The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  Mansell returned with Canadian Club on the rocks. He said, “She’s a beautiful young lady. Yours?”

  “My daughter, yes, but she was definitely her own person,” Delaney replied. A distant look was quickly controlled. Instead, she concentrated on the last of her champagne.

  “Wrong subject. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she responded. A long silence followed, filled only by the sound of a solo guitar. Finally, she glanced up into his eyes, ingenuous eyes without expectations. “Her name was Amanda. We were driving home from Cape Town one night three years ago. It was raining. One of those September rains. The coast highway was a disaster. You know how it gets. My husband was driving. He was upset about wasting three days visiting my folks. Three bloody days out of a lifetime. I’ll never forgive him that. Outside of Sedgefield, where the mountains border the coast, there was a rockslide. It was foggy. We were going too fast, arguing. Arguing! God. And I’ll never forgive myself for that. Amanda was sleeping in the backseat when we went off the road. It was forty or fifty meters to the rocks. She never knew. It was too quick. I’m thankful for that; for her ignorance, that there was no pain. That sounds trite, doesn’t it.”

  “Trite? No, not trite. Normal.”

  The record ended. The room absorbed the silence.

  “I severed my Achilles tendon in the accident. I was on crutches for six months. I used to play a helluva game of tennis, Inspector. Now I collect walking sticks.” Delaney stared down at the oak stick at her side, grasped the handle, and pushed it aside. “We stopped talking. He started drinking. I looked in all the wrong places for support. Terribly original stuff. We were divorced fifteen months ago.

  Delaney’s shoulders sagged for an instant, and then she arose. She retreated to the stereo. She traded Jonathan Butler for Juluka. Mansell produced a cigarette from his jacket.

  “I don’t know why I told you that,” she said, leaning heavily against the record stand. “I don’t talk about it.”

  “How old was she?” he asked.

  “Six.” Delaney held the walking stick before her like a war shield. “She had just started to live, my baby. She would smell every flower and talk to every tree and listen to the sounds of the ocean. Oh, God, and laugh. . . . She had just started to live.”

  “Some people never do,” Mansell offered. “You must have been doing something right.”

  “My mistake was bringing her into this sick world in the first place.”

  “I don’t think so. Creating a human life? That’s no mistake, Mrs. Blackford. Creating love. It’s hard to do any better.”

  “Very philosophical,” she countered. Then, regretting it, she asked, “Do you believe that?”

  “Sure,” he answered. The wall clock behind Delaney read 11:45. Don’t be thinking about a second drink, he ordered himself. Had coming here been a mistake? No. “I admit I’ve been more successful digging out the dead than creating babies. Maybe someday.”

  Delaney released herself from the comfort of distance. Crossing the floor, she stopped an arm’s length away. “It’s my turn to pour,” she said, snatching the glass away before Mansell could protest, adding, as she breezed out of the room, “I see you wear a wedding band, Inspector.”

  Mansell elected not to reply while Delaney replenished his whiskey. When she returned, he hid behind his inspector’s mask, asking, “Did you know Ian Elgin well enough to know about his hobbies? Did sports interest him?”

  “Male avoidance?” asked Delaney. “I tell you my darkest secret, and then you proceed to ignore a simple observation.”

  In a single motion, Mansell consumed half the whiskey. Heat spread outward from his stomach like ripples on a pond. “Sometimes,” he said, “avoidance says more than self-pity.” “Aren’t they the same thing?” Delaney replied. “I’ve been practicing for three years. I should know.”

  Mansell felt the quickening of his heartbeat. He blamed the cigarettes. “One hurts more than the other,” he said. “My imagination is too damn powerful. It’s a nice attribute for a policeman, but it gets tricky when the day is done. Avoidance is a quick fix, but it adds up. Self-pity’s always close at hand, just in case.”

  “I know.” Delaney sat on the edge of the sofa, at Mansell’s right. She toyed with her empty wine goblet.

  Mansell watched her hands, slender, graceful fingers. Finally, he looked aside and said, “When I was in college, some of us spent a month exploring the underground caves in Natal. It was an unusual sport called spelunking.”

  Delaney set the goblet down in the shadow of the porcelain vase. Purposely, she rotated the stem between fingertips. When she released it, she sought out Mansell’s eyes.

  Eventually, she said, “Ian mentioned it a couple of times. Exploring caves in the dark. It didn’t make sense to me. That’s probably why I remember it. Ian seemed to be fascinated with it. Were you?”

  “I haven’t done it since that summer.” Mansell smiled, shaking his head. “Did Elgin ever mention any names, or any of the places he liked to go?”

  She fell silent, lost in a thought that Mansell could see spread across her face. “They worked in two-man teams. Ian said that good partners were hard to find,” she said. “Koster was his name. John or James Koster, I think. He’s an official in one of the ministries.”

  ****

  Night was a figment of Anthony Mabasu’s blank imagination. Time was an illusion; it had failed to exist hours ago. Mabasu only knew that his feet could no longer withstand the pressure of the bricks. His hands had locked onto the rope suspended above him, joints cemented solid. He dangled from the rope like a side of beef in a meat locker. His arms were gratefully numb, but his shoulders burned from the inside out and his chest glowed metallic from the baton. His heart seemed to speak to him, but it spoke so quickly that the message eluded him.

  He wasn’t thirsty. Why, he thought, did they continue to pour bitter tea down his throat?

  The interrogator, the one with the bulldog face, kept reading to him from his own confession. The signature looked familiar, but those weren’t his words, were they?

  The picture from the city morgue; that he recognized. The picture made him forget about his burning shoulders, his pulverized feet, his scarred chest. How had he done that? they asked. How had he done what? Mabasu heard himself reply. Kill your own wife, they answered. Yes, we were killing each other, he mumbled. We needed some time apart. It happens to everyone, doesn’t it? he asked.

  The ugly one, the corporal with hair all over his face and a bare chest, raised his baton. Mabasu swore he could feel the air parting as the bamboo thwacked his kidney. The sound of a breaker slapping the shore, he thought. His lower back felt damp. It felt like an injection, one badly inserted into the muscle and forgotten, he thought. And the very idea of them removing the needle left him afraid.

  The bulldog told him again about Sylvia’s affair with the dead union official. Details bounced off an invisible shield, and Mabasu’s one clear thought was that he had already forgiven her.

  This he tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Now the other investigator, Mabasu thought, he listened better. And he had cigarettes. Sometimes tea. But he wouldn’t fit in here very well, anyway.

  The bulldog screamed something. Mabasu saw the assault coming, but it was useless to protest, impossible to resist. This time he lost consciousness.

  When he came to again, Mabasu found himself in a fetal position in a pool of red. Involuntarily, he cracked an eyelid. To his surprise, the room was dark. The floodlights were sleeping, he thought. Or had he been moved? The thought was short-lived. His toes touched the bricks. He recoiled into a ball. Shivers raced up and down his spine like an out-of-control locomotive.

  Was he alone? From the position he was in, Mabasu couldn’t see anyone. Nor could he hear anything. No voices. No sounds. Did it matter? But there was light. Yes, he saw it now. A faint luciferous glow from the room’s only window. Still, his brain failed to comprehend the first sign of
dawn.

  Yet it wasn’t the light so much, he thought, as the window. Like his heart, the window spoke to him. But again, he couldn’t decipher the words. Why? he wondered. But the sound, the sound at least was friendly. Did that mean he was dying? Was he already dead?

  No.

  Mabasu heard a chair scrape against the floor behind him. God, no, please, not for a while, he thought. Footsteps. Closer. Silence. The toe of a boot nudged his rib cage.

  “Come to your feet, Mabasu.”

  Nausea raced through him. Tears rolled down his face. Anthony Mabasu stared past the window. Now he saw the light, heard it, and knew why. He called out for a last reserve of strength. Gradually, he rolled onto his knees. He struggled to his feet. A hand grabbed his elbow, but Mabasu wrenched free and ran.

  The last thing he thought before plunging headfirst through the window was that the light of day had come at the perfect moment that morning, and he gave thanks.

  Chapter 5

  At 6:12, a taxicab responded to a call from the Victoria Hotel on the corner of Chapel Avenue and Victoria Way.

  The cab moved leisurely down Chapel in front of the Hall of Justice. There was no traffic. Two cars were parked at meters along the street. The cabby, a Xhosa with special permits, saw the body sprawled facedown on the sidewalk near the back bumper of the second car. At first, he figured that a drunk had passed out on his way to the Donkin Reserve park, but a sea of blood two meters in diameter convinced him otherwise.

  The cabby jumped on his brakes. He leapt from the car, but stopped halfway to the body. He ran toward the Hall, a dozen steps, and stopped again. His stomach revolted. He raced back to the taxi, wiped his face with a greasy rag, and radioed his dispatcher. The dispatcher, in turn, called CIB headquarters on Military and Main.

  The moment Nigel Mansell spoke to the responding officer, he realized the cabby’s change of heart had almost certainly prevented a cover-up. He glanced up at the shattered window ten floors up; an explanation wasn’t necessary.

  A newspaperwoman from the Port Elizabeth Daily Mail arrived in a beat-up Fiat. Sixty seconds later, a sleepy-eyed reporter and a cameraman from the Cape Province Bulletin appeared in a staff car. They approached the chief inspector with pads and pencils and pale faces.

  The woman spoke first. “Inspector, is this thing going to be placed in quarantine under the Police Act?”

  Mansell stared across at the broken body of Anthony Mabasu. He shook his head. “This one’s fair game, Louise. Go to it.”

  A dozen Security Branch officers, armed with riot guns and nightsticks, patrolled the scene. Barricades were erected. Major Hymie Wolfe, aroused from a nap ten minutes before, bleary-eyed and dressed in wrinkled blues and grays, shouted orders.

  Mansell stepped between barricades and approached the body

  Shards of glass were spread from one end of the walk to the other.

  SB Sergeant Venter, the officer present in the interrogation room at the time of the incident, related the specifics to Wolffe. The reporters crowded near. Mansell bent over the victim.

  “What would drive a man to such a state of despondency, Major?” asked the Bulletin reporter. Mansell examined Mabasu’s lower back. Animals with human faces, he thought.

  “Certainly it’s a tragedy,” answered Wolffe. “Mr. Mabasu had been detained for questioning, nothing more. His wife was reported killed yesterday in Ciskei. An apparent homicide. We were searching for leads.”

  Two ambulance attendants laid a stretcher at Mabasu’s side. “Not yet,” said Mansell. He ran a hand gently over the backside of Mabasu’s knees.

  “Was Anthony Mabasu a suspect in the death of his wife, Major?” asked the newspaperwoman.

  “He was being questioned. Nothing more.”

  “Then no charges had been brought?”

  “That is correct.”

  She watched as Mansell examined the mutilated soles of the victim’s feet, then asked, “How long had Mr. Mabasu been in your custody, Major?”

  “Since Saturday, I believe,” Wolfe answered uneasily.

  “Since Saturday? Then we can assume, since his wife’s body was found only yesterday, that Mr. Mabasu was being held with regard to another investigation?”

  “As it happens, yes.”

  “The Ian Elgin case,” she said.

  “Now wait, wait just a moment. You know the current status of that case,” stammered Wolffe. Make the bastard sweat, thought Mansell. “An official statement on this matter will be released later in the day.”

  “You’re calling it a suicide, then?” she asked.

  “Preliminarily, yes.”

  “I see,” she said. Mansell detected swelling about the neck and lividity along the spine. The reporter persisted. “How do you explain the condition of the victim’s feet, Major? That certainly didn’t occur in the fall.”

  “I can’t say at this time,” Wolffe replied.

  “Bricks,” uttered Mansell. He locked eyes with the pudgy Security man, and Wolffe retreated a step.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector,” said the newspaperwoman. “What was that you said?”

  “Try standing on hard bricks for twenty-four hours and see how pretty your feet look.”

  Wolffe lumbered forward. “I don’t imagine the inspector will want to be quoted on that. Now, when the facts are known, a statement will be issued, and until then, any further questions will be construed as a direct violation of the Police Act. Is that all quite clear enough?”

  “Meaning the victim’s death is related to the Elgin murder,” said the Daily Mail reporter.

  “That was neither implied nor stated, Ms. Jameson. And I would be wary of suggesting such a thing if I were you.” Wolfe waved irritably at the attendants. “Get that body out of here.”

  “I think not,” said the chief inspector coolly. Mansell arose, dragging his eyes away from the body. “Witnesses or suspects to major criminal investigations who die while said investigation is still in progress shall be subject to complete autopsy at the hands of a qualified pathologist. Section something, something, something, of the bloody South African criminal code. Shall I be more specific, Major Wolfe?”

  Wolfe mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “If you think any good will come of it, Mansell, by all means conduct your autopsy. But matters of state security remain.”

  ****

  Joseph Steenkamp led Mansell away from the heavy diet of formaldehyde.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “I’ll try one of those lethal weapons which you so rudely call a cigarette, please.”

  “Difficult not to be moved,” Mansell replied.

  They smoked as if the clock had paused just for their benefit. At length, the pathologist spoke. “My good friend Nigel. You cannot win this battle, I’m afraid. No more than you can win your war against the likes of Hymie Wolfe. The disease is malignant. Irreversible. We have seen to it. All of us. Everyone in South Africa is afraid of someone, and everyone insulates himself by one trick or another.”

  “We should have more faith, Doctor. Government statistics freely admit that only fifty-two prisoners have died in detention over the past decade.”

  “You’re an optimist, Inspector. Your very own source of defiant liberalism, The Cape Town Argus, suggests that the number may well be closer to ninety, maybe as high as ninety-five.”

  Steenkamp’s chest revolted in a spasm of harsh coughing. Locking eyes betrayed them; both knew the actual number to be closer to eight hundred.

  “How will your report read?” Mansell asked.

  “How do all official reports on the subject read, Inspector? Uniformly banal, of course. ‘J. Manganyi. Poet, teacher. Slipped in the shower causing a severe hemorrhage.’ `L. Tolwana. Defense Attorney. Fell down a flight of stairs while attempting to escape.’ `R. Timon. Photojournalist. Died from malnutrition brought on by a hunger strike.’ `A. Mabasu. Dock Worker. Suicide.’ “

  “Exposés,” Mansell added, “from the ever-growing skeletons lurking in the clos
et of the SAP.”

  “Insulation for the masses.” Steenkamp crushed the cigarette between his fingers. He said, “There were traces of blood in the victim’s spinal column. This is true. Security will claim it was sustained in the fall. His right kidney was punctured. True. Explanation: sustained while trying to escape. Blood clots observed in the left ear as if from a heavy blow, a blow received at least two hours before death. They’ll say the prisoner attacked a guard and had to be restrained.

  “He may have been dead when he went through that window. If not, he was certainly dying. But I can’t prove it, Nigel.”

  Fatigue, the by-product of three hours of sleep on an office cot, drove Mansell outside.

  A brisk breeze proved a stimulating antidote. He bought day-old plums and grapes from a native boy. He bought hot tea at the cafeteria. He used the station-house locker room for a wash and shave and felt nearly human.

  Then he took the stairs to the main floor. The Pit seethed with bodies and high-pitched voices. Like reluctant warriors, each prepared for the moment when Anthony Mabasu’s death hit the press. Riot squads donned flak jackets and helmets. A nervous supply sergeant issued stun guns and shotguns with rubber bullets. Two floors up, the communications center coordinated police patrols with local commando units.

  Mansell ignored it all.

  On the second floor, an office in disarray greeted him. Incomplete dailies cluttered his typing center. Files on Ian Elgin from Jo’burg, Durban, and Cape Town, all tagged with reference notes from Merriman Gosani, filled the hanapers on his desk. Computer printouts on the Federation of Mineworkers Union and the Affiliated Union, with an attached memorandum from Piet Richter, lined the desk top. A long day lay ahead.

  Three notes were taped to the shade of his desk lamp.

  Mansell started with these, slumping into an armchair as he read the one from Jennifer. They’d been invited to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with the Pruitts at their beach house in Oyster Bay. Could he make it? Was he interested in making it? The paper fell fro his hand. His first reaction: muted indifference, a heavy sigh, the return of fatigue. He lit a cigarette.