‘Down by the river, filling water barrels for the week.’ Karin’s brown fingers curled around the pale teacup. ‘You and the
kaffir
policeman found something on the mountain. What was it?’
‘You’re very sure.’ Emmanuel sipped his tea. It was sweet and dark with a bitterness that caught in his throat.
‘Two and two makes four,’ she said. ‘The vultures were on the crest of the mountain this morning and then you come asking for a telephone. Something is up there.’
‘Why didn’t you go and check?’ Emmanuel asked.
‘Lammergeiers circling a kill are common as dirt out here. I’d run myself thin going to every sighting.’ She leaned back and gulped a mouthful of tea. ‘I could track your path back up the mountain easy and find out what you won’t tell me.’
‘So you could.’ Karin was a hunter and tracker who had spent her life in these mountains. She’d find the shelter and the body in half an hour. ‘But you’re too clever to interfere with official police business.’
Karin shrugged and turned to the maid, now perched on a stool in the corner closest to the wood stove. ‘Do you think Mandla found the gardener from the English farm?’ she asked in Zulu.
The maid rubbed the soles of her bare feet against the sacks on the floor and then answered in a quiet voice, ‘It might be so. The chief’s son and his men came down from the mountain just after dawn this morning. They did not stop to pass the time but went straight to the river and cleaned their spears with sand.’
‘The spears were used.’ Karin glanced at Emmanuel with bright eyes and continued in Zulu. ‘I think this
umlungu
policeman found the gardener.’
‘If that is so, I will get the word to his mother.’ The maid sat in the dim corner with her hands folded on her lap. Her business would have to wait until knock-off time when the sun fell below the mountains.
‘What did she say?’ Emmanuel asked. It was an effort to keep a blank expression and pretend he had no idea what was going on and more difficult still to ignore Karin calling him an
umlungu
, a derogatory term for a white man.
Karin pointed to the straining bowl. ‘I asked where she got the honey from and she said from out in the woods, just behind the barn. It’s good. You should try it.’
Emmanuel dipped his index finger into the bowl and tasted it. Playing the clueless city detective had advantages. The clandestine conversation confirmed that Shabalala was right about when Mandla and the
impi
had discovered the body. Cleaning their spears in full view of Covenant Farm proved they had nothing to hide.
‘Delicious,’ Emmanuel said and Karin smiled, enjoying the ruse. Toying with an out-of-town detective might be one of the ways that she made her own fun out here in the sticks.
Three distant whistles and the faint snap of a whip broke the quiet in the kitchen. Karin drained her cup and stood up. ‘That’s Pa and the boys. They’re getting ready to load the water barrels. Come to the river, I’ll introduce you.’
Emmanuel was glad to get out of the hot kitchen and onto the
stoep
. The springbok entrails on the floor were gone, removed by a faceless servant. A filthy cat lapped at the blood puddle left behind.
‘Forgot my hat,’ he said and ducked back into the house. The maid hadn’t moved from the corner. He moved closer and caught her attention.
‘Do you know where the gardener’s mother stays?’ he asked in Zulu.
The maid looked up, surprised at his fluid command of the language. She hesitated then said, ‘The mother is staying at the other side of the English farm. At the Mashanini
kraal
.’
Emmanuel held her gaze and saw that the cornea of the woman’s eye was frosted over at the centre. Blindness was a few years away but inevitable. ‘When the time is right I will go and collect her and tell her what has happened to her son. Will you let me do this?’
There was a pause before she answered, ‘
Yebo, inkosi
.’
‘I thank you.’ He collected his hat and moved outside. That the maid should not mention their conversation to Karin did not need saying. He had promised to go directly to a frightened Zulu woman and explain things face to face. That gesture had earned the maid’s silence.
NINE
‘W
e’ll stop on the way and pick up your kaffir,’ Karin said when Emmanuel joined her at the side of the house. ‘He needs to be introduced. Pa doesn’t like strangers roaming the property.’
The Boer farmer might not be so different from Thomas Reed after all. The sun was high in the bright sky and the muddy ground steamed with heat. Karin cut straight through the mud in her heavy boots and stopped at a large wooden barn. Emmanuel picked his way across the yard, stepping from one clump of damp grass to another.
Karin watched him, amused. ‘The workmen’s hut is back there,’ she said. ‘Careful of the wet ground, Detective.’
‘Thanks.’ Emmanuel took the insult on the chin.
‘Sergeant.’ Shabalala broke away from a cluster of Zulu workmen leaning on their shovels and drinking tea from tin mugs. A half-dug irrigation ditch ended a few feet away from them. Emmanuel waited by the barn. Any trust Shabalala had built with the workers would be compromised by the intrusion of a white man.
‘Time to meet the boss,’ he said to Shabalala. ‘We’ll talk afterwards.’
They caught up with Karin on a wide, uncultivated field cut by deep wagon tracks. A wrought-iron fence circled a crop of white headstones eroded to stubs. The Paulus family graveyard, Emmanuel supposed.
Shabalala hesitated on the lip of a steep drop to the river and whispered, ‘Look there.’
A wagon was drawn up on the near bank of a fast-flowing river. Two black labourers lifted a fifty-gallon water drum onto the flat wagon bed while a pack of dogs splashed in the water and a white man wearing torn overalls and worn boots cracked a whip over a team of oxen straining at the yoke. The man’s face was tanned, and his high cheekbones and wide forehead suggested an infusion of Hottentot blood; a true Afrikaner. Pure Dutch my arse, thought Emmanuel.
‘My pa.’ Karin pointed to the whip hand. ‘And the dogs.’
‘Six of them,’ Shabalala added quietly. A pack of African
boerboels
with massive jaws and sleek brown coats lurched up the bank, barking and snarling.
‘Stay close and don’t move,’ Karin said. ‘They look tough but they’re gentle. Honest.’
One bite and you’d lose a hand. Easy. Paws found purchase on the rise and spit flew from their mouths. Emmanuel and Shabalala stood motionless and waited for father or daughter to stop the dogs from getting too close. Finally a whistle sounded. The white man called, ‘Heel!’
The dogs stopped mid-stride, retreated to the sandy bank and milled around their master’s legs. The black workmen patted the oxen’s flanks and held them steady.
‘Who’ve you got there, girl?’ Pa shouted in Afrikaans and looped the plaited whip over his shoulder.
‘The police.’ Karin scrambled down to the river’s edge. Emmanuel and Shabalala followed, giving up on saving their leather shoes from damage. ‘These are detectives Cooper and Shabalala from Durban.’
Pa frowned at the sight of Shabalala and said in Afrikaans, ‘They have
kaffir
detectives now?’
‘A handful,’ Emmanuel replied in the
’taal
, as insiders of the true faith called the Afrikaans language. He waited for the man to sneer at the idea of black detectives.
‘Good. You need a native to catch a native.’ Pa extended a gnarled hand. ‘Sampie Paulus. You’ve met my daughter Karin.’
‘I have.’ Emmanuel shook hands, struck by Sampie’s powerful grip and the sandpaper texture of his skin.
‘Those are my boys, Johannes and Petros. Brothers. Good with the oxen.’ Sampie pulled a tobacco pouch from the top pocket of his overalls. ‘You’re here about Amahle?’
‘Yes. We arrived yesterday morning.’
‘Make any progress?’ Sampie removed two papers from the pouch and tipped a small mound of rough-cut tobacco into the palm of his hand.
‘Early days,’ Emmanuel said. ‘We know when she disappeared and where she was found. But not much else.’
‘Here. In the shade.’ Paulus retired to a damp patch of sand where the remnants of a fire smouldered. The dogs followed. Sampie sank onto his haunches, arms resting on his knees just like a native. ‘You’ve been to the Matebula
kraal
?’
‘We met the chief and his number one son, Mandla.’ Emmanuel crouched next to Sampie. He ignored the burn in his fatigued calves and Karin, who sat cross-legged and carpeted in dogs. Shabalala stood on the outer edge of the patch of shade and listened.
‘Mandla came around the other day.’ Sampie rolled the cigarette and sealed the papers with a lick. ‘Asking after Philani Dlamini, the gardener at the English farm.’
‘Did everyone know he was in the area?’ If Philani’s location was an open secret, the list of suspects in his murder increased.
‘Nobody had seen him. Karin and me included.’ Sampie dug a rusty metal lighter from a back pocket. It took four hits of his thumb against the wheel to produce a flame. ‘If Mandla was on
my
tracks I’d bury myself good and deep and stay there.’
Sampie was right. Philani would not have disclosed his location to a wide circle of people. The killer must have been someone the gardener trusted.
‘We’re tracking Philani ourselves,’ Emmanuel lied. ‘What does he look like?’ His gut told him the body in the shelter was the gardener, but it would be hours before the corpse was moved and a formal identification arranged. A list of physical attributes to match with the ones he’d jotted down at the crime scene would help give his intuition weight.
‘About thirty, thirty-five, give or take a few years. Light-skinned. Small for a Zulu.’ The blunt-faced farmer pointed to Shabalala with nicotine-stained fingers. ‘Not like your boy. Now that’s a proper Zulu.’
Yes, and all Englishmen were pigeon-chested with pink skin and had no idea about Africa. Indians were hard-working but crafty and not to be trusted. Mixed-race coloureds were sly and spiteful and most likely to lead your children into sin. Most South Africans, no matter their skin colour, carried a twisted mental illustration of each race group for easy reference.
‘Height, weight, hair or eye colour?’ Emmanuel asked. Sampie’s brief description fitted the body at the crime scene. Zweigman could use the finer details at the examination.
‘He was short. Stocky. Brown eyes . . . I think.’ Sampie drew in a mouthful of smoke before exhaling through flared nostrils. ‘What’s the gardener got to do with any of it? Mandla gave me a story about Philani owing him money but that was
kak
.’
‘There’s a rumour that Philani was involved with Amahle.’
Sampie turned to his boys and called out in Zulu, ‘The Englishman’s gardener and the daughter of the great chief. Have you ever heard such a thing?’
The workmen shook their heads in the negative and turned back to tending the oxen. Evidently the intimate question was embarrassing and any discussion about the dead girl was dangerous.
‘In his dreams, maybe.’ Sampie pinched the end of the hand-rolled cigarette between thumb and forefinger and shoved the butt into a top pocket. A waste-not, want-not man. ‘Pretty girls do that, hey? Make fellows think stupid things. Dlamini wouldn’t be the first.’
The Afrikaner farmer stood up and snapped the leather whip in the air, signalling a move back to the homestead. The dogs stretched and yawned while Karin brushed fur off her pants. Shabalala crouched amid the flurry of activity and watched the river current surge over the rocks.
‘See you back at the house, Detective,’ Karin said and walked away, the dogs running ahead of her. The workmen steadied the wagon onto two deep tracks cut into the dirt. Even Sampie took up their Zulu work chant as he got behind the cart and pushed.
‘Come, Sergeant.’ Shabalala stood up and headed across the sandy bank in the direction of the departing oxen. ‘The water is dropping fast. In one hour we will be able to cross the stream to the car.’
‘
Ja
,’ Emmanuel said reluctantly. He was in no hurry to tell Philani’s mother that her son was in pieces on a rock ledge.
The churn of wagon wheels and oxen hooves turned the farmyard into mud. Johannes and Petros, Sampie’s boys, rolled the full water barrels across the
stoep
and rested them against the rear wall of the house.
Emmanuel and Shabalala crossed the muck, their shoes and trouser bottoms caked with river sand and now more mud. Smoke from the kitchen fire made a long grey finger against the sky. A male figure sprinted from the stand of pomegranate trees and closed the distance to them in a blink.
‘That was quick,’ Emmanuel said.
Cyrus the runner was back at Covenant, dripping sweat and sucking air into his mouth. His shirt, already shabby and eaten with holes before the run, was now ripped and hanging loose from one shoulder. Cyrus must have cut through thorn bush to travel the quickest route to Little Flint Farm.
‘For you.’ The runner presented the split stick with a shaky hand. ‘From the little madam at the English farm.’
Emmanuel dug in his pocket and exchanged a handful of coins for the message. ‘Thank you, Cyrus. And sorry about the shirt,’ he said and unfolded the note. Six words were written across the page in blue ink:
No answer at the police station.
Ella’s signature looped under the reply. He gave the paper to Shabalala.
The Zulu detective read it and handed the note back to Emmanuel. ‘We are still on our own,’ he said. A tribe was nothing if all the factions did not pull together in times of trouble. The police force demanded the same kind of allegiance.
‘It’s just you, me and Zweigman again,’ Emmanuel said.
‘
Yebo
,’ Shabalala said. ‘But we know well how to work that way.’
Emmanuel laughed and remembered that yes, they had worked well together – it was just the trouble they had got into on those other cases that bothered him. He wondered if nosy police detectives and Jewish doctors had as many lives as cats.
Karin crossed the yard with a confident stride. ‘Cyrus brought bad news?’ she said. She hooked her thumbs into the belt loop of her dirty jeans and waited.
‘No answer at the police station,’ Emmanuel replied. Removing the body without Bagley’s help would be a challenge.
‘Pa says your boy can eat lunch with the workers at the
kaffir
hut.’ Karin pointed beyond the milking shed to a whitewashed hut with a grass roof, adding to Shabalala, ‘Come back to the big house when I call, okay?’
Shabalala tipped his hat and walked off.
Emmanuel had the honour of joining the whites-only table in the homestead. Sampie, Karin and Emmanuel ate springbok stew with potatoes in almost complete silence. Occasionally Sampie grunted requests, and Karin obeyed. For dessert she served peeled oranges accompanied by a nip of peach brandy poured into old jam jars. Emmanuel had only eaten half his serving of stew and was about to request second helpings of the brandy when a shout came from the yard.
‘What’s that?’ Sampie jumped up and cocked his head to the right, listening. More shouts and the slap of gumboots on dirt. Karin stood and reached for the rifle stored in the corner of the kitchen.
The dogs pawed the ground at the back door of the homestead, their unclipped nails digging into the dirt floor. Sampie pushed them out of the way and turned the handle. ‘Go!’ he growled and the
boerboels
sprinted into the yard, howling. Father, daughter and Emmanuel followed the pack of dogs outside, Karin slinging the rifle over her shoulder like a seasoned army sniper. The air was cool after the kitchen, the sun past its zenith.
‘By the coop,’ Sampie said. ‘That’s where they are. Go, Karin.’
The dogs were already running along the perimeter of the wire fence surrounding the poultry yard. Sampie and Karin closed in. If anyone was still inside the henhouse, there’d be no escaping now.
‘Thieves,’ Shabalala said when Emmanuel moved in the direction of the fracas. Workmen scattered among the farm buildings, shouting. The dogs barked. Guinea fowl in the woods raised their own alarm. ‘Stand and be quiet, Sergeant.’
The growls of the
boerboels
overwhelmed the crow of a rooster and the clucking of chickens. Emmanuel stood in the yard, straining to listen through all the sounds of panic.
‘Did you hear?’ Shabalala whispered.
‘Footsteps,’ Emmanuel said. The sound was only just discernible. ‘Where from?’
A string of filthy Afrikaans curses issued from the direction of the chicken coop. Both Karin and Sampie were calling down a plague on the thief, who must have slipped the net.
A thud came from inside the Paulus homestead. Emmanuel and Shabalala ran to the front door, left open by the maid who now huddled against the wall in fear. The house was dark after the sunlight outside. Rusted metal clicked against rusted metal.
‘Back door lock,’ Emmanuel said and ran the obstacle course of rickety chairs and piles of yellowed newspaper in the passage. Something heavy fell from the top of the family organ and hit the floor. A gasp of breath was heard and then the creak of an opening door.
Emmanuel and Shabalala entered the kitchen together. A slim male figure bolted across the
stoep
and sprinted for the treeline. Alert to a new front of attack, the
boerboels
streaked around the corner of the lean-to. The figure melted into the brush, the dogs following him.
‘Did you see that?’ Emmanuel said after the dogs had disappeared.
‘
Yebo
,’ Shabalala said. ‘My eyes saw it too. A white boy in a school uniform.’