A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  “I told you. He was buying supplies—”

  “Everyone out of the room,” Emmanuel said. “Winston. You stay.”

  “Sergeant—” Hansie stood fidgeting in the doorway. “It’s for you. The telephone.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s the old Jew. He says it’s urgent and I must get you now now. Straightaway.”

  Davida hurried to him and whispered “Granny Mariah” so that her mother didn’t hear it.

  “I’ll check,” Emmanuel said, then spoke to Hansie. “Stand guard and don’t let anyone leave until I get back. You understand? No one.”

  “No one,” Hansie repeated, and took up position in the middle of the doorway, hands on his hips in a direct imitation of a police recruitment poster printed in the English and Afrikaans newspapers. “Why stay on the farm or serve in a shop?” the advertisment seemed to say. Why indeed, when a few months’ training translated into instant authority over ninety percent of the population?

  Emmanuel walked into the office where King had shown him the native spells kept by Pretorius senior and picked up the telephone on the desk.

  “Detective Cooper?” Zweigman sounded like he’d run a mile in wooden shoes.

  “Is it Granny Mariah?”

  “No, she is recovering. Davida?”

  “Recovering also.”

  “And the boy?”

  “In custody,” Emmanuel said. “We’ll be transporting him to Mooihoek in a few hours.”

  “Good.” Zweigman dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do not come near the town and be careful on the roads also.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “The brothers searched my house and Anton’s. Nothing serious. Torn books, overturned furniture. Amateur theatrics…” The old Jew was unfazed by the thuggish actions of the Pretorius boys. No doubt he’d seen several libraries’ worth of books burned on Nazi bonfires and watched a continent bombed to rubble. He didn’t scare easily.

  “They are still searching for you,” Zweigman added.

  Emmanuel listened carefully. There was no possibility of returning to town, not after what had happened to Louis on the mountain.

  “What did you mean about the roads?” he asked. If he couldn’t get to Mooihoek this evening he needed to make alternate plans. On the King farm he was a sitting duck for the Pretorius brothers and the Security Branch.

  “The Security Branch has sent four teams of men out to set up roadblocks leading to and from the town.”

  “Why?”

  “This I do not know. Tiny was ordered to take his finest liquor to the police station and it was he who passed this news to me.”

  “Any idea where the roadblocks are? Or what they’re looking for?”

  “No idea.”

  Emmanuel paused to consider his position. If the roadblocks were set up between King’s farm and Mooihoek, then he was trapped until daybreak.

  “Doc,” he said after a pause. “What’s the best way to store a dead body overnight?”

  Emmanuel sat down opposite Winston at the kitchen table and studied him for a moment. The rest of the family were in the sitting room under Hansie’s guard. Winston appeared composed. Zweigman’s phone call had given him time to collect his thoughts.

  “Let’s talk about Captain Pretorius,” Emmanuel began. He kept his tone friendly and relaxed.

  “I only met him a few times,” Winston said.

  “Funny, the way history repeats itself. Your mother must have been about Davida’s age when she took up with your father. Maybe a little younger.”

  “I’ve never done the maths,” Winston said.

  “I think you have. You know better than most people the kind of life Davida was headed for.”

  “My mother’s been very comfortable.”

  “One child taken away and dressed up to pass as white, the other traded for a piece of land. That’s ‘comfortable’?”

  Winston got up abruptly and walked to the stove, where he warmed his hands despite the heat in the kitchen.

  “I made a mistake,” he said. “I realize that now.”

  “Explain that to me, Winston.”

  “I should have gone after my father instead.”

  Emmanuel asked slowly and deliberately: “Did you kill Captain Pretorius at Watchman’s Ford last Wednesday night?”

  Winston looked him in the eye. “He took Davida’s chances away when she had so few to begin with. That was unforgivable.”

  “Did you kill him, Winston?”

  “I was in Lorenzo Marques on Wednesday night. I bought supplies for the Saint Lucia Lodge. I have five witnesses who will testify to that in court.”

  “Only five? Surely your father can afford more.”

  “He can. But five will do.”

  “I’m curious. Captain Pretorius was pulled into the water,” Emmanuel said. “Why?”

  “Maybe the killer didn’t want to leave him on the sand with his fly open and reeking of sex. Maybe the killer felt sorry for him in the end.”

  “You have some regrets, then, about shooting Captain Pretorius last Wednesday night?”

  A hardness showed itself beneath the surface of Winston’s face. Surviving as a fake in the white man’s world had taught him how to protect himself and his family at all costs. He smiled but said nothing.

  Emmanuel wondered what kind of world Winston King lived in. His whole life was a lie. Even his fair skin and blue eyes were a lie. It didn’t help that he lived in a time when the term “immorality” was applied to interracial sex and not to the raft of laws that took away the freedom of so many people.

  “What about Davida?” Emmanuel asked. “Do you have any idea what will happen to her?”

  “She didn’t kill Pretorius. She has no case to answer.”

  Emmanuel wanted to slap Winston across the face. He showed no remorse for Captain Pretorius’s murder and no understanding of how his actions would affect his darker-skinned sister.

  “Davida gets to walk into the sunset? Is that what you think?” Emmanuel said. “All thanks to you?”

  “She’ll go to Western Cape University and she’ll get to live her own life. Surely that’s worth something?”

  “Davida’s a key witness in the murder of a white policeman. She’ll be put through the wringer. In court. In the newspapers. The dirt will stick to her for the rest of her life. Do you really think she’ll go to university?”

  “I didn’t think that far ahead,” Winston muttered. “I didn’t think about it.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Emmanuel said. “You’re a white man. Remember?”

  Emmanuel sat down next to Shabalala and considered the health of the case. Sick but not fatal. He had a written statement from Davida for the docket and a five-sentence lie from Winston claiming to be in Lorenzo Marques buying supplies on the night Captain Pretorius was murdered. No confession, but enough to haul Winston in for formal questioning in the near future. That was the end of the good news.

  “A couple of miles along the main road?” Emmanuel repeated the information the Zulu constable had given him, hoping he’d gotten some part of it wrong. The men from the Security Branch were smack between them and Mooihoek.

  “Yebo. A car and two men are at the roadblock, waiting.”

  “Any chance of getting by them?”

  “Across many farms and through many fences, but not at night. Not in the dark.”

  The police van was now parked in the circular driveway in front of King’s homestead. Van Niekerk didn’t have the power to call off a Security Branch roadblock, and Emmanuel wasn’t inclined to let the major know about the mess he was in.

  “They won’t let us through without searching the vehicle,” Emmanuel said. “We’ll have to spend the night here and check the roads at dawn.”

  “What shall we do with him? The young one?”

  “King’s icehouse out beyond the back stoep. Zweigman said that’s the best place for him.”

  “Home,” Shabalala said. “That
is the only place for him.”

  “Not much of a home after the lies his father told.”

  “To live in this country a man, he must be a liar. You tell the truth”—Shabalala clapped his hands together to make a hard sound—“they break you.”

  20

  HE FELL THROUGH the sky, and his body twisted and arched in the air like a leaf on the wind. He smelled wild sage grass and heard the sweet, high voice of Louis Pretorius singing an Afrikaans hymn. A tree branch snapped and he continued to drop at incredible speed toward the hard crust of the earth. He called out for help and felt a gust of cold wind tear across his face as he plummeted without stopping.

  Emmanuel sat up gasping for breath in the darkness. He felt around him; his fingers brushed a blanket and the hard edges of a wrought-iron bedstead. He had no idea where he was. No memory of lying down in a wide bed with soft sheets in a room that smelled of fresh thatch and mud.

  To the right of the bed he found a box of matches and, in the weak light cast by the flame, found an unused candle with a fresh wick. He lit the candle and tried slowing his breath to normal. The naive tribal designs painted onto the bare concrete floor helped place him. He knew where he was. A just completed guest bedroom attached to the back of Elliot King’s homestead.

  The quiet rustle of the reed mat at the foot of the bed alerted him to her presence and he held up the candle to cast light farther into the room. She sat on the floor with her chin on her drawn-up knees like a pensive child.

  “Did your father send you?” he asked. “Or your brother?”

  “Were you dreaming about the mountain?” She shuffled forward and placed her elbows on the mattress. He was sweat stained and shaky, but she showed no fear of him.

  “Yes.” Emmanuel saw no point in lying and it was a relief to tell the truth to someone who had been there. “I was.”

  “Was he in the dream?”

  “Just his voice. Singing,” Emmanuel said. “I fell off the side of the mountain and went down like a stone. You?”

  “He was washing me under the waterfall and when I looked down, the skin on my arms was torn to ribbons. I saw the white of my bones through the flesh.”

  “He’s gone. The dreams will stop but it might take a while,” Emmanuel said. After the ordeal on the mountain, he knew he represented a safe haven from all the terrible things Louis had done to her in the name of purity. All victims of war and violence felt a bond with those who save them. The bond was fragile, however, and should not be encouraged. Now was the time to tell her to disconnect. Life would resume and they would be strangers to each other again. That was as it should be.

  She moved closer and Emmanuel didn’t stop her.

  “Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asked.

  “Why would I think that?”

  “Because of the captain and what I did with him.”

  “You had good reasons for everything you did,” he said, and realized, with a sense of discomfort, that this was the first personal conversation he’d held with a nonwhite person since his return from Europe. Interviews, witness statements, formal and informal questioning: he came into contact with every race group in the course of his work but this was different. She was talking with him. One human being to another. Her skin shone velvet brown in the candlelight.

  “Do you think God knows everything?”

  “If there is a God, he’ll understand the position you were put in. That’s as close to philosophy as I come in the middle of the night.”

  “Hmmm…”

  The sound was low and thoughtful. She tasted the idea of an understanding God. She reached out and touched the scar on his shoulder. He glimpsed sanctuary in her eyes and felt the warmth of her skin and her breath. Easy now, Emmanuel told himself. This is a police operation: a murder investigation in which she figures centrally. This was no time to give in like a vice cop at the end of the shift.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  The sleeve of her nightdress fell back to her elbow and he touched the long red scars along her arm.

  “So are you.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. Her mouth felt lush and warm and yielded to his. Her tongue tasted him. She climbed onto the bed and slid herself between his legs, then rested her hands on his knees as the kiss continued, an endless dance.

  He pulled back. Not far enough to convince himself or her of his intention to disengage.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  “I want to be in charge this time.” Her hands slid over his thighs to his wrists, which she held in place with a firm grip. “Will you let me be in charge, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper?”

  She gave him power and asked for it back in the same breath. It was exciting and shaming: that raw appeal to his rank.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Sleep pulled him under, past riptides and eddies to a place of safety. He slept like the dead but the dead did not bother him. He was in the burned-out cellar of his dreams with the woman curled against his back for warmth.

  “Get up!” The command was barked loud and clear into his ear. “That is an order, soldier!”

  Emmanuel pushed his face deep into the pillow. He wasn’t ready to leave the cocoon. The war could go on without him.

  “Up. Now!” the sergeant major said. “Put your shorts on. You don’t want them to find you bare-arsed, laddie.”

  The bottle of white pills, still almost half full, stood next to the spent candle stub. Emmanuel reached for it and saw, through half-open eyes, the pale pre-dawn light that crept through the curtains.

  “Forget the pills,” the sergeant major said. “Shorts first and then wash your face, for God’s sake. You smell like a Frenchman.”

  Emmanuel sat up, alert to the rumble of voices on the other side of the bedroom door. He reached for his shorts and pulled them on, then touched Davida on the shoulder.

  “Get up,” he whispered. “Put your nightgown on.”

  “Why?” She was sleepy and warm, the crumpled sheets wrapped around her body.

  “Company,” he said, and lifted her up by her shoulders so he could drop her cotton shift over her head.

  “Whatever happens, stay low and don’t say anything.” She was now wide awake and alert to the footsteps outside the door. She slid off the bed and sprang into the corner like a cat.

  Outside, King’s voice was raised in protest. “There’s no need for this—”

  Emmanuel stood up and the door smashed inward. Silver hinges flew into the air and Dickie and Piet appeared as solid black silhouettes against the gray dawn light in the open doorway.

  “Down! Down!” Piet’s handgun was drawn, hammer cocked, finger on the trigger. “Get down.”

  Emmanuel sat on the edge of the bed, conscious of Davida hidden in the dark corner behind him. She was low to the ground and silent, but it was inevitable that Piet and his partner would find her.

  “Get the curtains, Dickie.”

  Two more Security Branch men pushed King back toward the main rooms of the house.

  “That’s my property!” King fumed. The Security Branch officers pressed him into the kitchen. One of the men remained on guard in the corridor while the other returned to the destroyed doorway. Piet and Dickie had come with backup. Thank God the mad Scottish sergeant had woken him up. He had his shorts on and Davida had her nightdress on. That was something.

  “You’re in a world of trouble,” Piet said. “The Pretorius brothers are opening the icehouse now. What are they going to find, Cooper?”

  Emmanuel tried to absorb that information. Did Shabalala leave his lonely vigil outside the icehouse and walk to Jacob’s Rest with the news? No. Shabalala would never leave Louis alone, not for a second.

  The sound, half scream, half howl, was terrible to hear. The Pretorius boys had found their baby brother lying cold and blue among the bottles of fizzy soft drinks and ice cube trays. Emmanuel got to his feet, thinking of Shabalala facing the rage of the grieving Pretorius family a
lone.

  “Sit down.” Piet clipped his gun back into the holster and began to walk a slow circuit of the room. He kicked a pile of discarded clothing with his foot and randomly lifted artifacts and books. He stopped at the foot of the bed and peered into the corner.

  “Well, well, Cooper,” he said, “this explains why this room smells like a whorehouse.”

  A cold finger of fear touched Emmanuel’s spine. He had to get Piet away from Davida, even if it spared her only a few minutes of his special attentions.

  “Is that the only place you get to be with a woman?” Emmanuel said. “In a whorehouse? Makes sense with a face like yours. I hope you leave a decent tip.”

  “Secure this package, Dickie.” Piet indicated Davida’s hiding place and lurched toward the bed where Emmanuel remained standing.

  “You are in my world now, Detective Sergeant Cooper.” Piet was unnaturally calm. “You should show some respect.”

  In Piet’s world, fear and respect were the same and Emmanuel wasn’t going to show either without a fight. Davida cowered in Dickie’s shadow and he went on the offensive.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. There were rules about how white policemen dealt with each other and Piet was walking a thin line.

  “I was invited.” Piet fumbled in his grubby jacket and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes. The stench of stale beer, sweat, and blood wafted from him. “King sent one of his kaffirs to the police station to ask for our help. A hell of thing, the old kaffir making it there on a bicycle in the dark.”

  “Why would King need you?” He already knew the answer. Why wait for a team of Hebrew lawyers to get to work when it was possible to play one branch of the police force against the other and muddy the waters even further? King had smelled his separation from the main task force and used it against him: basic warfare tactics. There was only one flaw in the plan. The rich Englishman hadn’t planned on the Security Branch finding Davida in the room with him, and against all reason Emmanuel was glad of the knowledge. Davida had come to him of her own accord.

  Piet lit a cigarette and inhaled.