Not take the chance? Yudel wondered. Was this Abigail speaking? By her standards this was no chance at all.
“Here they are,” she said. A strongly built African man in a dark suit had stopped in the doorway of the hotel. He was looking at Abigail with an intensity Yudel had often seen in men when looking at a desirable woman. No doubt there had been times when he had looked at women that way himself. The way this man looked at Abigail was no surprise to Yudel. What did surprise him was the hurried, almost frantic way she rose and crossed the lobby to meet him. “I’ll see you later,” she murmured.
Yudel followed as far as the glass doors. When he reached them, Chunga had opened the door on the passenger side for her. Abigail hesitated a moment, momentarily looking up into Chunga’s eyes, before she got in. Yudel saw something surprisingly self-conscious about her movements, something he had never before seen in her. Damn, he thought, this is not going to make things any easier.
27
The police cells to which Jonas Chunga took Abigail were on the southeastern side of town. The cells served more than one township, some shack settlements and a number of suburbs. They had to pass through a spreading tangle of simple dwellings to reach them. An assortment of street vendors plied their trade along streets where buses, minibus taxis and the occasional battered car stirred up the dusty surface. Some of the houses were coated in a layer of reddish dust that was probably a permanent part of their appearance now.
Abigail had seen it all before in other parts of the continent. The food being sold along the road was of the simplest kind, each vendor displaying only a small assortment of vegetables or a few live chickens in cages. The advantage of selling live chickens was that your stock needed no refrigeration. If you made no sales that day, your produce would not go bad overnight.
The police building suited the area. It was an old house, also colonial in style, but nothing like the clubhouse of Saturday night. Like so much of the city, the building had been kept immaculately clean. Porch, floor and windows showed no sign of dirt. It was clear that even the daily dust from the street was swept or washed away regularly. Finding the budget to replace anything that had broken was another matter. Whatever signage may once have proclaimed the existence of a police unit in the building had long since disappeared. So had the front gate, leaving only the rusted frame that once held it.
Chunga asked her to wait in the charge office, while he passed through a door into the back of the building. Two officers behind the desk and a small line of local people, waiting to receive attention, all turned to look at her with undisguised curiosity. A young constable brought a hard-backed wooden chair from behind the counter that separated the staff from the public. “Would you like to sit down, ma’am?” he asked, making only the briefest, most deferential eye contact.
Abigail smiled at the policeman and accepted the chair. Sitting on it was a problem though. One of the people in the line was a woman who may have been eighty or more. Abigail carried the chair to where she was standing. “Sit down, mother,” she said. The old woman looked uncertainly at the constable who had offered Abigail the chair. “It’s all right, mother,” Abigail told her. “You sit down.”
The constable was frowning at Abigail, but more in puzzlement than annoyance. The old woman sat down and Abigail returned to where she had been standing at the counter. She smiled at the constable, more as a protection for the old woman than as a gesture of friendliness. He tried to smile back at her. His confusion only lasted a moment. Abigail saw him bend over. When he straightened up he was carrying another chair. This time Abigail had no choice but to sit down.
She reflected on the drive to the police station. She had expected it to be quiet; for Chunga to feel at least some degree of awkwardness after Saturday night. Instead, it could have been that nothing had passed between them.
He told her how pleased he was that they had made an arrest and that they believed the man they were holding was the culprit. He was one of the class of criminals who could not stay out of jail. Before this, he had been convicted of other violent crimes for a variety of motives. He had killed Patel in revenge. Chunga explained how the suspect had been represented by Patel some years before on an armed-robbery charge, but had been sent to jail. Apparently, he had harbored a grudge against Patel ever since. He was a volatile, unstable character and he had been boasting about the killing in a township tavern. An informer had turned him in.
Chunga’s reappearance interrupted Abigail’s thoughts. He led her to a room in the back of the police station. A man wearing a suit and tie, whom Abigail took to be one of Chunga’s men, and a uniformed policeman with a pen and writing pad were seated on one side of a large table. Opposite them was another man in civilian clothes, but he wore no tie or jacket. At the far end, a small, hard-eyed man looked suspiciously at Abigail. He was wearing the sort of khakis that a farmer might give his laborers as work clothes. He had been shackled, both hands and feet. Across from him were two empty chairs. Chunga showed Abigail to one and took the other himself.
“Who this lady is?” The accused man had not turned his head toward Abigail. Only his eyes had moved.
“Shut up. We ask the questions,” the man in the suit said. He was not a tall man, younger than Chunga, but stocky, almost as powerful a figure. He was not nearly as well dressed. A collar on the verge of fraying strained to encompass a thick neck that merged almost imperceptibly into broad, sloping shoulders. Only his tie, a glossy, bright scarlet, looked as if it had been bought in the last year. “Does the director want us to begin?” he asked.
“Thank you, Agent Mpofu,” Chunga said. He nodded to the other man in civilian clothes. “Please go ahead, Inspector Dzuze.”
“I want to know who is the lady.” The prisoner’s eyes were traveling back and forth between Chunga and Abigail.
“What you don’t want is to make us angry,” Mpofu said.
“Why I can’t know?”
Abigail saw something simultaneously aggressive and servile in the suspect. She could imagine him down on his knees begging on a street corner, but knifing in the back anyone who refused him.
“I want to know who is the lady. Is she Mr. Patel’s lady?”
Mpofu moved in his chair, as if ready to attack the suspect. Abigail looked at Chunga and saw the set jaw and firm control she was getting to know.
“Is this lady Mr. Patel’s lady?” the prisoner whined.
“This little bastard is looking for trouble.” Mpofu’s voice had developed a harsh rasping tone. His hands had hardened into fists.
The prisoner was looking at Abigail out of the corners of his eyes, but this time he was wise enough not to continue. Chunga had raised a hand from the surface of the table and was patting the air very gently. The gesture seemed to be aimed at Mpofu.
“My name is Abigail Bukula,” Abigail said. “I am an advocate and Mr. Patel was assisting me in a court action against the government. Could you tell me your name?”
“Kleinbooi Mokgareng.”
“You’re a South African,” Abigail said. “Why are you killing people in Zimbabwe?”
She thought she saw his eyes flick toward Mpofu before answering. “Mister Patel let them put me in jail.”
“The state put you in jail, not Mr. Patel.”
“This lawyer should not be questioning the suspect.” Inspector Dzuze made himself heard for the first time since Abigail had come in. He was looking at Chunga. Everyone took his lead from the CIO director.
“The inspector is right,” Chunga told Abigail. “Please continue, inspector.”
“We already have the motive recorded,” Dzuze said. “Tell us what you did on the night.”
“I shoot this little bastard, Patel.”
“Tell us from the beginning about that night.”
The prisoner looked from Chunga to Abigail. “I take the gun from my friend Albert’s place.” The uniformed policeman started writing. “Then I go to the place where I know Patel works. I go upstairs in the b
uilding and wait for him to come out.” He was answering Dzuze’s question, but his eyes were roving back and forth between Chunga and Abigail. Like a wild animal he had read the situation and knew that the danger was real, but, like an animal that has not yet seen the predator, he could not know just how great the danger was and from which direction it may come. “When he come out, I shoot him.”
“So you’re saying…” Dzuze began.
“What make of rifle was it?” Abigail interrupted. The men in the room all turned to look at her.
“I not know.”
“What was the time when you did it?”
“Not late. Maybe eight o’clock. I not know.”
“Where does your friend live?”
“There on the other side.” He waved a hand. “Kuwadzana.”
“How did you get from your friend’s place to the place where you killed him?”
“I walk.”
“Carrying the rifle—openly—so everyone could see it?”
He stared at Mpofu now. The CIO man saved him the need to answer. “Director Chunga, this is not right.”
“Abigail, please.” Chunga said gently. “Let our people do their work.”
“I’d just like to know which building he fired from and how he gained access to it.”
“Please, Abigail.”
It took Dzuze a long moment to gather his thoughts before continuing, but the real hostility Abigail felt came from Agent Mpofu. He was taking deep breaths. His eyes were hard. Abigail’s interruption was clearly an outrage. Dzuze spoke: “So what happened after you shot Mr. Patel?”
“I run.”
Abigail interrupted again. “With the rifle?”
“I take the rifle back to Albert.”
Dzuze turned his attention to Chunga. “The rifle is in our possession and it has been fired recently.”
“Did you find the spent cartridges or the bullets?” This time Abigail was talking to Dzuze. Mpofu threw up his hands in apparent disgust.
“Abigail, I must ask you not to interrupt,” Chunga told her. “You’re here as an observer only.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We found no shells at the scene.”
“I throw them.” To Abigail it seemed that the prisoner was trying to come to Dzuze’s aid. “I throw them by the bush.”
“He could point out the spot,” she said. “It should be easy enough to recover them.”
Chunga put a hand on Abigail’s forearm nearest to him. “Abigail…”
But she was already rising. “It’s all right, Jonas. I’ll wait in the charge office.”
* * *
When Chunga came out, she was waiting for him on one of the straight-back chairs the young police officer had offered her. The old lady had left, presumably having completed her business with the police. Her chair too had disappeared.
On the way back, Abigail was expecting some sort of reprimand, but Chunga only smiled at her. She had seen the same look on Robert’s face when he was planning a surprise for her. “A drink?” he suggested.
Yes, she thought, I could use a drink. “Why not?” she said.
The café to which he took her had tables and chairs in a garden you could not see from the road. Chunga ordered a whiskey from a white-suited waiter wearing a red fez. Abigail asked for a Coke. “How many pleasant places like this still exist in Harare?” she asked.
“Not enough.”
“And you know them all?”
“There’s not much in Harare I don’t know. I need to know the city.”
“And what do you know about your suspect? Frankly, he doesn’t seem to know too much about what happened that night.” Abigail said it challengingly, expecting him to defend their arrest.
“I agree,” he said.
“You agree?” How was it, she wondered, that he caught her off-balance so easily. “Jonas, why are you so unlike everything I expected?”
“What did you expect?”
“I expected you to defend all government and CIO actions.”
He smiled, a warm, playful expression. “Saturday evening you didn’t seem to mind my being different.”
What was there to say? Abigail looked down at her hands, then back into that smile that seemed to be saying, whatever happens I’ll be there to protect you. Or was that truly what it was saying? And how could he so easily create this confusion in her?
With a wrench, she forced her attention back to the man they had arrested. “I have to talk about more serious matters.”
The amusement disappeared. “You have my attention.” She could see that it was true. There was none of the patronizing of women that, in her experience, was so common in men, especially African men.
“As long as you hold that man, your men will not be looking for the real killer.”
“I know. I’ve already instructed them to question him further to confirm these suspicions. I expect he’ll be released no later than tomorrow, unless we find new evidence.”
And yet you haven’t even questioned Patel’s widow, Abigail thought. But she drove the conversation in a new direction. “Also, on Saturday night the Makwati twins were arrested, apparently by your men. Are they also just going to be missing?”
“No. We have them.”
There it was again, another of his unexpected admissions. “Are you going to charge them?”
“I am. They were apparently keeping watch on the prison gate. No country allows that.” He was speaking seriously, wanting her to understand his position. “You have to ask yourself what their motive could be.”
“Perhaps they were looking for their friends.”
“If their friends are in Chikurubi, no one is going to see them from the outside.”
“Are you going to protect them?”
“Why should I?”
“Why did you protect them after the bombing?”
This time Chunga struggled for a reply. “It was not my decision only.” He stumbled over the words. “My director general knew about it.” With a visible effort to take back control of the conversation, he directed the discussion onto a new track. “I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“Who’s the white man you were talking to in the hotel?”
“He’s a friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“You’re not jealous are you, Mr. Chunga?” Damn you, Abigail, she said to herself. Why do you go over to flirtation so readily with this man?
“Perhaps,” Chunga said. He looked seriously at her, the same look she had seen in Patel’s office the day she first met him.
“Yudel Gordon is a criminologist. He’s come to assist me.”
“That’s a very good friend.”
“He is.”
“I also have something important to tell you.” He let her wait for the revelation. She said nothing, only returning his gaze with curious eyes. “A really important something.”
Forget it, Jonas, she thought, I’m not going to play your game. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out a folded sheet of paper and passed it to her. Abigail looked into his eyes without immediately unfolding the paper.
“Open it.”
She did as he instructed. The letter carried the national coat of arms. It had been written by someone in the Department of Justice and it announced the date of the hearing. “It’s tomorrow,” Abigail said. “Why didn’t you give it to me earlier?”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you would have stayed at the hotel to prepare. I wouldn’t have had your company this morning.”
She waved the letter at him. “Jonas, I don’t know how to thank you. How did you do it so fast?”
“In Zimbabwe you need connections.”
“I can see that.” She looked again at the letter. “The letter says it’s being held in Chikurubi prison.”
“The courts were full and special preparations are being made in the prison.”
Abi
gail thought about what was convenient for the authorities, and how holding the hearing in the prison meant that neither the public nor the press could be present. The hearing could be held in absolute privacy. Perhaps even the court’s decision would not be made public. Why, Jonas, she asked silently, when you do something to make me trust you, is there always some reason in it to fuel my distrust?
“I want Mr. Gordon to come with me.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
“Does the judge have a name?”
“It’s in the letter.”
Abigail glanced at the letter again. Her habit of reading very fast often meant that she stopped reading letters and reports as soon as she thought she had the essential information. It sometimes resulted in her missing facts that she needed to know. “Judge Mujuru,” she read.
“An excellent and fair judge,” Chunga said.
I hope so, Abigail thought.
28
The afternoon passed slowly for Yudel. Abigail was in her room, preparing for the next morning’s hearing. Rosa was in their room, waiting for her niece to collect her. To pass the time she was reading a book about space travelers who had occupied the earth five hundred million years ago. “It sounds like science fiction,” Yudel had said.
“Don’t attack something just because you know nothing about it,” Rosa answered.
Idleness never sat easily on Yudel. Waiting for anything was almost an impossible ordeal. He was accustomed always to be wrestling with some problem. During daylight hours, he was either working on some aspect of his rehabilitation plan, or interviewing individual prisoners. Often there was not time enough in the day to deal with problems arising from the rehabilitation program. On those occasions the problems went home with him. Otherwise his evenings were spent consulting on criminal matters or seeing patients with emotional problems. Reading was done in bed, the book sometimes falling from his hands as sleep overtook him.
The next morning Abigail would come face-to-face with the very reason Krisj Patel had brought her here. Outwardly, there seemed to be nothing he could do to help her. But he knew this was not so. He could feel, somewhere deep inside himself, that there were aspects of Abigail’s case that needed his attention, but what they were eluded him. Then there was the death of this Patel. And the investigation into it was being conducted by people who were definitely not sympathetic to the lawyer.
Those Who Love Night Page 16
