A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  The young and fit could move to E’goli, the City of Gold, Johannesburg, where even a black man had the chance to become rich. Or they could stay in the location with their families and remain poor. Most chose the city.

  The church door opened and a wizened pastor with watery eyes peered out. Emmanuel lifted his hat in greeting and received a wary nod in return. From down the dirt lane came the sound of children’s voices.

  Constable Shabalala hurried toward the cars, followed by a long train of children. The black policeman was in his Sunday clothes: a graying white shirt, black trousers, and a corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows. The bottom seam of his trousers had been let out to their full length, one inch too short to cover his socks and boots. Perhaps the captain’s hand-me-downs.

  He approached the Security Branch car with his hat in his hand. He knew that Afrikaners and most whites set great store by a show of respect. Piet pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “N’kosi Duma,” Piet said. “Where is he?”

  Shabalala spread his palms out in an apologetic gesture. “That man, he is not here. He is at the native reserve. He will be home maybe tomorrow.”

  “Christ above.” Piet lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the clean spring air. “How far is it, this reserve?”

  “Before baas King’s farm. One hour and a half on my bicycle.”

  Piet had a quick discussion with Dickie, who was hunkered down behind the wheel.

  “Get in,” Piet told Shabalala. “We’ll go and get him.”

  Emmanuel made his way over, determined to wedge himself into the situation somehow. He felt the beat of his heart. Piet knew whom to ask for. How the hell did they know a man named N’kosi Duma lived on a location outside of Jacob’s Rest?

  “Constable Shabalala can ride with me,” Emmanuel said. “I’ve got enough fuel.”

  “He’s with us,” Piet said coolly. “Your job is to show us the hut.”

  “The reserve is between here and the hut.” Emmanuel knew he was pushing his luck but kept going. “Should we call in there first?”

  “The hut,” Piet said.

  “It’s a hunting camp,” Dickie said after they’d examined the captain’s clean little space. “Only an English detective from the city would think it was anything else.”

  “A waste of time, just like I thought,” Piet muttered. “Let’s move on.”

  Emmanuel didn’t show them the hidden safe.

  They ducked out through the hole in the tall stick fence and rejoined Shabalala, who waited patiently between the cars. Piet motioned Dickie into the black Chevrolet and turned to Emmanuel.

  “You will go back to town,” Piet said with a glimmer of pleasure in his pebble eyes. “The Peeping Tom story is your area of investigation. Remember?”

  “It’s Sunday. I don’t think there’s much chance to make inroads there.”

  “You’re a religious man, aren’t you? Here’s your chance to get to the church service in time. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Amen,” Emmanuel said, and approached Shabalala, who’d stepped back to allow the Dutchmen some room. The Peeping Tom story was all he had to keep him in Jacob’s Rest and close to the main game. He had to follow that trail and do it with a smile.

  “The coloured church,” he said to Shabalala. “Where is it?”

  “You must go past the old Jew’s store. The ma’coloutini church is at the end of that road.”

  “Let’s roll.” It was Dickie, chomping at the bit like a racing hippo out for the derby day sweepstakes.

  Shabalala hesitated. “You will be at the station this afternoon, Detective Sergeant.”

  It was a request, not a question.

  “I’ll be there,” Emmanuel said, and Dickie gunned the engine. The chassis on the Security Branch Chevrolet dipped a half foot closer to the ground when Shabalala got into the car. There was enough collective muscle in the vehicle to pound a steel girder into shape.

  Piet leaned his head out the window. “Go first,” he instructed. “We’ll follow you out.”

  Emmanuel did as he was told. The Security Branch needed to see him run off with his tail between his legs. It gave them pleasure. It wasn’t hard to hand them what they wanted. He got in the Packard and drove back to town.

  Emmanuel made a sweep of the police files and hit the letter Z with nothing. No files under P for pervert, or Peeping Tom. No files at all for any of the women in the old Jew’s shop or for Zweigman himself. There was no written evidence the molestation case ever existed.

  He pulled out files at random. Cow theft. A stabbing. Damage to property. The usual small town complaints. He searched for Donny Rooke and found him—charged with the manufacture and importation of banned items. The photos of the girls were signed into evidence, but not the camera.

  Was it possible the coloured women’s complaints weren’t taken seriously enough to write up? Or had the files been lifted? Donny Rooke’s stolen camera proved the captain wasn’t above confiscating evidence when it suited him.

  The Security Branch and the National Party machine wanted a respected white policeman struck down in the line of duty. They didn’t want complications to that story. Under the new race laws, everything was black or white. Gray had ceased to exist.

  Physical intimidation, theft and the possible importation of pornographic items—Captain Pretorius may have appeared to be a straightforward Afrikaner, but something more complicated lurked beneath the surface.

  The small stone church overflowed with worshippers. Families, starched and pinned in their Sunday best, spilled out onto the front stairs that led to the open wooden doors. The captain’s premature death was good for business.

  An organ wheezed “Closer My God to Thee,” and the coloured families stood to sing the final hymn. Twin girls in matching polka-dot dresses broke free of their plump mother’s embrace and ran into the churchyard. They threw themselves down beside a flower bed and peered into the foliage where Harry, the old soldier, was curled around the stem of a daisy bush, fast asleep.

  Emmanuel leaned against the wall between the church and the street and watched the Sunday service let out.

  Every color from fresh milk to burnt sugar was on show. There was enough direct evidence in the churchyard to refute the idea that blood mixing was unnatural. Plenty of people managed to do it just fine.

  A clutch of wide-hipped matrons in flowered dresses and Sunday hats brought pots of food to a table set up in the shade of a large gum tree. Men in dark suits and polished shoes milled around waiting for the signal to pounce on the food.

  At the bottom of the stairs Tiny and Theo kept company with two respectable coloured women. Emmanuel needed someone to get him into the community and introduce him around. A white man hanging off the edge of a mixed-race gathering had an unsavory feel. He also had to show the Security Branch something to convince them he was hard at work on the pervert lead now that the station files had yielded nothing.

  “Tiny.” He put his hand out in greeting, aware of the murmur of the congregation around them.

  “Detective.” The coloured man was all scrubbed up. Any trace of last night’s debauchery had disappeared. “This is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

  The liquor merchant was ill at ease, his handshake a quick brush of the fingers. The crowd thinned as people moved back to assess the situation.

  “Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, Tiny. I need to reinterview all the women who filed complaints about the Peeping Tom.” He took off his hat in a friendly gesture. “I was hoping you could give me a hand.”

  “Um…” Tiny hesitated. It didn’t seem right, talking about a degenerate on a potluck Sunday when all the good families were gathered around.

  “I won’t talk to them now,” Emmanuel reassured him. “I need a list of names, that’s all.”

  “Well…”

  “There were four of them.” The tight-girdled woman next to Tiny spoke up. She was fair skinned, with two blo
bs of rouge painted high on her cheekbones. “Tottie and Davida, who work for the old Jew. Della, the pastor’s daughter, and Mary, Anton’s little sister.”

  “Detective, this here is my wife, Bettina.” Tiny fell into line. “And this here is my daughter, Vera.”

  While Tiny and Theo were up late with the whores, the women in the family stayed safe at home working the hot comb. Both mother and daughter were starched and neat with hair that hung in a lifeless curtain to the shoulder. Burn marks, now a faint red, marked the skin along their hairlines—battle scars earned in the war against the kink.

  “Are all the women still in town?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Tottie is there by the steps…”

  Honeypot Tottie was surrounded by a swarm of suitors. She wore a tailored green and white dress with a neckline cut just low enough to produce un-Christian thoughts. The girl was ice cream on a hot day.

  “Della is there next to her father.” Tiny’s daughter, Vera, pointed to a long, skinny girl with breasts a giant would have trouble getting his hand around. The pastor’s daughter was plain in the face but all souped up under the hood.

  “Davida lives with Granny Mariah, but she’s with her mother at Mr. King’s lodge today and Mary is over there, helping serve the food.” Mrs. Hanson indicated a pixie-sized teenager working the tight space between two hefty matrons. Mary was halfway across the bridge between childhood and adulthood.

  The women were different from each other, and distinct from the crowd in their own ways. There was Tottie, the all-round beauty and bringer of wet dreams; Della, the generously endowed pastor’s daughter; and Mary, the pocket-sized woman-child. That left Davida, whose only distinction, as far as Emmanuel could tell, was the fact that she didn’t stand out in any way. You had to get close to her to see anything of interest.

  Now that he had the women’s names, it was time to chase up the garage fire story. Anton the mechanic was absent from the gathering.

  “Anton not a churchgoer?” Emmanuel said.

  “We’re all churchgoers, Detective,” Tiny’s wife said primly. “This is a righteous town, not like Durban and Jo’burg.”

  The round-heeled women from the liquor store were missing in action.

  “Drinking, dagga smoking, loose women, and loose morals.” He looked at Theo meaningfully for a moment. “I’m glad Jacob’s Rest doesn’t have that kind of thing, Mrs. Hanson.”

  “You want to see Anton, Detective?” Theo asked, anxious for the conversation to move on. “He’s in the church. Come, I’ll show you.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Emmanuel tipped his hat to the straitlaced pair and followed Theo through the crowd and into the church. Anton was inside, stacking hymnbooks. The stained-glass windows cast a jigsaw of colors onto the stone floor.

  The mechanic looked up.

  “Got you working Sundays, Detective?”

  “Every day until the case is closed.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly,” Emmanuel said, then waited while Theo left the church. “I need information about the captain and his family.”

  Anton emptied the last pew of books. “Can’t say I can help. The Dutchmen keep to themselves, the black men keep to themselves, and we do too.”

  “What about the fire? How did you and the captain arrange compensation?”

  There was a pause as the lanky coloured man placed the pile of books next to the pulpit. “How’d you know about that?” he asked.

  “I’ve got big ears,” Emmanuel said. “Tell me about the fire.”

  Anton shook his head. “I don’t want to get the Pretorius boys off side. Without the captain to control them, anything could happen.”

  “Does King know about the fire?”

  “He’s one of my investors,” Anton said. “He knows everything.”

  “Good. If I have to, I’ll tell the Pretorius boys that King let the story out. King is too big for them to mess with, isn’t he?”

  “He is,” the mechanic agreed, then got a cloth from a cupboard and began wiping down the wooden lectern with a vigorous hand. He worked for a minute in silence. Emmanuel let him get to the story in his own time.

  “I used to work at the Pretorius garage,” Anton said. “Five years. Not bad work, but Erich is a hothead, always on about something or other. One day, Dlamini, a native who owns three buses, got me to do some work out at the black location and it got me thinking maybe I could go it alone, you know?”

  Emmanuel nodded. He could see where the story was headed.

  “I talked to a few people. King, the old Jew and Granny Mariah put up the seed money and I was on my way. Things went good for a while. The Pretorius garage kept the white trade and the holidaymakers moving through town.” Anton worked the dust rag over the wooden pews. “I kept the black and coloured trade. It was a fair split, seeing the Dutchmen own most of the cars.”

  “What happened?”

  “King’s nephew was visiting and his roadster needed new spark plugs. He brought the car in to me and that started it off.”

  “A red sports car with white leather interior?” Emmanuel asked.

  “The very one,” Anton replied. “Well, you can imagine the fuss in a town this size. An actual Jaguar XK120. White, black, coloured, they all piled into my shop for a look. I was excited myself. A car like that doesn’t come around every day.”

  “You forgot,” Emmanuel said.

  “That’s right.” The coloured mechanic managed a smile. “I forgot it was a white man’s car and off limits. Didn’t think about it until the old Jew came pounding on my door that night.”

  “How does he fit in?”

  “He saw the whole thing,” Anton said. “He saw Erich pour the petrol, light the match and walk away. It was Zweigman who went to the police station the next morning to file a witness statement. Wouldn’t be talked out of it by anyone, not even his wife.”

  For someone trying to hide out in a small town, Zweigman managed to attract a lot of attention.

  “Did you try to talk him out of filing the statement?”

  “I was scared my house would be firebombed next,” the mechanic said. “I wanted King to handle it.”

  “Did he?”

  “He didn’t have to. Captain Pretorius himself came to see me in the morning and told me Erich would pay for the rebuilding of the garage and for the replacement of my lost stock.”

  “In exchange for what? Getting Zweigman to withdraw his statement?”

  The mechanic flushed. “It’s not possible to live here and be on the wrong side of the Pretorius boys, Detective. I asked the old Jew to withdraw the statement like the captain asked. He wasn’t happy, but he did it.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Four months.”

  “Did Erich pay you the whole amount in cash?” Where would anyone, with the exception of King, get that kind of money?

  “Half up front, the rest due next week.”

  “How much?” Emmanuel asked.

  “One hundred and fifty pounds still owing.” Anton balled the cleaning rag and threw it into the corner with a hard click of his tongue. “Not that I’ll see a penny of it now the captain has passed. There’s no papers, no nothing, to prove Erich owes me a thing.”

  “No criminal record to connect him with the fire and no more debt,” Emmanuel said. Hotheaded Erich was now a person of interest to the investigation. “How did Erich feel about paying the money?”

  “He was furious.” Anton sat down in a cleaned pew. “Marcus, the old mechanic who works at the garage, said the captain and Erich had a real head-to-head about it. Erich thought his pa was siding with the natives instead of supporting the family.”

  That piece of information didn’t surprise Emmanuel. The Pretorius brothers were princes of Jacob’s Rest, who took their father’s protection for granted. It must have stunned Erich to find he’d overstepped the line from privileged Afrikaner to criminal.

  “Why do you think the captain made Erich pay?�
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  “The old Jew,” Anton said. “He was one hundred percent certain he saw Erich start the fire and he was ready to swear to it in a law court. Said he’d even swear on the New Testament Bible. It took me an hour of begging to make him go to the police station and withdraw the statement.”

  The captain was levelheaded enough to see that paying the money was the best option. It wouldn’t do for Frikkie van Brandenburg’s grandson to be held in a place of confinement with the detritus of European civilization. Even though it was likely that a handpicked jury of whites would decide in favor of Erich, the purebred Afrikaner, over a Jew. Captain Pretorius, it seems, was an expert at keeping things off the record and out of public view.

  “The next payment is due?” Emmanuel asked.

  “This Tuesday.”

  “You going to ask for it?”

  Anton got to his feet. “You believe a coloured man can walk into a Dutchman’s place and demand his money? You really believe that, Detective?”

  Emmanuel looked at the floor, embarrassed by the raw emotion in Anton’s voice. The mechanic didn’t have a hope of getting the money unless a white man, one more powerful than Erich Pretorius, made the approach. Both he and Anton knew the simple truth.

  The church door opened a fraction and Mary the woman-child peeked in.

  “Anton?” Her lips clamped shut and she stood like a gazelle caught in a hunter’s spotlight.

  “What is it?” Anton asked.

  “Granny Mariah’s curry…” she said, then withdrew her head and disappeared from sight.

  Anton forced a smile. “That’s my sister Mary. I think she wanted to say Granny Mariah’s curry is going fast. It’s a popular dish at potluck Sunday.”

  “She was one of the victims in the molestation case?”

  “Ja.” The mechanic rubbed a finger along the edge of a pew. “That’s why she’s like you see her now. Frightened of men she don’t know.”

  “Who interviewed her?”

  “Lieutenant Uys, then Captain Pretorius.” Emmanuel stepped into the aisle and moved toward the front door.