Present Darkness Page 4

  Instead, he saw Cassie Brewer standing with her right palm pressed to the glass, her yellow nightie a splash of colour under a pale face pinched tight with fear. She stepped aside and switched off the light, leaving a black void.

  *

  The girl took quick, shallow breaths though her open mouth. The rough cotton sack covering her face wasn’t a pillowcase grabbed up from a bed and shoved into a pocket. It was designed and made for this purpose alone: to be pulled over the head and then tightened around the neck with a drawstring. The exact fit frightened her. More so than the soft purr of the car engine that sang for miles and miles of smooth, tarred road that led away from the city and all her familiar places.

  The kidnappers smoked cigarettes in silence. The smell of tobacco and leather permeated the sack. The frayed end of the drawstring rubbed against her neck, irritating her skin. They’d left her hands free but she dared not loosen the string. Any movement might attract attention and it was safer to remain quiet in the back seat, unmolested, at least for the length of the ride.

  She could feel leather under her thighs. Wind rattled the passenger side window and her dry breath caught in her throat. Seventeen years old and already an expert at running away. Charity homes, juvenile facilities and Christian youth camps, no place held her for longer than she wanted to be there—and the interior of this immaculate car was not a place she wished to be.

  Escape remained possible; a quick lift of the door handle, a hot rush of summer air and then a leap into the dark. Landing on the road would hurt. The alternative—staying with men who owned homemade hoods and prowled alleyways for lone prostitutes—would hurt multiple times more. One way or another, tonight would end in her blood.

  She moved her right hand across the supple leather, slowly inching in the direction of the door. The tarmac ran smooth beneath the car wheels. The road would lead her back to the city, to the room with a single cot in the corner and a window ledge decorated by pigeon droppings; a dump made beautiful in her mind’s eye.

  Cool metal curled under her hand. Blood roared in her ears, drowning out the wind that rattled the window glass. Now. It had to be now. Her fingers lifted the handle. She eased sideways, ready to take the leap. A hand encircled her wrist and tugged her away from the door with a jerk.

  “Do you know who I am, sweetheart?” the man who’d blocked the alleyway asked. His fingers tightened against her skin to make a handcuff.

  “No,” she croaked. In her heart she already knew plenty about the big man. He was patient: sitting in the front seat, smoking a rollie, waiting for her to break cover like an antelope drinking at a waterhole. He was not angry that she’d tried to escape. He was amused. Cold enjoyment, the girl knew from experience, was worse than violent rage.

  “I’ll tell you who I am, sweetheart,” the big man said. “I am your salvation.”

  4.

  Negus dozed on an iron cot pushed into a corner of the European detective’s room at Marshall Square Police Station. The room was a large space with cracked linoleum floors and two fans that whirred from the ceiling. Wooden desks covered with paperwork and empty coffee cups cut the space into a grid.

  “No-one waiting for you to get home, Cooper?” Mason stood in the enquiry room door with an unknotted tie, rolled-up shirtsleeves and damp patches under his armpits. The station interview rooms sweltered in summer.

  “Just a bed,” Emmanuel said and threw his hat on his desk. The weight of one more lie added to all the others barely registered. Besides, the Lieutenant asked too many questions.

  “One of the boys, Nkhato, has been released,” Mason said. “The senior priest at Saint Bart’s confirmed he was in bed at lights out. That was at nine. He’s clean. Makes you wonder what other errors that Brewer girl made.”

  “A bad ID on both boys is possible,” Emmanuel agreed. That would be a sweet result even if the Police Commissioner cancelled holiday leave until an arrest was made.

  “It’s possible.” Mason stifled a yawn. “I need you in with the Shabalala boy. Work your magic. Play up the born and bred in Sophiatown angle and maybe he’ll tell you the truth about where he was last night.”

  “What makes you think he’s lying?” Emmanuel asked. The Sophiatown angle? The Lieutenant had definitely gone through the personnel files and picked up details that should have remained private.

  “You’ll see.” Mason retreated into the corridor and proceeded to the last door on the right. Emmanuel followed. There was still a chance the schoolboy in the interview room and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala were not related.

  Mason opened the door to a windowless room painted prison green. A bright electric bulb cast a harsh light over the small wooden desk and the black youth seated with his back against the wall. Plucked from bed by the police, he wore blue cotton pyjamas and polished brown leather school shoes without socks. A school blazer hung over the back of his chair, superfluous in the heat. Mason shut the door and leaned against it.

  “I’m Sergeant Cooper,” Emmanuel said, sitting down opposite the boy. He was clearly a younger version of Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala of the native branch. “And you are?”

  “Aaron Shabalala. And I have already told the other policeman everything. Many times.” If Aaron knew who Cooper was, he wasn’t showing it.

  “I wasn’t here,” Emmanuel said. “You’ll have to tell me where you were earlier tonight.”

  “I was at school, then at Principal Brewers’ house, then at home.” Aaron stretched out his legs, already familiar with this line of questioning. He was tall even when seated and muscle was starting to fill out his shoulders and chest. His broad face had no expression. Whatever his emotions were, they were hidden behind a calm façade. Emmanuel recognised the cool countenance and the loose physical grace with which the Zulu youth moved.

  “Do you know why the Lieutenant and I are asking you about where you were last night, Aaron?”

  “Some men broke into the principal’s home and beat him and his wife,” the young Shabalala said in a quiet voice. “The principal was a good man. His wife was hospitable. They took us into their home and fed us with kind hearts. I would never harm these people.”

  “What about their daughter?” Cassie had blushed before describing the Zulu youth. There might be something there. “Did she also have a good heart?”

  Aaron hesitated, caught out by the question. The mask that hid his feelings slipped, and a bright flash of anger registered in his dark brown eyes. He cleared his throat and said with careful deliberation, “The daughter sat and ate at the table with us.”

  “Did you go back to the Brewers’ house after you’d finished eating dinner, Aaron?” The anger Emmanuel had seen was brief but real. The Zulu youth had a temper. He controlled it well but what might happen when that control slipped?

  “I did not go back to the principal’s house. I got off the bus and walked for a long time. Then I went back to my home.”

  Mason sucked his teeth to show what he thought of that answer. Emmanuel felt the same. The boy would have to give up a name, a location and at least one witness to back his story.

  “Where did you go, exactly?” A bar crowded with drinkers, a card game, a brothel; any place with people, would be a plus.

  “Nowhere. Just walking.”

  Emmanuel retrieved his pen and notebook and placed them neatly on the tabletop. “Give me the name of one person, just one, who saw you wandering through Sophiatown on Friday night.”

  “I kept to the shadows. Nobody saw me.”

  “Really?”

  “It is so.”

  Surely this boy, the son of a detective constable, understood the penalties for serious assault and theft. What part of “you’re in deep shit” did he not comprehend? A knuckle rapped hard against the interview room door.

  “Lieutenant,” Detective Constable Negus’s sleep-affected voice said. “Phone call for you.”

  “Take a message. I’m busy,” Mason said.

  “I already
offered but the man says it’s an emergency and you must come now. Something about a shepherd and his sheep.”

  “All right.” Mason straightened and gripped the door handle. “You’re with me, Cooper. We’ll give Shabalala ten minutes to think about what he really did last night and hope that he remembers the truth by the time we get back.”

  “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 ca
ndle. “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.