A Beautiful Place to Die Page 8

  “Thanks.” Emmanuel shook Anton’s hand and watched him slip away into the veldt with Harry trailing behind. The old soldier’s voice drifted back in a thin and broken rendition of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

  Emmanuel followed the path and emerged into the gardens of The Protea Guesthouse. The coloured mechanic had saved him from a beating and worse. Donny wouldn’t be so lucky. The screen door groaned, and then a flash of white at the corner of his eye. A torn piece of paper was wedged between the frame and the mesh. He pulled it free. His late-night visitor had left him a present. Moonlight hit the page. Two words in black ink: “Elliot King.”

  5

  THE SHEET OF corrugated iron gave way and Emmanuel was in, crouched in the dim interior of the shack. Donny Rooke was sandwiched between his wives, head thrown back like a walrus bull protecting his harem with rumbling snores. Emmanuel crossed the room before Donny opened his eyes. He grabbed the redhead by the throat and lifted him from the squalid bed. The smell of unwashed bodies wafted from under the blankets and he heard the cry of the girls as he swung Donny out and pinned him naked against the wall.

  “You lied to me, Donny.”

  “Leave him!” The older girl was on the attack. Emmanuel felt the sting of her fists across his back, then came the sound of her flailing and kicking in midair. Shabalala had the furious girl off the floor. Emmanuel kept his focus on Donny.

  “You lied to me,” Emmanuel repeated calmly, and eased his hold on Donny’s neck a fraction. “Why did you lie?”

  “Scared—” Donny gasped for breath.

  “That was your excuse for running yesterday. You have to come up with something a lot better or I’ll give you good reason to be scared. You understand me, Donny?”

  “Please—”

  “You. Englisher.” It was the older girl. “Tell the kaffir to get off me. He can’t touch me. It’s against the law.”

  Emmanuel pushed Donny into a chair and turned to the girl sitting naked on the sofa. Shabalala was behind her, a hand resting firmly on her head, his gaze directed at the floor. The strange, paternal scene was undercut by the grotesque angle of the girl’s hips, which tilted upward to offer a full view of everything between her thighs.

  “Close your legs.” Emmanuel picked up a thin sheet from the floor where it had fallen and threw it over the girl’s lap before turning back to Donny. “You ready to tell me the truth or do you need me to help you remember?”

  “No.” Donny cowered in the chair. “I was too scared to tell you yesterday. Honest to God.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew it would look bad. Me being the last person to see Captain Pretorius in town.”

  “At the liquor store?”

  “No,” Donny insisted. “On the kaffir path that goes behind the coloured houses.”

  Emmanuel pulled up a chair opposite Donny. The chair tilted to the side and came to rest at a crooked angle, like everything else in Donny Rooke’s life. He picked up a discarded shirt from the floor and handed it to the naked man.

  “On Wednesday?” Emmanuel prompted.

  “Ja. I go in once a week to pick up supplies. This day I was running late and it was getting dark when I got to Tiny’s shop.” Donny stopped to pull the shirt over his bruised body. He didn’t bother with the buttons. “While I was picking up my bottles, Captain Pretorius came in and I hid behind the counter. I didn’t want him to see me. I thought he’d take the bottles off me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Captain left and I stayed behind. I thought I’d give him long enough to get his worms and head out fishing. I went out on the kaffir path. The sun was down, so I took it slow. I came around the bend, heading toward the hospital, and saw the police van parked behind a tree. I hid myself and waited for him to leave.” Donny pulled his shirt tight around himself. “I wasn’t spying. I was waiting for him to leave. That was all. I swear it.”

  “Then?”

  “I heard footsteps. I looked up and he’s standing there with his torch pointing right at me. ‘You spying on me, Donny?’ he says. I say, ‘No, Captain, I’d never do nothing like that. Never.’ He laughed and I almost wet myself. There was something…” Donny struggled with his poor vocabulary. “Something like a stone about him. Hard like. He didn’t raise his voice, nothing like that. I said, ‘Listen, Captain—’ and bam.”

  Donny swung his head around to indicate a slap to the face. “He hits me like this, then he lays into me with his fists. He beat me down to the ground, then he grabs my hair and says, ‘This is just a taste of what you’ll get if I catch you spying on me again.’ I wasn’t spying but I says, ‘Yes, Captain.’ He pulled me up and brushed some dirt from my shirt, like I’d fallen all by myself. Then he picks up my bottles and gives them to me. ‘Don’t forget these. You’re going to need them tonight,’ he says. My hands was shaking, I was so scared. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ I said, and limped away as fast as I could.”

  “What time you get home?”

  “I don’t know,” Donny cried. “He beat me like a dog. There was pain all over my body. I got no idea how long it took me to get back from town.”

  “You own a clock?”

  “It’s broken.”

  “You own a gun?”

  “Ja, of course.” Donny pointed to a ledge behind the kitchen sink. Emmanuel got up and removed the gun. He slid the bolt back and wasn’t surprised when the whole piece fell to the floor.

  “Own any other guns?”

  “No.” Donny motioned to the girl on the couch. “She’s good with a slingshot…”

  Emmanuel returned the rifle to its stand and sat down in the tilting chair. The sight of Donny, naked but for the shirt yawning open at the front, was unsettling. He pressed his palms against his eyes as Donny began a quick slide off the suspects list. The killer was patient and careful. The crime scene was neat and controlled. Donny Rooke was a shambles. Body, mind and shack: all in disarray. He was the sort to leave a flask engraved with his name and address next to the corpse.

  “You were angry at Captain Pretorius for handing you a beating. You wanted to get him back, get revenge.” Emmanuel kept down the path.

  “I wanted to get as far away from him as I could. There was something…” Again a struggle for words. “…wrong about him. Different.”

  “Did you follow him?”

  “And get more of the same? No dice. I came straight home and pushed the furniture against the door.”

  Emmanuel looked over at the elder girl. She was tougher than most of the gangsters he ran into in Jo’burg. He turned to the younger sister, a silent figure huddled under the weight of a tattered patchwork quilt. She was his best bet. He approached slowly and squatted by the side of the bed.

  “I’m Detective Cooper,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Marta.” The voice was barely audible.

  “Did Donny tell you how he got hurt, Marta?”

  “Ja.”

  “How’s that?”

  The adolescent chewed on her bottom lip before answering. “Said Captain Pretorius kicked the kak out of him. Belted him black and blue for no reason.”

  “What did Donny do when he got home on Wednesday?”

  “Got into bed and cried. In the finish we give him a second bottle to put him to sleep, he was making so much noise.”

  “He didn’t leave again?”

  “No, he was too drunk to stand up.”

  “I was hurt.” Donny rushed to defend himself. “My arm still don’t work properly from where he punched me. Look.”

  He struggled to raise his right arm above shoulder level. There was no doubt he’d been worked over thoroughly and that Captain Pretorius’s hands with their bruised knuckles were the perfect fit for the assault.

  “Why didn’t you say this yesterday? You have the injuries, and you have witnesses to back up your story.”

  Donny’s laugh was a thin, bitter sound. “Who was going to believe he beat me for no reason? A ‘good man’ like him. Never s
moked or swore in front of women. Always friendly like. And me here with nothing. The whole town would laugh at me. Call me a liar.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No, if you’d seen Captain Pretorius that night you’d understand.” Donny went down on his knees, his shirt thrown off to highlight his dire circumstance. “I left him on the kaffir path and came straight home. I didn’t know nothing else till a coloured boy told Marta he was dead. As God is my witness.”

  Emmanuel doubted that God and Donny were on speaking terms, but his own gut reaction was now a solid feeling. The pathetic man kneeling in front of him was, in all likelihood, not the killer.

  “Constable Shabalala. What do you think? Is our friend here telling the truth?”

  Shabalala spoke with deep pity. “I think this man could not kill the captain. This man is not strong enough to do this thing.”

  “That’s right. Look at me.” Donny jumped up and used his skinny body as an exhibit. “Look. I hardly got any muscles. No way I could handle someone as big as Captain Pretorius.”

  “Put your clothes back on, Donny. That’s not what Shabalala is talking about.”

  The killer wasn’t physically strong: he and Shabalala both knew that. It was mental strength Shabalala was talking about, a toughness of the mind. Emmanuel wondered about the tight-lipped constable. He never volunteered information and didn’t comment unless specifically asked to. There was resistance there, a stubborn refusal to get involved.

  “Hey, you.” It was the older girl, peeved at not being included in the conversation. “Is it true what they say about Englishmen? That they like it with boys?”

  “You shut it, you hear?” Donny rushed toward his wife, fists clenched with violent intent. The girl stared him down.

  “Sit,” Emmanuel instructed Donny quietly. The shack and its inhabitants were beginning to seep into his skin. He picked up a cotton dress, discarded on the floor, and handed it to the older girl. She stood up and allowed him to get a good look at her. The flat stomach and small high breasts, the thatch of strawberry blond hair covering her mons. And most arresting of all, the defiant sexual invitation glittering in the dark brown eyes.

  “We have to get to the funeral,” he said to Shabalala. Brassy young girls did nothing for his libido.

  “Yebo,” the black policeman answered with relief. The squalor of the shack was beginning to get to him, too.

  “If I have to come back here again,” Emmanuel said to Donny, “you’re going to get a double dose of what Captain Pretorius gave you. That’s a promise.”

  “Ja, of course, Detective.” Donny was giddy with relief. “Everything I said is true as the Bible. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  The older girl flashed Emmanuel a look of disgust when he passed by.

  “Scrotum licker,” she said coolly in Afrikaans, certain that the English detective had no taste for girls. Emmanuel made his way out to the sunlight.

  Donny followed them to the car, shirt open like a tent flap. “Detective, if you find my camera—”

  Emmanuel slammed the car door behind him and flicked the key. “I’ll make sure to bring it to you.” Emmanuel eased the car into first gear. He gave it some juice. Donny and his sad dirt yard were soon behind them.

  “Did Captain Pretorius get rough with people?”

  “No,” Shabalala answered firmly.

  “Why Donny?”

  “That one”—Shabalala motioned in the direction of Donny’s receding figure—“he came to the station and asked Captain Pretorius for his camera. The captain said he did not have such a thing and Rooke called him a liar and a thief.”

  “Captain Pretorius give him a tap or two?”

  “No, but I think maybe Captain remembered what this man said to him.”

  Emmanuel turned onto the main road leading back to Jacob’s Rest. The image of Pretorius’s bruised knuckles was clear in his mind, as were the faces of the townsfolk when they talked about their murdered police captain. “Righteous” and “upstanding” were two words that came up frequently. That was the problem. The righteous also believed in punishment and retribution.

  “Up here,” Emmanuel instructed a puffy-eyed Hansie, who jumped onto the car’s mudguard. “Tell me when you see him.”

  Hansie rubbed his swollen lids and squinted at the mass of people pouring out of the graveyard of the Dutch Reformed church. First came the blacks who had been on the outer rim of mourners, then the coloureds, then the inner core of whites. The whole district had turned out for the funeral. Every inch of space on the street leading to the church was taken up by bicycles, cars, and tractors driven in from outlying farms. Many more blacks from the location had come into town on foot. The captain’s death had turned Jacob’s Rest into a bustling metropolis.

  “Well?” Emmanuel prompted. Shabalala had been invited into the Pretorius family’s honor guard, which left Hansie as his only source of local intelligence. The phrase almost made him laugh.

  “I can’t see him,” Hansie said. “Maybe he didn’t come.”

  “If he’s alive, he’s here. Keep looking.”

  “I am.” Hansie sulked as the crowd pressed out of the church grounds.

  A curvy brunette made her way toward the street. “Is that Elliot King with the brown hair and the big breasts?” Emmanuel said.

  “No.” The young policeman hiccupped in surprise. “Mr. King has light hair.”

  Emmanuel thought Hansie was joking, but there was no spark in the dense blue eyes, just a teenaged yearning to be close to the sweetie jar. A powerful mix of sadness and longing had sucked the last spark of energy from a brain that had no backup generator.

  “Go,” Emmanuel said. It was time to cut his losses and find an alternate source of local knowledge. Hansie was as much use to him as a blind parrot. “I’ll see you back at the police station later this afternoon.”

  Hansie was down and pushing his way through the crowd before the sentence was finished. The brunette was still on the church grounds when the most senior police official in Jacob’s Rest, eighteen-year-old Hansie Hepple, laid a hand on her shoulder.

  At least he feels something, Emmanuel thought. In a small crush of coloured people he caught sight of Anton, the level-headed mechanic who’d saved him from a beating. He motioned him over.

  “Elliot King,” he said after they’d exchanged greetings. “Can you tell me where he is without pointing him out?”

  Anton’s brown eyes flickered over the gathering with quick intelligence. “Under the tree to your left, paying his respects to the family. Fair haired, wearing a safari suit.”

  Emmanuel spotted him right off. He exuded the kind of casual ease that comes from sitting on a pot of family gold. The tailored khaki suit was a nice touch. It imparted a rural man-of-the-people charm without diminishing his superior status.

  “Money?”

  “Sugar mills and now game farms.”

  Elliot King proceeded down the line of family members, shaking hands as he went. The chill from the Pretorius men reversed the midday heat by a few degrees. Even Louis managed a look of disdain.

  “What’s up?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Captain Pretorius sold the old family farm to King a year or so ago. They think King cheated the captain on the price.”

  “Did he?”

  Anton shrugged. “Captain never complained about the money, only the sons.”

  “Anything come of it?”

  “Just a lot of hot air. Silly talk from the brothers about King being a swindler, but King is too big for them to mess with. The Pretorius boys don’t like it when they don’t get their way.”

  “You know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of them?”

  “Everyone in Jacob’s Rest has had a taste. I’m no different.”

  Emmanuel was about to ask for more details when two newcomers to the family group caught his attention. The men, crewcut commando types, were squeezed into the cheap cotton suits worn for court appearances and interrogation c
ell duties. Both were drawn from the “rough justice” section of the training manual. Neither appeared capable of playing the soft man, versed in worming confessions out of prisoners using empathy and skill. They were the Security Branch.

  “Friends of yours?” Anton asked.

  Emmanuel jumped off the mudguard and pulled Anton down after him. The crowd washed around them like a black sea, momentarily blotting out the presence of sharks in the water. Emmanuel took a deep breath. Two days. Just long enough to select personnel for the assignment, brief them, and arrange transport. The Security Branch had no intention of taking a backseat. They were in on the investigation from the start. “Taking an interest” was just the bullshit they’d thrown van Niekerk’s way to keep things calm while they marshaled their forces.

  “Don’t know them,” Emmanuel replied. “But I’ve got a feeling they’ll introduce themselves to all of us soon enough.”

  Anton swallowed. “Should I be worried, Detective?”

  “Are you a political man? Do you belong to the Communist Party or a union that disagrees with the National Party laws?”

  “No,” the coloured man replied quickly. “Can’t say I like what’s going on, but I’ve never done anything about it.”

  “Are all your identification papers in order?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Then keep it that way,” Emmanuel said. “The Security Branch is here to look for political activists, and whatever the Security Branch looks for they find.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Anton answered quietly. If the Security Branch had the power to spook a white detective, what chance did a coloured man have?

  “You know how to play the game, Anton. Just keep playing it.”

  “You a strange man,” Anton said lightly. “What do you know about the game, anyway?”

  “I was born here. Everyone in SA has to know their place. Some of us are pawns and some of us”—he stopped and motioned in the direction of Elliot King, who was walking toward a canvas-topped Land Rover parked on the street—“are kings. I’ll see you later.”