Many people who had seen it, or even been inside it, having been asked what it was like, had described it as big and without color. Abigail saw it as a forbidding, lifeless presence. Tucked away behind a low ridge and a dense fringe of blue gums, and set well back from the fence of the outer perimeter, it was invisible from the road. A sign proclaiming its presence was so badly rusted and weathered that it now served little purpose. Helena and Prince had traveled in the backseat of Yudel’s hired car, with Abigail next to him in front. They arrived twenty-five minutes before the scheduled start of the hearing. At the outer gate, a guard in prisons department uniform met them and asked them to wait while they were identified. Entering Chikurubi was not easy for Abigail. She had been telling Yudel about the form she expected the hearing to take, but had stopped talking as the building appeared through the trees. Even Yudel, who had spent much of his life inside the walls of prisons, felt the wave of oppressive energy that swept toward them from beyond its walls.
