Closed Circle, page 9
“The man who saw them, what was his name?"
“A character called Fred One-night Tuwani, a trade unionist. He was coming to the Attic on foot and he saw them get into a car and take off the masks. I think the car's inside light came on by accident." His smile's vindictive aspect had returned. “See Reverend Dladla. He's a Presbyterian, a bit sensitive, not an easy man to talk to, but he knows all about the Attic. And he knows Fred One-night very well. If you can find Dladla, I don't think Fred will be far away." An insinuation was present in what Mbelo was saying, but Yudel had no way of deciphering it.
The bar at the Hotel Veldkornet was a pleasant enough place to have dinner. It overlooked an illuminated pool area that had palms and ferns planted densely along the far side. The menu offered a mushroom steak for twelve rands and a kiddie's portion for seven. Yudel never managed to get a hotel or restaurant steak into his one hundred and fifty-five pound body. He considered for a moment the waiter's possible reaction to his ordering a kiddie's portion.
The waiter wore a gleaming white jacket, shining black trousers and a black bow tie. On his head a red fez was mounted at an angle that suggested confidence and the possibility that he might not suf fer nonsense from patrons. “One mushroom steak," Yudel said.
“Yes, sir." The waiter made notes on his pad. “To drink, sir?"
“Coffee," Yudel said. “And could you bring it now...if it isn't too much trouble."
“No trouble at all, sir." The waiter clicked his heels and hurried in the direction of the kitchen as if Yudel was the only customer he had served all day.
Yudel took one last look at the kiddie's steak on the menu before closing it and sliding it away across the table. What the hell, he thought. Feeling in his inside pocket, he brought out the RACC declaration, a document potent enough to bring down violent assaults on the heads of its authors.
“Anything from the bar, sir?" This was a second waiter. He wore a red jacket and silver bow tie.
Yudel had a table in the corner. At the bar a number of well dressed people were talking with alcoholic exuberance. “Nothing," he told the wine steward.
“Nothing, sir?" This was clearly a response that was not altogether acceptable.
Yudel yielded the point. “A glass of sherry."
“Thank you, sir."
The wine steward went away and Yudel went back to the RACC declaration. He read fast, consuming both the information and the tone in which it was written. The language was ecclesiastical and the approach was cautious, slow getting to the point, but purposeful. It started by professing love for those in authority, thanking God for them and suggesting that Christians pray continually for them to be granted wisdom, a commodity the document suggested, was in short supply.
By the next paragraph it was exhorting those very people in authority, who apparently had not yet received the required wisdom, to submit themselves to the word of God. By the third it was quoting scriptural grounds for propositions that all people should have equal rights before the law, that relatives should be allowed to visit political detainees, that detention without trial obstructs the proper exercise of justice...
Yudel's sherry came and he emptied the glass with a single swallow, which was a pity because the sherry was of excellent quality. It surprised him that such humble material, so full of religious language and so littered with biblical quotations could be the cause of such fury. Then his eyes fell on a list of signatories that did not include either Dladla or Tuwani. An understanding started to form itself in his mind. Apart from Miller himself all of them were university faculty members. In brackets after each of the approximately twenty names was the university and the department represented. A few came from departments of philosophy, but overwhelmingly they were theologians and, surprisingly to Yudel, from Afrikaans universities, soul mates of Professor van Deventer. Perhaps it was this that could not be forgiven. The English or black rebel revolted against a system in which he had no real power anyway. If the Afrikaner once started to rebel, no white resistance would remain.
This Fred One-night Tuwani actually claimed to have seen Miller's assailants without their masks and to have recognized one of them. And Reverend Dladla would know where Tuwani was. But who knew where Dladla could be found? Yudel had called the offices of the Presbyterian church that afternoon, but Dladla had resigned from their ministry three years before and they did not know his whereabouts. He had tried Blythe Stevens, but Stevens had never heard of him.
The fact that one of Miller's assailants had been a black man was troubling in the same way that the detailed information in the pamphlet about the professor of law had been troubling. Where, he asked himself, would a black mercenary find employment of this sort? The options were not wide.
The waiter brought the steak. It was very good and so was the mushroom gravy. He ate it with great enthusiasm, leaving nothing. Now the only problem was what to tip the waiter.
Yudel removed his watch and placed it on the surface of the desk next to Blythe Stevens's file. The digits on its face told him that it was eleven o'clock. From outside he heard a few distant cars and the bored and mournful barking of a dog. Otherwise the night was silent, a silence somehow brought into sharper relief by those far-away sounds.
The place in the wall where the bolt had lodged looked innocent now. The steel shaft had been removed and the hole patched. Freek would have arranged that, probably to make sure that Rosa did not see it.
The events of the last few days were so strongly in Yudel's mind that thinking about anything else was difficult. Even Rosa's unhappiness slipped quickly away to leave space for the job in hand. Aspects of the entire thing had become distasteful to him. In many ways Yudel was an old-fashioned patriot. That the money came from outside the country was a problem. That the Du Plessis brothers were not students, but involved in the running of a student newspaper was also troubling.
Yudel tried with little success to turn his thoughts away from it all. He had heard too many stories, examined too many coincidences and studied too many crimes in the past few days. They were beginning to merge in his mind, a poorly defined blur of violence, anger and fear. He was being asked to find some unity in it all, a strand of culpability that would draw them all together. His flight would leave at seven. That would mean boarding the airways bus at five-thirty. He set his desk alarm for ten to five. He was glad of the few days in Durban. Perhaps his mind would clear. Perhaps new sights would make the old ones more understandable. Perhaps newer questions would answer older ones. Perhaps.
He slept in his chair until the alarm woke him.
Nine
Yudel parked the hire car on the grass verge of the road and followed the curving lane through the cluster of dense tropical trees. He stopped at the open gate of the property, looking at the house where Doctor Raymond Baker had spent the last years of his life.
Like the other houses in the neighbourhood it was old and large, but had been kept in good condition. It had a broad untidy lawn in front with patches where the brown Natal soil showed through. There were broad windows down the front and a glass panelled door with stairs leading up to a wide veranda.
The part of the file devoted to Baker had been filled with notes in Blythe Stevens's handwriting. Stevens had been a close friend and the contents of the notes would probably have come from personal knowledge. One of them had said that the widow did not want to talk about Baker's death. Another had said that she was now living in the house with a director of radio programmes.
He had seen photographs of Dahlia Baker. In one she had been laughing, her mouth wide open, an exuberant uninhibited expression. In another she had been smiling with the slow slyness, the soft knowing eyes of the sexually promiscuous. Yudel realised that he might be wrong in an assessment based on two photographs. He told himself that he was always willing to revise a first impression. Then he told himself that this was not always true.
He crossed the lawn slowly. It was a suburban property like any other. The comfortable looking house, the stand almost an acre in size, the broad lawn and the trees along the drive: all combined to make it look like a good place for kids to grow up. No sign remained of the events of six years before.
Yudel stopped in the centre of the lawn. He wanted to see all that could be seen, hear every possible sound, even smell whatever was being carried on the air. The years had taught him that the most significant pieces of information often came at moments when they were least expected.
He crossed to the foot of the short flight of steps that led up to the front door. He would have started up, but the door opened and he recognized the woman in the doorway from the photographs. “Good afternoon, Mrs Baker," he said. “My name is Yudel Gordon."
Her skin was fairer than he had expected and her hair was waved and full around her head, looking more European than Asian, but it was the eyes that held his attention. They were deep brown and friendly, but with a shade of panic. It was the face he had seen in the photographs, but the excitement seemed to have left it and been replaced by the anxiety he saw now. “Hello, Mister Gordon," she said. “I've heard about what you're doing."
Yudel thought briefly about Stevens's closed Venetian blinds and locked garden gate. “Why not?" he asked. “Everyone else has."
“I hoped you wouldn't come here."
“But you thought I might?"
Neither of them had moved, Yudel at the foot of the stairs and Dahlia in the doorway.
“Yes, I thought you might."
“It must be done, you know that." It was not a question.
“I suppose it must." Her face was troubled and for a moment she seemed to be thinking about something else and to have forgotten Yudel. Then she looked at him and stepped aside. “Do you want to come in?"
Yudel mounted the stairs and went past her into the hallway. The floor was uncarpeted and the only furniture was a cane table and chairs against one wall. A few mediocre water-colour paintings hung at irregular intervals on either side.
“They took him outside his office, not here," Dahlia told him.
“Someone saw it, I believe?"
“A shopkeeper across the road from the building where the union had its offices heard the hooter of Ray's car and went outside. While he was watching the hazard lights came on and the car pulled away suddenly, jerking like mad." Her expression was neutral and her voice quiet and unemotional. She had told the story often before and she would tell it again only if it was unavoidable.
“You weren't here that night?"
“No." There was a finality about the way she said the word, that interested Yudel, a flatness that precluded the possibility of an explanation.
“So when did you hear about it?"
“Early that morning."
“Someone called you?" Yudel was trying without success to make his interest sound casual. He did not want to appear to be cross-examining her.
She shook her head briefly. “I arrived home." Yudel was sure that she would prefer not to talk or even think about that night. “Will you sit down?" She waved a hand towards the open door of the living room.
He went through the doorway, chose a seat and sat down. Dahlia remained standing. “A cup of tea? " she asked.
“Thanks," he said. She left the room and he looked around it. The furniture was old and the lounge suite had needed upholstering long before. A number of simple wooden bookshelves along one of the walls were filled with books that had probably belonged to Baker. Their titles indicated that the subject matter of most would probably be classified under headings like Sociology and Political Science.
But Baker was dead and Dahlia was alive and sharing her house and bed with another man. Yudel wondered about it. For years she had been contravening the racial provisions of the Immorality Act by having intercourse with a white man and for as long she had been ignoring the Group Areas Act by living in a white area. Yet neither she nor Baker had ever been prosecuted.
A magazine stand next to the chair where Yudel was sitting contained very recent and very cheap fiction. He wondered if this was the reading matter of Dahlia’s new man. Among them, in a plain blue jacket was a book with the title The Kingdom is Within You. The name of the author was Raymond Baker. The back cover bore a quotation from the book. Yudel read, “To achieve the ideal of a perfect society we must consider first every human being and his or her need for personal liberty."
Dahlia came back into the room. She stopped before him, holding a small steel tea tray on which the paint was wearing away. Yudel got to his feet and accepted a cup. He sat down again and she sat opposite him. He held up the book. “Do you think I could borrow it?"
“Do," she said. “I don’t know if anyone reads Ray’s work anymore.” She sat with her hands on her thighs and her knees touching. Something in her posture seemed intent on convincing Yudel. He read in her face a weakness and vulnerability, possibly an inability to be alone for long.
“I'll return it in a few days." She shrugged as if it were not a matter of importance. “It won't take me long to read."
“It's not a very long book."
“No," Yudel said. It was clear that Dahlia was going to tell him little that was not in answer to a question. “Your husband was a noted opponent of the government."
She nodded in slow, thoughtful agreement.
“Overseas visitors with political interests often visited him?"
"He was part of the tour."
“The tour?"
“Since he became banned. They didn't feel that they'd found out about South Africa unless they'd been to see Ray. Overseas visitors just have to visit certain people while they're in South Africa. They can't go home unless they can tell people they’ve seen Winnie Mandela, Bishop Tutu and so on. It doesn't matter who they are, film makers, journalists, politicians, they just have to meet the real opponents of apartheid." There was a degree of cynicism in Dahlia's voice. “In Ray's case there were sometimes three or four a week."
It was interesting to Yudel, but not what he had come to discuss. “The night he died..."
“As I told you, I wasn't here." She looked straight at him and her expression was somewhere between annoyance and pleading. “Look, Mister Gordon . . ."
“Yudel."
“Yudel." Her expression softened a little. “I've talked about Ray a lot, to all sorts of people. None of it has done any good. I don't want to talk about him anymore. Why don't you talk to his mother? She loves talking about him."
“I'd like to but she lives a long way from here..."
“She's living with Lionel Bensch and his family." Bensch was next on Yudel's list.
“With Bensch...?"
“She's here to harass the police. She spends her life trying to force them to find Ray's killer. She just can't leave it alone."
“And you?"
"He's dead. Nothing can change that. I have a new relationship. I want to make it work this time."
This time? Yudel thought. Apparently the last time had not been a success. “Will you tell me about yourself, if you won't tell me about Ray?"
For a moment she looked really surprised. “Me? Why would you want to know about me? I'm not very interesting."
“I'm sure I'll find you interesting." Yudel was the least flirtatious of men. Little that was temporary appealed to him. He admired high and lonely hilltops, the churning waters of a mountain cataract, the long curve of a seashore, the inexorable passage of the seasons: all that was unchanging in human terms. They were not the tastes of a man who drew much from the transient or superficial. For all this he realized that his voice had adopted a flirtatious tone. He also realized that it was Dahlia who was the cause of it.
“Interesting?" She tried to suppress a smile. “What do you want to know?"
“I'd like to know why you've never been prosecuted under the Group Areas Act." He was trying to sound businesslike. “Not to mention the Immorality Act." His determination did not help. His voice was thinking for itself.
At the mention of the Immorality Act Dahlia had to work at looking serious. “I suppose they felt sorry for me."
“I'd be surprised."
“You'd be astonished," she said, "to know what our life was like. The security police once came here while Ray was banned. They said that the CID had wanted to prosecute us, but they had stopped them. They were so busy watching Ray that they didn't want little things like us sleeping together or me living here to disturb them. If he was in jail they wouldn’t be able to watch his movements or tap his phone. They said they get first option."
“And they actually told you this?”
“They did.”
“They spent a lot of time watching you ?"
This time she did not bother to suppress the smile. “Actually Ray," she said.
“How did they watch ?"
“They tapped the phone, of course. Sometimes they questioned us about things we had said over the phone. They often turned up, just walking in. Ray was allowed to be in the company of just one person at a time. They would come round to check up. They also got some of our neighbours to spy on us. Old Mr Maartens at the back even cut his hedge low so that he would have a clear view of the house.”
“And your immunity has lasted till the present day?”
She sucked in her cheeks slightly, trying not to smile. “It looks like it."
“There are children?"
He was again touching on something she did not want to discuss. She answered quickly. “A son by his first wife. They've left the country. His mother took him to England."
“And the woman, Beryl, who was staying here?"
"She's left the country." She looked resignedly at Yudel. “I really know little about that night."
“Perhaps you could tell me something else. I read in a newspaper that you were a trade unionist at one time..."
“I was a branch secretary for the Garment Workers' Federation, not a very high position." She raised her eyebrows in surprise that this should interest him.
