Present Darkness Read online

  “She’ll be back before long,” Jason said and wrestled the heavy bucket onto his shoulder like a native porter carting goods from a supply train. “She hates the country so she can’t have gone too far.”

  In what direction? A sensible city-bred teenager would stay close to shelter and a source of water. Emmanuel shaded his eyes and searched through the heat haze on the plains. He did not feel especially confident of Cassie’s level-headedness.

  Shabalala set the buckets down and walked across the sand to the flat rock. He crouched and scanned the riverbank. “A girl wearing sandals left from this place many hours ago.”

  “When did you see Cassie last?” Emmanuel asked her cousin who swayed with the effort of keeping the overflowing water bucket balanced on his shoulder.

  “Breakfast,” Jason said. “She ate half her porridge and left in a hurry.”

  “Go and find her,” Zweigman urged. A city girl wandering the bush alone for hours rang a warning for all three of them. “I will use the time to rinse the infection from the children’s eyes. Milk and honey will clear it up.”

  The doctor picked up the empty buckets and stooped by the water’s edge, his energies shifting to the inhabitants of Clearwater homestead in need of his care.

  “One hour.” Emmanuel agreed: he and Shabalala would track Cassie across the veldt and Zweigman would tend the children. “If she stayed close to water we might be away longer than that.”

  He nodded to Shabalala who tilted his hat in farewell and walked along the riverbank with quick strides. He crouched again by the rock and examined the sand and twigs nearby. Zweigman and Jason retraced the grass path to the homestead, their steps slowed to compensate for the weight of their buckets.

  “The boy is right. His cousin came here many times to sit at this place. This morning she stayed and then moved in that direction.” The Zulu detective pointed along the crooked spine of the river to a point beyond where the washerwoman lathered soap onto a scrubbing brush.

  “At least she’s got sense enough to stick close to water,” Emmanuel said and fell into step with Shabalala. Silver light refracted off the farmhouse roof. If Cassie were lost, that wink of civilisation could act as a beacon, drawing her homeward.

  “Have you seen the young white missus?” Emmanuel stopped to ask the washerwoman who scrubbed away at worn cotton sheets. A hint as to Cassie’s state of mind would be helpful. The woman looked up, glad for the break.

  “The sad one was here when I came with my first load, ma baas. I greeted her but she turned her face away from me. When the children came to play in the water she got up and ran away; quick, quick, past the bulrushes and then on till I could not see her any more.”

  “My thanks.” Emmanuel caught up with Shabalala on a bend in the river. Cassie had taken off long before they’d arrived at Clearwater with their questions. What reason did she have for running?

  “The girl moved fast and then rested here against the tree trunk.” The Zulu detective indicated a hollow in the sand and tracked the soft scoops left in the riverbank by Cassie’s sandals. A few minutes later they came to another dip in the sand where the teenager had again sat down to rest.

  “She runs and stops. Runs and stops, yet there is nothing chasing her,” Shabalala said when they’d tracked her long enough to establish a pattern. On the opposite bank a tall boy drove a herd of cattle down to the river. The sun blazed hot. Shabalala and Emmanuel removed their ties and jackets, rolled up their sleeves and wet their heads and faces with handfuls of cool water. They moved on.

  Ten minutes later they came to a trampled patch of grass stained with drops of dried brown liquid. Shabalala rubbed the substance between thumb and forefinger to confirm what they both already knew.

  “Blood. Only a small amount and just dry …”

  Emmanuel stepped back to get a clearer view of the area. A hard object crunched underfoot. He kneeled down and lifted a black-handled steak knife from the grass. Rust-brown liquid stained the serrated blade. White noise roared in his ears. Cassie held the key to open Aaron’s jail cell. Unless she retracted her statement, Lieutenant Mason’s tainted evidence would make it to trial. Her life was precious, yet she’d decided to throw it away. He turned a quick circle, searching for a body, and realised that the roaring sound in his head had an external source.

  “A waterfall,” Shabalala said and loped off. Emmanuel matched his pace. They rounded a sharp bend. Five feet ahead the land dropped away and the river plunged over the edge of a steep cliff. Cassie stood on the lip of the precipice with her arms pressed close to her sides.

  “No …” the word came out short and strangled from Shabalala’s throat.

  “Wait!” Emmanuel shouted over the crash of falling water. He sprinted to close the gap with the lonely figure balanced on the edge of the cliff.

  Cassie jumped.

  23.

  Emmanuel hit the water. His left shoulder bounced against a submerged boulder and pain tore through his body; sharp and dull at the same time. The force of the cascading river pushed him down to the bottom of the deep pool at the base of the falls. Bubbles escaped from his mouth as the impact pushed all the air out of his body. His left arm hung useless by his side. The world spun in a dark swirl of leaves, sand and silt. He kicked hard toward the surface. The sheer weight of the falling water held him down. He tried again, right arm extended to its maximum length to search for a finger-hold above the surface. A hand gripped his wrist and pulled him up to the light. Shabalala, soaked to the skin and hatless, tread water just outside the impact zone.

  “Cassie?” Emmanuel shouted over the roar of the water and tasted mud and algae in his mouth. He and Shabalala had jumped over the edge together, falling like leaf litter into the pool.

  “I will find her.” The Zulu detective dived down through the white spray and disappeared into the churning water. Emmanuel clung to a craggy rock ledge, his teeth gritted against the pain of bruised muscles and what felt like a dislocated shoulder. The last he’d seen of Cassie Brewer was a bright flash of her red hair and a white hand sinking out of view.

  “Don’t black out just yet, soldier. If anyone can get the girl out, it’s the Zulu,” the Scottish Sergeant Major said. “He’ll find her.”

  “Dead or alive?”

  “That’s out of our hands. All we can do is pray … even though you and I know there’s no-one listening.”

  Minutes later Shabalala broke the surface of the water and scissor-kicked out of the foaming spray. Pale limbs thrashed in his wake as he dragged Cassie Brewer to the side of the pool and propped her body against the rocky edge. She spat up brown sludge and moaned low in the back of her throat.

  Emmanuel moved around the edge of the pool, clinging to the bank with his right hand. Shabalala sucked in great mouthfuls of air and held Cassie afloat despite the effort he’d expended dragging her up from the bottom.

  “Climb out,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll keep her above the surface.”

  Shabalala brought himself out of the water in one graceful push, then crouched in the sand. He took two deep breaths and exhaled slowly, focusing on dragging the white girl’s dead weight over the edge of the pool and onto the riverbank.

  “I’ll push. You lift.” Emmanuel braced against the rocky bottom and wedged his good shoulder under Cassie’s body. She coughed up a twig and her eyes flew open, wide and panicked. “Now.”

  “Woza …” Shabalala breathed the Zulu exhortation, which meant “go, get up, move.” Workmen all over the country used the word to give them extra power when their energy had drained. The Zulu reached down and fit his hands under Cassie’s armpits and then applied the full measure of his strength to pull her from the pool. Emmanuel pressed upward, ignoring the pain that stabbed across his shoulder and into his neck. Cassie’s body lifted and then sloshed over the rock edge like a fish on a hook. Emmanuel heard retching and hiccups. Shabalala appeared again at the pool’s perimeter.

  “Give me your hands, Sergeant. I will pull you
out.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “Hit a rock on the way in. Hurt my shoulder.”

  “I see …” Shabalala peered into the water and pointed to a boulder wedged hard into the rock wall. “Come over here. Climb on. I will lift you onto the bank.”

  Emmanuel stepped onto the curved rock and grabbed a tuft of straggly grass to keep balance. Shabalala took hold of his good arm and pulled back slowly. The muscles of both Emmanuel’s right and left shoulders ached and flexed. He pushed up hard through the water and Shabalala dragged him over the lip of the rock and onto the coarse sand. Cassie Brewer lay a few feet away, curled into a tight ball, shaking.

  Emmanuel flipped onto his back, jaw clenched tight. “You’ll have to push my shoulder back into its socket,” he told Shabalala. “I’ll tell you how but it might take a couple of tries.”

  He had limited experience in readjusting dislocated shoulders having done it only once before and under the instruction of an injured field medic who’d tripped over on an empty ammo box and refused to wait for trained help to arrive.

  “One of you’ll have to fix my shoulder,” the medic had said to the squad. “I’ll guide you through.”

  Emmanuel volunteered. Medics saved lives. They brought morphine to the injured and carried the shot, the burned and the shell-shocked to safety. One medic down translated to multiple losses on the battlefield. He’d snapped the shoulder back into place under a barrage of enemy fire. Now, lying on a peaceful African riverbank, he hoped he remembered the right steps in the right order.

  “Bend my shoulder at a ninety-degree angle and rotate my arm to my chest. Good. That’s it …” he stopped and thought through the next stage; drops of sweat and river water forming on his brow. “All right. Now move the arm outward and try to coax the bone back into the socket.”

  Shabalala followed the final instructions and deftly eased the dislocated bone back into its socket. Relief came instantly, though the bruised muscle would take days to heal.

  “Thanks. You got it first time.” Emmanuel slowly rotated his shoulder, testing the movement of the joint. The bone stayed in place. He got up and walked over to where Cassie lay curled on the sand. She had red scratches on her wrists and forearms from where she had tried to cut herself with the steak knife.

  “Cassie …” Emmanuel crouched beside the girl with Shabalala behind. He pushed away the knowledge that pursuing this child over the precipice could have cost them their lives. But for a few lucky inches, the submerged boulder might have cracked a skull or snapped a spine. “Come. Sit up.”

  Cassie burrowed deeper into the sandy bank with her eyes squeezed shut. Goosebumps appeared on her skin and wet strands of hair lay plastered against the side of her face.

  Emmanuel touched her shoulder and felt the soft, shivering flesh. “You need to get warm,” he said. “Let’s get you into the sun.”

  Cassie remained limp and unmoving. Shabalala stepped closer and said, “Over there on that patch of grass, Sergeant?”

  “Yeah.” Emmanuel moved aside. The Zulu detective scooped Cassie up and carried her into a warm spot just outside the spray of the waterfall. The river flowed on: a slender, yet powerful, vein of silver cutting through the dry land. The two detectives crouched either side of Cassie and raised their faces to the heat like sunworshippers in an outdoor temple. They’d be close to dry in a few minutes and ready to walk back to the farmhouse. Emmanuel waited for Cassie’s ragged breathing to ease. Her eyes flickered open but she remained flat on the ground and expressionless.

  “Our friend Dr Zweigman is waiting at the house,” he said. “He’ll take care of any cuts and bruises from the jump and he’ll make sure that you’re all right. Can you walk?”

  “I don’t want to,” Cassie said.

  “You don’t want to walk or you don’t want to go back to the farm?”

  “Both.”

  Shabalala sank onto his haunches, preparing for a long wait. He didn’t mind the time it took to get the unhappy white girl up and moving. She was alive and, through her, Aaron stayed alive also.

  “Fuck this …” the Sergeant Major seethed. “Get your Zulu to carry the crazy bitch back to the house or drag her by the hair if necessary. It’s well past the time to play nice, Cooper.”

  “Flogging a sick horse never makes it go faster,” Emmanuel replied. “Same goes for teenage girls.”

  “This is what Mason meant when he said ‘you’re good with women’. You don’t mind the time it takes to get them warmed up and talking. I’d sooner have a wound sewn up with a blunt needle.”

  The source of Mason’s observation still remained unclear. Emmanuel’s hat had blown off during the jump and the sun beat down so that the hard light seemed to shine directly onto the back of his retinas.

  “We have to go back to the homestead if we want food and shelter for the night,” Emmanuel said. “You don’t have to walk. Detective constable Shabalala is strong enough to carry you most of the way … if you’d like.”

  Cassie lifted her head off the sand and looked outside her anguished self for the first time since jumping over the edge. Shabalala nodded encouragement and held out his hands to help her to her feet. She sat up slowly: all the while studying the tall black man intently.

  “He looks just like you,” she said.

  “I am Aaron’s father,” Shabalala replied. “I am sorry to hear the news of your father’s passing. He was loved I am sure.”

  Cassie dug her fingers into the riverbank and gathered the sand into fists. “It’s my fault that he died,” she said. “I lied about the Saint Bart’s boys and God punished me. He took my father away …”

  “The European men who broke into your parents house are to blame for what happened,” Emmanuel said. “You weren’t even there. You were in the little hut with Andrew Franklin when they came to the house.”

  “How do you know that?” Cassie tilted her head back and blinked hard.

  “We spoke with Mr Franklin this morning.” Emmanuel left it at that. He had yet to gauge the high water mark of Cassie’s feelings for her neighbour. Love with a capital L would make getting a true statement difficult. Conflicting emotions flashed across the teenager’s face: joy, apprehension and then a desperate flicker of hope.

  “Will Andrew come for me?” she asked.

  “No,” Emmanuel said. “I don’t believe he will.”

  “He promised that we’d be together.” Cassie sucked in a breath, accepting the truth of the detective’s statement. “I lied about being in the house to help him. He said we’d be together soon. Now my father is dead.”

  “Here.” Emmanuel squeezed water from his handkerchief and gave it to Cassie who wiped away tears. She pushed back strands of damp hair and blotted drops of river spray from her arms.

  “I don’t care about politics or native education,” she said. “That’s all my father used to talk about: bus passes and passbooks and fighting segregation. He’s up in heaven now and he’s telling my grandfather that I’m a liar. His spirit will hate me for eternity. I know it.”

  Shabalala leaned closer and rested his elbows on his kneecaps, graceful and easy in his six-foot-plus frame. “The dead have no cause for hate,” he whispered. “Your father’s spirit wishes for your suffering to end. He cares only for your happiness.”

  Cassie rested her cheek on her forearm and focused on the Zulu detective who crouched in front of her. Andrew Franklin had never regarded her with loving kindness and neither had Aaron. One person alone called her freckles “sun kisses” and insisted that her too-wide mouth was beautiful. Now it felt that this strange but familiar black man was looking at her through her father’s eyes.

  “My dad was good, like you,” Cassie said to the Zulu detective. “He’d want me to tell the truth, wouldn’t he?”

  “Your heart already knows the answer to that question,” Shabalala said.

  *

  The girl sank to the ground and clutched her knees to her body. Disappointment sapped the last of her en
ergy. The blue-green mountains, so cool and inviting on the horizon, offered no refuge from the heat now that she was here. There was no sign of water. Reality dawned on her. She would die in this barren land, watched over by a cloudless sky.

  If thirst didn’t take her then the cut in her leg certainly would, only more slowly. This morning’s ache had progressed to a sharp, stabbing pain in the flesh. It hurt to move. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to look across the land. She’d exchanged a dungeon for an open-air prison with no water or food. Just my luck, she thought.

  She lay down on the ground. Small brown birds sang from the thorn trees and, high above, an eagle soared on outstretched wings. A tiny flower sprouted from the earth at her eye level, its bright petals short and spiked. A thought nudged into her head. There was beauty in this harsh place: small and hidden, but it was there. Better to die in the fresh air than in a dark alley crushed between brick walls.

  “Hey …” a finger jabbed her ribs. “Hey, you.”

  She stirred and blinked into the light. A freckled white girl with ginger hair plaited into two messy braids crouched in the dirt with her head tilted sideways like a curious bird. Two black children, a boy and a girl dressed in a mishmash of traditional skins and cast-off European clothing watched from a safe distance. All three carried slingshots made of rubber bands and Y-shaped sticks. The boy asked a question in a native tongue and the white girl shrugged.

  “She’s alive but I don’t know her name.”

  Another question, this time from the black girl who scanned the hills and the arid plains with a nervous glance. The freckled girl answered in the native language and then said in English, “I’m Julie. You’re from the Lion’s Kill farmhouse. I saw you in the little room.”

  Of course, of course, the girl’s sluggish brain made the connection. She remembered now. This red-haired child had run across the dirt yard in front of the basement cell with a hessian sack slung across her back.