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.