8
LIEUTENANT PIET LAPPING and Dickie Steyns huddled over a decade’s worth of files. A row of empty beer bottles sat on top of the filing cabinet. After an afternoon of steady drinking and mind-numbing file checking, the Security Branch boys would be in a foul mood, ready to jump on anything new. Emmanuel pushed the door open and stepped into the room.
“Where the f*ck have you been?” Lapping snapped, and lit a cigarette.
“Taking a bath,” Emmanuel said. “You were right. Being a field detective is dirty work.”
“I thought I smelled lavender,” Dickie said.
Piet ignored his partner. “How did your visit with King go? Find out anything you’d like to share with us, Cooper?”
Emmanuel felt a kick of fear in the pit of his stomach. Did he really have the steel to withhold evidence from the Security Branch? If they found out, they’d make him pay in blood.
“I did a search of Captain Pretorius’s hut,” he said, “but didn’t find anything. It was clean, like someone had tidied the place up.”
“Hut?” Dickie’s brain was just firing up. “What hut?”
“The captain built one on King’s farm. He used it for R&R.” Emmanuel spoke directly to Dickie. “That’s rest and recreation, for those of you who don’t speak army bachelor talk.”
Dickie stubbed his cigarette out with a grinding action that made the ashtray creak. “One day you going to get that clever head of yours kicked in, my vriend. You wait and see.”
Emmanuel smiled. “Headkicker is one up from shitkicker, isn’t it? Your ma must be proud.”
The veins on Dickie’s neck swelled and he stepped forward. He clenched his fists.
“Sit down, Dickie,” pockmarked Piet ordered calmly. “Cooper here is just playing with you. Aren’t you, Cooper?”
Emmanuel shrugged.
“About the hut…” Piet continued where Dickie had lost the thread. “You’ll take us there tomorrow morning and show us everything of importance.”
“That’s not possible,” Emmanuel said. “It’s Sunday. I’ll be in church for the morning service.”
“You religious?” Piet asked with a trace of disbelief. There was no mention of it in the thin intelligence file.
“Aren’t you?” Emmanuel asked.
The lieutenant took a long drag of his cigarette. “That’s twice you’ve turned the questioning around onto us, Cooper. Once with Dickie and now with me. Must be force of habit, hey?”
“Must be,” Emmanuel said, and upped the likelihood of being found out for withholding evidence. Piet Lapping was coolheaded and clever.
“So, you finally turned up.” It was Paul Pretorius, looming in the doorway to the police cells.
“I was out working the case,” Emmanuel said. The spit-and-polish soldier swaggered into the room and set himself up behind Hansie’s desk.
“Tell me,” Paul said, and leaned back in Hansie’s chair, square jaw jutting out. “Why are all the suspects on your list whites?”
Emmanuel looked at Lieutenant Lapping. Who was in charge of this investigation, him or the tin soldier?
“Answer the question.” The words barely made it out from between Piet’s clenched teeth. Having Paul Pretorius along for the ride wasn’t Lapping’s idea. Some bigwig must have pulled strings.
“You think Jews are proper whites?” Emmanuel threw the question out and waited to see if the bait was taken.
“No,” Paul replied without hesitation. “They’re different from us, but we need their brains and their money to build a new South Africa. We don’t have to worry about them mixing blood with us or the kaffirs because it’s against their religion. Blood purity is part of their thinking.”
“Are they the chosen people?” Emmanuel wondered out loud, and made a close study of the captain’s second-born son. The man’s barrel-like chest was puffed up like a bellows.
“They may have been the chosen people in the olden days, but it’s our turn now. We’ve been given a covenant by God to rule over this land and keep it pure.” Paul Pretorius leaned across the desk as if it were his own personal pulpit and continued his sermon. “In years to come, the world will look to us for guidance. You mark my words. We will be a beacon.”
“Guidance in all areas or just—”
“Detective Sergeant Cooper!” Piet Lapping couldn’t contain his frustration. “I said answer the question. How did you compile your list of suspects?”
Dickie and Paul were easy to distract but Piet kept his pebble eyes on the prize: relevant information. If Emmanuel were caught out, it would be by Lieutenant Piet Lapping.
“Preliminary inquiry found that Zweigman and Rooke both had motive. The captain suspected Zweigman of crimes under the Immorality Act and was known to have reprimanded him. Rooke blamed the captain for his arrest and imprisonment. Mrs. Pretorius supplied me with the names. Both suspects provided alibis.”
“What about this man King?” Piet asked. “Was there bad blood between him and Captain Pretorius?”
“Not that I could find. They seemed to have liked each other. The captain even built his own bush hut on King’s farm.”
“Rubbish.” Paul Pretorius leaned farther across the desk. “My father had nothing in common with that Englishman. They hardly knew each other.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that your father had a deal with King to retain some of the old family farm.”
“Rubbish again.” Paul waved the information away with a flick of his hand. “Anything King says about my pa is an out-and-out lie.”
“Okay.” Lieutenant Lapping ground his cigarette out. “Let’s leave that for a moment. Anyone else on your list, Cooper?”
Emmanuel stopped himself from rubbing the lump at the side of his head. At the top of his personal list was the bastard who’d smashed his skull, pissed on him, and then stolen the evidence.
“I’m looking at another lead. A Peeping Tom who molested some coloured women a year or so back.”
“Who was it?”
“Don’t know yet,” Emmanuel replied. “It’s possible this man killed the captain to keep his secret hidden.”
Paul snorted out loud. “No man, no white man in Jacob’s Rest would interfere with coloured women. That sort of thing might happen in Durban and Jo’burg, but not here. Have you questioned any native or coloured men?”
“None of them presented as suspects,” Emmanuel replied evenly.
“They’re not going to hand themselves over.” Paul spoke with blunt force. “You have to go in there and show them who’s boss and then they’ll start talking.”
“Okay…” Lieutenant Lapping tried to keep the discussion on the rails.
“No, man, it’s not okay.” The seams of his blue army uniform stretched under the strain of Paul Pretorius’s muscled bulk. “With your help, my brothers and I could shake the investigation up. Get information flowing instead of following up some stupid rumor put around by the coloureds to shift blame onto an innocent white man.”
Piet pulled another cigarette from the pack and took his time lighting it before he answered. “You and your brothers are the injured party, but you are not the law. I am the law. Understand?”
“Ja.” Paul looked almost sulky. For a soldier he didn’t take orders very well.
“Good,” said Piet, and took a drag of his cigarette. “When the time comes to get your brothers involved in the investigation, I’ll let you know.”
The lump on Emmanuel’s head throbbed back to life. Giving the Pretorius boys a slice of the investigation would create the potential for disaster. Did the lieutenant support the idea of a family vendetta or was he just trying to keep Paul and his powerful backers on his side?
“You think there’s something in the pervert story?” Piet asked.
Enough to make two angry coloured men threaten violence in an attempt to protect their women. The stalker was no storybook phantom.
“The new laws make men with particular appetites nervous,” Emmanuel said. “Public humiliation and jail time are good enough motives for murder. Even here in Jacob’s Rest.”
“Any political leads?”
“Haven’t looked into that yet. The bus boycotts and pass burnings haven’t made much of an impact out here.”
“Not yet.” Piet was grim. “This resistance campaign is like a f*cking disease. The whole country is set to go up in flames. There is nothing the comrades won’t do to crush the government. They want a revolution. They want to destroy our way of—”
The door to the police station crashed open and the Pretorius men washed into the small room on a wave of crumpled black suits and beer fumes. Shabalala remained out on the porch, sober and impassive.
“Howzit? Howzit?” Henrick slumped against the edge of Hansie’s desk and addressed no one in particular. His suntanned face was mottled with patches of red brought on by alternating bouts of crying and beer drinking.
“Detective Sergeant…” It was Hansie, lobotomized by a few drinks too many. “You find anything? You find anything good at King’s?”
“Nothing,” Piet Lapping said, and looked over at Emmanuel while he said it. All information was going out through the Security Branch, and the Security Branch alone.
Emmanuel kept quiet. He needed time to work out the calendar while Piet and Dickie crash-tackled their way through the political side of the investigation.
“You didn’t find anything, Detective?” It was Louis, the only Pretorius male not glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.
“Nothing,” Piet said.
Emmanuel shifted uncomfortably under Louis’s continued scrutiny. Despite Piet’s definitive answer, the boy was waiting for him to reply. He shook his head and made sure to keep direct eye contact.
Out of the corner of his eye Emmanuel glimpsed Shabalala moving quickly off the veranda and onto Piet Retief Street. There was the sound of a scuffle and a loud cry.
“Captain…” a drunken voice called out. “Captain! Please!”
“What the f*ck is that?” Paul was on his feet, ready to play the commando.
“Captain. Captain. Please!”
The Pretorius men pressed out of the building in a rush. Emmanuel followed close behind and saw Harry, the old soldier, in the middle of Piet Retief Street. Shabalala was trying to guide him away, but the gray-coated man refused to move.
“Captain,” he continued to bay. “Captain! Please…My letters…”
Paul and Henrick made it first down the stairs. One push on the chest and the skeletal old man fell back onto the hard surface of the road with his arms and legs askew.
“We buried my pa this morning.” Henrick bent low over the crumpled figure. “Hold your tongue. Hear me?”
“My letters…” The warning passed Harry by. He struggled to his feet and continued toward the police station. “Captain. Please. Come out.”
Erich grabbed the addled soldier’s face. “My father’s dead. Now shut up.”
Emmanuel pushed past Piet and Dickie, who watched the action with bemused smiles. Drinking and fighting were natural Saturday-night activities and getting between white men and a feeble-minded coloured one wasn’t worth the effort.
“Shut up.” Paul grabbed the old soldier by the lapels and shook him like a dry cornstalk. Johannes and Erich joined their brother, and the medals on Harry’s coat rattled a discordant tune as they pushed him from one to the other. Louis hung back.
Emmanuel approached the phalanx and felt Shabalala move with him. They shouldered their way into the circle and stood on either side of the old man.
“What you doing?” Erich’s blood was high and ready to boil over.
“He’s crazy,” Emmanuel said quietly. “Constable Shabalala and I are going to take him home. His wife will do a much better job of beating the shit out of him than you ever will.”
“Home.” Harry grabbed Emmanuel’s jacket sleeve. “Not home. No. Not home.”
“See?” Emmanuel said. “He’d rather stay here with you than go home to his wife.”
“Not home.” Harry’s thin voice went up an octave. “Not home.”
Paul laughed first, followed by his brothers.
“He sounds like an old woman, hey?” Erich imitated the shell-shocked old man. “Not home. Not home.”
The laughter stepped up a notch and Emmanuel and Shabalala moved slowly out of the circle with Harry between them. They went down Piet Retief Street. They kept their pace measured and deliberate. Walking. Just walking home.
“Go back to your wife,” Henrick called after them, his mood lightened by the violence and the old man’s comic turn. “You lucky this time, Harry.”
“Captain…” Harry whimpered softly. “Captain. Please.”
“Here.” Shabalala pointed to a small path that ran along one side of the police station. “Go here.”
They slipped onto the path and moved briskly until they were out on the veldt. Harry turned back toward the station, his palsied hands held out like a beggar’s.
“Captain,” he said. “My letters.”
Shabalala picked the old soldier up and raced along the narrow kaffir path. Emmanuel struggled to keep up with the black policeman who worked fast to put distance between them and the volatile Pretorius brothers. Guard dogs snarled and barked at a perimeter fence as they slipped past houses lit by the gentle flame of gas lanterns. Night began to fall.
Shabalala stopped at a rickety wooden gate and put the old man back on his feet. A sheen of sweat on the black constable’s brow was the only indication he’d done more than stroll from the police station.
“This is his house,” Shabalala said. “You must go in and give him to his wife.”
“You’re coming with me.”
“Captain or Lieutenant Uys go in with the coloured people. Not me.”
“The captain’s dead,” Emmanuel said. “Tonight, there’s only you and me.”
Shabalala nodded and followed him in through the gate and past a narrow vegetable patch that ran the length of the yard and pressed up against the back stoep of the house. Emmanuel pounded on the door.
“The letters.” Harry started toward the gate. “The letters.”
“Get him,” Emmanuel said as the sound of footsteps approached the back door. “Police. We have Harry.”
The door opened and Angie, the old soldier’s wife, stepped out. She wore a brown cotton housecoat double stitched along the collar and sleeves to reinforce the fraying material. Her dark crinkly hair was pulled up and stretched taut across the curve of huge plastic rollers.
“Where did you find him?” she asked curtly. Harry went walking almost every day. Most of the time he found his way home without trouble.
“Outside the police station,” Emmanuel said.
“The letters,” Harry wailed. “The letters.”
Angie crossed the stoep in five quick steps. “You talk about the letters? You say about the letters, you stupid man?”
Emmanuel rested a warning hand on her shoulder, then withdrew it. “He’s had a hit or two already. He doesn’t need any more.”
She saw the bruised flesh around her husband’s left eye. “Who hit you, Harry?”
“I want the letters,” Harry said. “I want the letters.”
She addressed Shabalala. “Who hit my Harry?”
“Madubele. He and his brothers.”
Angie took her husband’s arm and led him into the small cinder-block house. She looked back toward the gate, fearful of what lay beyond it in the gathering darkness.
“Inside. Quick,” she said to Harry, who shuffled in ahead of her.
Emmanuel followed without an invitation.
He signaled to Shabalala, who reluctantly stepped into the house and stayed with his back pressed against the closed door.
The cinder-block house consisted of two plain rooms joined together by a cracked seam of mud and plaster. The kitchen, a collection of mismatched pots and plates on a chipped sideboard, sat directly opposite a curtained alcove that contained a double bed and a small chest of drawers with a beveled mirror.
They were in the sitting area: four wooden chairs and a moth-eaten love seat that must have been transported by sea and bullock train from the mother country to the outer edges of southern Africa decades before. A round table with the diameter of a tin bucket displayed two photos in tarnished frames: one of Harry as a young soldier bound for the glory of the battlefield, the other a family portrait of Harry and Angie with a trio of white-skinned girls. The picture was identical in setup to the one he’d seen in the captain’s house, a family group formally arranged against a plain backdrop. The traveling photographer had done a good trade in Jacob’s Rest.
Harry sat on the edge of the double bed, his palsied hands resting unsteadily on his knees. Angie pulled the curtain closed around them. The clink of campaign medals was followed by the metal sigh of the springs as the old soldier lay down to rest.
Emmanuel picked up the family photo and motioned Shabalala over. “Where are the daughters?” he asked. There was no sign of them in the cinder-block house, not a ribbon or a hairpin.
“Gone,” Shabalala answered. “To Jo’burg or Durban. For work.”
The girls in the photo had taken after their father. Skinny and pale skinned with fair hair and freckles, they were a race classification nightmare. Pose them against the cliffs of Dover and they’d blend right in. They were white girls, pure and simple. Only someone who knew the family could say any different.
“What’s on their papers?” he asked Shabalala. “Mixed race or European?”
Shabalala looked at the floor. “I have not seen their papers.”
“Those are my girls.” Angie reentered the sitting area and took the photo from Emmanuel. She wiped the frame down with her sleeve, as if to clear it of germs.
“Where are they?”
Angie tilted the photo so the light hit it fully. “That here is Bertha, she lives in Swaziland. Then Alice and Prudence, they live in Durban now.”
“How long have they been gone?”
“Six months or so.”
“The letters Harry was asking for. Were they from Alice and Prudence?”
“No.” Angie put the photo down and angled it away from the room. “Harry doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The mustard gas, it’s made him imagine things.”
“He seems certain about the letters,” Emmanuel said.
“That one is certain about a lot of things. But that doesn’t make it so.”
Angie moved across his line of sight and blocked the photo from view. She was the lioness at the gate whose job it was to stand guard over the family secrets.
“Make sure Harry stays in until morning,” Emmanuel said. “Tonight’s not a good night for him to be wandering around.”
“I’ll make sure he stays right where he is.” The furrowed lines on Angie’s bulldog face softened and she showed them out the back door. “Thank you for helping my Harry home, Detective.”
Emmanuel and Shabalala left by the back gate. The moon was on the wane but its light still shone strong enough to see by. Out on the kaffir path, Emmanuel turned to the black policeman.
“Tell me about the letters,” he said.
“I have not seen any letters,” Shabalala replied simply.
Emmanuel studied the closed face of his partner.
“Did the captain see the letters?”
“Uhhh…” Shabalala cleared his throat nervously. “He saw them. Yes.”
“Who did the captain say they were from?”
“Those inside. The two youngest children of the old man.”
“Why was the captain collecting letters for Harry?”
“Uhhh…” This time, the black constable’s lips closed firm and sealed the words in.
Emmanuel watched him, saw the gates slam shut.
“Nobody else will know what you tell me tonight, Constable,” he said. “That is a promise.”
Shabalala took off his hat and turned it like a spinning wheel in his broad hands. The hat stopped spinning, and he breathed out.
“The old man’s daughters, they are living among the white people. They cannot write to their own people in case someone finds out.”
“How did they get white ID papers?”
“They are white, just like the Dutchmen. Captain said they must register in the city and if there was a problem he would say they were from a European family.”
“Captain tell you this?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he do it?” From all he’d seen, the Pretorius family were firmly in the racial segregation corner. In their world, race mixing wasn’t in bad taste; it was a crime.
“I do not know why he did it.” Shabalala put his hat back on and pulled it low on his forehead.
“If you knew would you tell me?” Emmanuel asked.
The constable spread his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. “I have told you all I can,” he said politely.
The black policeman would tell him all he could, not all he knew. Was it possible that the strong bond between black and white playmates, so common in childhood, had actually survived the transition to adulthood for Captain Pretorius and Constable Shabalala?
“Those men at the station,” Emmanuel said. “They won’t wait for you to tell them what they need to know. They will get information the fastest way. You understand that?”
“I understand fully.”
“They can do as they please.”
“I have seen this,” Shabalala replied.
Emmanuel turned to leave, then stopped. “You said Madubele and his brothers hit Harry. Who’s Madubele?”
“The third son of the captain and his wife.”
“Erich?”
“Yes. The third son has a temper. He is always exploding like a rifle shot. That is why he was given that name.”
“Tell me the others,” Emmanuel said. The names given to people by the natives always had a core of truth to them that was instantly recognizable.
Shabalala held his hand up like a schoolteacher and worked his way from thumb to little finger. “The first one is Maluthane. He deceives himself in thinking he is the boss. The second is Mandla because he is strong like an ox. Three is Madubele and fourth is Thula because he is quiet. Five is Mathandunina, meaning he is loved by his mother and he loves her.”
Each name was a thumbnail sketch of the Pretorius boys, each one broadly accurate in its content. Even Louis, the runt of the litter, was described not in his own right but in connection with his mother.
“What’s your name?” Emmanuel asked.
“It is long. You speak Zulu, but even you will not be able to pronounce it.”
Emmanuel smiled. It was the first time the black constable had made a joke in his presence. In five or ten years’ time Shabalala might come around to telling him the truth about the captain.
“Tell me what it is,” Emmanuel said.
“Mfowemlungu.”
Emmanuel did a quick translation. “Brother of the white man.”
“Yebo.”
“The captain was the white brother?”
“That is correct.”
Emmanuel thought of the people on the Pretorius family farm, their hearts soaring as the young Shabalala and Pretorius ran the length and breadth of the property like warriors in the Zulu impi of old.
“Mrs. Pretorius, what does she think of this name?”
“She believes we are all brothers in God’s sight.”
“You and the captain were like twins?”
“No,” Shabalala said. “I am always the little brother.”
Emmanuel sensed Shabalala’s resignation. Never the man, always the garden boy. Never the woman, always the cleaning girl.
“Did the captain think of you that way?”
“No.”
“You felt for him as one who is a true brother?”
“Yebo,” the constable said.
The leaders of the Afrikaner tribe made a great deal out of blood bonding. Their most secret organization, the Broederbond, meant “blood brothers.” What happened when the bond went across the color line, and tied black to white?
“I will find out everything,” Emmanuel said. “Even if it hurts you and the captain’s family, I will find it out.”
“I know this to be true.”
“Good night, Shabalala.”
“Hambe gashle. Go well, Detective Sergeant.”
Emmanuel followed the narrow kaffir path that led to the coloured houses and the shabby strip of businesses serving the nonwhite population. He needed a drink and the Standard Hotel was the last place he was going to look for one. Time to pay Tiny and his son an after-hours visit.
The path skirted the grounds of the Sports Club. Farm families, overnighting in town after the funeral, were camped out in trucks, which were drawn into a circular formation like the wagon laagers of frontier times. Emmanuel ducked low to avoid being seen. He came up to his full height when the dark outline of the Grace of God Hospital became visible.
Past a stretch of vacant land decorated with scraps of windblown garbage, he entered the small grid of coloured people’s homes. The first house, set on a wide span of land, was well hidden behind a high timber wall and a row of mature gum trees. Emmanuel ran his hand along the fence. His fingertips brushed against the wood and the small gate that led into the garden. It was good to walk in the dark: silent and undetected.
This is how Captain Pretorius must have felt: free and godlike as he moved across every boundary in his small town. It was here, on this stretch of the kaffir path, that he beat Donny Rooke to a pulp. Out on the main streets, in the houses and the stores, the captain was a good man: moral and upright. But outside the grid, in the shadows of the kaffir path, who was he?
Emmanuel passed the burned-out shell of Anton’s garage, two more houses, and a small church. The path swung hard to the left to run along the edge of the vacant lot adjoining Poppies General Store. The next shop along was the fine liquor merchant’s. Emmanuel slowed at the gate but didn’t go in. A woman’s voice, shrill and liquored up, drifted out over the back fence.
“You bad, Tiny. You a bad, bad man.”
“How can I be bad when I make you feel so good, hey? How’s that?”
Emmanuel found a gap in the fence large enough to see through. He pressed his eye to the slit. Tiny and his son, both shirtless and drunk, were working the clothes off two well-used coloured girls. Emmanuel recognized the woman sliding herself over Tiny’s hardened stomach like a grease cloth. She was the one in front of Poppies, walking a toddler along the street.
“Mmm…Ja…” The coarse-haired woman gave a practiced groan and sucked on a hand-rolled dagga cigarette. “You bad, Tiny.”
“I’m about to get badder,” Tiny promised in a sodden voice. “Let me see some.”
The woman threw her unbuttoned shirt to the floor and lifted a drooping breast up for inspection. “This what you want?”
Tiny was on her nipple in a second. The wet sound didn’t bother Theo, who hammered away at a fat brown girl with two missing front teeth. The girl, built to absorb maximum thrust, managed to take deep sips from a whiskey bottle even as Theo worked his magic on her.
Emmanuel stepped back. No chance of a drink just at the moment, but Captain Pretorius was onto something. A night on the kaffir paths was worth twenty door-to-doors.
The split where he’d lost his late-night visitor was up ahead. The rustle of footsteps broke the peace. Someone else was out, skirting the town in the dark. Emmanuel retreated into the shadows.
Louis trotted past. Emmanuel waited until he got well ahead, then followed. The boy wasn’t lost; he walked as if he owned the kaffir path. The light from Tiny’s courtyard cut into the darkness. Louis moved in on it like a moth.
The boy stopped and knocked on the gate. The noises from inside drowned him out. He tried again.
Emmanuel slipped into the space between the liquor store and Khan’s Emporium. A shirtless Tiny opened the gate to Louis.
“What you want?” the coloured man asked. He was in a foul mood.
“Give me something small,” Louis said.
“No dice. I promised your father. Never again.”
“The captain’s gone,” Louis said.
“What about your brothers? What happens when they find out?”
“They won’t.”
“Ja, well…they better not,” Tiny said, and retreated into his courtyard before reappearing with a small bottle of whiskey.
“How about a smoke?” Louis asked, and slipped the bottle into his pocket.
“What? And get my business burned down when Madubele finds out?” Tiny waved the boy away. “Make tracks.”
“He won’t find out.”
“If he does? You going to make him pay compensation like the captain did for Anton? You lucky I gave you anything. Now get moving before someone sees you.”
“The captain’s gone to the other side,” Louis repeated. “There’s no one to see us.”
Tiny ended the conversation by closing the gate in Louis’s face. The boy unscrewed the whiskey bottle, took a long swallow, then raised his free hand to the sky with his palm held open. Another swig from the bottle and Louis’s clear voice graced the empty lot and the night sky.
He sang “Werk in My Gees Van God,” “Breathe in Me Breath of God,” a well-known Afrikaans hymn. The tune was the source of uncomfortable memories and even now Emmanuel could recall the words: Blend all my soul in Thine, until this earthly part of me glows with thy fire divine.
Was Louis able to distinguish between the whiskey fire in his belly and the divine fire of the Holy Spirit? The back gate to the liquor store swung open and Tiny pushed his face out.
“Keep it for church, Pretorius. You’re spoiling the mood.”
Louis raised the bottle in a salute, then sidled off in the direction of the coloured houses and the Sports Club where the overnighting white families were camped. What was he going to do there? Give a sermon? Or find a dark corner to do a little of the devil’s work?
The kaffir path was a gold mine of information and Emmanuel sensed that at least part of the answer to the captain’s murder lurked out here in the shadows of the town.
The main street was in darkness, as was the dirt road running to The Protea Guesthouse. He passed the police sedan, its locked boot home to the filthy suit and the captain’s marked calendar. Tomorrow he’d find a proper home for the sensitive items. The Security Branch could jimmy a boot lock with no effort.
The door to his room was ajar and the light was on. He stepped inside. Piet and Dickie lounged on either side of the bed. Clothes and papers were dumped onto the floor.
Piet yawned and lit a fresh cigarette.
“You always pack this lightly, Cooper?”
“A hangover from the army,” Emmanuel said. “You need to borrow a clean tie, or was it starched underwear you were after?”
“Your fondness for old soldiers?” Dickie asked. “Is that a hangover also?”
Emmanuel pulled up a chair and sat down. “I confess. I got to the rank of major by bending over for all the Allied generals. What else do you want to know?”
“We didn’t come to ask questions,” Piet said. “We came to tell you something.”
“I’m listening.”
“In the next day or two”—Piet spoke through a curtain of smoke—“we’re going to know everything about you, Cooper. What you drink. Who you’re f*cking. Where you buy those sissy ties. We’ll know it all.”
“I drink tea white, no sugar. Whiskey neat. Water when I’m thirsty. I haven’t f*cked anyone since my wife ran back to England seven months ago, and I get my sissy ties from Belmont Menswear on Market Street. Ask for Susie. She’ll help you find the extra-large sizes.”
“It’s good you have a sense of humor,” Piet said. “You’ll need it.”
“When you take the credit for any arrests? Or when you dump a bad result on me?”
Piet’s smile was a slash cut into his acne-scarred face. “Either way, you and your boyfriend van Niekerk are going to regret trying to grab a piece of our investigation.”
“I thought the two of you came to my room because you wanted to be friends. You won’t be bunking with me tonight, then?”
Dickie flushed red. “No wonder your wife left you.”
“You’re the one who came to my room uninvited,” Emmanuel said. “Have a good time looking through my underclothes, Dick?”
Dickie leapt to his feet.
“Sit down,” Piet instructed him. “I have to tell Cooper a few things.”
“Threaten away,” Emmanuel said. It was getting late and he’d had enough of the Security Branch.
“Seven AM tomorrow morning we will go to King’s farm. You will show us over the hut. You will then investigate the Peeping Tom story. All other leads are our territory.”
“There’s only two of you,” Emmanuel noted.
“No,” Piet corrected him. “The local guys, Hepple, Shabalala and Uys will make up the rest of our team.”
Emmanuel had no trouble interpreting the information. The Security Branch was officially shutting him out of the case.
“Nice to see some people still make house calls,” he said when Piet and Dickie squeezed their giant frames through the doorway.
Piet stopped and flicked his lit cigarette butt into the garden. “Let me tell you how this will end, Cooper. If you work against us, I will find you out and then Dickie here will beat the English snot out of you. That’s a promise.”
Emmanuel closed the door on the Security Branch. His breath was tight in his chest. He resisted the urge to gather his scattered clothes, throw them into his bag, and head back to his flat in Jo’burg. He was in Jacob’s Rest on Major van Niekerk’s orders. The choice to leave wasn’t his to make.
“F*ck them up.” It was the sergeant major with some gentle late-night advice. “Go in hard. Take no prisoners.”
Emmanuel looked up at the ceiling. He’d hoped he’d heard the last of the Scotsman and his deranged pronouncements out on the road.
“Take the tire iron. Give them a taste of steel.”
Emmanuel touched the lump on his skull. His head ached, but not enough to bring on a delusional episode. He emptied five white pills into the palm of his hand and chased them down with water. He lay back down. The voice would go away as soon as the medication took effect.
“Use the element of surprise.” The Scotsman continued his barrage. “Get them before they get you, soldier.”
“It’s peacetime.” He didn’t bother answering out loud. He knew the sergeant major would hear him fine. “Killing people isn’t legal anymore.”
“What are you going to do, then?” The sergeant major was at a loss now that brute force wasn’t an option.
“Figure it out,” Emmanuel said. “Find the killer.”
“Hmm…” The prospect of a peaceful solution threw the Scotsman off balance. “How are you going to do that?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not yet.”
“I see…” The sergeant major’s voice drained away into the darkness.
The pattern on the ceiling changed when the wind moved the tree outside the window. Figure it out? That was easy to say, but what did he have? A couple of coloured girls passing as white, a father and son who played with cheap whores, and a wily white boy with a taste for whiskey and dagga. Big news in a little town, but no match for the solid evidence he’d let slip away from him at the hut. And who’d left the note with King’s name on it in the dead of night? The killer or someone trying to help the investigation?
“You have the calendar.” The sergeant major fought his way past the flow of medication.
True, he had the calendar. But how was he going to get across the border without drawing the attention of Piet and his gorilla?
“Sleep,” the sergeant major instructed in a slurred voice. “I’ll keep the dogs at bay for you.”
Darkness folded in and Emmanuel floated down to a blackened barn smoldering in twilight. The sergeant major sat in front of the ruin surrounded by a dozen soldiers in torn and bloodied uniforms. One of the soldiers turned to Emmanuel. His face was reduced to lacerated flesh and smashed bone.
“All eyes to me,” the sergeant major ordered. “Gather round, lads, and let’s talk about drinking and f*cking. And women and children and home. Our man Cooper needs a kip.”
The soldier with the smashed face laughed. The troops pressed close around the sergeant major. Emmanuel closed his eyes and fell asleep.