Present Darkness Read online

  “Ja. Sure. Completely.” Cassie moved back and pressed her palms to the dusty surface of the Land Rover.

  “Last chance to tell the truth,” he said. The stark terror on the girl’s face as she stood framed in Mrs Lauda’s window had been real. She was lying to protect herself or someone else. “I give you my word that I’ll do everything I can to find out who hurt your parents and why.”

  “I already told you. I said how it happened.”

  “Time to move.” Delia finished the tyre inspection and lifted the driver’s door handle. “Get in, girl. We haven’t got all day.”

  “Where can I reach you if I need to?” Emmanuel asked before the aunt climbed behind the wheel and sped into the hinterlands. He wondered if she’d ever known the pleasure of lying in bed until noon. Probably not.

  “Clearwater Farm,” Delia said and gave instructions of major turn-offs and minor farm roads. “You can dial through to the farm on the party line. Don’t use it unless it’s urgent. Everyone listens in and the whole district knows your problems. I’ve got enough on my plate.”

  “I understand.” Emmanuel wrote down the phone number and instructions. Cassie stood by the Land Rover’s rear bumper with her arms laced around her waist. She looked younger than her years and exhausted. He could understand why Mason and the rest of the Marshall Square detectives wanted swift justice for this fragile white girl.

  “If that’s all you need we’ll make tracks, Detective Cooper.” Delia motioned Cassie into the decrepit vehicle. “No more tears, girl. Crying won’t change anything. The doctors will fix your parents up and you’ll be back to school in no time. Come, let’s go.”

  Cassie scurried into the passenger seat and wiped dusty palms on the front of her skirt. Tears wet her cheeks, despite Delia’s warning against crying.

  “Safe travels,” Emmanuel said when the Land Rover engine coughed to life and Delia mashed the gear stick into first. Between the farm, six children and the fruit canning, Cassie could expect to be fed and watered by her aunt, no more.

  “Say goodbye to the policeman,” Delia instructed. “Without the police, the black boys who put your parents in the hospital would still be walking free.”

  “Goodbye, Detective Cooper.” Cassie cast him a nervous glance and tucked a bright strand of ginger hair behind her ear. The spot where the metallic shine of the lipstick had streaked the back of her hand had been scratched raw.

  The Land Rover drove off with the main witness in the Brewer assault and robbery case huddled in the front seat. Placing a vulnerable teenager into the care of a relative made good sense, but Delia’s comment that the “man who called said Cassie’s got the case solved” struck a nerve. Aaron was going to get pinned for car theft and three counts of serious assault unless he came up with a credible alibi.

  “How’s she holding up?” One of the neighbours, a good-looking man with sandy coloured hair, alligator green eyes and a trimmed moustache, loitered on the pavement. He wore a pressed khaki safari suit that had never been worn outside of an office, much less on a muddy bush track. Emmanuel slotted the man into the “concerned but fascinated with the crime” category of civilians. Most people fell into that group.

  “Cassie is fine,” Emmanuel said. The scratches on the teenager’s skin were self-inflicted, as if she were physically trying to erase a stain from her person. Cassie lived a hundred miles from “fine” but that was confidential information.

  “My wife heard through Mrs Lauda that you got the thieves.” The man waved a brown leather satchel in the direction of house from which a baby wailed. “My wife reckons it’s two of the blacks that the Brewers had over for dinner.”

  “You thought the principal’s native improvement program was a bad idea.”

  “Not just me,” the tanned white man said. “Everyone on the street warned him that bringing natives was dangerous. We asked him to stop. He didn’t listen. And now look what’s come of that experiment.”

  “Did Brewer get into fights over the native visits?” Emmanuel asked. The untidy garden and weed-choked gutters were another clue that the principal and his wife didn’t care much about fitting into the neat streetscape. Still, they must have known that disputes over music played too loud and cars parked too long outside the wrong house could get people killed.

  “Me and Mrs Lauda had words with the principal. Mr Allen from down the road also told Brewer, calm-like, that his three daughters didn’t feel safe with so many strange black boys walking the street. You know what the headmaster told him? To keep his daughters locked in the house where they’d be out of harm’s way.” Colour rose in the man’s face at the remembered conversation. “Brewer got a fist to the chin from Mr Allen for that, but we all agreed that the principal deserved it.”

  “And you are?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Andrew Franklin. Call me Andy.” The man checked his watch, an antique piece with a battered leather strap. An heirloom, Emmanuel guessed, passed down from a distant ancestor with sweat-stained clothing and a rifle slung over the shoulder.

  “I’m late for a meeting.” Franklin smiled an apology. “If you speak to Cassie, tell her that we’re thinking of her. She suffered a lot because of the trouble her parents caused.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Andy Franklin walked to a station wagon parked outside a yellow house; a great white hunter dressed for the veldt but off to sell insurance in a sterile cube or maybe accept bank deposit forms. Emmanuel wrote Franklin’s full name in his notebook. If Aaron Shabalala dropped off the suspects list there’d be a number of disgruntled neighbours to interview.

  The sky stretched bright blue over the orderly street. When the police barricades were removed there’d be no reminder of last night’s events; no permanent marker of the blood that had been spilled within. The Brewer family and the black man in the garden, however, would remember that Friday night forever.

  7.

  Emmanuel entered the European detective’s room at 10.30 a.m. with two goals: to fade in and fit in while doing what he could to solve the Shabalala case.

  Negus and two undercover cops Emmanuel knew by sight but not by name smoked cigarettes at the far end of the room. Both were of average height with razor-cut brown hair and pink, fleshy faces: they might have been brothers but for the eagle nose on one and the stuck-out ears on the other.

  “Christ above.” Dryer shuffled in, blue suit wrinkled and tie crooked. He mopped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “I need a cup of coffee with four sugars after last night.”

  “You’re early.” Emmanuel shed his jacket and hat.

  Dryer consistently arrived five to ten minutes after the start of the shift and always with an excuse for the delay. “When Lieutenant Mason telephones and says, ‘Be in the squad room at 10.30,’ I make sure I turn up at 10.30.”

  “Wise move.” The telephone number for the house in Houghton was on the temporary transfer sheet Emmanuel had filled out in Durban before moving to Jo’burg. The transfer sheet also listed his address as that of an ex-detective friend who knew to answer any impromptu visits with a simple, “Cooper is out. Drop by again in a couple of hours.” The real phone number and the fake address summed up his split life nicely.

  “Any idea what the guys from undercover are doing here?” Emmanuel asked Dryer. The fleshy-faced twins were not picked at random: they were companions from a life that Mason had formally renounced. The Lieutenant was gathering his boys.

  “If we’re short-staffed Mason brings in extra men to help,” Dryer said. “It’s normal.”

  “You made the early call, Sergeant Cooper. I’m impressed. I telephoned the number on your contact sheet but the woman who answered said you were gone for the day and she had no idea when you’d be back.”

  Emmanuel turned to face Mason, who stood in the doorway of the squad room with a dead-eyed expression. He wore a freshly pressed black suit and dark blue tie.

  “I never sleep late,” Emmanuel said. He locked away the memory o
f Davida lazing in bed this morning with Rebekah at her breast. If anyone could see through the skin of a situation to the raw bone of things, it was Walter Mason.

  “Fill the gaps.” The Lieutenant signalled the other detectives closer. “Bad news first: Ian Brewer died of his wounds an hour ago. This is a now a murder investigation. All holiday leave is cancelled immediately. The Police Commissioner called. He wants results and he wants them quickly.”

  Dryer groaned. Negus sucked on a cigarette and blew smoke rings. Emmanuel felt the pit of his stomach drop to his toes. He dreaded giving the news to Shabalala who was even now travelling on the fast mail train from Durban to Jo’burg, having been granted emergency leave by his boss, Colonel van Niekerk.

  “There is good news,” Mason continued. “We’ve received an anonymous tip-off about the red Mercedes stolen from the Brewers’ house last night. In two minutes we move out to search this Sophiatown address.”

  Mason held up a piece of paper with the information written in blue ink. Emmanuel leaned in and read the street name and number: Annet Street backed onto the sewage works, the houses and stores were within walking distance of the front gates of Saint Bart’s school.

  “Cooper, you’re with me in the lead vehicle. You know the township so you’ll navigate. The rest of you, follow close. With the assistance of the Sophiatown police we will spread out and perform a grid search of the area. Remain in pairs at all times. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” The gathered detectives, including Emmanuel, answered in unison. He mapped the street in his mind, recalling the boundaries of the coloured school and the dense collection of shanties and rickety fruit stands that hawked single mangoes and oranges. A Mercedes Benz in that environment would not last long. If they found a metal carcass, they’d be lucky.

  *

  “Wind up your window, Cooper,” Mason said. “I hate the smell of this place.”

  Emmanuel complied. Dust whirled through the patched together shacks and faded buildings. Populated for the most part by Black Africans, Sophiatown also contained a smattering of Jews, Indians and mixed-race couples intent on breeding brown-skinned children. Sophiatown defied the racial segregation laws. The ruling National Party despised the township on principle. To Emmanuel, the place smelled alive with people, food, smoke and dreams. Fastidious whites, like Mason, found Sophiatown’s lack of proper sanitation offensive.

  “You’ve worked here?” Emmanuel asked the Lieutenant and checked the rear-view mirror. Dryer and Negus followed almost bumper to bumper in the second black Chevrolet sedan, Dryer driving too close for fear of losing his way in Sophiatown’s back lanes. The third vehicle carried the undercover cops.

  “We mostly raided illegal shebeens. We found a few marijuana storehouses and liquor stills. The usual.”

  Mason had forgotten to add “and burning them down if they refused my protection”. Half of Emmanuel’s mind remained on the conversation while the other half-scrambled to find a calm spot to work out the next best move for Shabalala and his son. The tip-off about the Mercedes would prove to be bullshit. The investigation would find nothing: not a tyre or an ashtray. That would buy time.

  “This is your town.” The Lieutenant looked out at the rough dirt sidewalk and the gang of sweaty boys playing soccer with a ball made from cotton rags and string. It sounded like an accusation.

  “Used to be.” Emmanuel swung hard right into a rutted dirt lane strewn with garbage. “Not any more.”

  He wasn’t going to volunteer anything else. Lieutenant Mason had read his files. That was enough disclosure for Emmanuel. Colonel van Niekerk, his current boss in Durban, and Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Special Branch kept buried the one secret Mason could not uncover: Emmanuel’s voluntary resignation from the detective branch and subsequent racial reclassification from “European” to “mixed race” for close to a year. The missing pages were stowed away until such time as the Colonel or the faceless men at the Special Branch deemed them advantageous. Colonel van Niekerk kept his past quarantined from the likes of Mason. This protection came at a cost. Emmanuel owed the Afrikaner policeman his loyalty and remained in his debt. To Mason, his temporary boss, he owed nothing.

  “You lost touch with your friends when you left the township?” Mason kept fishing for information.

  “Yes. I did.” That was the truth, with a few major exceptions.

  “Must have been hard, being cut off from your roots.”

  “Not really,” he lied. Moving from the grit and pulse of Sophiatown to the brooding silence of the country had been hell for a teenaged boy. “I was young when I left here.”

  “The Jesuits say, ‘Give me a boy till he’s seven and I’ll give you the man’.” Mason pointed at the wash of life on the street. A three-legged dog hunted for scraps outside an open-air butcher with a sheep’s head on the wooden table. Children played pick up sticks in the dust while men and women talked in front yards and on corners, trying to make sense of the world. “This township formed you, Cooper. Made you into the man you are today.”

  The implications of Mason’s statement were too weighty to consider. He’d smoked his first joint on the back stoep of an illegal bar not ten minutes walk from this laneway. A twelve-year-old “white kaffir”, Emmanuel had spent his time with teenage gangsters and whores, making plans, all of them bad.

  8.

  That’s it.” Emmanuel pulled over to the curb two doors down from a brown building with the number 33 painted on the wall in yellow. A blue van with some native policemen inside parked on the verge.

  “Sophiatown foot police,” Mason indicated the six black Constables who jumped from the van and stood on the sidewalk.

  Their bull-necked white Sergeant leaned against the back door and smoked a cigarette. “We’re looking for a red car hidden somewhere in this area. Stay sharp and keep your eyes open. If you find the car, blow your whistle and a European officer will find you. Get busy.”

  The native police spread out with bemused expressions. Did the white Lieutenant not see the rusted corrugated shacks riddled with holes and patched together with cardboard? If a car was left here, it was because the owner wanted it stripped for the insurance money.

  “Cooper, start at the end of the street and take the left-hand side. Work back in the direction of the van. Check every alley and backyard. I’ll interview the people in the house.”

  “Will do,” Emmanuel said and moved off. Mason didn’t pair him up with another detective, presumably because the inhabitants of the township would recognise him as one of their own.

  Shanties sprouted everywhere. A line of black girls sat cross-legged on the scrubby verge and braided each other’s hair into cornrows. Sullen boys with caps pulled low onto their heads loitered in doorways. Emmanuel searched dirt lanes too narrow for cars and neglected yards too small to lie down in. Mason was wasting time. The search proved how little he knew about township life.

  A slight black boy, about eight years old and with a head doused in white louse powder, sat on the sidewalk and angled a mirror to catch the sunlight. Reflections rippled across the walls of a dilapidated tuckshop. Emmanuel crouched beside him.

  “Can I see that?” he asked. “I’ll give it back.”

  “Promise?” Twitchy fingers tightened their grip on the object and the boy’s brown eyes were large in his dirty face.

  “Cross my heart.” Emmanuel held out his hand. The cracked mirror was encased in metal and weighed heavily in his palm. He turned it over. Flecks of silver brushed off the surface. “Where did you get this?”

  “Just there, ma baas.” The boy pointed to a space between two dilapidated shacks. “I was walking, looking on the ground for money. I found it fair and square.”

  “Keep it. It’s yours.” Emmanuel returned what was likely to be the side view mirror of a Mercedes Benz Cabriolet to the boy and took a closer look at the opening. Chest-high scrub was piled up as a barricade. He ran a fingertip across a streak of red paint scratched into the corrugated i
ron wall.

  He stripped away the branches. Hot colour showed through the leaves. With a quarter of the barrier torn down, the curved lines of a car bonnet became visible. He pulled out more scrub and threw it onto the street. Four more big branches and he could see the whole car: a red Mercedes Benz Cabriolet with black leather seats and a missing side mirror.

  Emmanuel opened the driver’s side door and leaned inside. The interior reeked of cigarettes. He flipped the ashtray: butts smoked down to the filter spilled onto the carpeted floor. The fuel gauge needle slumped near empty.

  A Sophiatown Constable stopped at the alley entrance and blew his whistle to call the other European detectives to the scene. Emmanuel slid behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. His knees hit the dashboard. The seat had been pushed forwards to allow contact with the foot pedals. The last person to drive the Cabriolet had short arms and legs, a description that didn’t match Aaron Shabalala.

  “Make a path.” The rear-view mirror reflected the street. Mason broke through the crowd of pedestrians who’d gathered at the entrance to the alley. Dryer and Negus and the ring-ins from undercover operations appeared next to Mason. “Police business. Move back.”

  Emmanuel got out of the car, still puzzled by its location. He’d known from the age of six which gangsters controlled the trade in stolen cigarettes, which ones did jewellery, and which ones could make cars disappear. Why was this car still here? At any given time there might be three or four buyers willing to pay cash for a ride like this.

  “Good work, Cooper.” Mason tapped his fingers on the car bonnet. “How far are we from Saint Bartholomew’s school?”

  “About a three-minute walk,” Emmanuel said. Cassie’s statement and the recovered Mercedes Benz put Aaron Shabalala on the lip of the volcano. He’d better provide a credible alibi or else get used to living out the remainder of his days in a cell with a bucket to squat over.