The October Killings

by Wessel Ebersohn

  29

  The parking attendant examined the three tickets Robert Mokoapi offered him for only a moment before allowing them into the garage. To Abigail, he gave the impression of having done it many times before. On other days he was known as Inspector Nkomo, but he had mastered ticket-examining after just a few minutes of training.

  She watched Robert as he followed the directions of the parking garage staff, another one of whom was also a policeman. She spoke to Yudel who was seated directly behind her. “How many men does Freek have here tonight?”

  “Thirty,” Yudel said.

  “Do you know where they’ll be positioned?”

  “We’ve already passed two.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She felt Robert lay one of his large hands on hers. “Relax,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”

  “Freek described his planning to me,” Yudel said as Robert parked the car and switched off the engine. “But let’s wait a minute. It’s still forty-five minutes before the advertised time. Let’s wait a few minutes before we go in. Freek will be in the lobby and one of his men will show us to our box. We’ll be safe. There’ll be a guard just inside the door of the box.”

  It was ten minutes before they left the car, walked the length of the parking garage, climbed the steps to street level, crossed Rissik Street where more policemen, dressed in the impresario’s uniform, were watching over the arrivals, and passed into the theater lobby. As Yudel had said, Freek, immaculate in his tuxedo, was shaking hands with two middle-aged women who had just arrived. “Delighted to meet you,” Abigail heard him say. “Remember that there’s a complimentary glass of wine, sponsored by Nederburg, in the upstairs lobby after the first act.”

  Behind Freek, in the entrance to the manager’s office, a worried-looking man in a business suit, the impresario who had organized the performance, watched Freek’s performance. He had tried to object to the presence in his theater of a squad of policemen, few of whom had ever heard of Handel. “Would you prefer a mass murderer and no policemen in your theater?” Freek had asked him. It had been a short discussion.

  “Thank you very much. That’s lovely,” one of the ladies was saying to Freek.

  “Very good of you,” the other added.

  The two ladies moved on and Freek smiled at Abigail. At the same moment a voice spoke at her shoulder. “Welcome to tonight’s performance.” The speaker was a tall man with dark, prematurely graying hair. He, too, was wearing a tuxedo. “Mr. Gordon’s party, I believe. Let me show you to your seats.”

  Abigail followed him up the stairs to the higher level. She glanced back once to see Robert just behind on her left, and Yudel another pace farther back on her right. By the time they reached the box another policeman had joined them. When they entered, he followed and took up a position in the shadows next to the closed door.

  The seat that been chosen for Abigail was in the box’s back row with Yudel and Robert on either side. Her seat was in darkness, hiding her almost completely from the theater below. Down below there were only eight people in the theater, but others were starting to arrive, in twos, threes and fours. A few of the men were in business suits, but most were dressed casually, in turtleneck sweaters or windbreakers, with slacks and shoes that did not lace up. The women too seemed to have come to listen to the music rather than to display themselves. So far, everyone was part of a group. No one had come alone.

  As Freek had promised, the lights over the stalls were brighter than usual. Abigail found that she could see the faces far more clearly than she had expected. A quick glance around the theater seemed to indicate that he could not yet be there. He would surely be alone. Yudel took a pair of opera glasses from one of his jacket pockets and passed them to her. She tried them and in the relatively good light of the theater she studied one face after the other. The glasses drew each face up close to her in distinct focus.

  Twenty years is a long time, she thought. But if I see his face, I will know it. One clear view of him, no matter how much he has changed, and I will know it.

  She felt Robert’s hand on her knee. On the other side Yudel was moving restlessly, also studying the people below. She was suddenly very grateful to the two men, her Robert and this strange man on her other side. They were great guys. Neither of them were violent men. She knew neither would last more than a second or two with Michael Bishop, but here they were, shielding her on both sides. A couple of heroes, she thought, each a tough guy in his own way.

  Yudel leaned across and fiddled with the bodice of her dress. “Take it easy there, fella, I’m watching you,” Robert whispered so softly that Yudel could only just hear it.

  “I’m just … I’m just…” Yudel struggled with the thin wire that was hidden in the front of Abigail’s dress and managed to get her microphone switched on.

  “I’ve got my eye on you, man,” Robert murmured.

  Despite the circumstances, or perhaps because of them, Abigail felt a giggle rising inside her and had to suppress it. “Now, now, boys,” she whispered.

  Yudel too had to stifle a chuckle. “No more talking,” he managed to get out. “We’re live to the communications center now.”

  The stream of people coming up from the parking garage became a steady flow. In the lobby, Freek was still trying to shake every hand and look into every pair of eyes. He had the sure belief that if he looked into the face of this man, he would know him. His life as a policeman had schooled his senses so that now it was almost impossible to lie to him successfully. When the stream of arrivals became too dense and he missed someone, Captain Nkobi stepped forward quickly to welcome the person. He, too, studied the faces of each new arrival.

  An athletic-looking man in his fifties entered alone from the parking area. Freek moved forward with outstretched hand. Before the man reached him a woman of about the same age, surrounded by three teenage girls, had caught up to him. One of the girls had him by an arm and was whispering something that made him laugh.

  “Welcome to this evening’s performance,” Freek said. “Don’t forget the free glass of wine at the end of the first act.”

  “We’ll be there,” the man said.

  There were more young couples than Freek would have expected—some groups of ladies, a television actor that Freek recognized, middle-aged people, also in groups or couples, the city’s mayor and others, drawn together by their love of the music. Another smallish man of about the right age and build entered the lobby. Freek moved forward and offered his hand. The man shook it and Freek looked searchingly into an unlined, blandly innocent face that squinted back at him through thick-lensed glasses.

  The police couples in the audience had been in position half an hour before the start of the performance. They were all doing exactly what Freek had instructed them to do, studying everyone seated in their field of vision and the new arrivals as they came in, and all without turning around or making any noticeable movement.

  Abigail watched as the members of the orchestra entered the pit and started making the discordant sounds that went with tuning their instruments. A little burst of violin music sliced through the other sounds, a foretaste of better things to come. With ten minutes to go, the arrivals had diminished to no more than a trickle. Only the occasional party was coming from the parking garage now.

  So far, just one couple had come in directly off the street. All the other members of the audience had come in from the parking garage.

  A man of perhaps eighty, walking with a cane and leaning on the shoulder of a young woman, perhaps a granddaughter, came in slowly from the parking garage and allowed Freek to shake their hands and study their faces. “Will you be able to find your seats?”

  They would be able to find their seats, thank you, good of you to ask.

  Captain Nkobi and two other men were in the lobby with him. He waved to Nkobi to come closer. He spoke softly. “Thoughts?” he asked.

  “He’s not here,” the captain said. “Definitely not.”
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  “Okay,” Freek said. “To your post and believe that he is here. Above everything, let your men believe that. Remember that he’s no ordinary criminal.”

  Something did not feel right to Freek. There was no logical reason for him to believe it, only the inner uneasiness that he rarely ignored. When he had, it had always been to his cost. He agreed with his captains that Bishop had not come through the lobby, and he knew that there was no other entrance. Or could there be? One of his lieutenants had entered the theater at the back to give himself a view of the entire place. Nkobi was in the lobby. Soon the choir would enter and the men in the choir would have a clear view of the stalls. The boxes had all been filled with private parties, leaving no room for anyone extra. Also, Freek’s men on the upper level had searched the boxes earlier and watched the members of the audience entering them.

  That left the emergency exits. Freek followed the hallway that encircled the theater on the lower level, checking again that the emergency exits were secure. Each one was solidly locked and did not yield a millimeter when he tried to budge it. Then he took the stairs to the upper level and did the same. The doors were as solid as those below.

  Please, Lord, Freek prayed. Let us not have a fire tonight. Bishop or no Bishop, let’s not have a fire. One of the lieutenants, who had been positioned on that side of the theater, had the keys for the emergency exits, but in the chaos of a fire they were unlikely to get more than one open in time.

  In her seat, any small excitement Abigail may have felt, any amusement at Robert’s murmured teasing, had fallen away. Now there was just a chill that went beyond ordinary physical coldness. It did not begin in the extremities, the way the cold of a winter night might grip you. This coldness came from within, a deep numbness somewhere in her chest and slowly spreading through her.

  Through the opera glasses she had studied every face in the theater. And now she was no longer as sure as she had been earlier. Perhaps he could be the thick-set man, sitting alone in the back row. People changed. In twenty years they changed a lot. Then there were two others, a slight man with a woman, but he looked too young. There was also a dark-haired man of average build, with an older man.

  Not impossible, she thought, looking at each of them. The microphone rested where Yudel had switched it on, just inside the neckline of her dress, but she remained silent.

  I will know him, she thought. I will certainly know him when I see him. I am certain. Perhaps I am certain. If only I could get rid of this feeling of cold. She leaned against Robert, but the cold was everywhere inside her. There was no ridding herself of it.

  30

  The windows of the prop storeroom had been painted over many years before, covering the glass with a grimy, cracking coating that had once been cream in color. Despite the paintwork, the windows still let in some light from the street and surrounding buildings.

  A row of figures, manikins dressed in the outfits of eighteenth-century pirates, vestiges of an ancient Peter Pan pantomime, would have been silhouettes against the dull glow of a window to anyone who came in at the door. No one did, so no one saw them or that one of the figures, this one dressed in the nondescript clothing of the early twenty-first century, moved from his position near the window toward the door.

  Michael Bishop had been in the storeroom since early afternoon. He had waited without moving for almost six hours. Now he waited until, faintly in the distance, he heard the applause that marked the entrance first of the choir, then the soloists and, finally, the conductor. Then he waited still longer until he heard the overture begin.

  Stepping out of the storeroom into a narrow passage, he closed the door carefully behind him. For a few seconds he stood quite still in the doorway, making sure that he was alone. The wariness he felt was something that never left him, no matter where he went or what he did. And he knew that at any time the authorities could decide that yesterday’s hero had become today’s problem. To Bishop there was no one who could be trusted and no set of circumstances that was entirely innocent.

  The passage led into the broader one that surrounded the theater and off which a number of doors opened. Again he waited a long moment. A man in a tuxedo came out of the theater and moved away from him toward the lobby. Bishop watched him go, then started in the other direction, this time walking quickly, a patron who was late for the start of the performance.

  The overture had ended and the tenor was singing, his voice light and clear. Bishop passed the doors at the back of the theater, knowing that they were too far from his seat. He stopped briefly at an emergency fire exit, tried the handle and found the door locked. Farther along the hallway, another emergency exit was locked. He wondered vaguely if this meant anything, or if it was simply incompetence.

  He had reached the entrance to the theater that was closest to his seat when he saw the last emergency exit and its door that was standing slightly ajar. He entered the theater opposite the fifteenth row where his seat had been booked and waited briefly in the shadow of a deep doorway. The theater was brighter than he had expected, but it made little difference. The lights would be going up between the acts anyway.

  The seat number on his ticket gave him the last seat in the row. But next to his seat were two empty ones and then a young couple who were clearly entranced by the music. He moved quickly past his own seat and sat down next to the man, reached across and shook his hand. “Apologies for being late,” he whispered.

  Three rows back one of the police couples had seen him enter, a lone man, slight of build, possibly fiftyish, exactly what they had been told to watch for. But then they saw him take the seat next to the couple and shake the hand of the man, clearly a friend. The female officer looked at her partner, but he was shaking his head, a barely perceptible movement. This could not be their man.

  Up in her box, Abigail had also seen him. She had seen the side door of the theater open and close, a barely visible movement against the dim light in the hallway. She had seen the quick, light way that he moved, and the sudden movement of his handshake. She knew that the handshake meant nothing. If you offered to shake the hand of a stranger, that person would usually respond. She knew who it was with as much certainty as she had ever possessed about anything, all her life. “He’s here,” she told Yudel, speaking so softly that he was not sure that she had spoken at all.

  Yudel slid from his seat in a crouch, trying to stay in the shadows. He waited for Abigail and Robert outside the box. “Where’s Freek?” she gasped as she reached him, with Robert close behind.

  “Downstairs,” Yudel said.

  From the top of the stairs, Abigail could see that Captain Nkobi had his firearm drawn and was aiming it at a short, broad-shouldered man. One of the other policemen was cuffing his hands behind his back. She could hear the man’s voice, menacing, but not raised. “Have you people gone completely fucking mad?”

  “This way,” the captain said. He had the man by the arm and was propelling him into the manager’s office.

  “You bastards are going to pay for this.” The voice was raised a little higher now. “Consider this the basis for a front-page news story.”

  As Abigail reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to the manager’s office slammed closed. One of the policemen in a tuxedo stepped in front of it to block the entrance. “You’ve got the wrong man,” Abigail told him. “The man you’re looking for is inside.”

  “The captain’s questioning him,” the sentry said.

  “This is lunacy.” Abigail had grabbed the lapels of the tuxedo and was trying to pull him out of the way. “Where’s Deputy Commissioner Jordaan?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. Let the captain do his work.”

  Yudel joined the discussion. “You’d better stand aside. This lady is the only one who’s ever seen the suspect and she has just identified him inside the theater.” The façade of complete assurance that is the territory of every police officer in charge of a situation began to crack and the first flicker of uncertainty crossed hi
s face. “You’re going to be in big trouble if he gets away,” Yudel added.

  The officer opened the door and turned to enter, but Abigail was already pushing past him. “Who the hell is this now?” The handcuffed man spat out the words in disgust. He was wearing a carefully tailored leather jacket over a silk shirt. It was not the sort of outfit you would have found on a poor man.

  The captain had also turned toward the door. He looked determined. If this was their man, he was not going to release him easily.

  “This isn’t the man.” Abigail tried to keep her voice down. It would be a disaster if the sound of the argument should reach into the theater.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the handcuffed man said. “I don’t know who you are, but it’s pleasing, under these circumstances, to meet someone who is not a complete moron.”

  “I’m sorry,” Abigail said. “This is just a mistake. I apologize.”

  “Then I trust I can be set free. My name is Lee McKenzie. I am the chairman of Gauteng Fiber Boards. We can still ignore this matter if it is resolved immediately.”

  The captain was looking at Abigail. He looked as uncertain as the man who had been guarding the door. “He’s inside the theater. I saw him,” Abigail told him. “This is not the man.”

  * * *

  In the fifteenth row of the theater Michael Bishop was not enjoying the music. The choir was singing vigorously, but he had come to realize that two of its members were silent. They were both making a pretense of singing but, to his eyes, it was a poor pretense. He had noticed the one on his side of the theater first and then started examining the others. After that he studied the other members of the audience. A couple seated four rows in front of him were not touching each other and seemed to be watching the audience to their left and probably in front as well. As far as he could tell, they seemed to have no interest in the music. On the far side of the theater he found another such couple. They were looking across the theater toward the side where he was sitting, but ahead of him. As far as he could see, they never once looked at the stage. Five or six rows ahead of them another couple were behaving in much the same way. Bishop rested back in his seat.