Edge of the Rain

by Beverley Harper

  ‘May I see it, sir?’ The policeman looked politely disinterested.

  ‘Sure.’ Alex moved to the supplies tent. ‘It’s in here.’ But on opening the metal trunk in which he kept his papers, he could find no licence. ‘That’s funny.’ He rummaged some more.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Madison called.

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  ‘Nor will you, sir.’ The policeman had moved up to the tent. ‘We ran a check through the Geological Survey files. No licence was ever issued.’

  ‘I tell you I have one. Ask Tim Boland at De Beers. He arranged it.’

  ‘Mr Boland is no longer with De Beers. He’s been PI’d.’

  ‘PI’d! Why?’ To be declared a Prohibited Immigrant was the ultimate disgrace.

  ‘I really couldn’t say, sir. Now, if you could get your things together, we’ll escort you back to Gaborone.’ He left the tent and went to speak with the other officers.

  Alex was still not worried. ‘I’ll sort it out,’ he told Madison. ‘Leave the camp as it is, I’ll be back in a few days. Paul can help. He knows I have a licence.’

  Paul could not help. ‘There is simply no record of the licence.’

  ‘I had one. You saw it.’

  ‘I know.’ Paul frowned. ‘This doesn’t look good. No-one at De Beers has heard of you and Tim Boland is somewhere in South Africa. He was accused of racist behaviour although before he left he swore to me that he was innocent. We can’t find him, though we won’t stop looking. Your defence depends on him.’ Paul shook his head. ‘The timing couldn’t be worse. He’s the only one who can sort the whole mess out but it would appear he’s so angry about the whole thing and feels De Beers should have backed him more that he’s just dropped out of sight.’

  ‘Who accused him of racism?’

  ‘His gardener. Trouble is, it’s been confirmed.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘A cousin of Kel’s who says he witnessed Tim kicking his gardener and calling him “a dirty kaffir”. And that’s only part of it. Kel has an uncle in Geological Surveys. My guess is he’s removed all trace of your licence. You’ve got a fight on your hands, Alex, and your hands are tied. A major kimberlite pipe has been found in the area near your camp, just a couple of miles away. Tim Boland put men south of Jwaneng because he believed in you. The entire area is officially off limits as of last week. Without Tim’s word, De Beers don’t believe your story. Kel has really got you this time.’

  The court case was considerably more than just a minor infringement offence. The government of Botswana was prosecuting Alex for being in a restricted area and with attempted theft of government property. Kel’s influential family had whispered words into the right ears, words fed to them by Kel. When Alex Theron was sentenced to five years imprisonment with hard labour, the nation and the government believed that justice had been done.

  EIGHTEEN

  Alex knew it would be hard. The prison in Gaborone was old and basic. Felons were punished. They were not, as they might have been in a more developed country, rehabilitated. Hard labour meant just that, bloody hard, back-breaking work. Food was African style. Stiff mealie meal porridge, covered by a thin gruel over which it seemed the cook had perhaps waved a chicken before ladling it onto the porridge. Spinach or cabbage were the only vegetables. He rarely ate red meat. He never had fruit.

  He shared a cell with a man called Pule, a harmless enough individual who was severely intellectually impaired and who was serving three years for stealing chickens from his next door neighbour who had happened to be a policeman. He was company of sorts.

  The accommodation was basic: two rows of cement block cells, facing each other across a narrow passageway, with small high windows and grille doors. Each cell was open to the elements. True, each had a roof, but the passageway did not and the windows had no glass. Dust, rain and wind blew through them as well as the doors.

  The prison authorities, used to years of white dominance, suddenly had a white man at their disposal to do with as they wished. The temptation to get even with the arrogant ‘whitie’ proved too much. Alex was given the toughest, dirtiest, most demeaning jobs of all. He was also denied all visitors. Letters made it as far as the general office wastepaper basket where they lay in tattered fragments. So Alex never knew that Madison had tried to visit him, or that she had written to him on countless occasions. Paul, too, had tried to see him but, like Madison, had been unsuccessful.

  The daily routine never varied. The guard banged his stick loudly on the cell door at five each morning. Alex had ten minutes to wash and use the bucket toilet. Dressed in prison clothes he was ushered to an assembly courtyard and fed tin mugs of sweet tea with chunks of dry bread. Then, once the other prisoners were marched to spend their day working in the quarry, in road gangs or in the acres of vegetable gardens, Alex had to clean cells, sluice out the shower blocks and empty the bucket toilets and clean them before reporting to one of the guards that he was ready to go to work. Mostly he worked in the vegetable gardens. Half the population of Gaborone bought their fresh vegetables from this lucrative enterprise. But while the other prisoners weeded and planted and picked, Alex was issued with a shovel, crow bar and mattock and sent to work at creating new beds.

  Used to digging and swinging heavy picks, he nonetheless found the hard infertile ground took every ounce of strength. Rest breaks were not allowed. He toiled non-stop until midday.

  Lunch was more tea and bread. Calls of nature had to be regimented to food breaks. More than once a day some unfortunate was caught short. If Gaborone residents ever wondered why the prison vegetables tasted richer than most, never in their wildest dreams would they suspect the real reason.

  Work continued until four in the afternoon. By then Alex was ready to drop. Dehydrated, head aching from the sun, back breaking, hands blistered, he stumbled out of the fields half mindless with pain. Then the complaints started. A toilet bucket hadn’t been properly cleaned, the showers needed more soap, a cell needed re-sweeping. While the other inmates rested and thought up more jobs for the white man, Alex—his body screaming for relief, with taunts and complaints ringing in his ears—somehow found reserves of strength to carry on. Objections on his part, he quickly discovered, brought more work. He had to grin and bear it.

  Supper was the main meal. After food all prisoners were locked in their cells. There were no books, no games or cards to fill the evenings. Tired as he was, Alex’s mind needed stimulation and this was denied. The world seemed to have forgotten him. No-one bothered to tell him he was not allowed visitors, so he began to think no-one cared. Alex wrote to Pa but his letters were torn up and tossed into the wastepaper bin by the warden. When he received no replies he assumed Pa was too upset or too disappointed in him to bother. Alex, despairing and exhausted, truly believed he was on his own.

  Paul, Madison, Marv, Pru and Pa all tried to see him and were turned away. Marv had driven up to Shakawe to collect Pa and bring him to Gaborone. The warden, in the presence of Pa’s sadness, told them, ‘It is not my decision. Until I am ordered otherwise, your son cannot have visitors. I’m sorry.’

  Madison met Paul in the entrance of the prison’s administration office. Alex had been inside for nearly two months and still no visitors were permitted. She came storming out of the warden’s office shouting, ‘You’re breaking the law yourself. I intend to report this.’

  Paul, who was waiting to see the warden, grabbed her arm and dragged her away. ‘You’re only making it worse.’ Her loss of temper impressed him but he knew it would do no good.

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I’ve tried to see the Chief Justice but he’s too busy to see me. My mother’s lawyer tells me an appeal will be useless. God! I’ve even tried to see President Khama but I didn’t get to first base. We’ve got to help him. He must be going mad in there. He should at least be allowed visitors.’

  ‘I’ve got a private detective trying to find Tim Boland in South Africa. The man has disappeared. Not e
ven a whiff of him so far.’

  They walked to their cars together but, after twenty minutes, they were still talking in circles.

  A couple of weeks later he telephoned her. ‘I have a plan.’

  When she heard what it was she cried, ‘No, never, no way.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’

  ‘Break him out.’

  ‘And then what? Where would he go? Botswana is his life.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she moaned.

  ‘You can,’ he said, remorseless. ‘And you will.’

  Loathing was in her voice. ‘I feel sick already.’

  But in the end, as he knew she would, Madison agreed.

  ‘It’ll be okay. I’ll be in the next room.’

  ‘Can’t we break into his house or something? Look for the licence?’

  They were in Paul’s lounge where he was outlining his plans. Madison, he could see, might refuse to cooperate at any moment. ‘He’s not likely to keep it there. Besides, we’re trying to prove Alex is innocent. We can’t do that by breaking the law ourselves.’

  ‘You have no idea what you’re asking me to do. I can’t stand the man. The mere thought of just talking to him makes me ill. But this . . .’ she spread her hands. ‘I can’t do it, Paul.’

  He reached over and took her hands in his. ‘Madison,’ he said gently. ‘We already know Kel will go out of his way to disrupt, spoil or destroy anything he thinks Alex cares about. You spent three weeks in the desert with Alex. Don’t kid yourself that Kel doesn’t know about it. He’ll assume you’re Alex’s girlfriend. If he thinks there’s the slightest chance of getting you into bed he’ll jump at it. If you can get him to boast about stealing the licence we’ve got him. It’s worth a try. I’ll be here all the time taping you. If it gets rough I’ll step in, I promise.’

  ‘We don’t know for sure he stole the licence.’

  ‘Who else would? His uncle works for Geological Surveys so he would have known where Alex was looking. Kel could easily have taken it when you and Alex were off digging somewhere. And there’s something else: it’s a little odd, don’t you think, that the duplicate has also gone missing from the same department?’

  ‘Paul, Kel scares me.’

  Paul looked grim. ‘I know,’ he said tightly. ‘He scares me too. He actually went into the Kalahari to find those wild horses so he could shoot them. Not because it was Nightmare who caused him to fall off his horse and land on his face, that would be too simple. No, he shot them because he knew how much they meant to Alex. Apparently he was bragging about it. He’s certainly unbalanced but don’t worry—I’ll be right in the next room, I won’t let him near you. Please, Madison, it’s all we can do.’

  She took a shuddering breath. ‘When?’

  ‘Two weeks from now. The party at the tennis club. I know he’s going.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Paul, Christ, I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  He patted her hands and sat back. ‘I’d do it myself but he doesn’t find me attractive.’ He grinned at her.

  There was work to do beforehand. A rumour was deliberately leaked by Paul to someone he knew would repeat it to Kel: Madison Carter had let slip she found Kel attractive.

  It was cocktail party season. Everyone in town was making the same nightly rounds. Several times during the next week Madison and Kel were at the same party. Safely in the company of Paul, she let her eyes rest on Kel until he looked up, then she would look quickly away.

  ‘Step it up a bit,’ Paul whispered.

  So, the next time Kel glanced her way she smiled at him before turning away.

  ‘Great!’ Paul said out of the side of his mouth. ‘As a sex siren you’d make a fabulous grandmother.’ Then his eyes went wide.

  She did something with her body. Nothing much. She shifted her weight to one leg, one hip went out, her back arched and her backside jutted provocatively. She had her back to Kel but the invitation was as clear as if she’d shouted it to him. ‘Nice one, ducky,’ Paul said in admiration.

  ‘Call me ducky again and it’s off,’ she muttered, her head coquettishly to one side.

  ‘Cool it. He’s about to blow a fuse.’

  She threw her head back and laughed, glanced coyly at Kel over her shoulder and said crisply to Paul, ‘Okay, buster, show’s over. Let’s leave.’

  On the way back to the house she shared with her mother Paul asked, ‘Where do you women learn that stuff?’

  ‘It’s in our genes.’

  ‘It’s dynamite.’

  ‘I know,’ she said cheekily. ‘It’s meant to be.’

  It was Wednesday night, three nights before Madison had to try and trick Kel into boasting about his involvement in sending Alex to prison. For Alex, the day had ended like all the others. Shut in his cell, and groaning with weariness, he stretched out on the mattress on the floor.

  Pule sat on his own mattress talking to himself. The guard was moving along the row locking doors. Alex closed his eyes. Every night was the same. The stench in the cell could not be taken away by the strongest disinfectant. The mattress crawled with fleas. God, will this ever end?

  Alex and Pule’s cell was the third last in the row. The guard reached their door but someone called to him from across the passage and he went over to speak to them. Then he moved to the cell next to Alex and locked it.

  He’s forgotten to lock us in. He listened carefully. The guard moved further away. Excitement mounted in Alex. He opened his eyes and looked at Pule but the man was oblivious of the fact that their door had not been locked.

  Alex thought rapidly. He knew the guard would not be back until morning. I’ve got to get out of here. It would be risky but not impossible. The prison was not a high security one. Most of the inmates were happy to be there. They got three meals a day and a roof over their head. The warden lived inside the prison grounds, his house and garden protected by a high netting fence and several large dogs. Guards patrolled the perimeter but Alex had heard them complain that there were not enough of them.

  The front of the prison was out of the question. The entire fence and main gates were floodlit. The southern boundary was also too dangerous. The warden’s dogs might raise the alarm. The northern perimeter bordered with a suburb of Gaborone. That left the eastern boundary. It was further away than the others but it provided more cover should something go wrong. Between there and the cell block was the vegetable garden and quarry.

  The lights went out at 8.30pm. The guards changed shift at 11.00pm. They usually spent ten minutes or so chatting before the new shift spread out to patrol the fences. That was when he would try it. He’d never get a better opportunity.

  Madison grinned at her reflection in the mirror, wondering if it would be appropriate to smear something black on her face. Wearing a black tracksuit, dark blue sneakers and a beret, she thought she looked like a cat burglar. She felt quite calm; the thought of breaking into Kel’s house bothered her nowhere near as much as the thought of his hands on her.

  Two things had combined yesterday to give her the courage she needed. A messenger from the Russian Embassy had hand delivered an invitation to her for a reception the following evening. She knew Kel would have been invited. The invitation said between 6.00pm and 10.00pm but, if past functions at the Russians’ were anything to go by, the evening would go on much longer than 10.00.

  The other catalyst was a girl at work. She had heard the rumour Paul started, that Madison was interested in Kel, and tried to warn her about him. ‘Keep away from him. He’s not normal.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ She played it cool. She didn’t know the girl very well and she might have been a friend of Kel’s.

  ‘He likes to do things that are . . . well . . . not usual. He’s got a cruel streak. Please, for your own sake, keep away.’

  Madison had shrugged. ‘I’m a big girl.’

  But the comments worried her. Her own instincts told her that Kel was strange. Not just unusual in the sense that he was an individual�
�some in-built sense warned her he was dangerous. This was why she was so opposed to Paul’s plan. If something went wrong and she was left alone with him, Madison felt strongly Kel might harm her in some way.

  The idea of breaking into his house to look for the licence had always been her first preference. Being the person he was, she felt sure he would keep it there to gloat over. But she knew Paul would try to stop her. So she had not told him. As she left the house, however, she told her mother and said, ‘If I’m not back by eleven go to Paul for help.’

  Her mother tried to talk her out of it. ‘What if you’re caught? You’ll be breaking the law.’

  ‘My mind’s made up, Mummy. Kel will be at the Russians’. It’s my only chance. On Saturday . . .’ She could not bring herself to dwell on Saturday. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘What if he catches you there? I don’t like this, Madison, it’s a crazy idea. Please, darling, think of something else.’

  ‘I’ve tried. I can’t think of anything. I must do this Mummy, it’s Alex’s only chance.’

  Pamela Carter rose. ‘Then I’m coming with you. I can stand guard.’

  Madison shook her head. ‘I need you here. If something goes wrong you’re the only one who knows where I am.’

  ‘Then get Paul to go with you.’ Pamela was getting desperate. Her daughter was one of the most stubborn people she knew and, once her mind was made up, nothing usually changed it.

  Madison shook her head again. ‘He won’t approve. He’s set on his own idea.’

  Pamela Carter saw the determination on her daughter’s face. ‘Eleven,’ she said, crisp in disapproval. ‘Not a second later.’

  Madison drove to Kel’s house, having first checked that his car was among those parked outside the Russian Embassy. He lived in a quiet, leafy cul de sac. She parked her car several houses away and walked, the heavy bulk of her torch comforting. A dog barked and she jumped. ‘Steady,’ she told herself. ‘Remember the alternative.’

  A security light over the front door flooded the garden but, slipping through the shadow of trees, she made it around to the back. The servants’ quarters were in darkness. Good. They were rather close to the house. The back door was locked. Damn! She’d hoped for a door with glass panels but Kel’s back door was solid wood. That left one of the windows.