A Beautiful Place to Die Page 17

  “You keep the key to this room?”

  The maid nodded.

  “How did the captain get in?”

  “He asked for the key.”

  Aggie the trusted servant was the gatekeeper, but how did Willem Pretorius gain access when he came home late from fishing?

  “Did he wake you and get the key when he came home after dark?”

  “No. He said where I must leave the key.”

  “You left the key on a table,” Emmanuel said. “Somewhere like that?”

  “He said where I must leave the key,” she repeated, and waved him out of the room impatiently. She was ready to move on.

  Emmanuel stepped into the corridor.

  “Where did you leave the key?” he asked.

  “In the flowerpot, behind the sugar sack, in the teapot. Wherever he said I must put it.”

  “Really?” Emmanuel marveled at the captain’s relentless need for secrecy. He acted like an undercover policeman whose real identity was his greatest liability.

  “Why do you think he changed the place for the key?” he asked while Aggie pushed the key into the lock with her gnarled hands.

  The worn-out old woman gave a shrug that implied she’d long since given up trying to understand the mysterious ways of the white man.

  “The baas says, ‘Put it in the teapot,’ I put it in the teapot.”

  That was the end of the matter as far as the maid was concerned. A servant didn’t question the master or try to make sense of why the missus needed the shirts hung on the line a certain way.

  “Aggie!” Mrs. Pretorius called from the back veranda. “Aggie?”

  The black maid didn’t hear the missus. She was busy turning the key in the lock with as much speed as her brittle fingers allowed.

  “I will go outside and have tea with the nkosikati,” Emmanuel said, and walked through to the back of the house. If he waited for Aggie it would be lunchtime when they finally made it outside.

  He stopped by the display cabinet running along the side of the large sitting room and picked up the picture of Frikkie van Brandenburg and his family. He was used to seeing the dour clergyman, the Afrikaner oracle, as an older man with a furrowed brow and fire in his eyes but even in his youth the unsmiling Frikkie looked ready to set the world to rights.

  What would van Brandenburg make of his daughter’s family? Dagga-smoking Louis, Erich the arsonist and Willem the deceiver were all tied to him by blood and marriage. Would Frikkie be proud or would he doubt, for just a moment, that the Afrikaner nation was set on a higher plane than the rest of humanity?

  Emmanuel replaced the photograph and continued toward the kitchen, where a younger black maid set up the tea service on a silver tray.

  “Sawubona…” He said good morning to the girl and stepped onto the vine-covered veranda. Mrs. Pretorius waved him over to a table overlooking a small vegetable garden. A garden boy, a squat man in his thirties, weeded the rows and turned the earth with a hand fork.

  Emmanuel sat down opposite Mrs. Pretorius and placed the police file on the ground. He kept the book in his pocket. The young black maid came out with the tea service and set it down on the table before she disappeared back into the house.

  “How do you take your tea, Detective Cooper?” Mrs. Pretorius asked.

  “White, no sugar,” he replied, and studied the late Willem Pretorius’s wife. She was beautiful in a refined way. There were no rough edges to her despite the steel he sensed within.

  “You have a lovely garden,” Emmanuel said, and accepted his tea. This would be his first and only chance to get a bead on the captain’s home life.

  “My father was a gardener. He believed that with God’s help and hard work, it was possible to create Eden here on earth.”

  “I thought your father was a minister. An exceptionally well-known one.”

  She made a weak attempt to wave off the reference to her famous father. “Pa didn’t pay any attention to the stories written about him. He liked better to work in his orchard than to speak to a hall full of people.”

  Like many powerful men, it appeared that Frikkie van Brandenburg had greatness thrust upon him.

  “He was a homebody?” Emmanuel asked with a smile. The newly written history books made a point of mentioning van Brandenburg’s zeal in spreading the message of white superiority and redemption. No meeting was too small or insignificant. No town too isolated to escape the gospel according to Frikkie. The great prophet traveled to them all.

  “He was home when he could be. We knew how important his work was for our country. Four of my brothers followed in his steps and became ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church. My two sisters are married to ministers.”

  “You’re the odd one out.”

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Pretorius answered. “Willem could easily have become a minister of the church. He had the strength for it but he wasn’t called.”

  “I see,” Emmanuel said. Perhaps the captain realized early in life that the path of moral rectitude wasn’t for him. Beating a small-time pornographer with your bare fists was not on the list of pastoral duties. And of course, Celestial Pleasures wasn’t required reading at the seminary.

  “Louis is going to be a minister,” Mrs. Pretorius said with satisfaction. “This was his first year at theological college.”

  Emmanuel didn’t show his surprise. After witnessing Louis hassling Tiny for booze and smokes, it was hard to imagine him leading a congregation or dispensing Christian wisdom.

  “What’s he doing home?” It wasn’t holiday time. All the schools and colleges were still in full swing. The summer break would begin in late December.

  Mrs. Pretorius sipped her tea and considered her answer. It took her a few moments to find the correct words. “Louis wants to be part of our people’s new covenant with God, but he’s too young to be away from home. The separation didn’t suit him.”

  Emmanuel waited. He’d seen a flash of doubt escape through a chink in the widow’s holy armor. Louis was her weak spot and there was something more to his early return from theological college.

  “My father took a break from his studies, you know. When he returned to the church he was stronger than before, more able to lead the people on the Way. Louis will spend time on Johannes’s farm, get to know the land and the concerns of the volk…he’ll go back to theological college and when he comes out he’ll be a lion of God.”

  There was absolute belief in her eyes.

  “Maybe Louis will be a farmer or a businessman like his brothers?”

  “No. Not Louis.” Her smile formed icicles on the rim of her teacup. “He’s not like the others. Even as a child he had a gift for gentleness and compassion. He is destined for greater things than what can be found in this town.”

  Mrs. Pretorius dreamed big, he’d give her that. Her sons ruled Jacob’s Rest but her ambitions were grander. She wanted a leader of the people who could make the nation into a holy land. The boy’s total unsuitability for the job was a fact that escaped her completely.

  “Did the captain share your dreams for Louis?”

  “They’re not my dreams, Detective Cooper. They’re Louis’s.” This time Emmanuel felt the chill from her smile in his bones. She was certainly van Brandenburg’s daughter. To go against her wishes was to go against the wishes of God.

  It was no wonder Willem Pretorius and his son traveled the kaffir paths in the dark. A woman with fire in her eyes and ice in her heart ruled their home.

  Emmanuel drank his tea. Mrs. Pretorius’s home was a showcase for her vision of how Afrikaner life should be. If he proved a link between the captain and the importation of banned materials, she’d burn the house down to purify it.

  “Willem loved this place and these people.” The widow’s blue eyes glistened with tears as she looked over the back fence to the veldt. “He was like a native that way. The land was all. I know you English laugh at our belief that we are the white tribe of Africa, but in Willem’s case it was true. He w
as an African man.”

  The captain certainly had an affinity with the Africans. His closeness with Shabalala was the source of Sarel Uys’s bitterness and maybe the lieutenant wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with Willem Pretorius’s relationship with the black constable.

  “Do you think some whites resented the captain’s good relationship with the natives?” he asked. He was thinking of Uys and the fact he’d just returned from Mozambique. Did the hard-faced little man park his car across the border, swim the width of the river then back again after committing the crime? He would have had two days to lie low and get a suntan before showing up at Jacob’s Rest again.

  “Willem didn’t mix with them socially,” Mrs. Pretorius said firmly. “He knew all of them because he grew up here. As police captain he had to talk with them and spend time among them. People understood that.”

  “Of course.” Emmanuel set his teacup down. Willem Pretorius did more than police the native community. He’d chosen Shabalala and Aggie the arthritic old maid to keep his secrets safe. That implied trust.

  The new segregation laws formalized the long-standing idea that the Black tribe and the White tribe were created by God to be separate and to develop along separate lines. Each tribe had its own natural sphere. Only degenerates crossed over into unnatural territory. In the eyes of some whites, Captain Pretorius might have done just that: crossed the line into the black world.

  “He’s not like other Dutchmen.” That was what Shabalala said on the first day of the investigation. Maybe that difference got the captain killed.

  “Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Pretorius.” Emmanuel retrieved the molester files from the floor. He had to see Erich and then he’d dig deeper into the “white man gone to black” lead.

  “I’ll be in contact if there are any developments.” He held his hand out, aware that this was the last time he’d have physical contact with her. After he interviewed her son, Mrs. Pretorius would freeze him out.

  She shook his hand and stared at the police file. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A file on the molestation case involving some of the coloured women in town.” He told her the truth. She didn’t like dirt in her house and he wanted to gauge her reaction to the news that Willem Pretorius had brought darkness into her world.

  “Oh…” She took a half step back. “Was it in the spare room?”

  “Yes,” Emmanuel said. “The case was unsolved and probably due for a review to see if any fresh leads came up.”

  Her brow wrinkled with distaste. “It was most likely one of them. One of their own who did it.”

  “Did Captain Pretorius say that?”

  “He didn’t have to.” She regained her composure and moved on to a topic she knew a lot about, the weakness of others. “The man who committed these acts still has strong primitive traits. We Europeans are further away from the animal state than the blacks or the coloureds.”

  Emmanuel wanted to tell her that every night he dreamed of the terrible things that civilized Europeans did to each other with guns, knives and firebombs.

  He slipped the file under his arm. Every hour of every day someone somewhere in South Africa commented on the strange behavior of those outside their own racial group. The Indians, the blacks, the coloureds and the whites pointed the finger at each other with equal enthusiasm.

  “Strange…” Mrs. Pretorius’s voice was soft. “Willem didn’t say anything about working on the case. He said it was closed.”

  The widow looked at the bulging file with a hungry curiosity. It was as if she wanted a taste of the shadow world her husband had worked to contain.

  “Did he discuss his cases with you?”

  “Not all of them,” she said. “But this one was special. It upset him to work on it. There were nights he couldn’t sleep for worrying about the town’s morality.”

  “Unsolved cases can do that to a policeman.”

  “That’s why…” Her focus on the file was complete. “I don’t understand why he didn’t say he was looking it over again. He…Willem told me everything.”

  The presence of the file in her house without her knowledge cracked the foundation of Mrs. Pretorius’s fantasy world. The certainty of her true Christian union with the captain had been called into question.

  “I’m sure he didn’t want to trouble you.” Emmanuel gave her an easy way out. She’d face a real test of her beliefs if he found the captain’s business in Mozambique was criminal.

  “Of course.” She smiled at her own doubts. “Willem was a natural protector. He lived to keep our family and the town safe.”

  The tears returned as the word “lived” left her mouth. It was the past tense. Every conversation she held about her husband was now a conversation about the past. Mrs. Pretorius’s sorrow was genuine but he had a feeling that if she’d caught her beloved Willem in an immoral act she’d have pulled the trigger herself.

  “I’m sorry…” she said. “I’m keeping you from your investigation. You could be using this time to hunt down the killer and bring him to justice.”

  “I do have some people to talk to. I’ll let you know if there’s a breakthrough.”

  Grief and vengeance would be Mrs. Pretorius’s constant companions for the next few months.

  Emmanuel left through the garden. He needed to see Erich Pretorius soon, but first he was going to ask Miss Byrd, the coloured postal clerk, for his second favor in as many days.

  “Where is the nkosana?” Emmanuel asked the black teenager manning the pumps at the Pretorius garage.

  “Office.” The stick-legged boy pointed to a room adjoining the mechanical repair shop.

  Emmanuel knocked twice on the door labeled “Pretorius Pty. Ltd.” and waited for an answer.

  “Whozit?”

  “Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.”

  “What is it?”

  Emmanuel pushed the door open. If he got through this encounter without a fist to the chin, he’d consider himself lucky. The third Pretorius son was in a filthy mood and the interview hadn’t even begun.

  “What do you want?” Erich looked up from a stack of paperwork on his desk.

  “The polite thing to say is ‘How can I help you?’” Emmanuel said. Spare parts and piles of old invoices littered the office. Unlike his mother, Erich Pretorius was comfortable with disarray.

  “You want something?” Erich pushed the unfinished paperwork away from him and sat back in his chair.

  “This must be a good business,” Emmanuel said, and studied a farm supply calendar highlighting the latest in tractor technology. “A corner position on the main street. You’ve done well.”

  “I do okay. What’s it to you?”

  “I’m just saying that business must be good, especially now you’re the only garage in town.”

  Erich leaned across the desk with a smile that promised a world of pain. “Who’s been whispering in your ear? That coloured?”

  “King was the one who explained to me that your next payment is due here.” Emmanuel returned to the calendar and tapped a finger to Tuesday.

  “What payment?” Erich sneered.

  “Fire insurance,” Emmanuel said. “Or don’t you need to pay it now your father is dead?”

  Erich was on his feet in a half second. “What the fuck has the payment got to do with my pa dying?”

  “He was the only one keeping the deal on the level.” Emmanuel felt the heat coming off Erich. He was about to combust with rage. “With your pa out of the way, there’s no proof you owe Anton a thing.”

  “You think I’d kill my own father for a hundred and fifty pounds?”

  Emmanuel stood his ground as the Afrikaner brick rounded the desk and moved toward him.

  “People have been killed for less, Erich.” He kept his tone amiable and calculated how fast he could make a dash for the door if need be.

  “Get out.” Erich was close enough to spray spit. “Get out of my place, you piece of English shit.”

  Emman
uel didn’t move. Erich was loud, but he was used to being second in command. He was the muscle of the Pretorius household, not the brains, and he’d fold as soon as it was clear who was boss.

  “Where were you the night your father was murdered?” Emmanuel asked calmly.

  “I don’t have to answer that,” Erich said.

  “Yes, you do.” Emmanuel stared the furious man down and showed no fear in the face of hopeless odds. The Afrikaner was big enough to break his jaw with one swat.

  “I was with my family.” Erich broke off eye contact. “My wife and our maid can vouch for me. We were all up at eleven PM with little Willem. Croup.”

  Emmanuel pulled out his notebook. “I’ll have to talk to your wife and verify your alibi.”

  “Fine by me,” Erich said without hesitation. “She’s just around the corner. Moira’s Hairstyles is her store.”

  Moira’s Hairstyles, set on the main street, was another slice of Jacob’s Rest belonging to the Pretorius clan. The captain’s family didn’t need the pro-white segregation laws to give them status. They were doing fine without the official leg up given to whites under the new government.

  Emmanuel sized up the man-mountain standing in front of him. He might not have killed his father, but was he angry enough about the debt to arrange a severe form of punishment for him?

  “How do you feel about paying all that money to a coloured?”

  “I got no choice.” Erich swung back to his desk with a grim expression. “Pa said if I don’t pay, that prick Englishman Elliot King will have the town crawling with Indian lawyers.”

  Emmanuel made a sound of understanding. Indian lawyers were universally acknowledged as being on par with the Jews when it came to brains and ambition.

  Erich opened a drawer and retrieved a bulging paper bag.

  “One hundred and fifty pounds.” He let the bag fall onto the desktop. A bundle of twenty-pound notes slid out. “I’d shove it up your arse but I have to deliver it to the old Jew this evening.”

  “What was your father thinking?” Emmanuel mused out loud. “Making you give money to a Jew to pay to a coloured?”