Blessed Are the Dead Page 24

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did.” Emmanuel walked out to the avenue of trees. “I apologize.”

  Ella nodded and they trod back through the leaves to the path. Shabalala waited at the point where Emmanuel had left him. He caught sight of Ella and responded by doing what every well-mannered black African did when confronted with the shocking behavior of white people—he studied his toes.

  “Good luck with the rest of the investigation, Detective Cooper.” Ella similarly ignored the Zulu detective. “I hope you find that woman.”

  “You mean it?” Emmanuel was skeptical.

  “Outside of her mother and sister, Gabriel was the only person that Amahle really loved. My brother will miss her.” She moved to the tumbledown path connecting the mountain to Little Flint Farm, taking her time getting there.

  “The Dutch woman and the Englishwoman?” Shabalala whispered the question to Emmanuel as Ella slipped out of view.

  “Ja,” he replied. “It’s exactly what you think.”

  “This is allowed if they are both European?”

  “No, it most certainly is not.” Emmanuel laughed. Whites were given more freedom than blacks in almost every aspect of life, so it was no surprise that Shabalala needed clarification. “They’re like the rest of us, breaking the rules when no one is looking.”

  The two men moved from tree shade to the sunlit mountain path. The green valley and the whitewashed buildings of Little Flint Farm spread out below. Emmanuel sat down on a fallen tree trunk and passed on the information about the Zulu woman in Philani’s rock shelter. “Run me through each of the Reeds’ housemaids,” he said.

  “There are three.” Shabalala perched on the log with his notebook flipped to the relevant page. “Betty Zuma is forty-three years old. A widow with two grown sons, both in Johannesburg. She was the one to greet us on the porch. She lives in the servants’ quarters behind the big house and stays on the farm every day except Sunday. Friday night she served the family dinner and then cleaned afterwards.”

  “That strikes her from the list,” Emmanuel said. “She was working when Amahle was killed.”

  “Right, Sergeant. She is not the one.” Shabalala flicked to a new page. “The next maid is Lindiwe Mabuza, eighteen years old and still unmarried. On Friday she stayed late at the farm because Amahle left early and the big missus said the tablecloths for breakfast and lunch must be ironed.”

  Emmanuel could almost hear Lindiwe’s sullen tone as she recalled the hours of Friday night ticking away in the company of a coal-heated iron and a bucket of starch.

  “Also working,” Shabalala said, and found the next interview. “Number three is Mercy Mhaule, twenty years old, unmarried but happy to be a second or third wife if necessary. She works only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday till four in the afternoon.”

  “Describe her,” Emmanuel said. The age was right and Mercy had left before Amahle on the night she was killed.

  “She is twenty years old . . .” Shabalala faltered and then said, “Full of life.”

  “What are you really saying, Constable?” The Zulu detective was holding back, too embarrassed to continue. “I promise not to tell.”

  “Smooth skin, fat lips and big brown eyes like a doe.”

  “Pretty,” Emmanuel said. He’d missed seeing Mercy himself but the rise of heat in Shabalala’s face told him all he needed to know.

  “Yebo.” Shabalala shoved the notebook away.

  “But not the daughter of a chief pulling higher wages than anyone else. Amahle was also the big madam’s pet, and the boy, Gabriel, was hers.” Emmanuel checked his watch. A young, pretty, jealous housemaid could be the perfect rival for Amahle. “Mercy knocks off in three hours. I think we should keep a watch on Little Flint Farm and grab her on her way home.”

  Shabalala stood up and straightened his jacket, ill at ease. Emmanuel waited for him to speak. If the Zulu detective could not share a confidence here on an isolated mountain with the two of them neck-deep in a barely legal investigation, he never would.

  “She was so pleasing . . .” Shabalala blew air out through his teeth. “Maybe I did not look at this woman properly and did not ask the right questions.”

  “Welcome to the Detective Branch,” Emmanuel said. “You’ve passed two big milestones. The first was throwing up at the crime scene, and now you regret not seeing beyond the surface of things and asking harder questions.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “No,” Emmanuel said. He stood up to make eye contact. “I had no idea a Zulu woman could be a suspect till we caught Karin Paulus with her khakis down. That was thirty minutes ago. We learn as we go.”

  “And then we learn more,” Shabalala said.

  “In theory, yes.” Emmanuel started down to the valley. “Mercy might be a dead end but we have to talk to her and see what we find out.”

  The dirt path twisted through rock fields and under marula trees. Despite what he’d said to Shabalala, Emmanuel had a good feeling about Mercy Mhaule, the pretty maid living in Amahle’s shadow.

  21

  THE DYING SUN set fire to the sky. Birds roosted for the night and a warm breeze stirred the sagebrush and the yellowwood trees. Emmanuel sat cross-legged, bathed in the light of day’s end. The indestructible beauty of the world amazed him. A full moon rising above the battlefield, peach blossoms falling on a freshly filled grave, blades of grass emerging from the cracked pavement of a razed town, and mankind toiling like ants across the surface. War or peace, the earth did not care.

  “Did we win, Sergeant Cooper?” Zweigman asked. He was propped against the wall of the tunnel, scratching his arms and legs, a common side effect of the morphine in his bloodstream.

  “Try not to speak.” Daglish tucked the ends of the blanket around Zweigman’s shoulders. “You need to rest.”

  Drugged up and stitched up, the German doctor still refused to take orders. He waved Daglish away and said, “Tell me the news.”

  Emmanuel got up and walked over to Zweigman. He leaned in close to stop the injured doctor from moving. A full night and day of drug-induced sleep had made Zweigman stronger but he was not completely out of danger yet.

  “We did not win and the news is not good,” Emmanuel said. “Our main suspect, a maid at Little Flint Farm, has alibis for the times of both murders. She’s in the clear and our interview list has nobody on it.”

  Mercy Mhaule left work on Friday and made a quick round of all the kraals with unmarried good-looking males either resident or temporarily away digging the mines in Jo’burg. She treated her unmarried status as a disease to be cured by the end of the year. She’d even detoured to the Matebula kraal on the advice of a friend who said the great chief might be on the prowl for a new wife. On Sunday, she attended a morning church service, had lunch with her cousins and then attended a late prayer meeting before bed. Mercy had a dozen witnesses for both nights and no marriage proposals.

  “Shabalala . . .” Zweigman scratched his bristled chin and neck, drifting in and out of the present. “I saw him. Now he’s gone.”

  “Shabalala’s checking a trapline that he set this morning.” Emmanuel glanced at the fading red light in the sky. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “And Lilliana and Dimitri are well?”

  The thought of how close Zwiegman’s wife and son had come to losing their husband and father raised the hair on the back of Emmanuel’s neck. “Yes,” he said. “They’re both fine.”

  “Lilliana worries too much. Davida is strong. She will adjust to her new life. Her mother will help. So will we.”

  “Davida?” Emmanuel asked. The Zweigmans had taken Davida into their home and sheltered her in the backwater town of Jacob’s Rest. The German couple and their surrogate mixed-race daughter remained close, though Zweigman rarely mentioned her name in Emmanuel’s company.

  “Shh . . . she needs sleep,” Zweigman said.

  “Is she sick?” Emmanuel leaned closer and tried to get Zweigman’s attention. He wanted
to know that Davida was happy and that his own reckless actions with her had not ruined her chances for love and peace.

  “Okay, so fucking the girl was a wee bit naughty,” the sergeant major said. “But it was one night, over a year ago, Cooper. She’s probably forgotten about it by now. Or is that what you’re worried about . . . being a footnote?”

  Emmanuel shrugged. He wasn’t sure why the memory of Davida refused to fade.

  “I should have learned to play guitar,” Zweigman mumbled, and scratched an earlobe. “Instead I learned the accordion. My mother said it would make me popular at parties . . .”

  “Rest,” said Emmanuel. The German was floating in time and space and morphine. “I have to help Dr. Daglish build a fire.”

  “Good woman. If I was ten years younger and the man I used to be . . . but those days are gone . . .” Zweigman slipped under the blanket and yawned. “One summer holiday Lilliana and the children ran barefoot across the grass and tried to catch fireflies with a net. I saw the moon in the lake.”

  Zweigman drifted off to sleep and Emmanuel left the cave to forage for dry wood. He’d dream of Davida Ellis tonight and relive the memory of her running across the veldt in a white nightdress, out of his life forever. Where was she now?

  The sun set and the evening star ascended. Red color faded to charcoal on the horizon and then the black night closed around them. This time tomorrow the future of Amahle’s mother and her baby sister would be decided by the sangoma. While beautiful in spring, this landscape turned harsh and cold in the wintertime. Snow fell on the mountains and food became difficult to find. How long could mother and daughter survive, outcast and alone, before they joined Amahle in the village of the ancestors?

  A hand crept under the edge of the brocade curtain Emmanuel used as a blanket and moved to his gun holster. He lay still and waited for dreams and reality to separate. The hand reached the brass clip and tugged at the leather. No dream. This was real. Emmanuel reached out and grabbed a bony wrist. He sat up and gripped the thief’s wrist tight. Gabriel struggled to break free, sweating heavily in the waning firelight. The King’s Row College uniform had deteriorated further and dirt streaked his face.

  “What are you doing?” Emmanuel whispered. Zweigman, Daglish and Shabalala were asleep around the night fire, wrapped in sheets and curtains from Gabriel’s trove of stolen treasure.

  “I’m taking your gun,” Gabriel said.

  “What for?” Emmanuel let go of the schoolboy and checked his watch. Quarter past four, just before dawn.

  “To kill the Red Queen. She’s roasting a baby in the coals.”

  The army hospital in England where Emmanuel recuperated after he’d been shot during the war housed lunatics with homicidal urges, living corpses balled up in corners and night ghosts that prowled the wards, trying to find their way home. The experience taught Emmanuel respect for the strength of the mind to manufacture its own reality. He could hear it in Gabriel’s voice: the Red Queen was real.

  “Tell me about the Red Queen,” he said.

  “She’s down there.” Gabriel pointed to the darkened forest. “I looked all day and then I found her.”

  “Why do you want to kill her?” Emmanuel applied gentle logic, trying to find the core of the boy’s fantasy world.

  “She’s the one who made Amahle fall asleep on the mountain.” Gabriel rocked back and forth, agitated by the memory. “She used bad magic but if I kill her she can find Amahle and bring her back from the other side.”

  Emmanuel kicked free of the curtain and reached for his shoes. When the cupboard was bare, the most far-fetched ideas opened up as possibilities. The movement brought Shabalala shuffling across the rock and into the dawn world of witches and red queens.

  “Sergeant?” The Zulu detective’s greeting was also a request for information.

  “I found her,” Gabriel said. “The woman who cast a spell on Amahle. Emmanuel won’t let me have his gun. Do you have one?”

  “No.” Shabalala leaned closer to the feral schoolboy and whispered, “What is this woman’s name?”

  “The Red Queen,” Gabriel said.

  Emmanuel exchanged a glance with Shabalala and got a small shrug in return. Evil witch, Red Queen or silver unicorn, there were no other leads to follow.

  “Take us to this woman,” Shabalala said to the boy. “Emmanuel will bring his gun in case she tries to cast a spell.”

  Gabriel stood up and buttoned his jacket, the way he must have when lining up for daily inspection at the college. “We must move fast,” he said after looking at the Webley still in its holster. “Before she flies away.”

  Emmanuel shoved his feet into shoes and Shabalala did the same. Gabriel jumped down from the mouth of the tunnel to the lower level and sprinted into the forest. They followed him, guided through trees and thick ferns by the sound of his footsteps. Pale blue dawn lit the path.

  Keeping up with Gabriel and Shabalala demanded all Emmanuel’s concentration and he lost track of time and direction. The woods thinned and they cut across a stony field dotted with aloes. A spark of red pricked the darkness.

  Gabriel slowed. “Her fire,” he said.

  They moved from the field and through a sparse grove of marula trees. Smoke from the fire carried the scent of charred flesh and burning herbs. Emmanuel closed down his emotional reactions. Whatever lay in the coals could not be changed, only accepted and then buried.

  “Slowly . . .” Shabalala cautioned. “Or she will hear.”

  “Quickly,” the boy replied. “Or she’ll disappear.”

  A mourning dove flew from the trees at their approach and the sound of its wings beating the air acted like a warning siren. Roosting birds twittered and called in alarm. Emmanuel glimpsed a human figure rising from the fireside.

  “That’s her,” Gabriel called out. “The Red Queen.”

  The figure swung away from the flames and melted into the trees with quick steps. Shabalala broke into a run. Flashes of a tan color appeared between the tall trunks. Emmanuel split to the right, moving parallel to Shabalala in case the fleeing figure cut back toward them.

  The blinks of tan disappeared and Emmanuel stopped to try to get his bearings. The pounding of footsteps faded somewhere in the distance and then disappeared into the sound of birds. He turned full circle, disoriented. Light glowed between reedy trunks and he headed in the direction of the light, dreading what he’d find in the coals.

  Gabriel Reed hunched close to the fire, fascinated by the charred object thrown into its heart. He shifted position when Emmanuel came closer but kept his eyes on the blaze. “That’s the baby,” he said.

  The organs of a child were deemed the most powerful for casting black muti spells, and those of a fetus even more so. Smoke stung Emmanuel’s eyes and the radiant heat of the fire burned hot against his skin. He stopped on the edge of the sandy area, unable to move closer. The smoke and flames mirrored the dream in which he stumbled through burning cinders searching for something he could not see, and the presence of a dead child sharpened the fear. Somewhere in the rubble of his nightmare, hidden in the ash clouds, there was a woman and a child wrapped in cotton. He knew that now.

  “One step at a time, soldier,” the sergeant major said. “There’s no way here but forwards. Complete the mission.”

  Emmanuel walked across the sand and looked directly into the smoldering core. Charred black flesh split to reveal ivory-colored ribs and a row of teeth. Emmanuel leaned closer. The set of the molars didn’t seem right.

  “Find me a long stick, Gabriel. Let’s get a better look.”

  The boy jumped up and foraged in the underbrush before returning with two young branches stripped of their leaves. Fascination with the charred body had clearly overwhelmed any desire to find and kill the Red Queen.

  He gave Emmanuel a branch and they scraped the remains out of the fire and onto the sand. A spine, ribs and hollowed eye sockets confirmed the mass had once been a living being. Emmanuel crouched down and
worked the tip of the stick along the jawline, which was long and slender and definitely not human.

  “A small animal,” he said. “Could be anything. A puppy or a newborn impala.”

  “A baby,” Gabriel insisted.

  “Yes,” Emmanuel agreed. “But not a human one. Shabalala might know what it is.”

  The sky lightened and individual plants and rocks became visible. Worrying about Shabalala hadn’t occurred to Emmanuel until that moment. The Zulu detective was fast and strong, but what if this black muti actually worked and he was chasing an opponent with dark powers?

  “Crap times twenty.” The sergeant major spat the words. “Keep yourself busy, for Christ’s sake, Cooper. Shabalala will be back directly.”

  Emmanuel took the advice. He walked around the fire, widening the circle on every rotation, looking for evidence of the woman’s identity. Gabriel followed, carefully fitting his bare feet into the tracks left by Emmanuel’s shoes.

  A silver bead nestling in the curve of a brown leaf glistened like a dewdrop. Emmanuel picked it up and placed it in the palm of his hand.

  “Look.” Gabriel crouched near a rock. “Another one and another one.”

  Silver beads had scattered across the ground and rolled into dirt hollows. Karin Paulus had said something about beads the day before. Emmanuel picked up a dozen of them and put them in his jacket pocket.

  “They belong to the witch,” Gabriel said. “She has them on her shoulders and her back.”

  That was it. Karin said the woman in the rock shelter with Philani wore tan buckskin decorated with shiny beads around her shoulders. A shawl of some kind.

  “Describe the witch to me,” Emmanuel said.

  “Black skin, wearing a red crown.” A police sketch artist would struggle with that physical description.

  “Is she tall or short?”

  “She’s full.” Gabriel continued picking silver from the dirt, taking delight in each individual bead. “But she’s hungry.”