Hot Ice (16 page)

Facing the modest square home, Chris Winters has a moment of clarity:
don’t go in there.
But Chris is
city-bred
and pragmatic. She’s well-known for her get up and go attitude. She has come to see Grace Tweneni in order to get her brother’s address and she intends to do just that. There and then! That’s how she operates. Intuition is something she tries to ignore. But still she hesitates. A dull rumble of thunder reminds her of the coming storm. Pulling herself together she walks up the gravel driveway and raps the knocker.

Grace Tweneni is wearing a nurse’s uniform, which is some small comfort in the face of her obvious hostility. Tweneni is a powerful woman and almost as tall as her brother. Chris finds her large, glittering eyes and her habit of staring without blinking thoroughly bizarre. After some hesitation Tweneni opens the door wide enough to let Chris slip through. Chris finds herself in a
modestly furnished living room, which is larger than she had expected, with a good deal of clutter lying around.

‘I’m Chris Winters.’ Chris says, holding out her hand, which the woman ignores. ‘Thank you for seeing me. I’m looking for your brother, Moses Freeman.’

Grace turns away, ignoring her, which disturbs Chris. ‘He told me that you would always know where he is,’ she persists. ‘I need to contact him urgently.’

‘What would a white woman like you want with my brother?’ Her voice is deep, more like a growl.

‘My employer, Prince Husam, sent me. He and your brother have a mutual business interest in Liberia. I’m in charge of checking the progress of the prince’s African enterprises. Tell me, do you know where your brother is?’

Her question is ignored. ‘Why are you searching after him? Why don’t you wait for him to call you?’

‘Because it’s urgent. The prince has promised to invest certain sums in their joint venture and quite honestly we no longer know which bank your brother is using.’

Rather than placating her, this information seems to infuriate Grace. ‘He’s not in South Africa.’ Triumph glitters in her eyes.

‘That isn’t a problem.’ Chris counters. ‘If you’ll tell me where he is…’

‘You came here alone?’

‘By taxi.’

‘And the taxi is waiting for you?’

‘No. I have a mobile. I’ll call for a taxi when I leave.’

‘Clearly, you are not from Johannesburg.’ She laughs unpleasantly and Chris feels the need to explain.

‘I arrived from England this morning. If you’d just let me have his address, I can be on my way.’ They seem to be going nowhere.

Grace smiles, but her smile is eerie, and Chris senses real hatred.

‘Sit down. You’ll have to wait. Moses calls me every evening around this time. I must clean up. The kids make a mess.’

Chris tries not to stare as Grace moves around picking up books and tapes and dumping them in the next room. Clearly she has children, but Chris is unwilling to try her hand at small talk. She’s been snubbed enough. She wonders where the children are.

Half an hour later the telephone rings, startling them both. Grace grabs the receiver and embarks on a loud complaint. Her gestures suggest that she’s talking about Chris. At last she simmers down and listens intently. ‘Ow!’ She exclaims several times. Ten minutes later she replaces the receiver.

‘You want to know where my brother is?’ she says, looking ferocious. ‘He’s in prison in
Windhoek awaiting trial for fraud, theft and diamond smuggling. He was set up by you. You told the prince that there are no workshops. You put my brother in prison.’

‘No! Good heavens! That’s insane. Do you think I would come here if it were true? It has nothing to do with me.’

‘You pretended to be the prince’s assistant. You went to see Moses and forced him to show you all his bookkeeping. Then you lied to the prince.’

‘No. I certainly didn’t.’

Grace Tweneni is looking murderous and she’s moving far too close. Chris backs towards the door.

‘They may deport him to Liberia to stand trial. That would be the end for him. You’re not welcome here.’

‘All right, I’m leaving, but you’re completely wrong. I didn’t report anything of the kind to the prince. I’m sure that the New York fraud squad looked into his affairs. Perhaps that’s why he was deported from America.’

‘We shall see. Sit down. You can put your mobile away. You won’t get a taxi to come here so late. Those drivers are afraid of getting hijacked. I’ll call someone local for you.’

Her offer comes as a welcome surprise to Chris. She slides a chair slightly nearer to the door and sits down. Ignoring her fear, Chris acknowledges that she has achieved her objective. She knows where Freeman is and with luck she will be able to speak
to him in prison. All she has to do is to get out of here. She watches sidelong as Grace dials a number and spends a long time gesticulating, her voice trembling with emotion. To get a taxi? Perhaps the driver is her lover. At last Grace switches off her mobile.

‘It took a long time to call a taxi,’ Chris murmurs uneasily.

‘They didn’t want to come, but finally they agreed.’ Chris sits in silence for the next five minutes, while Grace continues to tidy the room.

The car arrives and hoots and the two women hurry outside. Standing on the pavement, Chris exhales. Thank God I’m out of there. Still, it doesn’t look like a taxi, there’s no meter, but after all, this is Soweto, not London. To her surprise, Grace gets into the passenger seat in front. Perhaps she guessed right and he’s her lover.

‘Get in. He’s dropping me off,’ Grace explains.

The taxi twists and turns through the dark streets. The houses become smaller, the roads narrower and soon they are driving into an area of deep poverty. There are no lights, but in the car’s headlights she sees tin huts adjoining each other in a jumble of shapes and sizes. Only candles and oil lamps flicker through open doorways. The people are cooking on open fires and paraffin stoves.

Unease is making Chris feel very sick. ‘Surely you should have made for the motorway,’ she tells the driver.

‘He’s taking me to my sister’s first,’ Grace replies.

At last the car stops abruptly in a crowded open square in the midst of the shanty town. Poorly dressed locals surge around the car. Grace gets out and beckons and six men rush towards them waving batons. They look like mobsters. Two of them sport handguns in holsters. Chris struggles to throw off a strange feeling of apathy as her world becomes increasingly unreal. The feeling intensifies as she is dragged from the car by two men and her hands are tied. There’s no point in struggling. There’s nothing she can do against six men and surrounded by a hostile mob.

Don’t panic. Panic will harm me. I mustn’t show fear. Be calm. No one will help me. I’m alone. So I’ll have to help myself. Panic and guilt are synonymous. Stay in control!

The crowd watches in awe-struck fascination. She’s the star performer in a horror movie. Or is it a snuff movie? One of the men steps forward.

‘Grace Tweneni has laid a charge that you gave false information about her brother, Moses Freeman, leading to his arrest and imprisonment, but you were lying. You are to be tried here tonight by the People’s Court. You’re an informer. If the charges against you are found to be
true you will be punished by the People’s Court.’

The fact that he speaks good English gives Chris hope. Perhaps they’ll listen to reason.

‘There’s not a word of truth in this accusation. It’s absurd. I came here to see Moses Freeman. Call the police,’ she says.

‘Around here we are the police. We keep this township safe from skellums, even white skellums. You’ll see. If you have something to say, keep it for your trial. You’ll get a fair trial.’

A fair trial! Here…in the dark…with all these people waiting for the show…and Grace shouting her head off. They’ll kill me.

A hard knock between her shoulder blades propels her towards a clump of trees where she’s pushed behind a queue of prisoners. She stumbles twice. Her knees are so wobbly she can hardly stand. Breathing is hard, too. She fights to bring herself under control.

She remembers reading in law school of the infamous kangaroo courts that sprang up in South Africa’s slums in the bad old days. The people got together to try to bring law and order to their crime-ridden streets where white police were seldom seen. Since then the authorities have tried to stamp them out, but with limited success.

The ‘court’ consists of a table and chair placed at the side of the yard where four people are sitting. Two paraffin lamps hang from a post near the table. Other lamps hang from the surrounding
trees. A woman is dragged before them. Questions and answers go on and on, but Chris can’t understand a word of the proceedings. The judge speaks briefly. Screaming and fighting, the woman is dragged to the centre of the yard, stripped forcibly to the waist. She’s knocked headlong to the ground. Three men step forward and savagely beat her with wooden canes. Chris watches in horror as the blood spurts from her back and her screams intensify. Then it’s all over and she’s free to go, but no one helps the victim as she crawls to the edge of the crowd.

Soon it will be her turn. She has to get away. Chris steps slowly backwards, but collides with a guard holding a knife.

‘You will be necklaced,’ he whispers. ‘You will dance. It takes a long time to die.’ He points to a pile of tyres and cans of petrol strategically placed under a tree, lit by the flickering lantern.

Fear comes like blast from a bomb, knocking her on to her knees. She almost blacks out. Using strength she never knew she had, she blocks the scream that’s rising in her throat. Instead she sinks back against a tree and closes her eyes.

Surely necklacing is the foulest torture ever devised. With their hands tied behind their backs, the victims leap and fall about in their efforts to shake the petrol out of the tyres, which hang like flaming millstones around their necks.

How many more to go? How long before they drag her to the centre of the yard? As her eyes adjust to the gloom, Chris sees a thicket of trees and shrubs behind her. She sees a man, shackled and tied, being lead to the yard. A quiver of excitement runs through the bystanders. Whatever he’s done, Chris doesn’t hold out much hope for him. The interrogation is short. Two men force a tyre over his head. He struggles and sinks to his knees as fear sucks the strength out of him.

Chris glances around. The guards, fascinated by the macabre spectacle, have stepped forward for a better view. She steps slowly backwards towards the sheltering trees, but part of her is with the victim in the yard. She can’t look…it could be her…how can she run and leave him burning? She hears the trickling sound of liquid pouring, a strong stench of petrol wafts towards her. Then comes a whoosh as the petrol ignites. The accused man begins to scream. For Chris his screams never end.

Nearer comes a gasp of awe from the crowd. They inch forward to watch the macabre dance, and so do the guards. Chris backs towards the shelter of the trees. She expects to hear shouts and gun shots, but she only hears screams. She turns and flees headlong towards the bushes. It’s dark and she’s like an animal, bounding, falling, picking herself up. Fear drives her on. Heedless of roots and branches, she runs for her life. Soon Chris hears shouts and whistles behind her and the sound of
pounding feet. She flees through the dark woods with no idea what lies ahead or where she’s going.

The guards are gaining on her, so she changes direction, moving away from the commotion, racing along a narrow path, unable to shake off a sense of doom. They know the terrain intimately. She doesn’t. Then, on her left, she sees lights shining from far away. Perhaps a motorway. Safety seems to lie that direction, so she changes course again.

A long time later she reaches a clearing. It’s some sort of a makeshift football field, by the look of the goal posts. She is about to cross it when she sees a light flicker from behind a rock. A torch perhaps. She lurches back into the trees and hears a strange bird call, but surely no bird ever sang that melodiously. The sound sets her heart hammering and her skin crawling. She must get away from here. She turns back, hurtling from bush to bush…panicking, falling, hurting herself, but she’s beyond caring. Several more shots ring out, but they’re in the distance.

Half an hour later, her clothes in shreds, Chris pauses to take stock. Her path is hampered by a strong barbed wire fence. It takes a huge effort of will to stand still and listen. She seems to have left her pursuers far behind. She tries to catch her breath and stop panting as she saws the rope that binds her wrists on the rusty wire spikes until the strands fall apart. Pulling the wire aside, she tumbles through.

Not far away is a small rocky hill, like a vast pile of stones. She might be able to see the motorway from there. It’s steeper than it looks and the stones are loose so she keeps on sliding back. Panting and cutting her hands, she reaches the top at last, and she pauses to look around.

The first gunshot is thunderous. It shakes the night like a thunderclap. A second shot follows. She slithers down and runs headlong over the ground. She’s lost all idea of time or direction. She only knows that she must keep moving on.

A sudden streak of lightning transforms the darkness into daylight. She’s standing in the middle of an empty field. How can that be? The thunder clap is almost simultaneous and a strong smell of sulphur chokes the air. Then the clouds break. A solid mass of water drenches her and churns the dust to mud in seconds. Visibility is nil. Which way? Another flash lights the scene in lurid
purple-white
light. On the other side of the field stands a house, a garden, a child’s swing and a gate. It looks so safe that she bursts into tears. Crouched on the ground in the rain, she rocks backwards and forwards as her tears turn to rasping sobs of anger and relief.

Later, after she has been hustled into a hot bath by the farmer’s wife, Melanie, and dressed in the woman’s pyjamas and dressing gown, she sips a mug of sweet rooibos tea, gnaws her buttermilk
rusks, and tries to think up a suitable story, while the farmer, Steve, tells her how lucky she is to be alive. She doesn’t need to be told. She can’t stop remembering those terrible screams, the stench of burning flesh, the cruelty.