'Anyone
come out of the laneway?'
'No.'
'You
hear anything? Voices? An argument?'
'Nothing.
We was quiet because the police, they see Indians more quickly than they see
white people.'
'Did
you notice any other men in the area?'
Was
Jolly's murder connected to a bad deal? Did he see something he shouldn't have?
'No
one,' Parthiv said and fiddled with the dial of the radio despite all the
stations being off air till daylight.
'But
you knew the boy.' Emmanuel pushed ahead. 'Tonight wasn't the first time you'd
seen him. That's right, isn't it?'
'You
a cop,' Parthiv said. 'For sure.'
'I'm
not.' Emmanuel knew he'd pushed too far. 'I was just curious.'
Parthiv's
voice swelled with panic. 'You're working undercover, isn't it?'
'I'm
not an undercover policeman,' Emmanuel said. Or any other kind of police, he
reminded himself. 'Once you've dropped me at the freight yards, you and I will
never see each other again.'
'For
real?' Parthiv said.
'For
real.'
The
Cadillac sped through the empty streets and zipped past municipal parks with
deserted swings and scrappy cricket pitches. They soon arrived at the Point
freight yards. A drunk zigzagged along the footpath and a stray dog pawed at
the contents of a toppled garbage can. There were no police wagons, no crime
scene barricades and no guard positioned at the entrance to the alley where
Jolly Marks still lay undiscovered and alone.
'Thanks
for the lift,' Emmanuel said. Parthiv responded with a humourless snort and
swung a U-turn back towards the city centre. Red tail-lights dimmed and then
disappeared. Emmanuel scooped loose coins from his pocket. The closest public
telephone box was within visual distance of the Point police station. A risky
position for what he had in mind.
He
flipped his jacket collar up like a second-rate hood in one of Parthiv's
gangster films and ducked into the red and cream circular booth. A tattered
telephone directory dangled from a metal chain. He thumbed the pages to the
list of police stations and fed coins into the slot.
'Sergeant
Whitlam.' The voice on the other end was gruff. The morning shift and a soft
bed were still hours away. 'Point police.'
'There's
a body in the alley behind the Trident shipping office.'
'What's
that?'
'Listen
carefully, Sergeant Whitlam. This is not a hoax or a joke. Send someone out to
the alley behind Trident shipping. A boy has been murdered.'
'Who
is this, please?'
Emmanuel
hung up. It had come to this: anonymous phone calls in the dead of night to
speed the wheels of justice. He retreated into the shadows and crouched across
from the entrance to the alley, like a thief. Five minutes ticked by and then
ten. Every second magnified just how ludicrous the situation was. He was a
grown man hiding in the dark, with no option but to watch and wait. The
sensible thing was to get up and walk away.
A
gangly foot policeman with sleep-tousled hair turned up to conduct the search a
quarter of an hour later. Twenty years old at most, Emmanuel figured, not
cynical yet but certain that the charge office sergeant had sent him out to
chase a waste-of-time tip-off. The constable entered the narrow pathway with
his torch on high beam and re-emerged quickly, gasping for air. The subtropical
night was still and the policeman's rasps could be heard across the width of
the road. Nausea, shock and disbelief . . . Emmanuel waited for the young man
to go through the emotions that came with the discovery of a murder victim. The
constable wiped his nose with a sleeve and pulled the police whistle free. A
long and mournful note sounded across the Point.
It
was 6.45 a.m. and the morning light was soft on the shop-front awnings and the
tidy red-brick houses sitting behind tidy red-brick fences and trimmed hedges.
Emmanuel buttoned his grubby jacket, plastered down errant strands of hair and
approached Dover, the Edwardian-style apartment box that housed his 'fully
furnished short-term accommodation'. The cross-town tram rumbled off towards
West Street in the heart of the city, the lion's share of the seats reserved
for white office workers, clerks and perfumed shop girls. Non- whites were
squashed into the last six rows of the carriage in a press of saris, khaki suits
and pre-packed lunch pails.
He
approached the entrance to the Dover flats slowly, the better to judge the
chances of slipping in the side gate. He'd waited to see a guard posted at the
murder scene before turning for home. That was a mistake. Mrs Edith Patterson,
the landlady, was out on the front footpath pulling up weeds from cracks in the
pavement. Her purple hair was wound tight over rollers. The brass ring that
held the keys to her building clanked together against the green material of
her housecoat as she worked to tame nature.
The
black maid, a slight Zulu girl in a patchwork dress, collected the debris and
made neat piles ready to be swept up. Rows of paper Union Jacks were strung
along the fence to celebrate Princess Elizabeth Windsor's imminent coronation.
A dirty Scottish terrier panted down the stairs, trotted to Mrs Patterson and
attempted to mate with her arm.
'No,
Lancelot.' The landlady shook off the dog. 'Bad boy!'
Emmanuel
did a half turn towards the tram stop. He'd try his luck later.
'Mr
Cooper.'
Mrs
Patterson was now standing up, a much better vantage point from which to look
down her nose at him. He walked over to her and smiled. Buttoning the jacket
was a mistake, he realised. It only made him more pitiful: as if he really
believed a simple gesture could wipe the smell from his clothes or rearrange
the muddy creases in his suit. He unbuttoned his jacket in a show of defiance.
Five months at the Dover and he'd never been late making the monthly rent. He
was still paid up one week in advance. That counted for something.
'Mr
Cooper.' The landlady's brown eyes narrowed. 'Are you going to make me regret
my decision to take you on?'
She
pointed to the hand-painted sign nailed under the building's name, which read
'Europeans and well-behaved Mauritians allowed. No Exceptions'. Well-behaved
Mauritians being a code for any light-skinned, mixed-race person willing to
pay the inflated rent and refrain from bringing bar girls into the room for a
night of mattress thumping.
'My
car broke down and I missed the last tram,' Emmanuel explained while the mangy
terrier began an unsuccessful liaison with the mailbox pole.
Mrs
Patterson pursed her lips. She waited for Emmanuel to make an apology or show
regret for confirming her worst suspicions about mixed-race men. He relaxed his
shoulders, kept eye contact and said nothing. He'd explained himself enough
for one day. The maid's hand hovered above an unplucked weed, held there by the
sudden tension in the air.
Mrs
Patterson broke eye contact first. 'I run a good house. A clean house.' She
brushed dirt-flecked hands against her housecoat and the keys at her waist
chimed. 'I thought you understood that, Mr Cooper.'
Emmanuel
sidestepped the landlady and walked to the front door. He knew that the moment
this week was up, Mrs Patterson was going to slip an eviction notice under his
door. He'd committed the cardinal South African sin. A registered non-white, he
had failed to express gratitude for being bullied by a white woman.
'Lancelot.
No. Bad boy.'
The
landlady's tone set Emmanuel's teeth on edge. She talked to the dog the same
way she talked to him.
A
flicker of material at the downstairs window alerted him to the fact that Mr
Woodsmith, the retired postman who rented the ground-floor flat, had witnessed
the confrontation. He nodded in the direction of the curtain and the material
dropped. One week and not a second more.
Inside
the building, the oak banister of the staircase shone with a fresh application
of wax. Mrs Patterson did run a clean house. Why the Scottish terrier had never
seen a bath or a bar of soap was one of life's little mysteries.
The
walls of the flat were painted bright yellow; a cheery colour scheme that
depressed Emmanuel every time he entered it. The room possessed a single bed no
wider than a field cot, a two-ring gas burner and a wardrobe laced with
mothballs that easily contained two suits, six shirts and three pairs of work
pants. The private bath and shower squeezed into an alcove and separated from
the rest of the room by a wraparound curtain cost him an extra pound each
month.
A
tenants' phone in the hallway made it easy to call his sister in Jo'burg on the
first Sunday of every month. The conversations were brief. He repeated the
familiar lies that he'd told her while their parents fought in the kitchen:
life was good and everything was fine. Lies kept them together.
Emmanuel
reached into his trouser pocket and removed a postcard with a tinted photograph
of misty hills and deep, silent valleys. On the back, in chicken-scratch
writing, was an invitation to visit Zweigman's medical clinic in the Valley of
a Thousand Hills. Doctor Daniel Zweigman, the old Jew who'd saved his life
after a vicious beating by the Security Branch, was two hours' drive away.
Emmanuel laid the card gently on the bedspread. Maybe one day when he was less
worn around the edges...
He
stripped off his dirty suit and threw it into a small sisal basket in the
corner. The young maid took in tenants' laundry along with her other work.
Emmanuel washed. He'd already planned to have the day off from the shipyards to
rest and regroup after the night surveillance. But he would not sleep this
morning. He would not sleep at all today.
He
dressed in a clean suit and checked his reflection in the mirror. Five months
at the shipyards had erased any trace of physical softness from his person.
Impersonating a church minister or a gentle family man was now out of reach.
Yet he enjoyed the hard labour of the yards; doing what most Europeans
considered
'kaffir
work'. Hauling, lifting and hammering sapped his energy and left his mind
empty. Sleep came like a force of nature, black and unstoppable. Dawn brought
only a vague memory of having dreamt. Being too exhausted to think was the
closest he'd come to happiness since leaving his old life and the detective
branch back in Jo'burg.
He
slipped Zweigman's postcard into the jacket pocket of the clean suit and
scooped up his driver's licence. He left his ID card in the drawer. He retained
the body language of a white detective and no one had so far dared question his
right of entry to any venue, be it a Europeans-only restaurant or a non-white
queue at the bank.
He
collected the laundry basket. He was about to break a promise that he'd made to
himself when he left the force: never hang around an official police
investigation. He was going to go down to the freight yards and make sure the
detective branch was at the crime scene. Then he was going to try to find out
if the search had turned up Jolly Marks's notebook. It was a quick ten-minute stop.
Where
was the harm in that?
Striped
police barricades fenced off the crime scene. A black Dodge mortuary van was
parked on the street corner. Detectives in porkpie hats and loose cotton suits
scribbled in notepads and searched for evidence. Photograph flashes burst from
the alley and lit the crowd of shipping clerks and railway workers pushed
against the barricades, hungry for a glimpse of the terrors that lurked behind
Durban's sedate facade. Further along Point Road a group of Onyati - black
dockside labourers also known as Buffaloes - stood close together. A white
supervisor kept them in check by smacking a baton against his thigh while he
paced back and forth.
Emmanuel
unfolded the
Natal Mercury
newspaper and skimmed the columns in an attempt to distract himself. News of
the coming royal coronation took up slabs of space. There were details of the
cream satin gown and descriptions of the jewels embedded in the Sovereign's
Orb. Emmanuel found the whole thing exceedingly dull. News of Jolly's murder
was not in print yet, and when the story hit the stands tomorrow it would
probably take second place to the city's coronation celebrations.
Emmanuel
looked over the crime scene. The detective branch was out in force. He could
walk away with a clear conscience. But the energy radiating from the
investigation team roped him in and drew him closer. He missed this: the
intense focus on the task and the bending of individual will to the demands of
the case. He moved through the crowd of onlookers until he stood next to an
Englishman with busy eyebrows and a thin mouth.
'White
boy,' the man said. 'Cut to ribbons in the back alley.'
A
beanpole redhead slouched next to an older detective with salt-and-pepper hair.
Her purple sateen dress shone like discarded tinsel on a barbed-wire fence, the
plunging neckline highlighted breasts the size of bee stings. Parthiv's fussy
prostitute, the one who didn't sleep with Indians.
'Charras!'
The prostitute's shrill voice
rose in frustration; yet another of the English migrants who'd come to South
Africa
in search of a better life and had still found gas and electricity bills and
impatient landlords. 'All the
charras
look the same. Dark with greasy
hair, flash suits. Two of them.'
'That
figures,' said a bearded Afrikaner with hands that could crack walnuts.
Emmanuel recognised the aggrieved tone. The fact that Indians, or
charras
as they were called in Durban, owned shops and restaurants, ran their own
schools, and even built temples with spires and elephant-headed gods right in
the middle of town was an open source of resentment.
'Two
of them,' the Englishman added. 'A criminal gang of some sort.'
A
turbaned Indian clerk slipped into the entrance of Trident Shipping Company and
closed the door behind him. Two coloured men followed, nervous at being
mistaken for Indians. Further down the street, a black street sweeper swung a
U-turn and worked away from the crowd.
A
young detective emerged from the alleyway with an object laid out on a cloth
and the crowd stretched as one to take a look. The front rank of onlookers
eased back, disappointed by what they saw.
'Flashlight,'
the Afrikaner informed the crowd behind him. 'Probably belongs to the
charras.'
No,
Emmanuel thought, the torch does not belong to the
charras.
It belongs to me. It had fallen to the ground when Giriraj bagged him. The
salt-and-pepper-haired detective dismissed the prostitute and joined the
huddle of men around the torch. Emmanuel pushed forward to the first row of
onlookers.
'Good
work, Bartel,' the older detective said. 'Where was it?'
'Behind
the wheel of one of the freight cars, sir.'
'Must
have rolled there,' the senior detective speculated. 'Anything else?'
'Besides
the soft-drink bottle, nothing, sir.'
The
hand-rolled cigarette might have burned away but Jolly's penknife was made of
wood and steel. It should still be in the alley. The notebook normally attached
to the boy's pants had not been found either. That made two pieces of evidence
not retrieved by the police. There was one logical place they might be.
Emmanuel
stepped back and slowly made his way to the front doors of the Trident Shipping
Company. He wanted to run but that would be a mistake. Innocent bystanders
drifted away when the routine police work began. No bodies to see, no instant
arrests .. . just a big silver torch with a broken light and a bottle of
lemonade.
The
entrance to the shipping office was decorated with a painting of Poseidon. He
walked in under the curve of the sea god's navel. Six open cubicles manned by a
mix of Indian and coloured men took up most of the space. In a glass-fronted
office in the back, a busty female in a green suit took dictation from the
baas,
a white man lounging behind a teak desk.
The
turbaned Indian who'd slipped away from the crowd was seated at the second
cubicle. Emmanuel walked straight up. He had to get in and out of the office
quickly. An underfed coloured man with a pencil tucked behind an ear startled.
'Can
I help you, sir?'
'No,'
Emmanuel answered and drew level with the Indian clerk. 'Sir' meant the clerks
thought he was classified white and wouldn't challenge him.
The
turbaned man sprang to attention; another demobbed soldier of the empire ready
to present arms. 'I have nothing to do with the dead boy, sir. Nothing.'
'Saris
and All,' Emmanuel said. 'You know of a shop by that name?' That was the brand
stamped along the side of the wooden crate in Giriraj's room, and Maataa had
mentioned owning a shop. Two pieces of information that might lead back to the
Dutta family.
'Saris
and All?' The clerk repeated the name, surprised and relieved by the
unexpected direction of the conversation.
'Yes.
Do you know where I can find it?'
The
baas
glared out of the glass window. He'd be out in a moment, Emmanuel figured;
annoyed that someone other than him was bossing his workers around.
The
Indian man said, 'On Grey Street, I think, sir. Close to the Melody Lounge.'
'Thanks.'
The
baas
emerged from the glass fortress to investigate and Emmanuel exited the front
door. The crime-scene crowd was still five deep.
'To
the side,' a rotund sergeant instructed the onlookers through a megaphone.
'Make way for the van.'
The
crowd split and the black Dodge van drove through a breach in the barricade. A
balding man in a white double-breasted uniform opened the van doors and two
attendants carried a canvas stretcher out of the alley. Jolly Marks's body was
a small lump under the sheet.
A
dark-skinned Onyati with a broad face pulled off his woollen cap and the rest
of the dockworkers did the same. They stood in silence until the van departed,
and then the leader of the Onyati began to sing. His men joined in and the
melody swept across the freight yards and Point Road.
'Senzenina,
senzenina ...'
The voices rose
in a powerful harmony.
'Senzenina, senzenina. Siyo hlangane ezulwini. Siyo hlangane ezulwini
...'
'Kaffirs
got no respect. This is no time
for singing,' the bearded Afrikaner man said.
'It's
a funeral song,' Emmanuel told him. 'It says we will meet again in heaven. They
are singing the boy away so his soul won't remain trapped in the alleyway.'
Emmanuel
had Constable Shabalala, the Zulu policeman on his last case, to thank for
that piece of knowledge. Shabalala had taught Emmanuel something else, too: at
some point today, out of the view of the white supervisor, one of the Onyati
would pick up Jolly's soul with the help of a small spirit twig and transport
it to a better place. The life of an Onyati was hard enough without the angry
ghost of a dead white boy to contend with.
The
Afrikaner stared at the ground and listened to the second verse. The Onyati
song finished and the street became quiet. After a moment, the black men made
their way across Point Road and into the freight yards. Emmanuel moved through
the thinning crowd.
'Like
blades of grass, we are cut down.' A southern American voice cracked the
silence left by the Onyatis' seamless switch from singing to working. 'Was the
poor boy found here, on this very yard, prepared to meet his maker, oh Lord?'
Emmanuel
eyed the wiry preacher who stood on a wooden box and held a Bible in the air.
What ten-year-old boy was prepared to meet death? What idiot questioned the
victim's readiness to die instead of questioning God's unwillingness to protect
the innocent? And why, since winning the war, did Americans believe that
rescuing the world was their next mission? Emmanuel felt his body tighten.
The
preacher lowered the Bible and pointed a bony finger in his direction. He
sniffed an unrepentant sinner in the crowd.
'What
troubles you, brother? Is there sin in your life? An error against God that you
have not confessed to?'
'A
punch in the right direction would solve a few of my problems. Brother.'
Emmanuel emphasised the last word, tipped his hat and then turned towards the
Seafarers Club where the Buick Straight-8, on loan from van Niekerk, was
parked.
Uniformed
police milled on the sidewalk and picked through garbage cans for evidence.
Unmarked Chevrolets and blue Dodge police vans lined Point Road.
'Keep
up the good work, men.' A tall colonel with mutton-chop whiskers marched
through the ranks boosting morale. A sign that this murder was being taken
seriously.