The October Killings (12 page)

It was not even the thought that possibly Abigail knew who was killing the policemen who had been in the raiding party twenty years before. It was a little phrase of five words that kept Yudel awake. They hung in his mind, a clear, sharply delineated indication of the horror of those days. “Not everyone was so lucky,” van Jaarsveld had said. Abigail had shrunk from those words, as if facing a death sentence. Perhaps there resided a death sentence within those words. Who did Abigail know who was part of the “everyone” who had not been so lucky?

Then suddenly he knew. He got up and walked to the window. Before opening the curtains he switched off the only light in the room, the reading lamp on his desk. It was a clear night and the nearer flowers in Rosa's garden looked pale silver in the relative darkness of the Pretoria night.

Abigail had been fifteen at the time. Van Jaarsveld had killed her parents. Yudel had no provable way of knowing it, but he was as sure as if he had been present that night. He stood at the window for a long time. He saw neither the garden, nor the floodlit form of the Union Buildings against the hill on the far side of Arcadia. He thought about Abigail, the things she would not tell him, the raid on a house in Maseru so long ago and the price the perpetrators were now paying.

When Rosa found him at three o'clock, Yudel was still at the window. “Come to bed,” she said. “This will solve nothing.”

14

Tuesday, October 18

Chief Albert Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in downtown Johannesburg, did not seem to have woken when Abigail arrived at nine in the morning. Most of the offices she passed were empty and in one a secretary was reading the morning paper.

The former cabinet minister rose as Abigail was ushered into her office. She was in her mid-sixties and well known for her ability to ease tensions wherever she held office. This was a quality soon to be stretched to its limit by a growing leadership struggle in the party. The older woman had been redeployed from the Cabinet to Luthuli House, where she now filled the position of the party's deputy secretary-general.

She came round her desk, both arms outstretched, smiling warmly. “Abby, my child. I've been hearing such wonderful things about you. Your parents would have been proud.”

“Thank you for seeing me, mother,” Abigail said.

The deputy secretary-general waved an impatient hand that seemed to indicate that she could never refuse to see Abigail. “I saw you at the Black Management Forum banquet with your husband. That was your husband, wasn't it?”

“Yes, that was Robert.”

“He's the famous editor. Am I correct?”

“That's right. At least, I think of him that way.”

“What a clever couple. You are going to have clever children. Are there any yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Don't wait too long. You're in your thirties already, I think.” The former minister was so obviously concerned and well-meaning that her unasked-for advice and rather prying ways never met with a rebuff from anyone. “All the uneducated rural people are having dozens of kids. We need our highly educated people to have the kids who will lead us in the future.”

Abigail was one of the many who loved her. She smiled at the older woman. But now can we get past this? she was thinking. What if we get on to business now? Is that possible?

“Is it you or Robert who doesn't want babies?”

“No, we both want children.”

“Then the time has come to get on with it.” She frowned at Abigail for a moment, but immediately the smile reappeared. “But there's something on your mind. Let's talk about that first. You can allow an interfering old lady to question you later.”

Abigail started reminding her about the raid in Maseru twenty years before, but the deputy secretary-general did not need reminding. Her face, that smiled so readily, was stern now. “Yes, child, I remember. Your parents…”

“The night after that we were rescued in Ficksburg.”

“Yes. It was a wonderful achievement.”

“A man by the name of Michael Bishop was there.”

“Ye-es…” It was said slowly, the vowel sound extended beyond its usual length. “I'm told he was there.”

“A meeting was held to honor him in our offices a few days ago.”

“I had heard that. I have to say that I was surprised to hear that he attended such a meeting.”

“He didn't attend. Our minister was there and made the speech, but Michael Bishop didn't come.”

She nodded. This was clearly no surprise.

“I wondered if you knew where he is and what he is doing now.”

“Your minister wants to know?”

“I want to know.”

“Abby, my child, I must ask you why.”

“Mother…” Abigail felt very young, talking to this woman who had been a mentor to her mother and whom she knew would do almost anything for her. “Mother, I want you to believe me that this is important, but I don't want to make my problems your problems.”

The deputy secretary-general thought about this for so long that Abigail was beginning to see it as a refusal. “Very well,” she said at last. “To the best of my knowledge he holds no position in the party. And I only met him a few times during the struggle days. I don't know where he is now, but I'll take you to a male colleague who may be able to help.”

She led the way out of her office, but stopped in the corridor as if she had just remembered something. Turning to Abigail, she spoke very gently. “It would be better if you had as little dealing with this man as possible. He is not someone you should be having contact with.”

“I will be careful,” Abigail said.

The male colleague was not educated, a former soldier in the liberation army, who had been given the job of handyman as a reward for his loyal service to the movement. They found him installing a lock on a storeroom door on the ground floor. He rose and dusted off his hands before folding them in front of him. It was the gesture of someone who was among superiors. The deputy secretary-general introduced Abigail and told him that they were looking for Michael Bishop.

Although he was about the same age, he addressed her as respectfully as Abigail had. “Mother, I fought next to him in the struggle, but I know nothing about him now.”

“Did you ever work with him in October?” Abigail burst in suddenly.

“October, what year?” he asked.

“Any year in the month of October.”

The handyman looked helplessly at the deputy secretary-general. “Mother, I don't know this.”

“That's all right, Ephraim,” she said. “Do you know who can help us?”

“Yes, there's a man in Diepsloot who was his commanding officer.”

“Is that Jones, Jones Ndlovu?”

“Yes. He was Michael Bishop's commanding officer.”

After receiving instructions on how to get to Jones Ndlovu, the deputy secretary-general accompanied Abigail toward the building's entrance. “I don't know how wise this is. Jones Ndlovu is no longer the man he was. They say he's a drug addict now.”

“I'll go. I need to talk to him.”

They had reached the lobby, but Abigail took the older woman's arm above her right elbow and drew her gently into a decorative alcove. “Mother, do you remember that while we were in London, a South African businessman was murdered there? It must have been in the early nineties.”

The deputy secretary-general's eyebrows rose in surprise. “That was a long time ago, but yes, I believe there was such a case.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“I think I do, but only because of his surname. It had racial connotations and, at that time, everything seemed to have racial connotations. His name was Whiteman.”

“Whitehead.”

“Yes, that's it. Whitehead.”

“He was in the squad that raided us in Maseru that night.”

The older woman's head jerked back as if she had been slapped. “Are you sure?”

“Quite. Do you remember, would Michael Bishop have been in London at that time?”

“He may have been. He was back and forth at times, between London and different parts of Africa. But, my child, what are you suggesting?”

“And could Whitehead have died in October?”

“I don't know.” The deputy secretary-general was trying to remember. “You know, I think it was some time in the English autumn.”

Abigail released her grip. “Thank you, mother,” she said. She tried to leave, but now it was her turn to be held.

“Wait, my child. What are you suggesting?”

“I'm not suggesting anything. I'm only suspecting.”

“Wait a moment.” The older woman paused to gather her thoughts. “I need to say something.” Abigail saw a trace of pain in her face. “The struggle was a war. You know that?”

“Of course, mother. I was there.”

“You were. And you, as much as anyone, know how many of our finest people were murdered by the regime.” Abigail could not bring herself to answer this. “In a war you cannot always choose your weapons or methods. You have to use what is available. We used plenty of people in those days that we would like to be rid of today, but they were good comrades in the struggle and now we can't just throw them away. We have killers from those days in high positions today, some even in law enforcement. Some of them undertook operations that resulted in the deaths of civilians, which the leadership did not approve. But the masses and other activists see them as heroes. I was in Lusaka when this man arrived there for the first time. There were immediate disagreements over whether we should use him at all. At first we didn't trust him, this young white man who came from nowhere, and later, when he had shown that he really was on the side of the movement, I still did not want us to use him.”

Abigail already knew where the older woman was leading her, but every moment of the first twenty years of her life, everything she had learned during that time, compelled her to listen without interruption.

“Michael Bishop was available. We did not choose him, but he was there and he was effective. My God, he was effective. But, as far as I was concerned, his motives were wrong. He was not fighting for freedom. He was fighting for something else entirely. I don't know how well you knew him…” This too was something Abigail could not answer. “If you find him, and I don't believe you will, I don't want you going to him alone. Do you hear me?”

“I promise, mother.”

“I would also prefer it if you did not conduct this search of yours for long. I don't want him to know that you are looking for him. Remember this—that the struggle was a war, in which the other side had all the guns. We had to use what we had. One of the things we had was Michael Bishop. That is the only reason we used him.”

“I do know this, mother.”

The older woman seemed still to have a need to warn Abigail, but there was nothing left to say. “And October, my child, any October? What does it mean?”

“I must hurry,” Abigail said. “I must see Ndlovu, then get back to the office. Thank you, mother. And I will be careful.”

“Do not go to Bishop alone. Never go to him alone.”

15

Diepsloot was a settlement on the northern extremity of metropolitan Johannesburg. It had been created to absorb the torrential influx to the city of Africans from impoverished rural South African communities and those who had slipped across the border illegally from even poorer African communities. Diepsloot had started as a sudden explosion of wood-and-iron shacks on the open veld, without sanitation, electricity, running water or any coherent road plan.

Abigail had tried to contact Robert to tell him where she was going, but both he and his PA were out of the office and no one seemed to know where they were. She left a message on the voice mail of Robert's mobile phone, knowing at the same time that if she did need him urgently, he was too far away to help her.

By the time she turned at the traffic light on the artery that passed next to the township, it was beginning to take on the form of a suburb. The authorities had, in just a few years, created roads, built tiny, low-cost houses and provided basic services to residents.

Despite the obvious poverty, Abigail's was not the only nearly-new car on the streets of Diepsloot. Although most of the people were poor, there were some who had jobs that did not pay badly, but who preferred the very low cost of government-subsidized living. And there were the gangsters, the pimps and some traders who either did business in the township or used it as a refuge. They lived either in shacks or the subsidized cottages, but they dressed well and drove good cars.

Abigail had to ask directions twice before she found the opening, not quite a street, where Jones Ndlovu lived. It lay between a neat row of yellow-painted township cottages on one side and a ragged row of corrugated iron shacks on the other. She turned the corner and entered a thoroughfare that was surprisingly empty. Such township streets were usually dotted with cars, both serviceable and unroadworthy; children, both ragged and well-heeled; adults, both angry and resigned; and chickens that fled squawking in front of your car.

Today, this street, like all the others she had passed, contained the unroadworthy cars and the chickens, but very few people. She had already moved too far down the thoroughfare to turn back when she realized that she had a problem. A group of teenage boys had appeared from one of the shacks lining the narrow dirt road, deliberately blocking her way.

Abigail had never been part of the rough-and-tumble of township life. She had not been exposed to the regular robberies, muggings and holdups or the desultory killings and rapes that were a part of township life. South Africa's black townships had, during the latter years of the apartheid regime when resistance was most intense, become the most violent social system on Earth. Now, after the revolution had come and gone, the violence had declined only marginally. It had largely metamorphosed into crime and expanded from the black townships into the walled and burglar-protected white suburbs.