'What
news, Cooper?' Major van Niekerk sat at the head of a long table in the shade
of the porch. The remains of an early morning tea of raisin cake and jam scones
lay on a china platter edged in gold leaf. Zweigman and Shabalala sat side by
side with a view of the pool and gardens. They looked at Emmanuel with anxious
smiles and he wondered what the major had said to them.
'Speak
freely.' Van Niekerk scratched the stubble on his chin. 'They know everything.'
'Christ
above . . .' Emmanuel leaned against the side of the table. Why would the major
pull Zweigman and Shabalala deeper into this mess right at the point when they
should be on their way home?
'You're
facing three counts of murder,' Zweigman said. 'If the murderer is not found by
this afternoon you will be arrested and placed in jail. Correct?'
'That's
my problem, not yours.' Zweigman and Shabalala had saved him once already; a
debt he still owed. He didn't want them in danger again. 'I'm grateful for your
help but you have to go home now. I can't involve you in my troubles again.'
'You
did not kill these people,' Shabalala said. 'The man who did these things must
be the one to answer for the crimes. That is how it must be.'
'And
that is how it will be.' Emmanuel pulled up a chair and sat across from the
doctor and the constable. He knew from combat that the bond forged between men
and women who fought side by side was the hardest to break. What the three of
them had experienced in Jacob's Rest was the peacetime equivalent. Almost like
a family, they were tied together by blood. 'You are my friends, not my men,'
he said, trying to ignore the struggle inside himself. He wanted Zweigman and
Shabalala gone
and
he wanted them by his side.
'Yebo,
friends,' Shabalala agreed. 'And
that is why you will not do this alone.'
The
statement stopped Emmanuel cold. He had worked five months at the Victory
Shipyards breaking steel and hiding from the past when two hours away were
comrades. He wasn't alone after all.
Shabalala
poured him a cup of tea. Zweigman put a cake on a plate and placed it in front
of him.
'It's
settled, Cooper,' the major said. 'Doctor Zweigman and Constable Shabalala will
be non-combatants. Strategic backup, that's all. Did the Russians have any
leads?'
'An
American zealot preacher. Brother Jonah, he calls himself. He works the Point
and the harbour. He was in the freight yards on the night the kid was killed. I
think he might have something to do with Natalya and Nicolai, too.'
'Why?'
'Russians
and Americans running around the docks in the middle of the night? Maybe it's a
coincidence . . .'
'Do
you know where he is?' van Niekerk asked. 'A list of favourite places?'
Emmanuel
shook his head. 'Nothing yet.'
'He
has no woman and no friends?' Shabalala said. Such a thing was unthinkable for
a Zulu. Social isolation was a form of living death.
'No
woman.' Emmanuel drank a mouthful of black tea and remembered his joyride in
the back of the Silver Wraith. He also remembered Miss Morgensen's belief that
Jonah had been in that car as well. Maybe Khan could help. He knew more than a
little bit about what went on in the Point area and he gave money to charities
to keep up appearances.
'What
about Afzal Khan?' Emmanuel thought aloud.
'Khan
the Indian gangster?' the major said.
'The
very one.' A black-skinned man with a white bodyguard and a silver Rolls would
be well-known to the police and to every citizen on the Point with eyesight.
'Do
you know where this Mr Khan is?' Zweigman chose a piece of raisin cake and
broke it into bite-sized pieces over his plate.
'No
idea,' Emmanuel said. The door connecting the porch with the interior of the
house opened. Lana stepped out in black trousers and a man's white shirt,
untucked. A cigarette dangled between her fingers. Smoking and in pants; no
respectable venue in Durban would let her inside.
'Phone
call from Jo'burg,' she said to van Niekerk. 'He said it's urgent.'
The
major got to his feet and moved to Lana's side. He stopped and said, 'Cooper
has to find your friend Khan the gangster. Can you get him in?'
'Of
course.' Lana's smile was brittle, the cigarette now pinched between her
fingers. 'I can try.'
'Good
girl.' The major patted her on the cheek and disappeared inside.
It
was decided: the ex-barmaid who slipped through the dark like a fox and
shrugged off threats from guns, knives and very bad men would lead Emmanuel
back into the lion's den.
'I'll
get out here,' Emmanuel said and Zweigman pulled the dusty Bedford truck into a
parking space on Timeball Road. They were a block from the address Lana had
given him. 'I should be back in under an hour. If not, drive back to the
major's house and wait there.'
'Go
well, Detective Sergeant.' Shabalala raised a hand in farewell.
It
felt good to have backup and even better to know Zweigman and Shabalala were a
block away from any potential trouble. He started down Timeball Road, counting
the building numbers along on the way. A boy ran past trailing a kite made from
brown paper bags and butcher's string.
Ahead,
Lana stood outside 125, a squat brown building that might once have been a
printing plant or a garment factory. It was an unremarkable structure but for
the fleshy Indian man who stood on the front stairs smoking a cigarette. A
trio of raw-boned adolescents with boxing gloves slung over their shoulders
exited the building and ran down the stairs.
Lana
turned at Emmanuel's approach and his pace faltered. He'd seen her frightened,
drunk and even softened by physical pleasure but he'd never seen her angry.
'Hurry
up for god's sake,' she said. 'I don't want to be here all afternoon.'
'I
told you I was fine by myself. There's no reason for you to be here.' Was that
his voice? Defensive and bruised and hard done by?
'This
isn't a candy store.' Lana took a round compact out of her bag, flicked it open
and checked her reflection in the mirror: red lips, black eyeliner, silky black
hair and a tantalising display of cleavage. 'You need more than an address and
money in your pocket.'
'You
could have left me to talk to him by myself.'
'The
major didn't think that was a good idea.' The tension in Lana's body made it
obvious that declining to help set up this meeting had not been an option.
'I'm
sorry,' Emmanuel said. 'To drag you into this.'
'It's
my fault.' She dropped the compact back into her bag and snapped the lock. 'I
was the one who asked you for a lift home, remember?'
That
felt like a year ago and an hour ago. Memory seemed to bend time back on
itself. One timeframe could not be changed. There were now less than seven
hours left till the detective branch served the arrest warrant.
'Come
on,' Lana said and climbed the stairs. The hem of her skirt swished against her
bare legs and the heels of her sandals clicked on the hard surface. Emmanuel
fell in beside her and she nodded a greeting to the Indian guard. Up close,
Emmanuel saw that the guard was one of those men whose life was best summed up
by a series of 'ex's. Ex-boxer, ex-wrestler, ex-bar-room bouncer.
'Hello,
Miss Rose,' the man said and pulled the door open. Emmanuel slipped in behind
Lana, grateful for the easy entry but disturbed by the familiar use of her
name.
A
bare boxing gym with three practice rings, a row of punching bags and an old
weights bench were set out in a long room with a concrete floor. A taut black
man skipped rope in a corner while an Indian and a coffee- coloured man sparred
in a practice ring. An older white trainer with a flattened face called out,
'Move your legs, you lazy bastard!' It was unclear which boxer he was
addressing. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and dirty socks. Emmanuel
felt a burn in his chest: a combination of the odour and memories of
bare-knuckled school fights.
Lana
walked straight to the back wall. Despite the dress and perfume, she looked
like a logical part of the scene. She opened the door and they entered a small
room with bare walls and no windows. A line of wooden chairs was set up outside
a second door against which Khan's bodyguard, the British bulldog in a suit,
lounged. Two Indian women and a mixed-race man sat with cheerless faces in the
stark space.
'Hell's
waiting room,' Emmanuel whispered to Lana.
'How
else do you get an audience with the beast?' she said and walked up to the
bulldog, who straightened up from his slouch. 'Tell Mr Khan that Lana wants to
see him.'
'He's
busy.' The guard gave a lopsided smile. 'I'll let him know you're here when
he's finished up.'
A
strangled grunt came from inside the office and Lana moved back into the middle
of the room without answering. An old Indian woman with a face crosshatched by
worry lines sat on one of the hard wooden chairs twisting a lace hankie between
henna-stained fingers. Emmanuel walked over to Lana, who peered into her
handbag with a frown, searching for something.
'Got
any cigarettes?' she asked and sorted through an assortment of lipstick,
perfume and powder compacts with shaky fingers.
'Afraid
not,' Emmanuel said and watched the frantic search for another minute. Lana was
on a first-name basis with these citizens of Durban's underworld but it didn't
make her any more comfortable. The sharp scrape of furniture moving across the
floor came from the direction of the office and Lana snapped the bag shut.
'This
man you're looking for.' Her voice was tense. 'Is he the one who killed Jolly
Marks?'
Emmanuel
knew she was making conversation to stop herself from imagining what might be
happening behind the closed door.
'Brother
Jonah was in the yards on the night Jolly was killed. That makes him a person
of interest.'
The
old lady in the corner gave up strangling her hankie and leaned forward. 'The
police say it was Indian boys who did the killing,' she whispered. 'Two of
them. Maybe the Dutta brothers.'
Emmanuel
was certain that he had not mentioned the Duttas' involvement to anyone. Not
even to the major. Only he and Giriraj knew that the brothers had discovered
Jolly's body. The prostitute had not named them. They were just
charras:
dark men in slick suits with the cheek to think a red-haired Englishwoman would
have sex with anyone for money.
'Who
mentioned the Dutta brothers?' Emmanuel asked the old woman.
'No
one.' She threw a nervous glance at Mr Khan's door and then fell silent. Nobody
talked about Mr Khan except Mr Khan. That was the rule. If you broke the rule,
something of yours got broken in return.
'So,
maybe it was the Indian men.' Lana tucked a dark strand of hair behind an ear.
'Like the railway policeman at the bar said.'
'Someone
has certainly been spreading the word.'
Emmanuel
wondered if the police had taken Parthiv and Amal in for questioning and, if
so, how they'd gone from a description of 'two Indians in sharp suits' to
suspects with names. The old woman's stare suggested that Mr Khan was involved.
If so, had Khan obtained that piece of information direct from the rail yard or
had one of the scores of Dutta aunties and cousins gossiped over a fence?
The
office door swung open and a brown-skinned girl in a flowered dress staggered
out. Emmanuel judged her to be around eighteen. She looked neither left nor
right but straight ahead to the exit. The mixed-race man seated in the waiting
room got to his feet and walked to her side. They shared the same looks: dark
hair, brown skin and light green eyes. A father and daughter, Emmanuel thought.
The man touched the girl's arm but she shrugged him off in disgust and hurried
out to the gym and the street. The man followed, his shoulders slumped.
Khan's
offer to supply Emmanuel with a woman, 'any colour, any size', took on a
sinister edge. Sprinkled across Durban, in suburban houses, harbourside flats
and shantytown shacks were females with debts to the Indian gangster. Just how
had Lana made Khan's acquaintance?
'He'll
see you and your friend now, Miss Rose.' The Brit waved them into the inner
sanctum and then closed the door behind them.
The
contrast with the waiting room was stark and, Emmanuel suspected, deliberate.
Khan's office had a hand-knotted Chinese carpet spread across the floor and was
furnished with heavy wood cabinets that glowed with polish. A courtyard bright
with blossoms and vines could be glimpsed through an open window. A sullen
parrot peered out from a bamboo cage that dangled from a stand to the right of
a wide oak desk.
Books,
pens, loose paper, a black Bakelite phone and the heavy wooden box from the
Rolls were pushed to the edges of the desk - on which, Emmanuel felt certain,
the girl had paid off her father's debt. Khan looked up from securing the top
button on his baby blue shirt and smiled at Lana.
'It's
been a long time,' he said.
'Namaste,
Afzal.' She walked over to a
cabinet and lifted the hatch to reveal a bar stocked with non-alcoholic drinks.
She tipped ice cubes into a tumbler and filled it with guava juice, then placed
the drink within Khan's reach. 'This meeting is a favour for a friend,' she
said.
Emmanuel
knew that the favour was for van Niekerk and not for him. He shrugged off the
thought.
'Mr
Cooper.' Khan's dark eyes narrowed. 'I said we would see each other again
soon.'
'You
were right.' Emmanuel made an effort to relax. How did Lana know what drink to
pour the biggest Indian gangster in Durban?
'So
. . .' Khan leaned back while Lana Rose slid the pens and loose paper back into
place on the desktop and straightened the wooden smoking box. 'Why are you
here, Mr Cooper?'
'I'm
looking for Brother Jonah, the street preacher.'
'You
need salvation?'
'Information.
Brother Jonah can help.'
'I
only give information to friends,' Khan said. 'Fuck off.'
Lana
moved to Khan's side and leaned against the edge of the desk. She was close enough
to straighten the collar of his shirt. 'Consider him a friend of a friend,' she
said.
'Really?'
Khan's hand snaked out faster than a mamba's head and encircled Lana's wrist.
The flesh of his thumb rubbed against the blue veins visible under her pale
skin: an action that was both intimate and violent. 'How good a friend is Mr
Cooper?'
Emmanuel
moved forwards but Lana kept him in place with a glance that said, 'I will
handle this.' He eased back, repulsed by the beautifully furnished room, the
luxury car, the custom-made suits. Afzal Khan spent a fortune to disguise the
fact that he was just a thug.
'Not
too rough,' Lana Rose said. 'I bruise easily.'
Khan
seemed fascinated by her skin, but the expression on her face was one of
parental boredom. His fingers tightened their hold but she did not react.
The
desk phone rang and Khan released her to pick up the receiver. 'What?' he
barked into the mouthpiece, clearly annoyed that a pleasurable moment was
spoiled.
Emmanuel
motioned to Lana. The meeting was over. He'd find Brother Jonah himself if it
meant lifting every garbage lid on the Point. The price of Khan's help, to be
paid by Lana, was too high. 'Let's go,' he said. His anger made him feel twelve
years old again, barefoot and running along a dirt lane in Sophia town with his
sister's tiny hand clutched in his. The sound of their mother's cries for help
made the night blacker and colder than any he'd ever known. With every step
away from the three-room shack and its blood-splattered walls he'd promised himself
that when he was older and stronger he'd stand up to men like his father and
Afzal Khan.
'Yes,
let's go.' Lana grabbed her handbag from the desk and followed Emmanuel to the
door. The Oriental rug muffled their footsteps but the click of the door handle
was sharp.
'Wait.'
Khan sat forward with the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder.
'There is an address that might be useful.'
Emmanuel
kept his back to the room for a long moment. Five minutes ago the information
was out of reach and now it was being handed over for nothing. What was Khan up
to?
'If
the address is useful, I'll take it,' Emmanuel said and moved back into the
office. A muffled voice could be heard on the other end of the telephone line
but it was impossible to pick up words. Khan scrawled something onto a piece of
paper, folded it in half and slid it across the desk.
'Here,'
he said. 'Try this.'
Emmanuel
opened the page to check the information. A Signal Road address was scribbled
in bright red ink. The Indian man put the receiver down in the cradle and
pulled the wooden smoking box across the desk. He lifted the box lid and
extracted a pouch of tobacco and a stack of rolling papers. 'Be careful. More
than one person at the meeting might scare Jonah off and it would take hours to
find him again.'
'I'll
be alone,' Emmanuel said trying to figure how Khan, with the weight of the
Durban underworld on his shoulders, knew about Brother Jonah's state of mind.
'Good
luck,' Khan said and smiled. A bright spark of emotion lit up the dead centre
of his pupils like the headlights of a ghost train in a tunnel.
Emmanuel
left the office. Lana closed the door behind them. Funny how accents could bend
words so they seemed to take on another meaning. Khan's 'good luck' sounded
strangely like 'goodbye'. The people in the waiting room stared at them with a
mixture of anxiety and envy.