Tandia by Bryce Courtenay

set text in the end-of-year Latin exam, which she would now never take.
    It must have been quite late when Tandia heard the rattle of the key in the door of the cell. A black constable appeared md without even glancing at the sleeping woman beckoned Tandia to come out of the cell. He was a much older man than the policeman who had arrested her earlier in the day. 'Down there, but wait first.' He spoke quietly and locked the cell door as Tandia waited for him. The light in the corridor was much brighter than in the cell and she held her wrists out to him for the handcuffs. He looked at her swollen and cut wrists and then up at her face. The expression in his eyes was not unkind and he shook his head once and clicked his tongue in sympathy. Then he pointed down the corridor and nodded for her to start walking. 'Go to the end of the passage, the last door on the left.'
    Tandia's rubber-soled school shoes made almost no sound on the cement, but when the policeman turned to follow her the metal tips on the heel and toe caps of his boots sent a. clicking metallic sound racing down ahead of her to the end of the passageway.
    Tandia turned at the last door on the left and found herself back in the charge room. She hesitated at the door and waited for the black constable to catch up. Seated on the table, with his legs swinging over the side, was a white policeman she had not seen before. She felt enormous relief that it wasn't the same police officer who had so intimidated her when she had been brought in.
    The man seated on the table didn't look up. But, aware that she stood at the door, he pointed to the larger of the two chairs, the one which had been previously used by the other policeman. The white officer sat on the end of the table and Tandia was brought to the chair by the black constable. 'Sit.' He indicated the chair beside her.
    'Ja, sit, please,' the white officer added quietly. Tandia, as though afraid to make the slightest sound, lowered herself slowly into the same chair used by her white tormentor of the morning. She noted that the seated police officer held the charge sheet in his right hand and that the typewriter still stood at the opposite end of the table from where he sat.' Apart from the three words, the white police officer remained silent, swinging his legs and blowing a tuneless whistle. Not as much a whistle as the controlled breathiness a person affects when they appear lost in their own thoughts. Tandia grew more and more apprehensive as she waited. The black constable had taken up a position at the door with his legs apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed relaxed and uninterested, his eyes turned downwards.
    After a while Tandia, who had kept her eyes downcast, ventured a glance at the white man seated on the table. He was small for a policeman. She was used to thinking of size in the boxing parlance used by Natkin Patel, and she judged him to be a welterweight. Tandia was used to the policemen around Cato Manor where white police sergeants were generally much older men. This one wore a crew cut with a clipped, blond moustache and seemed to be in his early twenties. His nose had been broken more than once which gave his boyish face a slightly romantic appearance. He looked clean and tough sitting there looking down at the floor. He turned suddenly and looked at her and before she dropped her gaze she saw his eyes. They were very pale blue, like a favourite blue cotton shirt that has been washed a thousand times. His eyes didn't look tough at all and Tandia's heart skipped a beat. Perhaps it wasn't going to be like the other one.
    'You see this?' he said, lifting what looked like the charge sheet Tandia had refused to sign earlier. Tandia nodded, afraid to speak. Then he brought his free hand up and tore the sheet of paper in two. At the sound of the paper tearing, Tandia looked up in surprise. He placed the two pieces together and tore them down the centre once again. Then he dropped the