A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  “Shhh. Ma. Shhh…” Louis slipped into the room and kneeled beside his mother. He kissed her on the cheek, and mother and son held on to each other for a long moment. There was a startling resemblance between the youngest Pretorius boy and the fragile woman who held him in her arms.

  Out of his grease-covered overalls, Louis was comfortable in the room full of women. He was blonder and finer boned than the sisters-in-law, buxom farm girls built to outlast famine on the veldt.

  Emmanuel glanced over at Henrick and caught a flicker of discomfort. How had the captain felt about the soft boy who bore no resemblance to the hard-edged Pretorius men?

  “It’s okay,” Louis whispered. “I’ll take care of you, Ma. I promise.”

  Emmanuel waited until mother and son loosened their grip on each other. The daughters-in-law murmured comforting words.

  “Mrs. Pretorius…” Emmanuel knew he was about to make himself unpopular. “May I talk to you alone? I have a few questions I need answered and it would be better if we had some privacy.”

  “Not Louis,” Mrs. Pretorius said. “Louis stays.”

  The daughters-in-law glared at him and walked out of the room to join the family groups congregated on the back stoep. He waited until the sound of their whispers faded, then said, “Mrs. Pretorius, when was the last time you saw your husband alive?”

  She held on to Louis’s hand. “Yesterday morning. We had breakfast together before he went to work.”

  “Did he say he was going anywhere unusual or meeting anyone in particular?”

  “No. He said he was going fishing after work and that he’d see me in the morning.”

  “You were normally asleep when he came home from fishing?”

  “Yes. Willem used the spare room so he wouldn’t disturb me.” She squeezed Louis’s hand tighter. “I had no idea he wasn’t home until Hansie came…”

  She began to cry and Henrick stepped into the room. Emmanuel held his hand up like a traffic policeman and Henrick stopped in his tracks.

  “Can you think of anyone who would do this to your husband, Mrs. Pretorius? Anything he told you would help.” Emmanuel kept his voice soft and urgent.

  “Come, Ma,” Louis said. “Tell the detective what you know.”

  The blond woman took a deep breath. When she looked up, her eyes were hard as uncut diamonds.

  “The old Jew,” she stated flatly. “Willem said he caught him hanging around the coloured area at night. He was up to some funny business.”

  “Did your husband catch him doing something?” That would explain Zweigman’s resentment.

  “No. You know how clever Jews are. Willem saw him going in and out of different coloured girls’ houses after sunset. It was obvious what he was up to, so Willem gave him a warning.”

  “Did he tell you how Zweigman reacted?”

  “He didn’t like it, I know that. Willem had to see him a few times before he was sure Zweigman had stopped.”

  “Did Captain Pretorius have problems with anyone else?”

  She was ahead of him, ready with the answer. “That pervert Donny Rooke. Willem sent him to jail for taking dirty pictures of the du Toit girls. He’s been back in Jacob’s Rest four or five months.”

  “He lives out past the coloureds,” Henrick said from the doorway. “He doesn’t come into town unless he has to. His brother runs the shop now.”

  Emmanuel remembered Donny’s All Goods on the main street. “He was angry with the captain for sending him to jail?”

  “Of course. The worst sinners don’t believe they should be punished for their sins.” There was no mistaking the contempt in her for the morally weak. “Willem helped guide this town and now he has been struck down. I pray to God for swift retribution upon the killer.”

  “Amen,” said Louis.

  Emmanuel shifted in his seat, unnerved by the intensity of the woman in front of him. There was no room in her for forgiveness.

  “Anyone else?”

  Mrs. Pretorius sighed. “There was always trouble with the coloureds, drinking and fighting, that sort of thing. They find it hard to control their emotions no matter how much white blood they have in them. Willem understood that, and tried not to be too hard on them.”

  Emmanuel flicked his notebook to a clean page. He’d heard every race theory in South Africa. None of them surprised him anymore. “Can you remember any specific names?”

  “No. Lieutenant Uys will know all the coloured cases. Shabalala will know the native cases. They were a good team, Willem and Shabalala. Everyone respected them. Everyone…”

  The tears came again and Emmanuel stood up before Henrick had a chance to kick him out. He flicked his notebook closed and put it in his pocket. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Pretorius. Please accept my condolences on the loss of your husband.”

  Louis sprang up and made it to the front entrance ahead of him. He swung the door open and leaned a shoulder against the wood frame. “You’ll catch the killer, won’t you, Detective?”

  “I’ll try.” Emmanuel stepped out onto the veranda. “I can’t promise you any more than that, Louis.”

  “My grandfather was Frikkie van Brandenburg and Pa was a police captain. Your boss sent the best detective out, didn’t he?”

  Stuck in the shed all day, Louis had no idea about little sister Gertie’s botched call to headquarters. As far as the teenaged boy was concerned, the police department had handpicked Emmanuel to break the case open.

  Emmanuel let him down easy. “I’ve solved quite a few cases and I’ll do everything I can to solve this one. Good night, Louis.”

  “Good night, Detective.” Louis’s voice followed him as he crossed the veranda and walked down the stairs to the garden. He made his way back to the police station.

  Emmanuel paused at the corner of van Riebeeck and Piet Retief streets, and felt himself pulled in the direction of the liquor store. Instead, he turned toward the station and Constable Shabalala.

  Now he understood: Frikkie van Brandenberg was the reason the Security Branch was involved. Captain Pretorius was son-in-law to one of the mighty lions of Afrikaner nationhood, a man who preached the sacred history of white civilization like an Old Testament prophet. No wonder the Pretorius brothers hated Zweigman. Jacob’s Rest was too small to contain two tribes claiming to be God’s chosen people.

  The main street was empty. Lights from the garage made a yellow circle in the darkness. A fragment of memory flickered to life. He was running barefoot down a small dirt lane with the smell of wood fires all around him. He ran fast toward a light. The memory grew stronger and Emmanuel pushed it aside. Then he disconnected it.

  4

  DOWN THERE.”

  Shabalala pointed to a corrugated iron shack anchored to the ground by rocks and pieces of rope: Donny Rooke’s house since his fall from grace. Emmanuel pulled the sedan into the patch of dirt that was the front yard. The early-morning light did nothing to soften the hard edge of poverty.

  He exited the car, and the first stone, sharp and small, hit him in the cheek and drew blood. The second and third stones hit, full force, into his chest and leg. The stones hit hard, and he lost count of them as he ran behind the car to take shelter. He crouched next to Shabalala, who calmly wiped blood from a small cut in his own neck.

  “The girls.” Shabalala raised his voice over the torrent of sound made by the pebbles hitting the roof of the car.

  “What girls?” Emmanuel shouted back.

  Shabalala motioned to the front of the car. Emmanuel followed and risked a quick look out. Two girls, skinny as stray dogs, stood at the side of the shack, a pile of rocks in front of them. Behind them, a man with blazing red hair took off across the veldt.

  “Go after him,” the black policeman said, and filled his pockets with stones. “I will get the girls.”

  Emmanuel nodded and sprinted full speed across the dirt yard. A stone knocked his hat to the ground, another skimmed past his shoulder, but he kept the pace up, eyes on the redhead
ed man running into open country.

  “Ooowww!” There was a high-pitched squeal, then the sound of yelping. Shabalala walked calmly toward the girls, his stones hitting their target with sniper-like accuracy. The girls scuttled into the shack, seeking shelter.

  Emmanuel cleared the side of the dilapidated vegetable patch and ran hard. The gap closed. Donny slowed to catch his breath, his hands resting on his knees. A minute more and Emmanuel body-slammed Donny, who toppled over with a groan. He held the redhead’s face in the dirt for longer than he needed to, and heard the dust fill his mouth. The dents in his Packard meant he’d have to write a detailed damage report. He pressed down harder.

  “Where you going, Donny?” He flipped the choking man over and looked down at his dirty face.

  “I didn’t do it. Please God, I didn’t do anything to the captain.”

  He pushed a knee into Donny’s chest. “What makes you think I’m here about Captain Pretorius?”

  Donny started to cry and Emmanuel pulled him up with a jerk. “What makes you think I’m here to talk about Captain Pretorius?”

  “Everyone knows.” The words came out between broken sobs. “It was him that put me in jail. He forced me to live out here like a kaffir.”

  Emmanuel pushed Donny toward the shack. His cheek stung from where the stone had broken the skin and his suit was covered in dust. All in pursuit of a man with less sense than a chicken.

  “There’s your army.” He shoved Donny between the shoulder blades and forced him to look at the girls, now crouched in the dirt next to Shabalala. They were hard faced and thin from living rough.

  “Inside,” Emmanuel said. “We’re all going to have a talk.”

  The girls picked themselves up and slipped in through the rusting door. Emmanuel followed with Shabalala and Donny.

  “Nice place,” Emmanuel said. There wasn’t a piece of furniture not propped up by a brick or held together with strips of rag. Even the air inside the shack was inadequate.

  “I used to have a good home,” Donny said from the edge of the broken sofa. “I was a businessman. Owned my own place.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was—” Donny started, and then bent over with a groan. His right arm hung limp by his side.

  “You hurt him,” the oldest girl said. “You got no right to hurt him. He didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  Emmanuel pulled Donny into a sitting position. He’d been rough with him, but no more. This pain was something else.

  “Take your shirt off,” he said calmly.

  “No. I’m okay. Honest.”

  “Now.” The faded shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a collection of dark bruises spread out across Donny’s stomach and chest.

  “What happened?”

  “Fell off my bicycle, landed on some rocks.”

  Emmanuel checked the tear-streaked face, saw the swelling at the corner of the weak mouth. “A rock hit you in the mouth as well?”

  “Ja, almost broke my teeth.”

  Emmanuel glanced at Shabalala, who shrugged his wide shoulders. If Donny had taken a beating, he knew nothing about it.

  “You were telling me about your business.”

  “Donny’s All Goods. That was my shop.”

  “What happened?”

  Donny pulled at an earlobe. “Border gate police told Captain Pretorius about some photos I brought in from Mozambique. He didn’t like them and had me sent off to prison.”

  “What kind of photos?”

  “Art pictures.”

  “Why didn’t the captain like them?”

  “Because he was married to that old piece of biltong and me here with two women of my own.”

  “He was jealous?”

  “He didn’t like anyone having more than him. Always top of the tree. Always putting his nose into everyone else’s business.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “He didn’t like me.” Donny was in full steam now. “He stole my photos and my camera, then put me in jail. Now look at me. Skint as a kaffir. He should have been the one in jail. Not me.”

  “Where were you last night, Donny?”

  Donny blinked, caught off guard. His tongue worked the corner of his bruised mouth.

  “We was here all night with Donny,” the older girl stated. “We was with him all the time.”

  Emmanuel looked from one hard-faced girl to the other. Their combined age couldn’t have been more than thirty. They stared back, used to violent confrontation and worse. He turned to Donny.

  “Where were you?”

  The girl had given him time to collect himself. “I was here all day and all night with my wife and her sister. As God is my witness.”

  “Why did you run?” Emmanuel asked quietly.

  “I was scared.” The tears were back, turning Donny’s face into a mud puddle. “I knew they’d try to pin it on me. I ran because I thought you’d do whatever they asked you to.”

  “We was here with him all the time,” the child wife insisted. “You have to leave him alone now. We’s his witness.”

  “You sure you were here, Donny?”

  “One hundred percent. Here is where I was, Detective.”

  Emmanuel took in the sordid ruin that was Donny Rooke’s life. The man was a pervert and a liar who’d scraped together a flimsy alibi, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Don’t leave town,” he said. “I’d hate to chase you again.”

  The air outside Donny’s squalid home smelled of rain and wild grass.

  “Detective.” Donny scuttled after them with Emmanuel’s filthy hat as an offering. “I’d like my camera back when you find it. It was expensive and I’d like it back. Thanks, Detective.”

  Emmanuel threw his hat into the car and turned to face the scrawny redheaded man. “Just so you know, Donny. Those are girls, not women.”

  He slid into the sedan and gunned the engine, anxious to leave the shack behind. The car wheels bumped over the potholed road and threw up a thin dust serpent in their wake.

  “Where are the parents?” he asked Shabalala.

  “The mother is dead. The father, du Toit, likes drink more than he likes his daughters. He gave the big one as wife, the small one as little wife.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence.

  The mechanical hum of sewing machines filled Poppies General Store as Emmanuel and Shabalala walked in for the second time. Zweigman was behind the counter, serving an elderly black woman. She pocketed her change and left with a parcel of material tucked under her arm. Zweigman followed and shut the doors behind her. He flipped the sign to “Closed,” then turned to face his visitors.

  “There’s a sitting room through this way,” Zweigman said, and disappeared into the back. Emmanuel followed. For a man about to be questioned in connection with a homicide, Zweigman was cool to the point of chilly. He’d obviously been expecting them.

  The back room was a small work area set up with five sewing machines and dressmaker’s dummies draped in lengths of material. The coloured women manning the machines looked up nervously at the police intrusion.

  “Ladies.” Zweigman smiled. “This is Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper from Johannesburg. Constable Shabalala you already know.”

  “Please introduce us,” Emmanuel insisted politely. He wanted to get a good look at the seamstresses. Maybe there was something to Mrs. Pretorius’s poisonous accusations. Zweigman did have access to five mixed-race women under the age of forty.

  Zweigman’s smile froze. “Of course. There’s Betty, then Sally, Angie, Tottie, and Davida.”

  Emmanuel nodded at the women and kept a tight focus on their faces. He ticked them off with crude markers. Betty: pockmarked and cheerful. Sally: skinny and nervous. Angie: older and out of humor. Tottie: born to make grown men cry. Davida: a shy brown mouse.

  If he had to lay money on Zweigman’s fancy, he’d bet the farm on Tottie. Light skinned and luscious, she was the kind of woman vice cops used as bait in immorali
ty law stings, then took home for a little after-hours R&R.

  “Gentlemen.” Zweigman opened a second curtain and led them into a small room furnished with a table and chairs. The dark-haired woman, so nervous yesterday, now poured tea into three mugs with a steady hand.

  “This is my wife, Lilliana.”

  “Detective Sergeant Cooper,” she responded politely, and waved him and Shabalala over to the table, which was set with tea and a small plate of cookies. Emmanuel sat down, senses on full alert. With a few hours’ notice, the old Jew and his wife had rebuilt their defenses and nailed all the windows closed.

  “Which one of those women are you ficken?” he asked conversationally, using German slang to sharpen the impact.

  Zweigman flushed pink and his wife dropped the plate of cookies onto the table with a loud crack. There was a drawn-out silence while she collected the cookies and rearranged them.

  “Please,” Zweigman said quietly. “This is not the kind of talk for a man to have in front of his wife.”

  “She doesn’t need to be here,” Emmanuel answered. “We’ll question her later.”

  “Take the ladies out for a walk, liebchen. The air will do you good.”

  The elegant woman left the room quickly. Emmanuel sipped his tea and waited until the front door closed. He turned to Zweigman, who looked suddenly stooped and worn down by life. There were tired circles under his brown eyes.

  “That was cruel and unnecessary,” Zweigman said. “I did not expect it of you.”

  “This town brings out the worst in me,” Emmanuel answered. “Now, which one of those women is the lucky one?”

  “None of them. Though I’m sure if you had your choice, you’d pick Tottie. I saw how you looked at her.”

  Emmanuel shrugged. “Looking was still legal the last time I checked the list of punishable offenses. Captain Pretorius thought you’d done a lot more than that.”

  “He was mistaken.” The answer was clipped. “I walked the ladies home after dark because there was”—he struggled to find the right word in English—“a peeping man in the area. It was purely a safety measure.”

  “Really?”