
‘Major, you know what it’s like. He went inside ahead of me and charged up the stairs like an Afrikaner bull.’
‘You tell that to his parents, Captain.’
The ambulance arrived five minutes later to take the bodies away. Why an ambulance, which was, after all, for the living? Deon could never understand that. He left the reliable Captain Smit to help the ambulance men, and began his search of the house.
It was a big place, immaculately furnished and with no bri
c-a-brac lying around. He felt curiously uncomfortable in it, an unusual feeling which he stored in his mind for future reference. Often such feelings came to have a direct bearing on a case.
The first thing that struck him as odd was the absence of servants. Usually in Johannesburg, a house of this size would have at least three servants resident on the property. He opened the kitchen door and walked over to the servants’ quarters.
The rooms were locked but it was obvious that the servants must have been on the property the previous day. There were clothes on the washing-line, and in the rubbish bins were remnants of recently eaten food. It would be natural for one or two of the servants to be out on a Saturday night, but not for all of them to have gone away.
The owner was probably a wealthy, single man. The furnishings were dark - a lot of black leather and stainless steel. There were a few vases, no flowers but plenty of indoor plants. Definitely the taste of a man, not a woman.
The paintings on the walls were originals. Major de Wet did not know much about art but he had an instinctive eye for the value of things. Just one of these paintings would certainly fetch more than the modest house in Parktown he had worked hard for ten years to put down the deposit on. The fact did not make him jealous, it rather appealed to his own Calvinistic view of the role of the policeman in society.
One of the black lacquer cabinets bordering the sitting room was hanging open. Inside was a case containing a magnificent Georgian silver tea service. He’d dealt with a case of forgery recently and had become something of an expert on antique silver. He took the service in its case out into the light and examined a few of the pieces carefully. All the hallmarks matched, all the pieces were of the same set, it was perfect. He took a long, deep breath. He knew what this collection might fetch at an auction at Christie’s in London. Had this been an attempt at a theft to gain insurance money? There were no burglar bars on the windows of this room, and only an idiot would leave articles of such value unprotected.
Deon’s eyes combed the walls of the room, finally spotting an electronic movement-detector mounted close to the ceiling. It had been disarmed. So, whoever they were, they were professionals.
He moved carefully up the blood-soaked staircase, past the chalk-marked areas that marked where the bodies had fallen. The smell of death was strong. He wondered cynically if the owner would demand compensation from the South African Police for the glass table Sergeant Venter had broken.
He walked towards the open door at the end of the spacious passageway, his feet sinking into the deep-cut pile. This must be the master bedroom. It was stark, with a square white bed in the centre. All along one wall were fitted cupboards, along the opposite wall a full-length mirror. He stared at his reflection, then turned away; he did not particularly like the look of the cold, hard man in the mirror.
A third wall was all window, from ceiling to floor. He had never seen anything like it - it must have cost a small fortune to install. The en suite bathroom contained its own jacuzzi and sauna. Like the rest of the house, it was fitted with every possible luxury.
He came out of the bathroom and looked again in the mirror. Something about it was odd. It was as if the mirror had come apart from the wall at one side. He walked up close to it, touched it lightly - and the mirror shifted effortlessly to one side, into a recess in the far wall. He wondered if the runners were mercury- filled, it shifted so silently.
Behind the mirror was a narrow passage that ended in a sophisticated vault door. Deon thought the door was locked, but when he tried the handle it swung open easily. Beyond was a small square room. It was lined with shelves filled with files, safety-deposit boxes, computer discs and reels of film.
De Wet slipped on the thin cotton gloves he always carried. He would be examining articles that might need to be fingerprinted later. He prised open one of the cylindrical cases that held a 16mm film spool, unwound the shiny black film inside and held it up to the light.
Porn, he thought to himself. A skeleton in a rich man’s closet. He closed the metal canister and slipped the reel of film into his pocket. He pulled down one of the files and found himself looking at what resembled a series of personal dossiers. He noted that the numbers on the files corresponded to numbers on the film canisters. He put the file back, and took out the one with the same number as the film spool he had just confiscated.
Photographs. Pages of descriptions. Perhaps this was the way top businessmen analysed their staff? But then there were pictures of a woman. Could it be the woman he had just looked at on the film?
There was a noise on the stairs. Quickly Deon tore from the file the section of photographs that seemed to match the film, and stuffed it inside his jacket. Then he walked out, closed the door and swung the mirror back, hiding the safe.
He walked back into the bedroom just as someone entered through the door. He found himself face to face with General Muller.
‘Major de Wet, what the hell’s going on!’
It sounded more like a threat than a question. And those eyes, always those bloody eyes. They gave him the creeps, never staying in one place, always shifting, pale yellow orbs recessed in Muller’s toad-like visage. The man was short and round, his uniform bulging at the seams. There was a pistol in one fat hand and De Wet wondered for a few seconds if General Muller would shoot him. This was the man who could make or break his career in the police force.
‘Major de Wet, what are you doing in this room?’
De Wet was usually scrupulously honest, but this time, for some reason, he decided to lie.
‘Looking for clues. We obviously surprised them, sir.’
‘Major de Wet, this is not the home of some middle-class businessman. You have no right to be in this room. You are trespassing.’
‘Three men dead, one of them a policeman. I suppose that’s incidental.’
He waited for General Muller to explode at his impertinence, but the General’s mind was clearly occupied with another matter.
‘You’ve made your point, de Wet,’ he said mildly, and walked past him towards the mirror.
De Wet felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. He was scared and he wasn’t shy of admitting it. It was as if Muller knew there was a safe behind the mirror . . .
‘Well, de Wet, I’m sure you’re not going to find much up here. I suggest you concentrate your efforts on the staircase. Obviously a couple of professional house-breakers - some of the silver service is missing from downstairs.’
‘But General, the silver . . .’ De Wet had said it before he could stop himself.
‘What, Major? Didn’t you notice the empty case?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I’m surprised at you. A simple case of house-breaking and you haven’t checked what’s missing? Get out of this room, man. You may have a good record, but sloppy work is unforgivable.’
‘There may be more to this case, General Muller.’
‘That’s quite enough, de Wet. You should never have left the station, you’re supposed to be in command. Get back to your office. I want a full report on my desk by six o’clock this morning. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The light of dawn was breaking as Major Deon de Wet drove past the buildings of the University of the Witwatersrand. It was the best university in Johannesburg, if not in the country, with a reputation for liberal thinking. He was slightly in awe of it, of what it represented, and yet he wondered now, as he drove past, whether its liberal academics really had any idea what it was like to be a policeman in South Africa today - or whether they even cared.
He took the Braamfontein off-ramp and swung down into Smit Street, travelling parallel to the Braamfontein Cemetery. As he entered the suburb of Pageview he turned left down Mint Road. After driving for another kilometre he pulled over and switched the engine off. He went round to the boot, pulled off his blue uniform jacket and donned a dark green windcheater that he kept in a holdall with some other clothes. There was no one about.
He walked towards the west, without any fixed destination in mind. Gradually, the thoughts that had filled his head drained away into his subconscious and he began to relax a little. The argument with Muller had set him on edge.
The streets became familiar, evoking memories from his youth, many of them unhappy. There wasn’t much to be happy about in Fordsburg in those days, even less now. Almost without realising it, he arrived at the pokey little house.
It was a terrible mess, and the front yard was filled with rubbish
• cans and old motor-car parts. He walked quickly past, afraid that, even at this early hour, someone might see him and recognise him. Then he looked back at it, and remembered . . .
As the first born, from the moment he was able to walk Deon had been given every attention. His father, Carel de Wet, was a brilliant attorney, a man who lived life to the full, enjoying alcohol, women - even other men’s wives - a giant of a man with saturnine features and eyes that seemed to see right into your soul. Sometimes Deon wished he could have loved his father when he had been alive instead of when he was dead.
They hadn’t lived in the house in Fordsburg then, they’d lived in Kensington, the best suburb of Johannesburg. But he had been too young to remember it well. There were parties that were the talk of Johannesburg’s high society. In those days, his mother had told him, Carel de Wet could do no wrong. His law company was growing at an incredible pace attracting clients from the major mining houses. His courtroom successes were legendary. He could always find a flaw in his opponent’s case and then exploit that weakness to the full. He had the kind of iron constitution that enabled him to wine and dine till the early hours of the morning and still appear in court next day as fresh as a daisy. Nothing, it seemed, could stop his meteoric rise.
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