Game of Stones

by David Maughan Brown

‘The man I killed was a notorious sadist,’ Cameron said. ‘He had tortured and “disappeared” any number of black opponents of apartheid. He was proposing to flog my wife at gunpoint. There was no way I could possibly allow that to happen.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Hudson said. ‘OK. It wasn’t an overreaction.’

  ‘Why are you fraternizing with a remand prisoner charged with murder?’ Cameron asked. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, I know all about the good-cop bad-cop routine.’

  ‘You really are paranoid,’ Hudson replied. ‘Don’t you remember that I approached you, and told you about what happened at Hillsborough, before you were arrested for murder?’

  ‘Yes – that’s true,’ Cameron said. ‘But why bother with me now? Why risk antagonizing your colleagues even more than you have done already?’

  ‘Because, surprising as it may seem in a policeman, I don’t like injustice,’ Hudson said. ‘The whole of my life since that day has been shaped by what happened at Hillsborough. I can’t get it out of my head. But, if I can’t, what about the families and friends of the 96? The truth is out there for anyone to read, and has been for years – the Taylor report, Phil Scraton’s book, and so on – but the establishment has closed ranks around the lies. For nearly twenty years now those families have had to live with the pain of knowing that as far as the papers, the police and the politicians are concerned, their loved ones were a bunch of drunken football hooligans who were entirely responsible for their own deaths. And that’s simply not true. I’m OK, I’m tough enough – its their pain I find it difficult to live with.’

  ‘But what does all this have to do with me?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘It’s precisely because it doesn’t have anything directly to do with you,’ Hudson replied. ‘We’ve been over that before. You are an outside observer, and you not only feel passionate about the injustice, but are also prepared to write about it. The more people who write about it the more hope it gives the families of the 96, and the more chance there is that in the end something will be done about it. Though it doesn’t seem at the moment like there is much hope of that.’

  ‘But, if Phil Scraton’s book isn’t making any difference, in spite of his regular updates, why would anyone think that my letters and articles might?’ Cameron asked. ‘Only one chapter of my book – if I ever get to finish it now – deals with Hillsborough, and that is based largely on Scraton’s book.’

  ‘What you write may not change the minds of the bastards at the top of the muck heap,’ Hudson said, ‘but it helps to give heart to the families of the 96 and their supporters – and that includes me. I must go now.’

  ‘Thanks for the tea,’ Cameron said, as Hudson heaved himself to his feet, picked up the two mugs and unlocked the cell door.

  ‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything you need to know about,’ Hudson said as he opened the door and eased himself through it.

  Hudson couldn’t, surely, just be playing the good-cop part, Cameron thought as he heard the metallic rasp of the key turning in the lock. If he was that good an actor he would be strutting the red carpet in Hollywood, he wouldn’t be a police constable playing the role of tea-boy in a down-at-heel police-station in Sheffield.

  Chapter 15

  It was difficult to believe that time could drag itself past so slowly. As the cell gradually grew lighter after every unrestful night, Cameron expected the day to bring his threatened transfer to one of South Yorkshire’s prisons. The nervous anticipation of what he might find there was the only sensation that disturbed the numbness. He could feel Mutoni’s death only as a waste of all the pain she’d been through – grieving properly for her would have to come later, once the numbness had worn off.

  The police must have been involved in framing him. It seemed unlikely that the policeman who found his gun had been the one to pull the trigger – but it wasn’t impossible. It was much more probable that the gun would have been passed on to one of the Rwandans who wanted Mutoni out of the way – passed on with instructions to make sure that no DNA other than Cameron’s was to be found on it. The police might be corrupt, but they weren’t stupid. If they wanted him to be framed for murder they would have made sure it was done properly. Even if the evidence was only circumstantial, they wouldn’t let the case go forward until they were sure there was enough to convince a jury. Nobody had bothered to question him again, so they must be confident their evidence was strong enough.

  Brian was back from holiday and had been allowed to bring some books for Cameron to read, but he hadn’t been allowed to speak to him. Cameron had picked up the odd book from time to time, but none of them had held his attention for more than a minute or two. He told himself that was because he was too tired to concentrate. The cushion was too thin to serve as an adequate mattress, and shooting pains from his damaged shoulder made it impossible to sleep on his side. Hudson had brought him tea a couple of times but hadn’t stayed to talk. Harriet had managed to fit a brief visit into her busy schedule most days – ostensibly to discuss the minutiae of his defence – but the visits never lasted for more than a few minutes. Otherwise, apart from the bringers of meals, Cameron felt abandoned to his solitude. They would no doubt be hoping that his solitude was a cauldron of regret that he had ever even heard of Hillsborough.

  ‘I’ve just learnt a bit more about the prosecution case,’ Harriet told Cameron as soon as she stepped in through the cell door ten days after his arrest. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t going to look good to a jury.’

  ‘Tell me the worst,’ Cameron said.

  ‘They found some small round stones on Mutoni’s body, which I assume must be the Go stones you talked about last time they interviewed you,’ Harriet said, sitting down at the end of the bench nearest the door. ‘They’ve done a DNA analysis and they’ve found your DNA as well as Mutoni’s on some of them.’

  ‘Black stones or white stones?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Black, I think,’ Harriet replied. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cameron said. ‘If they are black stones they aren’t going to help them. They are very easily explained. I gave Mutoni two black stones when she left after coming to my house the first time. She told me about a traditional Rwandan folk tale that involved two grindstones fighting one another. She said the Go stones on my board reminded her of the tale and asked if she could take two of the black ones. There were more than enough in my bowl, so I was very happy to allow her to take two.’

  ‘That’s your story,’ Harriet said, putting heavy emphasis on the ‘your’.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would a jury believe your account of how Mutoni came by the stones?’ Harriet asked. ‘You have to admit that the bit about the grindstones is going to sound pretty far-fetched.’

  ‘There must be an expert on Rwandan folklore somewhere around who could confirm that the story Mutoni told me is a traditional Rwandan folk tale,’ Cameron said. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? The fact that two of my Go stones were found on her body doesn’t mean I killed her.’

  ‘Only two?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cameron. ‘You said “some” of them earlier – they didn’t find more than two did they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said. ‘They apparently found five. They were obliged to tell me about them as part of their primary disclosure because they are not going to include three of them in their evidence. Those three stones apparently don’t have your DNA on them, so they aren’t any use to the prosecution and technically constitute “unused evidence” which has to be disclosed.’

  Cameron, who was still standing in the middle of the cell after getting up to greet her, suddenly felt a wave of nausea wash over him and had to put a hand out against the wall to steady himself. He took three or four tentative steps backwards and sat down on the blue cushion at the far end from Harriet with his head between his hands.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Harriet said, sounding alarmed. �
��What’s the matter? You suddenly went very white and looked as if you were about to faint. What’s going on?’

  Cameron didn’t answer. He concentrated on slowing his breathing and trying to stop his heart from racing. After a few more seconds of silence he heard Harriet shunting herself along the cushion to get nearer to him and was conscious of her leaning forward to try to see his face.

  ‘You aren’t having a heart attack are you?’ Harriet asked. ‘Do you want me to call someone?’

  It wasn’t until Harriet put her hand on his sore shoulder that Cameron felt the need to say something, and then it was only to mutter ‘bloody, bloody, bloody Hell’ under his breath.

  ‘Please talk to me,’ Harriet said. ‘I don’t know what is going on. Are you alright?’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit dizzy and nauseous, but I think I’m OK, thanks,’ Cameron said. ‘It has to be van Zyl.’

  ‘What has to be van Zyl?’ asked Harriet. ‘And who on earth is van Zyl anyway?’

  ‘Van Zyl was their commanding officer,’ Cameron said. ‘He was the brain behind the Special Branch in our area. I made the mistake of going on a futile mission to ask him to order Venter to stay away from Jules. We had a conversation about Go – he used to play Go too. When I went back to Cape Town later I visited the grave where Jules and my children had been buried and found a vase of rather weathered artificial flowers that were being held in place by black Go stones. The whole vase was full of them. Van Zyl had set a trap to catch me if I ever visited the grave. But the Go stones weren’t part of it, they were just intended to convey some kind of message to me. I’ve never worked out exactly what the message was supposed to be – probably something along the lines of my game being up. He is very smart but completely mad in a very orderly kind of way. Everyone who thought that apartheid was the answer to anything had to be somewhere on the insanity spectrum, but he was madder than most.’

  ‘So there were black Go stones on the grave, and black Go stones on Mutoni’s body,’ said Harriet. ‘There’s obviously a connection there, but as far as we know van Zyl is in South Africa and has no connection whatever with Mutoni. Do you even know if he is still alive?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing about him for over twenty years, thank God,’ Cameron said. ‘But I am as certain that he is behind this as I have ever been about anything.’

  ‘Why would he bother to go to all this trouble?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘I was the guinea-pig in an experiment he had made a substantial emotional and career investment in,’ Cameron replied. ‘He had been trying to demonstrate to his superiors that it wasn’t necessary to murder, ban or incarcerate the many academic opponents of apartheid. He wanted to prove that all you had to do to neutralize them was discredit them completely. So he didn’t lock me up when he could have, he just set about discrediting me – and did that very successfully. That’s why, all these years after the ending of apartheid, I still don’t live in South Africa. But then I screwed up his cunning plan up by doing away with a Special Branch officer. Bang goes his elaborately developed experiment. It would have been a much better idea to lock me up or assassinate me after all.’

  ‘That certainly won’t have done his career prospects much good,’ Harriet said. ‘I can see why he might bear a grudge against you.’

  ‘And it won’t have helped that I subsequently managed to evade the trap he had expended considerable resources in setting for me,’ Cameron added.

  ‘But none of that explains why five Go stones should have been found on Mutoni’s body,’ Harriet said. ‘If you gave her two, where did the other three come from? Could she have taken them when she spent that night at your house and left before you woke up?’

  ‘Yes, she certainly could have,’ Cameron said. ‘But why would she want to? The only reason she wanted the first two stones was because they reminded her of the story, and the story featured two grinding stones, not five. Anyway I am absolutely certain that she wouldn’t have stolen anything from me – she wouldn’t have stolen anything from anybody. The stones must have been planted on her body to convey some kind of message. It has to be van Zyl.’

  ‘But what kind of message could five Go stones convey?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Three, not five,’ Cameron said. ‘She already had the two I gave her, remember, and she said she would carry them with her always. I don’t know exactly what kind of message. Possibly, again, just that I was the weaker player – the weaker player always has the black stones in Go. Perhaps the message is that the end game will literally be the end game for the owner of the black stones. I don’t know – how do you read the mind of a madman? There had to be several screws loose in the minds of people who believed so ardently in apartheid that they were prepared to torture, maim and murder anyone who tried to impede its victory march along the yellow brick road to the Promised Land. Who knows what might have been happening inside those minds over the past eighteen years as they have had to watch the dismantling, stone by stone, of the whole edifice they had expended so much energy, and shed so much blood, building and protecting?’

  ‘So you think that what we are contending with here is a highly intelligent but potentially insane man who is not averse to having people killed by proxy?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘That sums it up perfectly,’ Cameron replied. ‘But it may work to our advantage that he has to operate by proxy. The people who are doing his dirty work will almost certainly not be as smart, or for that matter as mad, as he is.’

  ‘I’m not sure I find that particularly reassuring,’ Harriet said.

  ‘The police, or the CPS, or somebody, must have photographs of the stones,’ Cameron said after a longish silence. ‘Could you try to get a copy for me to look at?’

  ‘I can certainly try,’ Harriet answered. ‘The disclosure requirements are there to make sure that the police don’t try to hide any evidence that could assist the defence. To give them their due, that is why I was told about the Go stones in the first place. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t ask to see the stones – or, if not the stones themselves, at least a photograph of them. I’ll bring what I can when I come tomorrow.’

  The next twenty-four hours promised to be the longest and slowest yet, but the realization that van Zyl must somehow, after all these years, be involved in what had happened had shocked Cameron out of his torpor. He felt his brain energized and engaged again, exactly as if he were in the middle of a game of Go, playing against a superior player. Van Zyl would probably be pleased to know that the mere conjuring up of his name had the same effect as a round of electroconvulsive therapy. Associations of van Zyl with electro-convulsion were not coincidental.

  As chance would have it, it was one of the days when Hudson had volunteered for tea duty. It didn’t look to be one of his more talkative days, so Cameron tried to preempt an early departure with a quick question.

  ‘As far as you know, was there anything odd about Mutoni’s body? Where were the five Go stones found? Have any of your colleagues said anything to you about it?’

  ‘I wasn’t involved,’ Hudson said, ‘and most of my “colleagues”, as you call them, don’t talk to me any more than they have to. But I did overhear a bit of conversation when the two who attended the scene came back. One of them was saying that something about it was quite creepy.’

  ‘Creepy?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure that was the word he used,’ Hudson answered. ‘I didn’t hear much more than that, so I don’t know what was supposed to have been creepy about it. But it will be easy enough for me to take a look at the file. They will have taken photographs of the body.’

  ‘Could you do that for me, please?’ Cameron asked. ‘I don’t suppose you could get hold of one of the photographs for me to see?’

  ‘I can certainly look myself,’ Hudson said, ‘but I wouldn’t have any good reason for removing anything from the file, and it would be an unnecessary risk. I’ll
let you know if the photograph shows anything out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Thanks very much, I would really appreciate that,’ Cameron said as Hudson opened the cell door to leave.

  It was several restless hours before Cameron heard the key turn in the lock again and saw Hudson sidling in looking vaguely guilty – probably because he wasn’t holding the usual mug of tea by way of a visa entitling him to visit.

  ‘I can see why he said it was a bit creepy,’ Hudson said as soon as he had shut the door behind him.

  ‘Why?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘The photographs show Mutoni lying on her back with her legs straight and her hands together on her chest,’ Hudson said. ‘Nothing creepy about that, except that it looks as if she has been laid out for a funeral. What was really odd – creepy even – was that her eyes were closed and one of the black stones was balanced on each eyelid. They found another in her mouth. Her mouth was closed but one of the stones had been put between her lips, resting on her front teeth. You can see it clearly in the close-up photograph taken of her face. Only three of the five are visible in the photographs because two were found in one of her pockets.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Cameron. ‘”Creepy” isn’t the word for it.’

  ‘Have you any idea what it could be all about?’ Hudson asked.

  ‘A message about death – impending death – probably my impending death,’ Cameron said. ‘The two Go stones on Mutoni’s eyelids are a reference to the coins that used to be placed on dead people’s eyes to try to stop the eyes popping open as a result of posthumous muscle contractions. Now that really would be creepy. The stone between her lips should actually have been under her tongue – but whoever was responsible must have been worried that we might miss it if it was put there. Miss the stone and you miss the message. It must be a reference to the coin Greek mythology required the dead to pay to Charon to ferry them across the River Styx to get to Hades.’

  ‘No wonder the Greek economy is going belly-up,’ commented Hudson. ‘But a message to who? I would have thought a dead body conveyed a clear enough message about death. I wouldn’t have thought Go stones were needed,’ Hudson said.