Present Darkness Read online

  “I’m glad we found Alice,” Julie said to the Sergeant. “The other girls just disappeared.”

  “Other girls?” Emmanuel stopped in the darkness and stared at Julie. He felt the hairs on his neck stand up.

  “Last holidays it was a lady with long black hair and black eyes,” Julie continued in a matter of fact way. “I didn’t see the one before that but I heard her crying in the small room.”

  “Did you tell anyone about the women?”

  “I’m not allowed onto Lion’s Kill. Same goes for Precious and Boy-Boy from the reserve. We’d get a thrashing if our parents found out that we played here.”

  “Fair enough,” Emmanuel said. Speaking up meant a beating while silence gave Julie the freedom to roam with her friends. He switched the rope handle of the hessian sack to his left shoulder and walked over to Shabalala and Alice. Zweigman flanked the pair, shining a light onto the ground with a torch.

  “Were you the only woman at the farmhouse?” he asked Alice.

  “Yes.” She stopped to catch her breath. They’d walked but a few yards from the start position and Clearwater was still miles away. At the rate they were travelling they’d make Delia’s farm by dawn and Johannesburg by early afternoon. “I found a hairclip under the cot. That’s when I figured out that other girls had been locked in the room before me.”

  “Tell me how you got from Jo’burg to here.” From her low-cut sateen dress and rough accent, Emmanuel guessed she was a working girl.

  “I was in my usual spot, waiting for offers.” Shabalala took the full weight of Alice’s body while she talked. “The big man came from one end of the alley and started moving towards me, slow-like. I didn’t like the look of him so I took off. I almost made it to the road before the little man blocked the way. They caught me. They put a hood over my head and pushed me into a car with leather seats and it smelled of cigarettes. After that I didn’t see anything.”

  “When was that?” Emmanuel asked. The big man who led the raid on Fatty’s club had picked through the women like a gold prospector, searching for “a new one” to take home.

  “Friday night,” Alice said. “I thought they were rich but the car is the nicest thing about them. The house and the yard are falling apart.”

  Shabalala turned in the direction of the farmhouse and listened intently to a sound that barely registered in Emmanuel’s ears. Julie ran back to where they stood and pointed across the plains.

  “A car,” she said. “I saw the headlights.”

  “It is coming in this direction,” Shabalala said. “They have seen us, Sergeant. Switch off the torches.”

  Three beams shut down simultaneously. The group stood in the moonlit darkness, breathing slowly, waiting for the threat to pass. The sound of the car engine grew louder. Alice moaned low in the back of her throat.

  “Move,” Emmanuel said. “We have to be gone by the time they get here.”

  “The river is this way.” Julie darted ahead, familiar with the landscape and the location of the fence line. Shabalala scooped Alice into his arms and ran. Zweigman and Emmanuel followed, ducking and weaving through thorn bushes. A brown buck sprang from a stand of mopane trees, giving away their location. The car engine revved, the driver shifted into fourth gear.

  “In here.” Julie dodged hard right into a thicket of red-spiked aloes. She slipped between the trunks and moved deeper into the heart of the forest. The plants grew thicker, their fleshy leaves touching like outstretched fingers. Emmanuel crouched low and caught a glimpse of Zweigman and Shabalala hidden in the moon shadows. The Zulu detective held Alice tucked close to his chest. Julie was gone.

  High beams cut the darkness, flooding the aloes with light. Emmanuel breathed deep and stayed down. The engine whined as the driver shifted down a gear and kept the vehicle close to the outer edge of the forest. Tyres spun in the sand and the car stalled. Emmanuel snapped open his holster with his thumb and gripped the Webley revolver’s smooth handle.

  “None of this aiming for the leg bullshit, Cooper,” the Sergeant Major said. “These men have kidnapped and hurt God knows how many women. And they’re connected to the Brewer mess and the club robbery. You know it, too. They will kill to keep their secrets. Shoot straight like I taught you. Get the bastards before they get you.”

  The engine started up and the driver tapped the accelerator. Emmanuel slipped the Webley free from its holster and rested it on the curve of his knee. The car tyres spun, kicking up stones. A male voice cursed. The tyres found purchase and the vehicle continued along the sandy edges of the aloe grove. Emmanuel held the gun steady and waited until the mechanical sounds faded into silence. He crab-crawled across the dusty ground to Shabalala and Alice.

  “The car is heading for the river,” the Zulu detective said when Zweigman and Julie came out of hiding. “The driver knows we must follow the fence line and then cross over to the native reserve. He will wait for us there.”

  “There must be another way off the farm.” Alice looked from one face to the next, desperate to hear the right answer.

  “We could take the farm road and follow that back to Clearwater but it will take a long time,” Julie said. “The other river crossing is at the far end of the fence and it will take us a long time to get there, too.”

  “We have to be off this farm by dawn,” Emmanuel said. If they failed, they would be on the wrong side of a turkey shoot in the morning and he’d miss the deadline to call Davida’s father and warn him about Mason. He thought through options and came up with a possible way out. “Shabalala and I will draw them away from the river, give the three of you time to cross over to the native reserve. We’ll circle around and come after you.”

  Julie moved closer, nudged a shoulder against his leg. “I want to stay with you, Detective.”

  “You have to guide Alice and the doctor across the river and back to Clearwater,” he said. “I’ll be back in time for breakfast. That’s a promise.”

  He’d broken that promise to his ex-wife Angela at least once a week during their brief marriage. He made Davida no promises. She returned the favour.

  They crossed a dry field, keeping to the treeline. Julie pointed to the river running silver in the moonlight. A multitude of stars dusted the night sky over the plains that stretched to the horizon. A parked car aimed its high beams at the space where the fence stopped short of the riverbank. Cigarette smoke curled from windows.

  “Two men, maybe more,” Shabalala said. “They are settled. Only a fire or a storm will move them.”

  “Good idea,” the Sergeant Major said. “Put a match to the homestead, stand back and watch the bitch burn. That will get their arses in gear.”

  The tinder-dry bushland made the perfect kindling for an inferno that could easily spread to the native reserve and to neighbouring farms. A bushfire drew oxygen from the air like a living being; it jumped and ran and roared with life. It took instructions from no-one.

  “A pity there’s no safe way to start a fire in a drought,” Emmanuel said. “Or call down a flood.”

  “There’s a braai pit at the back of the homestead. Boy-Boy jumped into it and the sides come up to here.” Julie touched her forehead. “Me and Precious rolled a big stone into the pit so he could climb out.”

  The light shining in the window of the Lion’s Kill homestead pierced the darkness. A fire built in a deep pit would barely register over the same distance.

  “We run,” Shabalala said. “The men in the car will follow. It is human instinct.”

  A breathtakingly simple plan, Emmanuel thought. No fire, no flood: just the two of them running like rabbits in a hunter’s headlights. The plan would work. Sitting surveillance stretched the time, made minutes feel like hours. Nicotine took the edge off the boredom but only for a while. The men would give chase.

  “We must move fast to the gap in the fence line and into their light, Sergeant.” Shabalala stood up and scouted the fall of the land, which dipped down to the riverbank. “If we run to the r
iver the men in the car will lose sight of us and begin the chase.”

  Emmanuel’s lungs burned in advance of the sprint through the headlights and across soft sand.

  “A fine plan, gentlemen,” Zweigman said. “Except for one detail. They are in an automobile and you are on foot.”

  “There are no roads,” Shabalala said. “We are free to move into the rocks and through the thorn trees where a car cannot go.”

  The doctor gave a weary shrug, accepting that the detectives had made up their minds and were prepared to, literally, run for their lives. Once more he’d be left with the care of the sick and the needy. He healed wounds and mended broken bodies and he did it well. Some called it a gift, even a blessing. On occasions like this though he longed for some of the pure physical strength and quick reflexes that Shabalala and Cooper took for granted.

  “To the right, across the headlights and then down the ridge to the river.” Emmanuel fixed the sequence of events in mind, imagined the fall of each step onto hard ground and then the change in texture to fine sand.

  “Yebo, Sergeant. Ready?”

  Alice stepped closer and licked her dry lips. “If you get to the homestead …” she addressed the space between the detective’s shoulders, unused to asking for favours from the police. “Could you check the little room? They might have brought in a new girl. I saw a car drive to the house this afternoon. She might have been in the car. She might be trapped in the cell. She might never get out.”

  “We will.” Emmanuel had his own reasons for checking the Lion’s Kill farmhouse. He turned to Julie and said, “See Dr Zweigman and Alice home to Clearwater. When the car leaves, take them across the river and over to the native reserve as quick as you can.”

  Julie nodded. Emmanuel split to the right of the group with Shabalala, both preferring to skip the goodbyes and the good-luck farewells. Their survival depended on the most basic physical elements: speed and stamina.

  “Run fast,” Julie said. “And keep running.”

  27.

  Light from the high beams hit the back of Emmanuel’s retina, momentarily blinding him. Shabalala ran a half stride ahead, loose limbed, graceful. Emmanuel stayed glued to the Zulu detective’s shoulder, heard the muffled cry of male voices and the sound of a car engine turning over. Bait taken; now to avoid being landed and gutted like a fish.

  They hit the downward slope to the river and dropped from sight. Shabalala poured on the speed, aiming for a slender path winding up through the grass. The sand bank had no shelter on either side, no safety from enemies on higher ground. The bump of car wheels on the ridge confirmed the chase had begun, just as they had anticipated.

  They scrambled up the path and hit the flatlands at a sprint. The car came from their left, headlights burning bright, its engine running in top gear. In thirty seconds the car’s silver fender would collect their legs and knock them clear into the thorn bushes. Fear pushed Emmanuel hard. He drew level with Shabalala. The car closed in. They simultaneously bolted slightly to their left and the car’s silver fender whipped past them, collecting the tail of their jackets and fanning a breeze.

  “Close. Too close, boyo.”

  A flat stretch of land dotted with acacia trees lay before them. It might as well be a four-lane highway. Car wheels spun in the dirt, kicking up stones. Emmanuel and Shabalala had no option but to keep running, just like Julie said. A stand of trees, two deep and two hundred yards off, beckoned. They set off with the car’s headlights licking the darkness, seeking them out. The sound of the engine cranked up as the car closed the distance to impact.

  “Split!” Emmanuel said. “Now!”

  Shabalala peeled to the right and Emmanuel went left. A space opened between them, wide enough for the car to drive between. Brakes slammed. The driver threw the gears into reverse and swung the wheel hard in Emmanuel’s direction. Emmanuel ran flat out. Knives stabbed at his side, the pain hot and sharp. The trees came into range. He tripped and he pitched forward onto his knees. So close were the trees that he was able to make out individual leaves and the sharp ends of thorns.

  “Fuck … this is like dying on the last day of the war.”

  A hand snaked out and dragged him bodily into the woods. Car brakes slammed. Emmanuel pushed onto all fours and scrambled into the trees. He found a kneeling position. Shabalala crouched low in the gloom and sucked in lungfuls of air through his open mouth.

  “We must draw them further away from the river,” Shabalala said. “The girl’s leg is bad. It will take time for the doctor to walk her across to the reserve. He is not strong enough to carry her.”

  “More running?” The pain had dulled to needles pricking Emmanuel’s lungs, which made breathing difficult.

  “To the big rocks.” The Zulu detective pointed through the trees to a mass of dark shapes looming from the dry veldt. “The car cannot follow us into such high ground.”

  The rock outcrop looked to be miles away with no safe place to stop and draw breath. Meanwhile, the car circled the trees like a shark, waiting for them to break cover.

  “First, I need to grow fresh lungs.” Emmanuel’s breath came in short, noisy gasps. “Give me a year.”

  “You can run the distance easily,” Shabalala said. “When you find the rhythm of your body the strength will flow.”

  “Are you seriously talking to a white man about finding rhythm?” The idea was funny, even in the circumstances.

  “Tonight,” Shabalala said. “You and I are the same. We go together as one.”

  Nice theory but a bad idea. Lagging behind would put them both in danger. What if they didn’t make it? The thought of Shabalala’s wife Lizzie becoming a widow chilled Emmanuel. His lungs seemed to repair themselves instantly.

  “All right but we split when I say.” That way, at least one of them would get to the rocks in safety. “With luck the car will chase you this time.”

  Shabalala grinned, not bothered by the thought. They moved to the edge of the trees closest to the rocks. The car, a black Dodge, cruised by with the windows rolled down and bony elbows jutting over the metal.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are …” the driver called. “I know, I know you’re not very far.”

  The lyrics of a Frank Sinatra song used as a threat; Emmanuel gave the driver points for musical knowledge. The vehicle circled past the hiding spot and continued around to the other side of the trees. Taillights glowed red in the dark.

  “Empty your mind,” Shabalala said. “Listen only to the breath coming into your lungs and then going out again.”

  They broke cover and sprinted. They made the halfway mark before a car horn blasted three times, signalling the second phase of the chase. Emmanuel’s head reverberated with the sound of rattling bullets from long ago, and the cries of men as they were cut down. He’d run for his life under an iron sky on Sword Beach in Normandy, hid from snipers and huddled in mud trenches. Most of what he remembered now was the fear. As he had many times before, Emmanuel pushed the fear away, although he knew he would never fully rid himself of its power.

  “Breathe, Sergeant. Breathe with me.”

  Shabalala’s voice broke through the memory and pulled him back into the present. The throttle of the car engine surged and faded. He released a long breath and drew in another in time with Shabalala. Five more synchronised breaths and the world simplified. His body fell into rhythm. He was whole and intact: a survivor. He felt as if he could run forever. The rocks rose up from the earth like the walls of a citadel. Emmanuel jumped, found a foothold and scrambled the craggy surface to a ledge high off the ground. The Dodge braked and spun a circle. The boot smashed into the rocks and metal groaned. Car doors opened and feet hit the ground.

  “Fuck.” Two bullets ricocheted off the granite wall to the right of Emmanuel. He pressed into the shadows, certain the shots were fired blind and in anger.

  “How did they do that?” a male voice said. “They disappeared into the rocks!”

  “Who cares how
they did it? All I know for sure is that we’re in big fucking trouble. Help me push the car free. She might be good to drive.”

  Emmanuel pressed his palms flat to the granite and worked around to a patch of starlight at the far end of the ledge. He jumped to a lower level, landing in a crouch. Shabalala was somewhere in this field of wild grass and boulders. The driver and his passenger swore a red streak as they struggled to push the wrecked Dodge free.

  “We made it,” he said when the Zulu detective stepped out from the shadows and walked across the dry ground on cat’s feet.

  “I had no doubts,” Shabalala answered.

  The rock ledge where Emmanuel had sheltered cut a black slash into the rock face. How he’d gotten up that high, he had no idea.

  28.

  Mummified oranges lay scattered on the ground of an orchard planted in uneven rows. Their plan was to circle away from the crashed Dodge and then switch back in the direction of the river, giving the armed driver and his passenger a wide berth. From there they’d join Zweigman, Alice and Julie at Clearwater farm.

  Emmanuel crossed the orchard, the dead fruit crunching underfoot. Branches threw shadows on the ground and a windmill creaked in the dark: a sound both lonely and bleak. He and Shabalala stayed silent, aware of a light shining up ahead. Lion’s Kill homestead, no doubt. They stopped at the treeline and looked out to a whitewashed structure so unloved that the moonlight hitting the silver roof turned it grey.

  Gravel stretched from the edge of the orchard to the front door. Tyre marks criss-crossed the gravel but the yard was empty of cars and the traditional plantings of hardy aloes and lavender bushes.

  “She said that a second car drove onto the farm this afternoon.” A light glowed in a front room. It might have been left on to guide the men in the Dodge back home. Or it might be illuminating an occupied chair.