'This
is your house?' he asked.
'It
belongs to my cousin, Kolya.' Nicolai made the name sound like a disease. 'He
has gone to work at the whaling station. We are visiting here from Russia.'
So,
a married couple on a family visit. The attempted strangling and the ambush
with the Walther still had to be explained, however.
'Why
are you trying to kill me?' Emmanuel said. 'First with the chain and then with
this gun.'
Nicolai
shrugged. 'Kill or be killed.'
'I
didn't come to harm you.' Emmanuel crouched by the burly man's chair but kept
the sidearm close to the ground. 'I came here to find out about the boy who
gave you the mermaid drawing. It was three nights ago. Do you remember him?'
Nicolai
frowned and then shook his head after failing to translate the question from
English to Russian.
'How
long have you been in Durban?' Emmanuel went back to basics. One question and
then one answer at a time, until the link with Jolly Marks was made.
'Here?'
The Russian indicated the sunroom.
'Yes.
How long?'
'Three
days.'
That
put the couple in Durban at the time of Jolly's murder. Emmanuel tucked the
Walther into the waistband of his trousers and pulled Jolly's notebook free.
The steel handcuffs in his jacket pocket rattled and Nicolai sat forwards. The
Russian recognised the sound the way an orchestra conductor might recognise a
note from a favourite instrument.
'Please.'
Nicolai fumbled with the buttons of his heavy wool coat and pulled a diamond
and ruby ring from the lining. He held it out in the palm of his hand.
'Please,' he said. 'Take and go away.'
Emmanuel
ignored the bribe and removed the documents that stuck out from the breast
pocket of the Russian man's winter garment. Two American passports in the names
of Nicholas and Natalie Wren were unmarked by immigration stamps for South
Africa or any other country. A healthy Nicolai, sturdy and handsome, smiled
from the black and white photo glued to the identification page. Natalya had
managed a pout.
'Real
diamonds and real rubies,' the Russian said. 'I give you for the passports.'
'Don't
worry.' Emmanuel replaced the documents. 'I'm not going to take them or the
jewellery.'
Natalya
hovered next to the deckchair, her focus on the ruby and diamond-studded ring.
She held her hands out for the jewellery the way a spoilt child might demand
sweets.
'Not
a chance,' Emmanuel said, pushing the goods back into Nicolai's coat. He
flipped Jolly's notebook to the mermaid illustration and held it up for Nicolai
to examine. Natalya poked him on the shoulder and Emmanuel shrugged her off.
'I'm
not giving you the ring,' he said.
She
poked him again, harder.
He
turned and faced her so she got the full visual effect of his annoyed
expression.
'Nyet.
Don't ask me again.'
Natalya
clutched his hand and dragged him over to the window, where she drummed her
knuckles against the glass. She stopped and there was silence. Emmanuel pulled
her away from the window. The quiet stretched out.
'Shh...'
He motioned for her to keep still and checked the backyard through a crack in
the heavy curtains. The German Shepherd's body lay slack against the wire
fence. Its pink tongue dangled from its mouth. Yellow leaves blew across the
empty yard and lifted into the air.
Emmanuel
shoved the notebook into a jacket pocket and backed up two steps. Whoever had
killed the dog was still out there somewhere. Exodus and the car were at the
front. He moved to the deckchair and leaned in close to Nicolai.
'Can
you move?' he said.
'No.
I not leave here. They kill me.'
'Someone's
already killed the dog,' Emmanuel said. 'We have to leave this place. Now.'
The
emotion in Nicolai's pale green eyes was pure and animal. Emmanuel had seen it
in the faces of soldiers in battle and knew that others had seen it in him,
too. It was the fear of death.
'Go,
Natalya.' The Russian man pushed himself out of the deckchair. 'I will follow.'
The
sound of kicking at the back entrance echoed through the house. Natalya opened
the front door and ran with lumbering grace between the ridiculous ceramic
statues. Nicolai followed with a limping stride that rocked his wide shoulders
from side to side.
'Movet'
Emmanuel urged them on from the rear. They passed a statue of a yellow-eyed
wolf cub by the gate. A few feet more and they made it to the parked DeSoto.
Exodus spun around at the sound of the passenger door opening and watched the
burly man dripping with sweat slide across the leather.
'Start
the car,' Emmanuel said. 'Now.'
The
engine turned over. Natalya was no longer at the passenger door. She was
running back towards the house, blonde hair flying in the breeze. Emmanuel went
after her.
'What
is going on?' Exodus called out from the car window.
'Keep
the motor running!' Emmanuel shouted and sprinted towards the shabby building.
Natalya was inside, dragging the polished leather suitcase across the floor.
The wood panels of the back door splintered against the crate of empty bottles
pushed against it.
'Jesus
Christ!' Emmanuel snatched the suitcase. He wasn't going to die for a handful
of old photographs and Grandma's brooch. Inevitably people ran into danger for
their memories.
'Run,
Natalya.'
She
took off and Emmanuel followed. The case was heavy and halved his speed. The
back door gave way and the crate of empty vodka bottles toppled over with a
smash. Boots crunched the shards of broken glass littering the kitchen floor.
There was a heavy thud, the impact of flesh meeting a hard surface, and then a
groan.
Emmanuel
gained ground. Nobody followed. Exodus had turned the car to face the dirt
road. The leather suitcase thumped into the back of the DeSoto next to Natalya
and Nicolai.
'Go,
go, go.' Emmanuel clambered into the front seat and slammed the passenger door
closed. The car accelerated and the tyres kicked up dirt. Bushes scratched
against the doors and the passenger side mirror exploded. Chrome and glass flew
into the air. Natalya screamed. A second bullet went wide and hit the feathery
tops of a flowering reed bed.
Emmanuel
peered through the dust cloud trailing them. There was a flash of white skin
and a dark suit. It was impossible to make any kind of identification. Natalya
was doubled over with her hands jammed over her ears but Nicolai held himself
upright, cool under fire.
'Come
on. Come on, girl.' Exodus shifted the gears and stamped on the accelerator
till the DeSoto's six-cylinder engine roared. The car fishtailed onto the main
road doing fifty. A big black Dodge with a dent in the front grille was pulled
over to the side with its bonnet open. There were no driver or annoyed
passengers near the vehicle. No one had walked the dirt road to ask for help.
'That's
his car,' Emmanuel said. 'He parked it up here and worked his way around to the
back of the house.'
'And
who is he?' The gunshots had stripped Exodus of his charm and exposed the man
himself: angry enough to chew iron nails.
'I
don't know,' Emmanuel said.
The
fake mechanical breakdown, the silent disposal of the dog and the rear boundary
attack were the marks of a professional. That word, 'professional', had come up
at the scene of Jolly's murder. Neither Brother Jonah nor Joe Flowers seemed to
fit that description. The pale-skinned tradesman, however, fitted it perfectly.
That suspicion didn't make the situation any clearer. There was no logical
reason for the tradesman to tail him. One good thing had come from the ambush:
he wasn't paranoid. He was being followed. That was a small consolation.
'Should
have known,' Exodus muttered and overtook a rambling family sedan on a blind
corner. 'You look like trouble. But I think, no, he is okay this one. He has the
nice clothes and he has the money. Big, big mistake.'
The
sedan blasted its horn but Exodus didn't ease up. He stayed bent over the wheel
with the throttle jammed to the floor. Vegetation flew past the windows in a
smudge of green.
'Try
to get us to town alive,' Emmanuel said.
'My
side mirror is gone,' Exodus said. 'Now we are running like dogs. Why is this,
Mr Emmanuel?'
Emmanuel
couldn't offer an explanation.
They
turned into the settlement of Fynnlands and the speedometer dropped to sixty.
There was no sign of the black Dodge but it was too early to be relieved: they
had to get off the Bluff and disappear into the backstreets of Durban. The
DeSoto rumbled over the bridge and cruised past the mangrove swamps, then
plunged between the red-brick warehouses and factories along Edwin Swales
Drive.
'We
have to get off the main road,' Emmanuel said. Taking the major link back to
the town centre would be too easy a trail for the shooter to follow.
'You're
going back to the passenger wharf.' Exodus was adamant. 'What you and your
friends do after that is your own business.'
'Think,'
Emmanuel said. 'How did the driver of the black Dodge find us? Did he just take
a lucky guess or did he follow us from the passenger wharf?'
'Masende!'
Exodus used the Zulu word for 'testicles'
and hit the steering wheel with his fist.
'Exactly,'
Emmanuel said.
The
Basotho driver turned left and headed for the suburban streets of Congella.
Three pretty white girls in flowered cotton shifts and scuffed shoes played
hopscotch on the pavement. They watched the DeSoto's progress with curiosity.
Later, if the driver of the Dodge stopped and asked the girls if they'd seen a
nice car with silver trim, they'd say, 'The one with the
kaffir
and the white man sitting next to each other? That one?'
'Sunday-driver
slow,' Emmanuel said. 'We don't want to attract attention.'
'Then
you must get in the back seat like a proper
baas.
These white people, they don't
like a black man to drive for himself. We must only walk or ride bicycles.'
They
dropped to thirty miles per hour and cruised through the sleepy Sunday streets.
Cloud shadows drifted across the red-tiled roofs and darkened the slender
fronds of the royal palm trees on the roadside.
'Who
gave you the mermaid picture that I showed you at the passenger quay?' Emmanuel
said. It would be just his luck to have rescued a Russian couple with no
connection to Jolly Marks.
'The
big man. He and the girl, they came together with the picture and the address
for the house in the bush.'
'Thursday
night?'
'Yes.'
'What
time?'
'Maybe
just before midnight. I was outside the Seafarers Club. Three pounds to drive
to the Bluff.' Exodus laughed without humour. 'The money was too, too good. Now
I see why.'
'They
had a suitcase,' Emmanuel said. 'That should have told you something strange
was going on.'
'The
girl is ripe and the man was in a big hurry.' A long pause followed and then a
rush into speech. 'I thought maybe the man wanted to stay at the house so he
could have fun before the baby came.'
'I
see.'
A
simple explanation for the trip had not even occurred to Exodus. That was what
working outside the confines of polite society did: it blunted the idea of
normal and sometimes destroyed it. Emmanuel wondered if he'd pushed his
ex-wife Angela too far and asked her for things that were common in the world
of soldiers and police detectives but unacceptable in a 'decent' marriage.
'Chasing
the money Always chasing the money.' Exodus was rueful. 'That is where I'm at
fault, Mr Emmanuel.'
'Did
you see Jolly Marks that night?' His failure as a husband was fodder for a
late-night drinking session sometime in the future.
The
DeSoto's speedometer needle dropped to fifteen and two coloured boys on
bicycles flew by. Exodus's dark hands gripped the wheel hard and his knuckles
turned white under the pressure.
'A
bad thing has happened to that boy,' he said and sucked air into his mouth like
a rugby player who'd just been tackled and had the wind knocked out of his
lungs. 'That is why you are asking these questions.'
'Jolly
was killed in the freight yard on Thursday night somewhere between 11 p.m. and
one in the morning.' Emmanuel guessed at the times. The details of the
coroner's report would never be made available to him.
'Ayyyee...'
Exodus made a sound that combined both helplessness and despair. It was a
uniquely South African expression of grief. 'Who would do this thing?'
The
man was visibly shaken and Emmanuel's gut feeling about him solidified. Exodus
was an ambitious black man who loved money, American cars and nice clothes, but
he was no killer.