Present Darkness Page 24

  “Did you learn that in your bible?” Emmanuel said.

  The Lieutenant snapped his fingers and called Leonard over like he was a drinks waiter at a fancy restaurant and he, Mason, in need of a refill. The smaller man, Crow, raised the lantern to shed a light on the experiment. Mason tucked Cassie’s statement into his breast pocket.

  “You reap what you sow.” Leonard pushed close to Emmanuel’s face so their noses almost touched. Until the cuts and bruises faded, Leonard belonged to a new race group of “purple and blue” people. “I’m going to repay you for last night with interest, my friend. See how you like pissing blood.”

  The fight at Fatty’s could have been five minutes ago or a year for all that Emmanuel remembered of the specific details. The evidence suggested that he’d beat Leonard with a scientific thoroughness. What fleeting memories remained were the rage that burned through him like a fever and the bright blue eye that showed through a hole in the stocking mask. There was something in the colour, a familiarity he couldn’t place at the time.

  Mason stepped back and drove a fist into Shabalala’s shoulder. Leonard did the same to Emmanuel, putting weight into the punch, stepping into it like a professional boxer.

  “Why are you on my farm?” Mason asked, only slightly winded from connecting with Shabalala’s body.

  Emmanuel looked directly into a pair of eyes a lighter shade of blue than Leonard’s and saw the near identical shape of brow and jawline shared by the two men. He said to Mason, “We came to talk to your son about the break-in at the Brewers’ house, the manslaughter of Mr Brewer and the theft of a Mercedes Benz Cabriolet from the crime scene.”

  “Bullshit,” Leonard said. “Nobody saw us. You’ve got no proof we were there.”

  “I do now.”

  Mason blanched the colour of sea foam and grit his teeth. “You and your kaffir friend won’t live to see the dawn let alone the inside of a police station.”

  “Killing two detectives is a sure way for you and Lenny to end up sharing a cell and pissing in the same bucket. That’s until the hanging. A father and son execution will make The News of the World.”

  Emmanuel took a hit to the stomach but felt it was worth the pain. He’d opened the door to Mason’s worst nightmare; two graves side by side, both bereft of flowers.

  “What’s the alternative, Cooper? That I give up my son to save a black boy from the slums?” Mason turned, fixed Leonard with a hard stare. “My boy’s a killer, I know. But you’ve got to understand that everything he did was for my benefit. My prayers for his salvation have gone unanswered but my boy will be all that remains of me when I’m gone. No deals. Accept that you and your kaffir friend are dead.”

  “This place is called Lion’s Kill yet there are no lions,” Shabalala said out of the blue. “Very little buck also.”

  “What?” Mason was flummoxed.

  “The house is filled with dead animals but the farm is empty of live ones,” Shabalala said. “What is there to hunt in this dead place?”

  “Besides detectives, you mean?” Emmanuel said.

  Shabalala laughed, drawing on the diamond hard reserves of a black man who’d seen through the pale skin of the “superior race” to their weak and cowardly hearts. Sound worked its way from Emmanuel’s stomach, up to his windpipe and out through his mouth in a chuckle.

  “A hunting reserve with no animals to hunt. That is funny.”

  “They killed all the animals,” Shabalala said.

  “I’m going to let my boy work on you one at a time.” Mason mouth held a smile but his eyes filled with spite. “There’ll be no laughing then. I guarantee it.”

  “I believe you,” Emmanuel said. Leonard tortured women for sport.

  A fleck of gravel hit the window, soft enough that it might have been blown by the wind. Crow jumped. Lenny put a hand into his jacket pocket and gripped something there. A knife, Emmanuel thought; the same one that had dispatched Vickers, the Afrikaner railway man, to the great train yard in the sky.

  “It’s the whore,” Crow blurted. “I told you she’d come back.”

  “Shut it.” Leonard broke a sweat and wiped a hand across his forehead. “It’s the wind, you idiot.”

  Mason stood at ease; shoulders loose, arms hanging by his side. A face peering through the window would see a calm man, a man in total control of his emotions. You’d have to move closer, pay attention to the deepening lines at the side of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes to recognise the rage building under the impassive expression. Emmanuel had experience. He could read the signs. Mason’s fuse was burning fast.

  “Crow, cover our visitors while I talk to my son,” Mason said in a gentle voice that was worse than shouting.

  “Yes, sir.” Crow put the lantern onto the map unfurled on the table and fumbled a snub-nosed revolver from his jacket pocket. He held it in unsteady hands.

  Mason placed his palm on the crown of Leonard’s head; a loving touch, but all wrong in the details. His fingers tightened. He jerked Leonard back by the roots of the hair and slammed him to the floor. Emmanuel winced at the sound. He remembered Davida being dragged across Fatty’s club with Leonard’s fingers twisted through her hair. Lenny had learned the technique from the master.

  Mason worked two punches into Leonard’s side; finding the kidneys. Emmanuel checked the exit to the corridor, calculated the distance. Shabalala’s body coiled tight, ready to make a run. Crow’s hand shook. Mason kept a firm hold on the Browning.

  At this range either man could hit a vital organ or nick an intestine. Emmanuel and Shabalala exchanged a look. Too dangerous, they decided, but the odds of living were better than ten minutes ago. Something was changing.

  “You disobeyed my instructions,” Mason said to Leonard who lay dazed on the floor. “How long did you keep her after I gave the order?”

  “A day.”

  “How long was it really, Crow?”

  Crow rolled over without resistance. “Two days, sir. I told Lenny what you said but he wanted to keep the girl for a bit longer.”

  Mason patted Leonard’s cheek and found a bruise. “You disobeyed me, boy. Under normal circumstances I’d turn you black and blue but Sergeant Cooper got to you first.” He leaned closer. “Have you got any idea where she is now?”

  “I … I don’t know.” Leonard spoke through clenched teeth. “She ran off. It’s summer. There’s no water for miles. I figured she’d make her own grave.”

  Mason looked up and caught Emmanuel in a predatory gaze. “You found the whore,” he said. “You and the black.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry, Pa.” Lenny flipped and found a foetal position. “I’m sorry I disobeyed you.”

  “Shh … quiet now. I need to think.” Mason got a chair from the table and placed it directly in front of Emmanuel. He sat with his arms resting across the top rail, the Browning hanging loose in his right hand. “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Lenny’s friend.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Bullshit. She’s at Clearwater. I’ll stake my life on it.”

  “You mean you’ll stake Leonard’s life on it,” Emmanuel said. “After the Pretoria police dig up that orchard he’s the one who’s going to swing. And you’ll swing with him, Crow.”

  Crow’s hand shook, sent the gun barrel jigging right to left. “I’m clean. Getting those girls was Lenny’s idea. He kept them to himself.”

  So Alice was right. More than one girl had occupied the cell before her.

  “Shut it,” Mason said. “Cooper is lying but not well enough to fool me. Ten years working undercover, I can sniff out a liar blindfolded.”

  “Is that why you read over my files … to catch me out in a lie? And how many times did that happen, Lieutenant? Not once, I’m guessing. I’m from Sophiatown, I was born lying to men like you.”

  A flicker of emotion crossed Mason’s face. Fear, followed by the determination to
export that fear to others.

  “Clever will get you just so far, Cooper. You are in my house now. It’s not like any place you’ve been before.” He nudged the tip of his shoe into Leonard’s ribs. “Get a chair and sit next to me, Lenny.” He waited for his son to take a seat directly opposite Shabalala. “Where did you first encounter these two men?”

  “By the river fence. They ran down to the bank and we chased them.”

  Mason nodded. “They moved from the mountains where the torch lights were shining, down to the river and then back in the direction of the farmhouse.”

  “I never thought of it that way but, ja, that’s what they did.”

  Emmanuel caught the moment the geography clicked in Mason’s head and could think of no way to undo it. Shabalala brushed dirt from his trousers, pretending a calm that neither of them felt.

  “You came on foot from Clearwater,” Mason said with undisguised pleasure. “Somebody that side saw the whore and you came to the rescue. You risked your skin and the Brewer girl’s statement for a tramp that nobody will miss, not even her clients. What kind of a fool does that?”

  Emmanuel shrugged off the question.

  Mason rubbed the stubble on his chin. “In all the rush I forgot to make the proper introductions. This is Leonard Hammond. My son. His mother and I never married so he kept her name. He gets his looks from her and his height from me. From both of us he inherited some very bad habits. Tell Sergeant Cooper and this kaffir the ways that you have erred.”

  Lenny hesitated and received a fatherly nod from Mason. “I drink, I steal, I take the Lord’s name in vain, I lie, I fight, I bare false witness, I … I …”

  “Come. Don’t be shy. Tell Cooper the worst of your habits … the one that gives you the most pleasure.”

  A second hesitation on Lenny’s end prompted a second nod of approval from Mason. Emmanuel wondered where this conversation was leading.

  “I take women off the street and teach them the error of their ways.”

  “All kinds of women?”

  “No. Just the bad ones.”

  Mason turned to Emmanuel while he talked. “Tell me about the woman Cooper danced with at the rail yards. Was she one of the good ones?”

  Emmanuel tried to keep a neutral expression and knew he’d failed when Mason smiled.

  “A mix of both,” Leonard said. “She danced like one of the cheap ones but up close she smelled of roses and talked like a girl who does music lessons. I wanted to bring her home.”

  “Of course you did,” Mason said. “You found a diamond in the rubble and wanted to keep it. Unfortunately that gem already belonged to Cooper. He thrashed the white off your skin when you laid hands on her.”

  “If he hadn’t surprised me I would have had him.”

  “No, that would not have happened. Do you want to know why?” Mason continued before Leonard replied. “A man will fight, give everything he has, to protect what he loves. Is that not so, Cooper?”

  Emmanuel shrugged stiff shoulders and heard the breath sucking in and out of his lungs. He dared not talk for fear that he’d beg Mason to leave Davida out of their business, to forget that she ever existed. Or worse still, that he’d threaten acts of violence he was in no position to dish out. Either way he’d sound weak.

  Mason’s smile widened. “Yes, I thought it was something like that. You’d kill for that girl … almost did, in fact. And I know where she is. Figured it out just now.”

  Emmanuel said nothing.

  “Ja, really. See, I did my homework. I asked around about your private life and got back zero. What I do know is that you’re not the type to fuck and run, not least with a woman like that one. You’d take the night and then steal the morning in bed with your coloured bit.”

  “Interesting theory,” Emmanuel said.

  Mason laughed, discovering a sense of humour. “Oh, I’m on the money. I see the truth in your eyes. There’s no hiding it, Cooper. Your woman is in that Houghton house … probably waiting for you right now with the sheets turned down.”

  Emmanuel turned to Shabalala, seeking a guideline. He could not control his expression. He’d lost the ability to hide the fear and rage churning inside. His brain had taken the long hike back to Sophiatown days when his father, vengeful and self-pitying drunk that he was, smashed the chairs and plates that he’d neglected to break the week before.

  Shabalala turned, gave him a calm face and deliberately looked to the window. Emmanuel did the same. Moon-shadows streaked across the dusty glass. Beyond the glass, black sky and stars.

  “There’s something out there,” Crow said. “We can’t hear it but the kaffir can.”

  “Rubbish,” Mason said. “Cooper and his friend came here alone. Heroes don’t need back-up. Isn’t that so, Sergeant?”

  A second piece of gravel hit the window, too loud to be windblown, too deliberate to be ignored. Crow swivelled and took aim at the glass. Leonard pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade; both of them skittish as alley cats.

  “Go out there, Crow,” Mason said. “Check the house perimeter and report back.”

  “Yes, sir.” Crow slid the revolver into the waistband of his pants and headed out. The front door opened the same time as a stone hit the window, fracturing the glass. Cracks fanned across the surface to make a webbed pattern.

  “How many out there?” Mason asked Emmanuel.

  “Don’t know. It must be the wind.” For once he spoke the God’s honest truth, which sounded like a lie.

  “Answer or I’ll gut the kaffir like a bush pig.” Leonard stood and pushed his knife to Shabalala’s jugular vein.

  30.

  A rock smashed a hole in the fractured window, showering shards of glass into the room. Fragments pinged against the table and the hardwood floors. Leonard pitched forward, stuck in the neck by a splinter. Shabalala pushed the couch backward to avoid the knife blade. The sofa flipped. Emmanuel hit the floor, raising dust. He sucked in a breath, aware of bodies slamming and rolling to his right. A thin whistling sound came from outside the broken window. Animal heads stared from the wall like high court judges sitting on the bench. He had no idea what had just happened.

  A hand slapped the side of his head. He sat up, caught a glimpse of Mason standing ashen-faced in the doorway. The fear and sorrow that Zweigman had seen hiding behind the Lieutenant’s face now seemed to leak from every pore of him. Emmanuel swivelled right to follow Mason’s gaze. Leonard sprawled across the ground with his body pinned under Shabalala’s weight. A knife handle protruded from his chest, the blade stuck deep into his sternum. Blood leaked across his shirt. His blank blue eyes stared at the ceiling.

  “Go after the father, Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “The son has passed over.”

  Emmanuel followed Mason into the house’s dark interior. The journey led through the kitchen to the top of the stairs that led to the cellar. All light died on the third rung down. He crouched and crossed the threshold of the concrete cell. He jagged to the left and in the direction of the discarded Webley revolver.

  Mason’s voice floated from the pitch black. “My boy is the reason I read through your files, Cooper. I wanted to know how a white kaffir from the slums made it to the detective branch instead of checking in and out of prison. How did you slither out of that hole? Why didn’t Leonard find the right path? He won’t have that chance now. Your kaffir stabbed him. Took my son …”

  Emmanuel could not think of anyone more deserving of being stabbed to death than Leonard. He inched across the concrete floor with both hands sweeping the surface for a touch of metal.

  “Leonard tried to do good,” Mason said. “He got me the original surveyor’s map showing the boundaries between the native reserve and Lion’s Kill. The new boundaries will stand now that there’s no proof to contradict our land claim. My son got me the river.”

  “He could have bribed an official at the Lands Department to lose the map like a normal person.” Emmanuel could not let that sugar-coated ve
rsion of Leonard’s actions pass.

  “The Brewer bitch took the map from the office, told everyone it had been misplaced. Leonard knew that she and her kaffir-lover husband were going to let the blacks from the reserve have it. If she’d done that, ‘Lions Kill’ would have turned to dust in the drought.”

  “Your son beat Martha Brewer into the emergency ward and Ian Brewer into the grave for that map on the table upstairs?” Wars had been fought over access to water and cities had fallen for the lack of it. Water in a dry land had a price above rubies.

  “All things considered, one murder in exchange for river frontage is a good deal,” Mason said. “Lenny understood that.”

  “Leonard got what he deserved. It’s just a pity he died so fast,” Emmanuel said and heard Mason suck in a breath as if he’d been hit in the gut.

  “I’m going to kill you and your friends, Cooper. Afterwards I will drive to that house in Houghton and introduce myself to your woman. Not a polite introduction, you understand. I will share the present darkness of my soul with her and leave her in pieces.” Mason’s feet scuffed the floor as he moved closer.

  Emmanuel blocked images of Davida and Rebekah from his mind, blocked out the fear. His left hand extended and touched a handle, then the metal barrel of his Webley. He righted the gun in a two-handed grip; arms locked in firing position.

  “You’ve got nothing to say?” Mason’s voice came from directly ahead. “Are you afraid she’ll enjoy my …”

  Emmanuel squeezed off two shots and heard a grunt, then the sound of Mason’s body drop. Footsteps pounded the cellar stairs and the light from a lantern cut through the gloom. Mason lay on the floor. Blood trickled from two wounds on the left side of his chest. “Let me live.” The Lieutenant grinned, enjoying a private joke with God or the Devil. “I promise not to tell anyone about her.”

  Emmanuel pressed the muzzle to Mason’s heart and pulled the trigger once more. Shabalala moved into the room and the light from his lantern grew brighter. Emmanuel reached into Mason’s pocket and removed Cassie’s statement before blood soaked the paper. He gave it to the Zulu detective. They walked out in silence.