by Mike Nicol
‘No, Mr Trigger, not mine. Think again.’
‘The man next to the man in the pictures.’
‘Clever boy.’
Spitz thought, why not go straight in, she was cockteasing anyhow. ‘I am thirsty,’ he said. ‘I can buy you a drink.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sheemina February. ‘Why spoil it.’
‘What is the thing we have to spoil?’
‘Lots, Spitz. I’ve this image of you. From your brogues to your short dreads.’
Spitz let the curtain fall closed. So the lady knew stuff. ‘Only one drink? I will pay for it.’
‘I’ve got a client to comfort, Mr Trigger. This is no time for socialising.’
On the television the credits were rolling. He’d missed the takeoff, the look of unrequited love on Bogie’s face.
‘There could be afterwards?’
‘Till the weekend, you’re on your own. Enjoy the city.’
‘I mean after you have taken Mr Chocho back to the prison?’
‘Then I’m going home to bed.’
‘We could meet anywhere you like?’
‘Forget it, Spitz. I don’t need any other nonsense.’
He liked her more and more. The sort of woman he could talk to. Not freaked by life.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Show me your town. Tonight. Or on any night? Or you could take me up the mountain. That is something that I must do.’
‘Forget it, Mr Trigger. I don’t do tourists. What you do is tomorrow you do the job. Friday you drive away for the main contract. In between you can go up the mountain. With the other tourists.’
‘No. There is a problem with the car.’
‘What sort?’
‘We have to leave it.’
‘Why?’
‘For the police to find.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘This was the arrangement with them. After a week it is in their computer system that it was stolen.’
She paused, Spitz imagined her frowning as she worked it out. Then: ‘You’ll get a replacement. And another gun. How’s that? Very professional.’
‘Show me your town,’ said Spitz. ‘One drink on the town.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised at you.’
The softness of Sheemina February’s voice stirring movement in his groin.
‘Why are you surprised with me?’
‘I thought you were the consummate professional.’
‘I am such a person.’
‘Wanting to seduce the client.’
‘I want to buy you a drink. I think you are a nice lady.’
‘Sure, Spitz. But I think not. So leave it.’
Spitz frowned. Weren’t many women, weren’t any women, who spoke to him like that.
‘Tomorrow night. And Saturday night on the farm. Those’re your obligations. Nice talking to you, Spitz.’
She disconnected and Spitz decided that one thing he’d do before he left the city was have Sheemina February.
He dropped into a chair. The continuity announcer on the television was promising Play it Again, Sam up next. Spitz didn’t know if he could watch a Woody Allen. He would rather smoke menthols, listen to bad songs, fantasise about Sheemina February.
23
As Judge Telman Visser powered his wheelchair out of the shower room, up the ramp to the gym’s entrance, his personal trainer came trotting up. A young man, sweat stained.
‘See you out, judge?’ he said, dropping to a walk beside the wheelchair.
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Judge Telman Visser smiling up at the face that for the last hour had talked him through bench presses and weights and a rowing regime that had worked his heart until he thought it might pop. A face he could exercise with. A face he found engaging.
An engaging young man all round, saying to him, ‘There’s another murder happened on the golf estate where my ma’s employed. At Tokai.’
Employed. Not works. A young man bettering himself.
‘Oh,’ said Judge Visser, ‘I hadn’t heard.’ He paused to take in a light the colour of chardonnay that washed the Constantia valley to the mountain, pale and hazed.
‘Nothing on the news yet. My mom told me.’
‘Really,’ said the judge. ‘I’m not sure I even knew about the first one.’
‘Man shot his wife,’ said the young man. ‘You must have a lot of that in court.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said the judge. ‘A lot of it doesn’t come to trial. But enough does.’
‘This oldie got fifteen years. I mean really an oldie. Like sixty-five or something. He said he did it to stop his wife suffering.’
‘Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Seneca.’ As they left the building and started down the path to the car park, the judge steered towards his car in the bay reserved for the handicapped. ‘From the earth to the stars, there is no easy way.’
‘I suppose,’ said the trainer. Unsure, frowning.
Judge Visser glanced at the puzzlement on the brown face. ‘Life’s a bitch,’ he said, which made the young man laugh.
‘Fifteen years is a bit harsh though.’
‘I wouldn’t want to comment,’ said the judge. ‘Without knowing the facts.’ He aimed his remote at the car and unlocked it, hydraulic pumps kicking in to open the hatch door, lower the ramp.
‘This is just the coolest car,’ said the trainer. ‘Every time I see it I can’t believe what they’ve done.’
‘It cost,’ said the judge. ‘And while it works, it’s wonderful. I don’t want to think about something breaking down. I’d be truly buggered.’ He lined up on the ramp, looked at the eager face of his personal trainer. ‘That other murder, did your mother say who was killed.’
‘Uh-uh. She’s not nearby. You know, grapevine stuff among the staff. But she did hear they were black.’
‘Oh well,’ said the judge, ‘c’est la vie’ – reaching out to squeeze the young man’s arm. A strong arm, firmly muscled. Arms that he’d let lift him into his wheelchair from time to time.
‘Right,’ said the trainer.
‘Such is life.’ The judge released his grip and rode the wheelchair up the ramp into the car. He dropped his kit bag on the passenger seat and pressed the remote to lift the ramp and close the door. His wheelchair clicked into position behind the steering wheel. The judge pressed a button to lower the side window where his trainer was waiting to say goodbye.
‘Do you like kudu?’ Judge Visser asked. ‘Occasionally we shoot one on the farm. Fresh kudu is better than any meat you’ve ever tasted. Perhaps you’d like to come with me to the farm? For a break? A couple of days, next time I go.’
‘Oh wow,’ said the trainer.
Sometimes the judge thought of him more as a boy than a young man. A boy with unbound enthusiasm for life.
‘That’d be cool.’
‘Alright then, the next trip I make,’ said the judge. ‘Should we say in a month?’
‘Brilliant,’ said the trainer. ‘Let me know, I’ll take off some time.’
The judge smiled as he drove away: that would be an entertaining few days.
At home, with a large scotch to hand, Judge Visser phoned his father. The old man was worked up.
‘I just heard,’ he said, ‘Niemand’s dead. Burnt to death, the stupid fellow.’
‘What?’ said the judge. ‘Old Jan?’
‘No one else called Niemand I know,’ said Marius Visser.
‘Burnt to death.’ The judge taking a mouthful of the scotch.
‘Speak Afrikaans. That’s what I said. In his office.’
‘When?’ The judge switching to his home language.
‘Friday night.’
‘Christ,’ said the judge.
‘I will have no blasphemy,’ said Marius Visser, going silent but the judge had no intention of apologising. His father starting again, ‘You know she kicked him out, that bloody wife of his, Betsy. She to
ld him to smoke his cigars outside, not in her house, not in her bedroom, not in her bed. A month ago he told me he moved out. To hell with the woman, he said, if he wanted to smoke he was going to smoke.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said the judge. ‘You never said anything about that.’
‘I wouldn’t. I’m only telling you because he’s dead. Stupid fool.’
‘And Betsy?’
‘I phoned her. She’s not talking or crying. I can’t talk to someone on the phone who doesn’t answer back. The children are there with her. I can’t talk to them either, they’re crying. The daughters and the son. What a bloody mess.’
The children, thought the judge, were his age. The youngest probably in her forties. The two daughters married to farmers. The son a lawyer in another town.
‘In the old days,’ his father was saying, ‘the fire engine would have got there. Probably saved the building and Jan. This time they couldn’t get the engine started. Bloody darkies. You give them a pencil they break it. What’re they going to do with a fire engine?’
Judge Visser cut in, ‘Jan was…’
‘Toast,’ his father said. ‘The latest word I hear on the TV. To you and me burnt meat. Charcoal.’
‘They couldn’t get him out?’
‘A bloody raging fire, Telman. Everything burned. All his papers. My bloody will. The farm documents. Bloody everything. No one could get into the building the fire was so fierce.’
‘Christ,’ said the judge.
‘Ag, Telman,’ said Marius Visser. ‘Not the Lord’s name, please.’
The judge stared at the reflection of himself in the window, the garden now dark. A man in a wheelchair, a phone to his ear, a glass of whisky in his right hand. He found the sight troubling. Raising an anger in him. At himself. At his father.
His father was saying the funeral would be on Friday, maybe it would be a good thing if he could come up.
‘I can’t make it,’ said Judge Visser. ‘I’m on a commission.’
‘What commission?’ said Marius Visser.
‘It doesn’t matter. The arms deal scandal. We have hearings all next week.’
‘I didn’t expect you to come.’ Which to Judge Visser meant the opposite. ‘But on the weekend, you could.’ He paused. ‘Maybe Betsy Niemand is a hard woman but we can show some respect. Christian compassion. For the whole family, Telman.’
‘It’s impossible,’ said the judge. ‘Not next weekend.’ He could imagine his father’s temper rising at this obstruction.
‘You are a judge, Telman. In my time that meant something. People respected you. If you said something they listened. And you could bloody well have the court go into recess for a day. Two days. A week. If that was what you decided.’
‘No, Pa,’ said Judge Visser. ‘Pa, listen to me. I cannot come to the farm this weekend.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Telman. I don’t ask anything of you,’ said Marius Visser. ‘But I’m asking this: pay your respects.’
At the anger in his father’s voice, Judge Telman Visser smiled and relaxed. He eased his grip of the phone, tapped a finger dance on the rim of his whisky glass. ‘I will write to Betsy Niemand,’ he said. ‘And send flowers with my condolences.’ He heard his father curse, the swear word muffled as Marius Visser covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Vervloekte seun.’
In English the judge said, ‘This weekend you will have a visitor, though.’
‘What’s this?’ his father said. ‘What visitor?’
‘A security adviser,’ said the judge, reverting to his father’s language. ‘His name’s Mace Bishop.’
‘No, Telman. Not this weekend. That’s impossible. With all this other business going on.’
‘He can sleep in the guest cottage,’ said the judge.
‘And who’s going to feed him?’
‘Farmer’s hospitality. What is one more mouth?’
‘Tell him to bring his own food.’
‘You need to talk to him, Pa,’ said Judge Visser. ‘Tell him everything that’s been going on. About the fences pushed over. He’s a good man. The best in the business.’
‘An Englishman?’
‘He speaks English, yes.’
‘Bah.’ The sound exploded in the judge’s ear. ‘What does an Englishman know of farm murders?’
Judge Visser switched languages. ‘I’ll let you have the exact arrangements later in the week.’
‘You talk too much English,’ said his father. ‘You sound like a bloody Englishman.’ The line went dead.
Judge Telman Visser thumbed off his phone and took a sip at the whisky. He stared through his reflection into the night. At the bottom of the driveway he could see a light winking as a breeze moved the foliage.
The problem with his father, he thought, was that he was his father. A problem that haunted his earliest memories.
Judge Visser propelled his wheelchair to the liquor cabinet and poured a shot two fingers deep into his glass. In his study waited a file on the arms scandal. A depressing account of self-enrichment. The avarice of the powerful. And the Machiavellian guile with which they’d been hooked by men like one Rudi Klett. Rudi Klett would have stories to tell about the worst of human nature. Perhaps he should have suggested a meal to the engaging young trainer. Enjoyed instead the better side of human nature and passed a pleasurable evening that might have opened up other possibilities.
His telephone rang and for a moment he wondered if it was his father. Unlikely. The old man was not given to remorse. He considered, too, letting the answering machine take the call. Having to talk to anyone other than the engaging young trainer seemed a hassle too far.
On the sixth ring he took it.
The voice was a woman’s: sophisticated, firm, instantly recognisable. She said, ‘This is Sheemina February, Judge Visser. As you know Obed Chocho is my client.’
‘Indeed,’ he said.
Since they’d last spoken he’d found out certain things about Sheemina February. That once she’d represented the Muslim organisation, People Against Gangsters and Drugs. That she’d blocked a controversial development in the city when the bones of slaves were excavated on the site. She’d taken up the cause and cost the developer millions. Also got half the city in an uproar that the remains of their ancestors were being disrespected. He’d sympathised with her fight. But he couldn’t imagine how she’d become the lawyer of someone like Obed Chocho. Surely Chocho would have someone from the Black Lawyers Forum. Had had some black lawyer. That he’d replaced a blood brother with a coloured sister intrigued Judge Telman Visser.
‘Judge Visser?’ said Sheemina February. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Judge Visser,’ said Sheemina February, ‘I am applying for my client to be released on compassionate grounds.’
‘I’m not a parole officer,’ said the judge. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘My apologies for disturbing you at home on a Sunday. But I believe I have exceptional cause.’
‘Go on.’
‘My client is due for parole next weekend. On Friday actually. But he has…’ She paused. ‘His wife has been murdered. Under the circumstances I am petitioning for his early release.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Judge Visser. ‘But I still don’t see… This is surely a matter for the prison authorities.’
‘Of course,’ said Sheemina February. ‘I have consulted with the prison commander and he has no objection. The same with the chairman of the parole board.’
‘Then?’
‘The petition needs a judge’s authorisation. As the judge who sentenced Mr Chocho, as the judicial officer most intimate with his case and character, I believed you would be sympathetic.’
She paused and Judge Visser felt the manipulation in the moment’s silence: the undertow of her words. He marvelled at her timing as she came in just as he was about to speak.
‘Mr Chocho is severely distressed, as you can under
stand. He has been sedated. Obviously in his condition he could not leave the prison tonight.’
‘I see,’ said the judge.
‘If you cannot…’ said Sheemina February, ‘then you cannot…’
‘No, no,’ said Judge Visser. ‘That’s alright.’ And himself left a gap before saying, ‘Tell me, how was his wife killed?’
‘She was shot. Police believe during a robbery.’
‘At their home?’
‘No. She was visiting a colleague.’
‘Dreadful,’ he said. ‘Will you wait a moment.’
Judge Telman Visser put the phone down and sank a good finger of his whisky in a single swallow. If the man was to be released in five days, there could be no harm in letting him go early. What signal could it send the public but one of judicial compassion. Would he make the same call for common convicts? Probably not. But Obed Chocho was not a common convict. He picked up the phone.
‘Miss February, tomorrow morning at my chambers.’
‘I do appreciate this, judge,’ said Sheemina February. ‘I owe you a favour.’
‘No,’ said Judge Telman Visser, ‘your reference the other day has proved useful.’
‘I’m pleased. He’s a good man, Mace Bishop,’ said Sheemina February. ‘Ideal in the situation.’ And rang off.
The name reminded Judge Visser that he still didn’t have the man’s agreement. Without replacing the handset, the judge dialled the cellphone of Mace Bishop. He got voicemail. The message he left said please to call him urgently. Next he tried Mace Bishop’s home number. The person who answered said she was Christa Bishop.
He gave her his name: Judge Telman Visser. He said he knew her father was out of the country but that the soon as he got home he was to phone, no matter what the time.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘This is most important. Most urgent.’
When he’d put the phone down, Judge Telman Visser realised his heart was pounding. He was slightly breathless. He gripped the arms of the wheelchair and brought his breathing under control.
24
‘What’s this about, Rudi?’ said Mace from the front passenger seat as Rudi Klett gave his driver an address in the Grunewald. The driver a big goon, shaven head, pierced ears.
