Before she utters a word, I can tell from her look that the woman in the row behind, who has caught my eye in the shuffling exit from Court J, wants to be heard.
There's scoffing incredulity in her face, and what she has to say she repeats to all around her as if challenging them to contradict her, to deny that in the weighing of what's right and wrong, something's amiss: "Hy's ge-bullet proof. Het jy gesien?" (He's been made bullet-proof. Have you seen?)
It's true. In the dock, the child killer's cocoa-coloured jersey does little to disguise the awkward stiffness, the bulk, of the bullet-proofing his prison minders have seen fit to strap him into.
Now that he's gone again, below, to the cells, it's the one thing that seems to stand for everything else about the unsettling reappearance of the loathed Norman Afzal Simons in the community that knows him as the Station Strangler.
The subtleties - that this is an inquest, not a trial; that he's a prisoner for life, whatever happens here; that the law seeks to determine truth and deliver justice by essentially gentlemanly means, procedurally, not passionately - seem irrelevant against the somehow affronting fact of the bullet-proof vest.
They want to protect the killer, the woman seems to be saying. Did you see?
Yet, when he takes his place in the dock, Simons seems all the more vulnerable for the too-obvious padding under his jersey and the surly watchfulness of his escort.
Court J is full, but the quiet, tense members of murdered children's families and other residents are outnumbered by the more than 20 police officers, and probably a dozen prison warders - four of whom, two with assault rifles, two with shotguns - are posted in the corridor.
For a moment, before entering the dock, the bespectacled, shaven-headed Simons is easily mistaken for another guard, until his saffron prison trousers, stamped with the word "prisoner" in black lettering, mark him.
It is dead silent.
Simons, shoulders drooping, and clasping his hands before him, seems immobile. The glimmer of his shaven head emphasises the deep fleshy creases in his neck.
Now and then he inclines his head slightly as if to follow the proceedings, and at one point, nods repeatedly to affirm his agreement to submit DNA samples.
In the entire hearing, he utters just one word, a quiet "Ja" in a voice that sounds as though it belongs to a smaller man.
It is impossible to judge from the faces in the public gallery what anyone has made of Simons, today, 10 years after his conviction for the kidnapping and murder of nine-year-old Elroy van Heerden.
Straining to hear, and straining to make sense of, the puzzling details of the law, of rights and of science - references to DNA, to samples of blood, hair and semen that, they trust, will have some bearing on the anguish of the unresolved murders of children more than a decade ago - they seem impassive, and remain so as Simons turns, head down, lips pursed, and descends to the cells.
But the bullet-proof vest, that was something.
It is the corollary, in a sense, of the sentiment on the street.
Disgruntled residents jostling for a view of the prisoner at the gates of the court earlier in the morning demonstrated a ruddier grasp of the essentials of justice.
"Hy's 'n eville man, my broe," one man said, adding darkly: "Hulle moet hom liewe vrylaat en ons sal the punishment organise". (Free him and we will organise the punishment.)