Present Darkness Read online

  Franklin’s one saving grace was providing a detail that tied the assault on the Brewers to the murder of the Afrikaner doorman. A big white man and a little one had led the break in at Fatty’s club. Zweigman’s theory could be right.

  “You left the girl alone and in danger,” Shabalala said. “You who are the elder. The man.”

  Red crept into Franklin’s cheeks: that a kaffir should talk to him with such contempt felt worse than an open-handed slap or a bruised windpipe. He threw his head back and tried to pin Shabalala with a cold stare. “Watch your mouth,” he croaked. “A kaffir in a suit is still a kaffir.”

  “I am half Zulu and half Shangaan,” Shabalala answered with good humour. “And you are not even worthy to be called a man.”

  “Are you going to let him speak to me like that?” Franklin played the “white men against the natives” card and got a shrug in reply.

  “I’d let him break your arm if he wanted to,” Emmanuel said. “Now tell me about the black man who came to visit Cassie’s parents.”

  Franklin remained sullen in the face of his own impotence. “The kaffir came from the country. Cassie’s mother was helping out with a land problem. I don’t know the details.”

  “Any idea where the man came from exactly?”

  “Up north.”

  Delia Singleton, Cassie’s aunt, lived on a farm north of Pretoria. That might explain how Mr Parkview came to have the Brewers’ address in his pocket.

  “So,” Emmanuel clarified. “You saw nothing and you know nothing because you hid in the shed and then ran off home while two men broke into the Brewers’ house and beat one of them to death. Is that the sum of it?”

  “I told Cassie to wait till the men had left. I said to be careful.”

  “A true gentleman.” Emmanuel signalled Shabalala to release Franklin. They moved to the garage door and stepped out into the garden, leaving Franklin sweat-stained and cowering in the chair.

  “Where to, Sergeant?” the Zulu detective asked.

  “Sophiatown.” He crossed the lawn with car keys rattling. “Let’s find out why Aaron is lying.”

  *

  Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman gathered around a pine table covered with breakfast plates and dirty crockery. Fix Mapela wore his standard uniform: striped pyjamas and a dressing gown with a silk collar.

  Emmanuel had explained the gangster’s unusual apparel on the path leading to the plain brick house. “He thinks that wearing pyjamas in public will make him unfit to stand trial if he’s ever caught and charged. Knowing Fix, he read that in a law book while actually in jail.”

  Penny, Fix’s church sanctioned wife, poured coffee. Half a dozen years, at most, separated her from the school playground. The pretty woman-child with a shy smile and doe eyes was too sweet for a township gangster. It was probably what Fix loved most about her.

  “Go now,” the gangster said to her. “Leave the men to business.”

  Penny slipped out of the room and shut the kitchen door. Apart from a soft “hello” when introduced, she’d said not one word or made eye contact with anyone at the table, not even Fix. It might as well be 1835; when traditional men expected modest and obedient wives.

  Emmanuel sipped the bittersweet coffee and said, “I’ve got two names. One of them lives here in Sophiatown.”

  “I will help you if I can.” Fix spread a thick layer of butter and plum jam onto a slab of burnt bread; a taste he’d acquired from living on the streets and cooking over an open flame. “Tell me the names. Everything you know.”

  “What I know isn’t much.” Emmanuel flicked to the page where he’d penned the key points of the prison warden’s rambling monologue. “First we have an older man with white hair and broad shoulders who goes by the name of Bakwena. He drives a black sedan with a dented front bumper. The second man is a Khumalo with brown hair and brown eyes and younger than Bakwena. Both of them neat and well-spoken.”

  “Bakwena is from Sophiatown?”

  “Yes.”

  Fix crunched down on the blackened toast and chewed slowly. Shabalala and Zweigman drank coffee and waited, hoping the flimsy descriptions would transform themselves into names and addresses for the men who’d visited Aaron in jail.

  “There is one man …” Fix licked jam from his sticky fingers, savouring the taste. “A Bakwena who owns the ‘Eternal Rest’ funeral parlour on Morris Street. He has a dented black car and white hair. He is a big noise here in the township and likes to speak against the government whenever there is a meeting or a strike.”

  “We’ll call in and say hello.” They’d knock on every door and check every name like prospectors searching for gold in a river. “Which end of Morris Street?”

  “Eternal Rest is near the open land at the far end. Come, I will take you.” Fix stood up and grabbed the edge of the table with a startled expression. Twenty-seven years with a stunted right leg and its shortened length still surprised him every time he got to his feet. Use the word “cripple” within earshot, though, and he’d introduce you to the sharp end of a knife, free of charge. “Bakwena will answer questions quick, quick with Fix Mapela by your side.”

  Bad idea. A truly terrible idea. Fix didn’t ask questions, he interrogated and he intimidated until answers spilled out … along with blood and other fluids. Emmanuel pretended to weigh the offer before answering.

  “Stay. Spend time with that pretty wife of yours. This business with Bakwena will take ten minutes, tops. You’ll be bored.” Fix and boredom were mutual enemies.

  “Remember, I am your blood brother. Brothers stick together through thick and thin.”

  “Of course.” Had he known at the age of six that the slice of a penknife blade across his palm would have real and actual consequences in the future he’d have declined. Or perhaps not. Fix had made a nightmarish childhood bearable and had even stolen shoes and pens for Emmanuel’s sister Olivia so she could concentrate on school instead of the empty money jar on the kitchen counter. Fix had been a brother: a wild, tearaway sibling who lived on the streets, but a brother nonetheless.

  “All right,” Emmanuel relented. “But no knives or guns.”

  “You take your gun,” Fix said. “I will bring a knife. A small one. Just for show. That is fair, no?”

  Zweigman gave a small groan and Shabalala stared at a crack in the linoleum floor with a blank expression. Emmanuel saw beneath the mask. The Zulu detective disagreed with the decision to include Fix Mapela in the investigation. They’d already used up a week’s worth of violence and intimidation when questioning Andy Franklin earlier. With Mason poking about Emmanuel’s private life he did not have the time or the inclination to explain the complex web of childhood dreams and poverty that tied him to a township gangster. Besides, Fix was right. Bakwena would answer their questions with Fix in the room.

  “Let’s go,” Emmanuel said.

  “We will take my car.” Fix clapped hands like a child invited to a party. “In matters of business it is best to arrive armed and in style!”

  21.

  Painted heavenly blue, the ‘Eternal Rest’ funeral home comprised a stout brick hall and a long wood-working shed for the construction of the simple pine boxes in which most of the township dead were buried. The smell of sawdust and the clank of hammers reached the street.

  Fix led the way into the main building. His trade made him well acquainted with township funeral homes. Some gangsters got public farewells with a casket and flowers, others a shallow grave on vacant land with only the sky to say goodbye.

  “In here.” Fix pushed open a door to a stifling hot office with a polished cross hanging on the back wall. A broad-shouldered black man with a scrim of white hair clinging to the back of his skull sat behind a desk, reading a newspaper. All the major newspapers in fact: English language, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa.

  “Mr Mapela.” The man stood up and tugged his waistcoat straight. “One of your colleagues has passed and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “N
o, no.” Fix grinned. “I bring you three live friends with questions in their mouths.”

  Bakwena’s attention shifted from Emmanuel to Zweigman and then to Shabalala, as if mentally fitting their bodies into the right sized caskets. He gave up trying to connect these three, disparate men and said, “I will be happy to answer whatever questions you have regarding the passing of a loved one. Put your minds at ease, gentlemen. Eternal Rest provides only the best service.”

  Fix snorted. “Who do you think they’ve come to bury—their sister?”

  Bakwena forced a smile and indicated a row of seats in front of the desk. “Be seated, gentleman. I will help if I can.”

  “Very wise,” Fix said. “To refuse my friends is to refuse me.”

  Bakwena sat and linked his fingers together. He nodded, giving permission for the questioning to begin.

  “What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?” Emmanuel asked, having seen a dented black car parked outside Eternal Rest and witnessed first-hand Bakwena’s overly polite manner. White men in authority generally lapped up this “good native” drivel and the prison guard was no exception. The funeral director pursed his lips to consider the question.

  “The name is unfamiliar to me,” he said in his deeply timbered voice.

  A hard, metal click broke the silence that followed Bakwena’s denial. Emmanuel glanced sideways. Fix wiped the blade of a flick knife against the leg of his pants and then proceeded to dig dirt from under his fingernails with the tip. He remained relaxed, an apex predator passing time before a kill. Zweigman blew out a small breath, stunned by the sudden, subtle escalation of tension. Shabalala studied Bakwena’s face, probing for the truth.

  “I’ll ask you again, just to be sure,” Emmanuel said. “What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?”

  Bakwena breathed deeply and looked down at his linked fingers. “I am sorry, gentlemen. I don’t know the Shabalala of whom you speak.”

  Emmanuel pulled out his notebook at roughly the same time that Fix lunged across the desk and slammed Bakwena’s right hand flat to the wood surface. The motion sent newspapers scattering across the floor. Sweat broke out on the funeral director’s brow. The Fix effect was instant.

  “You lie to my brother, you lie to me. It is the same thing and liars, they make me nervous.” Fix held the knife at eye level and the blade danced from side to side in his agile fingers. “When I am nervous, I make mistakes.”

  The point of the blade sliced down between Bakwena’s splayed thumb and index finger. Fix stabbed the point into the surface of the desk between the next two fingers and then the next. Metal found flesh on the last stab and blood leaked from the cut. Bakwena yelped in pain: a strange, high sound coming from a man of such solid build.

  “You see?” Fix gestured to the blood. “That is the kind of mistake that happens when I am nervous.”

  Zweigman shuffled forward but Emmanuel raised his hand, signalling him to stop. There would be time to doctor the wound after Bakwena told the truth about knowing Aaron and not before. Besides, Fix never left a job half-done. Calling him off was nearly impossible. Emmanuel leaned across the desktop and noticed that Shabalala had not moved an inch or flinched away as a result of Mapela’s attack.

  “Last chance to tell me everything before my brother trims your fingers for you,” he said. Fix laid the flat of the knife blade against the first and then the second knuckle of Bakwena’s index finger, then flipped it so the sharp edge touched bare skin.

  “I hardly know the boy.” The funeral director blinked away the trickle of sweat running into his eyes. “We met only a few times.”

  “Go on.”

  “He was a new member of the Call to Action Group. I thought him too young to join but the others said we needed new blood and fresh minds. He came to three of our planning meetings.”

  “What does this action group plan on doing?” The name suggested something rash.

  “Fighting fire with fire,” Bakwena said. “The National Party and the Dutch only respect what they fear. We have been too peace loving and it has gained us nothing. If we resist, the government will take notice of our grievances. To win this fight with the government, we must be an army. We must go to war.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s never been in the army or gone to war,” Emmanuel said. A battle plan on paper and an actual battlefield strewn with disassembled bodies were only distantly related: one remained a neat idea while the other reflected a flesh and blood cost. Still, he could hardly argue the point. Fix had loosened Bakwena’s tongue in minutes. Violence worked.

  “What exactly were your plans?” Emmanuel asked. Action took effort while talk cost nothing. The Call To Action Group might have been merely a forum for complaints.

  The funeral director squirmed and clamped his lips together to seal in a confession. Fix flipped the knife into the air, caught it on the fly and stabbed the blade at Bakwena’s right eye. The tip stopped inches from the dark pupil. Bakwena’s eyeball reflected in the silver surface.

  Emmanuel tensed but sat still. He breathed. He let the knife do its work. Neither Shabalala nor Zweigman moved.

  “A train line supplying the gold pits … not a passenger train, you understand?” The funeral director remained glassy-eyed and unblinking. “We wanted to strike fear into the government and the rich barons who own the mines. We weren’t going to harm the mothers or their children, just destroy the equipment that keeps the white man in power.”

  “Clean fights don’t exist,” Emmanuel said. “Somebody always gets hurt.”

  “Aaron was there when you talked of destroying trains?” Shabalala asked. The penalty for treason was life imprisonment with only annual visits from loved ones.

  “He came to the planning meeting on Friday night. We studied a map and made a list of places to destroy the track.”

  Fix withdrew the knife and tucked away the blade. “Heavy business,” he said. “Kicking the white man in the wallet. I like it.”

  Bakwena wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and instantly soaked the thin cotton. “Better to kick the white man there than to kill his women and children,” he said.

  Shabalala leaned across the desk edge so the funeral director had no choice but to meet him eye to eye. “Why would the boy join a group such as yours? He is from a good family with a good mother and father.”

  “It was because of the father that he joined,” Bakwena explained. “The white hospital refused to treat his father’s lung sickness even though they have many machines and empty beds. The father offered money but the doctors sent him away. Now the father is dying far from home.”

  “A great hurt made worse …” Fix mused. “That is the white man’s way.”

  “This explains Aaron’s weak alibi,” Emmanuel said. “Telling the truth meant putting everyone else at the planning meeting in the dock for treason. Aaron limited the danger to himself.”

  Would Bakwena have done the same? Emmanuel wondered.

  “I understand,” the Zulu detective replied. “He stayed quiet to save the others from prison.”

  “How committed are you to the revolution?” Emmanuel asked Bakwena.

  “The revolution is my life’s work.” The funeral director’s rich voice was perfectly suited to giving church sermons and delivering fiery speeches from the political stage. “I will not rest till every black African is given equal rights in all things. I am not alone in this. There are many, many more who feel as I do.”

  “Good,” Emmanuel said. “You have a chance, right now, to turn your words into actions. Go to the Sophiatown police station and make a formal statement. Tell them that Aaron Shabalala came to your house on Friday night at around 9.30 and stayed for an hour. That’s all it needs to be. Sixty minutes. Give him an alibi.”

  Bakwena said, “My politics are well known to the police. I myself am very well known here in Sophiatown. The police will use this opportunity to question my friends, my family … everyone that I know. The Call To Action Group will be
in danger.”

  “Tell them that Aaron came to discuss the cost of a funeral. His father is sick. It makes sense.”

  What would it take to move this armchair revolutionary from behind a desk? A miracle, Emmanuel suspected.

  “The risk is too great my friend,” Bakwena said. “One wrong word and the Sophiatown police will call in the Special Branch to investigate. Every chain has a weak link. The Special Branch will find that link and break it. All of us who were at the planning meeting will be condemned to life in prison. Better to sacrifice one life than five.”

  “So long as that life isn’t yours.” Andrew Franklin’s cowardice and Bakwena’s ruthless self-preservation were symptoms of their broken country. “Aaron didn’t break during questioning but you, the great leader, can’t promise the same.”

  “Shabalala is strong. He will keep his silence while we work to overthrow the government. We will achieve our goal and South Africa will be free. Shabalala’s sacrifice will be remembered in the history books. I gave him my word.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Emmanuel said. The funeral director had the voice of a revolutionary but lacked the necessary courage to save one of his own men from the gallows.

  Fix twirled the knife, ready to end this endless talk, talk, talk. “Five minutes,” he said. “I will make this man do as you please, brother.”

  “I don’t doubt it but we can’t control him once he walks into the police station.” They needed a definitive solution to Aaron’s dilemma: one that didn’t call Lieutenant Mason’s attention back onto the Brewer case. A statement quietly lodged over the Christmas break would likely go unnoticed until well after Johan Britz had had the time to unpick the police investigation.

  “Two minutes,” Fix begged. “Our dove will sing the right tune.”

  “Mr Bakwena has no power but in words,” Shabalala observed. “First he will sing for us then he will sing for whoever has him trapped in a cage. He will exchange the lives of the others to save his own. Of this I am sure.”