Despite the Darkness, page 8
‘Are you OK, Mirambo?’ Cameron asked. ‘That was a lot too bloody close for comfort.’
‘No, of course I’m not OK – don’t keep asking whether I’m OK,’ came the muffled response. ‘I’m so cramped I don’t think I’ll be able to get out of here, and one of my legs has gone to sleep so I won’t be able to walk if I do.’
‘OK,’ Cameron said. ‘I think I know somewhere we can stop where we will be able to get you out under cover – we are nearly there.’
The lay-by was a little further along the ridge than Cameron had remembered. As a picnic site it would in daylight be indistinguishable from hundreds of others around the country – a line of four or five tall blue-gum trees, five in this instance, a concrete picnic table with concrete seats and a large round concrete litter bin, which appeared from the look of its immediate surroundings not to have a magnetic attraction for litter.
When it came to traffic-cop hides, on the other hand, the lay-by was certainly distinctive. It was cut into the hillside at the city end so that a steep bush-topped bank ensured that police cars parked in against the bank would be completely invisible to cars coming along the ridge from that direction. Cameron turned into the lay-by, bumping off the tarmac where the gravel had been particularly badly eroded, backed the car in and was pleased to see that, as he had hoped, the line of blue-gums was angled in a way that largely shielded the Renault from the headlights of cars coming from the other direction. It would take a very sharp-eyed driver to spot them, and by then the car would be almost past the lay-by. The only real danger would lie with the possibility that someone might want to pull off into the lay-by – which seemed unlikely at that time of the evening.
Cameron switched off engine and headlights and paused for a moment to let the silence and darkness wash over him. But there was no time to hang around. Headlights were flashing past the lay-by at regular intervals – the interval it took to search the boot of a car. He would still need to call in at his aunt’s to give him an alibi. Jules would be very worried and would want to know where he had been. He hated having to lie to her.
Cameron went round to the back of the car and opened the boot. It was difficult to believe that Mirambo had managed to curl himself up to fit in there – small wonder the linguist and his mates hadn’t thought it necessary to open the boot. They underestimated Renault 16s. Mirambo, on the other hand, clearly thought that he had overestimated this particular Renault 16. As soon as Cameron lifted the hatch Mirambo groaned and levered himself up onto one elbow.
‘My foot, my whole leg, has gone to sleep, Cameron,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here.’
‘With a little help from your friends,’ Cameron replied. ‘Give me your hand.’
‘Bloody hell, Cameron, I thought I was going to shit myself in there. What were the chances of spending God knows how long with the fat backsides of two boers a foot from my face without them discovering me? How lucky was that?’
‘I can’t help thinking that it would have been a damn sight luckier not to have been flagged down by them in the first place,’ replied Cameron. ‘But I suppose if we hadn’t been asked to lift them we wouldn’t be out here on the other side of the roadblock. I was worried you were going to sneeze. Let’s get you out of there.’
‘I was much more worried about farting,’ Mirambo said. ‘That would have given the bastards with their refined sense of smell something to think about. “Kaffir ruik” my arse. “Kaffir” this, “Bantu” that – the only way to respond to people like that is with a bullet, preferably several bullets, with the first two through the kneecaps. Help me get my leg out.’
Cameron helped Mirambo to unwind himself. There was enough light from the passing headlights for him to see a dark stain on the collar of Mirambo’s shirt.
‘If you can get right down behind the car,’ Cameron said, ‘I need to risk using my torch to have a look at that cut, it looks as if it has bled quite badly.’
‘If I tried to walk right now I would fall over,’ Mirambo said, ‘so I might as well sit down. But using the torch is risky.’
‘Not as risky as inviting the Transvaal police rugby club front row to share your getaway car with you – and that worked out alright.’
Cameron opened the passenger-side front door, reached in quickly to switch the roof light off and found his torch and Jules’s first aid kit in the glove compartment. A couple of brief flashes of the torch showed that the cut had stopped bleeding. It could have done with a plaster, but it was too far towards the hairline for one to stick – and anyway a plaster would be noticeable and might make people look at Mirambo twice, which was not what he needed. Cleaning it with a bit of antiseptic from the kit would have to do. But there was a surprising amount of blood on Mirambo’s light-coloured collar.
‘I’ll just put some antiseptic on this cut,’ Cameron said, opening the first aid kit, ‘but I think you should take my shirt. There’s quite a bit of blood on your collar that might attract attention, even in poor lighting. I’ll make sure yours is washed when I get home – don’t worry about mine, its an old one.’
Two good shirts in one afternoon. His wardrobe wouldn’t be able to sustain that level of attrition for very long. This one wasn’t an old one either – in fact Jules had given it to him for his birthday, so there would be a lot of explaining to do. ‘I decided to swop shirts with the main suspect in last night’s terrorist bombing because his shirt had blood on it’ would hardly cut it. The last twenty-four hours – less than that, difficult as that was to believe – had made so many future evasions, half-truths and lies to Jules inevitable that he might as well be having an affair. The difference being that an affair could only be a lot more enjoyable.
Mirambo looked at him but said nothing. It was too dark to read his expression. Cameron got on with cleaning the cut, while Mirambo flexed his legs to get his circulation going again.
‘OK, my friend, I think that will have to do,’ Cameron said after a minute or so, ‘we both need to get going.’
Cameron went round to put the first aid kit and torch back in the glove compartment, closed the passenger door and turned around, unbuttoning his shirt. As he was taking it off he heard a roaring exhaust accompanied by a very loud scraping noise approaching from the direction of the city. Someone’s exhaust had broken and the silencer was dragging along the road. The car’s engine was slowing.
Cameron turned and saw a pair of headlights swinging off the road and into the farther entrance to the lay-by – the driver must have spotted the picnic-site too late to make the first entrance. The headlights were on full beam and were being driven straight towards them, slowing to a stop with the exhaust burbling.
Cameron froze, his heart missing a beat yet again – how often could that go on happening without it stopping altogether? Mirambo ducked down and squatted behind the car. There was a momentary pause before the engine was switched off. Was it better to stand stock still, clearly visible in the spill of the headlights, or to risk attracting attention by ducking for cover behind the car with Mirambo?
The engine wasn’t switched off – it roared, the wheels spun before they gripped, and the car lurched forward suddenly and swung back onto the road heading away from the city again. As the car bumped back onto the tarmac there was a loud rending of metal and the roar of the exhaust faded into the distance without the percussion accompaniment of the dragging silencer.
The driver must have spotted Cameron’s pale winter-white torso between the trees and decided to get the hell out before he became involved in whatever bizarre ritual required a white man to stand like a semi-naked waxwork beside his car in a lay-by on the Richmond road after dark. He would have stopped to find a way of detaching his silencer – so they had done him a favour by putting him to flight. He, on the other hand, hadn’t done them any favours by scaring them witless.
As Mirambo stood slowly upright, still flexing his left leg cautiously, Cameron handed him his shirt. Presenting Mirambo with the shirt off his back seemed as definitive a statement of solidarity as anyone could wish for in the circumstances. Whether or not Mirambo had been responsible in any way for the bomb was now, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. Cameron had sheltered him and helped him escape the police net as far as this lay-by. If he were to be caught, there was no question but that Mirambo would be tortured. The chances were that the torture would be particularly vicious as Mirambo would almost certainly be far more intelligent and far better educated than his torturers. They would see it as their obligation and right to restore the divinely ordained natural order in which blacks were in all respects inferior. Regardless of how much he might try not to – and why would he try particularly hard not to? – Mirambo would end up telling them that Cameron had helped him. The nausea was making itself felt again.
Mirambo must get away safely. But even though Cameron had managed, very much more by good luck than good judgement, to get him through the first roadblock there were bound to be others. The Richmond road went in the wrong direction for the Lesotho border. The only reason the boot hadn’t been searched at the roadblock was because the car had been lifting the policemen – that wouldn’t be the case next time around. The only hope was for Mirambo to lie low somewhere until the furore had died down. The Transvaal would need its own police back soon enough.
Mirambo didn’t reach his hand out for the shirt.
‘You’ve still got to get back through that roadblock, Cameron,’ he said. ‘They will shine their torches on you and if they see the blood the game will be up – and don’t forget that my shirt smells of Kaffir.’
‘That’s not bloody funny,’ Cameron said. ‘I’m sure there won’t be a problem. The police weren’t paying much attention to vehicles going into the city – they certainly weren’t searching them. You were lying on your left side, so the blood is on the side of the collar away from anyone flashing a torch in my face – I’m sure it will be OK. Go on, take it – it’s the least I can do.’
‘You’ve done a lot, Cameron, thanks for this,’ Mirambo said, waving his hand vaguely in a gesture that took in the picnic site, the car and the general direction of the city. Before taking Cameron’s shirt he unbuttoned his own.
‘Where will you go now?’ Cameron asked. ‘Remember the Edgar Brookes book if you want to get a message to me. I’m glad I can at least say goodbye properly rather than just leaving you in my aunt’s garage.’
Mirambo held Cameron’s eyes for a few seconds before responding.
‘I’m glad too,’ he said. ‘There are two possible places – but I’m not going to tell you where they are. It will be far safer for you, and for the people I am going to try, if you don’t know.’
Cameron felt his stomach tightening again. Just as he had been imagining the possibility of Mirambo being tortured, Mirambo was clearly envisaging the same fate for him.
Mirambo pointed to a gap in the bushes on the other side of the road, opposite the far end of the lay-by. It almost certainly indicated the beginning of a path running down through the bush towards the lights in the valley. He retrieved his kit-bag from the still open boot – just as well the light bulb in the boot had blown months ago – and closed the hatchback. The thud as it closed had a ring of finality.
Cameron walked with Mirambo to the other end of the lay-by, keeping behind the limited screen the trees provided. Cars were still passing along the road out of the city at regular intervals. There was very little traffic going in the other direction – people were probably worried that the bomb might not have been a one-off event. They stood together in the shadow of the last blue-gum tree watching the lights of a car approaching.
‘OK, off you go, Mirambo. Hamba Khale – go well my friend. Don’t forget you’ve got a thesis to complete. Take care.’
‘You take care too, Cameron. Thanks again. Amandla!’
‘Awethu!’
Cameron stood in the shelter of the tree and watched Mirambo run across the road after the car had passed – his leg was obviously back to normal. Mirambo turned and waved briefly. As expected, a path led down through the bushes towards Edendale. Cameron watched as Mirambo disappeared alone into the darkness.
Chapter 6
Cameron walked quickly back to the Renault – no point in being picked up in the headlights of a passing car and possibly identified. His presence on public platforms and at funerals over the past few years had ensured that rather too many people for comfort might recognize him. But once back in the anonymity of his car he sat for a few minutes in the darkness summoning up the energy and resolve for what was bound to be a difficult evening.
Seeing the back of Mirambo should bring with it a wash of relief. Any direct link to him or anything he might have done would be more difficult for the SB to establish now than it would have been if he had been discovered curled up in the boot of the Renault – but Mirambo’s departure down the hill into the night felt somehow like a bereavement. There had been just enough light for Cameron to watch his outline being swallowed up in the darkness of the bush as he disappeared over the rim of the road.
It was a good thing they had parted on friendly terms. Ironically, they had King Kop and his minions to thank for that. If he had had to leave Mirambo in the garage at his aunt’s house without a proper goodbye, the dominant memory would have been of the bitterness of Mirambo’s reaction to Cameron’s refusal to take him to the border. The swarms of police, and the roadblock in particular, had shown that backing off from that had been sensible – it wasn’t evidence of a lack of balls. But leaving Mirambo to go off into the night alone felt like a dereliction of some sort – and now the car felt strangely empty, as if something was missing. Mirambo was not the only person alone in the darkness.
A sudden rush of anxiety about getting home before Hilton and Nicky went to sleep galvanized Cameron into starting the car and pulling out onto the road back towards the city, taking care to avoid the silencer lying in the way. The cars were still coming along the ridge at the same regular intervals, which meant that the roadblock was still in place – as was, of course, to be expected. It would be there all night and in all likelihood for two or three more days – unless they caught whoever it was they were looking for. Take care, Mirambo.
The queue of cars crawling up the hill out of the city was significantly shorter than it had been earlier as the rush hour was past. There was only one car going into town ahead of him at the roadblock, and it had been waved through by the time he pulled up. As he slowed down, Cameron pulled the right side of Mirambo’s shirt collar forward so that the bloodstain on the left would be in the shadow. He couldn’t see who was behind the torch being shone into his face as he wound his window down.
‘So it’s you again. What are you doing back so soon? Where have you been?’
Cameron recognized the voice of the linguist instantly.
‘The people I was going to visit in Thornville turned out not to be there,’ Cameron answered. With a bit of luck a cop from the Transvaal wouldn’t know how far it was to Thornville.
‘So why didn’t you phone ahead to make sure they were going to be at home before coming all this way?’
‘I’d made an appointment to see them at a particular time,’ Cameron replied. ‘Why would I bother to phone ahead? ’
‘More likely they don’t have a phone,’ the policeman said. ‘I expect you were going to visit someone’s Bantu garden boy to make him feel appreciated in this racist society you don’t like but seem quite happy to live in.’
Cameron counted to five – this wasn’t going well and it certainly wasn’t the time or place for a political argument.
‘Actually I was going to see someone who makes garden furniture in his spare time,’ Cameron said. ‘I can give you the name and address if you like.’
A safe enough gamble – the linguist was just being provocative. He would be highly unlikely to have any interest in following up on anything Cameron told him. Lying to the police turned out to be surprisingly easy. It would be a lot more difficult having to lie to Jules.
‘OK then, open your boot,’ the policeman ordered. ‘Let’s see how much garden furniture you bought.’
‘I told you they weren’t there,’ Cameron said. ‘I didn’t buy any.’
No future in making the obvious point that a Renault boot was not big enough for much in the way of garden furniture. How much blood had the cut on Mirambo’s head shed into the boot, and was any of it visible?
‘Ja – but maybe you weren’t going to buy garden furniture,’ the policeman said. ‘Maybe you were going to pick up another bomb. I said open your boot.’
Cameron waited as the linguist moved away from the car door towards the boot, opened the door and walked around him, keeping his blood-stained collar always on the side away from the policeman. Cameron could feel his heart pounding and the blood in his temples pulsing again. If a regular increase in the heart rate was as good for one’s health as the exercise scientists claimed it to be, he should live for a very long time – provided nobody intervened with a noose.
The linguist signalled to Cameron to open the boot. As he raised the hatch-back the linguist shone his torch cursorily around its emptiness. If Mirambo had lost any blood to the boot it had found itself in mixed company – various spills from juice bottles, brake fluid and other liquids down the years had served very effectively to camouflage any more recent stains. The light of the torch even picked out a few dry scales from long-dead trout.
‘I’m not surprised Koos thought your car smelt of Kaffir – sorry, Bantu,’ commented the policeman with a theatrical wrinkling of his nose as he slammed the hatch-back shut with unnecessary vigour. ‘Now you can bugger off again.’
