A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  “Sleeping with as in napping or sleeping with as in fucking?”

  “Most nights we did both.” She was defiant, ready to burn all the remnants of herself as a good woman.

  He liked the angry Davida a lot better than the milk and water version she peddled to the world.

  “I’m wondering why a mixed-race woman would get involved with a married white man whose family lives just a few streets away. Do you like taking risks, Davida?”

  “No. It wasn’t like that.”

  “How was it?”

  “I didn’t want to.” She scraped curls of flaking paint off the windowsill and rubbed the residue between her fingers. “He didn’t want to.”

  “He forced himself, did he?” Emmanuel didn’t try to hide his skepticism. How long did it take Willem Pretorius to raise the white flag and surrender to the pleasure of the wrought-iron bed? A day, a week, or possibly a whole month?

  “He tried,” Davida insisted. “First with abstinence and then with the photos, but those things didn’t work.”

  “Tell me about the photographs,” he said.

  She’d volunteered the information without knowing he was in possession of printed copies. Maybe it made her feel better to admit to the things in her life that had been locked in the internal vault. Being a model in pornographic photographs was an illegal activity sure to have her barred from membership in the League for the Advancement of Coloured Women.

  “Captain said if he had some photos to look at, then he wouldn’t have to touch me. He said looking at pictures was a lesser sin than committing adultery.”

  “I see.”

  The differences between the two envelopes of photographs were stark. The first pictures were naive and gentle, the second explicit and untamed. Sometime between shooting roll number one and roll number two, sin had won the battle for Captain Pretorius’s soul.

  “But the photographs didn’t work and the two of you ended up committing adultery? Is that right?”

  “Yes.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what happened.”

  “What was your relationship like?”

  “I already told you.”

  “So, Captain Pretorius would have sexual relations with you and leave immediately afterward? There was nothing more to it?”

  “No. Captain liked to stay and talk for a while afterward.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with him? Good?”

  “As good as it could be.” She shrugged her shoulders. “There was never going to be wedding bells.”

  “Then why did you do it? Anton or any of the other coloured men in town would have been more suitable choices, wouldn’t they?”

  She made a sound of disbelief low in her throat. “Only a white man would ask a question like that and expect an answer.”

  Emmanuel felt he was seeing her for the first time. The meek coloured girl he could deal with, even ignore, but this furious sharp-eyed woman was something else altogether.

  “What’s the question got to do with my being white?”

  “Only white people talk about choice like it’s a box of chocolate that everyone gets to pick from. A Dutch police captain walks into this room and I say what to him? ‘No, thank you, Captain sir, but I do not wish to spoil my chances for a good marriage with a good man from my community, so please ma’ baas take yourself back to your wife and family. I promise not to blackmail you if you promise not to punish my family for turning you away. Thank you for asking me, Mr. Policeman. I am honored.’ Tell me, is that how it works for nonwhite women in Jo’burg, Detective?”

  Emmanuel felt the truth of her words. It was as if she’d slapped him hard with an open hand. He sat forward and considered the implications of what she’d said. A secret and illegal affair with an Afrikaner certainly delayed any chance of getting married or of beginning a serious relationship with someone in her own race group. Jacob’s Rest was too small to cover that level of illicit activity. Davida Ellis was stuck in limbo: an unmarried mixed-race woman tied to a married white man.

  “When was the last time you saw Captain Pretorius?”

  The rush of color brought on by her tirade against the white man ebbed away, leaving her curiously ashen.

  “The night he died,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “He came here to the room. He said for me to get my things because we were going out to the river. I didn’t want to go but he was angry and said we were going.”

  “What was he angry about?”

  “He caught Donny Rooke spying on him and had to give him a hiding as a warning. I cleaned the captain’s hands with a cloth before we left because he’d split the skin on his knuckles.”

  That was one up for Donny and confirmation that Pretorius leaned hard when he had to. It was unlikely that Donny, the outcast, could have organized an assassination and a foray into Mozambique to cover his trail after the beating he’d taken. Donny wasn’t nearly smart enough or strong enough for that.

  “You didn’t want to go out that night?”

  “No.” She fell back into her old ways and concentrated on her hands while she spoke. “I never liked going outside with the captain. I was scared that someone would see us.”

  “Pretorius had no such worries?”

  “He said it was okay now that he knew who was spying on him, and the river was his favorite place to…you know…to go.”

  Emmanuel remembered his impression of the crime scene and the distinct feeling that the victim might have been smiling when the bullet struck. Not so far off the mark, then.

  “Captain Pretorius thought someone was spying on him before he caught Donny that night?”

  “He said he knew there was someone out on the veldt and that he was going to catch him.”

  “When did he first tell you that someone was spying on him?”

  “Three, four weeks or so before he died.”

  “He thought that man was Donny?”

  “Yes. That’s what the captain told me.”

  What on earth would lead Willem Pretorius to believe that Donny Rooke, of all people, was capable of cunning undercover surveillance? The watchful presence was still out there in the dark, and it sure as hell wasn’t Donny.

  “What happened then?” He believed everything Davida had said so far and wondered when she’d slip and try to cover up a hole in her story. Everyone had something to hide.

  “We went to the police van and I got under the blanket in the back. We drove to Old Voster’s farm. Captain got out and checked to see if everything was okay. He didn’t come back for a long time and…” She took a deep breath. “I got scared but then he came and said it was all clear, so we went down to the river.”

  She was breathing harder now, her chest rising and falling in an unsteady rhythm. She was like this in the stone hut. Scared to death.

  “Go on.”

  “Captain spread the blanket out and then…well…that’s when it happened. Two popping sounds and he fell forward just like that.”

  “Captain Pretorius was standing by the blanket and you were sitting down?” Emmanuel asked. Something was missing from her description of the events.

  “We were both on the blanket.” She stared out the window like a prisoner watching a flock of birds soar above the barbed wire. “We were…he was…you know…”

  “Davida, turn around and look at me,” he said. “Tell me exactly what happened on the blanket. Don’t leave anything out. I won’t be angry or shocked.”

  She turned back to him but didn’t lift her gaze from the middle button of his jacket. After what she’d done in the photographs, it was amazing to see a blush work its way up her neck and darken her skin.

  “Captain was doing it to me from behind.” Her voice was a reedy whisper of sound. “He finished and was doing up his buttons when I heard the two popping sounds. I didn’t know what it was and then the captain fell forward and I couldn’t move. He was on me, lying on top of me. I tried to move but he was on top of me.”r />
  “What did you do then?”

  “My heart was beating so loud that my ears were ringing. I was crying, too. Trying to get out from under the captain. That’s how come I didn’t hear him until he was behind me.”

  “Who?”

  “The man.”

  “What man?”

  “The man with the gun. He kicked my leg and said, ‘Run. Look back and I’ll shoot you.’ I pushed myself out from under the captain and I ran. I fell over on the kaffir path and my necklace snapped but I didn’t stop to look for it. I got up again and I ran until I got back home.”

  “This man. What language did he use?”

  “English. With an accent.”

  “Tell me about the man. Did you see any part of him?”

  “I was facing away and the captain was behind me. I didn’t see him. I only heard him telling me to run.”

  “From his voice,” Emmanuel said, “what would you guess? White, coloured, black, or Indian?”

  “A Dutchman,” she answered straight off. “A proper Afrikaner.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “His voice. A Boer used to giving orders.”

  That description matched ninety percent of the men who’d attended Willem Pretorius’s funeral. It was the same as finding a match for a man wearing khaki work pants or overalls.

  He was skeptical about the appearance of “the man.” Wasn’t it a little too improbable, and convenient, to have a phantom Afrikaner descend from the sky to absolve her of involvement in the captain’s murder?

  “Did you know the man, Davida?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Was it a coloured man? Someone from town?”

  She looked up now, alert to the change in atmosphere. Her eyes were the color of rain clouds.

  “It was a white man,” she repeated. “He spoke to me like I was a dog, like he enjoyed giving orders.”

  “Did you know the man, Davida?” He hit the question again and waited to see where she went with it.

  “I told you. No.” Her voice was pitched high with frustration. “I don’t know who it was.”

  Emmanuel studied her face, strikingly pretty now that she’d ditched the novice-nun pose and he could see her clearly. “He did you a favor, didn’t he? The man. No more posing for illegal photos. No more lifting your skirt every time Pretorius came calling.”

  “That’s not right. I didn’t want to hurt the captain.”

  “Why not?” Emmanuel countered. “Sleeping with you is against the law. Making pornographic photographs is also against the law and yet he forced you to do both those things. That’s right, isn’t it? You couldn’t say no to an Afrikaner police captain.”

  “That’s true.” The rain clouds burst and she wiped the tears from her face with a quick hand. Crying for a dead Dutchman in front of an Englishman. Could there be a more ridiculous thing for a mixed-race woman to do?

  “You had feelings for him,” Emmanuel said. He’d seen the photograph she’d taken of Pretorius. Davida and the captain shared more than just a mutual physical pleasure.

  “I didn’t love him.” She was angry about the tears and the cool way he watched her struggling for control. “But I didn’t hate him, either. He never did anything to hurt me. That’s the truth.”

  “There’s plenty of ways to hurt someone without raising a hand to them.” His own anger came in a flash and he let ten percent of it out to breathe. “What will happen when you testify in court and everyone in South Africa hears about the photos and the fact that you were a white policeman’s skelmpie? Will that feel good or will that hurt? No matter. You can always remember how considerate Willem Pretorius was when he led you down the road to nowhere.”

  “You’re cruel,” she said.

  Emmanuel stayed quiet for a moment. He’d gone too far.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s get back to the riverside. Is there anything else you can tell me about the man who shot Captain Pretorius? Anything at all will help.”

  It took her a while to recover from the terrifying specter of the courtroom and the public fallout from the murder trial.

  “He was quiet,” Davida said. “Like a cat. I didn’t know he was there until he was right behind me.”

  “You were frightened and crying,” Emmanuel reminded her. “Hearing anyone would have been hard.”

  “I know but…it was like the time the Peeping Tom grabbed me. I didn’t know he was there until right before he jumped. It was like that.”

  “Was the killer’s accent the same as the man who grabbed you?” Emmanuel asked. No matter which way the case turned, the molester was always there, like a shadow.

  “They both sounded strange.” She looked directly at him, the connection clicking into place. “Like someone putting on a voice.”

  Well, if she was lying about the man at the river, he couldn’t fault her performance. She looked amazed not to have made the link before now between the killer on the riverbank and the molester.

  Emmanuel digested the new information. It supported his sense that the captain’s murder was tied to small-town secrets and lies and not part of an elaborate Communist plot to derail the National Party government.

  He stood up and brushed the creases from the front of his trousers. Two days ago he’d believed Davida was a shy virgin who shrank from the touch of men not of her own “kind.” That perception was now a confirmed pile of horseshit and he was forced to give serious credence to her version of events regarding the captain’s murder. He no longer trusted his instincts when it came to the captain’s little wife.

  Was that because, as the sergeant major suggested, there was something in her that stirred him? Emmanuel avoided looking at the wrought-iron bed and resisted the flood of uncensored images that came to him in a rush. Of all the times for his libido to rise from the dead, this would have to be the worst. Davida Ellis was a mixed-race woman and a key witness in the murder of an Afrikaner policeman: the devil’s very brew.

  Emmanuel turned his back on the bed and faced the window where she stood. “When did you take up with Pretorius? Before or after the molester stopped?”

  “After. The first time the captain came into this room was to interview me about the attacker. That was the end of December.”

  “Do you remember being asked anything unusual by the captain?”

  “Well…” She considered her answer. “Everything about the interview was strange. Not like with Lieutenant Uys, who asked three questions and then chased me out of the police station.”

  “Strange in what way? Tell me about it.”

  “Captain came here to this room by himself.” She let that breach of protocol sink in. “He asked me to sit down on that chair and close my eyes. I did and then he asked me to think about the man who’d grabbed me. He asked a lot of questions. Was the Peeping Tom bigger or smaller than me? I said bigger but not by that much. What was his skin like? Rough or smooth? I said smooth with only a little roughness, like a man who works with his hands now and then. Did his skin smell of anything in particular? Coffee, cigarettes, grease, or soap—any of those things? I said no but his hands did smell familiar. Captain told me to keep my eyes shut and try to remember. Where had I come across the smell before?”

  “Did you remember?”

  “I said that Anton’s hands smelled the same way. Like crushed gum leaves.”

  “You think Anton’s the Peeping Tom?”

  “No,” Davida said. “Anton’s hands are rough, like sandpaper, and his arms are hard with muscles. The man who grabbed me had soft hands and a smaller body than Anton’s.”

  He didn’t ask her how she knew those intimate details about Anton. Presumably she had done a lot more than take the air when she went out walking with the lanky mechanic.

  “How did Captain Pretorius react when you told him about the smell on the molester’s hands?” There was no mention of the gum leaf smell in the record of interview typed up and filed after the captain’s informal visit to the ol
d servant’s quarters. There had to be a reason for the omission.

  Davida shifted uncomfortably, and then seemed to realize that both her reputation and the captain’s were lost beyond any hope. Head up, she spoke to Emmanuel directly, in much the same way as Granny Mariah had outside the church.

  “My eyes were closed. I didn’t see his face but I know he was pleased. He stroked my hair and said, ‘You’re a clever girl to remember that, Davida.’ I opened my eyes and he was halfway out of the door.”

  What was it about the town of Jacob’s Rest? The heat, the isolation, or maybe just the proximity of the race groups appeared to make the exercise of power over others irresistible. Emmanuel himself had almost touched Davida’s wet hair outside the captain’s stone hut because he’d tasted the thrill of knowing that she was under his command and would keep his secrets safe. Wasn’t that feeling of power just an extension of the white induna fantasy that the National Party was now enacting into law?

  “Did you ever tell Anton about the connection with the Peeping Tom? Ever ask him what the crushed gum leaf smell was?”

  “Captain Pretorius came back here three or four days later and it was hard to talk to Anton after that. I don’t know what the smell was and the captain never mentioned it again.”

  “Did you always call him Captain?”

  The bold act evaporated and Davida went back to looking at the magic spot in front of her right toe. “He liked to be called Captain before and during and then Willem afterward.”

  Yes, well. A relationship with a morally upstanding Dutchman with a taste for pornography and adultery was bound to come with a dizzying level of complications and arcane rules. Emmanuel glanced around the room and took note of the hastily made bed and the dust motes dancing over the painted concrete floor. It seemed that Willem got all the neatness he needed at home and then came to this room to wallow in the mess.

  “Did you visit Pretorius at the stone hut?” he asked. The stone hut that was kept as fastidiously clean as the locked study in the immaculate Cape Dutch house but without the help of a maid.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “When you’d finished calling him Captain Pretorius and then Willem, did you clean for him?”