Mimi had grouped the various documents under the cases to which they were related and gathered them into cardboard files. The first one that Yudel withdrew was marked "Cissy Abrahamse. 6 June 1974." Yudel looked at the calendar on his desk. Today was Friday. The 6th had been the previous Wednesday, only nine days before. He went quickly through the papers in the file, not finding it necessary to read every word, his practised eye picking out the points that were important. The file contained a statement by Weizmann, telling how he had come downstairs after a sound in the storeroom of his shop and how he had fired in self-defence when a young woman armed with a hammer came at him out of the darkness; a statement by the investigating officer, telling how he found the body of the girl shot twice through the abdomen and describing her wounds, how she had been holding a two-pound hammer in one hand; a note in Freek's handwriting that there would be an inquest on Friday the 22nd, in a week's time, and a statement by a Mrs Sinclair who lived in a flat across the road, saying that she had been looking out from her balcony and had seen a Bantu man passing the side door of Weizmann's shop. The man had started running at the sound of shots coming from inside. She had called the police. And finally a social worker's report on Billy, the girl's brother. It had taken her three days to find anyone who knew who the boy was and that person had been the landlady who let Cissy's mother the room in which they lived. The social worker had reported her as saying, "That lot were always drunk. I'm not surprised."

  Yudel dropped the file into his briefcase and withdrew a second one. Neatly printed across the front page was the name, Isaiah Zulu, and the date, 15 February 1974, only four months ago. The file contained statements by Weizmann, his wife and a police sergeant. According to the contents of all three statements, Weizmann had been travelling through the silent streets of the Roodepoort industrial area late one night, having lost his way after visiting a friend in Krugersdorp, when a drunken Bantu, one Isaiah Zulu, dashed out of the shadow of a building in front of the car, leaving Weizmann no time to brake or take any other avoiding action. A note attached to the back of the file in Mimi's handwriting said that Zulu had died in hospital that night. He had suffered a rupture of the spleen and severe brain damage. Mimi's note also referred to the inquest, giving the date on which it had been held. The magistrate had decided that no one was to blame for Zulu's death.

  The phone on Yudel's desk chirped shrilly at him. He answered, "Gordon here," without pausing in his reading.

  Through the barrier built up by the intensity of his interest in what he was reading Yudel heard Rosa's voice faintly. "Yudel?" All day Yudel had gone about his business mechanically while his thoughts had been filled with the Weizmann affair. Now that he was able to concentrate on it fully, it was no easy matter to break through to his attention. "Yudel-dear? Are you there?"

  On the cover of the third file Mimi had printed, Jakobus Malherbe. 16 December 1967. This file was thicker than the two Yudel had already been through. It started with Weizmann's statement to the police. All of them seemed to start with Weizmann's statement. "Yudel-dear? Is that you'?" Rosa's voice was drawing closer, reaching to him through the mists of his concentration.

  "Mmmm," Yudel said thoughtfully.

  "I heard a sound in my shop," Weizmann had told the police. "My flat is directly above the shop. I fetched my revolver and went downstairs to investigate." He had started it almost identically to his statement after the killing of Cissy Abrahamse. "Two young white men were breaking into the door of the storeroom behind my shop."

  "I heard you, Yudel. I know you're there." Rosa's voice finally broke through to him.

  "Gordon here," Yudel said.

  "I know it's you," Rosa said. "What's going on there?"

  This time Yudel had listened to and recognised his wife's voice and comprehended what she was saying. "I'm reading," he said.

  "Don't be late. Remember you have patients tonight."

  "I won't be late."

  "It's half-past three and you stop working at four on Fridays. Please don’t forget that."

  "All right, Rosa. I'll be on time."

  "I hope so, because Mrs Atkins is coming back this afternoon and we don't want the same thing to happen this time that happened last time. Do we?"

  "No," Yudel assured her, "we don't. I won't be late. Goodbye, Rosa."

  "Goodbye, Yudel. Only half an hour to knock-off time."

  "All right, Rosa. Goodbye."

  "Goodbye."

  "I grabbed hold of one and tried to arrest him, but he pulled away and they split up," Yudel read. "One went up the road and one went down the road. I chased the one that went up the road towards Hillbrow, but he ran too fast for me. I then fired a warning shot. I tried to miss him by about six feet. The pavement is very dark in the shadow of the trees, so I lost sight of him. I found him two blocks further near the corner of Hayes and De Korte. He had a wound in his neck. I tried to take his pulse, but he seemed to be dead. The police came and they said he was dead."

  It was that simple, Yudel thought. A warning shot had been fired and of all the places the bullet could have struck it had struck a young man and killed him and no one was guilty of anything.

  The second statement was by a Wynand van der Westhuizen who had been nineteen years old at the time and had been a close friend of Malherbe. According to van der Westhuizen they had been "...having a beer in the Victoria bar. We were both a little bit drunk when we passed Mister Weizmann's place. We started wrestling in front of his shop. I don't know why. We were not angry with each other. We were just playing. I think we bumped against the door of Mister Weizmann's shop. The next thing I knew the door was open and Mister Weizmann grabbed hold of Kasie. I don't know how the door got open. I broke away and ran down the road. I was round the corner already before I heard the sound of Mister Weizmann shooting..."

  Yudel skimmed quickly through a statement by a police officer that added nothing to what he already knew, statements by the dead man's wife, mother and a clergyman, dealing with his unblemished character up to that point and one by a passer-by who had seen Weizmann fire a shot, but had not been able to tell at what he was aiming.

  Towards the bottom of the file the state pathologist's report caught Yudel's attention. "Death was caused by a hemorrhage of the jugular due to the bullet wound...the nature of the wound seems to be compatible with either a ricochet or the muzzle of the gun being held against the skin of the jaw..." The two possibilities seemed unrelated. One would leave powder burns and the other would not.

  Immediately following the pathologist's report was a copy of the magistrate's finding. "Mister Weizmann was within his rights in firing a shot in the air. Under the circumstances he was fully entitled to fire a warning shot. The court finds that Malherbe's death was justifiable homicide." Which meant that the magistrate had decided that Malherbe was killed by a ricochet. Clearly no one fires a warning shot while holding the gun against someone's jaw. Yudel wondered how a shot fired into the air could ricochet. Off a streetlight fitting perhaps?

  He was about to go on to the next file when he noticed that it was a quarter to four. If he read another one he might be late and then there would be problems with Rosa. On the other hand he was not supposed to go home early. "We have to set an example to the non-professional staff," Doctor Williamson had told him on many occasions.

  Yudel packed the files into his briefcase, left his office and strolled down the passage to Doctor Williamson's, stopped in the doorway to establish that Williamson was not in (probably slipped away early himself, Yudel thought), dashed back to his own office, scooped up his jacket and briefcase and made for the lift. As he reached out to press the calling button the lift doors opened and Doctor Williamson stepped out. Yudel saw his boss's face stiffen into a prim self-righteous expression as the pale blue eyes took him in, jacket, briefcase and all. "Have a nice weekend," Yudel said bravely as he stepped into the lift.

  He saw Doctor Williamson make as if to glance at his watch, but restrain himself before he got that far. "Goodbye," he said.

  "Mrs Atkins cancelled her appointment," Rosa said. "I'm not surprised. So there'll only be your Mister Weizmann. That should please you."

  Yudel and Rosa were at the dining-room table, drinking coffee. "He should have been here more than an hour ago," he said.

  "He can stay away as far as I am concerned, as long as he keeps those other people away too."

  Yudel knew who she was talking about and he nodded in agreement. That Weizmann was not going to come was something he had felt on the previous evening. He had come too close to the source of Weizmann's problem and he had done it too quickly. He knew how all human beings clung to their illusions and dishonesties, the strange distortions of reality that all need in order to go on living. Weizmann had felt the nearness to reality, the truth that he had never all his life been able to face. It was a truth that Yudel knew he had enclosed in a shell of fiction in order to protect himself against it, and now he had retreated before the prospect of having it revealed. Compounding matters, there was his urinating at their last meeting and the shame that had caused. Had Weizmann come for his appointment Yudel would have been astonished.

  He finished his coffee in silence, hardly hearing Rosa's few ineffectual attempts at conversation, then went into the study to phone Weizmann. He found the number of the Twin Sisters Restaurant in the Johannesburg directory. A woman with a shrill voice and a slovenly manner of speaking answered. "Hullo ja. Twin Sisters."

  "Is Mister Weizmann in?" Yudel asked in Afrikaans. "No. He's not here. Who's speaking?"

  "Might he be in his flat? Has he got a telephone there?"

  "There's no phone there, but he's not there. He's out. Who's speaking?"

  "Thanks very much," Yudel said. "That's all I wanted to know."

  "Who's speaking?"

  Yudel hung up and went in search of Rosa. She was already settling herself in front of the television set. He looked speculatively at her and something in the nature of the look alerted her. "You're not going out?" What she meant and what Yudel knew she meant was-you're not going out and leaving me all alone on Friday evening after you've been away at work all week and I've hardly seen you: you aren't doing that?

  "He's a dangerous man, Rosa. And at this stage he's my responsibility."

  Rosa got quickly to her feet. "What if they come while you're away?" Her face was anxious and Yudel had no doubt who she was referring to.

  "They won't come back. There's no reason for them to come back."

  "They might. I'm not staying here alone."

  "This is your home, Rosa." The first uncertain beginnings of a personal hostility towards the security police were making themselves felt within Yudel. Who were these bastards to make his wife feel unsafe in her own home?

  "If you're going to Jo'burg you can drop me at Irena's place."

  "I won't be able to come in though." Rosa's admiring sister and her sister's hugely successful husband were not among Yudel's favourite people.

  "I just don't want to stay here alone tonight," Rosa said.

  The Twin Sisters Restaurant was on the corner of Myburgh Street, a busy well-lit thoroughfare, and Hayes, a narrow tree­ lined side street, dark at night because of the trees that cut out the light from the street lamps. The buildings in the area were a mixed bunch, a few of them new – concrete, glass and steel, thirty or forty stories high, housing the offices of large and affluent businesses – most of the others were old, brick and plaster, rarely more than five or six stories, having had their origins in an earlier, less prosperous period. In time they too would be replaced by a new wave of corporations. The paintwork on the old buildings was often scarred and stained. Glass-panelled doors were perhaps not cleaned as often as had once been the case. Letterboxes with sagging hinges, dusty passages in cheap apartment buildings: all showed signs that there was not now in this part of the city as much money as there once had been.

  By the time Yudel reached Weizmann's place it was already early evening. He stopped in the side street across the main thoroughfare from the shop, got out of the car and stood for a while in the shadow of a small oak tree that was losing the battle with the carbon monoxide-laden air. The front of the shop and part of its side had plate glass windows through which he could see into it. The word Restaurant described it in large painted letters on one of the windows. It was a flattering description. Weizmann's place was what Yudel had known in his childhood as a fish-and-chip shop. Its front was divided into two sections. The section on the corner through which it was entered held a counter where you could buy sweets, cigarettes and cold drinks, and a second counter where you could get your fish, chips, sausages, meat balls, pigs' trotters or other low-cost options. Behind this counter Yudel could see the vats where the food was fried. Two women, one middle-aged and the other young, were behind the cigarette counter. He could see no one else in that section of the shop. The other section had a few wooden tables where people were seated, eating and drinking. Down the side in deep shadow Yudel thought he could see the doorway that led into the storeroom at the back. Above the shop, a few lights were on in the flat, but he could see no movement in any of them. Yudel waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed the road to enter the shop.

  The two women turned to look at him as he came in. He addressed himself to the older of the two. "Is Mister Weizmann in?" he asked in Afrikaans.

  The woman looked to be about Weizmann's age. She had very fair skin with few wrinkles, a flat ugly face and crinkly red hair. "Do you want him?"

  Yudel recognised the voice as the one that had answered the telephone. "I would like to speak to him," he said.

  "Can I give him a message?" She spoke in a quick abrupt, almost irritated way, her small green eyes fixed angrily on him as if he should have known better than to ask such a thing.

  "Is it not possible for me to speak to him now?"

  "He's out." Again the quick manner of speech, the same hint of irritation. "Who can I say was seeking him?" And again the same curiosity as to his identity.

  "Say Yudel Gordon came to see him. He missed our appointment this evening and I was concerned that something might have happened to him."

  "Appointment?"

  "Yes. He had an appointment to see me."

  Suddenly the woman knew who Yudel was. He could see the moment of awareness in her face, but it was not an awareness that was filled or even tinged with pleasure. She smiled, but it did not happen naturally. The expression had to be forced into appearing. "Oh, you are ..." She was looking for the word.

  "That's right," Yudel assured her. "Is your husband in?"

  "No, he's out. I don't know where he is."

  There was only an archway between the room they were in and the store at the back. Yudel could see straight into it, but he could not see the stairs that connected it to the floor above. The light in the store was out and all that he could discern clearly was a set of steel shelves against the opposite wall. "I'd like to say how sorry I am about the trouble you've been having," he said. "Naturally your husband has told me about it." The woman adopted an air of serenity. Yudel half expected her to clasp her hands before her in the manner of an angel in an Old Master.

  "I can only thank all the wonderful people who have stood by us," she said.

  A black man in his late teens or early twenties, wearing an open-neck shirt and sports jacket, entered the shop and stopped a pace behind Yudel and to his left, waiting to be served. Neither woman looked in his direction. "People have stood by you then?"

  "All our friends have stood by us." Yudel glanced in the direction of the man who was waiting to be served and back at the woman, but she did not seem interested in his needs. "Shall I tell my husband you were seeking him?"

  "Tell him I'll phone him."

  "Good. I'll tell him and I'll tell him you came all the way from Pretoria to see him." She lingered over the word "all" as if emphasising the distance, possibly indicating to Yudel that she appreciated his effort. Yudel doubted that the appreciation was real.

  Along the side windows there was a row of glass-fronted refrigerators, filled with cold drinks. "I think I'll have a drink," Yudel said. He went to the nearest one, all the time conscious of Weizmann's wife watching him. He turned quickly to look at her. There was nothing in that pale hostile face to indicate that he was welcome. Yudel smiled and she turned quickly to her other customer. The man wanted cigarettes and he was served with a sort of efficient anger that seemed to say, here you can have the cigarettes and I'll take your money, but now move your black arse out of here. On the other hand, Yudel conceded, it may have been himself that brought on her anger, not the other man. He selected his cold drink slowly, managing to get a direct look at the younger woman. She was not unattractive, but slovenly, a grubby fawn-coloured sweater hanging loosely over a too-full bosom that did not seem to have the benefit of artificial support. There was no hostility at all in her face. Meeting Yudel's eyes, she smiled at him, her mouth opening wide, revealing large yellow teeth, bright pink gums and the remainder of a meal or many meals wedged into the crevices between her teeth. Yudel withdrew his earlier impression that she was not unattractive. At a guess he made her one of the twin sisters. The attitude of the two women towards each other seemed like that of mother and daughter.

  His choice fell on apple juice. He brought it to the counter and put it down in front of Weizmann's wife. "Drink it here or take it away?" she asked.

 

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