Tandia

by Bryce Courtenay

  'Tom Majombi, how did he die?'

  'Ag man, I haven't looked. Tomorrow the doctor will say maybe.'

  'Maybe is not sufficient, Meneer Klopper. I would like to bring my own doctor, two doctors.'

  Klopper was visibly upset. 'We have a government doctor. We don't like other people sticking their nose in our business, Advocate.'

  'Meneer Klopper I'd appreciate your co-operation in this matter. Tom Majombi was a boxer, I'm a boxer. In the ring a boxer is just a boxer.' Peekay explained.

  'But outside he's just a kaffir again.' Klopper added.

  'Please, I don't want to bring a court order, it just makes more paperwork for you.'

  Klopper scratched his chin. 'I don't know, man, it's highly irregular.'

  'Perhaps they can come in, say, two hours before your pathologist comes, that way there is no confrontation?'

  Klopper thought about this for a while. 'Okay, man, you must be here half past seven tomorrow morning.'

  Peekay had challenged the coroner's finding in court. The government pathologist's report simply showed 'death by causes unknown'. However the evidence by the two independent specialists told a different story. Both indicated that the morgue examination was too superficial and, after the government pathologist had seen Majombi, they had caused the body to be moved to a private hospital where they'd performed an exhaustive autopsy.

  Klopper hadn't mentioned the visit of the two private medical men prior to the government's pathologist's arrival, thinking not to upset him. Now the government found itself totally compromised as the evidence showed that Tom Majombi had died of a massive brain haemorrhage, the result of a middle-ear infection caused by a ruptured eardrum.

  It was three weeks from the time Peekay had seen the boxer in hospital to the discovery of his body, and from the report it was also obvious that he hadn't been treated since his original hospital diagnosis.

  Dr Dinkelman, the forensic surgeon who'd been present at the autopsy, was asked to explain in court at the preliminary hearing how massive brain damage sufficient to cause death, could occur as a result of middle-ear infection. The surgeon showed how repeated punching to the naked ear by a soft boxing glove would compress air inside the canal which, unable to escape outwards, would blow inwards into the eardrum which would eventually rupture. If the rupture wasn't attended to it would set up a middle-ear infection which would eventually lead to brain haemorrhage and death.

  It was this single point on which Peekay's potential right to have his case heard rested.

  'This middle-ear infection, is it painful, Dr Dinkelman?' he asked.

  'Extremely, the man would be in a great deal of pain,' the doctor replied.

  'So much pain that he would be likely to seek medical attention?'

  'Almost undoubtedly.'

  Peekay turned to Magistrate Coetzee. 'May I suggest, your honour, that the reason why Tom Majombi didn't seek medical attention at this stage was that he was incarcerated somewhere?'

  The counsel for the government, a senior police prosecutor named Opperman, objected. 'This is conjecture, your honour; there is no evidence to say the deceased was incarcerated.'

  Peekay sighed. 'Your honour, I am trying to establish the degree of pain suffered by the deceased. I will rephrase the question.' He turned to the doctor in the-witness stand. 'Is it possible, doctor, that Mr Majombi would simply grin and bear his condition? A Zulu stoic, far braver than you or I?'

  Dinkelman frowned. 'No, sir, even if he was able to stand the pain of an untreated middle-ear infection, what would follow the initial infection would be impossible for him to sustain in silence. The man would have been in the most dreadful agony.'

  'Thank you, Or Dinkelman. One or two more questions, please.'

  'Is it one or two?' Opperman asked, laughing. 'In a South African court we like to be precise, Mr Peekay!' He was trying to take the mickey out of Peekay, pointing up his inexperience to the court.

  Peekay brought his finger to his nose, rubbing the tip, but ignored Opperman's remark and continued. 'Apart from intense pain, what would be the outward signs of such a condition?'

  'Night sweats at first, then a high fever and shivering; severe vomiting; finally delirium.'

  'And you said that the infection eventually travels to the brain. How long would this process take?'

  The coroner rubbed his chin. 'If the conditions in which the entire infection took place were unhygienic...'

  'As in a prison cell?' Peekay said.

  'Objection!' Opperman sighed.

  'You were establishing the degree of pain, not the whereabouts of the deceased, Mr Peekay,' Magistrate Coetzee said. He was a big drowsy-looking man, recently transferred from Durban where he'd been Chief Magistrate to take the same position on the Rand. Peekay was quickly learning to respect him. 'Objection sustained,' the big man added in a tired voice.

  'Please continue, doctor.' Peekay asked Dinkelman.

  'Well, yes, where was I now…'

  'You were talking about conditions, unhygienic conditions,' Peekay reminded him.

  'Ja, okay, under unhygienic conditions we could expect the prognosis to go from onset to termination in three weeks to a month.'

  'The deceased appeared at the Baragwanath Outpatients a week after he claimed he'd first felt the pain. He was found dead nearly three weeks later. Does this fit with a typical prognosis, doctor?'

  'If what you tell me is correct, then certainly,' Dinkelman answered.

  Opperman laughed. He was enjoying himself. Not bothering to address himself through Magistrate Coetzee or even to rise, he pointed his pencil at Peekay: 'Mr Peekay, I must object. You are young and this is, I believe, your first case.' His tone was tinged with sarcasm. 'We are not in the habit of planting evidence, even if this clever technique is taught in England where, I believe, you received your legal training. You have alleged that the decreased turned up at the Baragwanath Outpatients. There is no evidence to prove this was ever so!'

  Magistrate Coetzee looked up. 'Mr Peekay, are you trying to establish the time it took for the native boy to die, or is your point that someone deliberately interfered with his attempt to be treated in a hospital and that this interference was the direct cause of his death?'

  'Your honour, my learned colleague may regard this case as one simply involving a dead black man. Or as Mr Klopper put it earlier in this preliminary hearing, "Listen, man, I can't be responsible for every dead kaffir now, can I?'" Peekay mimicked Klopper perfectly. 'Nevertheless, I intend to prove that Mr Majombi did register at the hospital and was diagnosed with an inner-ear complaint and that shortly thereafter he was forcibly removed by the Special Branch on the instructions of a senior police officer who I am prepared to name in this court.'

  'That will hot be necessary, Advocate,' Magistrate Coetzee said.

  'I am asserting that people under the direction of this man caused the deceased to be taken in a police van to a place or places unknown, where he was unable to ask for, or was refused, treatment for his condition, and as a direct consequence died an agonizing and unnecessary death.'

  Peekay paused, and appeared to be rubbing the point of his nose with the tip of his forefinger, a gesture for which he would become famous in the years to come. 'When the Red man touches his nose everybody watch out!' the Africans would say of him later, for they learned that the gesture always signalled an unexpected turn in events.

  Now Peekay began again slowly. 'I admit I may be clumsy and lack the sagacity of my learned colleague, whom I note feels so much at ease in this court room that he considers himself free to confront me directly without addressing himself through the bench. However, must I conclude that where he was trained there is a distinction made between the sanctity of a black life and a white?'

  Magistrate Coetzee sighed. 'We are not here to be lectured on the sanctity of life, Advocate. Will you kind
ly stick to the point.' Though the magistrate's expression didn't change, he liked the young lawyer who refused to be intimidated by Opperman, a notorious bully who took great delight in putting young counsel in their place. 'Would the counsel for the deceased now show the court any evidence he has to prove, or at least to strongly suggest beyond reasonable doubt, that the deceased, Tom Majombi, was a patient in Baragwanath Hospital,' the magistrate instructed.

  Peekay turned to his law clerk, who was acting as his junior. The man handed him an envelope which Magistrate Coetzee instructed the clerk of the court to retrieve. 'Your honour, I submit a letter signed by myself on the day in question, in the presence of a doctor and nurse authorizing any extra medical attention Mr Majombi would require and for which I guaranteed payment.' He turned to his clerk again, who handed him a manila folder. 'The carbon copy, in other words, the hospital copy of the letter you have, is contained in this file which I now also submit to this court as further evidence. You will note that in this letter the patient's name and address appears and specific details are given of his prognosis and of the treatment required.'

  Opperman jumped to his feet. It was obvious Peekay had caught him unawares. 'Counsel requests permission to study this document, your honour,' he said.

  'Advocate Opperman, may I remind you that this is a preliminary hearing. The evidence will be assessed by me alone.' Opperman was suddenly aware that he'd underestimated his young adversary. This was the third and, most likely, the final day of the hearing and Opperman had relaxed, confident that if any evidence existed which would show that the kaffir boxer had been admitted to hospital the young, inexperienced lawyer would have revealed it long before now. On more than one occasion during the hearing he'd been neatly caught in a verbal trap of Peekay's making.

  In his mind he'd made light of this; without any real evidence, it would take more than a clever young tongue to outwit him. Now his expression showed real enmity towards the young advocate, a sure sign to Magistrate Coetzee that the ground had been taken from under his feet.

  'I'd like to validate this document, your honour. As you know, it is relatively easy to reproduce material of this nature. What's in a receipt? A few hastily scribbled words, such a thing is easy to forge. Nobody knows this better than you, your honour!'

  Magistrate Coetzee looked up over the top of his glasses at the government lawyer. 'Advocate Opperman, if I am such a expert on forgery, then I would also be in a position to know whether the document seems genuine. In which case, I take it you will be satisfied with the court's decision on this matter?'

  Opperman sat down heavily. 'Certainly, your honour.' Magistrate Coetzee had mixed feelings about the new evidence. He was now sufficiently convinced by Peekay's conduct during the hearing that some prima-facie evidence existed against the police for conspiracy and that there was also sufficient cause for charges to be laid against Geldenhuis and Klaasens for assault leading to the death of the young black boxer. On the other hand, cases against members of the police force usually ended up in a horrible shit fight and he hated the idea of ruling for the crown that the two senior policemen in the Special Branch of the South African police force had a case to answer.

  Magistrate Coetzee knew nothing of the hate which Geldenhuis felt for Peekay, but he knew how difficult it would be for a young barrister's career if he earned the enmity of the police force at the outset. Peekay would almost certainly lose his case; but win or lose he could expect a rocky road ahead in his career.

  The tired old magistrate hoped that it might be otherwise for the young lawyer; but he told himself that if he knew anything about men, Peekay wasn't going to give up easily. Momentarily he wished that he wasn't so old and cynical and that his gout didn't play up as much as it did. He would have liked to keep the hearing in the Magistrates Courts and preside over it himself. It would have given him the opportunity to match wits against the young advocate who carried a flaming sword and a fine mind into battle. He told himself he would also, in the process, have tried very hard to see that justice was done.

  But Magistrate Coetzee had too much brandy under his belt and too many years on the bench to want to take on a trial which could last who knows how long? His transfer from Durban to Johannesburg was his last before he retired and he wanted his remaining few years to be as peaceful as possible. At his age he knew better than to be caught in the crossfire. He had fifty acres waiting for him in the Eastern Transvaal where his land formed part of a bend in the Crocodile River. There, small buck and guinea fowl and an occasional warthog came to drink at sunset and when you lay at night in bed you could hear the distant crash of the rapids as the water swept across the rocks in a bend in the river.

  Magistrate Coetzee comforted himself that he could look forward with some anticipation to following the ensuing court case. He would take great pleasure in watching the way this upstart from Oxford would conduct it. On the other hand, the young advocate was about to make a lot of trouble for everyone, trouble which could be avoided if Magistrate Coetzee now ruled that insufficient evidence existed for the case to go on trial. The police would be happy and, in the long run, he'd be doing the young rooinek lawyer a real favour. Personally he wasn't under any illusions; a Bantu death, no matter how you looked at it, wasn't equal to a white one. Why then should he care? His duty in this matter was plain: he would serve Pretoria best by declaring that no proper evidence existed to justify a trial.

  At the end of the third day's hearing, at two in the afternoon, immediately after the court had returned from luncheon recess, Magistrate Coetzee announced that, in the opinion of the court, a prima-facie case existed against the two members of the South African police force, Lieutenant J. Geldenhuis and Colonel N. J. P. Klaasens, together with persons unknown, for conspiring to abduct a patient from his hospital bed and, as a result, to cause him such grievous bodily harm as to lead to his death. Peekay had won the right to go to trial.

  For Jannie Geldenhuis the news was devastating. His defeat by Mandoma had left him severely depressed, to the point where he'd considered taking his own life. He knew he would never step into the ring with Peekay and to add to this, he would now have to appear for cross-examination before the man he hated the most in the world. He, Jannie Geldenhuis, a brilliant young lieutenant in the police force would have to stand in the dock, not as an officer of the law, but as someone whose reputation and career was on trial. And what for? For the death of a stinking black kaffir, a meat bag whom they'd tossed into a cell because he'd been stupid enough to talk to Peekay and Mandoma. What the fuck did the black bastard expect? They'd paid him good money to be a sparring partner. In his sick head, Geldenhuis told himself that Tom Majombi had been a plant. How else would Peekay have known about him? He had gone directly to Baragwanath the day Majombi had been admitted. It was too bloody neat. It was a conspiracy, a conspiracy to make sure that he never got a chance to fight Peekay. Majombi was a deliberate plant, he'd been feeding Mandoma information prior to the fight. The reason he'd lost was because Tom Majombi had told Gideon about his weaknesses. The rooinek and the Jew had framed him. Jesus! He and Klaasens had played right into Peekay's hands! By stupidly allowing the Zulu fighter to die in an isolated police cell, there was now no possibility of proving that such a conspiracy had existed. Geldenhuis felt sick at the stupidity he had shown.

  The more Geldenhuis thought about it, the more convinced he became that he was the victim and not Tom Majombi. What did they care about another shit black fighter? It had to be a set-up! Otherwise why. would Peekay agree to pay Majombi's hospital expenses? Since when do white guys go around paying the hospital fees for kaffirs they don't even know?

  Geldenhuis shook his head, disgusted with himself. If only he'd realized sooner, he would have made the black bastard confess. He was suddenly angry again. It was fucking Klaasens! He'd assumed control of the abduction and in the process he'd totally fucked things up.

  Geldenhuis told himself that had
he been in charge he'd have thought it out. He'd have discovered the plot. Klaasens hadn't even talked to Majombi. Christ! That was fundamental police stuff, routine, the sort of information you fall over without even trying when you're conducting an interrogation. He would have kept Majombi alive to confess in court and then later quietly killed the black bastard.

  Geldenhuis winced at the stupidity of the whole thing. The rooinek and the Jew had played him for a sucker. Now Peekay had him crucified. He, Jannie Geldenhuis, was indicted on a fucking murder charge!

  When the young policeman had fitted all the pieces together his physical reaction to his total dismay was a compulsion to throw up. The vomiting and retching continued for an hour until he was so weak he sank to his knees in front of the toilet with his head hanging into the bowl. Every time he threw up he swore to God that, come what may, he would spend the remainder of his life dedicated to the destruction of Peekay. The kaffir didn't matter; he'd get Mandoma anyway; but it was Peekay and the Jew - above all, Peekay. He wouldn't rest until he'd killed him, but before he did that he would humiliate him. He would find a way to discredit him in the eyes of everyone, to totally destroy him.

  Finally someone found Geldenhuis unconscious, with his head resting in the toilet basin, his hair swimming in his own sick.

  Magistrate Coetzee set a date for the trial to come before a judge six months ahead. Peekay immediately filed for a further three-month postponement so that he could defend his welterweight title against Gideon Mandoma. His request was rejected by the chief magistrate and Peekay faced the prospect of going into court three days after the first defence of his title.

  Peekay's title defence proved to be as big an affair as the fight with Jake 'Spoonbill' Jackson, though this time the home crowd was torn between the Tadpole Angel and the charismatic young chief, Gideon Mandoma.