Hyena Dawn

by Christopher Sherlock

  Then he took on a case for Max Golden, the owner of one of South Africa’s biggest mining companies. The two were often seen at each other’s houses, their wives became intimate. Sud­denly the relationship soured. For some reason that no one could really understand, Carel de Wet refused to represent Max Golden. There was a vague rumour that he had found Golden’s business dealings unethical, and had said so.

  The crash came out of the blue. It began with a report in a Sunday paper of corruption in the leading law firm of De Wet and Partners. At first it was dismissed as the work of an over- zealous young reporter, anxious to make a name for himself, but then the evidence had begun to mount up, and though Carel de Wet insisted on his innocence, people began to ask themselves if he was in fact a man who could be trusted. The rumours accelerated. The Bar Council demanded a thorough investigation.

  In the weeks that followed Carel de Wet’s name was linked to scandal after scandal: affairs with prostitutes; indiscretions with clients’ trusted information; the bribing of key trial witnesses and the misappropriation of a large sum of money belonging to a leading businessman. Still Carel de Wet declared his innocence, but in a matter of months men who had been proud to say they were his friends were openly stating that they had never had much time for him. The big house in Kensington became a morgue and the bank foreclosed.

  Carel de Wet was a broken man. After the crash he lost himself in a self-created hell of low-class women and alcohol. He made a small amount of money by giving legal advice to people and also by playing the piano - a talent he’d never before considered to be of economic value.

  Deon, who had never consciously known the wealth of the previous household, accepted their poverty as his natural con­dition. When he wasn’t running errands for his father or helping his mother in the house, he would play with the other children out in the street. He was respected because of his size, and the other children gravitated towards him because of his natural authority. He had a silent disposition and soon learned that on the street his fists offered the best means of communication.

  When he was a bit older, Deon started to earn money by playing as lead guitarist with a local band, The Flyers. He enjoyed the success with girls that playing in the band gave him, and also the night life, but his friends often wondered at his strange, almost religious obsession with doing what was right. Deon never took drugs or drank any alcohol. If he did sleep with a girl, he always took precautions. It was just the way he was. The band would often steal ashtrays and beer mugs from a gig, but Deon would always return them. Once they had been playing at a private function and some men had tried to gang-rape a girl. Deon had laid every one of them out on the floor. No one in the band spoke to Deon on the way back to Fordsburg that evening, but they all silently respected him. . .

  Major Deon de Wet continued walking the early morning streets

  • walking and thinking. Most children in this area would have little chance of ever getting anywhere. At best they’d probably end up like his younger brother Pieter - a gang man, a gutter fighter with no goal in life except survival. What could anyone really do to change this? He was stupid even asking himself such questions, he knew. Yet the teachers in the schools really tried, and so did many of the parents. It was just that the place was against them. He’d once taken a holiday in England and spent a day in the industrial town of Birmingham. The same sort of place, the same sort of problems.

  Deon kicked a can in front of him and thought proudly of his own children. They’d pleased him more than he’d ever dreamed possible. To have enabled his kids to avoid this poverty, this hopelessness, was an achievement in itself.

  Yet he did realise that many of his own childhood friends who were now hardened criminals still had their own code of ethics. There were certain things they would never do, and he could never regard them as being essentially bad. But just tonight, in the house of an incredibly wealthy businessman, the sort of house he could never dream of owning, he had found evidence of the lowest form of criminal activity. It was only luck that had produced that evidence; if it had not been for the robbery, he would never have found it.

  Deon thought back to the things he had found in the secret safe of the luxurious Westcliff home - things that betrayed a depth of evil that he both despised and was fascinated by. He had come upon this evil in the residence of a certain Mr Bernard Aschaar, head of the Goldcorp Group, South Africa’s largest mining company.

  He wondered what the robbers had really been after. He wished he had had more time to search the safe, to discover what it was that had been worth dying for. And what was General Muller’s involvement? Why had he been so anxious to get Deon out of that bedroom? Had he deliberately removed some of the silver to make it look more like real burglary?

  Deon kicked an empty can along the gutter and for no reason he could exactly understand, began to cry. Memories of his father’s death, long suppressed, came flooding back to him. He remembered that appallingly hot midsummer’s day a few weeks before the Christmas of 1956 - the day the fateful letter had come, the letter that had decided him on his present career . . .

  With his very excellent academic record, Deon was surprised at first that he should have been turned down for a legal scholarship. He had accepted that it was probably because of his poor background and the school he had been to - but then his father had picked up the letter. Carel de Wet had been quiet for a while. Then he had laughed. It was a sarcastic, bitter laugh. He looked his son straight in the eye.

  ‘Think of this as a favour, my boy. Now you know your place in life.’

  Then he had disappeared into the little room that he called his study.

  Deon could remember standing there, quite still, with the letter in his hand. He could remember deciding that there was not another person on earth whom he despised as much as his father - a man who had been exposed as a cheat and a liar. He could remember vowing that those things would never be said about himself. Then he had walked out of the house to visit one of the members of his band, and they’d spent the rest of the afternoon rehearsing a new song.

  He had returned home in the late afternoon. He’d been surprised to see a policeman waiting for him with his brother. Their father had shot himself just after lunch. Very professionally done, he’d put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. On discovering the body, Mrs de Wet had had a stroke. One burial, two coffins.

  As a result of his father’s suicide, Deon had made the decision to join the police force. If he couldn’t read law, then he’d enforce it. The little money he got from the sale of the house, he used to send Pieter to boarding school. . .

  Now, when he walked down this street, the memories were as vivid as ever. The police force had saved him, and for that he was very grateful. He had taken a challenging post on the Angolan border with the South African Police, and the fighting and the action had helped him forget the cruel events in Fords­burg. Since then, everything had gone well for him. His pro­motion within the force had been rapid, he had an attractive wife and two very healthy children.

  For Pieter things had gone less well. He had refused to knuckle down and work, and in the end had run away from boarding school. Deon knew that it was useless to try and keep his brother on the straight and narrow, so he gave up any further attempts to impose an education on him, and had to watch him go his own way.

  Now, as he walked the dismal streets, the first sunlight began to appear in the sky. This place was his security. Most of the time he liked to kid himself that Fordsburg was a thing of the past. And then, in moments such as this, he needed to come back. He knew he could be thrown back into it and survive. That was his strength against people with money and influence, people like General Muller and Mr Bernard Aschaar. What bothered Major Deon de Wet was his reponsibility to his own family. Would they stand by him, if things got difficult? At least they would never be able to look on him the way he had looked on his own father.

  He got back to his car and slipped behind the steer
ing wheel, catching sight of his face, torn and disturbed, in the rear-view mirror. The car started easily and he pulled away from the kerb.

  His mind began carefully to put together the report of a simple case of house-breaking that had resulted in three deaths, and the mysterious disappearance of silver after the robbery. A report that somehow included his almost certain knowledge that Gen­eral Muller had deliberately steered attention away from the real motives for the break-in.

  He knew he was beginning his own silent battle against the real culprits.

  Major Deon de Wet’s full file on the robbery of Mr Bernard Aschaar’s house in Westcliff was not to be found at police headquarters, nor was it in his desk at home. If his wife had been asked if she knew of the existence of such a file, she would have reliably reported that she didn’t. It was hidden in a metal box buried at the bottom of the de Wet garden. In the box lay also the documents and the film Deon had found in the safe.

  Deon knew that he had latched onto something very import­ant. Muller’s behaviour in the house still bothered him. He had always had a basic mistrust of Muller, and now this case had reinforced his suspicions. Bernard Aschaar was a wealthy and powerful businessman - it was not unthinkable that he was paying Muller off.

  Deep down, though Deon would have refused to admit it, there was another reason for his interest in the contents of the safe. The mining company Aschaar ran, Goldcorp, was still owned by Max Golden, who had had something to do with his father’s fall from grace. Deon remembered his father’s insistence that Golden was corrupt; his policeman’s mind had filed the information away, keeping it permanently on hold.

  Unfortunately, because he worked in the murder and robbery section of the force, Deon did not automatically have access to the information he needed to pursue his enquiries - and to ask his colleagues too many questions would be to give the game away. So Deon began by investigating the supposed theft of the Georgian silver he had seen at the house. He knew it hadn’t been stolen, but the thieves were dead and no one would believe his story. If Muller said the silver had gone, then it had gone. Where to, was another question.

  He got in touch with a useful contact, an expert in antique silver. The man was not only able to tell him where the service had been bought, but he also knew about the unusual hallmarks Deon had seen on it. He had then made a call to a friend of his who sold antiques to Aschaar. This man relayed the information that a toad-like individual in a badly fitting suit had delivered a metal case to him for safe-keeping for Mr Aschaar that same day. Deon had no doubt that the silver was locked inside it.

  The office was enormous, and spartan. Through the two high windows the last rays of sunshine poured in like spotlights on a stage. Deon de Wet could see dust swirling in the pools of sunlight, and beyond, a figure seated at an ancient desk.

  The man was writing, and did not bother to look up as he came into the room. Deon walked up to the table and saluted. Still the Minister continued to write, and Deon wondered if he was actually aware that there was anyone else in the room.

  ‘You may sit down, Major de Wet.’

  Still he carried on writing, a precise script that never faltered, the head bent over the clean white paper, the thin blond-grey hair barely covering the pale, freckled scalp. This man had fought his way up to one of the most powerful positions of government and demanded respect from everyone who worked for him. Major de Wet had felt courageous at many times of his life, but at this precise moment he was feeling distinctly uneasy.

  The Minister put his pen down, leaned back and placed his hands behind his head. The cold, grey eyes stared.

  ‘Major de Wet. I don’t think that there is another man in South Africa’s police force with a record comparable to your own. As you no doubt realise, we struggle to get recruits of high calibre. You are a very intelligent young man and, without doubt, remarkably good at your job.

  ‘Your family past is of no interest to this force as long as it does not interfere with your work. One cannot be held respon­sible for the actions of one’s parents or one’s brother. You married an Afrikaner, your children go to a good Afrikaans school. All these things bode well for your future, Major de Wet.’

  Deon trembled as he waited for the crunch line.

  ‘I am pleased to announce your appointment as major-general with effect from today.’

  Deon felt himself swaying on his feet. This was the last thing he had expected; he had not believed he would get another big promotion for at least five years. But he refused to admit a smile; he could tell there was something more the Minister had to say, and that it would refer to his own sphere of influence within the police force.

  ‘Please sit down, Major-General de Wet.’

  Deon took a chair. Obviously his new rank allowed a little more informality with the Minister.

  ‘Congratulations are also in order for your handling of the burglary at Mr Bernard Aschaar’s house last Saturday. General Muller tells me you caught the robbers red-handed.’ The Minister paused, and stared directly at De Wet. ‘The robbery, it turns out, is of interest to the Bureau of State Security and it has been handed over for their investigation. I would appreciate it if you would assist them with the details of the affair. Naturally, your own investigations on this matter will cease forthwith.’

  The smile was icy. The word ‘forthwith’ had been enunciated with particular emphasis. Deon had the distinct impression that he was being bought. This appointment could only have been as a result of General Muller’s direct commendation.

  He got to his feet. ‘Thank you, sir. I hope I will be able to do justice to the position you have given me.’

  The following weekend, Teresa de Wet decided to visit her mother with the children. Deon stayed at home, pleading work. On Saturday afternoon, checking that none of the neighbours was around, he walked nonchalantly down to the bottom of the garden. He looked just like any other middle-class South African husband who had decided on the spur of the moment to do a little weekend gardening.

  The spade cut easily through the ground and soon he had unearthed the metal box. It came out smoothly from its resting place, and he carried it to the room at the back of the garage. He locked the door behind him and prised open the lid.

  Suddenly there was a rap on the door; then another. Deon froze, unsure of what to do. In an instant he had pulled himself together, leapt up onto the workbench and hidden the box on the wooden rafters that supported the roof. Jumping to the floor, he pushed a set of garden shears into the industrial vice set into the corner of his work bench. Another rap on the door. He opened it quickly.

  ‘God, Deon, what the hell are you up to? Oiling your shears! You police guys take this secrecy business a bit too far. Have you got some petrol? My lawnmower’s run out and I can’t get any more this weekend because of the bloody restrictions.’

  Deon felt the relief soaring through his body. It was his next- door neighbour, John Tillson, a Yorkshireman out in South Africa on contract for his company.

  ‘No problem, John. I’ve got several jerry-cans in the front of the garage. Guess I’ve got used to doing things behind closed doors!’

  They walked round to the front of the garage, and Deon handed John a jerry-can of petrol.

  ‘Bloody hell, I don’t want to fill my car up, Deon. You could get arrested with that lot, you should know, the law states only a ten-litre can of petrol can be kept on the premises.’

  ‘You see, even a policeman can be a crook at times. Actually I’ve got a licence to keep this lot here. It’s in case of emergencies, you can’t have the Flying Squad running out of petrol, you know.’

  ‘Well, thanks, Deon, I’ll bring the can back full on Monday morning. Otherwise, no doubt, you’ll have me up for obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty!’

  He waited for John to disappear and then walked back into the garage. It wasn’t like him to be so jumpy.

  What he wanted to do was quite simple and would not excite any attention. He’d ma
de sure the incinerator was packed with leaves and old grass, and the things he wanted to destroy could easily be placed within this rubbish and would burn to ashes, which he then planned to bury in the garden. No one knew he had the material, so no one would come looking for it.

  Deon locked the garage door behind him again and took the box down from the rafters. The lid had jammed, and he had to force it open with a screwdriver. It came loose, at last - so violently that the contents of the file flew across the floor as it fell out. He picked up the pieces of paper first because he knew they would bum the easiest.

  A photograph caught his eye. He tried not to look at it but it was no good. The woman was naked, lying face-down on a table, her legs dangling to the floor. Her hands were tied to the far corners of the table. A man stood above her holding a rubber whip - a sjambok - and another looked on smiling. There were heavy weals across her back and buttocks. The next photograph featured the same woman and man, but this time he was assaulting her. Deon knew these were not posed pornographic pictures, rather they were snapshots of an actual event that someone wanted recorded.

  He felt something rise up deep within him, something the boys who had been at the dance had seen so many years before: a hatred of evil. He knew he would not be able to leave this thing alone.

  In the enlargement that Deon had had made, the woman on the table looked as if she were in her late teens - the lines on her face were only there because she was in a lot of pain. She was extremely attractive; a slim body, from what he could see, perfectly formed. Her hair was dark and short. What was the story behind this photograph? How could this man have per­formed such a bestial act on such a beautiful creature?

  The man next to Deon coughed to break the silence. He was a slight, anaemic-looking man wearing blotchy horn-rimmed spec­tacles; Major-General Deon de Wet made him feel uneasy, and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the darkroom put him on edge. ‘Good picture, don’t you think, Marcus?’