Game of Stones

by David Maughan Brown

  ‘And your children?’ Cameron asked quietly, after waiting for Mutoni to go on.

  ‘As soon as the RPF arrived I went back to the church, of course. I found them lying side by side. At least they died together. I was able to bury them. I was one of the lucky ones.’

  ‘Christ, just how lucky can you get?’ Cameron muttered. And he was the one with post-traumatic stress disorder. How could anyone who had survived what Mutoni had lived through not end up stark raving mad? He had often thought how relatively un-traumatic his stress had been compared to that of many black activists under apartheid. What Mutoni had been through was of a different order of magnitude altogether. She had told the story without even considering it necessary to mention that her own head had been slashed open. How had her wound managed to heal in the mud? She wouldn’t have encountered many St John’s Ambulance volunteers among the papyrus.

  ‘Spending that long in the mud couldn’t have done you much good,’ Cameron observed. ‘How did you survive? How did you stop yourself from going mad?’

  ‘There weren’t any crocodiles, just mosquitoes. I managed to find just enough food at night to keep alive, and I clung on to the truth of two Kinyarwanda proverbs. The one – “one lives through the day, one never steps beyond the day” – reminded me to focus on staying alive just one day at a time. The other was even more important: “You can outdistance what is running after you, but not what is running inside you.” I had outdistanced what was running after me. I needed to hold myself together, not to allow fear or despair to run too fast inside me, so that when I lifted myself out of the mud I could find my children. Now I find I’m still having to outdistance what is running after me.’

  Mutoni stopped talking and sat with her eyes fixed on the portrait of Mandela on the wall opposite.

  ‘Where was your partner in all this – your children’s father?’ Cameron asked to break the silence.

  ‘My husband,’ Mutoni said matter-of-factly. ‘He had left Ntarama a few months before, when the radio started saying that Hutus who had married Tutsis were worse than the cockroaches they had married and needed to be stamped on. He was a Hutu. He said he was leaving to make it safer for us, but I expect he left to make it safer for himself. He drank too much. I didn’t miss him.’

  Mutoni stopped talking and looked at Cameron for a few seconds.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she said. ‘I never talk like this to anybody, and I don’t really even know you. But you are a kind man and there is very deep sadness in your eyes, like the sadness in the eyes of people who lost loved ones in the massacre. Mixed with the sadness there is a lot of anger. I thought telling my story might help you to become ready to tell yours and allow you to let go of both the anger and the sadness.’

  ‘I did tell my story to a friend last night,’ Cameron said. ‘It was the first time I had told it. I hadn’t intended to. It is very kind of you to care – perhaps it was your wish that I might tell my story to someone that made me do so. The telling has not yet helped me to let go of the sadness, but it may with time do so. If you would like to hear it, one day I will tell it to you too.’

  Telling his story had certainly not helped Cameron to let go of the anger, any more than it had yet helped him to let go of the sadness. But why, anyway, would it be a good idea to let go of his anger? That certainly wouldn’t help him to get his book written.

  ‘My husband was weak,’ Mutoni went on. ‘I knew that if he went back to his own people when he left us he would be dragged into joining the interahamwe. To be fair, he probably had no choice – either join or be killed as the penalty for having married a Tutsi. I discovered later that he did go with the interahamwe and was later found in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head. I don’t know whether the gun that executed him was held by a Hutu or a Tutsi. It doesn’t matter. It came to the same thing in the end.’

  ‘So who is running after you now – and why?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘I told you that when I escaped from the church I could see two interahamwe leaders telling their men to attack the church. When the RPF came and drove the interahamwe away, I told their commanders about the men I had seen and agreed to tell what I had seen if those two men were ever caught and put on trial. I knew their friends would try to stop me, but what was left for me? I left Ntarama, but when the two men were caught I was advised to seek asylum here. The RPF government said they couldn’t be sure to keep me safe any longer.’

  Mutoni paused to take a sip of water before going on.

  ‘When the trial of the top leader began at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda they flew me to Arusha in Tanzania to tell what I had seen. The man was found guilty of what they said was genocide, crimes against humanity, murder and extermination and he was sentenced to life in prison. I was happy about everything except “extermination”. That made it sound as if the tribunal agreed with the interahamwe that we were cockroaches. The trial of the other leader is due to begin in September and I have been warned that the sentence passed at the first trial means I need to be even more careful. There are people who want to make me be silent forever. That was why some nights I slept in the shed.’

  ‘It must have been very cold,’ Cameron said. ‘

  ‘I didn’t really mind the cold,’ Mutoni replied. ‘When I wrap myself in blankets, and particularly when I use a duvet I sweat, and the feel of the damp pyjamas and bedclothes pressing in on me makes me have nightmares about being back in the mud. I smell the blood mixed with the mud and hear the crying of the children.’

  Mutoni shuddered and stood up suddenly. It was time to go to bed. Extending the sleeper couch involved moving piles of books and papers and piling them randomly, some probably never to be found again, in one corner of the study. Cameron took sheets, pillows and two light blankets out of the cupboard, leaving the spare duvet where it was. They made the bed up together.

  Cameron suggested that Mutoni have first use of the bathroom, but she insisted that he take priority. He went downstairs to lock up and turn out the lights, and on his way to the bathroom glanced in at the open door of the study. Mutoni was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for him to finish in the bathroom. She looked exiled – lonely and forlorn and very vulnerable. Cameron felt a very strong urge to go in and sit beside her and fold her in his arms in the gentlest of hugs. He later wished he had done exactly that, but it would have been open to misinterpretation. He just said ‘Goodnight, sleep well’ as he went into the bathroom.

  Cameron got up early the next morning, dressed and knocked on the study door to ask Mutoni what she would like for breakfast. When there was no answer, he opened the door a fraction to check that all was well. The bedclothes were neatly folded at the foot of the sleeper couch. A piece of paper with the words ‘Thank you Cameron’ in capital letters was pinned to the pillow on top of the pile. Mutoni had gone. It was worrying that none of the sounds she must have made, not even the click of the Yale lock on the back door, had woken him.

  Chapter 9

  It wasn’t the click of a Yale lock that startled Cameron out of bed two nights later. It was a splintering crash that sounded as if a car had mounted the pavement and smashed into the front door. He woke to find himself already standing groggily beside his bed. It was still dark. The luminous dial of the clock beside the bed told him it was 3.20 am. Blue lights, banded by the venetian blinds, were pulsing on the ceiling. Cameron could feel his heart racing as he heard heavy boots pounding on the stairs.

  Don’t go to meet them – if you meet them on the stairs it will give them an excuse shoot you. They’ll call it self-defence.

  There was no time to meet them on the stairs anyway – they had already burst into the bedroom. Four, five, six of them – one after the other, all identical, all cloned, all kitted-out for a commando raid on the Eagle’s Nest with bullet-proof vests over some kind of overall, all anonymous under balaclavas. They w
ere carrying automatic rifles, all pointed at him. They were all shouting ‘Down! Down! Down!’ Thank God they weren’t wearing the thick gloves that stopped them feeling their triggers. There would be bullets in the breeches of all their rifles and their safety-catches would be off – standard procedure. ‘Down! Down! Down!’ What the hell did they want him to do?

  Whatever it was, Cameron was too disorientated to do it. The thought flashed across his mind that he shouldn’t have taken a sleeping tablet, but he had hardly slept the previous two nights and desperation had set in. One of the clones rushed at him and swept his feet out from under him so that he landed painfully on his side. Two of them rolled him onto his stomach and wrenched his arms behind him – the pain in his right shoulder even worse than it had been the last time. They fastened his wrists together with what must have been a plastic tie that cut sharply into his skin in a way the handcuffs hadn’t.

  Somebody was still shouting ‘Down! Down! Down!’ He couldn’t get any further down. He could feel the uneven weave of the grass mat beside his bed pressing into his cheek, and smell its dusty dry-grass smell. It was mingling with a vaguely camembert-like smell from one of the socks he had dropped on the floor when he undressed. It was only a few inches from his nose but his senses all seemed sharper than usual – he could hear the noise of the sideboard drawers being pulled out downstairs and cutlery cascading onto the floor.

  The men on either side of him hauled Cameron to his feet holding his arms just above the elbows, sending stabbing pains through his arm and shoulder. The man holding his right arm went ponderously through the ‘anything you say’ ritual in a broad South Yorkshire accent, probably from somewhere around Barnsley.

  ‘What the fuck is this about?’ Cameron asked. ‘What do you think you are arresting me for?’

  No answer. Cameron could feel his initial fright and bewilderment giving way to anger.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you are doing?’ he asked. ‘You can’t just burst into my house and arrest me when I haven’t done anything wrong. This isn’t apartheid South Africa. You can’t behave like the Stasi in East Germany or the KGB and refuse to tell me what you think I have done wrong.’

  ‘You swear too much,’ the man holding Cameron’s right arm, who appeared to be leading the raid, muttered. ‘Swearing at a policeman is an actionable offence. Let’s go.’

  ‘And you invade people’s houses in the middle of the night too much,’ Cameron said, as the men on either side of him started to march him none too gently out of his bedroom and across the landing.

  ‘Hang on! Wait!’ Cameron said, trying to stay put, ‘I need to put some clothes on if you are taking me out of the house.’

  ‘My instructions are to arrest you and take you to the police station,’ came the answer. ‘Nobody said anything about you getting dressed.’

  Cameron was fully awake by now and could feel himself possessed by the same rage he’d felt at the cameraman. If one of them had been standing just in front of him another head-butt might well have been the outcome. He needed to get a grip on himself.

  ‘You are legally obliged to inform me what crime you are arresting me for,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Terrorism,’ the man replied.

  ‘You must be bloody joking,’ Cameron said. ‘Seriously – is this some kind of joke? Or do you people still think that the ANC is a terrorist organization? Anyway my membership lapsed years ago. What am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose,’ the man replied.

  The stairs were too narrow for two people, never mind three, to go down abreast. They let go of his arms and the one who appeared to be in charge went down ahead of him, the other staying very close behind him. Progress was slow as the staircase was steep, he couldn’t hold the bannister, and having his hands tied behind his back didn’t help his balance. It was a case of consolidating both feet on each step before stepping down onto the next one. A shove from behind on his bad shoulder when he was halfway down almost sent him headlong. The only way to stop himself from falling was to sit down very abruptly, crushing his hands and wrists against the edge of one of the stairs and banging his coccyx painfully as he slid down onto the next one.

  ‘Get a shift on,’ came another South Yorkshire voice from behind him, ‘you aren’t a fucking geriatric just yet.’

  Cameron got gingerly to his feet, leaned against the wall to steady himself and carried awkwardly on down the stairs.

  ‘So its OK for Mr Plod to swear at me, but it is actionable for me to swear at him is it?’ Cameron asked when he got to the bottom.

  ‘You can just be thankful that we didn’t shoot you in the shoulder,’ came the reply. ‘Nor did we drag you down feet first with your head banging on the stairs.’

  Cameron felt a familiar chill stillness come over him. It was the way he used to feel with the death threats, and was usually followed by nausea. Somehow this bastard had got to read his chapter on Forest Gate and was playing games with him, letting him know that they had read it. It couldn’t just be a coincidence – the ‘head banging on the stairs’ bit was a direct quotation. But the chapter hadn’t been published. Brian was the only person he had given it to; the only person who should have read it. Either they must somehow have got hold of the hardcopy he had given to Brian or, much more worrying, they had hacked his PC. And, if they had hacked his PC, why on earth would they be happy to let him know that they had done so?

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, sliding his feet into his slip-on shoes, Cameron could see that they meant business – whatever the hell business was supposed to be. The front door was smashed beyond repair, it could hardly have looked worse if a car really had mounted the pavement and crashed into it. He could see a chunk of the doorframe, with the staple and striking plate clearly visible, lying in the hallway alongside other pieces of splintered wood. All it was fit for now was a bonfire.

  ‘Why the hell did you find it necessary to smash the door down?’ Cameron asked the man in charge. ‘If you had rung the doorbell or knocked loudly enough I would have come down and opened the front door for you.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose.’

  ‘Why would you worry anyway?’ asked the clone behind him. ‘It isn’t your house – you’ve only rented it.’

  ‘She isn’t here, Chief,’ a disembodied voice shouted down the stairs.

  ‘OK, but keep searching,’ the man who Cameron assumed to be the leader called back.

  Looking through to the kitchen, Cameron could see two people in forensic overalls who looked as though they had strayed off the set of a science-fiction movie.

  ‘What on earth do you imagine you are going to find in my kitchen that justifies the expense of having a forensic team ferreting around among my pots and pans?’ Cameron asked. ‘Actually, forget I asked that. Let me guess. You aren’t at liberty to disclose.’

  The man who was now confirmed as being in charge ignored him but signalled to the clone behind Cameron to take him out to one of the blue-light-flashing police cars. As he was escorted out of the house, Cameron could see lights on in upstairs windows all along the terrace. Being led out in his pyjamas made him feel completely exposed. This wasn’t going to help his chances of getting an invitation to the next street party.

  Police tape stretched across the front of the house announced to the world that his house was a crime scene. Cameron’s escort lifted the tape so that he could pass under it and ushered him, wrists still tied together, into the back of a police car. The trip to the police station was significantly longer than it had been on his last visit, but with hardly any traffic on the road at four in the morning it didn’t take much more time.

  The few minutes of relative calm while the police car drove through the deserted streets were enough to allow Cameron to focus on an uneasy feeling that had been niggling at him ever since his front door had been smashed in. He
realized it wasn’t just the close parallel with the apartheid Special Branch raid twenty-three years earlier. It was the Sig Sauer under his mattress. The Special Branch had found it within a minute or two of starting their search, which hadn’t been a problem in South Africa because he had a licence for it. There was no chance whatever that this lot wouldn’t have found it, and now he didn’t have a licence.

  Cameron remembered reading something about a minimum sentence for possession of a prohibited weapon. He couldn’t remember the details. In so far as it wasn’t licensed, the Sig Sauer was presumably ‘prohibited’. He hadn’t taken much notice at the time because he had no intention of ever taking it out from under the mattress, and in the normal course of events nobody was ever going to find it there. But this was not the normal course of events, and the police would certainly find it. The fact that they hadn’t been looking for it wouldn’t make the slightest difference, and, as his last experience of the police station had made all too clear, the South Yorkshire police would be only too pleased to find something to pin on him. The Sig Sauer wasn’t loaded, and he no longer had any bullets for it, but he wasn’t sure that would make much difference. He was going to need a lawyer.

  Part-time lecturers who don’t have children to collect at the school gate, or to watch from the touchlines of playing fields, tend not to come across criminal lawyers in the normal course of events. It had started to rain quite heavily. The back and forwards rush of the police car’s windscreen wipers lent an urgency to Cameron’s sense of the need to identify someone who could help him out of the hole he had dug for himself. He should just have thrown the bloody thing overboard once he had left South Africa. Neil had been right: hanging onto the gun could end up getting him into all kinds of trouble with the police.