block. They held their ID cards up against the windscreen. The prisons man had seen their faces, good enough for him. The car slid under the raised bar, was inside the perimeter of the prison complex.
Left now, past the prison service store on Wimbledon Road, past the prison service swimming pool, past the prison service tennis courts, past the rows of prison service houses and flats, past the old gaol where he had worked his apprenticeship with his uncle.
A long lit wall rose in front of them. They were high on the wooded hillside above the scattered lights of Pretoria.
They were at Beverly Hills. And in Frikkie de Kok's opinion that was a hell of a silly name to be given to a section of a gaol- But maximum security had always been Beverly Hills to both the prison staff who came in and out on their shift pattern and to the inmates on their one way visit.
Beverly Hills, Frikkie had heard, was a flash hotel down in Durban. Frikkie disliked Durban. Too many English down there, too many liberals, not his place for a holiday. But the new gaol, opened eighteen years before, the most modern in the country, and the most secure, was Beverly Hills to all who talked of it. The most modern and the most secure.
The detectives parked the escort car. They would wait outside for Frikkie and his assistant until their work was clone.
The assistant drove to the gates. The lights beamed down on them. A television camera jutting from the wall followed them. By a hidden hand the gates glided open. The car drove inside. The gates closed behind. More gates in front.
An airlock. Close walls. An iron grille for a roof.
Through a glass panel a warrant officer looked down into the car from his control centre.
The assistant wound down his window, showed their two cards perfunctorily, then passed their hand guns up to the waiting hand. It was two minutes to four o'clock. The gates ahead of them opened and they drove on.
The hangman and the hangman's assistant had reached their place of work. All of the 'condemns' who had been sentenced to death in courts throughout the Republic were brought to Beverly Hills to while away the months before their appeal, before the State President deliberated on the matter of clemency. All of the condemns whose appeal failed, whose plea for clemency was rejected, died on the Republic's single gallows beam in Beverly Hills.
They were in a small parkland. Their headlights caught a startled antelope and a warthog in the white light. Frikkie thought it a good thing that a hanging gaol should harbour a small nature park between the perimeter walls and the cell blocks. He liked to see the animals. If he had been asked he would have said that he thought it unfortunate that the cells of the condemns did not have windows that looked out onto the animals. The windows were set too high for the condemns to see out. But Frikkie was never asked what he thought, and he would not have ventured an opinion of any matter that was not his business.
As soon as he was inside the administration with its cathedral steps he heard the singing. The singing used to upset him when he first came to the old Pretoria Central with his uncle. He had learned through his uncle's indifference to accept it. The whole of A section and B section singing, all of the Black condemns. Not a sound from C section, the White condemns hardly ever sang. Frikkie de Kok was a regular churchgoer, he knew his hymns. He'd never heard singing the like of that in Beverly Hills on the mornings that he worked. Wonderful hymns that the Blacks had learned in the mission schools and their own fine natural rhythm. When the Black condemns sang about Jesus, then they sang with feeling and with love. Best thing. He had many times told his assistant, the singing helped their work.
They were escorted to the duty officer's room. They were given coffee.
The singing helped because it calmed the condemns who were to be handled that morning. The singing gave them strength, seemed to drug them, meant they didn't give any trouble.
Creamy coffee and sugar. Only half a cup. As Frikkie had told his assistant, he didn't want his bladder under strain when he was working.
There hadn't been any trouble for years, but the trouble then had been so bad that Frikkie de Kok would never forget it, so if the singing helped to quieten the boys then that was fine by him. His last assistant had packed it in after that piece of trouble. Four condemns had barricaded themselves in a cell and they couldn't be forced out when the execution detail came for them. They'd sent for the riot gas canisters and the whole block had been screaming, and they'd kept Frikkie de Kok waiting. Once they'd opened the doors the execution detail had moved so fast that they hadn't stopped to get their masks off before they reached the gallows building.
The duty officer passed a remark about the weather. He didn't think it would rain, not from the forecast given the previous evening on the S.A.B.C. It hadn't rained for three and a half months in Pretoria so it was a fair bet that it wouldn't rain. Frikkie just acknowledged him. The assistant didn't speak.
Most of them went well. Most of them had a lot of guts.
The Whites always went well, especially after the Blacks were gassed to the gallows. The sort of White that he hanged was the sort of guy who wanted to show that he had more guts than a Black.
At three minutes to five Frikkie de Kok levered himself up from the easy chair. He nodded his thanks to the duty officer for the coffee.
They crossed the prison. There was the slither of their shoes, and the crack of the boots of their escort. There were voices that warned of their approach so that doors could be opened ahead of them. The singing was rising to its pitch.
They climbed the steps.
Frikkie de Kok pushed open the heavy double doors.
This was his preserve, where his orders were not questioned.
He was in the preparation room. A high room, brilliantly lit by a fluorescent strip. There were a dozen men waiting there, all in the uniform of the prison service. He recognised three of them, they were three who were always there. It was a job of work for Frikkie de Kok, but he always marvelled that some made it their business to be present each and every time. The other nine were youngsters, five Black and four White. It was the law of Beverly Hills that every man who served there must attend a hanging. None of these execution virgins caught his eye.
He opened the interior door. He switched on the lights.
No official from the prison service would have presumed to go ahead of him. The gallows room was a blaze of light.
Along the far wall, where the railed steps went below, lay the shadows of the long beam and four nooses. The four ropes above the nooses were coiled and fastened with cotton thread. It was as he had left it the previous day when he had made his arrangements, tested the lever and the trap, measured each rope for the drop, made his calculations based on height and weight.
The district surgeon came to him. There was the first sheen of dawn in the skylight. The district surgeon told him that the four men were in good shape and none of them had asked for sedation. The district surgeon, a pale- faced gangling young man, was the only person that Frikkie de Kok would speak to at this time. That was privileged and valuable information.
He stood on the trap. Firm.
He wrapped his fist on the lever. Shining and oiled.
He looked at the cotton holding up the nooses to chest height. Correct.
He glanced at his watch. Three minutes before half past five.
He nodded to the duty officer waiting at the door of the preparation room. The duty officer raised his personal radio to his mouth.
Frikkie de Kok knew of the crimes for which the four had been convicted. One had stabbed to death a White housewife after they had disagreed on what he should be paid for sweeping her drive. One had raped a six-year-old girl, White, and strangled her. One had shot to death a petrol station attendant during an armed robbery in East London. One had been sentenced to death for ritual witch-craft murder, the killing of two men and the cutting out of their organs for mud. To Frikkie de Kok's mind execution by hanging was the correct penalty for such crimes.
He had stipulated in which order the four should be brought down the corridor and into the preparation room.
He had heard once of a mistake, many years ago, before his uncle's time. Two men, one heavy and tall, one slim and small, brought in the wrong order. The small fellow had had the short rope and they'd had to pull on his
