Tandia (76 page)
A small crowd as usual gathered outside the township mortuary as the two Black Jacks pulled the corpse from the police van. A brown paper bag had been pulled over Tom Majombi's head and tied with a piece of string around his neck, so that faceless, he resembled a limp, dark, dusty scarecrow. A head bag was easier to use and cheaper than a body bag and served the same basic purpose, to avoid identification in the event that the dead man was someone of political importance whom the crowd might recognize.
Johnny Tambourine and Dog Poep Ismali pushed to the front of the crowd gathered around the police van. Their families, along with the rest of the gang, had been forcibly moved from Sophiatown to Meadowlands and Moroka.
Now the two boys stared at the body and Dog Poep Ismali jabbed Johnny Tambourine in the ribs. 'Hey look, it's Tom Majombi,' he announced in a loud whisper.
'How can you tell?' Johnny Tambourine whispered back.
'The tattoo, see the tattoo on his arm!' Etched on the deep brown forearm of the young Zulu fighter in the familiar midnight blue of tattoo ink was the name Black Tornado, Tom Majombi's fighting name.
The news of the boxer's death was soon on the" township streets and, as always, reached Madam Flame Flo by nightfall. She called Peekay and he went directly to the morgue. It was after five and the white man who was responsible for the morgue, a large Boer named Klopper, at first refused to admit him.
'It's after hours, man, tell him to come back tomorrow,' Klopper had told the black clerk who'd come to tell him a white man was making an enquiry. Occasionally a white would come to the mortuary looking for a black servant whom the family may have been fond of, but Klopper didn't like this. They were
kaffir boeties
and not to be encouraged. But then he'd glanced down at the card the black man had handed him and had seen Peekay's name. 'Here, man, why didn't you say so, this is the Welterweight Boxing Champion of the whole world!' He hurried out to meet Peekay.
Peekay identified Majombi's body. 'When does the doctor perform the autopsy, Meneer Klopper?' he asked.
'Ag, man, we don't worry too much.' Klopper waved his hands, indicating the fifteen or so bodies lying on the cement floor of the mortuary. 'When you seen one stab wound you seen them all. The doctor comes in for half an hour, maybe sometimes forty minutes, every day and writes out certificates for the coroner.'
'And if there isn't any stab wound?'
'Man, then it's only one of two things, a heart attack or the spoke.'
'Spoke?'
'Ja, man, a bicycle spoke is a major murder weapon. Come I'll show you.' He walked over to the body of a young male and turned him over onto his stomach. The man was naked and there appeared to be no marks on his body. Klopper went down on his haunches and pointed to a tiny red spot between the first and second vertebrae at the base of the neck. 'The victim is pushed forward and a sharpened bicycle spoke is pushed in. His spine is cut. He's dead in ten seconds, maybe less, and there's no mark, no noise. Here in Soweto, Advocate Peekay, the spokesman is the hired killer. A good spokesman is higher up than a gunman. He can kill a kaffir in a crowd and nobody will notice; they just think the man fell down or something.'
'Tom Majombi, how did he die?'
'Ag man, I haven't looked. Tomorrow the doctor will say maybe.'
'Maybe is not sufficient, Meneer Klopper. I would like to bring my own doctor, two doctors.'
Klopper was visibly upset. 'We have a government doctor. We don't like other people sticking their nose in our business, Advocate.'
'Meneer Klopper I'd appreciate your co-operation in this matter. Tom Majombi was a boxer, I'm a boxer. In the ring a boxer is just a boxer.' Peekay explained.
'But outside he's just a kaffir again.' Klopper added.
'Please, I don't want to bring a court order, it just makes more paperwork for you.'
Klopper scratched his chin. 'I don't know, man, it's highly irregular.'
'Perhaps they can come in, say, two hours before your pathologist comes, that way there is no confrontation?'
Klopper thought about this for a while. 'Okay, man, you must be here half past seven tomorrow morning.'
Peekay had challenged the coroner's finding in court. The government pathologist's report simply showed 'death by causes unknown'. However the evidence by the two independent specialists told a different story. Both indicated that the morgue examination was too superficial and, after the government pathologist had seen Majombi, they had caused the body to be moved to a private hospital where they'd performed an exhaustive autopsy.
Klopper hadn't mentioned the visit of the two private medical men prior to the government's pathologist's arrival, thinking not to upset him. Now the government found itself totally compromised as the evidence showed that Tom Majombi had died of a massive brain haemorrhage, the result of a middle-ear infection caused by a ruptured eardrum.
It was three weeks from the time Peekay had seen the boxer in hospital to the discovery of his body, and from the report it was also obvious that he hadn't been treated since his original hospital diagnosis.
Dr Dinkelman, the forensic surgeon who'd been present at the autopsy, was asked to explain in court at the preliminary hearing how massive brain damage sufficient to cause death, could occur as a result of middle-ear infection. The surgeon showed how repeated punching to the naked ear by a soft boxing glove would compress air inside the canal which, unable to escape outwards, would blow inwards into the eardrum which would eventually rupture. If the rupture wasn't attended to it would set up a middle-ear infection which would eventually lead to brain haemorrhage and death.
It was this single point on which Peekay's potential right to have his case heard rested.
'This middle-ear infection, is it painful, Dr Dinkelman?' he asked.
'Extremely, the man would be in a great deal of pain,' the doctor replied.
'So much pain that he would be likely to seek medical attention?'
'Almost undoubtedly.'
Peekay turned to Magistrate Coetzee. 'May I suggest, your honour, that the reason why Tom Majombi didn't seek medical attention at this stage was that he was incarcerated somewhere?'
The counsel for the government, a senior police prosecutor named Opperman, objected. 'This is conjecture, your honour; there is no evidence to say the deceased was incarcerated.'
Peekay sighed. 'Your honour, I am trying to establish the degree of pain suffered by the deceased. I will rephrase the question.' He turned to the doctor in the-witness stand. 'Is it possible, doctor, that Mr Majombi would simply grin and bear his condition? A Zulu stoic, far braver than you or I?'
Dinkelman frowned. 'No, sir, even if he was able to stand the pain of an untreated middle-ear infection, what would follow the initial infection would be impossible for him to sustain in silence. The man would have been in the most dreadful agony.'
'Thank you, Or Dinkelman. One or two more questions, please.'
'Is it one or two?' Opperman asked, laughing. 'In a South African court we like to be precise, Mr Peekay!' He was trying to take the mickey out of Peekay, pointing up his inexperience to the court.
Peekay brought his finger to his nose, rubbing the tip, but ignored Opperman's remark and continued. 'Apart from intense pain, what would be the outward signs of such a condition?'
'Night sweats at first, then a high fever and shivering; severe vomiting; finally delirium.'
'And you said that the infection eventually travels to the brain. How long would this process take?'
The coroner rubbed his chin. 'If the conditions in which the entire infection took place were unhygienic...'
'As in a prison cell?' Peekay said.
'Objection!' Opperman sighed.
'You were establishing the degree of pain, not the whereabouts of the deceased, Mr Peekay,' Magistrate Coetzee said. He was a big drowsy-looking man, recently transferred from Durban where he'd been Chief Magistrate to take the same position on the Rand. Peekay was quickly learning to respect him. 'Objection sustained,' the big man added in a tired voice.
'Please continue, doctor.' Peekay asked Dinkelman.
'Well, yes, where was I nowâ¦'
'You were talking about conditions, unhygienic conditions,' Peekay reminded him.
'Ja, okay, under unhygienic conditions we could expect the prognosis to go from onset to termination in three weeks to a month.'
'The deceased appeared at the Baragwanath Outpatients a week after he claimed he'd first felt the pain. He was found dead nearly three weeks later. Does this fit with a typical prognosis, doctor?'
'If what you tell me is correct, then certainly,' Dinkelman answered.
Opperman laughed. He was enjoying himself. Not bothering to address himself through Magistrate Coetzee or even to rise, he pointed his pencil at Peekay: 'Mr Peekay, I must object. You are young and this is, I believe, your first case.' His tone was tinged with sarcasm. 'We are not in the habit of
planting
evidence, even if this clever technique is taught in England where, I believe, you received your legal training.
You
have alleged that the decreased turned up at the Baragwanath Outpatients. There is no evidence to prove this was ever so!'
Magistrate Coetzee looked up. 'Mr Peekay, are you trying to establish the time it took for the native boy to die, or is your point that someone deliberately interfered with his attempt to be treated in a hospital and that this interference was the direct cause of his death?'
'Your honour, my learned colleague may regard this case as one simply involving a dead black man. Or as Mr Klopper put it earlier in this preliminary hearing, "Listen, man, I can't be responsible for every dead kaffir now, can I?'" Peekay mimicked Klopper perfectly. 'Nevertheless, I intend to prove that Mr Majombi did register at the hospital and was diagnosed with an inner-ear complaint and that shortly thereafter he was forcibly removed by the Special Branch on the instructions of a senior police officer who I am prepared to name in this court.'
'That will hot be necessary, Advocate,' Magistrate Coetzee said.
'I am asserting that people under the direction of this man caused the deceased to be taken in a police van to a place or places unknown, where he was unable to ask for, or was refused, treatment for his condition, and as a direct consequence died an agonizing and unnecessary death.'
Peekay paused, and appeared to be rubbing the point of his nose with the tip of his forefinger, a gesture for which he would become famous in the years to come. 'When the Red man touches his nose everybody watch out!' the Africans would say of him later, for they learned that the gesture always signalled an unexpected turn in events.
Now Peekay began again slowly. 'I admit I may be clumsy and lack the sagacity of my learned colleague, whom I note feels so much at ease in this court room that he considers himself free to confront me directly without addressing himself through the bench. However, must I conclude that where
he
was trained there is a distinction made between the sanctity of a black life and a white?'
Magistrate Coetzee sighed. 'We are not here to be lectured on the sanctity of life, Advocate. Will you kindly stick to the point.' Though the magistrate's expression didn't change, he liked the young lawyer who refused to be intimidated by Opperman, a notorious bully who took great delight in putting young counsel in their place. 'Would the counsel for the deceased now show the court any evidence he has to prove, or at least to strongly suggest beyond reasonable doubt, that the deceased, Tom Majombi, was a patient in Baragwanath Hospital,' the magistrate instructed.
Peekay turned to his law clerk, who was acting as his junior. The man handed him an envelope which Magistrate Coetzee instructed the clerk of the court to retrieve. 'Your honour, I submit a letter signed by myself on the day in question, in the presence of a doctor and nurse authorizing any extra medical attention Mr Majombi would require and for which I guaranteed payment.' He turned to his clerk again, who handed him a manila folder. 'The carbon copy, in other words, the hospital copy of the letter you have, is contained in this file which I now also submit to this court as further evidence. You will note that in this letter the patient's name and address appears and specific details are given of his prognosis and of the treatment required.'
Opperman jumped to his feet. It was obvious Peekay had caught him unawares. 'Counsel requests permission to study this document, your honour,' he said.
'Advocate Opperman, may I remind you that this is a preliminary hearing. The evidence will be assessed by me alone.' Opperman was suddenly aware that he'd underestimated his young adversary. This was the third and, most likely, the final day of the hearing and Opperman had relaxed, confident that if any evidence existed which would show that the kaffir boxer had been admitted to hospital the young, inexperienced lawyer would have revealed it long before now. On more than one occasion during the hearing he'd been neatly caught in a verbal trap of Peekay's making.
In his mind he'd made light of this; without any real evidence, it would take more than a clever young tongue to outwit him. Now his expression showed real enmity towards the young advocate, a sure sign to Magistrate Coetzee that the ground had been taken from under his feet.