The punch was expertly thrown. It travelled no further than the length of a man’s forearm and landed against her nose. The sound of the bone breaking was a muted snapping and she felt the warmth of blood running into her mouth through the nasal passages. Oh, please God, she prayed. Why is he doing this to me? Please help me, but most of all, please keep my son safe.
‘I told you to keep quiet. How’s that nose going to grow on? How’s Elia Dlomo going to like you now?’
So this did have to do with Elia.
‘I told you to do what I tell you. I’m not telling you again. Do you hear me?’
She nodded. Blood was dripping onto the floor at her feet. She unhooked the bra and slipped off the panties. She was broad in the hips, a fact accentuated by a role of fat that had gathered round them. Her breasts were full and only drooping slightly. Hall reached out with both hands and fondled them briefly.
‘You’ve got money. Don’t tell me you’ve got no money. Where’s your money?’
‘Over there. There by the tin, next to the sink.’ The blood was making bubbling sounds when she spoke.
Hall opened the hinged lid of the old biscuit tin, the remains of a company Christmas present a few years before. In it there was a twenty and a ten and some silver. Hall scooped it up and slipped it into a pocket. ‘Don’t tell me this is all there is. Don’t tell me that.’
‘True’s God. That’s all.’
‘What about the bank account? You’ve got a card?’
‘Please leave that. Otherwise I got nothing for the month.’
‘Do you want to live? Do you want your boy to live? Where is it?’
‘By the pocket by my jacket.’
He found it in a small, plastic purse. ‘Pin number.’
‘Four, double three, one. But there’s not much. Thirty, forty, no more’n that.’ She watched him slip the card into his pocket, then look at her through expressionless eyes. He’s thinking what to do with me, she thought. He’s thinking what to do after he fucks me.
But Hall had come to her home, knowing what he wanted to do to her. No decisions were needed now. He intended to have no trouble during the rape and he wanted Elia Dlomo to learn the details of what had happened to his woman so the beating should be a thorough one. He had learnt well from Enslin Kruger in the treatment of Penny Dongwana and his plans for this Beloved bitch.
Circling slowly around her like a boxer looking for an opening, although with hands raised to her damaged nose no effective defence was likely, he stumbled on an uneven patch on the floor. The small size of the room, the movement as he circled her and his own preoccupation with her: all contributed to him lurching towards the closed door of the bedroom. His shoulder no more than brushed it. The latch had long since stopped clicking into place to hold the door closed. Now it moved, opening only enough for Jenny to see a corner of her bed. A child’s foot hung over the edge of the bed, the toes facing downward.
‘Elia.’ It was a single note, but this time it was screamed. Before she could scream again the first blows were landing, removing her ability to either breathe or scream.
From the back door of Jenny Pregnalato’s home, Hall could see the tracks. He could also see the fifty or more flat-bed coaches of the freight train as it came past slowly. The freight, whatever it was, was covered by canvas that was stretched tight and anchored to the floor.
By Hall’s reckoning there was perhaps thirty metres between himself and the tracks. Boarding the train while it was travelling this speed would not be hard, but first he had to cross the yards of a few cottages, then a short stretch of dry, highveld grass where there was no cover, and finally slip through the wire fence bordering the tracks. While he watched, the train seemed to start gathering speed.
I can’t stay here, he told himself. Not now. Staying in this place had become impossible. These damn township people were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. It would be impossible to keep them away for long. And so far his face was not known in this place.
Hall stepped out into the warm, afternoon air. He hesitated only a moment before walking unhurriedly down the space between the back doors of the cottages. Most of the fences had long since collapsed. He stepped over two that were worn down to little over knee height, starting to run only when he reached the open grass. The surface was uneven, but the grass was thin and he reached the railway fence quickly. It was waist high with horizontal support wires that could serve as footholds. Holding onto one of the uprights, he went over easily.
The train was now moving faster than he could run. He sprinted next to it to make the jump easier. Glancing back, he saw a rail he could use to pull himself up, but it was gaining on him more quickly than he would have liked.
He timed the jump well, getting the rail in both hands. For a moment his feet touched the stones that supported the track. The tensing of his muscles as he jerked himself upwards was no more than a reflex.
Lying flat on the bed of the truck, both hands still on the rail, Hall looked back towards the township. He could see no one who may have watched him leave.
Johannesburg Station – 1 407 kilometres from the Freedom Foundation
THE FURNITURE
in the flat that served as headquarters showed clear signs that the good days were over. Dlomo spent only an hour there, seated on a frayed and discoloured armchair and surrounded by his men. He thanked them for what they had done for him and he told them about this thing he had to do, and that there was no avoiding it. He would come back, but first this had to be done.
Four of the five members of what was left of Elia Dlomo’s gang were foreigners, all of them in the country illegally. They had left impossibly difficult circumstances in Somalia, Zimbabwe and the Congo to find a better life in Johannesburg. Things had not worked out for any of them.
When the wave of xenophobia swept through the city’s black communities, they found themselves being attacked by people they had thought of as friends. People who served with them on township chambers of commerce set fire to their tiny convenience stores. People who sat next to them in church led mobs that attacked them. Parents of children that played with their children watched while they were dragged from their dwellings. By the time Dlomo found them, they were ready for what he had to offer. If this country stopped them getting respect, money, liquor, women and cars legally, they were ready to try Elia Dlomo’s way.
In their years with Dlomo, they discovered that he was ready to risk his life for them. While they were alive, they were valuable to him. Had they thought about it, none would have expected Dlomo to weep for any who were killed by the police. Membership of his clan was for the living. Some of their members had died and others were in jail, but those who were free had found what they were looking for. All were devoted to Dlomo and all had participated in the raid that freed him.
That the boss was free was the best news they had had for a long time. Willie Seremane, who had led the raid that freed Dlomo and was the only local in the gang, had organised a few robberies. They had got away each time, but the scores had been small. Lately they had been reduced to stealing old cars for the scrap industry and holding up roadside hawkers and corner cafés. The take was always pathetic. One of them had gone crazy and tried, at the point of a gun, to keep a few hundred he should have shared. Seremane had to kill him to ensure that no one else tried such foolishness.
It was Dlomo who had always spotted where the big scores lay and knew how to go after them. His method was simple. He had put together big teams and armed them with the vestigial remains of the liberation struggle,
AK
-47s from Umkhonto and
R
4s from the apartheid defence force. The occasional
RPG
rocket launcher or limpet mine filled out their arsenal. They struck cash-in-transit vehicles and banks in such force that the guards never had a chance. And Dlomo had a sense of where money lay. They had never raided an empty cash-in-transit truck, or a supermarket or a bank where the tills were empty. With Dlomo the take was either good or superb.
What Elia Dlomo had to say was a shock to the members of what was left of his gang. They had risked their lives to free him because they expected that, after they did, things would again be like the old days. But he had told them that this was not possible, at least not for a while.
To make himself understood to this disparate group, Dlomo spoke English. ‘When this is finished, we’ll go back and do jobs again. I just gotta get this done.’ He was not sure that he was telling them the truth, but it was the best he could offer them.
By midday he had left his dispirited gang members and had taken a taxi to Johannesburg Station with enough time for the daily train to Cape Town. His thinking was that you were bottled up in a flight, while a train gave you places to hide and escape routes. It was better than a flight, even better than the roads.
Only Seremane accompanied him to the station. Dlomo was wearing a black suit with a clerical collar Seremane had found for him. The gang members had collected a few thousand for him, enough to travel where he needed to go and to come back. It was not a lot, but it was everything they had.
After buying the ticket, Dlomo and his main lieutenant found a part of the platform where they would not be overheard. ‘Chief, I don’t understand this,’ Seremane said gently. ‘Why you got to go do this thing first?’
‘This coloured, Hall, made parole day before yesterday. Maybe he’s going already. Maybe he’s in the Cape already.’
‘But we not inside. We don’t have to think about that now.’
‘Willie, you remember the money we made in the old days?’
‘Yes, Chief, a course.’
‘We going to have money again.’
‘Yes, Chief.’ He looked down at his feet while he said it. They would not be making good money if the chief did not come back.
‘More money than before.’
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘But we not going to die at home in our bed.’
Seremane was silent. What was his chief talking about now?
‘We got a home?’
‘The flat?’ It was less than a statement of fact.
‘We got no home. We all going to die with a police bullet. Otherwise we going to die inside. We all know this thing.’
Again it was impossible to answer. Seremane had never heard him speak this way. They all knew it, but no one ever spoke about it. He raised a hand in a vague gesture that may have indicated the desire to speak, but the thought faded, the hand was lowered and he said nothing.
‘We know this thing. But first we going to live good again. We going to do big jobs again. But when we go back inside, then I want every bastard to know who’s boss. I want Enslin Kruger to know who’s boss.’
Seremane and the others were all members of the Twenty-Six Gang. He understood the need to deal with such matters. Eventually he spoke. ‘You going to kill him, this Hall?’
‘If I see him, but where will I find him?’
‘What then?’
‘The woman.’
‘This woman from the prison. They say she likes us.’
He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘She smiles, she walks. But she’s from them, not from us. I got to kill her before Hall gets there.’
‘We want you must come back, Chief.’
‘I’m coming back – I have that woman’s hair in my pocket when I come back or I come back in a box.’
Klerksdorp Station – 1 283 kilometres from the Freedom Foundation
The Cape train slowed for Klerksdorp. Elia Dlomo sat on the lower bunk in his compartment. It was late afternoon. He felt comfortable in the clerical suit. It fitted perfectly. The Bible on the seat beside him completed the picture.
On the upper bunk a young computer technician on his way home for his annual leave was snoring softly. He had tried briefly to engage the reverend in conversation, but Dlomo had the Bible open on his lap and seemed to be studying the text. What conversation the technician had managed to coax out of him had been brief. Sleep seemed a better option.
The concrete platform rolled smoothly past as the train entered the station. From his window Dlomo saw two uniformed policemen and a few passengers with their luggage at the far end.
He rose and made his way to the observation deck at the end of the coach. As he reached it, the train jerked hard once, then came to a dead stop. From the deck he had a clear view of the two policemen. They were walking away from him towards the driver’s cabin. While he watched they reached the driver, who had opened his door and was looking out.
One of the policemen was saying something, but the distance was too great for Dlomo to pick up the words. ‘How are you, Reverend?’ a voice asked in Zulu. A friendly conductor who had clipped his ticket earlier had arrived on the deck behind him.
‘I’m well, my son,’ Dlomo said. ‘I slept. I often sleep on a train.’
‘Most fall asleep very quickly on the train.’
‘It’s the rocking.’ He nodded towards the policemen. ‘What the officers want?’
‘They get on sometimes. Sometimes they look for a criminal, sometimes they check luggage.’
‘Why do they check luggage?’
‘Dagga. Mostly they check for dagga.’
‘They looking for dagga today?’
‘I don’t know, Reverend.’ He started in the direction of the next coach. ‘I must go and talk to them. If they need to get into compartments, I have to be with them.’
‘They tell you what they want, then you tell me?’ Dlomo was immediately sorry he had asked. It may not be the sort of thing innocent men asked.
The conductor looked surprised, but Dlomo could discern no trace of suspicion in his answer. ‘Yes, Reverend, if you’re not asleep. But the police won’t bother you. They’re looking for criminals.’
‘I don’t think I’m going to sleep now.’
‘I’ll knock softly on your door.’
‘Thank you,’ Dlomo said, then, remembering his role, added, ‘my son.’
He returned to the compartment. From under the seat took out his travelling bag, little more than a satchel. Inside it the nine-millimetre Makarov was wrapped in a face towel. It had been smuggled onto Johannesburg Station by Seremane and handed to him through the window once he was already seated. He checked the Makarov to ensure that it was loaded, then slipped it under a pillow on the side away from the door. The computer technician was still asleep.