Let the Dead Lie (24 page)

Yes,
he knew it.

Give them the
slip,
the sergeant
major said.
Give them nothing till you've had
a chance to clear your name
.

Emmanuel
checked the time: 1.30 a.m. They'd come in an hour or so when they were sure
everyone at La Mer was sleeping. Timing was everything. The ability to drag
suspects from their beds still numb and confused by sleep was power itself; a
simple action that said, 'We own the night. We own your dreams. We own you.'

Six
months of fading into invisibility and tasting what it was to be non-white.
Well, not tonight. Fifteen hours were left on the van Niekerk clock and he was
going to use every one of them. The man in the Dodge and his friends would have
to wait.

'How
many cars?' he asked Lana, who stood on the veranda biting her thumbnail.

'One
car at the end of the street,' she said. 'There's a man behind the wheel.'

'All
the exits from the house are blocked.' Emmanuel looked down the unbroken lines
of the hedge and the side fence. 'They have us trapped.'

'Do
you know who they are?'

'I
don't know names but I know who they are. I know what they are.'

'Police?'
Lana's tone was hopeful. Major van Niekerk's name would provide a quick way out
of any trouble from them.

'No,'
Emmanuel said. 'Security Branch.'

Neither
of them spoke for a moment.

'What
are they doing here?' Lana said quietly.

"They're
waiting. They're going to raid the house.'

'Why
would they do that?' Her skin paled in the mellow porch light. Major van
Niekerk would never keep a girlfriend who'd been caught in the Security Branch
net. There would be too much to lose.

'They're
looking for something or someone,' he said. 'My guess is it's the Russians.'

'So
they'll arrest the Russians and leave?'

'No
way to know what will happen,' Emmanuel said. 'They might arrest one of us or
all of us.'

Lana
stared across the garden. 'When do you think they'll come?'

'Between
two and four. Best time for night raids.'

'That
gives
us ...'

'Half
an hour. An hour if we're lucky.'

'What's
the plan?'

'We
find a way out and we take it,' Emmanuel said. 'You, me and the Russians.'

Lana
jerked a thumb towards the house. 'What about your Frenchwoman?'

'I
doubt they're coming for her.'

There
was no way to stop the raid. All he could do was limit the damage done to
Hélène and get out quickly.

He
motioned to the hedge that separated Chateau La Mer from its back neighbours.
'Our exit point will be across the yard and into the street behind. We'll break
through the hedge if we have to.'

Emmanuel
split to the left and Lana to the right. They worked their way towards the
middle of the hedge, looking for a break in the tropical vegetation. The
servant's
kyaha,
like
the one behind the Duttas' house, was built almost flush against the back
boundary of the property. Servants needed to be close but not close enough to
see through the bedroom curtains.

Emmanuel
checked the lonely portal into the room. No lights. No movement. The
kyaha
was empty. A place the size of La Mer should have at least one on-grounds maid.
Hélène had invisible help and an invisible husband.

The
space between the back wall of the
kyaha
and the hedge was pitch black
and narrow. Emmanuel squeezed in and fumbled towards the inky light that showed
at the other end of the shack's boundary. His hands tangled in the foliage then
touched air and space.

'What
is it?' Lana moved through the dark easily and rested a shoulder against the
wall.

'A
hole,' Emmanuel said. 'Feels wide enough to crawl into.'

'The
maid's secret passage,' Lana guessed. 'She probably used it to visit her
boyfriend after lights out.'

Emmanuel
crawled through the tunnel, which opened to a wide yard illuminated by a
lantern that burned in the window of a mud-brick room a few feet to the right.
White spider orchids in round-bellied pots lined a path to the back door of the
main house. Lana emerged beside him and together they crouched low and breathed
in the stillness of the night.

Emmanuel
rose slowly. An empty driveway ran along the left side of the house. 'That
leads to the street. We'll find a car out there.' There was no need to say
more. Lana knew what 'find' meant.

'Let's
get the Russians,' she said and they retreated towards the tunnel.

The
screech of rusted metal against concrete shredded the silence. A nuggety black
man flew from the doorway of the mud-brick room and ran straight for the back
hedge. A wood knobkerrie, a native club, was raised high in the air.

'Stop,'
Emmanuel said in Zulu. 'Stop where you are.'

The
man slowed but kept coming. Fear drove him. Fear and, Emmanuel guessed, the
certain knowledge that if he failed to protect the delicate white orchids and
the silver cutlery in the big house then his work pass would evaporate.
Without this job, he'd get sent back to a native location in the sticks and be
given an arid patch of dirt from which to scratch a living.

'Stop
and listen.' Emmanuel spoke quietly in Zulu. 'We are not here to steal. We are
not here to harm you or those whom you work for . . .' The hard clicks and
tongue-twisting consonants of the Zulu language had a rhythm and a melody that
was unique and to speak it, even here in the dark, unarmed, with a knobkerrie
poised above his head, gave Emmanuel pleasure. The last conversation he'd had
in Zulu was with Constable Samuel Shabalala, a man blessed with a simple
eloquence that went to the heart of the matter and never danced around it.

'Does
he understand?' Lana moved to Emmanuel's side, curious.

The
wooden club dropped from the Zulu man's hand and he shuffled backwards. White
women were more precious than the gold dug from the mines of Johannesburg. If a
native raised even a finger to one of them, the white man's law came down like
a fist.

'Salani kahle,'
the black man said and returned
to the small mud-brick building. 'Stay well,
nkosi.'

'Hamba kahle.'
Emmanuel returned the man's
traditional farewell. 'Go well.'

The
corrugated-iron sheet, cut down to fit the doorway, scraped closed and the
lamplight inside the servant's room died. The orchid petals shone like distant
stars in the darkened yard.

'What
did you say to him?' Lana asked.

'I
told him it is safer to dream than to be awake.'

There
would be no safe dreams for Hélène Gerard. Emmanuel's fingers curled around the
silver handle of her bedroom door as Lana pushed herself up against the wall
and tried to breathe quietly. Earlier, her calm had disturbed him but now
Emmanuel was glad of it. He needed an experienced woman who broke the rules and
got away with it, not an innocent.

'Flick
the light switch when I say "now".'

The
light from the hall revealed a cavernous room. Curtains covered a bank of
windows that opened to the veranda. The carpet muffled their footsteps and
Emmanuel reached the side of the bed in silence. A dark mound under the
blankets indicated a sleeping form. He reached forward, eyes adjusting to the
dim light, and cupped a hand over a mouth.

'Now,'
he said and the overhead bulb shone bright. The body in the bed surged forward
and Emmanuel pressed down hard. Beard stubble pricked his palms. Hélène Gerard's
frantic voice came from the opposite side of the mattress.

'Don't
hurt him. Please.'

A
man in striped cotton pyjamas jerked and spluttered under the covers, his green
eyes alive with panic. Two silver-framed photos tumbled from the side table and
bounced on the carpet.

'Please.'
Hélène scrambled across the king-sized bed on all fours, her flimsy nightgown
bunched around her thighs. 'Let him go.'

Emmanuel
lifted his hand and pulled back in shock; an involuntary movement that he
immediately regretted. The man's face was scarred and infected black lumps
spread across his left cheekbone and over the bridge of his nose before
disappearing into his hairline.

'Vincent
Gerard?'

'Yes,'
the man whispered. He was dark-skinned, dark- haired and had once been handsome.
Beyond his facial disfigurement he retained a faint glimmer of the fashionable
French-Mauritian partial to hand-tailored silk suits. Something terrible had
transpired and now Vincent was a recluse in his own house.

'It
was the skin-lightening cream,' Hélène said. 'We wanted to make sure Vincent
got European papers when he was examined by the Race Classification Board but
the treatment backfired. The cream damaged his skin and then the rash broke
out. We were married before the new laws came in and now . . .'

Mauritians,
once automatically considered 'Europeans', had to be reclassified with the rest
of the population and placed in a race group. Some retained their white status
but a great many others had been downgraded. A dark- skinned Mauritian and his
blonde wife had no future together.

'Major
van Niekerk ate at our restaurant once a week . . . before Vincent's accident
forced us to close,' Hélène said. 'He promised he'd sign a letter to say
Vincent is white and that he suffers from a rare skin condition that can't be
cured.'

The
solemn word of an Afrikaner policeman given to the Race Classification Board
practically guaranteed Vincent his 'white' papers. No wonder Hélène smiled till
it hurt. Her marriage depended on it.

'What
does the major get in return, Hélène?'

'I
had to take care of you. Not tell anyone you were here. Call him with any
news.'

'Did
you tell him about her?' He jerked his thumb in Lana's direction. She was
halfway into the room, drawn by the mention of van Niekerk's name.

'No.
I did try to call just after you came but there was no answer.'

Major
van Niekerk was eating sherry-infused trifle at the coronation party in Durban
North or he could be right outside Chateau La Mer. What was the real reason for
signing Emmanuel's release papers?

'We
have to move.' Lana was anxious. 'Now.'

'What's
going on?' Vincent Gerard said. 'Is the major backing out of our deal?'

'No.'

Emmanuel
opened the top drawer of the armoire and rifled through the delicates and found
four pairs of silk stockings. There was no way to do what had to be done
gently. He pulled Hélène from the bed.

'You're
hurting me.' She twisted away but Emmanuel kept hold of her arm. Hélène's fear
had to be real or the raiding party would take their frustrations out on her
and her house's beautifully ordered interior. He pushed her down into a chair
and pinned her arms behind her back. He did not look at her. If he did, he'd
have to say, 'I'm sorry. Forgive me.' A small hurt now to avoid real pain
later. That was the trade-off.

Vincent
Gerard growled and sprang forward with his fists clenched. Emmanuel pushed the
Mauritian hard on the chest to stop him and Vincent flew back. His head cracked
on the edge of a bedside table and he crumpled to the carpet.

'Vincent!'
Hélène tried to get up from the chair but Lana held her down by the shoulders.
Blood leaked from a small cut just below Vincent's hairline.

Emmanuel
remembered too clearly many long hours spent grilling suspects in stark
interview rooms where proceedings ended with a confession that stated, 'It was
an accident. I didn't mean to hurt anyone.' After a year in the detective
branch, he could write the confessions himself. He might yet get that chance.

'God
damn
it.. .'
He scrambled to Vincent's side.

He'd
come into the room to shield Hélène from the possibility of real damage, not be
the cause of it.

'Vincent!'
Hélène cried. 'Is he alive?'

A
heartbeat drummed against Emmanuel's fingertips. Thank god. A moan escaped
Vincent's lips and relief unclenched the muscles in Emmanuel's face. He lifted
Vincent onto the bed. When he came to, the trouble would start all over again.
The Mauritian wasn't going to sit quietly while his wife was tied to a chair
and gagged.

Emmanuel
retrieved a stocking from the floor. The French-Mauritian couple smiled from
the deck of a sailboat in one of the silver-framed photos lying on the carpet.
No matter how he approached the situation, Hélène and Vincent would not emerge
unharmed.