A Beautiful Place to Die (12 page)

She nodded.

“You have to look at me and promise not to tell anyone.”

She lifted her head. “I promise.”

“Not even your mother, hey, Davida?”

“Not even my mother.” She repeated the phrase like a dutiful child instructed in the dark secrets of the house.

“Good,” he said, and wondered how many white men had exacted the same promise once the sweat was dry and the shadow of the police loomed overhead. Even the use of her name, Davida, made him feel he’d crossed a line.

Emmanuel closed the safe and returned the cowhide rug to its original position before remaking the bed. He wondered about the sheets again. He folded the calendar and put it in the pocket of his jacket. Davida was the perfect accomplice. If he decided to keep the calendar to himself, the Security Branch would never approach her as a person of interest. He ducked through the low opening and followed Davida out of the compound.

A black horse with Thoroughbred leanings was tethered to the fence next to his Packard sedan. The stallion, all rippling muscle and glossy coat, was not destined for the glue factory anytime soon.

“Yours?” Emmanuel asked.

“No.” She blushed. “I ride him for Mr. King.”

“Ahh.” That explained the unlikely teaming. In King’s world the tedious upkeep of animals and property was a job for the servants. The habits of rich men duplicated themselves the world over.

Emmanuel pulled the car keys out of his jacket pocket. “You’ll remember what we talked about?”

“Yes, of course.” She made direct eye contact, let him feel the power he had over her. “I won’t tell anyone, Detective Sergeant. I promise.”

The urge to stroke her damp hair and say “good girl” was so strong he turned and rushed to the car without another word. If he wasn’t careful he’d turn into a grown version of Constable Hansie Hepple: a puffed-up bully drunk on the extraordinary power handed to white policemen by the National Party.

Emmanuel sat back and closed his eyes. He needed a moment to get things clear in his head before driving back to Jacob’s Rest and reporting in to the lieutenant.

“It felt good, didn’t it?”
It was the sergeant major again. Out of nowhere.
“A man could get used to it. Learn to love it, even.”

Emmanuel opened his eyes. Through the mud-flecked windscreen the dirt road unfurled in a soft red ribbon toward the horizon. Dark clouds gathered overhead, poised to feed the rivers and wildflowers with spring rain. He concentrated on the landscape, felt the dip and curve of it inside him.

“It won’t work, boyo. Nobody ignores me, you know that.”

“Go away,” Emmanuel said, and switched on the engine to drown the voice out. He drove to the dirt road cutting across King’s farm and swung left toward the tarred road. God knows what was in the powder he’d swallowed back in the hut.

“I don’t need a pissy medicine to get to you, soldier. You’ll have to cut off your head to get rid of me, because that’s where I live. Up in there.”

“What do you want?” He couldn’t believe he’d answered. The sergeant major, all six feet two of him, was probably trussed up in a dingy Scottish retirement home for ex-military tyrants.

“To talk,”
the sergeant major said.
“You know what I like about being out here? The open space. Enough space for a man to find out who he really is. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. The army psych test passed him clean. “Healed and ready to return to active duty,” that’s what the hospital discharge papers said.

“Her trembling brown hands. The feeling in your chest, tight and burning.”

Emmanuel slowed the car, afraid of crashing.

“You know what that was, don’t you, Emmanuel, perfect soldier, natural-born leader, clever little detective?”
The sergeant major continued his assault.
“You want to think it was shame, but we know the truth, you and I.”

“Fuck off.”

“It’s been so long since you felt anything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,”
the sergeant major said.
“It gave you pleasure to hurt her and not say sorry. Felt good, didn’t it, soldier boy?”

Emmanuel stopped the car and took deep, even breaths. It was daylight, hours yet before the war veteran’s disease crept up on him in the form of sweaty nightmares.

He tore at the buttons of his shirt and threw it onto the backseat with the jacket. The smell of the clothes had dragged buried memories to the surface. That’s all it was. There was no truth in the sergeant major’s bizarre accusations.

If the Security Branch caught even a whiff of the daylight hallucinations, he’d be off the case and in a sanatorium by week’s end. Van Niekerk couldn’t help him. He’d be suspended pending psychiatric evaluation and there was every chance he’d fail the test.

“You finished?” Emmanuel asked.

“Don’t worry,”
the sergeant major purred.
“I won’t make a habit of visiting you. If there’s something important to say, I’ll drop by and let you know. It’s my job to keep you alive, remember?”

8

L
IEUTENANT
P
IET
L
APPING
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 fuck 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 fucking 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 fuck 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.