Present Darkness Read online

  “Maybe the visitor left,” Shabalala said from under the branches of a native tree. “Maybe the house is empty.”

  There was only one way to tell. He’d promised Alice that he’d check what she’d called “the cell” for a new prisoner. He peered across the yard and made out a broken window boarded up with cardboard. The metal grate covering the opening was bent out of shape.

  If his suspicions proved right then Davida had escaped being thrown into this very space by the big man.

  “Sergeant.” Shabalala held out a cut stem with withered leaves. “Look. UmPhanda. The raintree.”

  “Same as the branches hiding the red Mercedes.”

  “The very same,” Shabalala said.

  Emmanuel ran his hand over the trunk of a near tree and felt dried sap and raw timber where branches had been hacked off.

  “This is the house of the men who beat the principal and his wife and then stole the car.” Shabalala nodded to the forlorn dwelling. “The big man and the little one.”

  “I know it. The same men also broke into Fatty Mapela’s dancehall. If the big one had had his way, then Davida would be locked in that house right now. Let’s check the cell and be gone. When we’re back in Jo’burg we’ll find out who owns this place and drop the names to the Pretoria police.”

  He stepped from the shadows onto gravel. White stones marked the perimeter of a hole dug out close to the side of the house; the braai pit that Julie had mentioned. Ash and bleached animal bones lay on the bottom. Shabalala went wide and scanned the area ahead. Emmanuel pressed to the wall and moved to the window in which the light shone.

  He’d seen piss-poor farms before and had lived on one during adolescence, so the bleak interior of Lion’s Kill was no surprise. The uncurtained windows, paint peeling off the walls and dust on every surface were familiar. Likewise, the paraffin lantern on the fold-out table, the threadbare couch and the stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall. The beds would have lumpy sisal mattresses and the kitchen, a wood-burning stove that belched smoke.

  “Empty,” he said of the room. “Swing around the back, check the other exits and entries. I’m going in.”

  Shabalala lifted a brow. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “If that car engine starts up, those men will be back here soon. We have to move fast.” He crossed to the front door and turned the handle. The door opened. Folks in the country rarely locked their doors but they often kept loaded guns on hand in case of unwelcome guests. Shabalala disappeared into the night. Emmanuel slipped into the corridor of Lion’s Kill homestead. It was darker inside than he’d thought. The lantern glow drew him into the front room like a Neanderthal seeking fire.

  He moved to the table. A paper-thin map, yellowed with age, spread over the tabletop. The words “Northern Transvaal” ran along the bottom in black ink: of all the things to find in a backwater farmhouse. He picked up the lantern and held it high to cast more light. A small detail snagged his attention and slowed his exit to the corridor. A black leather-bound bible lay on the arm of the couch, its thumbed pages slotted with strips of paper to mark the location of favourite verses. The men in the Dodge weren’t the praying kind and they’d be back as soon as the motor ticked over. He stepped into the corridor. The lantern flame threw circles of white light onto the walls and the wooden floors. Crickets chirped and the windmill turned outside. The two bedrooms each contained twin iron cots with unmade sisal mattresses and cotton sheets. There wasn’t much to see in the kitchen beyond a small dining table, a wood stove and a chipped cabinet stocked with mismatched cutlery.

  A door led off to the side of the kitchen. Emmanuel opened it and entered a tacked-on annex made of thin wood panelling. Dust blew in under the gap between the concrete floor and the bottom of the walls. A flight of stairs led down to a subterranean space. The little room: Alice’s holding cell. His heart kicked harder with each downwards step; the old battlefield terror pressed a weight to his chest and coiled into his windpipe like a snake. He pushed his fingertips against the metal door and it swung open. Nothing good waited behind an iron door built below a wooden annex. He entered the concrete cell with the lantern held high. Shadows flickered. He moved deeper into the room and allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The rusting cot and mattress gave off the smell of sweat and dried blood. A primal dance, older than the advent of speech, had taken place here.

  “Get in and then get the fuck out,” the Sergeant Major said. “That was the plan. Now follow it. This place gives me the shakes.”

  No hostage, no reason to stay. One call to the Pretoria police and a carload of detectives would flood this cell with a bunch of foot police pinned behind them. Alice was white, thank God, and a worthy victim.

  The soft shuffle of feet across the concrete floor snapped him around to face the door; too late to draw his weapon, too late to do anything but experience the rush of fear flooding his veins. A large man stood in the doorway.

  “Keep the lantern high, unclip your weapon and kick it into the corner,” a familiar voice said. “I have my revolver aimed straight at your gut, just above the navel, and at this range I won’t miss.”

  “Lieutenant,” Emmanuel said. “This is a surprise.”

  “It’s a surprise and it isn’t, if you catch my drift,” Mason said. “You and I have business to settle. Now do like I said and drop your weapon.”

  Emmanuel unclipped the Webley left-handed and placed the revolver on the floor. He kicked it, heard the barrel scrape against the rough concrete surface then come to a stop some place he could not see. The initial rush of fear drained. Meeting Lieutenant Mason again felt more like fate than coincidence.

  “Have you figured it out yet?” Mason moved closer, let the lantern light find the black metal barrel of a Browning Hi-Power. “Have you made the connections?”

  “Trying to,” Emmanuel said. “The gun pointed at me isn’t helping.” Thoughts rolled into black corners, leaving only a faint kind of sense. Mason here at Lion’s Kill. The bible belonged to him but so what? He found one clear thought and held onto it: Mason was far from the big house in Houghton. That’s what really mattered.

  “Come on. A clever man like you must have some ideas.” Some men, less experienced than the Lieutenant, held their weapons too high and miscalculated the strain of the gun’s weight on their shoulders and wrists. Mason held the Browning like it was an extension of his hand. “Take a guess, Cooper.”

  “You’re the detective who owns part of this farm and all of the local police.”

  “Spot on,” Mason said. “And there are no local police, just a single constable. He and I have an understanding. He understands that I will beat the teeth from his head if he interferes with me and mine.”

  “Me and mine” was an odd phrase to describe the men driving the Dodge. Emmanuel associated the term with blood relatives, family. Mason’s words still translated the same though: expect no help from the law. You are alone.

  “What are you doing here, Cooper?”

  “We ended on a bad note the last time we talked. I came to apologise, make sure there were no hard feelings.”

  “Funny …” Mason said deadpan and slammed the butt of the Browning to Emmanuel’s head. Emmanuel felt the breeze generated by the gun slicing through the air and then the crunch of his bones hitting the floor.

  “The first thing that you should know about me, detective kaffir-fucker, is that I do not have a sense of humour. Never have. Even as a child.” Mason kneeled down and the light from the fallen lantern threw shadows across his chalk-white skin. “Second thing is, I have a very short fuse. If you don’t answer my questions quickly, I will beat you down every single time there’s a delay. I will continue doing that till the mountains fall into the sea if necessary. Understand?”

  “You sound like my father,” Emmanuel said. “He had a short fuse.”

  In five minutes, maybe ten, Shabalala would come looking for him. All he had to do in the meantime was take a beating. He’d don
e it before and wasn’t looking forward to it. Mason rubbed the barrel tip of the Browning against his cheek; itching a scratch with the safety off and a finger on the trigger.

  “Do you have children, Cooper?” The Lieutenant sounded genuinely interested.

  “I’m single. How could I have children?”

  Mason grinned. “Being single doesn’t mean anything in the world that we live in. And a man of your proclivities wouldn’t flash photographs of his half-caste offspring around the office. You could have a dozen little bastards stashed away.”

  “I like non-white women.” Admitting to the lesser sin of fornication might camouflage the greater sin of unsanctioned procreation. “That doesn’t mean I’m ready to settle down and have a family with one of them … even if it was legal.”

  “A man without a son leaves only bones when he dies. You waited too long, Cooper. Who’s going to bring flowers to your grave?”

  “I’ll be buried on your land so I’m hoping you’ll do the honours once a year on my birthday. No carnations. Wildflowers are fine.”

  “Here it comes …”

  The punch lit up a constellation of stars behind Emmanuel’s eyelids. He fell back, breathing hard. Where was Shabalala?

  “I did warn you.” Mason took a reasonable tone. “Now tell me what you’re doing on my farm.”

  “Passing through, thought I’d say hello.” Emmanuel willed his muscles slack, like a drunk driver about to make impact with a wall. The Lieutenant’s fist connected with the weight of a brick thrown by a giant. Shabalala had better come soon.

  “Tell me the truth,” Mason said, almost kindly. “Believe me when I say that beating you to a puddle gives me no pleasure.”

  From the low vantage point of the floor, Emmanuel found that he believed Mason’s statement. The word “joyless” best described the Lieutenant’s attitude and perhaps the very fibres of his being. Happiness and humour were nowhere to be found, even outside the confines of this cell. Behind the dead-pools that were Mason’s eyes, Zweigman had glimpsed fear and sadness. Emmanuel saw only a void that couldn’t be filled. The years of boozing, violence and whoring had dug the pit deeper and made it impenetrable to light.

  “Now that you’ve tracked me down, you’ve got nothing to say.” Mason rocked back on his heels, thinking. “Curious.”

  “If you want my opinion, you could do more with this space, Lieutenant. Replace the broken window, get some curtains, put a rocking chair in the corner and you’ll have a nice reading room.” Every cut and bruise throbbed but he’d heard the soft crunch of a footstep in the gravel yard. Shabalala would enter the house soon, moving in the darkness; part of the darkness. Between them, he and the Zulu detective would take care of Mason. Somehow.

  The Lieutenant remained still in the cell’s murky atmosphere. No fist, no slap, no reaction at all to the rocking chair comment. He spoke after a long pause. “When a person deliberately tries to provoke me to violence, I stop and ask why. Does that man enjoy being beaten or is he hoping, for example, to cover the sound of footsteps approaching the house? You brought friends with you.”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Are you sure about that, Sergeant Cooper? I hear a person moving around out there.”

  “I came alone.” He emptied all thoughts of Shabalala from his mind. He imagined himself deep in a mountain stronghold and far from Mason’s probing gaze. Gravel hit the cardboard square pushed into the cell’s empty windowpane, killing the element of surprise.

  “You’ve got no idea who’s creeping around the house perimeter?” Footsteps moved away from the front door and in the direction of the braai pit ringed by white stones. It didn’t sit right: Shabalala stumbling and raising noise. The first you knew of the Zulu detective was after he’d materialised from the air and stepped to your side. He didn’t stumble or go bump in the night.

  “It’s probably your men,” Emmanuel said. “The ones in the Dodge.”

  More footsteps crunched across the front yard and a male voice called out, “Quick, there’s one over there. Come round.”

  Mason stood up and kept the Browning in a relaxed grip, as if he were shaking hands with a good friend. “Pick up the lantern and walk to the door slow. I’ll be right behind you. Run and I’ll put a bullet in your back. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.” Run? He could barely stand. His bruises throbbed and his bones ached. Mason’s solid right hook had re-opened a cut sustained during the fight in Fatty Mapela’s bar last night. The wound pulsed in time to the beating of his heart and a trickle of blood ran down his cheek and onto the lapels of his shirt. A dry-clean job for sure.

  “Move,” Mason said.

  Emmanuel raised the lantern and darted a quick look into the corner, hoping to find a glint of silver in the gloom. Darkness stared back. The Webley might as well be invisible or locked in a gun safe for all the time it would take him to find it.

  “You’d never make it to your weapon in any case,” Mason stated the fact. “Glad to see it crossed your mind, though. I had you down as one of those pretty army officers with no guts.”

  “I was in the field not behind a desk,” Emmanuel said. Held at gunpoint, bloodstained and beaten, he still felt it necessary to clarify his position as a combatant: a fighter, a soldier who’d been in the mud at the business end of the war. His military vanity appeared to be resistant to fear.

  “Eyes front. Make it fast, Cooper.”

  Mason tapped the Browning’s barrel to a middle vertebra, pushing Emmanuel out of the cells. Noise increased in the yard; rushing steps overlayed with hard breathing and raised voices. Emmanuel gained the stairs, certain that the men from the dodge were chasing shadows.

  “Into the lounge, Cooper. You know the way.”

  He cut through the kitchen, turned into the corridor and stopped by the side of the decrepit sofa with the bible sunk into the arm. Dead animals stared from the wall with glassy eyes that absorbed the lantern glow. Not a family portrait to be seen.

  “Sit,” Mason said.

  Emmanuel sat. The front door slammed against the interior wall and the floorboards creaked under the weight of people entering the house. Two men at least; most likely the driver and the passenger from the wrecked Dodge.

  “You can run but you can’t hide,” a man’s voice said. “I got you good this time, boy.”

  “True, you got him good,” said another.

  “In here,” Mason called and then moved directly behind the couch, ready to empty the Browning’s loaded barrel into the crown of Emmanuel’s head or into whomever walked through the door should they displease him; craftwork he’d learned working undercover operations. “Slowly.”

  A small man entered first, grin strung from ear to ear like he’d just been given a puppy for Christmas in addition to the four-speed bike that he’d had on the top his list for two years running. Shabalala came next, arms raised to shoulder height, his face a blank canvas of skin stretched over bone. If the gun pressed to his neck gave him any bother it didn’t show. The last man in was tall, broad-shouldered and had blue eyes.

  “Lenny and Crow,” Emmanuel said, surprised but not entirely. Meeting the big and the little man who’d ransacked the Brewers’ house and broken into Fatty’s club also felt like fate. “We weren’t properly introduced last night. I was too busy beating the shit out of you and your men.”

  The tall one, Lenny, surged into the lounge, his face a patchwork of purple and blue bruises, his fist cocked. He landed a few punches but nothing compared to Mason’s right hook. The bible fell the floor, spilling tabs and fanning pages marked with red ink.

  “That’s enough, Leonard,” Mason said. “Frisk the kaffir for weapons. Make sure to check the socks. They like to keep knives tucked in there.”

  Lenny and Crow took opposite sides, each patting the Zulu detective down from shoulder to ankle. The paper with Cassie Brewers’ statement written out in a cramped hand rustled under Crow’s palms. Shabalala’s throat tightened, his Adam’s apple push
ing against the skin to make a hard lump, but otherwise he seemed calm.

  “Nice threads for a kaffir,” Crow said and ran baby fingers over the fine cotton. He reached into Shabalala’s jacket pocket and withdrew Cassie Brewer’s statement. Shabalala blinked hard and for a moment Emmanuel thought he might cry.

  “Give that to me,” Mason said and motioned to the couch. “Sit him down next to Cooper.”

  29.

  Emmanuel met Shabalala’s gaze and telegraphed the question ‘How the hell did you end up sitting next to me in this crap-hole?” The Zulu detective sat down and looked to the window, giving an answer that Emmanuel didn’t understand. Out there lay churned gravel and acres of thorn bush and none of it worth dying for. Mason came around to the front of the couch, side-stepping the fallen bible.

  “What are you doing on my farm, gentlemen?” He held Cassie’s statement between pinched finger tips, having read the contents. “You got the truth from the girl. Excellent job. Why risk it all by coming to Lions Kill?”

  “We were in the area and thought we’d drop by. We should have called first,” Emmanuel said. “For that, I apologise.”

  Mason would intimidate Cassie Brewer into withdrawing her statement. He’d walk Alice to a lonely spot and then bury her deep in a field. Harm the daughter of educated middle-class couple and the police station phones rang hot; one more missing whore, who’d notice?

  Mason raised the Browning and swung down hard. Emmanuel again felt the fanning breeze of metal displacing air then heard the wet smack of metal finding flesh. Not his flesh this time but Shabalala’s. The impact threw Shabalala back and bounced his head off the sofa’s wood frame. Emmanuel stood up, hands balled into fists, driven by pure instinct. Mason swung around, pressed the Browning to his forehead and applied pressure. Emmanuel sat down, breathing hard.

  “You told that constable at the crime scene that ‘Blood is blood. It looks, smells and stains the same no matter who’s doing the bleeding.’ Let’s put that theory to the test, Cooper. I will work on the kaffir and Leonard will work on you. We’ll see who bleeds the most before answering my questions. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”