‘There is but one thing more,
inkosi
.’
‘Yeah?’ Impatient to get going, Emmanuel turned to Baba Kaleni. The preacher’s hand moved in a blur, his palm slamming hard against Emmanuel’s chest. The physical contact literally took his breath away. He lifted his own hand to defend himself and push back.
‘Wait, Sergeant,’ Shabalala said. ‘He means no harm.’
The heat from Kaleni’s hand burned deep into the skin. Emmanuel had never felt palms so charged. His heartbeat slowed and amplified to a boom. Time lagged. Baba Kaleni leaned closer and Emmanuel could smell river mud and grass.
‘Where are the two boys and the girl that you promised to give to your mother?’ the preacher asked. ‘They are ghosts, still waiting to be born. You are also a ghost. You float in the land of the dead.’
Emmanuel tried to speak but couldn’t. Pressure built in his head and his ears rang just as they had when a concussion wave from an exploding shell knocked him off his feet outside a French village during the war. He blinked. He was twelve years old again, sitting in the kitchen in Sophiatown; the wind rattled the corrugated-iron walls and rain lashed the grimy windows. From outside, he heard the squeal of children splashing in the mud and footsteps running to the front door. Then came his mother, hurrying into the room humming a tune with her silky hair tousled by the rain and a bag of groceries in her arms.
‘You’re early,’ Emmanuel said. She normally came home after dark, when candles lit up the windows and the bars opened their doors. ‘And you’ve been drinking.’
‘Three glasses of sherry isn’t a crime, Emmanuel.’ She put the grocery bag on the kitchen table, sat down on a rickety chair and kicked off her shoes.
Emmanuel made her a cup of
rooibos
tea, black with three sugars. She smiled and stared at him over the lip of the cup. He looked to the door. His father would be home soon, seriously drunk and angry with the
kaffirs
, the coloureds, the Indians and the rich English bosses. He’d be angry most of all with this rain-washed woman, happy and beautiful in a shack with dirt floors and a leaking roof.
‘Come here, Emmanuel.’ His mother grabbed his hand and pinned it to the kitchen table. ‘Let me read your fortune.’
‘I don’t want you to.’ He already knew the future. A fight, broken cups and plates they could not afford to replace, a black eye for her and a cut lip for him.
‘Keep still.’ She traced each individual line in his palm with the tip of her index finger and said, ‘You’ll have three children: two strong boys and a girl with the heart of a lion. Your sons will favour you but the girl will be different, more like her mother. Life won’t be easy but you’ll have a home and a happy family.’
Emmanuel tried to jerk his hand away but she hung on, tightening her grip. Her hair retained the scent of cooking spices and cigarettes and the peppermint candies kept in a jar at the front of the Cape Trader General Store where she worked.
‘Promise me, Emmanuel.’ She was deadly serious now. ‘Promise me you’ll try to make this fortune come true.’
‘I promise,’ he’d said and looked away from the fierceness of her love, the unspoken hope that one day he would leave the heaving slum of Sophiatown and build a life without violence or fear.
Three hard taps of Baba Kaleni’s fingers against Emmanuel’s chest brought him back to the wide reaches of the Kamberg Valley. He sucked in a mouthful of air, trying to break the preacher’s spell.
‘Listen, my son.’ The old man hadn’t finished ripping out Emmanuel’s internal wiring. ‘Pleasure is easy to find between the legs of a woman but happiness is built over time and with much effort, like a hut. The woman who shares this hut with you will help carry your burdens, and you hers. Keep your body from strange beds and the night will reward you with stars bright enough to guide your way. In the name of the Father and the Son, amen.’
‘Amen.’ Shabalala mumbled the word but kept his face turned to the horizon. Physical pleasure and strange beds were not matters he’d ever discuss with the detective sergeant.
‘Stay well,’ Baba said and moved away.
‘
Hamba khale
, Baba.’ Shabalala called the traditional farewell. Emmanuel remained silent, wavering between shock and embarrassment at this revelation of private events.
‘And you stay well, my son,’ Kaleni said and trundled back to the True Israelites. A gospel hymn drifted across the hillside and Emmanuel glanced at his partner, trying to assess the effect on him of Kaleni’s words. Shabalala continued to study the drifting clouds with a blank expression. The preacher’s message had disturbed the easy camaraderie they’d shared earlier.
‘If you’ve got something to say, then say it.’ Emmanuel took off his jacket and tied the sleeves tight around his waist with angry movements.
‘The old one means no harm, Sergeant,’ Shabalala said. ‘The spirits of the ancestors send messages through him and he must speak these out loud.’
‘Well, the spirits have no idea what they’re talking about.’
Emmanuel could count on one hand – no, less – the number of strange beds he’d crawled out of in the last year. There was Janice, the divorced hairdresser from London Styles salon with the freckled nose and dimpled chin. And Lana Rose. Two women was hardly a tide of flesh. Davida Ellis, the coloured girl he’d broken the law to have over twelve months ago, stayed alive only in his dreams. He’d met Davida in Jacob’s Rest, the isolated rural hamlet where Detective Constable Shabalala and Dr Zweigman had both once lived. His investigation into the murder of Captain Willem Pretorius exposed the Afrikaner policeman’s secret double life and put Davida in danger. When she’d come to his room in the middle of the night, open, vulnerable and seeking comfort, he forgot his professional obligation to protect the weak. He could still remember the way she tasted and the feeling of her arms around him. Sleeping with Davida was a mistake, an error in judgement. Yet he couldn’t shake the notion that if they had not been dragged from bed by the Security Branch they might have stayed wrapped in each other’s arms forever.
‘If you say the spirits are wrong, then it is so.’ Shabalala motioned to the path. ‘Ready, Sergeant?’
‘You lead. I’ll keep up.’ Emmanuel vowed to keep up even if it meant coughing up a lung.
‘To the river,’ Shabalala said and hit the downward-sloping terrain at a sprint. Emmanuel followed him, crushing the red earth underfoot. The sun was hot on his shoulders, the breeze cool on his face. He pushed hard to a place of pure physical sensation. Five minutes more and the world would break down to sweat, breath and aching muscle. It would hurt, but in the temple of his body he was safe and strong.
Baba Kaleni’s words echoed in Emmanuel’s head. The promise he’d made to his mother was a wound that had scabbed over, healed and vanished. Yet with one thump on his chest the past had come roaring back as vivid as if it were right here, right now.
The gruelling mountain climb brought his mind back to the case. Mandla’s men would need to bend to the law or be broken. Together with Shabalala, he’d find Amahle’s killer and bring him to justice. There was so much still undone in his life, but the job of detective he did well.
FIVE
T
wo mangy brown dogs with fur hanging over their bones and an old man smoking a corncob pipe flanked the gateway to the Matebula family
kraal
. Behind the old man, a stick fence made of dried thorn branches surrounded a collection of thatched beehive-shaped huts.
At the sight of two city men sweating and panting on the threshold the old man struggled to get to his feet.
‘Sit,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Is Chief Matebula home?’ The dogs raised their heads and growled but then went back to sleep in their sun patch.
‘
Yebo, inkosi
.’ Smoke escaped from the man’s mouth when he spoke. ‘But the great one cannot be disturbed.’
‘He’ll make an exception for us.’ Emmanuel stepped onto the dirt path leading to the interior. Ahead was the heart of the family
kraal
, a dusty cattle yard with a huge white stinkwood tree at the centre. The path split to either side of the enclosure.
‘This way, Sergeant.’ Shabalala indicated the right-hand path. ‘The chief’s hut is always at the back of the cattle byre.’
They moved past squat huts with grass mats rolled down over entryways. A clutch of brown chickens scratched for food in the dirt and a swarm of flies settled on the rim of an uncovered cooking pot. The only human sound was voices whispering behind the hut walls. There was no sign of Mandla or his men. It was as if the whole
kraal
was holding its breath and waiting.
‘Everyone’s under house arrest,’ Emmanuel said quietly. ‘I wonder if the chief is afraid of a riot.’
The crash of splintering wood and a male voice raging in Zulu came from the northeast corner of the compound. The dozing dogs awoke and barked at the sky. Emmanuel and Shabalala passed a large hut with dried buffalo horns at the entrance, and proceeded to a wide yard with an umdoni tree at its centre. Nomusa crouched on a woven grass mat, her head bowed in supplication. A young girl huddled against Nomusa’s body, her skinny arms circling the woman’s waist. Items of clothing and a small cardboard box with the lid ripped off were flung across the yard. As the detectives approached, a giant Zulu man snapped a tree branch across his knee and raised the limb high enough to cast a shadow over Nomusa and the shivering girl.
‘Drop that,’ Emmanuel said in Zulu and crossed the dirt circle in four paces, raising dust.
The man turned, surprised. He was easily six foot three and had been handsome once, but carried a ring of fat on his belly and under his chin. The onset of middle age had thinned his hair and evidence of too much good living could be seen in his bloated face and red-rimmed eyes.
‘I am the great chief . . .’ the man said, blood still running hot. ‘No-one, not even a white man, tells me what to do in my own
kraal
.’
‘We’re the police, which means we can,’ Emmanuel said. He disliked the chief on sight. ‘Now, drop the stick.’
Shabalala took up position at Nomusa’s right shoulder, ready to deflect an attack. The chief threw the limb against the perimeter wall, rattling the thorn branches and startling a thrush into flight. Nomusa and the child remained hunched over in the face of Matebula’s wrath.
‘Have you found out who killed my child?’ the chief demanded. ‘There is a debt owing for her life and it will be paid.’
‘Who do you think is to blame for your daughter’s death?’ Emmanuel stepped around Matebula’s bulk and caught a whiff of sour maize beer and
dagga
smoke. He checked on Nomusa and the girl, who looked about eleven years old and wore the short beaded skirt of an unmarried female.
‘The mother is to blame for Amahle.’ Matebula pointed at Nomusa. ‘She let my child roam across the valley and sent her to work in the house of the white farmer instead of keeping her in the
kraal
.’
‘I was thinking of a person who might actually have killed Amahle. A boyfriend or maybe an old enemy.’ Emmanuel reached out to lift Nomusa to her feet before he caught the quick movement of Shabalala’s hand. A short, sharp wave that said,
Do not touch the woman, Sergeant
. He dropped his arm.
‘My daughter was good,’ Nomusa whispered. She kept her face turned away to hide a swollen eye and a cut on her left cheek. ‘Amahle had no boyfriends. No enemies.’
‘Lies.’ Chief Matebula grabbed the cardboard box and upended it. A toothbrush, a lipstick, some candy-pink nail polish and two lead pencils scattered across the mat. ‘Explain these things! Where did they come from when all your daughter’s pay was meant to come to me, her father?’
‘Shut up and sit down.’ Emmanuel had had enough of Matebula’s big mouth. ‘There. Up against the hut.’
‘A chief does not sit on the floor.’ Matebula shouted an order in Zulu to someone hidden inside the largest hut and stood with his hands folded across his bare chest.
Emmanuel permitted him the small victory. There were more immediate concerns than the maintenance of Matebula’s ego. He crouched at the edge of the mat and tried to make eye contact with Nomusa. She shut him out, looking up and beyond the fence line to the mountains wrapped in clouds. Traditional Zulu women, especially those married to an arrogant chief, did not speak to outsiders without their husband’s permission.
‘Sergeant.’ Shabalala nodded towards the narrow passage connecting the circular yard with the rest of the
kraal
. Another signal.
‘Go,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Take Nomusa and the child to their hut and come back when they’re settled.’
‘Just so.’ The Zulu detective picked up the vanity items scattered on the mat and repacked them in the cardboard box. Emmanuel wondered if these little luxuries had been given to or bought by Amahle, or if she had stolen them from her employers at Little Flint Farm. Beyond her startling physical beauty, he knew nothing about her life or her personality. What unknown event might have placed her in harm’s way?
‘Let go, Mama.’ The girl broke free of Nomusa’s hold and scooped up the four cotton dresses and a blue hand-knitted sweater from the grass mat where they’d been thrown. She clutched them tightly, a fierce little creature with wide brown eyes flecked with gold, black corn-rowed hair and a smooth oval face that would one day match her murdered sister’s beauty. A double-stranded necklace of blue and silver beads and a row of glass bracelets indicated her superior social status in a valley devoid of manufactured items.
‘Come.’ Shabalala shepherded Nomusa and her daughter towards the passage. They crossed paths with a lushly proportioned female, who came out of the great hut carrying a carved wooden stool and a rolled cowhide. The newcomer’s ochre-stained hair was brushed high into a stiff crown and adorned with shells and porcupine quills.
‘My fifth wife,’ Matebula said as the woman sidled barefoot across the dirt circle, her hips swaying widely enough to knock a child to the ground. Amahle’s little sister clutched the dresses tighter and narrowed her eyes like a cat ready to unleash its claws. Nomusa cast the woman a cold glance. Matebula’s wives were rivals, not friends.
‘Great chief . . .’ The fifth wife unrolled the black and white cowhide in the shade of the umdoni tree and placed the stool at the very centre. A dried leaf fluttered onto the hide and she flicked it away.
‘Tell me, policeman from the city . . .’ the chief settled onto the stool, feet apart, chest thrust out like a pigeon, ‘how will you compensate for the loss of my daughter?’
‘The police and the courts will exact a payment for the crime,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Whoever killed her will be found and punished.’
Matebula grunted. ‘These courts are far away in Pietermaritzburg and Durban. They cannot know the depth of my loss.’ The chief’s words did not contain a shred of genuine emotion. He was talking about money. A beautiful daughter of marriageable age had been killed before
lobola
, a bride price, could be paid.
The fifth wife cooed agreement from where she’d sunk down on her knees at the chief’s feet. She simmered for her husband. She was still young enough to enjoy her favoured status and did not yet understand that another nubile girl would, in time, replace her. Matebula clamped a hand on his knee and massaged the flesh under his palm.
‘How much was Amahle worth?’ Emmanuel asked, curious to gauge the depth of Matebula’s callousness.
‘Chief Mashanini from Umkomazi offered twenty cows. Not ordinary ones. A fat herd with long horns and speckled skins.’
‘Did you accept his offer?’
‘Of course, yes. Amahle was getting old and the price for her was fair.’ The chief pursed his lips. ‘Now I will get nothing.’ His wife made a sympathetic sound and shook her head.
The mixture of self-pity and greed fascinated Emmanuel. Matebula’s world ended at his fingertips.
‘Amahle was happy to marry and move to Umkomazi?’ he asked. Not far from this
kraal
missionaries taught girls to read and write and do sums, preparing their souls for heaven and their minds for life in the twentieth century. Marriage was no longer the only option for a Zulu girl.
‘Happy?’ Matebula grappled with the word, trying to find its relevance. ‘She was satisfied to do her duty to me.’
Maybe, Emmanuel thought. Marrying to escape was common in every racial group: indeed he’d often suspected his own ex-wife Angela had chosen him as the quickest way to break free of her overbearing father and her defeated mother. But life as a detective’s wife was not the peaceful refuge Angela had been looking for. They divorced when it became clear to both of them that their marriage was a way station, not a sanctuary. Amahle might have decided that life under the chief’s rule was worth ditching.
Shabalala returned, stepping up to Emmanuel’s left.
‘Your daughter had no admirers? No-one she fought with?’ Emmanuel asked.
The chief heaved a sigh, bored by the question. ‘Amahle spent much time with the white people on their farm but here at the
kraal
she was modest and silent,’ he said.
The fifth wife leaned back, her shoulder almost touching Matebula’s thigh, and whispered softly in Zulu. ‘There was one such man.’ The chief followed his wife’s prompt. ‘Philani Dlamini. He is a garden boy at the farm where my daughter worked. He told many people that he was betrothed to Amahle.’
‘Was he?’ Emmanuel wrote the name on a blank page. The first and only suspect in the investigation so far.
‘Never.’ The word was dismissive. ‘This man has a herd of five cows and he is not a chief.’
‘Where does Philani live?’ Emmanuel asked.
Another urgent whisper came from the fifth wife, who kept her eyes cast down to the cowhide, the model of a good Zulu wife.
‘Near the Dutchman’s farm.’ The chief pointed over the thorn fence to a mountain dotted with orange aloe blooms. Shabalala marked the direction and the travel distance at a glance. ‘But Dlamini is not there. His mother has not seen him for two days.’
‘How do you know that?’ Emmanuel asked.
A small bump of the shoulder against the chief’s thigh acted as a warning from the fifth wife to take care. Matebula shrugged and kept quiet.
‘Where is Mandla?’ Emmanuel asked. ‘We’d like to speak with him and his
impi
.’
Matebula sat up higher on the stool. ‘My son does not have an
impi
. Everything in this
kraal
belongs to me.’
‘Excuse us, great chief.’ Shabalala stepped forward with his shoulders dipped to decrease his size and presence. ‘We wish only to warn your son and your men that searching for Amahle’s killer is a job for the police and the police only.’
‘Why should my
impi
withdraw when the police stay in the town and never set foot on this land?’ asked Matebula.
‘Because,’ Emmanuel said, ‘if the
impi
continue to threaten witnesses, the chief of police will send more policemen to this valley, enough to trample the cornfields and outnumber the rocks.’
‘The truth is spoken,’ Shabalala said to emphasise the point. Black-against-black violence rarely caught the eye of the authorities but if the trouble spilled over to white-owned farms, Matebula could expect his world, and his authority, to come under threat.
‘I will talk to my men when they return,’ Matebula said.
After you’ve rolled your fifth wife, had a nap and smoked another marijuana cigarette, thought Emmanuel. It was time to move on with the information they had obtained. He pocketed his notebook, happy for the one name in it.
‘Stay well, great chief,’ Shabalala said, taking up the burden of good manners when Emmanuel turned to leave. A flock of tiny red birds flew overhead and settled in the branches of the umdoni tree, above the chief. The crimson flash caught Emmanuel’s eye and he glanced back over his shoulder.
The fifth wife remained nestled close to the chief’s thigh but her gaze was no longer on the dried cowhide but on the two detectives leaving the yard. She looked away but not fast enough to hide the calculating expression on her striking face. Not so naive then and probably brighter than her husband by fifty watts. Yet Matebula would go to his grave believing that she was soft and yielding and born to please.
As they walked through the
kraal
, Emmanuel asked Shabalala, ‘What do you think of the great chief?’
‘Unworthy of the title.’
‘Can he rein Mandla in?’
‘No chance.’
‘Thought not.’ Emmanuel paused outside a hut and noticed Nomusa and her daughter seated in its front yard. They were hunched over a bowl of brown lentils, picking stones and other impurities from the dried food with their fingers.
Nomusa lifted her head like an impala testing the air for the scent of a predator and saw Emmanuel and Shabalala standing at the boundary of her home. ‘Go,’ she said to them, and shuffled her child back into the hut. ‘Please, go from this place.’
Emmanuel moved towards the small break in the stick fence outside the hut. He wasn’t happy leaving Nomusa here, battered and grieving. A palm touched his shoulder.
‘Sergeant,’ Shabalala said. ‘You must not walk past the fence. Things will go worse for the chief’s wife if you do. This is not her family
kraal
. It belongs to her husband and his clan.’
Shabalala was right. Long after Amahle’s murder was written up in a case file and handed to a judge in robes and a wig, Nomusa would still be here, living in the shadow of the great chief.