Let the Dead Lie (16 page)

Miss
Morgensen stood outside the abandoned soup factory clutching her walking stick
in her hands like General Patton about to address the Third Army.

'You
knew,' she said.

'I
suspected.' Emmanuel kept an eye on the oak stick that had not once been used
for walking.

'You
knew,' she repeated with narrowed eyes and marched onto the path that led back
to the car. The wide swing of her walking stick cleared the overgrown vegetation.
Shredded grass seeds and greenery flew into the air. 'You pretended charity,
Detective Sergeant, but your heart was full of deceit. Mrs Flowers now thinks I
led you to her son and she will never trust me again. The bond is broken.'

Emmanuel
let Miss Morgensen continue her violent land clearing. He had used her, that
was true, but even the infirm Mrs Flowers must know that Joe was only a moment
ahead of the law.

The
street came into view and the missionary stopped to get her breath back. 'I
thought you were investigating Jolly's murder,' she said, turning to him. Her
cheeks were pink but her eyes had the calm of the sea after a storm.

'I
am. Joe's escape and Jolly's murder may be connected,' Emmanuel said. 'Was Joe
Flowers a member of your congregation?'

'We
can't talk here. Too many of my family live in the area and after that trick
you pulled with Mrs Flowers it's better if I'm not seen with you.'

'Whither
thou goest, I goest,' Emmanuel said and had the unexpected pleasure of Miss
Morgensen's laugh.

The
crippled man in the Victorian-era wheelchair was parked at the front of the
crumbling flats, same as yesterday.

A
straw hat was jammed onto his head to keep the midday sun off. Two mangy
kittens burrowed into the blanket tossed over his paralysed legs.

'Anne's
father,' Miss Morgensen said when they reached the front door. 'Used to be a
railway shunter. Hit by a train. That's all that's left. Anne's mother took off
with another man about six months after the accident.'

They
climbed to the second floor and Miss Morgensen rapped her knuckles on the door.
There was a shuffle of feet inside the flat but no answer. Emmanuel manoeuvred
closer to the wall and out of sight.

'Sister
Anne?' Miss Morgensen said. 'I won't take more than a minute of your time.'

The
door creaked open and a young white woman's angular face appeared in the gap.
Her stubby nose was dusted with freckles and her thick brown hair was cropped
close to her skull; in the wrong light she could easily be mistaken for a boy.
Red cold sores cracked the corners of her mouth. Miss Morgensen's 'holy temple'
blessing this morning had not erased the reality of life in the shadow of the
port.

A
tawny kitten slipped into the corridor and rubbed itself against the
missionary's leg. The woman undipped the chain lock and scooped the kitten up
in her thin arms. It was hard to tell who needed milk most: Anne or the
starving cat.

'Have
you got Pa's medicine?' The kitten dug its claws into Anne's shoulder. 'A few
more days and he'll be out.'

'The
clinic is waiting on supplies,' Miss Morgensen said. 'I'll bring the medicine
the moment it's ready.'

'Ja,
sure.' The young woman's voice
wavered when she caught sight of Emmanuel leaning against the wall. She reached
for the door handle.

'He
won't hurt you, Sister Anne. I'll be with you the whole time.'

'What's
he want?'

'You're
not in trouble,' Emmanuel said. 'I just want to talk with you.'

Anne
retreated into the flat and Emmanuel trailed close enough to grab her if she
made a run for it. Winter light seeped in from the front window. Fingers of
rising damp curled strips of green wallpaper from the walls and gave the flat a
musty smell. A litter of kittens frolicked in a broken chest drawer and the
overflowing contents of the sandbox added an animal odour to the small space.
The peeling wallpaper and the grim poverty of this flat at the centre of a
dilapidated mansion were one of the reasons for the National Party's rise to
power. In and around Durban, there were blacks that lived better than this. To
the National Party and their constituents this was untenable. Anne scooped up a
second kitten and held it to her chest. Her eyes flickered to the opened
window, judging the distance to the street.

'Have
a seat, Anne,' Emmanuel said and leaned back against the edge of the
windowsill, legs outstretched. Casual body language to signal the fact that he
wasn't worried that she would make a break for it because, if she did, he would
catch her. Anne slumped onto a tartan couch that had been mended with scraps
from a box of random patches. She scratched a kitten behind the ears till its
body vibrated.

'Are
you a friend of Joe Flowers?'

'Used
to be,' she said.

'Have
you seen Joe lately?'

'Joe?'
Bony fingers curled into the kitten's mangy coat. 'No.'

'You
sure about that?'

'Ja,
of course.' The kitten leapt to
the floor but she pulled it back by the tail and held it down by force. Cat
claws dug through her cotton dress and into her skinny thighs.

'You
haven't seen him at all? Like across the street or maybe near the Zion Church?'

The
captive kitten squirmed free and streaked across the room to the safety of the
drawer. Anne turned her attention to its tawny sibling burrowing into the
crook of her neck. She massaged it with rough hands and avoided eye contact.

'Last
time I seen Joe was before he went to Durban Central, a long time back. I don't
know where he is now.'

'What's
through there?' Emmanuel indicated a hole in the wall that had once been a
doorway.

'That's
the bedroom.'

'Can
you show me?'

She
dragged herself over to the entrance like a deep-sea diver working against the
current. 'My pa sleeps in the big bed and I sleep in the corner,' she said.

A
double bed and a narrow cot were neatly made up. A tallboy, half wardrobe size,
held Anne's and her father's Sunday clothes. A porcelain ballerina with a
missing foot pirouetted on a small side table. Emmanuel moved to the window at
the back of the room. It was shut but the latch was open. Out the window,
rusted iron stairs spiralled down to the common yard. An older Zulu woman hung
wet clothes onto a wire line while a small white child drew pictures in the
dirt with a stick. Even destitute Europeans could not live without help. A
wooden gate, painted an optimistic yellow, opened from the yard to a nightsoil
lane.

'You
ever use these stairs?' he asked.

'No.
Never.'

A
tin plate and a mug of the kind normally reserved for servants were laid out on
the iron ledge just outside the window. Ants pulled breadcrumbs over the lip.

'Never?'
he said.

'Never.'

'Okay,
I believe you.'

Anne's
head dipped against the kitten's fur to hide a smile. A lie swallowed whole by
the police; if Joe came around she'd tell him the flat was safe and that the
police detective was a fool. Fine by Emmanuel.

Still,
there was something familiar about the room. Not from childhood but from the
last few days. Emmanuel stepped closer to Anne and the sensation increased so
he stopped and examined her. He'd seen her receive a blessing outside the Zion
Church but that wasn't it. There was something that made him feel that he knew
her well enough to touch her. He leaned in. The scent of flowers was faint on
her neck, a trace of something exotic in the broken-down room. The perfume
smelled expensive. Like Lana Rose had worn at van Niekerk's coronation party.
Joe had been shopping for his 'sister'.

'Detective
Sergeant,' Miss Morgensen said, 'Sister Anne has answered your questions fully
and I believe it is time for us to move on.'

'Of
course.' Emmanuel returned to the windowsill. He wrote Chateau La Mer's phone
number onto a page in his notebook then tore it loose and handed it to Anne.
'If you see Joe, call me, or tell Miss Morgensen and she'll contact me. Will
you do that?'

'Jâ.
Of course.'

Emmanuel
almost laughed at the easy promise. The only working phones in a two-block
radius likely belonged to the bookmakers and the public bar keepers.

'We're
done here, sister. Peace be with you,' Miss Morgensen said.

'And
with you,' Anne said and rushed to the door. She cracked it open to let them
out. The purring kitten sunk its claws through the fabric of her dress again
and burrowed its wet face against her nape. Red scratch marks appeared on the
freckled skin of Anne's neck and shoulder.

She
enjoys it, Emmanuel realised: the simple combination of love and pain and need.

'It's
not what you think,' Emmanuel said. 'Back in the flat.'

'What
was it I witnessed, Detective Sergeant? Fatherly concern?'

'Did
you smell the perfume? Expensive.' He held the front door open for the
missionary, who stepped out into the bright winter light.

'I...
well, yes ...'

'I
don't think she bought it herself.'

'You
come from these people, I think.' Miss Morgensen stopped by the antique
wheelchair and adjusted the straw hat, which had slid down over the crippled
man's eyes. The kittens played with a piece of newspaper stuck between the
wheel spokes.

'I
grew up surrounded by Annes,' Emmanuel said. 'The fact that I noticed her is
what's strange.' Anne should have smelled of caustic soap and hard times. Not a
subtle mix of lilac and spice.

'Speaking
of strange.' The missionary gestured towards a skinny man in a dark suit
spreading pamphlets in a semicircle around a wooden box. It was the preacher
from the crime scene and the Night Owl cafe.

'Bumped
into him twice,' Emmanuel said. 'He works the harbour, doesn't he?'

'Three,
sometimes four, times a week he hands out those leaflets and threatens everyone
with damnation. What he does with the rest of his working hours, I can't tell.'

'That
makes him strange?'

The
preacher was Miss Morgensen's competition. Both gathered souls that were
notoriously hard to hold onto.

'I
pray for charity,' she said. 'But there's something about Brother Jonah that
makes me want to . . .'

'Punch
him?'

'Yes.'
Her rumbling laugh startled the kittens and they scampered under the seat of
the wheelchair.

'I
know the feeling,' Emmanuel said. Any man who tried to drum up business at the
scene of a child's murder was no Christian.

'Sister
Bergis.' The preacher lifted a cream felt hat and revealed shoulder-length
black hair. He smiled and his lively brown eyes twinkled.

'Brother
Jonah.' Miss Morgensen returned the greeting but did not break stride. Her
fingers gripped the handle of her walking stick. Brother Jonah stepped across
their path and shoved his hand at Emmanuel.

'You're
new to these parts, aren't you, brother? What's your name so I might remember
you in prayer?'

'I
don't have a brother,' Emmanuel said and shepherded Miss Morgensen around the
fruit-box pulpit. She didn't need protection but there was something in Brother
Jonah's smile, a hint of pity and condescension, that irked him. Or maybe it was
his Jesus-like hair, which was brushed back from his forehead to reveal the
sharp 'V' of a widow's peak.

Emmanuel
and the missionary walked on at a brisk pace till they reached the street
corner.

'What
I said earlier about not knowing anyone suspicious around this area,' Miss
Morgensen said. 'I've changed my mind.' She jerked a thumb in Brother Jonah's
direction. 'The last few weeks he's been around the Point and the passenger
terminal every hour of the day and the night, talking especially to the children.'

'Jolly?'

'I
saw him with Jolly on Wednesday. They were walking past the terraces on
Wellington Street. Brother Jonah had his arm around Jolly's shoulder.'

'That
was the day before Jolly died?'

'Well,
yes.'

'What
time?' Emmanuel asked. Brother Jonah was a white man in a black suit, which
made him a match for the prostitute's description .. . along with a thousand
other males in Durban.

'Around
six fifteen. It was getting dark but I recognised them.'

'You
didn't think it was strange at the time?'

'We
both work in this area and we know the same people. It didn't seem odd.'

Emmanuel
manoeuvred Miss Morgensen around the corner and out of Brother Jonah's sight.
Protecting witnesses from potential retaliation was second nature to anyone
who'd worked in the detective branch.

'What
else?'

'You'll
think I'm a silly old woman.'

'Try
me and we'll see.'

'Brother
Jonah is not who he says he is. He disappears for days at a time and he keeps
strange company in strange places.'

'So
do you.'

Most
white people would run screaming from the abandoned soup factory and turn away
from the native nightwatchman hiding his wife and children in the city.

'Female
intuition?' Emmanuel suggested.

'No.
I followed him.'

'Ahh
...'

'Brother
Jonah arrived without the backing of a church or an evangelical mission.' The
missionary set off quickly and the end of her stick hit the pavement hard. 'Yet
he hands out money. Not much. A few bob to buy food or a school textbook. He
doesn't collect donations or ask for charity from the local shopkeepers. So
where does the money come from?'

They
turned onto Point Road where a line of customers waited in front of a kiosk.
Among the cigarettes and newspapers were colourful handmade paper badges
featuring Princess Elizabeth, the queen in waiting. The city would be lit up
tonight, on the last day of May, in honour of her upcoming coronation. Record
crowds were expected to witness Durban's attempt to be 'one of the most colourful
coronation cities in the Commonwealth'. Brass bands and flag waving. Emmanuel
made a mental note to stay away.

Miss
Morgensen pushed her walking stick between two men and forced a space. The
kiosk line parted like the Red Sea and they sailed through without breaking
stride.

'My
motives were dishonourable, Detective Sergeant. I don't like Brother Jonah. I
wanted to catch him in sin. Envy led me down the path of temptation.'

'Find
anything?'

She
paused outside a ship's chandlery to catch her breath. A white and blue mural
of a right whale and her calf breaking the ocean's surface was tiled into the
footpath. 'He went to Larsen's scrap metal yard near the black stevedores'
barracks. There's an office at the back of the yard, away from the street. He
was in there with another man.'

'Doing?'

'Talking,'
she said. 'The blinds were drawn in the office so I hid by the side of the
stairs and listened. They used English words but I didn't understand what they
said.'

'For
example?' Emmanuel kept the ball rolling. She was ashamed of her unchristian
behaviour and he was her confessor. Ask, listen and nod. A surprising amount
of police work hinged on these three simple actions.

'Brother
Jonah said, "They are not going to send a dogface on a mission to extract
this Ivan .. ."'

A
pause stretched out and Emmanuel lifted an eyebrow.

'The
language was not good,' Miss Morgensen said.

'I'll
give you a bob for every word I've never heard before.' Emmanuel extracted his
wallet and flipped it open. 'Let's see if you can make some money for the
collection box, sister.'

Miss
Morgensen hesitated then wrote the word 'motherfucker' onto the dusty surface
of the chandlery window with the tip of her finger.

'Well?'
Her eyes twinkled. 'Do you owe me a bob, Detective Sergeant?'

'Afraid
not,' Emmanuel said. 'It was a favourite of the

Yank
GIs. First time I've ever seen it written down so neatly though.'

'That
must be worth a bob,' she said. 'For penmanship.'

Emmanuel
paid up and switched the wallet for a notebook. He wrote down the unfinished
sentence and read it back to the missionary who was slipping the coins into a
breast pocket with a tiny smile.

'They
are not going to send a dogface on a mission to extract this Ivan .. . ?' He
tapped the word 'motherfucker' instead of saying it out loud in front of Miss
Morgensen. 'Ivan' was a slang term for the Russian soldiers that had flooded
across Europe in the wake of the Allied victory. 'Dogface' was the nickname
given to the men of the US infantry. Together they made no sense. Was the
American evangelist a soldier turned preacher?

'Anything
else?' he said. Brother Jonah seemed to be in the middle of a military mission.

'No.
The nightwatchman came out of his shed and I ran out to the street. A moment
later a big silver car drove by very slowly and there was a burning feeling
here in my chest.' She pointed to her heart. 'Brother Jonah was in the car and
he knew that I had followed him.'

'You
saw him?'

'No.
I felt him. Judging me.'

The
sign of a well-trained Christian was the deep and certain belief that God saw
all and judged all; almost always in the negative. Miss Morgensen knew her
actions were wrong and, as promised in the book, God, in the form of Brother
Jonah, had caught her red-handed.

'Tell
me about the car,' he said.

'It
was Mr Khan's Rolls-Royce.'

He
cocked his head in surprise. 'You know Mr Khan?'

'He's
one of the local merchants who supports the Zion family with donations.' A red
tinge worked its way across her cheeks. 'He supplies medicine for the sick.'

Dirty
money washed clean through charity.

'Maybe
Brother Jonah gets his money from Mr Khan. Same as you.'

'I
do not take money from Afzal Khan.' She tapped her cane against the footpath to
emphasise the words. 'Mr Khan supports Christian and Muslim organisations.
Twice a year Zion gets a box of medicine. Bandages, headache tablets, cough
syrup and disinfectants. Mr Khan's very particular about the donations being
given out to the poor. Brother Jonah gives out nothing but pamphlets.'

'Was
Mr Khan the man that Jonah was talking to at the scrapyard?'

She
shook her head. 'I can't say for sure. Brother Jonah was the one who did the
talking.'

'What
do you think Brother Jonah was doing in Mr Khan's car?'

If
he'd been in the Roller at all: a fact yet to be established beyond the feeling
that burned inside Miss Morgensen's chest.

'A
man of God in Mr Khan's limousine just before midnight? My thoughts on that
subject are uncharitable so I will keep them to myself.' She erased the
swearword from the dusty window with a sweep of her palm. 'After that, I put
temptation behind me. But the feeling of being observed by Brother Jonah ...
that has not gone away. It's stronger.'

The
line in front of the kiosk had thinned and Emmanuel got a clear view to the end
of the block. A man in a dark suit and dark hat stood on the corner with the
Natal Mercury
newspaper
held open in front of him. Pale alabaster hands clutched the pages. Blood
thundered in Emmanuel's ears. Was the tradesman from the police interrogation
room tailing him? Emmanuel stepped forward and the man on the corner turned and
walked away.

'Something
wrong, Detective Sergeant?'

Fear
spread once it was whispered out loud. The magic charm against it, in battle
and in peacetime, was silence. Knowing when to shut the fuck up.

'Coronation
fever,' he said, and pointed to a girl in a short cotton shift tying red, white
and blue balloons to the points of a wrought-iron fence with the help of a maid
only a few years older than herself.

'Will
you be celebrating?' Miss Morgensen asked. 'The newspaper says the buildings in
town will be lit up like a fairyland.'

'I'll
be working.' Emmanuel closed the notebook at the mermaid sketch and shoved it
into his pocket. His hands were steady but his heart raced. The night with Lana
Rose had happened before the murders at the Dover. Why would anyone have been
following him then?

'Looking
for Joe?' Miss Morgensen asked.

'Among
other things.'

Like
checking over his shoulder every five minutes to confirm that he was being
tailed. His watch read 3.45 p.m. Time to head back to the passenger ship quay
and try to find the Flying Dutchman.

'Is
Joe your only suspect?' The prospect clearly worried the Norwegian missionary.
How would she explain that someone who'd once been called 'brother' had
committed the murder of a family member? The delicate bonds of trust that held
the congregation together would break and the Zion Church would fracture.

Emmanuel
mentally scratched together a suspect list. Flowers was a white man in a dark
suit who moved fast and was known to Jolly. Joe also knew the docks, having
pimped a variety of girls there. And now there was Brother Jonah, the possible
ex-soldier turned preacher who worked the docks and talked to children. He wore
a dark suit and had got close enough to the skittish Jolly to put an arm around
his shoulder.

'No,'
Emmanuel said. 'Joe isn't the only suspect.'