Present Darkness Page 3

  “Call for a native ambulance,” Emmanuel told Dryer. “And get the foot police down here with lights and a blanket. Quick smart.”

  The police from the porch descended on the garden, their voices high-pitched with excitement. They were young, thrilled to be part of the unfolding drama. The black man now lay motionless on the ground, his breathing a low rasp in his throat. Emmanuel rested on his haunches and listened to the air moving in and out of the man’s lungs.

  “In here,” he said when the foot police drew near. Three flashlight beams converged on the secondary crime scene. The first policeman through the foliage made a sound of distress and stopped short. He clutched a blanket to his chest.

  “Stay where you are,” Emmanuel said. “The rest of you keep back and form a circle.”

  They followed the instructions, each shuffling self-consciously into place with their flashlights held high.

  “Do you think it’s the gardener?” one of the foot police whispered.

  “Maybe,” another replied. “Why else would a kaffir be in a white man’s backyard after sundown?”

  Emmanuel was uncertain. The black man curled in the leaves wore a long-sleeved shirt and dark cotton trousers. His bare feet and hands were dirty but lacked the roughness made by manual labour. And the garden grew wild. If he were a gardener, he was terrible at his job. Emmanuel crouched low and searched the man’s pockets for identification.

  “What have you got there?” Mason pushed through the tree branches and made a space between two of the foot police.

  “An unidentified male.” Emmanuel felt around for the passbook that black men were required to carry at all times. A pass contained the bearer’s name, place of origin, a black and white photograph, copies of their work details and a record of previous encounters with the police; their life story in bullet points.

  “No money or ID in his trouser pockets.” Emmanuel lifted a blood-stained paper from the man’s shirt pocket and squinted at the pencilled text. “The Brewers’ address.”

  “What the hell is an unregistered black doing in a Parkview garden?” Mason asked. “Even if he had a passbook he should have caught the last bus to kaffir town hours ago.”

  “Same goes for Shabalala and Nkhato. Doubling-back from Sophiatown to Parkview on public transport can’t have been simple.”

  “They managed it somehow; maybe with the help of accomplices. You heard the girl. Those boys were in that house. She named them.”

  Yes, she had. And a traumatised white girl’s testimony was hard to attack in court with a sympathetic European jury seated in the box.

  “Any word on the native ambulance?” Emmanuel rubbed his palms together, flaking off dried blood.

  “It will be a while.” Mason turned to leave. “The nearest native hospital is Baragwanath and they’ve only got a handful of vans. Dryer might know. Assuming he asked the hospital for an estimate.”

  “Give me the blanket, Constable,” Emmanuel said to one of the policemen: a bright-haired teenager with a face as plain as a glass of milk.

  “But … sir …” the Constable stammered. “I got this blanket from inside the house. It’s wool. From the girl’s bedroom.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not meant for one of them. His blood will get all over it.”

  Emmanuel stood up and ripped the blanket from the boy’s grasp. “If the Brewers survive the night they can burn the blanket and bury the ashes. Blood is blood. It stains the same no matter who’s doing the bleeding.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Constable shuffled back a step, embarrassed at offending the Detective Sergeant.

  “Stand guard till the ambulance gets here. Make sure nothing is disturbed,” Emmanuel told the foot police and spread the blanket over the unidentified stranger. It angered him to think that Davida and Rebekah might be denied comfort in a similar situation because they had brown skin instead of white.

  He turned and walked away. Lieutenant Mason followed him onto the moonlit path with an enigmatic expression on his face. Emmanuel remained quiet. One word would betray his building fury and then Mason would know beyond a doubt that his reaction to the constable’s attitude was personal.

  “You speak kaffir,” Mason said when they reached the house.

  “Some,” Emmanuel replied. He did not advertise the fact he spoke fluent Zulu and Afrikaans and a now a smattering of Shangaan, thanks to spending time with Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala.

  “Stay here with the foot police and the injured native,” Mason said. “If he comes around, make a note of anything he says that might explain how two schoolboys made this mess. The Police Commissioner’s going to need proof to back up the Brewer girl’s statement. Negus and I will bring the boys in for questioning.”

  “I’ll stop by the station afterwards,” Emmanuel said. Keeping track of the evidence against Aaron and Nkhato was paramount. What he’d do with the information once he had it, he did not know.

  “Paid overtime hasn’t been approved on this case yet, so if it’s a few extra pounds you’re angling for then go home and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I work till the work is done,” Emmanuel said. Mason operated undercover for months at a stretch, living and breathing the job twenty-four hours a day. In Mason’s world, real policemen worked for love of the job.

  Dryer stepped out of the back door and jerked a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “Police secretary is here, Lieutenant.”

  “Cooper’s already got what we need. Let the secretary hold the girl’s hand for a while and then send her home to Benoni. The next-door neighbour Mrs Lauda has agreed to take Cassie in till her aunt gets here tomorrow from north of Pretoria. Cooper, you’ll walk her over when the time comes.”

  “Of course.” There were good reasons for leaving him in charge of the primary crime scene and of Cassie, the star witness; the foremost being Dryer’s idiocy. The less obvious reason was that Mason did not trust him.

  The Lieutenant disappeared inside the house.

  “Typical, hey?” Dryer spoke once the back door had closed. “Mason and Negus get the good jobs while we take care of a beaten up kaffir and a girl.”

  “Any word on the native ambulance?” Emmanuel asked.

  “The switchboard logged the call but it’ll be a while. The hospital vans are attending a bus crash out near Tembisa.”

  “It could be dawn before they get here.” A bus accident took priority over a single black man bleeding out in a white suburb miles from the hospital.

  “How bad is the kaffir?” Dryer asked.

  “Bad,” Emmanuel said.

  “Shit luck for him.” The Afrikaner detective yawned and looked up at the full moon. An injured native counted for little. Cassie Brewer’s witness statement meant his holiday plans were all but assured—the perpetrators were practically in custody already. In a week’s time he’d be floating in the Indian Ocean and drinking a cold beer while fish nibbled at his toes.

  If Aaron Shabalala had instead been just some random black boy accused of robbery and assault, Emmanuel acknowledged that he might feel the same sense of relief at the easy “case closed”.

  “I’ll check in with the police secretary.” He took the stairs and opened the kitchen door. A path had been swept through the debris and the rice and flour had been wiped from the tabletop. An older white woman with a helmet of blue-rinsed hair and a pursed mouth painted a violent shade of fuchsia combed a brush through Cassie’s frizzy hair. Dressed in a grey wool twinset with a matching skirt and a single strand of pearls at her neck, the police secretary personified the government template of a European woman.

  Cassie gave Emmanuel a quick glance and turned her face away.

  “Shh … it’s okay,” the police secretary soothed. “I’ll take care of you, my darling. Don’t fret.”

  Cassie eased into the woman’s arms. She shut her eyes and shut Emmanuel out. The police secretary held Cassie close and whispered to Emmanuel, “Let it rest, Detective. The poor thing
has suffered enough tonight.”

  Emmanuel retreated. He’d made Cassie wary with that earlier look. If he got within a foot of her without tears spilling it would be a miracle. The girl enjoyed being the hurt one.

  “Where are you off to for Christmas, Cooper?” Dryer asked from his moonlight perch.

  “I’m staying in Johannesburg.” That was a lie but a necessary one. His private life was private. “And you?”

  “Me, the wife and children are off to Kosi Bay. Ten days in a cabin by the sea.” Dryer cast an imaginary line into the garden. “Fishing, swimming, eating prawns. It will be good. Why the hell would you stay in Jo’burg, my man?”

  “I like it here,” Emmanuel said. This conversation, he realised, followed the pattern of every single work interaction. The other detectives gave him facts and family stories and he replied with bullshit.

  “Sergeant.” The milk-faced policeman appeared from the garden path, flashlight waving in panic. Whiter now, his pale eyes huge in his face, he stammered, “Come. Please. It’s the man. There’s a rattle in his chest, only wet. What should we do?”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Emmanuel said. The black man needed medical attention immediately. Not at dawn or whatever time the native ambulance arrived. “Stand guard till I come out and relieve you.”

  “Yes, sir.” The constable retreated into the tangle of fruit trees.

  Emmanuel moved to the top stair, dry-mouthed and searching for a plan. Ian Brewer was glory-bound but Martha Brewer would likely survive the night thanks to a fully equipped “Whites Only” emergency ward. The black man in the garden had no such hope. He’d be dead within hours and any evidence he had would die with him. If Aaron Shabalala and his schoolmate provided an alibi for the time of the robbery they might get clear. If they didn’t, then Cassie’s word would remain the gospel and every detective on the case with holiday leave pending would happily sing from her hymnbook.

  There was one avenue open to him. Taking it meant stepping into the world of police who played by their own rules. Emmanuel considered his situation. As a lying European Detective Sergeant with a mixed-race woman and daughter stashed away from public view, he broke the law every day. He was, in reality, already across the line that divided the dirty cops from the clean ones.

  “Head home if you like, Dryer,” he said. “Things are pretty quiet. I’ll stay on here.”

  “No way, man,” the Afrikaner detective said. “Mason will have my guts if I leave before this is closed.”

  “Mason won’t know.” Emmanuel smiled reassurance. “Go on. You have a wife and children at home. I don’t have anybody.”

  “It wouldn’t be right leaving you with all this.” Dryer rummaged around in his jacket pocket, searching for car keys, his commitment eroding.

  “A beaten up kaffir and a girl … Having two detectives on the scene is a waste of time. Or would you rather stay and keep me company till the native ambulance shows?”

  “You sure you don’t need me?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Emmanuel said.

  “All right.” Dryer found his ring of keys and swung them around his index finger. “You should come over for dinner some time, Cooper. Meet the brood.”

  “That would be nice,” Emmanuel said. He’d take up the invitation right after he started performing his own dentistry for pleasure.

  “I owe you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He clapped a hand to Dryer’s shoulder and gently guided him down the stairs. It was hard to keep smiling. He wanted the Afrikaner detective gone five minutes ago.

  “See you tomorrow.” Dryer squeezed between the house and the garage wall and out to the driveway. Emmanuel waited till the car’s red tail lights faded into the dark at the end of the street and then walked quickly to the rear of the house. If he stopped to think about what he was doing, he might reconsider.

  3.

  Dr Daniel Zweigman, grey hair askew and reading glasses halfway down his nose, stitched the wound with precision and knotted the cotton thread. A circle of policemen held torches to light the outdoor surgery, including the folded sheet upon which lay the disinfectant, bandages and morphine syrettes used for the operation. Emmanuel told the German doctor to bring everything and he had.

  “The wounds are closed and the bleeding has stopped,” Zweigman said. “That is all I can do with what I have.” He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “It might be enough.”

  Emmanuel stood up and stretched. The injured black man had a chance to live. That had to be worth breaking the promise he’d made just a few months previously to keep Zweigman out of danger and away from police business.

  Zweigman removed his bloodied gloves and tucked the wool blanket around the unconscious patient’s shoulders. The doctor’s blue trousers and checked shirt were rumpled. He’d probably dressed in the dark to avoid disturbing his wife, Lilliana, and their adopted son, Dimitri, as they slept in the guest bedroom of Davida’s father’s house. A few months earlier, Davida had given birth to Rebekah at Zweigman’s clinic in the Valley of a Thousand Hills to avoid the complications of bringing an illegitimate, half-caste child into the world.

  “What now?” Zweigman asked.

  “You go back to Houghton. I’ll wait here for the native ambulance to arrive,” Emmanuel said.

  “So, that is it. ‘Thank you, doctor, and auf wiedersehen’?” The wiry doctor repacked the medical supplies into his leather bag and snapped the lock shut. “Once again it has been a pleasure doing business with you, Sergeant Cooper.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Emmanuel said. Zweigman’s involvement with the Brewer case ended here. There were still nights when Emmanuel woke in a panic at how close he’d come to losing Zweigman on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains a few months ago. In Emmanuel’s dreams the spear wound on the doctor’s shoulder refused to heal and he died cold and alone in a cave while Emmanuel watched and did nothing.

  “Put the torches down and take a break,” Emmanuel told the policemen. “I’ll see the doctor out.”

  “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen,” Zweigman said to the Constables and cut through the dense foliage. Twigs snapped under his feet. Moonlight illuminated the dirt path that led to the back door of the Brewers’ house.

  “I appreciate your help,” Emmanuel said when they emerged from the suburban jungle and onto a patch of grass. “But I can’t drag you deeper into the investigation. Not after last time.”

  “What will you tell Shabalala?” Zweigman ignored the reference to his own near-death experience and ducked under the clothesline. He accepted that life inflicted wounds and life healed them. Surviving the war in a concentration camp had taught him that lesson.

  “If this Aaron is actually his son, then I’ll tell Shabalala the truth,” Emmanuel said. “I just haven’t figured out the right words yet.”

  “There is nothing right about this situation.” Zweigman studied the garden. “No son of Shabalala’s could inflict such a brutal attack.”

  “I don’t know,” Emmanuel said. “I ran wild at the same age and got myself into plenty of trouble.”

  “Drinking and riding in stolen cars with girls,” the doctor guessed. “Nothing involving blood and broken bones, I’m sure.”

  “No,” Emmanuel said. “That came later.”

  A pulse of bright red light blinked from the driveway. Evans, the policeman left to guard the front of the property, broke into the yard.

  “The kaffir ambulance is here, Sergeant,” he said. “It’s in the drive.”

  “Show the attendants through, Evans.” Emmanuel checked his watch in the glow of electric light spilling from the neighbour’s window. Eleven forty-two. If he’d held steady for half an hour longer, Zweigman would still be in bed instead of attending a crime scene.

  “The line between life and death is not set in stone,” Zweigman said, reading Emmanuel’s mind with a glance. “The quicker a wound is cleaned and stitched, the better a patient’s chan
ce for survival and recovery. You know this from the war.”

  “I do,” Emmanuel said. They might not have saved the man’s life with their open-air operation but they had, at least, increased his chances of his surviving the night.

  “Back here. Back here.” Evans waved his arms in the air, excited by the coming end of shift. With the injured black man out of the way, he and the boys could return to their homes, loosen their belts, and knock the top off a cold beer. “Come down this passage and into the yard.”

  Two burly black men muscled through the gap between the house and the garage carrying a canvas stretcher with a small first aid kit resting in the folds. Zweigman motioned them to follow him into the garden. Emmanuel let them get well ahead. The handover from field doctor to hospital attendants was a courtesy Zweigman would insist on.

  The ambulance men worked fast and in silence. Within minutes of their arrival, the injured man occupied a bench seat in the rear of the ambulance kitted out with donated blankets and hand-rolled bandages. The younger of the two attendants pressed Zweigman’s hand in his massive paw and simply said, “Bless you, Baba.”

  And they were gone.

  “Do they have far to travel?” Zweigman asked.

  “Miles and miles,” Emmanuel said and dismissed the policemen who’d bunched together next to a blue police van. They scrambled aboard, stretching out their limbs and breaking open packets of cigarettes. The engine revved and the van jumped the lip of the curb before vanishing into the neat grid of white Johannesburg streets.

  He ushered Zweigman through the Brewers’ front garden to a blue Ford sedan, glad to see the doctor depart the crime scene for his own warm bed.

  Emmanuel slipped behind the wheel of his police-issue black Chevrolet and started the engine. He turned on the headlights. The houses on the street were dark now, but for a solitary window in the bungalow next door. He glanced across at the unpruned rose bushes, expecting to see the angular figure of Mrs Lauda bordered by the wood frame.