Dream of Darkness, page 18
They all looked at each other. Or rather, curiously, they all seemed to look at Mrs Marsden, who gave a minute nod.
Archbell said, ‘There’s something else, my sweet. You remember that stuff from the Ugandan Human Rights Commission you found in your book?’
‘I knew it was you who put it there,’ said Sairey.
‘What? Not me, dearie! Why should I bother with something like that?’
He glanced at Vita and winked.
‘Vita. You?’
Archbell laughed and said, ‘Et tu, Brute. You see, I do have a smidgeon of classics, too. But what I was saying is, there’s another instalment of evidence to that Commission which may interest you.’
He turned and went out of the room. Vita said to Mary Marsden, ‘Is this necessary?’
‘Don’t get protective now,’ snapped Sairey. ‘Facing up to things is the name of your game, isn’t it?’
‘Where the hell’s it gone?’ fumed Archbell, coming back into the room. ‘I had it, I know.’
He had an open briefcase in his hand, from which he shook papers all over the desk.
‘It was definitely there.’
‘You mean Gregory’s evidence?’ said Mrs Marsden.
‘What else? It’s gone. But how the hell …’ Then he paused and said, ‘That lad. Bright’s son. Oh shit.’
Vita said, ‘If he’s read it …’
‘But he doesn’t know where Ellis is,’ said Sir Joe.
‘Yes, he does,’ said Sairey, not understanding anything but their sudden concern for either Allan or her father. ‘Daddy rang from … from where he is.’
‘From Dunelands? Oh, it’s all right, the call was intercepted and traced,’ said Lightoller impatiently. ‘And the boy has a car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I suggest we get down there after him, or we may find we’ve a real mess to clean up.’
They all began to move to the door, Sairey with them, still demanding explanation.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘What’s the panic? Why should Allan rush off to Dunelands without saying anything?’
‘He did say something,’ Archbell reminded her. ‘He said, Tell Sairey, I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’
And Archbell over his shoulder growled, ‘At a guess, for killing your father.’
OP ANTENOR CO-OP 17/33/7 RESTRIC (NON-ATT)
DOC 79 VG/SE
ORIG comm on hum rights kampala 87 admission 834 (PHOTOC)
Interrogation of Kakuba, Gregory, assistant guard in prison block of Headquarters of Public Safety Unit at Nagaru.
Day 3 (cont.)
Q. You handed the Commission some papers at the start of your interrogation. (For the record, let it be noted that these papers and their transcription now form Admission 835 of this investigation.) What was your motive in producing these papers?
A. Sorry, boss?
Q. Why did you keep the papers?
A. Mr Bright say that when Idi Dada go and proper gov’ment come, he tell everyone Gregory was good guard, no cruelty, no torture, no stealing prisoners’ rations. But Mr Bright get killed in road accident …
Q. Do you believe that he was really killed in an accident?
A. Anyone can have accident with all these mad army fellows driving up and down road to Jinja. Maybe he do have accident, maybe not. But no accident while he is in Gregory’s care!
Q. Let’s return to the papers. With Mr Bright’s death, you had no one to speak up for you, is that right?
A. Yes, boss.
Q. And you thought you would need someone to speak up for you. Why?
A. Poor man has no voice of his own. Poor man needs someone to speak for him.
Q. So you thought if you couldn’t get help from Mr Bright, you might get help from his papers?
A. Yes, boss. He always scribbling. I catch him but don’t say anything. Like he would tell you, Gregory always kind to prisoners.
Q. Do you know what he wrote in these papers?
A. No, boss. Gregory can read big letters like on notice, but these little scribbly ones, like Mr Bright does, are out of sight.
Q. He wrote that he asked you to do a favour for him.
A. Yes, boss. I do lotta favours for Mr Bright. I help him when he first arrive in my cells. Mr Bright in bad way without Gregory’s help.
Q. How was he in a bad way? Was he sick?
A. Sick? He was all smashed up, boss.
Q. You mean he’d been beaten?
A. Yes. Beaten bad. They say: feed him, make sure he get well. But unless I help, he cannot feed; unless I give lift, he cannot walk.
Q. So you helped him because those were your orders? Who gave those orders?
A. No! I help more than orders because here is a sick man who done me no harm and needs help.
Q. All right. But who gave the orders?
A. The bosses, boss. The ones with the big cars and the women, the ones who sit and laugh at the sledgehammer game.
Q. And who gave them their orders to stop torturing Mr Bright?
A. Don’t know, boss. Only know who give my orders.
Q. So you helped Mr Bright. Did he make a good recovery?
A. Oh yes. He is very strong. Also very lucky. Nothing broken, nothing important, only very little bones. He come along very nicely, thank you.
Q. And then he asked you to do this favour. Tell us what he wanted you to do.
A. Mr Bright always worried about his wife. You know his wife was Acholi? Bad to be Acholi in those times. Bad for Ugandan woman to be married to white man. I know nothing of this woman. Mr Bright wrote a message, asked me to take it and give it to this white man in Kampala so he could pass it to this Acholi woman.
Q. This message, what did it say?
A. I don’t know. Like all the other papers, I cannot read.
Q. But you took it?
A. I worry what is best to do. If I get caught, there is big trouble. But Mr Bright is always asking, and day by day he is looking better, and perhaps soon he will look well enough to let him go and then Gregory has not done him the favour. Then there is holiday. Idi Dada has married again while all the big bosses are in Kampala talking big. I have to leave to go to Kampala to see my family. I have some beer and feel brave and think no one will notice if I take care. So I got to this house that Mr Bright has told me …
Q. Whose house was this?
A. White man called Ellis. This Ellis, friend of Idi Dada I find out later. If I knew that at first, I keep long way off from his house, no fear!
Q. How do you know this white man Ellis was a friend of Amin?
A. His wife gets killed soon after and everyone is very afraid because Idi Dada is very angry, asking who has done this, especially when all the big bosses are in Kampala. And PSU say it must be SRC and SRC say it must be PSU, but in the end both say it was kondis.
Q. So what do you do when you get to his house?
A. I go into garden. The beer has made me want to piss, but when I am done, I find I have pissed out my bravery with the beer. Now I wonder, is anyone else watching this white man’s house? But then I think, no, tonight is big celebration night and all the big bosses will be filling themselves with whisky and chasing women, and all the little bosses, too. So I take a drink from this bottle I have brought with me, and soon I feel brave again. But before I can go up to the house, a car comes and a white man gets out and goes inside. I think this must be Mr Ellis and I think I am a fool because I do not shout and give him the message, then go fast away from there. But I am hiding in some bushes in the garden and I think that maybe if I shout from bushes, he would shoot me, thinking I was kondi. So now I take another drink. There are lights in the house and people moving, I can see this. Also, I hear a little girl crying. So I wait a little longer, take another drink. Then just when I am ready to deliver my message, a taxi stops in road and a woman comes hurrying up the little road to the house.
Q. A white woman?
A. Black. She look like Acholi woman and I think, ah, maybe this is wife to Mr Bright. Almost I call out, but then I think that woman even more than man will get scare of kondis in the bushes and scream, so I take another drink and wait. Time passes …
Q. How much time?
A. I don’t know. Perhaps I sleep a little. Yes, I sleep, I think. When I wake it is because of the noise of cars.
Q. Cars? Arriving at the house?
A. No. Leaving the house.
Q. How many cars? What kind?
A. Two cars. One is the big car the white man who might be Ellis came in. The other is a little car. Little red car.
Q. Who is in the cars?
A. The white man drives the big one and the Acholi woman is driving the little red one.
Q. Is there any movement in the house?
A. There are some lights. Also, I still hear the child crying. But I see nothing. Now is the time for Gregory to go, I think. But my legs are not ready to go. I lie down to rest and get strength. Once more I wake by sound of car.
Q. Just one car?
A. Yes. The big one. White man and Acholi woman are both in it. They get out. He puts arm round her, she puts arm round him, they go into house. Now Gregory’s legs work. I get up and go back to my family.
Q. And what about the message?
A. I put paper in my mouth and chew it up and spit it out. These things I do not understand.
Q. But this favour Mr Bright asked you to do, what did you tell him about that?
A. I tell him I cannot deliver message and I want to tell nothing else. But he asks questions all the time, and he gets angry and says I am lying because I was afraid to deliver message. Then I get angry and tell him what I see. I think he understand these things as less as me. He sits and thinks and thinks. Then two, three days later, patrol truck comes into yard. I see from my window. Two prisoners kicked out. One hit the ground and lie there. He looks like gone case to me. The other is a woman, hurt bad and face all smashed, but I think maybe I recognize her. Then I hear this great cry from Mr Bright’s cell and woman look up and I know then she is Acholi woman he is married to. I run damn quick to his cell and drag him from window or else he be in trouble. But he in trouble anyway. They come for him soon after and he runs at them like madmen. But they just kick and beat him up bad and mock him, then take him away.
Q. When they mocked him, what did they say?
A. Things like, good fuck your woman, take three men at once, that sort of thing. Also, you got no friends. Even white friends don’t want to know you. Fuck your woman then give her up to PSU, that’s what your white friends do. Then they take him away. Come back one, two hours later. Teeth all broken, nails torn, things that do not mend. I know this time they don’t plan he should go free.
Q. What happened to Mr Bright after that?
A. Nothing more. They leave him to me. I help how I can, but he is gone case. Last time I see him, he is in compound. They are making men play sledgehammer but he does not look, just sits. Then Towelli, big PSU boss, appear with white man. Mr Bright look up and see white man. Suddenly he find strength, or some of it. He jumps up, snatches sledgehammer from man and comes running at Towelli and white visitor. He is shouting, I cannot understand what, and he is swinging sledgehammer like he wants to kill someone.
Q. What happened then?
A. Someone trip him up. Then they start beating him. I go away. I have duties to do. Mr Bright does not come back to cells, and later I hear he is dead in car accident. I am very sorry for Mr Bright. I am his friend and I take his papers from where he hides them and keep them so that I can show how Gregory is not torturer like others but helps his prisoners and does them favours.
Q. The white man with Towelli, did you recognize him?
A. Oh yes, boss. He was Mr Ellis, white man whose house I visit in Kampala, friend of Idi Dada’s.
Q. This session of the Commission’s interrogation of this witness stands adjourned.
20
Sairey sat in the back of a green Volvo Estate and read the document with the help of a dull maplight. Mrs Marsden was driving, with Vita next to her. A car’s length behind, Archbell was driving Lightoller in a red BMW. The frivolous thought flashed across her mind that security people showed their patriotism in strange ways, but she knew it was merely a lightning before death.
She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Oblivion would be best, but when it wouldn’t come, she found she had achieved an odd kind of relief through sheer satiety. How many impossible things was it really possible to stomach before breakfast? She menued them in her mind.
One: her father had been having an affair with his best friend’s wife while his friend was in jail.
Two: accused of this by her mother, her father had killed her.
Three: aided and abetted by his sister and his mistress, Nigel Ellis had then dumped the body, burnt out her car, and waited to be told that she’d been murdered by kondis.
Four: he had then betrayed his mistress and her fugitive brother to the authorities.
Five: he had finally connived at the murder of his best friend.
There was a Six, which comprised what he had done to his only child. She merely toyed with this for fear that it should prove too easy to digest. But it was at Seven, superficially the least revolting dish on the menu, that she finally gagged.
Seven: in a fit of pique, he had started writing his memoirs, thus concentrating all the expert attention of his erstwhile colleagues on just those parts of his life which he must have prayed would remain buried for ever.
Funny; you couldn’t be sure you knew someone well enough to affirm them incapable of murder and treachery, but you would stake your life they were too clever to do anything really stupid.
She found, after a very short while, she didn’t have the talent for such detachment and sought diversion in anger. Reaching forward, she rapped Vita hard on the shoulder.
‘How much are they paying you to get mixed up in this grisly job, Vita?’ she demanded. ‘Or have you always resented my father so much that you did it for free?’
Vita turned to look at her. ‘I get paid what I’ve been paid for the past sixteen years,’ she said calmly.
‘How long?’ said Sairey, taken aback.
‘Sixteen years. Not full-time, of course. It was your grandfather who recommended me to the Co-op. He got to know me quite well as a friend of your mother’s and felt I might be of use to their Medpsy Department.’
‘So Daddy knew that …’
‘No. Of course not. People only know their own sections. We don’t have Christmas parties. I was … am … merely a consultant on interrogation psychology.’
‘Is that grown-up language for torture?’ said Sairey.
‘No. It’s concerned mainly with assessing how genuine defectors are. Also, how suitable prospective employees are. It has dovetailed nicely with my main areas of professional interest outside the Co-op.’
‘Nice for you,’ sneered Sairey. ‘So what have I been, Vita? A footnote in a thesis? Or maybe even a monograph in a learned journal!’
Sairey yelled the last words so loud that Mrs Marsden jumped in her seat and the car lurched towards the kerb. Who the hell was Mrs Marsden, anyway? Sairey asked herself. The female equivalent of the stud chauffeur? Absurd!
Vita’s voice was unchanged. Calm, patient, clear. The voice of a woman who has viewed all her works and seen that they were good. At that moment, Sairey hated her.
‘When a co-op was set up to deal with your father’s proposed illegal memoirs, I was seconded to it as the Medpsy representative. At first, I resisted on the grounds of my acquaintance with the family. I was persuaded by the argument that I would be able to ensure that proper justice was done.’
‘And me? You wanted to do justice to me by ferrying intimate details of my treatment to all those grubby ears so they could sift through them, looking for crap to throw at Daddy? Christ, Vita, whatever professional list you’re on, you ought to be struck off it with an iron bar!’
For the first time, she felt she had drawn blood. Vita turned her head away and took her time in replying. When she finally spoke, her voice hovered on the edge of uncertainty.
‘Your father’s memoirs and your problems are related, Sairey. More closely than I could have guessed, to start with. The very fact that he was writing them was probably one of many triggers that reactivated your trauma. When I heard that you were unwell …’
‘Heard? How did you hear?’ Sairey’s mind must have been getting more finely attuned to the sub-texts of this shadowy world, for she provided her own answer almost instantly.
‘Dr Varley! He was Mummy’s family doctor, wasn’t he? And someone with a job like Sir Joe’s wasn’t going to rely on the Hippocratic Oath when he could use the good old Official Secrets Act to gag his quack, was he? And it was Varley who suggested you!’
‘I never told you that, Sairey,’ mused Vita.
Sairey didn’t even blush at this reminder of her eavesdropping, but she did accept this reminder of the sharpness of Vita’s perceptions.
‘So you agreed in advance to take me on as part of the job?’ she accused. ‘You can’t even claim it happened by accident.’
‘I took you on to protect you,’ said Vita, with her old crispness. ‘You are the daughter of the best friend I ever had, and I was determined no harm would come to you. I thought when I started that it was simply the trauma of your mother’s death I was dealing with. It wasn’t till the hypnosis sessions had got under way that I began to wonder if the trauma were not something much more massive than simple loss. And when I realized what was actually behind it, I felt I could not know how best to proceed without reference to the other facts as they were being collated by the Co-op.’
‘Crap,’ said Sairey. She didn’t even shout. ‘You’ve always hated Daddy ever since he took your best friend away by marrying her. It must have blown your mind when you realized what you might be able to pin on him. God, now I think of it, this unbiased committee of enquiry, I don’t know who else is on it, but the ones I do know seem hand-picked because they’ve one thing in common: they all hate my father! There’s you; there’s Grandad, who always blamed Daddy for Mummy’s death, even before you went running to him with my tape; and there’s that animal Archbell, whose whore he stole!’
