A Beautiful Place to Die (16 page)

“That’s why I spend my holidays in Mozambique or Durban,” he said. “I prefer the ocean to the countryside.” Sarel Uys smiled and showed a row of teeth the size of dried baby corn kernels. Everything about the man was small and hard.

“Most people in town go to Mozambique a couple of times a year, don’t they?”

“Everyone but the natives,” Sarel said. “They don’t like the water.”

The blacks’ dislike of water was a tired belief that ceased to apply the moment whites needed their clothes washed or their gardens watered.

“Did Captain Pretorius go often?” Emmanuel asked.

“A couple of times a year.”

“With the family or by himself?”

The lieutenant was suddenly curious. “You think maybe someone from over there did it?”

“Maybe. Do you know if Captain Pretorius ever went to LM for business?”

“Ask the native,” the lieutenant threw back. “He’ll tell you if he has a mind to.”

“You’ve been here two years,” Emmanuel continued. It was getting harder to maintain a friendly tone with this man. “Surely you got to know Captain Pretorius a little?”

“This murder is typical of the captain.” Sarel shook his head in disbelief. “I tell you, it’s typical of the way he treated me.”

Emmanuel had trouble following the logic. “How so?”

“He got himself killed while I was away on holiday so I didn’t get to find the body or call in the detectives. My one chance to get back to Scarborough and he makes sure I’m not here to take it.”

“Captain Pretorius didn’t plan on getting murdered,” Emmanuel said.

“He knew everything that went on in this town. He must have known he was in danger. I could have helped him if he’d just told me what was going on.” The lieutenant’s slender fingers rubbed a bald spot into the material of his trousers.

Perhaps Sarel Uys needed a permanent holiday from the force instead of six days in Mozambique.

“He never asked for my help.” Uys stared across the quiet street. “I could have been his right-hand man if he’d given me the chance.”

The bitter tone had changed to longing. Uys had never left the playground or outgrown the desire to be close to the most popular and athletic student. The captain had denied him the small pleasure of living in his reflected glory.

“I’ve heard you helped the captain with a lot of cases. You both worked the molester case, didn’t you?”

“Oh, that.” The little man was dismissive. “Catching a man who interferes with coloured women doesn’t get you noticed with the higher-ups, believe me.”

Emmanuel leaned a shoulder against the wall and thought of Tiny and Theo out on the veldt with a loaded gun and itchy fingers. They’d taken the law into their own hands because the law didn’t give a damn what happened to their women.

“Captain Pretorius didn’t care about promotion,” Sarel went on. “He was happy here with ‘his people,’ as he called them. He didn’t have any plans to move up. Not like me.”

Emmanuel doubted Lieutenant Uys was moving anywhere but sideways and eventually out of the force. He’d end his days warming a bar stool and complaining about his missed chances.

“Did the investigation run for a long time?” Emmanuel asked.

“Maybe two months or so. There were times I couldn’t get through a week without hearing some coloured woman complaining about being followed or being touched up.”

Emmanuel thought of Mary, the woman-child, darting away from the church door like a startled springbok. Who had put the fear of men into her? The Peeping Tom or Lieutenant Uys?

“You filed all the interviews?”

“In one big fat folder. Under
U
for unsolved,” Sarel said with satisfaction.

The file wasn’t under
U
or any other letter. The files were no longer “absent,” they’d been taken. Sarel had no idea the file was missing, but even if he’d noticed, he’d have let it ride: there was no glory in hunting up a file concerning a nonwhite problem. The new laws were set to make old attitudes worse. Nonwhite cases were already at the bottom of the pile. That’s why the Security Branch was so pleased to off-load the molester case onto him. Only grunt cops with too much time and too few brains dirtied their hands exclusively with nonwhite cases.

Emmanuel pushed himself from the wall. Why would someone take the files unless there was something in them worth hiding?

He left Uys to his bitter musings. The filing cabinet needed to be searched again and then he’d move on to Constable Shabalala and see what shards of information he could extract from the black man.

Emmanuel entered the front office. A dog-eared paper folder lay on Hansie’s desk. The folder was dark blue and not like any of those in the police station’s filing cabinet. It was not like anything he’d seen at Marshal CID, either. A pale yellow snakelike
S
was hand-drawn on the front—a Security Branch file. Emmanuel checked the front door and the side door leading to the cells. He couldn’t lock either without drawing attention to himself, so he moved quickly.

He unbuttoned the fastener: inside the folder was a stack of mimeographed papers stamped along the top with the bright red warning “Highly Confidential.” The word “Communist” was repeated on every page above lists of names neatly drawn into two columns underneath.

A pamphlet with the optimistic title “A New Dawn for South Africa” was clipped to the front of a hazy black-and-white graduation photo. The face of a young black man wearing thick-rimmed glasses was circled in red. At the bottom of the photo was the school’s name, “Fort Bennington College.”

Emmanuel knew the school by reputation. It was an Anglican mission school famous for turning out the black academic elite. The first black lawyer to open his own law firm, the first black doctor to run an all-black practice, the first black dentist had all come out of the school. Fort Bennington College educated blacks to rule the country, not just carry a bucket for the white man. Afrikaners and conservative Englishmen hated the place with a passion.

A cough from the direction of the cells forced Emmanuel to close the file and rebutton the fastener. The folder was proof that Piet and Dickie were the attack dogs of a powerful political force with vast intelligence-gathering capabilities. His hands shook as he repositioned the blue folder and moved to the filing cabinet, where he checked under the letter
U
and found nothing.

The door to the cells opened. It was Piet with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a cigarette hanging from the side of his puffy lips. The Security Branch officer undid the fastener on the blue folder and slid a piece of paper into the middle.

“Have fun at the coloured church?” Piet asked, and took a deep draw on his cigarette.

“Not much,” Emmanuel said.

“Shame.” Piet grinned. “Van Niekerk won’t like to hear his number one boy has come home empty-handed.”

Piet blew a series of smoke rings into the air and Emmanuel’s heartbeat spiked. The Security Branch had found something. N’kosi Duma had given them something good. Piet could hardly contain his glee.

“Is Constable Shabalala around?” Emmanuel asked. There was nothing to gain from going up against the Security Branch in a cocksure mood. He had to sidestep them and find out as much as he could from other sources.

“Out the back,” Piet said. “You can come through, but be quick about it.”

Emmanuel walked through to the police station yard and saw Dickie standing by an open cell door. A gaunt black man, whom he assumed was Duma, cowered against the hard metal bars.

“Don’t worry…” Dickie spoke to the terrified miner in a grotesque parody of motherly concern. “I’m sure your comrades will understand why you did it.”

“Dickie.” Piet encouraged his partner to move his tank-sized body farther into the cell. The black man flinched and held his arms over his head in a protective gesture. Dark bruises marked Duma’s skinny arms and a low animal whimper came from deep in the terrified man’s throat. The Security Branch always got what they wanted: one way or another.

“Keep moving,” Piet ordered. “Your business is outside.”

Two steaming cups of tea rested on the small table by the back door. Emmanuel exited and found Shabalala seated by the edge of a small fire that burned in the outdoor hearth. Piet slammed the back door shut.

“Detective Sergeant.” Shabalala stood up to greet him.

Emmanuel shook the black man’s hand and they sat down.

“What happened in there?” he asked in Zulu.

“I have been outside,” Shabalala answered.

“What do you
think
happened?” Emmanuel pushed a little harder. Unlike Sarel Uys and Hansie Hepple, the black policeman showed a real aptitude for the finer details of police work. Constable Shabalala needed to know that nothing he said could be used against him by the Security Branch later.

The black policeman checked the back door to make sure it was still shut. “The two men, they want to know if Duma has seen a piece of paper with”—he paused to retrieve the unfamiliar word—“Communist writing on it when he worked in the mines.”

“Did they get an answer from him?”

“Those two did not get an answer from Duma,” Shabalala said with a trace of contempt. “It was the shambok that got the answer.”

Emmanuel took a breath and looked deep into the fire. The liberal use of the rawhide whip, the shambok, readily explained the bruises on the miner’s arms. Hard questioning was one of the things that made the Security Branch “special.”

“What did Duma say?”

“I did not hear,” Shabalala said. “I could not listen anymore.”

This time Emmanuel didn’t push. The sound of a man being broken during interrogation was enough to turn the strongest stomach. Shabalala had walked away and Emmanuel couldn’t blame him.

“Did they find out anything about the captain’s murder?”

“No,” Shabalala said. “They wanted only to know about the writing.”

If a link, however tenuous, was proved between a Communist and the murder of an Afrikaner police captain, Piet and Dickie were set for a smooth ride to Pretoria and a personal meeting with the prime minister of the Union. After the ministerial handshake they’d get fast-tracked promotions and an even bigger shambok to wield.

It seemed the Security Branch was in the middle of an investigation that somehow tied in with Captain Pretorius’s murder. Piet Lapping was no fool. He was in Jacob’s Rest because something in his confidential folder drew him to the town with the promise of netting a genuine Communist revolutionary.

“Are all the police files for this station kept inside?” Emmanuel steered away from the dark swamp of torture and political conspiracy that Piet and Dickie waded through for a living. The Security Branch could continue chasing Communist agitators. He’d play his hunch that the murder was tied to one of the many secrets Captain Pretorius kept.

“Sometimes,” Shabalala said, “Captain took the files home to read. He did this many times.”

“He had an office at home?” Emmanuel asked. Why hadn’t he thought of that when he was at the house?

“No office,” the black constable said. “But there is a room in the house where Captain Pretorius spent much time.”

“How would a person get into such a room?” Emmanuel wondered aloud.

“A person must first ask the missus. If she says yes, then he can go into the room and see things for himself.”

“If the missus says no?”

The black man hesitated, then said very clearly, “The man must tell me and I will get the key to the room from the old one who works there at the house. She will open this room for the person.”

Emmanuel let his breath out slowly.

“I will ask the missus,” he said, and left it there.

They sat side by side and watched the flames without speaking. The bond, still fragile, held firm. The Security Branch had a file crammed with enemies of the state but he had the inside track on the captain’s shadow life.

The back door opened and Piet stepped out into the backyard with his cup of tea. His pebble eyes had an unnatural sheen to them, as if he’d swallowed a witch’s brew and found that what killed other men made him strong.

“We’re through.” Piet spoke directly to Shabalala. “You can take him back to the location but make sure he doesn’t go anywhere until our investigation has finished. Understand?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Shabalala moved quickly toward the back door. When he drew level with Piet, the Security Branch agent put his hand out and patted his arm.

“Good tea,” he said with a grin. “Your mother trained you well, hey.”

“Dankie,” Shabalala replied in Afrikaans, then stepped into the station without looking at him.

Emmanuel marveled at Piet’s ability to mix an afternoon of torture with harmless banter. It didn’t matter that Shabalala and Duma knew each other and might even be related. When pockmarked Piet looked at Constable Samuel Shabalala, he didn’t see an individual; he saw a black face ready to do his bidding without question.

The Security Branch lieutenant sipped his tea and took in the dusty yard with a sigh.

“I like the country,” he announced. “It’s peaceful.”

“You thinking of moving out here?” Emmanuel said, and made for the back door. He didn’t have the stomach to listen to Piet waxing lyrical about the beauty of the land.

“Not yet.” Piet wasn’t letting anything penetrate his bucolic reverie. “When all the bad guys are behind bars and South Africa is safe, I’ll move to a small farm with a view of the mountains.”

“Home sweet home.” Emmanuel pulled the back door open and walked into the police station. Captain Pretorius had lived the dream. He was a powerful white man on a small farm with a view of the mountains. He’d ended up with a bullet to the head.

“Woza. Get up, Duma, and I will take you home.” It was Shabalala trying to coax the traumatized black man out of the cell. The injured miner was still pressed up against the bars with his arms over his head.

Shabalala put both his hands out like a parent encouraging a toddler to walk for the first time.

“Woza,” Shabalala repeated quietly. “Come. I will take you to your mother.”

Duma struggled to his feet and steadied himself against the bars of the cell, then limped painfully toward the door. The miner’s left leg was half an inch shorter than the right and twisted at an odd angle. Even before the Security Branch abuse, Duma must have been a pitiful sight.