A Beautiful Place to Die Page 7

“Constable Shabalala, please tell your colleague that I did not make the peeping man up.”

  Shabalala stared at the floor, uncomfortable at being included in the questioning. He cleared his throat. “There was a man. The captain looked but did not find anyone.”

  “No arrests?”

  “No,” Shabalala answered.

  “The man would have been found if it was European women being harassed,” Zweigman said. “The activity stopped and it was never mentioned again.”

  “Did you have occasion to comfort the scared women? It’s easy for emotions to get heated up when there’s an element of danger.”

  “Ah…” Zweigman had regained his composure. “How your mind works: always looking for the dirty secret. I will repeat. I am not and never was ‘ficken,’ as you so gently put it, any of the women in my wife’s employ.”

  “Captain Pretorius came to see you a couple of times this year. What for?”

  “To give me advice. Don’t be seen with women other than my wife after dark. Don’t let my employees become too friendly. Don’t go to social get-togethers with coloureds or blacks. Don’t forget you are a white man and not one of them. Would you like me to go on?”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I did not.” Zweigman took off his glasses and wiped them down on the front of his shirt. “I do not own a gun or know how to use one. Anton the mechanic across the road and my wife Lilliana will both tell you that I was here in the shop until after ten trying, unsuccessfully, to balance the store accounts.”

  Emmanuel wrote the witnesses’ names down. He had no doubt they’d supply Zweigman with gold-plated alibis. Two suspects both accounted for during the hours Captain Pretorius was shot. His thin list was washed out on the first full day of the investigation. It was time to join Hansie in the door-to-door. He had to turn over some rocks and see what spiders crawled out from underneath.

  Emmanuel sat upright in bed, mouth open, gasping for breath. He was in darkness and sweat beaded on his skin. Deep in his stomach he felt the familiar ache of fear. He slid a hand over his body, to check for injuries. The bullet wound on his shoulder had long since healed and the cut on his cheek from Donny’s insane girl blitzkrieg was only a nick. No knife, no blood.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The dreams came and went, but never with the woman. She was new. No way to know who she was. The cellar in his dream was in darkness, always. The pattern of events the same: a bombed-out town. The patrol moving on foot from one ruin to the next, checking and double-checking for the enemy. A routine sweep of a wine cellar. He turns to leave. The blade slices deep into his flesh and he falls forward into darkness and pain.

  That was the dream, played out in an eternal loop. Every door-to-door he conducted as a detective brought up memories from the bottom of the well. Things weren’t so bad now. He didn’t scream anymore, or reach for a light to bring himself back to reality.

  Emmanuel breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and imagined the corner of the cellar again. The smell of the woman fills the space. His ex-wife? No, her scent was English tea rose and iced water. Angela, so polite and restrained, would never claw and lick and bite. Sex was for the half hour before bedtime. Primal cellar fucking was not her thing. Fucking was not her thing.

  He lay back down. The woman was no one he knew from his waking life. Surely he’d remember if she was. Why hadn’t the dream ended with them falling, naked and warm, into a black morphine sleep?

  The sound when it came was crisp and distinct. A footstep on the gravel pathway leading to his door. He held still. This was not a dream. This was Jacob’s Rest and the crunch of gravel was close and getting closer. He slid off the bed and moved in the darkness toward the door. Moonlight spilled in from a crack in the curtain. He crouched close to the handle. The screen door opened, then closed just as quickly. Then the sound of something heavy pressed against the mesh, and the footsteps grew fainter.

  Emmanuel pulled the door open hard. Across the yard, a figure moved quickly into the shadow of a sprawling jacaranda tree and slipped into the night. Emmanuel charged at the screen door, ready to fly. The door jammed, held closed by the weight of a whitewashed stone borrowed from the garden edging. He pushed again, and the door gave way.

  “You! Stop!”

  Emmanuel sprinted out into the moonlit night. The sound of the intruder’s footsteps running hard across open ground drove him on. He felt the brush of tall grass and tree branches against his body. Dark houses disappeared behind him. He was on a kaffir path heading out to who knows where. He sped up and glimpsed the figure rounding a bend just ahead. After the bend, the path split into two. He sprinted to the left and pressed on, full throttle for a few minutes, until he realized he was alone and running blind into the moonlit veldt.

  A wave of nausea hit and he doubled over. His lungs were on fire, the bile rose up in his throat. Four years in the Detective Branch and he’d never been outrun. Down alleyways and over fences he was the fastest in the department. Whoever led him on this barefoot marathon across sand and stone had not let up or slowed down. Emmanuel sucked in a mouthful of cool night air. He’d been beaten clean and clear by a country mile.

  He closed his eyes and, without warning, there she was. The woman in the cellar, lit just enough for him to see her brown-skinned arms reaching up to him. Definitely not a European. One of the women from Zweigman’s shop: the delectable Tottie with her juicy mouth and grab-on-to hips? Or could it have been Sally, pockmarked and eager to please?

  You have to get out, get laid, he thought. Call the brunette who works the tie and hat counter at Belmont Menswear. She was perfect. Attractive, willing, and most important, white. Black and brown women were for vice cops with carnal appetites and no ambition. Mrs. Pretorius would have him hanged for being sinful enough to have the dream.

  “Move and I’ll blast you, mister.”

  Emmanuel felt the heat of a spotlight on his bare back and heard the click of the safety releasing. He froze.

  “Put your hands up where I can see them, and turn around to face me. Slow like.”

  Emmanuel did as he was told and the glare of the spotlight shone in his face. He squinted and saw two dark figures standing side by side.

  “Who you?” the man with the gun demanded.

  Emmanuel kept his hands held high, palms spread open like flags of truce. He was a barefoot stranger in pajama pants caught panting in the darkness. If they shot him now, a jury would move to acquit.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper. I’m here to investigate Captain Pretorius’s murder. My ID is back at the boardinghouse.” He concentrated on sounding sane.

  “My fat behind.” The man with the torch spat onto the ground. “Even white men can’t be policemen if they’re crazy.”

  “The Protea Guesthouse.” Emmanuel stuck to familiar things. The men were local and coloured, by the sound of it. “I was at Zweigman’s shop this afternoon. Ask anyone who works there. They’ll tell you who—”

  “Shut it, mister.” The man with the light stepped closer. “You people think now Captain’s gone you can come back and interfere with our women?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Get down on your knees or I’ll get my man here to shoot you for the fun of it.”

  Emmanuel turned his head away from the white glare of the light and slowly sank to his knees. The men stepped closer and he sucked in his breath, ready for the kicking he knew was coming. Heat from the spotlight burned his face.

  “Who you got?” the question was shouted across the veldt. Another coloured man come to join the hunting party.

  “Crazy white man,” the gunslinger called back. “Says he’s a policeman.”

  The third man picked up pace until he was running hard toward them.

  “Jesus Christ, Tiny.” The third man gasped for breath. “That’s him. That’s the detective from Jo’burg.”

  �
��You kidding me? Look at him.”

  “Truth’s faith.” The new arrival swore an oath. “That’s the detective. He came to my place this afternoon with Shabalala.”

  Emmanuel placed the voice. It belonged to the coloured mechanic who’d alibied Zweigman. A lanky man with dark brown skin and a gold filling set into his front tooth.

  “Anton Samuels,” Emmanuel said, still on his knees. “Number one mechanic in Jacob’s Rest. That’s what Constable Shabalala told me.”

  “I will be as soon as my shop is up and running again,” Anton said, and stepped forward to offer Emmanuel his hand. “I’ve got a month or so to go before I rebuild, but I’ll get there.”

  The safety was back on the gun and the spotlight aimed at the ground by the time Anton pulled him to his feet. There was a tense silence. The men waited for a cue. Assault of a white police officer meant jail time. An assault carried out by armed coloured men meant jail time with hard labor and regular beatings thrown in. Shooting him and slipping away was probably their best option.

  “Sorry about this,” Emmanuel apologized. “I must have given you a fright, running around like a lunatic in the middle of the night. I’m lucky you didn’t shoot me right off.”

  “Lucky for all of us, Detective,” Tiny said. He was a small man with a few wisps of coarse hair combed in a grand sweep across his skull. What he lacked in height and hair he made up for in girth. His stomach curved in front of him and strained against the buttons at the front of his shirt.

  “I’m Tiny Hanson.” He cleared his throat to minimize the quaver in his voice. “This here is my son Theo.”

  “A half-naked white man out on a kaffir path,” Theo said. He was six inches taller than his father but already beginning to run to fat. “That’s something I never thought I’d see. You do this sort of thing in Jo’burg, Detective?”

  The men laughed nervously, aware of how much still lay in the balance. One wrong move could send them plunging over a precipice, with no hope of a rescue mission to pull them out.

  “I thought you were used to white policemen on these paths. Didn’t the captain run on them all the time?”

  “Ja, but he had clothes on.”

  “Good point.” Emmanuel smiled. “Where did you guys come from, anyway?”

  “Liquor store,” Anton replied. “Tiny and Theo are back from Lorenzo Marques tonight. We were having a card game out the back when we heard you run by.”

  Emmanuel glimpsed a pale window of light to his left. He had no idea where he was. Off the grid of main streets, there was no way to orient himself. The kaffir paths put him on the outside looking in.

  “Will you take a drink, Detective?” Tiny offered politely. “Theo will show you back after.”

  Under usual circumstances the invitation was breaking all the rules. Coloured men and white police officers were not natural drinking partners.

  “Okay,” Emmanuel said. Sleep was a long way off; the dreams waited for him to return to his bed. “It’ll help wash the dust from my mouth.”

  “I own the liquor store,” Tiny said proudly, and moved toward the light. “I have enough to wash the dust from your throat and your stomach, too. I got new stock in from Mozambique. Port. Whiskey. Gin. You name it.”

  “Did you bring it in through the border post or across the river?”

  “I do everything legal. The captain knew that and I never had no trouble. A bottle or two to those at the border post. A keg of beer to the police station. I make sure everyone gets their share.”

  Tiny pushed open a wooden gate and led the party into a small courtyard at the rear of the liquor store. Three kerosene lanterns hung from hooks in the rafters of a lean-to built up against the back door.

  “Well, my share is a glass of whiskey,” Emmanuel said. A card table was set up in the middle of the lean-to. “What’s your game?”

  “Poker.” Theo poured a triple measure into a clean glass and slid it across the table. “You play?”

  “Used to,” Emmanuel said. “Where’s your other player?”

  “Harry,” Theo called into a darkened corner. “You can come out, it’s just the detective from Jo’burg.”

  A sunken-chested old man with a waxed mustache shuffled out of the corner and slid into the vacant seat. His skeletal frame was weighed down by an army-issue greatcoat decorated with service medals and faded ribbons from the Great War.

  Emmanuel took the seat next to the old soldier, who’d no doubt been dumped into the back blocks of the Empire with a warm coat to keep out the memories of gas and gunshots. There but for the grace of God…, Emmanuel thought.

  “Relax, Harry,” Anton said kindly. “It’s just past midnight. You’ve got another hour before you get in trouble. I’ll make sure you get back on time.”

  “Harry here is married to Angie, who works for the old Jew’s wife,” Tiny explained. “She’s very strict with the poor fellow. Isn’t she, Harry?”

  “Tough. Tough,” the man muttered to himself. “Tough on everything.”

  Emmanuel remembered Angie. Older and out of humor was how he’d labeled her. Right on the money, as it turned out.

  “You in, Detective?” Anton asked.

  Emmanuel took a mouthful of whiskey. Staying was foolish. It would put the whites off side if they found out and make the investigation more difficult than it needed to be.

  “Deal me in,” he said. “What’s the ante?”

  “Five matchsticks,” Tiny informed him seriously. “You sure you can afford it? I hear they don’t pay police so well these days.”

  “I can handle it,” Emmanuel answered with equal gravity. “Someone will have to stand me. I’ve got nothing on me.”

  Theo slid the matchsticks across the table. “Look at you, man. You’ve got a body like a tsotsi. How’d you get like that?”

  “Scratches from my little run tonight. The bullet wound from the war.”

  “My grandfather was German,” Tiny said, and topped up the glasses. “From Düsseldorf, he said.”

  “Mine, too,” Harry muttered. “Mine, too.”

  “No, man,” Theo corrected him. “Your grandfather was the Scottish preacher who drank like a fish. Ask Granny Mariah, she’ll tell you.”

  “Who are your people?”

  It took Emmanuel a moment to realize that the question was addressed to him. He took a deep swallow of his drink before he answered. There was no shame at this table in being a product of the Empire: impure and resilient.

  “English mother. Afrikaner father.” He had no idea why he told the truth. He didn’t speak about his parents often, and in the last four years on van Niekerk’s instruction, not at all. They were one of the things he kept at the bottom of the well.

  “Ah.” Anton laid his cards down with a flourish. “So, you’re mixed race just like us. Imagine that.”

  The laughter was loose and natural, greased by the whiskey and the dark blanket of night. South Africa, with its laws, each more punishing than the last, was a long way from the backyard of Hanson’s fine liquor merchants. The unreal truce would hold until tomorrow.

  “Hope it wasn’t one of my relatives that did that to you, Detective.” Tiny gestured at the bullet wound. “We aren’t all bloodthirsty like the English say.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Emmanuel said. “You almost finished me off tonight. Must be the Kraut in you.”

  “No! Honest,” Tiny protested over the easy laughter. “We thought you was the pervert. With captain gone, who knows what will happen?”

  “They never caught the guy?”

  “Not that we know of,” Anton said. “The old Jew kicked up a fuss, but the police said to forget about it. Go home. It’s over.”

  Tiny swallowed his tumbler in one hit. “That’s why I don’t mind serving Donny Rooke in my shop. The white hotel banned him, but I say he’s served his time and done the right thing by the girls. I don’t like what he done, but I know about it. The whole town knows.”

  “You should have seen Don
ny when the captain came into the store the other night,” Theo said. “So scared he almost kaked himself. The man who molested our women should be the same way. Instead, he’s walking around free as a lark.”

  “What night was that?” Emmanuel asked. Theo and Tiny had been out of town when the door-to-door happened. Their information wasn’t on file yet.

  “Wednesday.” Tiny threw his losing hand down with a grunt. “The night the captain passed.”

  “What time?”

  “Some time after six. Donny was running late and I opened the store especially for him. He’s fonder of the bottle than he used to be, is Donny.”

  “The captain came by?”

  “Ja, once a month he’d come by for a little bottle. Just a tot.”

  “Donny saw him?”

  “Heard him.” Theo snorted. “He was hiding behind the counter like an old woman.”

  “Pretorius know he was there?”

  “No. The captain didn’t stay long. Had to go to old Lionel’s place to get bait worms, so he took off. Donny stayed another half hour or so, till he was sure the captain had cleared town.”

  Emmanuel threw his cards in and noticed the casual way his own hands performed their task. Donny was back on the list with time, opportunity, and motive next to his name.

  “Well, that’s me done for. Got to get some sleep before the big day.”

  “All of us,” Tiny agreed. “Got to look respectable for a funeral, that’s one thing I remember from mission school.”

  Anton tapped Harry on the shoulder. “Time to make a move, my man, if you don’t want a fry pan to the head like last week.”

  “Home.” Harry sank the last of his drink. “Home.”

  “I’ll see you back, Detective,” Anton offered when they stepped out onto the kaffir path. “I’ve got to walk Harry to his house, and he lives just on the edge of the Dutch area.”

  Emmanuel waved good night and started down the path behind Anton and Harry. First thing tomorrow morning he and Shabalala would pay Donny a visit, and this time he and his child bride were going to tell the truth. He was going to give Donny a good reason to cry.

  “The Protea Guesthouse is down there to the right.” Anton aimed his torch at a narrow path wedged between two houses. “It would be better if you went alone. That part of town is off limits for us at night.”