A Beautiful Place to Die (14 page)

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 fucking. 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 fucked 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.

“Fuck 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 fucking. 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.

9

E
MMANUEL EASED THE
Packard into the space next to the Security Branch Chevrolet at 6:55 the next morning. The police station appeared small and abandoned in the morning light. Piet wound his car window down and leaned out.

“Change of plan, Cooper. Follow us.” He gave the command and Dickie flicked the engine on. “We’ll make a stop at the black location first, then go to Pretorius’s hut.”

“Whatever you say, Lieutenant.”

Dickie and Piet swung a right at the Standard Hotel and headed west on the main road. Emmanuel turned in behind them and pressed the accelerator.

He couldn’t get a handle on why the Security Branch was heading to a black settlement outside a small country town. Not a single clue led in that direction.

They peeled off onto a pitted dirt road and minutes later entered the black location, a haphazard planting of cinder-block houses and mud huts on a dusty span surrounded by veldt. Children in Sunday clothes played hopscotch in front of a dilapidated church with a rusted tin roof.

The Chevrolet pulled to a stop near the children and Piet waved a boy over. It was Butana, the little witness from the crime scene.

“Shabalala”—Piet raised his voice to a near shout so the kaffir boy understood—“go get Constable Shabalala. Understand?”

“Yes, baas.” Butana raised the volume of
his
voice so the Dutchman understood, then slipped off his too big shoes and took off down the dirt road that bisected the location. The other children followed behind, happy for an excuse to put some distance between themselves and the white men in the big black automobiles.

Emmanuel got out of the Packard and scoped the scene. It was a clear spring day. Fallow cornfields ran from the edge of a grassed area to a stream swollen with night rain. Beyond that, a lush carpet of new grass and wildflowers spread out beneath a blue sky and a roll of white clouds.

Breathtaking, Emmanuel thought. But you can’t eat scenery.

He turned his attention to the irregular grid of dwellings. They were ramshackle constructions put together with whatever was at hand. A corrugated iron roof patched with flour sacks to keep out the rain. A fifty-five-gallon drum rolled into a doorway to keep out the draft. It was spring, but the memory of a hard winter lingered over the native houses.

The young and fit could move to E’goli, the City of Gold, Johannesburg, where even a black man had the chance to become rich. Or they could stay in the location with their families and remain poor. Most chose the city.

The church door opened and a wizened pastor with watery eyes peered out. Emmanuel lifted his hat in greeting and received a wary nod in return. From down the dirt lane came the sound of children’s voices.

Constable Shabalala hurried toward the cars, followed by a long train of children. The black policeman was in his Sunday clothes: a graying white shirt, black trousers, and a corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows. The bottom seam of his trousers had been let out to their full length, one inch too short to cover his socks and boots. Perhaps the captain’s hand-me-downs.

He approached the Security Branch car with his hat in his hand. He knew that Afrikaners and most whites set great store by a show of respect. Piet pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

“N’kosi Duma,” Piet said. “Where is he?”

Shabalala spread his palms out in an apologetic gesture. “That man, he is not here. He is at the native reserve. He will be home maybe tomorrow.”

“Christ above.” Piet lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the clean spring air. “How far is it, this reserve?”

“Before baas King’s farm. One hour and a half on my bicycle.”

Piet had a quick discussion with Dickie, who was hunkered down behind the wheel.

“Get in,” Piet told Shabalala. “We’ll go and get him.”

Emmanuel made his way over, determined to wedge himself into the situation somehow. He felt the beat of his heart. Piet knew whom to ask for. How the hell did they know a man named N’kosi Duma lived on a location outside of Jacob’s Rest?

“Constable Shabalala can ride with me,” Emmanuel said. “I’ve got enough fuel.”

“He’s with us,” Piet said coolly. “Your job is to show us the hut.”

“The reserve is between here and the hut.” Emmanuel knew he was pushing his luck but kept going. “Should we call in there first?”

“The hut,” Piet said.

“It’s a hunting camp,” Dickie said after they’d examined the captain’s clean little space. “Only an English detective from the city would think it was anything else.”

“A waste of time, just like I thought,” Piet muttered. “Let’s move on.”

Emmanuel didn’t show them the hidden safe.

They ducked out through the hole in the tall stick fence and rejoined Shabalala, who waited patiently between the cars. Piet motioned Dickie into the black Chevrolet and turned to Emmanuel.

“You will go back to town,” Piet said with a glimmer of pleasure in his pebble eyes. “The Peeping Tom story is your area of investigation. Remember?”

“It’s Sunday. I don’t think there’s much chance to make inroads there.”

“You’re a religious man, aren’t you? Here’s your chance to get to the church service in time. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Amen,” Emmanuel said, and approached Shabalala, who’d stepped back to allow the Dutchmen some room. The Peeping Tom story was all he had to keep him in Jacob’s Rest and close to the main game. He had to follow that trail and do it with a smile.

“The coloured church,” he said to Shabalala. “Where is it?”

“You must go past the old Jew’s store. The ma’coloutini church is at the end of that road.”

“Let’s roll.” It was Dickie, chomping at the bit like a racing hippo out for the derby day sweepstakes.

Shabalala hesitated. “You will be at the station this afternoon, Detective Sergeant.”

It was a request, not a question.

“I’ll be there,” Emmanuel said, and Dickie gunned the engine. The chassis on the Security Branch Chevrolet dipped a half foot closer to the ground when Shabalala got into the car. There was enough collective muscle in the vehicle to pound a steel girder into shape.

Piet leaned his head out the window. “Go first,” he instructed. “We’ll follow you out.”

Emmanuel did as he was told. The Security Branch needed to see him run off with his tail between his legs. It gave them pleasure. It wasn’t hard to hand them what they wanted. He got in the Packard and drove back to town.

Emmanuel made a sweep of the police files and hit the letter
Z
with nothing. No files under
P
for pervert, or Peeping Tom. No files at all for any of the women in the old Jew’s shop or for Zweigman himself. There was no written evidence the molestation case ever existed.

He pulled out files at random. Cow theft. A stabbing. Damage to property. The usual small town complaints. He searched for Donny Rooke and found him—charged with the manufacture and importation of banned items. The photos of the girls were signed into evidence, but not the camera.

Was it possible the coloured women’s complaints weren’t taken seriously enough to write up? Or had the files been lifted? Donny Rooke’s stolen camera proved the captain wasn’t above confiscating evidence when it suited him.

The Security Branch and the National Party machine wanted a respected white policeman struck down in the line of duty. They
didn’t
want complications to that story. Under the new race laws, everything was black or white. Gray had ceased to exist.

Physical intimidation, theft and the possible importation of pornographic items—Captain Pretorius may have appeared to be a straightforward Afrikaner, but something more complicated lurked beneath the surface.

The small stone church overflowed with worshippers. Families, starched and pinned in their Sunday best, spilled out onto the front stairs that led to the open wooden doors. The captain’s premature death was good for business.

An organ wheezed “Closer My God to Thee,” and the coloured families stood to sing the final hymn. Twin girls in matching polka-dot dresses broke free of their plump mother’s embrace and ran into the churchyard. They threw themselves down beside a flower bed and peered into the foliage where Harry, the old soldier, was curled around the stem of a daisy bush, fast asleep.

Emmanuel leaned against the wall between the church and the street and watched the Sunday service let out.

Every color from fresh milk to burnt sugar was on show. There was enough direct evidence in the churchyard to refute the idea that blood mixing was unnatural. Plenty of people managed to do it just fine.

A clutch of wide-hipped matrons in flowered dresses and Sunday hats brought pots of food to a table set up in the shade of a large gum tree. Men in dark suits and polished shoes milled around waiting for the signal to pounce on the food.

At the bottom of the stairs Tiny and Theo kept company with two respectable coloured women. Emmanuel needed someone to get him into the community and introduce him around. A white man hanging off the edge of a mixed-race gathering had an unsavory feel. He also had to show the Security Branch something to convince them he was hard at work on the pervert lead now that the station files had yielded nothing.

“Tiny.” He put his hand out in greeting, aware of the murmur of the congregation around them.

“Detective.” The coloured man was all scrubbed up. Any trace of last night’s debauchery had disappeared. “This is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

The liquor merchant was ill at ease, his handshake a quick brush of the fingers. The crowd thinned as people moved back to assess the situation.

“Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, Tiny. I need to reinterview all the women who filed complaints about the Peeping Tom.” He took off his hat in a friendly gesture. “I was hoping you could give me a hand.”

“Um…” Tiny hesitated. It didn’t seem right, talking about a degenerate on a potluck Sunday when all the good families were gathered around.

“I won’t talk to them now,” Emmanuel reassured him. “I need a list of names, that’s all.”

“Well…”

“There were four of them.” The tight-girdled woman next to Tiny spoke up. She was fair skinned, with two blobs of rouge painted high on her cheekbones. “Tottie and Davida, who work for the old Jew. Della, the pastor’s daughter, and Mary, Anton’s little sister.”

“Detective, this here is my wife, Bettina.” Tiny fell into line. “And this here is my daughter, Vera.”

While Tiny and Theo were up late with the whores, the women in the family stayed safe at home working the hot comb. Both mother and daughter were starched and neat with hair that hung in a lifeless curtain to the shoulder. Burn marks, now a faint red, marked the skin along their hairlines—battle scars earned in the war against the kink.

“Are all the women still in town?” Emmanuel asked.

“Tottie is there by the steps…”

Honeypot Tottie was surrounded by a swarm of suitors. She wore a tailored green and white dress with a neckline cut just low enough to produce un-Christian thoughts. The girl was ice cream on a hot day.

“Della is there next to her father.” Tiny’s daughter, Vera, pointed to a long, skinny girl with breasts a giant would have trouble getting his hand around. The pastor’s daughter was plain in the face but all souped up under the hood.

“Davida lives with Granny Mariah, but she’s with her mother at Mr. King’s lodge today and Mary is over there, helping serve the food.” Mrs. Hanson indicated a pixie-sized teenager working the tight space between two hefty matrons. Mary was halfway across the bridge between childhood and adulthood.

The women were different from each other, and distinct from the crowd in their own ways. There was Tottie, the all-round beauty and bringer of wet dreams; Della, the generously endowed pastor’s daughter; and Mary, the pocket-sized woman-child. That left Davida, whose only distinction, as far as Emmanuel could tell, was the fact that she didn’t stand out in any way. You had to get close to her to see anything of interest.

Now that he had the women’s names, it was time to chase up the garage fire story. Anton the mechanic was absent from the gathering.

“Anton not a churchgoer?” Emmanuel said.

“We’re all churchgoers, Detective,” Tiny’s wife said primly. “This is a righteous town, not like Durban and Jo’burg.”

The round-heeled women from the liquor store were missing in action.

“Drinking, dagga smoking, loose women, and loose morals.” He looked at Theo meaningfully for a moment. “I’m glad Jacob’s Rest doesn’t have that kind of thing, Mrs. Hanson.”

“You want to see Anton, Detective?” Theo asked, anxious for the conversation to move on. “He’s in the church. Come, I’ll show you.”

“Thanks for your help.” Emmanuel tipped his hat to the straitlaced pair and followed Theo through the crowd and into the church. Anton was inside, stacking hymnbooks. The stained-glass windows cast a jigsaw of colors onto the stone floor.

The mechanic looked up.

“Got you working Sundays, Detective?”

“Every day until the case is closed.”

“How’s it going?”

“Slowly,” Emmanuel said, then waited while Theo left the church. “I need information about the captain and his family.”

Anton emptied the last pew of books. “Can’t say I can help. The Dutchmen keep to themselves, the black men keep to themselves, and we do too.”

“What about the fire? How did you and the captain arrange compensation?”

There was a pause as the lanky coloured man placed the pile of books next to the pulpit. “How’d you know about that?” he asked.

“I’ve got big ears,” Emmanuel said. “Tell me about the fire.”

Anton shook his head. “I don’t want to get the Pretorius boys off side. Without the captain to control them, anything could happen.”

“Does King know about the fire?”

“He’s one of my investors,” Anton said. “He knows everything.”

“Good. If I have to, I’ll tell the Pretorius boys that King let the story out. King is too big for them to mess with, isn’t he?”

“He is,” the mechanic agreed, then got a cloth from a cupboard and began wiping down the wooden lectern with a vigorous hand. He worked for a minute in silence. Emmanuel let him get to the story in his own time.