He
scrambled over a heavy coupling and settled into a space between two wagons.
Soon, an ant trail of trucks packed to the limit with whisky and cut tobacco
and boxes of eau de cologne would roll out of the yard. English, Afrikaner,
foot police, detectives and railway police: the smuggling operation was a
perfect example of how different branches of the force were able to cooperate
and coordinate if they shared a common goal.
He
flicked the surveillance notebook open. Four columns filled the faintly ruled
paper: names, times, licence-plate numbers and descriptions of stolen goods.
Until these cold nights in the freight yard, he'd thought the wait for the
Normandy landing was the pinnacle of boredom. The restlessness and the fear of
the massed army, the bland food and the stink of the latrines: he'd weathered
it all without complaint. The discomforts weren't so different from what he'd
experienced in the tin-and-concrete slum shacks his family had lived in on the
outskirts of Jo'burg.
This
surveillance of corrupt policemen lacked the moral certainty of D-Day. What
Major van Niekerk, his old boss from the Marshall Square detective branch,
planned to do with the information in the notebook was unclear.
'Jesus.
Oh, Jesus ...' A groaned exhalation floated across the freight yards, faint on
the breeze. Some of the cheaper sugar girls made use of the deserted boxcars
come nightfall.
'Oh
. . . No ...' This time the male voice was loud and panicked.
The
skin on Emmanuel's neck prickled. The urge to investigate reared up but he resisted.
His job was to watch and record the activities of the smuggling ring, not
rescue a drunken whaler lost in the freight yard. Do
not
get involved. Major van Niekerk had been very specific about that.
The
hum of traffic along Point Road mingled with a wordless sobbing. Instinct
pulled Emmanuel to the sound. He hesitated and then shoved the notepad into his
pants pocket. Ten minutes to take a look and then he'd be back to record the
truck licence-plate numbers. Twenty minutes at I he outside. He pulled a silver
torch from another pocket, switched it on and ran towards the warehouses built
along the northeast boundary of the freight terminus.
The
sobs faded and then became muffled. Possibly the result of a hand held over a
mouth. Emmanuel stopped and tried to isolate the sound. The yards were vast
with miles of track running the length of the working harbour. Loose gravel
moved underfoot and a cry came from up ahead. Emmanuel turned the torch to high
beam and started running. The world appeared in flashes. Ghostly rows of
stationary freight cars, chains, red-brick walls covered in grime and a back
lane littered with empty hessian sacks. Then a dark river of blood that formed
a question mark in the dirt.
'No...'
Emmanuel
swung the torch beam in the direction of
the
voice and caught two Indian men
in the full glare of the light. Both were young with dark, slicked-back hair
that touched their shoulders. They wore near-identical suits made from silvery
sharkskin material and white silk shirts. One, a slim teenager, his face
streaked with tears, was slumped against the back wall of the warehouse. The
other, who was somewhere in his early twenties, sported an Errol Flynn
moustache and had a heavy brow contracted with menace. He hunched over the boy
with his hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.
'Do
not move.' Emmanuel used his detective sergeant's voice. He reached for his .38
standard Webley revolver and touched an empty space. The most dangerous weapon
he had was a pen. No matter. The gun was backup.
'Run!'
the older one screamed. 'Go!'
The
men ran in different directions and Emmanuel targeted the smaller of the two,
who stumbled and pitched to the ground. Emmanuel caught his sleeve and steadied
the teenager against the wall.
'Run
again and I'll break your arm,' he said.
A
coupling clanked. The older one was still out there somewhere. Emmanuel rested
shoulder to shoulder with the boy and waited.
'Parthiv,'
the boy sniffled, 'don't leave me.'
'Amal,'
a voice whispered back. 'Where are you?'
'Here.
He got me.'
'What?'
'I've
got Amal,' Emmanuel said. 'You'd better come out and keep him company.'
The
man emerged from the dark with a gangster swagger. A gold necklace complemented
his silvery suit and a filigreed ring topped with a chunk of purple topaz
weighed down his index finger.
'And
just who the hell are you?' the
skollie
demanded.
Emmanuel
relaxed. He'd put down thugs like this one on a daily basis back in Jo'burg.
Back before the trouble in Jacob's Rest.
'I'm
Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper,' he said.
With
the National Party now in control, the police had become the most powerful gang
in South Africa. The air went out of the Indian's hard-man act.
'Names,'
Emmanuel said when the men were against the wall. He'd deal with the fact he
had no authority and no jurisdiction later.
'Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde,' the Indian Errol Flynn said. He looked tough and he talked
tough but something about the flashy suit and the jewellery made him look a
little ... soft.
'Names,'
Emmanuel repeated.
'Amal,'
the youngster said quickly. 'My name is Amal Dutta and that's my brother,
Parthiv Dutta.'
'Stay
put,' Emmanuel instructed and dipped the torchlight towards the ground. A
bottle of lemonade lay on its side near the pool of blood. Then, in the
shadows, Emmanuel made out the curled fingers of a child's hand. They seemed
almost to motion him closer. A white boy lay in the dirt; arms outstretched,
skinny legs tangled together. His throat was sliced open from ear to ear like a
second mouth.
Emmanuel
recognised the victim: an English slum kid, around eleven years old, who picked
a living among the boxcars and the whores. Jolly Marks. Who knew if that was
his real name?
Starting
at the tattered canvas shoes, Emmanuel searched upwards over the body.
Army-issue fatigues were rolled up at the cuffs and threadbare at the knees. A
line of string was tied to the belt loop of his khaki pants and blood stained
the waistband. Streaks of dirt fanned out across the boy's grey shirt and
gathered in the creases around his mouth. The search revealed the lack of
something in every detail. The lack of money evident in Jolly's shabby clothes.
The lack of hygiene in the tangled hair and filthy nails. The lack of a parent
who might stop a youngster from going out onto the Durban docks after dark.
Emmanuel
shone the light on the stained waistband again. Jolly Marks always had a small
notebook attached to the belt loop of the khaki pants, where he wrote orders
for smokes and food. The string that held the book was still there but the book
itself was missing. That fact might be significant.
'Did
either of you pick up a spiral notebook with a string attached?' he said.
'No,'
the brothers answered simultaneously.
Emmanuel
crouched next to the body. An inch from Jolly's right hand was a rusty penknife
with the small blade extended. Emmanuel had owned a similar knife at almost
exactly the same age. Jolly had understood that bad things happened out here at
night.
Emmanuel
knew this boy, knew the details of his life without having to ask a single
question. He'd grown up with boys like Jolly Marks. No, that was a lie. This
was whom he'd grown up
as.
A dirty white boy. This could
have been his fate: first on the streets of a Jo'burg slum, and then on
battlefields in Europe. He had escaped and survived. Jolly would never have that
chance. Emmanuel returned to the Indian men.
'Either
one of you touch this boy?'
'Never.'
Amal's body shook with the denial. 'Never, never ever.'
'You?'
he asked Parthiv.
'No.
No ways. We were minding our own business and there he was.'
Nobody
in the back lanes of the Durban port after midnight was minding his own
business unless that business was illegal. There was, however, a big difference
between stealing and murder, and the brothers' sharkskin suits were pressed and
clean. Emmanuel checked their hands; also clean. Jolly lay in a bloodbath, his
neck cut with a single stroke: the work of an experienced butcher.
'Have
either of you seen the boy before, maybe talked to him?'
'No,'
Parthiv said too quickly. 'Don't know him.'
'I
wish I'd never seen him.' Amal's voice broke. 'I wish I'd stayed at home.'
Emmanuel
tilted the torch beam away from the teenager's face. Violent death was
shocking but the violent death of a child was different; the effects sank
deeper and lingered longer. Amal was only a few years older than Jolly and
probably still a schoolboy.
'Sit
down and rest against the wall,' he said.
Amal
sank to the ground and sucked breath in through an opened mouth. A panic attack
was on the cards. 'Are you going to . . . to . . . arrest us, Detective?'
Emmanuel
took a small flask from his jacket pocket and unscrewed the lid. He handed it
to Amal, who pulled back.
'I
don't drink. My mother says it makes you stupid.'
'Make
an exception for tonight,' Emmanuel said. 'It's mostly coffee, anyway.'
The
teenager took a slurp and coughed till fat tears spilled from his eyes. Parthiv
gave a derisive snort, embarrassed by his younger brother's inability to hold
liquor. Emmanuel pocketed the flask and checked the narrow alley between the
warehouse wall and the goods train.
He
had a body in the open, no murder weapon and two witnesses who, in all
probability, had stumbled onto the crime scene. This was a detective's
nightmare - but also a detective's dream. The scene was all his. There were no
foot police to trample evidence into the mud and no senior detectives jockeying
for control of the investigation.
Clumps
of vegetation imbedded in the gravel shuddered in a sudden breeze. Beyond Jolly's
body, the butt of a hand-rolled cigarette blew on the ground. Emmanuel picked
it up and smelled it - vanilla and chocolate. It was a special blend of
flavoured tobacco.
'You
smoke, Parthiv?' Emmanuel asked over his shoulder.
'Of
course.'
'What
brand?'
'Old
Gold. They're American.'
'I
know,' Emmanuel said. Half the Yank army had puffed their way across Europe on
Old Gold and Camel. For a few years it had seemed that the smell of freedom was
American tobacco and corned beef. Old Gold was a mass-market cigarette
imported into South Africa. The vanilla and chocolate tobacco was probably made
to order.
'What
about you, Amal? Do you smoke?'
'No.'
'Not
even a puff after school?'
'Only
once. I didn't like it. It hurt my lungs.'
Parthiv
snorted again.
Emmanuel
shone the beam on Jolly's hands and face. Amal looked away. There were no
defence wounds on the boy's hands despite the open penknife. The killer had
worked fast and with maximum efficiency. Maybe it was the night chill that made
the murder read cold and dispassionate. The word 'professional' came to
Emmanuel's mind; hardly a description that fitted either one of the Dutta boys.
He played the torchlight over the rough ground again, looking for hard
evidence. Jolly's order book was nowhere near the body.
A
coupling creaked in the darkness. Parthiv and Amal focused on an object in the
gloom of the freight yard behind him. Emmanuel swivelled and a black hole
opened up and swallowed him.
Something
powerful forced a sack over Emmanuel's head and pulled it down hard over his
shoulders. Rough hessian scraped against his face. He smelled rotting potatoes.
Air hissed from his lungs and muscular arms tightened around his chest like
pythons. He was lifted into the air and his feet dangled beneath him like those
of a child on a swing.
He
could feel a face pressed between his shoulderblades. The man holding him was
small, with the strength of a troll. Emmanuel twisted to try to break the hold.
The arms tightened a fraction, enough for Emmanuel to feel the slow crush of
his own bones. He stopped struggling and listened to the angry chatter of
voices talking in overlapping Hindi. He had no idea what was being said and
couldn't judge from the tone if it was good or bad news for him.
'Shut
up, Amal,' Parthiv snapped in English. 'Find our torch and make sure we haven't
dropped anything. I'll get the car.'
'He's
a policeman,' Amal said. 'We have to let him go.'
'No
chance. Not after you spilled our real names.'
'What
about the boy?' Amal said.
'Someone
will find him in the morning. Now, move.'