Hateland (19 page)

    Colin and I used to ring home once a week to keep in touch. When we rang in early October 1985, we heard there'd been more rioting in London, this time on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham. More than 200 police officers had been injured and one of them, PC Keith Blakelock, had been hacked to death.

    Our South African friends goaded us 'Brits' for letting 'the kaffirs' get away with it. 'Your government should break out the rifles,' they'd say.

    About a month later, we got a call from 'Benny the Jew'. He said Adolf had been injured by a car bomb in Clapham High Street. Benny didn't have any more details. My first thought was that Adolf had been caught up in an IRA attack. But then I couldn't think of anything in Clapham that the Provos might have regarded as worth blowing up.

    Benny rang back a few days later with more information. That's when I first found out that Adolf had been travelling as a passenger in a car with the future BNP 'national organiser' Tony Wells/Lecomber but had got out just before it had exploded. Both Adolf and Lecomber had been injured. Adolf had minor burns to his face and hands; Lecomber was quite badly chewed up. Both had made their own way to hospital, where they'd been arrested.

    The fact they'd been arrested suggested the police didn't think of them as victims. Press reports mentioned that the headquarters of the far-left WRP stood 200 yards away from the site of the explosion.

    I wouldn't hear the full story until I'd got back to England. In the mean time, we sent Adolf a 'Get Well Soon' card.

    The success of our heavily armed approach to club security meant our job had become extremely tedious. Trouble had almost disappeared. Colin and I would sit at a table in the restaurant from early evening until the early hours of the morning, totally bored. We'd been planning to stay in South Africa and then apply for citizenship so we could join the army. But that remained a long way off.

    Colin suggested moving to Cape Town: 'It's full of English and we'd be near the sea.' I said we could think about it. Colin said he'd only stay in Jo'burg if the company gave him a more exciting job. The next day, he told the boss he was bored and wanted to leave. He was asked to 'hang on', because something was coming up that might interest him.

    I didn't want to be left out, so I told the boss the same thing. He told me the same thing, 'Hang on. Something's coming up.' The something coming up turned out to be another club, also in the city centre, but in the basement of a hotel. It was the haunt of various biker and Portuguese gangs. It had a reputation for trouble. This wasn't quite the new position Colin had hoped for, so he left the company.

    I decided to rise to the challenge, although without Colin I had no back-up. I was expected to handle any situation that arose, alone. In fact, most of the customers turned out to be all right.

The manager represented the problem. A half-witted, aggressive little shit, he caused more trouble than anyone else. His decisions, always arbitrary and irrational, seemed designed to provoke.

    He'd point at individuals he wanted me to eject from the club. Then he'd make a big show of the fact that he'd ordered their ejection. Most of these customers, so far as I could tell, hadn't actually done anything wrong. More than once, I saw him, blind drunk, threatening customers with a handgun. He'd never explain their supposed offences.

    One evening, he decided - again for no apparent reason - that jeans were no longer an acceptable form of dress. Given that bikers formed the largest segment of the clientele, his request struck me as even more markedly unreasonable than usual. Not only did he order me to turn away at the door any people wearing jeans, he also demanded that I eject every jeans-wearing customer already in the club.

    But I did as I was told, although I expected trouble. Fortunately for me and the manager, almost everyone left without much fuss. Only one group of Portuguese men took exception. They felt they were being singled out. As they left, they threatened to return to smash up the club - and me. The barman told me they had a reputation and that I ought to keep my wits about me
for
a
while.

    I finished work about 3.30 in the morning and walked the half mile or so home. There was no one about. I got in the lift and stepped out at my floor. A group of six or so men were standing around outside the first flat while being shouted at by a Portuguese woman. I'd never seen her before, although she only lived a few doors down from me. As soon as she saw me, she ran over. She started saying, 'Arrest him! Go on, arrest him!' She'd assumed I was a policeman. Our uniform was similar to theirs and, as I was also carrying a baton, handcuffs and firearms, I could understand her mistake.

    I tried telling her I wasn't a policeman, but she wasn't interested. She just kept gibbering on. 'I had a party in my flat. It ended. But these people want to come back in.' Her manner was agitated and she smelt of alcohol.

    I told her I didn't want anything to do with her guests: 'I'm not a policeman, I live here.' I walked a few steps with her. As I got to the men, I realised they were the same men who'd threatened me earlier at the club. 'Small world,' I thought. And it was almost my last thought ever, because the men recognised me too. One of them stepped forward, called me a bastard and lunged at my chest with a knife. The blade cut me, but I managed to turn away, so preventing it going right in. Holding the shotgun in both hands, I swung round and belted the knifeman across the head with it. The wooden butt crashing into his skull made a wincingly loud noise. He fell to the floor, unconscious and injured.

    I raised the shotgun and pointed it at the others. I made as if to shoot. They tore off down the corridor. The woman was standing there, muttering in Portuguese. I wasn't sure what to do with the man on the floor. His head was bleeding quite badly; one of his eyes had closed completely. I grabbed his feet and dragged him to the lift. I ferried him down to the ground floor, then dragged him out into the street, where I left him alongside the rubbish. I took the lift back up. The woman was still standing near her flat, alone. She started shouting in Portuguese. She seemed angry with me. I couldn't understand why. After all, I'd got rid of her unwanted guests.

    I told her to calm down. I walked with her to the door of her flat. Her evening's alcohol consumption had really started kicking in. She became abusive in English. I'd had enough. I was bleeding too, my stab wound was starting to hurt and I wanted to go to bed. She was lucky I wasn't a policeman: I'd have arrested her.

    I grabbed her by the arm, pushed her into her flat and told her to fuck off. I walked off down the corridor. She followed a few paces behind me, screaming abuse. Colin was awake when I got in. He said he'd heard a row, but hadn't realised I was involved. I warned him that if the Portuguese man ended up in hospital, we'd probably get a visit from the police. And, whether or not he made it to hospital, we'd probably get a visit at some point from him and his mates.

    I washed and cleaned the wound in my chest, then put the knife I'd picked up from the floor, and my torn shirt, into a bag and went to bed.

    I slept uneasily with the guns by my side. I was expecting either the police or the Portuguese to burst through the door, but no one came. Early next morning, the company telephoned to say they needed every available body to attend an incident near the black township of Soweto.

    An hour or so later, I was picked up in a company van which drove at speed out of the city to Soweto. I hadn't realised we had customers out there. I couldn't imagine how we'd recruited them. Perhaps we'd scared them with stories about the white police ('Flimsy shack, Madam? That's not going to stop a determined Boer in uniform, is it?').

    In fact, I discovered our customers were the South African police. They called occasionally on freelance help for 'non-political' incidents when they were overstretched. I was told in the van, which contained around ten other heavily armed colleagues, that two black factions had been fighting over ownership of a 'shebeen', that is, an illegal drinking den, often a venue for gambling and prostitution. (When I first heard the word 'shebeen', I thought it was native South African. Only years later did I discover it comes from an Irish Gaelic word for 'bad ale'.)

    By the time we got there, a gang fight had already taken place. One young man of about 20 had been trapped by rivals, put against a wall and stoned. He lay there motionless, blood spattered all over his broken body. I thought he was dead. Another man had been stabbed in the head. He was reeling around the street, clutching his head and screaming in pain. After a while, he collapsed.

    A police pick-up truck arrived. A few policemen got out, grabbed hold of the two men and dumped them both into the back of the truck, like sacks of rubbish. They drove off, leaving us standing in a cloud of dust.

    When I got back to the flat, I found an anxious-looking Colin waiting for me. He said that armed police had raided the flat. Apparently, the Portuguese woman had alleged I'd assaulted her. Colin said the police had made plain they planned to arrest me. I decided to seek legal advice. As I left the building, two policemen suddenly stood up, guns drawn, from behind a car near the entrance. Pointing their guns at me, they shouted, 'Raise your hands and turn around.' I wasn't going to argue. They came over, searched me, handcuffed me, then asked me where my guns were. I said, 'In the flat.'

    They told me to get into their car. As we drove off, one of them said they were taking me to John Foster Square police station. It had a worse reputation than my bikers' club. Numerous prisoners had died after supposedly 'jumping' from windows on the upper floors during interrogations.

    They brought me into a detention room. Sweating - and not just from the heat - I waited on my own for a few minutes before a detective entered the room. He asked me about the events of the night before. I told him the truth and added that I still had the knife and torn clothing at home. He produced a statement made by the Portuguese woman. She claimed that, for no reason, I'd grabbed her by the arm, pushed her about, threatened her with a gun and even sexually assaulted her (although she'd given no explanation of how).

    I was furious. I said, 'Why the fuck would I attack someone who lives on the same fucking landing as me, without reason? I'm not fucking stupid, mate.'

    I needn't have worried. The detective said he didn't believe the woman and he wasn't going to look into the matter any further. He said she was known to the police and added, 'Be careful of these people. They're trouble.' He wrote out a statement for me, asked me to sign it, then told me to go home and forget about it. Less than 30 minutes after being arrested, I was released. I thought that was the end of the matter. In fact, it was only the beginning.

    The company heard about my arrest. The boss didn't like having any bother with the police. He decided I needed a break from the nightclub. He thought that, between us, me and the manager were causing more trouble than we were preventing. He said he wanted to transfer me temporarily to 'patrol work', that is, patrolling the suburbs of Johannesburg in a pick-up truck.

    I was owed a few days, which I took before starting my new duties. During this time, I spoke a lot with Colin about moving on to Cape Town. At that time, a luxury train called 'The Blue Train' connected the two cities. We agreed we'd travel on it if and when we left Jo'burg, although it was becoming a case of 'when' rather than 'if'. It was now December. Debra missed her family, as she'd been away now for almost a year. They'd thought she'd only be gone for a month or two. She said she'd travel with us on The Blue Train, but first she wanted to spend Christmas in England.

    We booked three tickets for The Blue Train, due to depart Jo'burg on 14 January 1986. I don't know why, but something told me I wouldn't be on it. I just couldn't look forward to the journey (and the new 'new start'), because I knew it wasn't going to happen.

    Debra planned to leave for England in the second week of December. I told myself I'd ask her out for a meal the night before she left, but I bottled out of it. I thought she'd make some excuse and hand me the basket. She planned a final drink with her friends. They did invite me and Colin, but I said I had to work. I hoped to pop in to the club at some stage, but I never did. I don't know why.

    The following morning, Debra came round to say goodbye. I was surprised at how sorry I felt to see her go, even though she'd only be gone for a month. But thoughts of romance soon receded when I started my new duties patrolling the suburbs. Until then, I'd foolishly regarded myself as unshockable.

CHAPTER 9

BLACK MAN'S HELL

'Let's get this straight, Bernie. Kaffirs are fucking vermin. They're not human, OK?'

    Dougie, my senior colleague in the pick-up truck, was explaining the cornerstone of his world view as we drove around the tidy and well-tended suburbs of white Johannesburg and the less tidy and less well-tended suburbs of coloured Johannesburg.

    Most of the blacks we encountered were either domestic servants or - at least in Dougie's eyes - potential criminals. Our job was to answer emergency calls from Community Policing Services customers. We had white and coloured householders on our books, but calls from whites tended to be treated with the greatest urgency. These white callers were usually reporting suspicious people near, on, or in their properties.

    Dougie was in his mid-30s. Slightly built and not very tall, he bolstered his otherwise unimposing presence with an arsenal of weapons strapped to his body. I don't know if he was an Afrikaner or an Anglo, because we didn't have the sort of conversations in which I could have asked a question like that. Any details about his background emerged incidentally through anecdotes he'd tell about his past.

    These tended to describe his beating, shooting and humiliating 'kaffirs'. He said he'd shot his 'first kaffir' as a teenager. He'd been cleaning a handgun in his house when he'd heard his sister screaming in the garden. He'd run out with the gun, seen a black man standing over her and fired twice. The first bullet hit the man in the shoulder; the second slammed into his head, killing him instantly. He'd told the police the man had been attacking his sister. That was the end of the matter. No charges, no inquest, no nothing. I didn't really believe him. Naively, I thought he had to be lying or, at the very least, exaggerating. After a few shifts with him, I changed my mind.