A Beautiful Place to Die Page 16

  Emmanuel took a breath and looked deep into the fire. The liberal use of the rawhide whip, the shambok, readily explained the bruises on the miner’s arms. Hard questioning was one of the things that made the Security Branch “special.”

  “What did Duma say?”

  “I did not hear,” Shabalala said. “I could not listen anymore.”

  This time Emmanuel didn’t push. The sound of a man being broken during interrogation was enough to turn the strongest stomach. Shabalala had walked away and Emmanuel couldn’t blame him.

  “Did they find out anything about the captain’s murder?”

  “No,” Shabalala said. “They wanted only to know about the writing.”

  If a link, however tenuous, was proved between a Communist and the murder of an Afrikaner police captain, Piet and Dickie were set for a smooth ride to Pretoria and a personal meeting with the prime minister of the Union. After the ministerial handshake they’d get fast-tracked promotions and an even bigger shambok to wield.

  It seemed the Security Branch was in the middle of an investigation that somehow tied in with Captain Pretorius’s murder. Piet Lapping was no fool. He was in Jacob’s Rest because something in his confidential folder drew him to the town with the promise of netting a genuine Communist revolutionary.

  “Are all the police files for this station kept inside?” Emmanuel steered away from the dark swamp of torture and political conspiracy that Piet and Dickie waded through for a living. The Security Branch could continue chasing Communist agitators. He’d play his hunch that the murder was tied to one of the many secrets Captain Pretorius kept.

  “Sometimes,” Shabalala said, “Captain took the files home to read. He did this many times.”

  “He had an office at home?” Emmanuel asked. Why hadn’t he thought of that when he was at the house?

  “No office,” the black constable said. “But there is a room in the house where Captain Pretorius spent much time.”

  “How would a person get into such a room?” Emmanuel wondered aloud.

  “A person must first ask the missus. If she says yes, then he can go into the room and see things for himself.”

  “If the missus says no?”

  The black man hesitated, then said very clearly, “The man must tell me and I will get the key to the room from the old one who works there at the house. She will open this room for the person.”

  Emmanuel let his breath out slowly.

  “I will ask the missus,” he said, and left it there.

  They sat side by side and watched the flames without speaking. The bond, still fragile, held firm. The Security Branch had a file crammed with enemies of the state but he had the inside track on the captain’s shadow life.

  The back door opened and Piet stepped out into the backyard with his cup of tea. His pebble eyes had an unnatural sheen to them, as if he’d swallowed a witch’s brew and found that what killed other men made him strong.

  “We’re through.” Piet spoke directly to Shabalala. “You can take him back to the location but make sure he doesn’t go anywhere until our investigation has finished. Understand?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.” Shabalala moved quickly toward the back door. When he drew level with Piet, the Security Branch agent put his hand out and patted his arm.

  “Good tea,” he said with a grin. “Your mother trained you well, hey.”

  “Dankie,” Shabalala replied in Afrikaans, then stepped into the station without looking at him.

  Emmanuel marveled at Piet’s ability to mix an afternoon of torture with harmless banter. It didn’t matter that Shabalala and Duma knew each other and might even be related. When pockmarked Piet looked at Constable Samuel Shabalala, he didn’t see an individual; he saw a black face ready to do his bidding without question.

  The Security Branch lieutenant sipped his tea and took in the dusty yard with a sigh.

  “I like the country,” he announced. “It’s peaceful.”

  “You thinking of moving out here?” Emmanuel said, and made for the back door. He didn’t have the stomach to listen to Piet waxing lyrical about the beauty of the land.

  “Not yet.” Piet wasn’t letting anything penetrate his bucolic reverie. “When all the bad guys are behind bars and South Africa is safe, I’ll move to a small farm with a view of the mountains.”

  “Home sweet home.” Emmanuel pulled the back door open and walked into the police station. Captain Pretorius had lived the dream. He was a powerful white man on a small farm with a view of the mountains. He’d ended up with a bullet to the head.

  “Woza. Get up, Duma, and I will take you home.” It was Shabalala trying to coax the traumatized black man out of the cell. The injured miner was still pressed up against the bars with his arms over his head.

  Shabalala put both his hands out like a parent encouraging a toddler to walk for the first time.

  “Woza,” Shabalala repeated quietly. “Come. I will take you to your mother.”

  Duma struggled to his feet and steadied himself against the bars of the cell, then limped painfully toward the door. The miner’s left leg was half an inch shorter than the right and twisted at an odd angle. Even before the Security Branch abuse, Duma must have been a pitiful sight.

  Emmanuel felt a flash of heat across his chest. Not the familiar surge of adrenaline that accompanied a break in the case but a white-hot bolt of rage. The captain was shot by an able-bodied man with keen eyesight, a steady hand, and two feet planted firmly on the ground. Duma didn’t come close to presenting a match with the killer.

  Shabalala held the crippled miner’s hand and led him out of the cell toward the back door. The front door and the front offices were for whites only. Emmanuel’s rage turned to discomfort as he stepped back to allow the black men passage. Shabalala and his charge would spend the next hour dragging themselves across the veldt until they reached the location five miles north of town.

  “Stay by the front door to the hospital,” Emmanuel said quickly before sanity returned and he changed his mind. “I will come and pick you up.”

  “We will be there,” Shabalala said.

  Emmanuel walked through the front office and out onto the veranda, where Dickie and Sarel were watching a line of three cars driving down the main street. The sour-faced lieutenant looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy next to his hefty companion.

  “Weekenders coming back into SA from Mozambique.” Sarel Uys indicated the country-style traffic jam. “They’ll make a dash for home before the sun sets.”

  Dickie drank his tea with noisy enjoyment. Like pockmarked Piet, he had the look of a man with the wind at his back and the road rising up to meet him. What had Duma said? The Security Branch had released him, so they weren’t looking to hang the captain’s murder on him. What, then? He could try to find out, but Duma wasn’t in a fit state to talk to anyone. The connection between a Communist plot and Captain Pretorius’s murder remained a mystery for the moment.

  “Any luck with the pervert?” Dickie called out with great cheer.

  “Not yet,” Emmanuel said, and turned in the direction of The Protea Guesthouse, where the Packard sedan was parked. Justice be damned. He’d find the killer first, not to serve justice, but to see the look on Dickie’s face when he shoved the result down his throat.

  Duma was slumped in the backseat of the Packard with his eyes rolled back in his head. A low whimpering was the only sound he made. Emmanuel pulled the car to a stop in front of the church and glanced at Shabalala, who was nursing the half-crazed man.

  “How was he before this afternoon?” he asked Shabalala.

  The black constable shrugged. “Since the rock crushed his leg, he has been bad. Now he is worse.”

  A group of older black women approached the car. They were cautious and fearful in their movement, not knowing what to expect once the car doors opened. The women stopped short when Shabalala got out and approached them. There was the quiet murmur of Zulu before a pencil-thin woman in a yellow dress g
ave a shout and ran for the Packard. Emmanuel stilled as the woman hauled the miner into a sitting position in the backseat and wailed out loud. The sound was an ocean of sorrows.

  Shabalala pulled the woman away and lifted Duma from the car. The women followed the black policeman who carried the cripple down the narrow dirt road toward home.

  The skinny woman’s cries carried back to him and Emmanuel switched on the engine to drown out the sound. Five years of soldiering and four years picking over the remains of the dead and still the sound of a woman’s grief made his heart ache.

  10

  HE CAME UP to the big white house early the next morning and found Mrs. Pretorius planting seedlings in the garden. A wide straw hat covered her head and her delicate hands were protected from the dirt by sturdy cotton gloves.

  “Detective Cooper.” Her blue eyes were hopeful as she greeted him.

  “No news yet,” Emmanuel said in response to the look. “I’ve come to ask you if I could see the spare room where Captain Pretorius slept.”

  “On Wednesdays,” she told him with the diamond-hard look he’d seen at their first encounter. “Willem only slept there on fishing nights.”

  “Forgive me. I know you and the captain were dedicated to each other. Everyone in town commented on it. Even the nonwhites.”

  “We tried to set an example. We hoped others would see us and follow the path to a true Christian union.”

  “A good marriage is a rare thing,” Emmanuel said. Mrs. Pretorius might believe herself to be half of a Christian partnership, but the sin of pride was heavy on her.

  “You’re married, Detective Cooper?”

  Emmanuel touched a finger to the spot where his wedding ring had been. Any mention of a divorce was sure to set her against him and get the door to the spare room slammed in his face. Mrs. Pretorius wouldn’t countenance a morally flawed outsider touching her saintly husband’s belongings.

  “I lost my wife almost seven months ago.” He told the truth to the degree he could and hoped she’d fill in the blanks.

  “God has his reasons,” she said.

  She touched his shoulder. Even when cast down into the valley of grief, Mrs. Pretorius had to be the one to shine her light onto the world.

  “I’m trying to understand,” Emmanuel said. He was thinking of the captain and the homemade safe cunningly hidden from view. He was starting to see into the dark places in Willem Pretorius that his wife’s goodness failed to illuminate.

  “You may go into the room,” she said with a nod. His confusion, which she took for spiritual struggle, branded him worthy of her help. “Come with me.”

  Emmanuel followed Mrs. Pretorius across the garden and noticed the imprint of her boots in the freshly turned soil. A work boot with deep straight grooves almost identical to the prints left at the crime scene. He remembered what Shabalala told him: that the Pretorius men and Mrs. Pretorius had won many medals for target shooting.

  “You’ll have to get Aggie to open up for you. Willem used the room for work and kept it locked when he wasn’t at home.”

  The words nudged something in her and she began to cry with a soft mewling sound. Her face collapsed with grief. If the fragile blond woman had killed her husband, she regretted it now.

  She pulled off her gardening gloves and wiped away the tears. “Why would anyone hurt my Willem? He was a good man…a good man…”

  Emmanuel waited until the sobs lessened in intensity.

  “I’m going to find out who did this to your husband and I am going to find out why.”

  “Good.” The widow took a deep breath and got herself under control. “I want to see justice done. I want to see whoever did this hang.”

  The diamond-hard look was back and Emmanuel knew Mrs. Pretorius meant every word. She planned to be at the prison when the hatch opened and the killer took the long drop to the other side.

  “Aggie—” Mrs. Pretorius called out into the large house. “Aggie. Come.”

  They waited in silence while the ancient black woman shuffled across the entrance hall to the front door. Her ample body was bent in on itself after a lifetime of domestic work; her hands were gnarled from years of washing laundry and scrubbing floors for the ideal Afrikaner family. Emmanuel doubted she did much of anything anymore.

  “Aggie.” The volume of Mrs. Pretorius’s voice dropped only a fraction. The maid was deaf into the bargain. “You must take Detective Cooper to the spare room the captain used. Open up for him and lock it when he’s finished.”

  The ancient maid motioned Emmanuel in without speaking. What was her position in the household? Hansie said the old woman was no good anymore but that the captain wouldn’t let her go. Most Afrikaners and Englishmen had a black servant who was almost part of the family. Almost.

  “You must have tea with me after, Detective Cooper,” Mrs. Pretorius said. “Get Aggie to show you to the back veranda.”

  “Thank you.”

  After tea with Mrs. Pretorius, he was going to see Erich. The doors to the Pretorius family home were going to shut in his face after he questioned the volatile third son about the fire at Anton’s garage and the fight he’d had with his father over compensation. He had to get information while he could.

  Aggie stopped in front of a closed door and rummaged in her apron pocket. It took her an age to fit the key into the lock and turn it with her arthritic hands. She pushed the door open and motioned him in without a word. Emmanuel wondered if the black maid was mute as well as deaf.

  He viewed the room before he disturbed the contents. It was a large, pleasant space with a neatly made bed, bedside table, dark wooden wardrobe, and writing desk positioned by a window that looked out over the front garden. It was another example of the clean, ordered spaces Captain Pretorius specialized in.

  Emmanuel moved to the bedside table and pulled the drawer open. It contained a black calfskin-covered Bible and nothing else. He picked up the Bible and examined the well-thumbed pages. The good book wasn’t just for show. Captain Pretorius read the words of the Lord on a regular basis. There was no Bible at the stone hut, however—just a camera stolen from a sniveling pervert and an envelope with something worth pissing on a man for.

  Emmanuel turned the Bible upside down and gave it a shake to see if anything fell out.

  “Ayy…” It was the maid, Aggie, scandalized by his rough treatment of The Word. Seems she wasn’t mute or blind, just reluctant to use her dwindling energy stores on talking. Emmanuel gently closed the Bible and turned it the right way up. With the old maid looking on, he flipped through the pages as if he were a preacher seeking pearls of wisdom for an upcoming sermon.

  Emmanuel put the Bible back into the drawer. There was nothing in the book but the word of the Almighty. The bed was made up with a plaid blanket over clean yellow sheets. He lifted the pillow. A pair of blue cotton pajamas nestled underneath. The maid gave another soft gasp and Emmanuel replaced the pillow exactly as he’d found it. The room already had the feel of a shrine, with everything in it destined to remain untouched until the captain returned on Judgment Day.

  The wardrobe was a handsome piece of furniture with double doors and mother-of-pearl handles. Two ironed police uniforms on wooden hangers hung side by side. Two pairs of shiny brown boots glowed with polish and waited for the captain’s size-13 feet to fill them.

  “Patience,” Emmanuel told himself. The room was locked for a reason. He opened the writing desk’s top drawer and his heart began to pound. Inside, a fat police file lay next to a slim hardcover book. He undid the tie and flicked the file open. The first page was an incident report filed in August ’51 in which the luscious Tottie James was subjected to a gasping noise coming from outside her bedroom window. No surprises there. Emmanuel guessed that most men made gasping noises when she was in the immediate vicinity.

  He flipped to the end of the reports and failed to find a humorous angle in the description of Della, the pastor’s daughter, who had been grabbed from behind in her own ro
om and held facedown on the floor while the perpetrator ground his hips against her backside. Peeping Tom implied distance, a furtive individual coveting the desired object from afar. Physical assault resulting in bruising and a cracked rib was another matter entirely.

  Tonight he’d read the file in detail and try to get some idea of the man who committed the offenses and why the captain and his lieutenant failed to find and apprehend him.

  Emmanuel put the police file down and examined the hardcover book in the drawer. Small enough to fit into a jacket pocket, the slim volume was a high-class item. He felt the smooth leather cover. The title intrigued him: Celestial Pleasures.

  He opened the hand-cut pages at random and skimmed a couple of lines: Plum Blossom stretched out on the plush sedan, her only covering a red and gold tassel that hung from her exquisite neck. Wisps of opium smoke escaped her parted lips and rose up into the air.

  Curiosity got the better of him and he skipped to the middle. There was a line drawing of a naked Oriental girl with downcast eyes kneeling on a cushion. Classy, Emmanuel thought, and edging on literary, but a stroke book nonetheless. He slipped it into his pocket.

  “Hmmm…” Aggie was alerting him to the fact she’d seen him take the book.

  Emmanuel kept his back turned. He was leaving the Pretorius house with the police file and the book no matter how outraged the deaf servant might be.

  The rest of the drawers revealed the captain’s love of starched undershirts, plaid pajamas and olive drab socks. He moved back to the bed, checked underneath it, and found not a speck of dust.

  Emmanuel approached the generously padded black maid, who was resting her weight against the doorjamb. It was nine-thirty in the morning and she looked ready for a nap.

  “What do you do in the house?” he shouted in Zulu. Holding a conversation in English was likely to send the maid into a coma.

  “Clean,” she replied in her native language. “And keep the key.”

  “What key?”

  She rummaged in her apron pocket and pulled out the key to the spare room. She displayed it in the palm of her hand but didn’t say anything.