Present Darkness Read online

  “Water … please …” the words come out in croaks. “Help me.”

  The boy spoke in a harsh voice and rubbed his palms together in a gesture that said, “wash your hands of this problem quickly.” The black girl nodded agreement and they spun on their heels and took off at a run across the hard land.

  “Don’t.” The girl reached out, tried to grab Julie’s hand. “Stay. Please.”

  “Can’t.” Julie dipped into the pocket of her grubby cotton dress and pulled out three speckled birds eggs, the size of walnuts. She cracked the eggs together to break the shells.

  “Quick,” she said. “Open wide.”

  The girl worked her jaw apart and felt silky egg whites and the taste of yolk coating her tongue and then running wet into her throat. She swallowed and opened her mouth for more.

  “All gone. I’ll try to bring some more later.” Julie stood up and looked in the direction that her playmates had run. She threw aside the crushed shells, wiped her sticky fingers on the front of her dress and took off at a sprint, her braids swinging from side to side in rhythm with her steps. The girl struggled to a sitting position in time to see Julie’s diminishing figure winding through the anthills.

  “Alice,” the girl said. “My name is Alice.”

  A warthog trotted through the thorn trees and stopped to dig up a tuber with its curved tusks. It continued snuffling for food then raised its ugly head at the sound of a car engine shifting gears. Alice got to her feet and shaded her eyes. A red line cut through the veldt; a road.

  No sign of the car yet but its destination had to be the farm at the end of the road. She squinted into the light and recognised the stunted orchard and the gravel yard of the house where she’d been held captive. A rusted windmill turned lazy circles in the air, the lonesome creak of its blades terrifyingly familiar. A whole night and a day of running for the three hills had gained her a scant few miles from the concrete cell.

  The warthog grunted and took off with its tufted tail raised like a flag. A blue car appeared on the road and travelled at top speed in the direction of the farmhouse. The driver knew the way, it seemed to Alice, or had experience navigating rutted dirt tracks in third gear. Under different circumstances she might have run across the ground to beg for help from the driver but her injured leg and her intuition kept her still.

  The last visitors to the house had smashed beer bottles against the walls and fired guns. She doubted the big man knew good people, the sort who’d pick up a battered girl and race to the nearest hospital without questions. Having escaped the cell once she dared not risk being delivered back into the big man’s hands like a piece of lost luggage.

  Alice crouched down and gripped her knees tight. Pain throbbed deep in the cut on her leg. She barely noticed. There’d be no more eggs or water or help, no matter what the girl Julie said. Her earlier premonition would come true. This ground would be her grave.

  24.

  Emmanuel and Shabalala stood on the rear porch of the Clearwater homestead and drank rooibos, red bush tea, from mismatched cups. The elderly maid had made a big show of offering the fine china cup to Emmanuel and then a chipped tin mug to the citified Zulu with no business wearing a suit. The detectives drank in silence and paid the offended servant no mind.

  “You did well,” Emmanuel said of the written statement from Cassie Brewer exonerating Aaron and identifying two European males, one big and the other small, as the prime suspects. “We’ll give the new statement to the lawyer, Britz, first thing. He’ll make short work of the police case. The pressure will be on Mason to explain the school badge found in the stolen car.”

  They were ahead of the game for once, the end of the line now in sight.

  “My thanks, Sergeant.” Shabalala touched the folded paper in his jacket pocket again. Each word written by the school principal’s daughter carried a magic charge. “I am in your debt.”

  “Let’s call it even,” Emmanuel said, remembering the time fifteen months ago when Shabalala had spirited his broken body away from a beating at the hands of Piet Lapping of Special Branch.

  “Gentlemen.” Zweigman carried a tray of freshly baked buns out of the farmhouse and joined them on the porch. They ate quickly, inhaling the warm bread slathered in butter and honey.

  “How is she?” Emmanuel asked when the last bun had been eaten and the crumbs thrown under a bush for the birds. The doctor had taken Cassie into his care the moment they’d arrived back, sun-kissed and badly scraped, from the waterfall.

  “Exhausted,” Zweigman said. “I expect she will sleep through till dawn.”

  Emmanuel hoped to be gone from Clearwater long before that. “We have enough time to make the drive to Jo’burg before nightfall. Have the children been treated?”

  “The boy Hector has so far eluded capture. His siblings are hunting him down as we speak. Give me one more hour, Detective, and I will be ready to leave.”

  “We’ll wait,” Emmanuel said. If they left immediately, Zweigman would spend the long drive back to the city worrying about Hector’s red rabbit eyes while calculating the likelihood that the treated children would become re-infected.

  Jodea, the smallest of the Singleton children, flew around the corner of the house with a freshly scrubbed face. She waved to Zweigman. “Come quick, doctor. We have Hector under the mulberry tree. Jason says to bring the medicine.”

  The German hurried after the girl, determined to rid the farm of conjunctivitis. Emmanuel could not imagine Zweigman lying in the sun and sipping a fruit cocktail in Mozambique. He’d find patients no matter where he was, even on Elliott King’s island resort he’d discover a waitress with an infected toenail or a gardener fighting the flu.

  Shabalala threw the dregs of his rooibos into the garden and took the empty tray back to the kitchen. Afternoon light lent the arid plains and the outline of the three distant mountain peaks a stark beauty. The number of natives gathered under the yellowwood tree to seek an audience with Delia had swelled to six since setting off to look for Cassie. Emmanuel recognised the old men and the young mother who now held her sleeping baby wrapped in a cotton shawl.

  “So much to be done,” Shabalala said when he returned. The neglected crops and deserted cattle yards cried out for attention.

  “I’m not touching that pool,” Emmanuel replied. The dirt-poor farm boy inside Emmanuel who’d dug up tree roots and hunted rabbits with a slingshot thought the pool a useless indulgence built so close to a river.

  “The generator,” Shabalala suggested.

  Emmanuel picked up his hat, which he’d found covered in dirt a few yards from the waterfall, and pinched a fresh crease into the crown. He couldn’t imagine Shabalala lying around doing nothing either. Sometimes it seemed that the Zulu detective and the German doctor’s practical goodness kept him grounded in the world.

  “Lead on, ma baas,” Emmanuel said and took off his jacket.

  Shabalala smiled.

  *

  Fixing the generator’s clogged fuel line took ten minutes and left the pungent taste of diesel in Emmanuel’s mouth. Shabalala plucked grass from the edge of the path and handed Emmanuel a few stalks.

  “Chew on the white end,” he said. “It will cut the taste.”

  They walked and chewed; having both taken turns unclogging the fuel line. The woman they’d seen earlier stood on the edge of the path jiggling her baby from side to side on her hip.

  “How long has she been there?” Emmanuel asked. The woman must have followed them from her spot under the yellowwood tree and awaited their return in the afternoon heat. Her mute patience was yet another reminder of the years he’d lived on his step-father’s farm and waited for rain, for sun, for seeds to sprout and waited, especially, to get the hell out of there and back to Sophiatown.

  “Umjani, mama.” Shabalala slowed down and acknowledged mother and child with a nod. The woman smiled and ducked her head. Emmanuel took the lead.

  “The madam cannot talk with you today,” he said. Bet
ter to hear it now than realise that fact after dark.

  “I see that the madam’s door is closed. It is you that I wish to talk to, ma baas,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “How can I help?”

  “The matter concerns my husband. He is missing now for two days.” She rocked side-to-side to calm the infant. The baby arched its back, kicked out its legs and let out an extended howl. Birds flew from a nearby tree and escaped across the fields at the sound.

  “Shh … Shh …” the woman rocked faster. The white man and the black man who dressed like a white man would not stay and listen to the story of her vanished husband if the child continued wailing.

  Shabalala held out both hands. “Give the child to me,” he said when the woman hesitated, unsure that she’d read the gesture correctly. “I promise I will not drop the little one.”

  She relented and Shabalala cradled the infant in his arms. He swung back and forth in a steady rhythm. The child’s sobs quieted to intermittent hiccups.

  “Tell me about your husband,” Emmanuel said. He feared that now, as always, a missing person report would prove nothing more than an effective time waster.

  “He went to Johannesburg on the express bus and has not come back. He is gone now for three nights.”

  “He left to find work?” If that were the case then the husband might already be lost to this pretty woman and her child. The flow of the city absorbed country migrants into the urban stream and cast them adrift from their home places.

  “No, ma baas. He did not go to seek work. He is a teacher at the farm school.” This she said with a shy pride before adding, “And he is a deacon at the church.”

  “Why did he go to Johannesburg?” Religion and education were unreliable defences against the temptations of Jo’burg and Sophiatown.

  “He went to speak with the madam’s sister and her husband, who is also a schoolteacher.”

  Shabalala stopped swaying and sent Emmanuel a look.

  “Describe your husband to me.”

  “He is a good man, ma baas. Softly spoken and—”

  “What does he look like,” Emmanuel interrupted, impatient to have his suspicions confirmed.

  “Tall,” the woman said. “Taller than you ma baas but not so high as that man with you.”

  “His ears?”

  The woman frowned, not fully understanding the question. Ears were ears unless they were missing altogether.

  “Are they cut like this?” Emmanuel traced a slit onto his lobes with a fingernail to illustrate the point.

  “Yebo. They are cut just as you show. The sister of the madam said he must remove the clay plugs so he did not stand out in the city, where few men keep the custom.”

  “Mr Parkview,” Shabalala said with certainty and continued to rock the fretting child from side to side. “What is your husband’s name, mama?”

  “Abraham Zolta,” the woman said. “That is what he is called.”

  “What business took Abraham to Johannesburg?” Emmanuel asked. Four hours of driving on gravel and dirt roads in a private car translated to six hours or more of rough travel in a dilapidated bus with the misleading name “Fast Boy” or perhaps “Quick Time”.

  “He went about the river and the land and to see where the government has drawn their lines.”

  “What lines, mama?” Shabalala asked.

  The woman blushed and pushed bare toes into the sand. Abraham usually answered questions about white people’s business. “The lines that are drawn on paper,” she said. “The sister of the madam knows where these papers are kept.”

  “Martha Brewer worked for the Office of Land Management,” Emmanuel told Shabalala. The new segregation laws created a great deal of work in redrawing town and city boundaries that would formally split the entire country into physically separate “White” and “Non-white” living areas. Whole suburbs were being reassigned with the stroke of the pen. Wrongly coloured residents were given eviction notices.

  “Did the government draw new lines for the native reserve?” Jason Singleton said that the people gathered under the yellowwood tree had come from the farm and from a native reserve.

  “Maybe, ma baas. The white man across the river said it is so. He made a new fence and put up signs telling us to stay off his land. Abraham took the matter of the fence and the river to the sister of the madam.”

  Abraham Zolta had travelled to Johannesburg to settle a land dispute and ended up in the middle of a violent attack. Zweigman estimated a period of two to three days before the schoolteacher would be able to answer questions. It might be a week or more before he made it home.

  “You’ve heard what happened to the madam’s sister?” Emmanuel asked, realising that the chances of that were slim.

  “I know nothing.” The woman’s shoulders stiffened in anticipation of bad news. Abraham had gone to the city even after she’d begged him to stay close to familiar things.

  “Some men … thieves … broke into the house where your husband was staying in Johannesburg. They hurt the madam’s sister, her husband and also Abraham. Now Abraham is in Baragwanath hospital. He will come back to Clearwater when he is well but it will be many more days before that happens.”

  “He lives?”

  “He does,” Emmanuel said.

  The woman looked to Shabalala for confirmation. The word of a white man and a black man together had to be the truth.

  “Abraham lives,” the Zulu detective said. “He will return to you and the little one soon.”

  The woman scooped the baby from Shabalala’s arms and held it close, seeking the comfort of plump limbs. “God is good but my heart is heavy. What did these robbers take in exchange for the harm they caused?”

  “A motor car.” The wrongness of the theft again stuck Emmanuel. If the red Mercedes were the prize, the actual break-in made no sense.

  “We will leave the madam’s name and telephone number with the hospital in Johannesburg,” Shabalala said. “When it is time for Abraham to come home, they will call the madam and let her know.”

  “When must I come to hear news?” the young mother asked.

  “Go to the back door of the farmhouse in three days time and knock. Be at ease, the Sergeant will tell the madam that you are coming. She will expect you.” Shabalala paused so the woman understood that approaching the big house without explicit permission would not cause offence. “What the hospital tells the madam, she will also tell you.”

  “My thanks, ma bass. I will do as you say. Salani khale.” The woman swung the baby onto her back, tied it snuggly into place with the cotton wrap and then walked the path leading to the river.

  “What is on your mind, Sergeant?” Shabalala asked.

  “The two European suspects could have opened the garage, hot-wired the car and driven off with no fuss,” Emmanuel said. “Instead, they forced their way through the back door, beat the Brewers to a pulp and then stole the Mercedes. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “The men were looking for money and valuables in the house,” the Zulu detective said, coming to the logical conclusion. “They used the boot of the car to carry away what they had stolen.”

  “They wrecked the furniture but left a row of silver picture frames on the mantlepiece and a stack of presents under the Christmas tree. Not one thing in the lounge room had been touched.” Emmanuel visualised the crime scene in vivid detail: the smashed hallstand, the ripped telephone wires and the shards of broken glass lying in the doorway. “Why stop outside the lounge?”

  Shabalala thought for a long while and then said, “Maybe they found what they were looking for and had no need to search further.”

  “Huh …” Emmanuel considered the implications of that statement. “The thieves were searching for something other than money or jewellery. They found it and took the car on their way out.”

  “Maybe so,” Shabalala said.

  “Who gives a shit why those men broke into the Brewers’ place?” the Scottish Sergeant Major said. “It�
�s not your problem, soldier. The Shabalala boy is safe. Let sleeping dogs and corrupt police lieutenants lie. Forget about Mason. Forget about the robbery. Walk away with what you have.”

  25.

  The sun hung lower on the horizon and the shadows lengthened across the grass. They’d make Jo’burg just after nightfall if they moved now. Glimpses of the farmhouse walls flashed between rows of corn. A high-pitched squeal cut through the air. Emmanuel expected to find Jodie, the youngest of the children, hanging from the porch rafters like a bat.

  “Don’t you run away from me,” Delia’s voice carried from the kitchen. “You stay where you are, miss.”

  The back door opened and a bright-haired girl of about twelve scooted outside with a hessian bag slung over her shoulder. She sprinted across the porch with her red pigtails flying and the hem of her dress tucked into her underpants for extra mobility. Delia had no chance of catching up. The girl glanced back and smiled, sure she’d made a clean getaway. Her toe caught the edge of an uneven tile and she pitched forward and hit the ground hard. Delia grabbed a leg and the older maid, brown wig now askew atop her head, gripped an ankle.

  “It’s not for me.” The girl tried to kick free. “I’m telling the truth.”

  “You’re stealing food for your darkie friends,” Delia said. “Just like you did last week. Don’t lie to me.”

  “For shame …” the elderly maid panted. “How can the madam believe the stories coming from your mouth, child?”

  “I’m taking the food and the water to a sick person!” the girl screamed. “That’s the truth.”

  Zweigman and the rest of the Singleton children came around the far corner of the house at the same time that Emmanuel and Shabalala reached the altercation. The native men sitting under the yellowwood shuffled in for a better view.

  “So, this is Julie.” Emmanuel glanced briefly at his watch and allocated five minutes to defusing the situation before he took the long road home to Davida. He crouched down. “How did she get into trouble so fast?”