A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  The collapse in the road was passable, but it would add time to the journey to Mooihoek. He didn’t want to risk breaking the case open like this. A police van with a dead police captain was sure to get noticed, especially in Mooihoek, where a phone call would bring the press swarming down on them in no time.

  “Detective Cooper…” Sister Bernadette touched the silver cross around her neck and felt the comforting sharpness of Jesus’ ribs against her fingers. “There is Mr. Zweigman.”

  “Who is Mr. Zweigman?”

  “The old Jew,” Hansie said quickly. “He runs a dry goods store down by the bus stop. Kaffirs and coloureds go there.”

  Emmanuel kept his gaze steady on Sister Bernadette, God’s black-robed pigeon ready to take flight at the smallest sound.

  “What about Mr. Zweigman?”

  Sister Bernadette released a pent-up breath. “A native boy was run over a few months ago and Mr. Zweigman treated him at the scene. The boy came here later and you could see…he was fixed up by someone qualified.”

  Emmanuel checked Shabalala. Shabalala nodded. The story was true.

  “Is he a doctor?”

  “He says he was a medic in the refugee camps in Germany but…” Sister Bernadette gripped the silver cross tightly and asked the Lord’s forgiveness for the confidence she was about to betray. “We have had Mr. Zweigman look at one or two cases while Dr. Kruger has been away. Not officially, you see. No, no. A quick look, that’s all. We’d rather Doctor didn’t find out.”

  “The old Jew isn’t a doctor.” Hansie bristled at the idea. “Dr. Kruger is the only doctor in the district. Everybody knows that. What kind of rubbish are you talking?”

  Sister Angelina stepped forward with an angelic smile. She could have crushed Hansie in her enormous black fist, yet she chose to appear small in front of the puffed-up boy policeman.

  “Yes, of course,” she said in a warm voice. “Dr. Kruger is the only proper doctor, that’s correct, Constable. Mr. Zweigman is only for us natives who don’t need such good medicine. For the natives only.”

  Emmanuel found himself no closer to knowing if the old Jew was a doctor or a shopkeeper with a first aid certificate.

  “Shabalala.” He motioned the policeman to the back of the police van, and out of earshot. “What do you know about this?”

  “The captain told me, if you are sick you must go to the old Jew. He will fix you better than Dr. Kruger.”

  Better, not worse. That was the captain’s opinion and this was his town. Emmanuel fished the Packard keys from his pocket.

  “Here.” Shabalala pointed to a row of shops pressed close together under sheets of rusting corrugated iron. A pitted footpath added to the derelict appearance of the businesses, each with its doors thrown open to the street. Khan’s Emporium was pungent with spices. Next stood a “fine liquor merchant” manned by two bored mixed-race boys playing cards out the front. After that sat Poppies General Store, which looked in danger of sliding off its wooden foundations and into the vacant lot next door.

  Across the road, there was a burned-out garage with a charred petrol pump and piles of blistered tires. A lanky walnut-colored man patiently worked his way through the rubble, picking up bricks and pieces of twisted metal and throwing them into a wheelbarrow.

  A black native woman ambled by with a baby tied to her back, and a mixed-race “coloured” boy pushed a toy car made of wire along the footpath. No English or Afrikaners. They had slipped out of white Africa.

  “The last one is the old Jew’s place.” Shabalala pointed to Poppies General Store. Emmanuel switched off the engine and put his optimism on ice. A broken-down shop on the wrong side of the color line was no place for a qualified doctor unless he was crazy or had been struck off the medical register.

  Poppies was crammed with hessian sacks of corn, cans of jam, and corned meat. The air smelled of raw cotton, and bolts of plain and patterned material leaned against the far edge of a long wooden counter. Behind the counter stood a slight man with wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of brilliant white hair that flew up from his skull like an exclamation point.

  A crackpot, Emmanuel judged quickly, and “the old Jew” wasn’t as old as he’d imagined. Zweigman was still the right side of fifty, despite his hair and stooped shoulders. His brown eyes were bright as a crow’s as he took in the sight of the mud-spattered pair without reaction.

  “How can I help you, Officer?” Zweigman asked in an accent Emmanuel knew well. Educated German transplanted into a rough and charmless English.

  “Get your medical kit and your license. We need you at the hospital.” He made sure Zweigman saw the police ID he slapped onto the counter.

  “A moment, please,” Zweigman answered politely, and disappeared into a back room separated from the main shop by a yellow-and-white-striped curtain. The mechanical whir of sewing machines filtered out, then stopped abruptly. There was the sound of voices, low and urgent, before the shopkeeper reappeared with his medical bag. A dark-haired woman in an elegant blue satin dress tailored to fit the generous curves of her body followed close behind Zweigman.

  The old Jew and the woman were as different as a gumboot and a ball gown. Zweigman could have been any old man serving behind any dusty counter in South Africa, but the woman belonged to a cool climate place with Persian carpets and a grand piano tucked into the corner.

  The word “liebchen” tripped from the woman’s mouth in a repetitive loop that stopped only when Zweigman gently placed his fingers to her lips. They stood close together, surrounded by a sadness that forced Emmanuel onto his back foot.

  The headache had returned, glowing hot behind the socket. He pressed his palm over his eye to clear the blur. An image of Angela, his own wife, imprinted over his retina. Pale-skinned and ephemeral, she called to him from a corner of the past. Had they ever stood together as intimately as the old Jew and his anxious wife did just now?

  “Let’s go,” Emmanuel said, and headed for the door.

  Outside, the light was soft and white and shot through with fine dust particles. The coloured boys in front of the liquor store looked up, then quickly returned to their game. Better to have a policeman walk by than stop and ask questions.

  Emmanuel got into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and waited. Zweigman slid in next to him with his medical bag balanced on his knees. No one spoke as the car eased away from the curb and started back toward the hospital.

  “Where did you get your medical degree?” he asked. All the boxes had to be ticked before Zweigman was allowed to work on the captain’s body.

  “Charité Universitäsmedizin in Berlin.”

  “Are you qualified to practice in South Africa?” He couldn’t imagine German qualifications being denied by the National Party, even if the person holding them was Jewish.

  Zweigman tapped a finger against the hard leather of his medical bag and appeared to give the question some thought.

  They swung off Piet Retief Street with its white-owned businesses, and headed up General Kruger Road. Every street in Jacob’s Rest was the answer to an exam question on Afrikaner history.

  “Are you qualified?” Emmanuel asked again.

  The shopkeeper waved the question away with a flick of his hand. “I no longer feel qualified to practice medicine in any country.”

  Emmanuel eased off the accelerator and prepared to swing a U-turn back in the direction of Poppies General Store.

  “Ever been struck off the register in Germany or South Africa for any reason, Dr. Zweigman?” he asked.

  “Never,” the shopkeeper said. “And I don’t answer to ‘doctor’ anymore. Please call me ‘the old Jew’ like everyone else.”

  “I would.” Emmanuel pulled the car up in front of the Grace of God Hospital and switched off the engine. “But you’re not that old.”

  “Ahhhh…” The sound was dry as parchment. “Don’t be fooled by my youthful appearance, Detective. Under this skin, I am actually the ancient Jew.”

 
Strange turns of phrase were one possible reason the oddball Kraut was sitting next to him, and not in some swank medical suite in Cape Town or Jo’burg.

  “I think I’ll call you the peculiar Jew. It suits you better. Now let’s see your papers.” Friendship with a man crazy enough to choose shopkeeper above physician was not on his list of things to do. He just wanted to verify the qualifications, then get relief for the pounding in his head.

  Sunlight caught the rim of Zweigman’s glasses when he leaned forward, so Emmanuel wasn’t sure if he’d seen a spark of laughter in the doctor’s brown eyes. Zweigman handed him the papers, the first of which were in German.

  “You read Deutsch, Detective?”

  “Only beer hall menus.” He flipped to the South African qualifications written in English and read the information slowly, then read it again. A surgeon, with membership in the Royal College of Surgeons. It was like finding a gold coin in a dirty sock.

  Emmanuel looked hard at Zweigman, who returned his stare without blinking. There had to be a simple explanation for the white-haired German being in Jacob’s Rest. Deep country was the ideal place to bury a surgeon with shaky hands. Did the good doctor have a fondness for alcohol?

  “No, Detective Sergeant.” Zweigman read his thoughts. “I do not hit the bottle at any time.”

  Emmanuel handed the papers back with a shrug. Zweigman was more than qualified to do what was asked of him. That was all the case needed.

  Far enough from the main buildings to create a buffer zone between the living and the dead, a round mud-brick hut worked double time as the hospital’s morgue and hardware storeroom.

  Emmanuel paused under the shade of a jacaranda tree and allowed Shabalala and Zweigman to get ahead of him. The stooped doctor and the towering black man moved toward the morgue on a carpet of the jacaranda’s spent flowers. At the path’s end, Sister Angelina and Sister Bernadette administered spoonfuls of cod-liver oil to a row of ragged children while Hansie slept the dense sleep of the village idiot, with his head propped against the morgue door.

  My team, Emmanuel thought. He stepped out of the shade and the headache hit him again. The thatched roof of the hut bled into the sky and the grass merged with the white walls of the buildings so that everything resembled a child’s watercolor. He pressed his palm hard over his eye socket, but the blur and the pain remained. By nightfall the headache would be a sharp splinter of hot light that shut down the eye completely. After the examination of the captain’s body was set up, he’d get a triple dose of aspirin from the sisters. A double dose for now and a single one he could chase with a shot of whiskey before bed. At least he knew where the liquor store was.

  “Asleep on duty.” Emmanuel gave Hansie a sharp tap on the shoulder. “I could write you up for that, Hepple.”

  Hansie jumped to attention to prove his alertness. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was resting my eyes,” he said, then caught sight of Zweigman. “What’s he doing here? I thought you went to fetch the Pretorius brothers.”

  “We got lost.” Emmanuel sidestepped Hansie and pushed the door to the morgue open. It was cool and dark inside. He looked over his shoulder and saw Zweigman walk over to the sisters, who were flushed and uncomfortable in front of the man whose confidence they’d betrayed.

  “Sister Angelina and Sister Bernadette.” The white-haired German gave no indication he’d been co-opted by the police. “Will you please assist me?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Sister Bernadette said. “Excuse us while we prepare the necessary things.”

  The sisters marched the children toward the main building, where black and brown faces pressed up against the glass windows. The whites-only wing was empty. This afternoon the nonwhites would have something to tell their visitors. “The captain, ma big boss man Pretorius, he’s dead!”

  “Doctor?” Hansie was fully awake and glaring at Zweigman. “That’s the old Jew. He’s not a doctor. He sells beans to kaffirs and coloureds.”

  “He’s qualified to look at natives, coloureds and dead people,” Emmanuel said, and took refuge inside the darkened morgue. The pulsing behind his eye eased off a fraction but not enough. He switched on the examination light. Hansie and Shabalala stepped in and took up position against the wall. When the sisters got back, he’d ask for the painkillers right away. There was no way he’d make it through the examination with the harsh white light in the stifling mortuary.

  He pulled the sheet back to reveal the captain’s uniformed body. Zweigman looked ready to deposit the contents of his stomach onto the concrete floor. His knuckles strained white against the leather handle of his medical bag.

  “Were you friends with the captain?” Emmanuel asked.

  “We were known to each other.” Zweigman’s voice was half its normal strength, the guttural accent more pronounced than before. “An acquaintance that, it appears, has come to a most abrupt end.”

  Zweigman regained his color and started to clear a side counter with robotic precision. Was there the smallest hint of satisfaction in Zweigman’s comment about an abrupt end?

  “Not friends, then,” Emmanuel said.

  “There are few whites in this town that would claim me as a friend,” Zweigman said without turning around. He calmly rolled up his sleeves to his elbows and snapped open his medical kit.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I did not come here on the first Trekboer wagons and I do not understand how or even why one would play the game of rugby.”

  Emmanuel shaded his eyes against the naked light to get a clearer look at Zweigman. His headache pounded behind his eyeball. Zweigman had gone from shock to calm in the blink of an eye.

  “Where to, Doctor?” Sister Angelina entered the morgue with a huge bowl of hot water in her muscular arms. A starched white apron covered her nun’s habit, reaching to her knees.

  Zweigman pointed to the cleared counter. Sister Bernadette shuffled in under a load of towels and washcloths. They set up in silence, moving like dancers in a well-rehearsed ballet. Zwiegman scrubbed his hands and forearms, then dried himself with a small towel.

  “Doctor?” Sister Bernadette held out a white surgical robe with the name “Kruger” embroidered on the pocket in dark blue. Zweigman slid into the robe and allowed Sister Bernadette to knot the ties along the back. It was obvious they’d worked together before.

  “What do you want from me?” Zweigman asked.

  “Time of death. Cause of death and a signed death certificate. No autopsy.”

  Emmanuel pulled out his notepad, but his headache blurred his writing into dark smudge marks.

  “Detective?”

  Emmanuel refocused and saw Sister Angelina in front of him with a glass of water in one hand and four white pills in the upturned palm of the other.

  “Doctor says to take these right away.”

  He swallowed the tablets and chased them down with the water. Double the dose, the way he always took it when the blurring wouldn’t go away. Perhaps “the clever Jew” was a better name for Zweigman.

  “Thanks.”

  “No need.” Zweigman turned to the body. The ghostly face shone white under the glow of the naked lightbulb. “Let us begin with the clothes.”

  Sister Angelina picked up a pair of pruning shears, sliced along the stiff line of buttons that ran from neck to waist, then flicked the material out like the skin of a fruit to reveal the pale flesh of the captain’s bloated torso.

  Emmanuel stepped closer. Until the blurring lifted, he needed to take it slowly and write all the information down in large slabs. Obvious details needed to marry to a one-or two-word description in the notebook—at least until he could see straight.

  “Big” was the first word. The Pretorius brothers had inherited their height and strength from their father. The captain was six feet plus with a body built by physical labor.

  “Captain still play sport?” Emmanuel asked no one in particular. The captain’s nose, broken and then crudely reset in the face, was probably the result of t
ime spent on the muddy playing fields dotted throughout Afrikanerdom.

  “He coached the rugby team,” Hansie said.

  “And he ran,” Sister Bernadette continued. “He ran all over town and into the countryside sometimes.”

  “Same time every day?”

  “Every day except Sunday, because that was the Lord’s day.” Sister Bernadette sounded full of admiration. “Sometimes he ran in the morning and sometimes we’d see him run by well after dark.”

  That would explain why the captain hadn’t piled on the fat like so many senior officers on the force. It was practically against police procedure to remain at normal weight after more than ten years in service.

  “Yes.” Zweigman pulled a bootlace free from its knot. “Early morning or late at night. There was no way to tell when the captain would run by. Or when he’d stop for a friendly talk.”

  Emmanuel wrote “Zweigman vs. Captain?” in his notebook. He sensed a sting behind the doctor’s words. He’d sniff out the details later.

  “Oh, yes.” Sister Bernadette sighed. “The captain always stopped when he had the time. He knew all our little orphans by name.”

  “Trousers.” Zweigman moved aside and Sister Angelina sliced each trouser leg open with her pruning shears. The top two buttons of the trouser fly were undone and the buckle of the leather belt had twisted open in the rough river current.

  “Sister Bernadette,” Zweigman said. “Please remove the trousers while we lift.” He moved to position himself at the captain’s shoulders.

  “Doctor, please.” Sister Angelina waved him aside and single-handedly pushed the captain’s deadweight into a sitting position while her miniature Irish partner pulled the dirty uniform free and threw it onto the floor. They repeated the action with the trousers, leaving the captain naked and pale on the gurney. Sister Angelina discreetly draped a towel over the exposed genitals.

  “Poor Captain Pretorius.” Sister Bernadette placed the dangling arms back onto the gurney. “No matter what condition the body was in, I’d still know it was him.”