One
of the uniforms stuck on crowd control called out, 'Did we get the right one,
Sarge?'
'The
witness is on her way,' the sergeant bellowed. 'She'll do a formal
identification here on the spot.'
A
whistle blew and the throng split. The tram passengers craned their heads
towards the new movement. Detective Head Constable Robinson and Detective
Constable Fletcher pressed through the crowd with the witness tucked safely
between them.
Emmanuel
crouched and took hold of Amal's wrist. 'If I have to break your wrist to save
your life, I will. Now move.
Quickly.'
He tugged the boy to his feet. They stood almost face to face with Fletcher and
Robinson.
'Her?'
Amal gasped in recognition and Emmanuel wheeled them both sixty degrees so the
witness saw their backs.
Zweigman
glimpsed the fear in Amal's face and felt the urgency of the ex-detective's
movements. 'This boy is going to be sick,' he shouted. 'Make way. Please. Make
way.'
The
crowd and the police gave them plenty of room. A path opened and then closed
like a zipper as bodies hemmed in behind them. Soon, all three were part of the
great human tide. Emmanuel shouldered through the spectators and cut across to
Shabalala. The Zulu constable was the perfect barrier to shelter behind.
Zweigman joined Shabalala to form a line of cover. If the detectives looked in
their direction they would see an old man and a tall native brought into the
city to help his master with the heavy chores.
The
detectives led the witness over to Giriraj's body and Robinson held on to her
slender arm. She was unsteady on her feet and swayed with the breeze.
'Is
that really the same woman?' Amal whispered in disbelief.
'Yes,'
Emmanuel said. 'She's cleaned up.'
The
prostitute from the rail yard had come dressed in a dark brown frock that
buttoned to the throat and fell well below the knee. The loose garment covered
the details of her body. Her face was free of make-up, her hair pulled back
into a neat bun. A plain gold chain was her only adornment. Compared with the
sparkling night-time wear she favoured, this was practically sackcloth and
ashes. Still, there was something about her that didn't sit right. Despite all
her efforts to appear respectable, an aura of sexual availability clung to her.
Emmanuel couldn't figure out why. The prostitute held a hankie to her nose
like a Victorian heroine in a penny dreadful novella, and he saw bright colour
glint from the white cotton. She'd forgotten to remove the flecks of devil-red
polish from her long nails.
Detective
Head Constable Robinson drew in a breath and let it out slowly while the
witness completed her pantomime display of shock and grief. He appeared
uneasy, despite being on the brink of solving the brutal murder of a white
child.
'This
him?' Robinson asked.
'Jâ,'
the woman said. 'That's the
Indian. He followed Jolly Marks.'
The
crowd murmured in response. The prostitute continued to stare at Giriraj's
body, mesmerised. A memory flickered across her face and she stepped back,
lost in thought.
'And
. ..' Robinson prompted after the silence had dragged out long enough.
'He ...
he had a knife in his hand,' she
said.
A
few women tut-tutted while their husbands rued the fact that the Indian was
already dead and would not be dragged through the courts and then killed by the
proper means - a rope and scaffold.
Amal
grabbed hold of Emmanuel's jacket sleeve and whispered, 'That's a lie. Giriraj
never carried any weapons.'
'I
know,' Emmanuel said. 'But there's nothing to be done about it now. If she
fingers you as one of the Indian men in the yard that night, the detectives
will turn you inside out.'
'But
this is wrong,' Amal hissed. 'This is all a lie.'
'Getting
arrested won't make it right,' Emmanuel said.
He
studied Fletcher's and Robinson's tensed shoulders and blank expressions. They
sensed something was rotten too, but faced with a difficult case and a likely
suspect who could no longer defend himself they let the scene play out.
'You
sure it's him?' Fletcher scratched his neck and peered down at the collapsed
heap of flesh. 'You told the crime scene guys that it was two of them:
black-haired and in suits. This one is bald with sandals.'
The
prostitute licked dry lips. 'I was scared,' she mumbled. 'He'd seen me. He said
he'd cut me if I told the truth.'
'What
kind of knife was it?' Robinson kneeled on the tarred road and patted Giriraj's
body down with brisk hands. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small lump
wrapped in white muslin. The prostitute leaned forward, a horse to a sugar
cube.
'Hashish.
No weapons.' Robinson threw the white wrapped nub to his partner and spoke to
the star witness. 'Did you get a good look at the knife?'
'What?'
The woman fiddled with the gold chain around her neck, her hungry gaze on the
lump in Fletcher's palm.
'The
knife,' Robinson repeated. 'What did it look like?'
'Sharp,'
she said. 'I was scared. He said he'd cut me.'
Tricky
situation, Emmanuel acknowledged. A spellbound crowd, a dead man and a distressed
woman. No matter what Fletcher and Robinson thought of the witness's evidence,
they were in no position to question it. A scared white woman trumped a dead
Indian with a lump of African Black in his pocket any day. They had to play it
safe and keep the witness and the crowd on side.
Robinson
smiled. 'But you're not scared any more. You found your courage and decided to
tell us the truth. Is that right?'
'Ja,
that's right.' She spilled tears
and the detective stood up and laid a hand on her shoulder. The crowd responded
instinctively to the weeping woman. They projected the image of their own
mothers, sisters or aunties onto her, no matter the reality.
Emmanuel
wondered what the tears were for: the loss of Giriraj's tender alleyway
ministrations or the cessation of the regular smoke delivery? Probably both.
Giriraj had provided the streetwalker with pleasure and comfort in a life that
had little of either.
'Very
brave of you,' Robinson said, 'to come forward and identify Jolly Marks's
killer.'
'I
had to,' the woman sobbed. 'I had to . . .'
Stripped
of make-up and washed with tears, the prostitute radiated a strange purity.
Truth seemed to shine from her. Emmanuel figured that was because she was
finally telling the truth. The decision to come forward and identify Giriraj
was not hers. She had to. There was no choice involved.
The
woman turned from Giriraj's body and stumbled blindly to the edge of the
burgeoning crowd. Robinson snaked his heavy arm across her shoulder to weigh
her down and stop her wandering. The spectators pressed against the ring of
police cordoning off the scene.
'You've
done well.' Robinson injected sincerity into the textbook interview wrap-up.
'We couldn't have solved this crime without you. Jolly's mother can sleep easy
tonight.'
The
prostitute's sobs increased and Robinson signalled Fletcher to clear the way.
An eager uniformed constable parted the wall of blue overalls and the rail yard
workers stepped back and assumed the stiff posture of an honour guard. Robinson
guided the prostitute into the breach while the crowd looked on, mesmerised by
the fragile white woman being led to safety.
'God
bless you, miss,' a passenger on the halted tram called and fluttered a hankie
in farewell. The prostitute gave a royal wave and disappeared into the corridor
of blue.
Emmanuel
craned above the sea of hats and heads to catch the dying moments of the drama.
Tucked into the crowd but still in plain view, a British thug in a suit, whom
Emmanuel recognised as Khan's bodyguard, watched the prostitute. Robinson held
the witness steady and the rail workers ushered them through to an empty strip
of pavement.
'Shameless,'
Amal hissed. 'That woman is shameless.'
'She
can't afford shame,' Emmanuel said. 'Any more than you or I can afford risking
a heart-to-heart talk with the police.'
The
rail workers began to drift back to the freight yard. For a moment, real
justice had been within their reach, the Indian a half block away from
punishment. Now all that was left was work. Lines of sooty railway cars in need
of decoupling and mile upon mile of hypnotic steel track.
Khan's
bodyguard wove through the dispersing workers but kept two paces behind the
detectives and their star witness. He had the grace of a rhino on an ice floe
and knocked shoulders with a man attempting to roll a cigarette. The impact
spilled cut tobacco over the bodyguard's suit and drew a curse from the smoker.
The prostitute glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of Khan's man. Her
face was drawn with lines of fatigue but her eyes sparkled. Life on the docks
was patterned after the ocean: a cycle of rising and falling tides. Giriraj's
death had brought the streetwalker to the centre of attention, but the
spotlight would only last a minute before shining somewhere else. Soon this
drama would end and she would go back to a life filled with nameless men and
dirty boxcars.
A
pay-out, Emmanuel guessed. The sparkle in the prostitute's eyes when she saw
Khan's man was anticipation. She had acted her role and now it was time to
collect her reward: a few folded notes and a chunk of hashish to keep away bad
dreams of the innocent man sprawled on the tarmac.
Afzal
Khan was behind this perversion of justice but Emmanuel couldn't figure what
the gangster had gained from it.
'Move
back!' the sweat-stained sergeant in charge of crowd control yelled. 'Make way
for the mortuary van.'
The
spectators moved back slowly, reluctant to leave before the door to the van was
locked and the blood washed from the road.
The
conductor pulled the stunned tram driver upright and they inspected the damaged
vehicle. 'A quick trip to the workshop and she'll be good as new,' the
conductor said and shuffled his feet to cover the sound of the driver's quiet
tears. The driver touched the faint dent in the front of the vehicle made by
the contact with Giriraj's body.
'I
am responsible for what happened,' Amal said. 'More guilty than the tram
driver.'
'You
are not to blame,' Emmanuel said. 'Mr Khan gave your family an impossible
choice.'
'And
how must I live with this feeling inside?' Amal said.
The
mortuary van reversed at an angle and drew parallel with the stricken tram. The
passengers filed down the stairs under the eager watch of a police constable
and regrouped on the pavement. Two Indian girls in smart cardigan sweaters and A-line
skirts split from the group and walked away. They had seen enough.
'Do
more good than harm,' Emmanuel said to Amal and immediately regretted his
words. He was perhaps the least qualified person to dispense wisdom on the
subject of feelings. A taste for painkillers and the voice of the phantom
sergeant major indicated that his own emotions were still a tangle - the result
of a world war and a childhood that seemed to be a string of domestic battles.
And this country with its pettiness ... He wondered what qualifications he had
to tell anyone anything while he hung onto his white ID card and his
detective's badge - no matter how temporary they might be.
He
took another tack. 'Do not become Mr Khan,' he said.
Amal
said, 'I can do that.'
The
mortuary attendants - a fat coloured man and a muscular Indian, both dressed in
medical whites - swung open the van's double doors and pulled out a trolley. A
policeman picked up Giriraj's stray sandal and threw it on the corpse's chest.
The
sweaty sergeant lit up a cigarette and smiled at the morgue staff. 'He's a big
bastard. That's one hundred per cent pure Punjabi muscle. I'll finish my smoke
and give you boys a hand.'
The
attendants hung back. They would have to wait until the police sergeant was
good and ready. Giriraj lay sprawled across the roadway; just another load to
be picked up and stored for burial.
'Perhaps
we should go,' Zweigman said.
They
turned and left Giriraj in the care of the non-white attendants who would drive
him in their non-whites vehicle to the non-whites section of the morgue where
he would rest among other dark-skinned souls.
Ten
doorways from the scene of the accident Maataa and Parthiv sat on the second
step of a stone staircase that led to the front door of a garment import and
export business.
Their
shoulders touched. Clove cigarette smoke cocooned them from the bustle of the
street. Maataa's glass bracelets jangled when she drew on the cigarette and
handed it to Parthiv. They did not talk. They gazed at the pavement.
'Oh.'
Amal was taken aback by the harmonious family scene. 'They were here all
along.'
'Probably
waiting for you,' Emmanuel said.