Palace of Justice

36

Judge van Zyl and his Assessors returned after the short break.

‘There is half an hour left. Please proceed,’ said the Judge. James Murray looked bored. Niemand was ready to take notes, but the Judge and Assessors looked like they had had enough for the day. I decided to lead the evidence of the events of the tenth of December the next morning. Labuschagne also needed the rest. We would all be refreshed. I also did not want James Murray to have the whole evening to prepare their cross-examination on the events at the reservoir.

‘Tell the Court about Mr Tsafendas,’ I suggested.

James Murray was still halfway out of his seat when the Judge took up the cause.

‘What is the relevance of this?’ he demanded. He did not wait for an answer. ‘I have given the defence a lot of leeway, far more than I ever imagined I would in a case like this, but this is going too far. What could Tsafendas possibly have to do with the charges the defendant faces?’

I had to make my point in one hit. If it became a debate, or if Murray also entered the fray, I would lose.

‘M’Lord,’ I argued, ‘they locked this young man up with the worst murderers and the vilest criminals for eighteen months. Every day of those eighteen months he was locked up just like them, with the doors being secured behind him wherever he went, all day long. During the day he cared for the prisoners, saw to it that they were fed, that they had a wash and a haircut. They sent him to buy them stuff at the tuck shop. He watched over them and helped them read their Bibles and he heard them pray. Then he was told to call them out and to help kill them, to pray with their families and to bury them. Why are we so surprised at the events at the reservoir? He came to Maximum Security quite well adjusted, by all accounts. Then he killed seven men. We need to explore the reasons for the changes within him. And his encounter with Mr Tsafendas played a role in that.’

‘Get to the point,’ said Judge van Zyl, ‘what is the relevance of the evidence you propose to lead?’

Wierda was in sympathy with the Judge, apparently. ‘What’s this about?’ he hissed through clenched teeth, his pencil still for once.

‘It is relevant to the defendant’s state of mind,’ I said simply, partly to Wierda and partly to Judge van Zyl.

Wierda did not respond, but the Judge threw his pen down. It bounced off the bench and landed on the registrar’s desk three feet below. ‘And I told you to keep names out of it, didn’t I?’ he said. Then he covered his eyes with his hand, but I knew what he really meant. I have had enough of this, is what his body language told me.

I waited for a formal ruling, but the Judge did not speak again all afternoon.

‘Tell the Court, please,’ I said to Labuschagne, ‘of your encounter with Mr Tsafendas and how it affected you.’ I spoke quietly, as if the altercation with the Judge had not happened at all.

There was not a sound except that of scribbling pens and rustling pages for the rest of the afternoon. The Judge eventually came out from behind his hand, to listen and to watch, like the rest of us, in silence and amazement.

When Labuschagne had completed his story the entire court remained silent for a while. The evidence of his interaction with Tsafendas and the Tsafendas prophecy had turned our comfortable world upside down. Then whispers started in the spectator seats, until there was a buzz in every part, except for the bench. The Judge and his Assessors still sat in stony silence.

Tsafendas had long been our bogeyman, but here he was, scrambling about in a shoebox, hunting for stale newspaper clippings like a hobo in a rubbish bin and speaking in riddles. Vorster had been our champion, our Prime Minister, but here he was, scheming and conniving, doing things we could not have imagined.

Outside it was still raining. The light inside the courtroom had taken on the grey of the sky outside, with mist attaching to the inside of the windows. It lent an eerie aspect to a courtroom which, until that day, had basked in direct sunlight through the skylights overhead.

In the well of the court where the Officers of the Court sat and I stood everyone was dressed in the same drab dark or charcoal grey, the advocates and the registrar in black robes and white shirts and bands. The Judge, on the other hand, stood out like the leading lady in a Hollywood film, his scarlet robes the only item of colour in the room.

When we came out of the building the cameras were waiting for us on the steps. After the evening news on television the first death threats arrived at the hotel where Roshnee and I were staying. It was agreed that Roshnee would return to Durban for the time being; there was nothing left for her to do anyway. Pierre de Villiers came to pick me up and I moved to my sister’s for the night.

‘No self-respecting killer would give you a warning before he came over to kill you,’ he said.

I agreed with him and planned to return the next morning.

The work did not stand still. I had to read the next case, and I finished the summary before dinner. The case was just another of the many that made one despair of the human race and its total lack of empathy for others.