Those Who Love Night (16 page)

“Bukula and Associates,” Abigail said. It seemed to be the Zimbabwean way of giving your firm a name. The woman was screwing up her eyes as if weighing up Abigail's statement. “I am Bukula.”

“You're the solicitor?”

“I'm the barrister.”

“Oh.” The eyes widened. “Sorry, miss.” It was clearly not usual for barristers to make the trip to court for this sort of thing. Abigail watched her take out a foolscap-size notebook from behind the counter and page slowly through it. The process clearly took some concentration. Eventually she looked up, keeping her place on the page with an index finger. “Two weeks,” she said.

“That's out of the question,” Abigail told her. “This is a habeas corpus matter. It is urgent. People are missing and have to be found.”

The clerk went back to search through her notebook. “Friday, in two weeks,” she said. “That's the best I can do.”

“You have to do better.”

“Friday, two weeks from today, is the best I can do. The register is full.”

“Please try,” she said between gritted teeth.

“I can't try. The register, it's full.”

The woman who had remained seated spoke up in support of her colleague. “If the register is full, you can't try.”

*   *   *

By the time she reached it, everything had changed at the scene of Patel's death. The body had been removed hours before. Only a bloodstain in the gutter and a congealed remnant of his life's blood between the paving stones remained of the night's incident. The people of the area were going about their business as if nothing had happened. And, no doubt, many were unaware that their local attorney had been killed on that pavement just hours before.

Nothing could be learned from staring at the paving stones where Krisj's blood had run, or at the buildings on either side of the street. The night-watchman who had seen him die would probably be at home, asleep, before his next shift. His plastic chair was nowhere to be seen. Abigail wondered if, after this, he was still going to sit outside on summer evenings.

It was mid-afternoon by the time she got back to the hotel. She was lying down on the bed, debating whether she should call Robert again, when the events of the last twenty-four hours and the little sleep of the night before overcame her and she slept.

The knowledge that she would have to wait two weeks for the hearing and the thought of what might happen to Tony and the others in the meantime ran a tortured race through her dreams. She woke with the sun already low in the sky and the telephone ringing. Reaching for it, she knocked the handset onto the ground. By the time she had scrambled after it and gathered it off the floor, there was no sound from the receiver. Robert, she thought. It must be Robert.

She put back the handset and stood next to the phone, waiting for Robert to call again. In just a few seconds it rang. “Robert?” she demanded of the phone.

“Hello, Abigail.”

She recognized Jonas Chunga's voice immediately. “Good afternoon,” she said.

“I believe you were at the murder scene today.”

“That's right.” Is that a crime in this damned country? she wondered, but resisted asking.

“I can't tell you how sorry I am about what happened and how determined I am to apprehend the guilty party.”

“The newspaper says that gangsters did it,” Abigail told him. Explain that bit of nonsense to me, she thought. “I don't believe it.”

“Nor do I.”

“I'm sorry,” Abigail said. “Say that again.”

“I don't believe it was a criminal act. I believe it was a political crime.”

Abigail sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. “What are you saying?”

“I believe, as you do, that politics lay behind it.”

“And?”

“And it's not a simple matter. Have dinner with me tomorrow night and we can discuss it at length.”

“I beg your pardon? I don't think I heard you correctly.”

“I said, have dinner with me tomorrow night and we can discuss it.”

“Isn't there a Mrs. Chunga?”

“No, there's no Mrs. Chunga. There never has been. There was once a special lady, but there has never been a Mrs. Chunga.”

Yes, Abigail thought. I want to do this. I want to do this more badly than I should want it. I need to do this. But what about Krisj? What would Krisj feel if he could see it? Perhaps he can.

“Abigail, are you still there?”

“Yes. I don't think this is a good time, though.”

“Are you thinking about Patel?”

“Yes. And my case.”

“I understand, but there is so little time to deal with the matter that brought you here. We can talk about that. And we can talk about what happened to Patel. I can share my suspicions with you.”

“Just that?”

“I also want you to understand more about my country.”

What else? she thought. What else do you want from me?

He answered without her ever framing the question. “And I want you to understand more about me.”

Why that? she wondered, but she only said, “I see.”

“Will you come, then?”

He wanted her to understand about his country. And he wanted her to understand about himself. This was something real, perhaps something with meaning. He was so different to Robert. If he wanted her to understand anything, it might be why he was doing whatever it was he was doing with his blond
PA
.

“Will you come?”

What is it that I'm hearing in his voice? she asked herself. It sounds like the uncertainties of a teenage boy. Can it be that it took courage for this powerful man to ask me to dinner?

“Will you?”

“Yes, Jonas. I'll come.”

21

The restaurant was in a country club on the outskirts of town. Jonas Chunga steered the Mercedes down a long avenue skirted by sporadic clusters of spreading acacias. The light was still good enough for Abigail to see the beautifully manicured golf course beyond the row of trees. The parking area in front of a low, colonial-style building held more expensive cars than she would have expected, even on a Saturday evening. Nor did she expect the white-jacketed and white-gloved waiters or the maître d'hôtel who came down the stairs to meet them, shaking hands and smiling at Chunga, then bowing to her.

“Andrew is waiting for you, Director Chunga,” he said. “He has your table prepared.”

If there was a difference between the scene that greeted them on entering the club's restaurant and the one that would have greeted guests fifty years before, it was that now at least half the patrons were black. Most of them were members of the governing elite, dining tonight in the same setting that the colonial elite had once enjoyed. The other guests were probably all members of what remained of the business elite.

The maître d'hôtel had addressed him as Director Chunga. Now Andrew, the waiter, led them to a table on a glassed-in terrace overlooking the golf course and shielded from the main section of the restaurant by a row of potted palms. “I think you've been here before, Director Chunga,” Abigail said.

“Once or twice.” The waiter attempted to pull out the chair to seat her, but Chunga brushed him aside. He leaned protectively over her now as he seated her. She remembered the same feeling of being protected when she had been crowded by the people at the scene of Patel's death and how he had come between her and them.

He settled into his chair, leaning back comfortably, his hands resting on the edge of the table. He was broad in the shoulders, still more powerful-looking than the image that had remained in her mind since their previous meetings. The gray in his hair was not only at the temples, but spread in little bright tufts across his head. When she had first met him, he had been, for her, the representative of something that horrified her. Now, by some strange metamorphosis, he had changed from being a symbol to just being a man.

“This is a big surprise to me,” she said.

“Even bigger to me.” The little smile around his mouth and in his eyes revealed genuine amusement. The voice was strong and secure. The hoarseness when she had first met him and the boyish uncertainty over the phone when he had invited her had both disappeared.

“That you asked me. That's what surprised me.”

“And that you accepted. That was the biggest surprise of all.”

Abigail was aware that she too was smiling. This was a man, a powerful man, an attractive man and he found her attractive. His attention was only with her.

The waiter arrived with a bottle of white wine in an ice-bucket.

“Do you make all the decisions tonight?” she asked. Damn, she thought—that sounded like a tease.

“Not at all.”

“You mean I am allowed to order my own dinner?”

“May I be permitted a suggestion?”

She heard her own soft laugh. “I thought there was a catch.”

“There's no catch. It's just that I know the menu well.”

“So which delicacy should I order?”

The waiter, who had not gone far since bringing the wine, was back, order-book in hand. “May I suggest the seafood,” Chunga said. “The calamari heads as a starter, with the sole to follow. The fish is shipped in from Beira. It takes two or three days to get here, but it tastes almost as fresh as if it were caught this morning.”

Even this was comforting, that he was doing the ordering, relieving her of this minor responsibility. It was not something she usually allowed. Abigail did things for herself. She was not even good at delegating to Johanna. But tonight, sitting back in her chair at this man's table, and allowing him to run the evening, she was content.

Unbidden, the thought of why she had come to Zimbabwe entered her mind, and the memory of Krisj Patel and the sight of his body on the pavement. “You're not what I expected,” she said.

“And you're certainly not what I expected.”

The procedure Abigail usually followed when getting dressed was to lay out the clothing items she intended to wear that day, a process that took perhaps thirty seconds, then slip into them, taking another forty-five seconds or less. Applying the few cosmetic aids she used took as little time as getting dressed. She seldom wore jewelry of any kind. The only ring she possessed was the wedding ring Robert had slipped onto her finger at a ceremony at which only the two of them and two witnesses had been present. She kept her hair cropped close to her head, never once in all her life having resorted to the hair-straightening devices employed by most of her friends and female colleagues. While she was impatient with the female need to look gorgeous, Abigail knew by the average male reaction to her that her appearance did not need artificial bolstering.

Tonight though, she had taken care. She had spent time in front of the mirror and was wearing a glowing crystal pendant set in silver, given to her by Robert, in the years before diamonds had become affordable. She had positioned it to hang just at the point where her cleavage began. Her white blouse was open to halfway between collarbone and waist, and billowed only slightly above close-fitting black trousers.

She knew how fabulous she looked and that Freek Jordaan would have gulped at the sight of her. She was not beyond enjoying the thought that when he told Robert that he was the old white guy lusting after her that it was true. She also knew that she would ensure that Freek's lust would always be exercised harmlessly, from a distance.

Tonight was different. From the time he met her in Patel's office, Chunga had been unable to disguise the effect she had on him. All the while she had been getting ready for the evening, she had tried not to think about Robert. Despite what she was certain he was doing with that damned
PA
, she could not think about him tonight. Nor could she think about this strange girl, Helena, or the rest of her clients. This man Chunga was, she had to remind herself, a director of the
CIO
. But, she persuaded herself, he may also provide the solution to everything.

Thinking about Yudel and Rosa too was not possible. She could not imagine that they would have approved. To hell with them, she thought. Who are they to judge me?

Yet she knew that the only person who knew where she was and who may be judging her was herself. So thinking was not possible. Least of all could she think about the body of Krisj Patel on the pavement, limbs spread-eagled in patterns they would never have adopted in life.

Looking at this man sitting across from her, it was not possible to believe that he had anything to with the evil she had been hearing and reading about. His assurances were so direct and uncomplicated. The sturdy barriers she kept around herself, only ever breached by Robert, had been lowered. As for the matter of the Harare Seven, that too had receded into the distance. She warned herself that there was a real danger tonight that she might lose touch with everything except this man and the moments they were both enjoying.

As they had come up the steps of the clubhouse, she had felt one of his hands in the small of her back. The fabric of her blouse had been between his skin and hers, but the pulse from him to her was as immediate as if the blouse had not existed.

“I didn't think you'd come,” he said.

“Nor did I. I didn't even think you'd ask.”

“I didn't either. I wanted you to come so that I could explain some things about myself and my work, and to tell you how I can help you. But now that you're here, I'm having difficulty remembering what I wanted to say.”

“We can leave those things for some other time,” she said. But no, another part of her told her. You can't leave them for any other time.

“We may have to leave them, if I can't remember what they were.”

This was a powerful man, a man whom her clients seemed to believe had the power to decide who lived and who died in Zimbabwe. Not only did he have the power but, according to her clients, he exercised it readily. And this man was saying that, just being with her, he could not think straight. It was something Abigail needed to hear and she needed badly to hear it. “Jonas,” she said, “you know that we shouldn't be here, talking like this.”