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 alone.
“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.
“We got a confession last night,” he said. “The colonel is on his way from Pretoria to pose for photos. It’s going to be a big case. Everyone wants a piece of the action.”
“He signed?” Emmanuel asked. Nobody, but nobody, in government was going to look too closely at the confession of a known Communist, least of all van Niekerk, whose ambition was to rise on the political tide. Piet and Dickie were bulletproof and Emmanuel himself was half naked.
“Of course,” Piet said. “So you can imagine my surprise when I heard you had someone else in line for the murder. A murder that I have a written and signed confession for.”
If he dropped it now and said he made a mistake about Winston King’s involvement, then apologized for the inconvenience he’d caused, maybe he’d get to fight another day. The Security Branch had outmaneuvered him and now a black man from Fort Bennington College was going to hang for crossing the river on a Wednesday instead of a Saturday.
Piet smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence and blew smoke rings into the air schoolboy style. A bad sign. He walked over to the pile of clothes, picked up Emmanuel’s discarded jacket, and rifled through the pockets until he found what he was looking for.
He held up Davida’s statement between thumb and forefinger.
“Your evidence?” he said.
“A statement.” Emmanuel didn’t give him any more. Nothing was going to stop Lieutenant Lapping from reading over the long list of damning allegations leveled at Captain Pretorius: adultery, manufacture of pornography, physical assault, and criminal misconduct as defined under the Immorality Act.
Piet unfolded the paper and read the handwritten statement. He finished and looked to the corner where Davida huddled at Dickie’s feet.
“You write this?” he asked.
Davida pressed deeper into the corner, afraid to look up, afraid to answer. Dickie reached down and slapped her across the face with an open hand, drawing blood from the corner of her mouth. Fear kept her silent.
“Answer,” Dickie said.
“Yes.” She pressed her hand against her throbbing cheek.
“Look—” Emmanuel got Piet’s attention. “You have your confession. This is nothing compared to what’s going on at the station.”
Piet smiled. “I’ll leave after you have been punished for disobeying orders and for getting on my f*cking nerves and not a moment before, Cooper.”
The pockmarked lieutenant stepped away to reveal Henrick and Paul Pretorius standing side by side in the smashed doorway. He held the piece of paper up for them to see.
“Know what this is?” Piet asked. “It’s a statement claiming that your father was a deviant and a liar who defiled himself by blood mixing. What do you have to say to that?”
The Pretorius brothers moved toward Emmanuel in a rage. He blocked a punch from Paul and ducked under Henrick’s sledgehammer blow before a jab to the stomach sent him reeling back onto the bed. The wooden beams of the ceiling tilted at a crazy angle above him. Paul breathed down on him.
“You’re going to pay,” he said. “For Louis and for the lies you’re telling about my pa.”
“Every word, true,” Emmanuel said, and tried not to tense when the punches hit him from every direction. He tasted bile and blood and heard the wet smack of his flesh yielding to fists. So, this is what Donny Rooke felt like out on the kaffir path: a punching bag in the Pretorius family’s private gymnasium.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Piet ordered. “You can’t take it out of him all at once like that. It’s dangerous. You have to slow down. Consider where you’re delivering the message and how.”
Emmanuel struggled to sit up. If Piet was calling the shots, he was in deep, deep trouble. The Security Branch officer could keep him alive and in pain for days. Piet took off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up to the biceps.
“Henrick. Hold him down and keep him down,” Piet instructed.
“I’m a police officer,” Emmanuel groaned. “What you’re doing is against the law.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Piet said. “This is a private beating carried out by two men whose brother you killed and hid in an icehouse.”
That did sound bad. Inaccurate, but a jury would think twice about punishing the Pretorius boys for taking out their anger on the man who Louis had said tried to molest him.
“Now,” Piet continued. “Start with a slap. Openhanded. Not soft and not hard. Just enough to get his attention.”
“You have my attention,” Emmanuel said, and Paul delivered a stinging hit across his cheek. Not too hard and not soft, either. The tin soldier was a natural.
“Good.” Piet was impressed. “Now pose a question and wait for the answer.”
“Why did you tell those lies about my pa?”
“No lies,” Emmanuel said. “Your pa liked to f*ck dark girls. Outdoors and from behind.”
Paul hit him hard across the face and sent the blood and spit flying from his mouth. The skin above his left eye burned and he focused on the enraged Paul Pretorius, who was struggling against Piet Lapping’s hold.
“Calm down,” Piet said. “That was too hard too early.”
“He said—”
“Cooper is testing you,” Piet pointed out with a scholarly fussiness. “The stronger prisoners will do that. Your job is to remain calm.”
“I almost forgot—” Emmanuel blinked away the blood that ran from a cut in his eyebrow. “Louis was the one molesting those coloured women last year. Your pa sent him off to a crazy farm. Check if you don’t believe me.”
“For Christ’s sake, shut up,” the sergeant major whispered as Henrick rose off the bed and hammered his fists indiscriminately into whatever patch of flesh he could find. Piet’s little talk on remaining calm clearly had no impact on Henrick.
“Get him off,” Piet instructed Paul. “We don’t want a dead policeman on our hands.”
Henrick’s weight lifted off him, but the pain remained and surged in waves from his toes to his cranium. His mouth was puffed and cut, which made taunting the Pretorius boys a linguistic challenge. He heard his own breath, ragged and defeated. An hour more and he’d be sausage meat.
“You understand now, don’t you?” Piet said. “You are in shit up to your elbows.”
Emmanuel shrugged. He knew he was in trouble: he could feel it in his face, his chest, and his stomach.
“Bring the girl,” Piet instructed his partner, and Emmanuel sat up straight. He was scared: for himself and for Davida, who appeared slight and nymphlike in her white cotton nightdress. This morning was going to be bad for everyone. What was Mrs. Ellis going through, knowing her girl was locked away with armed and violent men? Even King must know that he’d opened his door to a force he could not control. “Don’t be frightened,” Piet said to Emmanuel when Davida was pushed roughly around the foot of the bed. “The physical work is done and now we move to a longer-term punishment. One that you have kindly handed to me in the form of this girl.”
Emmanuel tried to stand but Henrick slammed him down. Davida’s face was streaked with tears but she didn’t make a sound.
“Was she was worth it?” Piet asked. “I hope so, because you’re going to spend the next couple of years in jail wondering why you flushed your life and your career down the toilet for one night between the sheets.”
Emmanuel worked his swollen tongue against the roof of his mouth until a semblance of feeling returned. He wanted Davida out of the room and out of harm’s way even if it meant going against van Niekerk’s orders about keeping the past hidden.
“No law broken.” Emmanuel managed to get the three words out, slurred but recognizable.
Dickie sniggered. “Have you forgotten what country you’re in? You’ve been caught with a nonwhite. You’re going to jail.”
“Not white,” Emmanuel said, even as he thought about van Niekerk’s response to what he was doing.
“I know she’s not white,” Piet said. “That’s why you’re going down.”
“Not white,” Emmanuel repeated.
Piet stared at him, dumbfounded. “F*ck off.” He grabbed a hand and checked the skin underneath Emmanuel’s fingernails for dark pigment. It was an old wives’ skin color test passing as science. He dropped the hand with a grunt. “You’re as white as me and Dickie here.”
Emmanuel reached down and lifted one of his leather shoes onto his knee. He slid a finger under the inner sole and pulled out a single piece of paper.
“The missing intelligence report…” Piet smiled. Most interrogations were intensely boring: the repetitive questions, the strangled denials, the hour-long beatings. There were no real surprises left on the job anymore.
Piet opened the page and whistled low in response to the information.
“Little Emmanuel Kuyper,” he muttered. “I remember the photographs of you in the newspaper. You and your little sister. You had the whole country crying.”
“What are you talking about?” Dickie tried to keep up with the conversation. He didn’t read much, not even the lowbrow daily papers that carried more pictures than print.
“Emmanuel Kuyper. That was his name before he changed it, probably to avoid the connection with his famous parents,” Piet explained. “Cooper here is the boy whose father was acquitted of manslaughter after the jury found he had good reason to believe a half-caste shopkeeper had fathered his children. A part-Malay, if I remember.”
“Bullshit,” Dickie said. “There’s not a drop of Malay blood in him. Look at him. He’s white, white.”
“That’s what caused the scandal.” Piet lit up again, lost in memory. “Half the country thought the father’s story was a pack of lies, while the other half thought the mother was a whore. During the trial, the father’s side of the family put the children up for adoption. An Afrikaner family who didn’t want them turned over to a coloured orphanage took in Cooper and his sister. You were brought up in a proper Afrikaner home till you left school, hey, Cooper? Probably threw a torch onto the bonfire with all the other Voortrekker Scouts at the Great Trek celebration.”
The feeling in Emmanuel’s mouth returned. He was going to burn a couple of bridges in the next few moments but he didn’t care about the consequences. So long as Davida walked out unharmed and he could follow her.
Piet squinted hard and flicked the intelligence report to the floor. “Your mother may have been f*cking the Malay,” Piet said, “but there’s not a drop of brown blood in you.”
“Prove it,” Emmanuel said.
There was a pause while Lapping examined the problem from every angle.
“Interesting,” he said. “We can’t charge you under the Immorality Act if you’re mixed race, but that doesn’t mean your life isn’t about to go down the drain if I pursue this claim and get you reclassified.”
“Go ahead,” Emmanuel said.
“You’ll lose your job,” Paul Pretorius joined in. “You’ll lose your home and your friends. Everything.”
“He’s going to lose all that anyway once he’s charged under the act.” Lieutenant Lapping circled Davida, thinking aloud all the while. “This way he saves himself and the girl from a public court appearance and makes them both innocent parties, as they’ve committed no offense. Clever.”
“He’s trying to weasel out of it.” Dickie was furious. “He’s changing the rules on us. Look at him. He’s white.”
“I think he is,” Piet said mildly. “But there’s no way to prove it, which is why Cooper has chosen to give us this report. Claiming to be nonwhite is his easiest way out. No prison term and as much black snatch as he can poke. Right, Cooper?”
Emmanuel shrugged. His life was spinning down the drain while Piet imagined him living it up in a shebeen full of black women. It didn’t surprise him. Blacks and coloureds laughed louder and longer…or so it seemed to whites. He was going to miss the job, his sister, and his life.
“He gets to walk away.” Paul Pretorius couldn’t believe it. “Reclassification isn’t enough to pay him back for Louis.”
Piet ground his cigarette butt under his heel and immediately lit another, as if it were oxygen and not nicotine that was poisoning his bloodstream. He sucked deep until the tip of the cigarette glowed hot and red.
“Cooper is forgetting that a nonwhite man has little protection from the law.” The lieutenant handed the cigarette to Paul. “We will now be forced to make the punishment for what happened to Louis immediate and physical in the extreme.”
Shit, Emmanuel thought. Was there no way out of Piet Lapping’s carnival of perpetual pain? The Security Branch officer in the doorway swung around and faced into the house, hand on his gun holster.
“Speak—” The officer barked the command down the corridor.
“Lieutenant Lapping?” Mrs. Ellis’s voice, sharp with fear, called out from the sitting room. “Lieutenant Lapping?”
“Mummy—” Davida whispered before Dickie cupped his hand over her mouth.
“Ja?” Piet pursed his bulbous lips. The sound of a female voice put a damper on the high he experienced during physical questioning: like having your mother walk in on you just before the climax.
“Phone call,” the housekeeper said quickly, aware on a base, instinctual level that the men in the room were unused to a woman interrupting their dark business.
“What?” Piet moved to the destroyed doorway and listened. He was ready to leap and strangle the housekeeper if she made a wrong move.
“There’s a man on the phone. He asked to talk to a Lieutenant Lapping right away.”
“The colonel?” Dickie asked.
“No,” Piet said, and unrolled his sleeves and buttoned them, careful of appearances outside the room. “He doesn’t know we’re here.”
So—Emmanuel’s brain formed the thought with sluggish determination—Piet was keeping this excursion secret. He was determined to clear any obstacles that could throw doubts over the confession he’d extracted from the Communist last night.
“Put the cigarette out and don’t do anything until I get back,” Piet said, and left the room to answer the phone.
“Take a break.” Dickie stepped into the boss’s shoes and found them quite comfortable. “Cooper and his friend aren’t going anywhere.”
The Pretorius brothers retreated to the window and fell into a whispered conversation while Dickie pushed Davida into a chair and stood over her. Emmanuel sank his throbbing head into his hands. It was his fault that Davida was here, in this room with men who stank of violence and hate. Their pleasure had come at a high price.
“Look up.” Piet Lapping was back in the bedroom and he was not calm. “Look at me, Cooper.”
Piet paced back and forth in front of the bed, his fingers flicking the flame of his cigarette lighter off and on like a lighthouse beacon. Something had set him off and destroyed the mystic calm he insisted was a mainstay of the “work.”
“You’re really something,” Piet said through tight lips. “You and your sissy friend van Niekerk.”
Emmanuel had no idea what he was talking about. Van Niekerk was in Jo’burg and unaware of the disaster with Louis or that the Security Branch interrogation was taking place at Elliot King’s game ranch. How the hell had van Niekerk tracked him down?
“What happened?” Dickie asked.
Piet ignored him and bent down in front of Emmanuel, his pebble eyes wet with rage.
“Mozambique. That’s where you got them. Am I right?”
Emmanuel lifted an eyebrow in response. Piet could go fish.
“What?” Dickie walked to his partner’s side but kept plenty of space between them in case he needed to duck out of the way in a hurry. Lieutenant Lapping was unpredictable when he was angry and he was rarely this angry.
“I should have known,” Piet mused aloud. “That day you left for Lorenzo Marques to question the underwear salesman. I smelled something was wrong…”
“What underwear salesman?” Dickie was trying his best to get involved and be a genuine partner, not just a muscleman.
“Shut up, Dickie,” Piet said. “I need to get this straight so we don’t do anything foolish. I need to think.”
Piet flicked the lighter on and off, the sound of it like gunfire in the tense atmosphere. A muscle jumped in the cratered skin of his cheek and Emmanuel held his breath.
“He’s going to release the photos if we touch another hair on your pretty head,” Piet said after a long while. “He wants you to call him in ten minutes to verify that you’re safe, like a f*cking virgin at her first dance.”
Emmanuel stood up, his body stiff from the beating he’d taken. He didn’t care what the Security Branch threw at him. Van Niekerk had the photos and their power couldn’t be pissed away by slinging childish insults. He glanced over at Davida and saw that she understood. They were going to walk out of the room and then they were going to run.
“You’re going to let him go?” Paul Pretorius pointed an accusing finger at the pockmarked lieutenant. “You promised us he’d get what was coming to him.”
Piet caught Paul’s finger and twisted hard until the finger snapped out of its socket.
“Ahhgg—” Paul Pretorius groaned, and sweat broke out on his forehead.
“We are letting him go because your pa couldn’t keep his pants buttoned up and that slippery f*ck van Niekerk has proof of it.”
“That’s a lie.” Paul was red faced with pain. “He’s lying.”
Piet let go of Paul’s dislocated finger and said, “I did consider the possibility that he was lying, but he has something, this van Niekerk. It was in his voice. I could hear it: the pleasure he takes in having power over us. Over me.”
Dickie marshaled a decent thought and threw it into the ring. “Maybe he’s just a good liar.”
“Consider the facts,” Piet said patiently. “Van Niekerk knows my f*cking name, he knows where I am when even the colonel has no idea. This is not someone to be taken lightly and that is why I cannot take the risk that he is just playing with us.”
Emmanuel limped past the bickering Security Branch men and held out his hand to Davida, who was perched at the edge of her chair, ready to make a run for it.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She stood up and took his hand. Her fingers curled around his and squeezed tight. Emmanuel turned to the door and noticed pockmarked Piet staring at them with evil intent. Not good. Emmanuel started walking. Please, God. The shattered doorway was so close now. Just four more steps.
“So sweet,” Piet muttered. “The way you looked at her just then. It’s as if you actually like her.”
Emmanuel felt Davida’s fingers slip from his. Piet pulled her back into the room with a yank and held her in the tight band of his arms. Davida twisted and kicked but remained imprisoned against the foul-smelling white man with the cratered face.
“Don’t do this.” Emmanuel heard the pleading tone in his voice and tried again, stronger this time. “Let her go, Lieutenant.”
“The deal,” Piet said, “was for your release. We keep her.”
“No!” Davida arched her back and tried to wriggle free but she was no match for Piet’s bullish strength coupled with his experience in subduing troublesome prisoners. “Let me go!”
Piet lifted her in the air, as easily as he’d lift an empty laundry basket, and threw her back on the bed. The springs groaned and he straddled her in one quick move and pinned her arms above her head.
Emmanuel was close behind. His battered body found a sputter of speed from a reserve located behind his damaged kidneys. He smacked Piet hard in the side of the head and got no reaction. He went in for a second hit and connected with air. Dickie and Paul pulled him back and threw him into the chair. The dark fear from the dream consumed him and grew stronger.
“Good,” Piet said as Davida’s body strained and pressed against his inner thighs. “I like spirit in a woman: a bit of fight.”
“You have everything you want,” Emmanuel said. “She’s of no use to you.”
“I want the photos. The photos for the girl, that’s the trade.”
“If van Niekerk won’t give them up?” Emmanuel asked. That was a real possibility. “What then?”
“Well…” Piet pressed a thumb against Davida’s mouth and forced her lips apart. “You can f*ck off out of here or you can stay and watch me work on her. Your choice, Cooper.”
“No.” Emmanuel struggled against the mother lode of Boer muscle holding him in the chair but couldn’t break free. “Don’t do this.”
“You cannot imagine”—Piet’s breath was coming hard as the body underneath him continued to buck and grind—“how beautiful my work can be. I will get to know this woman in ways that are beyond you. I will break her open and touch her soul.”
“Please—” Davida arched away from the evil man leaning close to her. “Emmanuel—help me—”
“Wait,” Emmanuel said. He needed Piet to stop and listen. “Wait. I’ll talk to van Niekerk and try to make a deal.”
“The girl for the photos. That’s the only deal I’m interested in. I’m not going to let your major hang on to evidence that might spoil my case further down the track.”
“Okay,” Emmanuel said. “Let her off the bed and sit her in the chair. I’ll make the call.”
Piet shifted his weight and considered the request. He was reluctant to break away from the bruising and intimate tango that prisoner and interrogator danced together in the dark of the holding cells. He lifted his body and let the girl wriggle from under him. If he didn’t get the photos, he had this to look forward to. The task of breaking the woman to his will.
Emmanuel sat Davida down in the chair and let her feel his touch, gentle and unforced. It hurt to look in her eyes and see the stark terror flickering in the dark circle of her pupils.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Please don’t go.”
“I have to,” he said. “I’ll come back in a few minutes. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.” He didn’t know if he was coming back with the keys to her release or with nothing at all. He had to roll the dice.
“Go with him,” Piet said to Dickie. “Make sure he doesn’t start trouble.”
“I’m going alone,” Emmanuel said. “Van Niekerk won’t talk if someone else is listening in. Or is that what you’re hoping for, Lieutenant? A no from van Niekerk so you can get back to work on the girl?”
“Piss off,” Piet said, and fumbled for his cigarettes. “You have ten minutes.”
“Fifteen,” Emmanuel said, and shuffled out of the room past the guard in the hallway.