Present Darkness Read online

  “I have told you where I was.” Aaron flexed his right hand, testing the joints. “I was walking.”

  Emmanuel paused at the door and gave Aaron a look like the one he’d given Cassie: You are lying, boy, and I know it.

  *

  The hard linoleum floors amplified the gritty sound of Lieutenant Mason’s voice and the slam of the telephone receiver as it hit the cradle. Negus stood by the edge of the cot, waiting for knock-off time. Emmanuel sat at his desk, mulling over Mason’s decision to pull him from the interview room. Either Mason really didn’t trust him, or the ex-vice cop was so mired in a “one man undercover” mentality that dominating all aspects of an investigation remained second nature.

  Lieutenant Mason stepped into the squad room, jacket buttoned up and black hair slicked back. Churches of all denominations would happily invite him to join a prayer circle. Emmanuel, however, wouldn’t let the Lieutenant anywhere near pets or children. While Mason appeared utterly indifferent to the call that moments ago had him slamming down the phone, the tightness in his shoulders and the hard lines around his mouth reminded Emmanuel of his own father before a rage. The calm exterior was a lie. Mason had a violent temper fed by a decade of dirty police work.

  “Back to your lonely bed, Cooper. You too, Negus. We’re done for the night. Report in tomorrow at 11 a.m.”

  “Right enough, Lieutenant.” Negus stretched out, shoved a brown fedora onto his head and made for the door.

  “Shabalala is still in the interview room,” Emmanuel said. “I have a few more questions to ask him before finishing up.”

  A ball tightened in his stomach just as it had when his father brooded at the kitchen table, waiting for the one wrong word to justify unleashing a beating. The defenceless slum boy inside Emmanuel, who’d eaten dinner in a sweat of fear, warned him to be quiet in the face of Mason’s demeanour. The combat soldier with a bullet wound in his left shoulder did not listen.

  “We’re not in a conversation, Cooper,” Mason said with an unblinking stare. “Pack up and go home. That’s an order.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Emmanuel reached for his soft felt trilby with a sharply angled brim and tugged it on. Soldiers and police lived and died by orders. God knows he’d followed a raft of incomprehensible commands while fighting the war, and each time he had to stop himself from asking “why?”

  “Cooper.” Negus stood in the corridor with bags under his eyes. “Let’s make tracks, man.”

  “Good night, Lieutenant.” Emmanuel heeded the unspoken warning in Negus’s voice and left the room. Getting into a pissing competition with Mason was futile. The vice cop had already taken too much of a personal interest in him.

  Negus paused at the top of the stairs and said, “Here’s a free piece of advice. Do not fuck with Mason. If you do, he will fuck you back in ways that would make a whore cringe.”

  “How is making an interview request fucking with the Lieutenant? We’re working the same investigation.”

  “It’s his investigation, Cooper. Don’t forget it. Asking a question is the same as spitting on his dead mother’s grave. That’s assuming Mason had a mother.”

  “I thought he was born again.”

  “My Xhosa nursemaid had a saying, ‘The rain wets the leopard’s spots but doesn’t wash them off.’ Mason might take a shower in the blood of Jesus every morning but he’s still the same man who set fire to whorehouses and gambling rooms if they refused to pay him for protection.” Negus fumbled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and slotted one into the corner of his mouth. “You just painted a target on your chest and waved your arms at a man with a flame-thrower. Fade in and fit in, that’s your best defence.”

  “I’ll try.”

  It was too late to take evasive action or to play dead for Mason. The Lieutenant had him square in his sights: from reading over his file and retaining the details, to voicing comments that implied a first-hand knowledge of an incident involving women that Emmanuel couldn’t remember. There was only one course of action open to him if he had any hope of repaying his debt to Detective Constable Shabalala: act like a diplomat but prepare to fight a covert war.

  5.

  The rain wets the Leopard’s spots but does not wash them off. The proverb stayed with Emmanuel on the drive through the deserted streets of night time Johannesburg. How far had he travelled from the ramshackle streets of Sophiatown, he wondered? Not in miles but in time, or life, or history? Beneath the veneer of his tailored suits, polished shoes and clean hands, the white kaffir boy with a flexible attitude to the law and no allegiance to any one racial group, remained.

  He hid his roots well. But that invisible split between the respectable European policeman and the liar with a secret family across the colour line might be the reason Lieutenant Mason had read over his personnel file. He might sense something not quite “white” about a policeman born in a slum with no apparent personal life.

  Be careful, Emmanuel thought to himself. Be careful. The words played in his head throughout the long drive to the wealthy bubble of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. Here, sandstone churches and elite private schools contrasted with the gospel halls and cinderblock classrooms in Sophiatown. Shade trees and trimmed hedges hid grand houses with sprawling grounds and swimming pools.

  He turned right into Fourth Avenue and then right again into a paved driveway. The night watchman, a veteran of the El Alamein campaign in North Africa, flashed a light into the car then waved Emmanuel through the gates.

  The prime half-acre spread belonged to Elliott King, Davida’s father: a man cunning enough to keep a mixed-race family under one roof while simultaneously sitting at the table with members of the National Party who’d signed the racial segregation rules into law. King managed this feat by maintaining appearances. Europeans slept in the “big house”. A raid by the “immorality squad”, whose job it was to enforce the law forbidding interracial sex, would find the races in perfect balance. White men ups tairs in the big house and brown women in the servant’s hut or in the maid’s room adjacent to the kitchen: a system perfected by the God-fearing Dutchmen who kept black slave wives in the Cape of Good Hope back in the eighteenth century.

  Emmanuel parked at the rear of house and sat for a moment, tired yet fully awake; hungry but for more than food. Contact with Davida and Rebekah would satisfy him. First, he had two difficult phone calls to make.

  *

  He walked the path through masses of pale Madonna lilies and stands of weeping willows. Ahead, a whitewashed hut gleamed in the moonlight. He let himself in, slipped off his shoes and socks and lit a candle. From day one of his transfer to Jo’burg he’d ignored Elliott King’s rules and slept in the hut.

  Tonight, he knew that a stronger man would follow the rules and retreat to the big house so Davida got some rest. A better man would keep the mess of police work separate from his family life.

  Except he felt neither good, nor strong, nor sure that he’d fall asleep before dawn. Images of the ransacked house and the bloodied bodies of the Brewers and the unidentified black man in the garden were too fresh to put away. The sadness in Shabalala’s voice when he’d heard that his son was in police custody was something that Emmanuel would never forget, either. He padded across cool tiles to the bedroom. Davida lay on her side with the cream sheets bunched around her hips, her hair a dark tangle in the candlelight. Rebekah slept cocooned in a yellow wicker basket with a fat baby fist curled against her smooth cheek. She was brown like her mother. My girls, he thought, my beautiful girls.

  Davida eased onto her back and muttered, “Emmanuel … is that you?”

  “Yes.” He lowered the candle. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

  “What’s wrong?” She was half in dreams.

  “Nothing.” He heard the lie in his voice and added, “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “You’re tired.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “It’s late.”

  The thread that
connected him to Davida and their little girl remained fragile. Outside of the safety of her father’s private compound, interracial relationships were illegal. The new laws turned their love into something secret and precarious. If they let it, they could both feel the melancholy weight of it hanging between them … Detectives classified as “European” and mixed-race women did mix, but never in public. He didn’t have much to offer Davida in the way of a future.

  “Come on. Get in,” she said in a foggy voice. “Just sleeping. It’s too late for the other thing.”

  “You’re giving me the night off?”

  “Just this once.”

  He blew out the candle and tore off his jacket and tie. Next came the leather holster holding his Webley revolver, which he laid on the side table with the butt angled for easy reach. Shirt and trousers followed. He slipped under the sheets. Davida turned onto her side again. Emmanuel placed a hand to the curve of her hip and felt the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of her nightdress. He breathed in her scent, the faint trace of rosewater in her hair. There was no place for the two of them outside of this little hut. He didn’t care. Not tonight and maybe not ever.

  Still, he had to be careful. If Mason or the other police found out he’d leaked news of the investigation to a black friend and then come home to a coloured woman’s bed, they’d destroy him. The boys from Vice would tear down the delicate web of hope and lies that held his life together and they’d enjoy it. Davida and Rebekah would suffer.

  Be careful. The words reverberated in Emmanuel’s head until he was unsure if the warning was one meant for him or for Lieutenant Walter Mason, telling him and his questions to stay away from this hut and from his girls.

  *

  Sunlight burned through a high window, heating a corner of the bare concrete floor. The girl crawled into the sunspot and lifted her face to the rays. Her skin warmed. The ache in her bones eased. From outside the window came the low hum of cicadas and the lonesome creak of a windmill. The air smelled of dust and of fruit rotting on the ground. She was in the country and far off the tarred main road leading back to Jo’burg. She listened for dogs and heard none. Their absence was strange. Cities had cars and farms had dogs. But the big man was no farmer. No, he was city bred with smooth, uncalloused skin.

  She glanced around, taking in her prison. She had an army cot with a lumpy sisal mattress covered by a scratchy grey blanket and a wooden ablution bucket. A stained and tatty pillow was the one compensation to comfort. This was no room for living, just the opposite. The hairs on her arms prickled at the thought. The long drive from a dirt alleyway in the city to a slab floor in an isolated farmhouse might be the last journey she ever made.

  A guinea fowl’s incessant chirp reached her from the outside. Then, far off in the distance, she heard the throttle of a car engine travelling the rough dirt track to the house. Pain made her memories unreliable. The feel of her fingers gripping the locked door handle to the room came back to her.

  The big man and his friend had a fight. She remembered that even through the pain. After the snap of breaking furniture and a string of dirty words, they’d left the house and slammed the door shut. How long ago had that been? The stars were out and the moonlight fading. She’d tried to get out of the cell before eventually curling onto the mattress: to sleep and to heal and forget. Time blurred. Now the big man was on his way back.

  She stood and stretched for the window. It was too high to reach. Moving quickly, she pushed the cot across the floor to a space directly beneath the window. The mattress was uneven under her bare feet. Another long reach and her fingertips touched curling paint and the edge of a metal shape. The lock. It had to be. She perched on tiptoes, straining to reach the mechanism. Not quite. Another half a foot and she’d get to the lock easily. An extra foot in height and she’d be able to open the window and climb out.

  The engine idled at the gates to the property. Three, four minutes and the nightmare would begin again. She jumped to the concrete floor, dry-mouthed and nimble. Both the cot and mattress had to be back against the wall before the big man returned. The sound of the car grew louder.

  She pushed hard and the metal legs of the cot scraped against the concrete. There’d be marks on the floor; each a tell-tale map of her escape plan. Car tyres crunched over loose stones in the driveway and the engine cut. The girl wedged the cot against the wall, her heartbeat drumming like a tiny fist in her chest.

  “You can’t keep her, for Christ’s sake.” The smaller man’s voice carried into the room, sharp with reproach. “He said to make an end to it. Finished and clear.”

  “I will.” The big man replied and the thud of his footsteps moved to the front of the house. “When I’m ready.”

  “You seriously think he won’t find out that you broke your promise to get rid of her? This is his farm, dumkopf.”

  “He won’t know if you don’t tell him,” came the calm reply. “Make one more phone call and things will be finished and clear for you. Understand?”

  The girl grabbed the pillow and threw it into place on the bed. Her breath caught in her throat at the icy tone in the big man’s voice. He was poison, that one: the snake from the story of Adam and Eve in the bible.

  “Hey, relax. I’m just saying you have to be careful.” The smaller man was cowed. The girl heard the surrender in his voice. He wouldn’t help her if she escaped. One word from the big man and he’d run her down. A door creaked opened and footsteps slapped the wooden stairs.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be finished long before he gets here for the holidays.”

  Hinges creaked and the door to the box room swung inward. The girl threw herself onto the rough mattress and curled into a foetal position. Sweat trickled from her forehead onto the uncovered pillow.

  “Sleep well, sweetheart?” the big man asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” The girl forced a smile. It was important to be grateful and to speak gently. He’d taught her that last night. More lessons would soon follow this morning, each leaving a bruise.

  “Sit up,” he said. She did, careful to keep her chin raised, her back straight and her knees pressed together: last night’s etiquette lesson had taught her the correct posture and acceptable facial expressions. Sunbeams brightened the window glass and the shadow of a tree branch made leaf patterns on the floor.

  The big man clamped his hands onto her thighs and leaned in close. He was better looking in the daylight than in the light from the lantern the night before. Nature had lavished her gifts on him. Slick black hair, fair skin, sharp cheekbones and eyes the colour of the ocean. He’d win a beauty contest between them. The unfairness of it stung but the girl pushed that thought aside.

  A bird sang outside the window, calling her out of her hurting body and into the veldt.

  Soon, she promised herself. You will fly.

  6.

  The Brewers’ house appeared shabbier in the daytime than at night. Tiny black birds nested in the tangle of shrubs in the garden and a rusted post box leaned at an angle. No thieves worth a damn would target this place. The prison sentence for committing three violent assaults was too high a price to pay for a four-door Mercedes Benz, however low the mileage.

  Cassie Brewer stood by the boot of a dirty Land Rover parked in the driveway next door with her white socks scrunched around her ankles and her ponytail askew. She held a cardboard box overflowing with clothing and books.

  She’s still a child, Emmanuel thought. But old enough to have her word hold up in court.

  A freckle-faced woman with a halo of frizzy red hair hurried down the front steps of the Brewers’ house. Dressed in a brown cotton dress, black lace-up shoes with no stockings and no hat, she walked with the urgent stride of a farmer’s wife who’d find her rest when she retired to an early grave. She loaded the cardboard boxes into the Land Rover’s boot. A few neighbours worked their front gardens; some weeding and deadheading roses, others instructing their garden boys to do the same. They, too, watched the home.r />
  Emmanuel moved quickly to Mrs Lauda’s driveway. Cassie saw him coming and drew in a sharp breath. She rubbed the front of her right shoe against the back of her calf, fighting the urge to run. The red-haired woman gave him a cursory glance and slammed the boot shut, raising dust.

  “Detective Sergeant Cooper. Marshall Square CID.” Emmanuel offered his hand in greeting. “You must be Cassie’s aunt from north of Pretoria.”

  “Delia Singleton from Rust de Winter.” She shook hands quickly and checked the tyres, already focused on the challenge of navigating Johannesburg’s busy main roads and then the lonely dirt trails that would take her home again. “Cassie tells me you got the kaffir boys who made this mess.”

  “With her help we have one of the boys in for questioning,” Emmanuel said. “We’ll need to double-check the details of Cassie’s story before laying charges.”

  “The man who called last night said everything was settled. Cassie’s got the case solved and I should pick her up and keep her for a while.” Delia was brusque. “I’ve got six small ones at home and only half the fruit canning’s done. I can’t stay.”

  “One question for Cassie,” Emmanuel said. “Then I promise you’ll be on your way.”

  “Make it quick, Detective.” Delia crouched by the worn front tyre and touched a patch pressed into the rubber. She ran her fingers back and forth over the surface, making sure the repair remained intact.

  Emmanuel motioned Cassie in the direction of the rear of the Land Rover. She complied, reluctantly.

  “Did you see Shabalala and Nkhato from where you hid behind the wardrobe or did you hear them?” he asked.

  “I … um, I heard their voices,” Cassie mumbled. A vein on her forehead pulsed blue beneath her freckled skin.

  “And you’re one hundred per cent certain it was those two boys who came into your room and turned it upside down?” Emmanuel asked. Puffy-eyed and with a swollen bottom lip from where she’d bit through the skin yesterday, it was clear the teenager had passed a rough night.