She closed the door. She was alone with herself. The Librium didn't last into the morning. She worked at speed with the hoover and the dusters and the brush and pan, upstairs round the beds and downstairs through the kitchen.
The front door bell rang.
It was a cosy and predictable household. It was her home that was being damaged by nightmares and sedation pills and lies. The doorbell rang again. She didn't want to answer it, she didn't even want to go to the door and peer through the spy hole. Another long ringing. The milkman had already been, the post was on the sideboard in the hall beside the telephone, the newspaper was on the kitchen table. She looked through the fish eye spy hole. It was a tall man, still short of middle age she thought, and he wore a light grey suit and his face was tanned and his moustache was clipped short into a crescent over his upper lip. She tightened the belt on her housecoat. The door chain was hanging loose, unfastened.
She opened the door.
The man was smiling.
'Mrs Perry? Mrs Hilda Perry?' A soft casual voice.
'Yes.'
'Did you used to live, Mrs Perry, at 45 Green Walk, Coulsdon, in Surrey?' Another smile. She couldn't place the accent. There was a lilt in his speech that wasn't English.
'Yes.'
'Could I come inside, please, Mrs Perry?'
'I don't buy anything at the front door.'
'It's about a letter you had, Mrs Perry.'
'What letter?'
'You had a letter from a Mr James Carew in Pretoria Central prison. My name's Swart, it would be easier to talk inside.'
She recognised the accent as South African. 'What if I did have such a letter?'
'I'm from the embassy, consular section. The letter Mr Carew wrote to you is the only letter he's written to anyone inside or outside our country. We're trying to help Mr Carew. Sometimes a man's background, his personal history, can help a prisoner in his situation. It would be better if I was inside.'
Because Jack had lied to her that morning she was fine tuned to a lie. She knew this man lied. The man was taller than her even though he stood on the step below the front door.
'If you could help us with Mr Carew's background, his friends and his work and so on, then there might be something you told us that could make a difference to his situation.'
Whatever he said he smiled. She wondered if he had been on a course to learn how to smile. She knew Jeez's letter word by word. Each guarded sentence was in her mind. Jeez didn't want them to know that Hilda Perry was his wife, that Jack was his son.
'I've nothing to say to you.'
'I don't think you understand me, Mrs Perry. James Carew is going to hang. What I'm trying to do is to find out something that might lead to a reprieve.'
His foot was in the doorway. Jeez wouldn't have wanted him in her house, she was sure of that.
'I just want you to go away.'
The smile oiled across his face, and then he was inside the hall.
'Why don't we just sit down and talk, Mrs Perry, with a cup of tea.'
She thought of the good years with Jeez, and the misery without him. She thought of the way she had willed herself to hate him after he had gone. She would have sworn that the man who had pushed himself into her home was Jeez's enemy.
She picked up the telephone. She dialled fast.
'Who are you ringing?'
'Police, please,' she said into the telephone.
'That's a hell of a stupid thing to be doing.'
'Mrs Hilda Perry, I've an intruder in my house – 45
Churchill Close.'
'Are you trying to put a rope round his neck?'
'Please come straight away.'
She put the telephone down. She turned to face him.
'They're very good round here, very quick. Why don't you come into the kitchen and sit down, and then you can explain to the officer who you are and what you want.'
Cold anger, no smile. 'He'll hang, Mrs Perry.'
He was gone through the door. She saw him trotting down the path. When he was outside the garden he started to run.
Years of placid and sedate domestic life were disintegrating. For a long, long time she had loathed Jeez. For the last few short days she could remember only the times that she had loved him.
• • •
By the time the police car turned into Churchill Close, Major Hannes Swart was two miles away, going fast and fuming.
It had taken him long enough to track Hilda Perry from the address used by the prisoner, Carew. Some good, honest footslogging had translated Green Walk into Churchill Close, and for nothing. Swart had been in the South African police for seventeen years, but he hadn't done footslogging for more than a dozen. Security police officers were too precious to have their time wasted on door-to-door and scene-of-crime.
For some of his work he was a businessman promoting in the United Kingdom the sale of Stellenbosch wines. At other times he was an accredited journalist at the Foreign Press Association specialising in financial affairs. Most often he was a lowly member of the visa section of the embassy's consular staff. He worked to a police brigadier from the fifth floor of the embassy. He was one of the bright stars amongst the detail of security police officers assigned abroad. He had blown what ought to have been a simple task. A dowdy housewife had seen him off.
By the time a bemused police officer was leaving Churchill Close, having been told only that a South African male had tried to force entry into the house, no explanations of why, the temper of Major Swart had matured to controlled fury.
They should have jazzed the swine, used the helicopter on him, and the electrics when they had him in John Vorster Square. Too damn correct they had been with him in the interrogation cells.
And a hell of a damn good thing that he had taken the precaution of parking his car out of Churchill Close. At least the cow didn't have the number plate to add to whatever bloody story she hatched to the local force.
* *
Sandham had said that this was an, ah, irregular meeting, if you follow.
He sat with Jack in a tea bar off Victoria Street, some way from the Foreign Office.
'It's irregular because I haven't cleared it with my superiors and because I'm giving you the gist of F.O. thinking that may turn out to be incorrect. Your father's going to be hanged, and neither the private nor the public shouting of our crowd is going to change that. Your father's solicitor has told our people in South Africa that they'll spare him if he turns state evidence. Up to now he's told them nothing.
He doesn't sound to me like a man about to splash through a sea change. That's one pointer, there's another. A few days ago their Justice Minister made a speech that effectively shut out all prospect of clemency. They want to show they're strong. They want blood.'
'What would happen if I went out to see him?'
'You wouldn't get a contact visit. You wouldn't be able to touch him, hold his hand. You'd have a glass plate between you. You'd speak down a voice tube. My opinion, it would be pretty distressing for you and for him.'
What would they talk about? Jack shuddered. The man would be a stranger. God, and small comfort he'd be to his father.
