A Beautiful Place to Die (4 page)

“A kaffir woman touching him down there. He was against that sort of thing.”

There was a tense silence, colored by the ugly tide of recent history. The Immorality Act banning sexual contact between whites and nonwhites was now law, with offenders subjected to public humiliation and jail time.

“Go out and get some air,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Please. I want to help, Detective Sergeant.”

“You have helped. Now it’s time for you to take a break. Go out and get some fresh air.”

“Ja.” Hansie headed for the exit with hunched shoulders. It would take a while for the image of the captain, naked and molested by a black woman, to clear from his mind.

Emmanuel waited for the door to close before he spoke to Sister Angelina and Zweigman, both of whom had stepped back from the body during the young policeman’s outburst. A white teenager with a uniform and badge clearly outranked a foreign Jew and a black nun.

“Carry on,” he said, trying to move past an acute feeling of embarrassment. The Afrikaners had voted the National Party in. Racial segregation belonged to people like Captain Pretorius and his sons. A detective didn’t have to adhere to the new laws. Murder didn’t have a color.

“It is just as well,” Zweigman said after he’d murmured a low instruction to the sisters, who unfolded a white sheet and held it across the front of the captain’s body to shield it from view. Zweigman reached for the internal thermometer, hesitated, then cast Shabalala a concerned glance.

“You can leave now, if you’d like,” Emmanuel said to the Zulu constable.

“No.” Shabalala didn’t move a muscle. “I will stay here with him.”

Zweigman nodded, then continued with the grim task of extracting information from the dead. He checked the results of the internal thermometer, rechecked the milky film masking the captain’s eyes, and then examined the cleaned body for a second time.

“Cause of death was trauma to the head and spine caused by a bullet. The trauma to these areas is so specific and severe I believe the victim was most likely dead before reaching the water. I have not gone into the lungs to confirm, but that is my opinion.”

“How do you know he was found in water?” Emmanuel was sure he hadn’t mentioned the fact to Zweigman.

“Sediment on his wet clothes and in his hair. Captain Pretorius smells of the river.”

Emmanuel’s shoes were covered in mud and decaying leaves. Both he and Shabalala looked as if they’d been dredged in the river and then hung out to dry.

“Time of death?” he asked.

“Hard to tell. The captain’s lack of body fat and the cool water in which his body was found make calculations difficult. Somewhere between eight
PM
and midnight last night is my best guess.” The white-haired grocer handed the internal thermometer to Sister Bernadette and peeled off his gloves.

The sliced police uniform was heaped on the floor. The buttons still shone.

“Shabalala, did the captain always go fishing in his uniform?”

“Sometimes, when it was late, he went straight from the station to fish. He didn’t like to disturb madam after dinner.”

“Or maybe”—Zweigman pulled off the untied surgical gown and dumped it onto the side counter—“he just liked to wear the uniform.”

Emmanuel flicked back in his notebook and placed a tick next to “Zweigman vs. Captain?” The uniform statement was harmless enough, but there was an edge to it. Had Pretorius used his position to come down on the shopkeeper for some minor infraction? Every year the National Party introduced a dozen new ways to break the law. Zweigman wouldn’t be the first to get caught.

“If you’ll excuse me, I will fill in the death certificate and be on my way. Here is a supply of painkillers for your head.” Zweigman handed over a full bottle. “No offense, Detective, but I hope not to see you again.”

“Can you think of anyone who could have done this?” Emmanuel pocketed the pills and opened the morgue door for the physician.

“I’m the old Jew who sells dry goods to natives and coloureds. Nobody comes to me with their secrets, Detective.”

“An educated guess, then?”

“He didn’t have any enemies that I know of. If the killer is from this town, then he has kept his feelings well hidden.”

“So you think the murder was planned and personal?”

Zweigman lifted an eyebrow. “That I cannot say, as I was not privy to any discussions leading up to the captain’s unfortunate demise. Will that be all, Detective?”

“For now.”

There were few certainties this early in a case, but one was already clear: he’d be seeing the old Jew again and not to buy lentils.

“Constable Hepple!” Emmanuel called.

The boy policeman scuttled over. “Get the Pretorius brothers. Tell them their father is ready to go home.”

3

T
HE FRONT OFFICE
of the Jacob’s Rest police station consisted of one large room with two wooden desks, five chairs, and a metal filing cabinet pushed against the back wall. Gray lines worn into the polished concrete floor made a map of each policeman’s daily journey from door to desk to cabinet. A doorway at one side led to the cells and another in the back wall to a separate office. Shabalala was nowhere to be seen.

Emmanuel entered the back office. Captain Pretorius’s desk was larger and neater than the others and had a black telephone in one corner. He picked up the receiver and dialed district headquarters.

“Congratulations.” Major van Niekerk’s cultured voice crackled down the line after the operator’s third attempt to connect them.

“What for, sir?”

“Uniting the country. Once the story gets out, the native, English and Afrikaans press will finally have something to agree on—that the Detective Branch is understaffed, ill informed and losing the battle against crime. One detective to cover the murder of a white police officer—the newspapers will have to run extra editions.”

Emmanuel felt a jolt. “You know about the case, sir?”

“Just got a call from the National Party boys.” The statement was overlaid with a casual indifference that didn’t ring true. “The Security Branch, no less. They think Pretorius’s murder may be political.”

“The Security Branch?” Emmanuel tensed. “How did they get to hear about it so fast?”

“They didn’t get the information from me, Cooper. Someone at your end must have tipped them off.”

There was no way Hansie Hepple or Shabalala were hooked up to such heavyweights. The Security Branch wasn’t a regional body monitoring rainfall and crop production. They were entrusted with matters of national security and had the power to pull the rug from under anyone—including Major van Niekerk and the whole Detective Branch. Did the Pretorius brothers have those kinds of connections?

“What do they mean by ‘political’?” Emmanuel asked.

“The defiance campaign’s got them spooked. They think the murder may be the beginning of Communist-style revolt by the natives.”

“How did they come up with that?” The revolution idea would be funny if anyone but the Security Branch had flagged it. “The defiance campaign protesters prefer burning their ID passes and marching to the town hall after curfew. They want the National Party segregation laws repealed. Killing policemen isn’t their style.”

“Maybe the Security Branch knows something we don’t. Either way, they made sure I knew they were taking an interest in the case and they expect to be informed of any developments as they occur.”

“Is taking an interest as far as it goes?” Even members of the foot section of the police knew “taking an interest” was code for taking control.

There was a long pause. “My guess is, if the defiance campaign dies down, they’ll step back. If it doesn’t, there’s no telling what they’ll do. We’re in different times now, Cooper.”

Emmanuel didn’t think the defiance campaign showed any sign of dying down. Prime Minister Malan and the National Party had begun to enact their plan as soon as they’d taken office. The new segregation laws divided people into race groups, told them where they could live and told them where they could work. The Immorality Act went so far as to tell people whom they could sleep with and love. The growth of the defiance campaign meant that the Security Branch, or Special Branch as it was tagged on the street, would walk right into Emmanuel’s investigation and call the shots.

“When can you get more men onto the case, sir?”

“Twenty-four hours,” van Niekerk said. “Everyone here is focused on a body found by the railway line. She’s white, thank God. That means the press will keep running with the story. I’ll get a day to pull some men from headquarters and load them onto your case on the quiet.”

Major van Niekerk, the product of a highbred English mother and a rich Dutch father, liked to keep a clear line of sight between himself and his ultimate prize: commissioner of police. His present rank of major wasn’t high enough for him. His motto was simple: What’s good for me is good for South Africa. Sending out a single detective on a crank call that turned out to be an actual homicide wasn’t something he was keen to make public.

“And the Security Branch?” Emmanuel asked.

“I’ll handle them.” Van Niekerk made it sound easy, but it was going to be more like taking a knife from a Gypsy. “Meanwhile, you’ve got a chance to treat this like an ordinary murder, not a test case for the soundness of the new racial segregation laws. Consider yourself—”

Static swallowed up the rest of the sentence and left an industrial hiss breathing down the line.

“Major?”

The singsong
beep, beep, beep
signaled a disconnected line. Emmanuel hung up. Lucky? Was that the major’s last word? Consider yourself lucky?

Emmanuel tipped the contents of the captain’s drawer onto the desktop and began sorting through it. Booking forms, paper clips, pencils, and rubber bands got placed to one side. That left a small box of ammunition and a week-old newspaper. The box revealed rows of gold bullets. The newspaper stories he’d read last Wednesday. No luck there.

“Detective Sergeant?”

Shabalala stood in the doorway, a steaming mug of tea in hand. For such a large man, he moved with alarming quiet. He’d stripped down to his undershirt, and his trousers were damp from where he’d washed the material in an attempt to clean it. The black location, five miles to the north of town, was too far to ride his bicycle for the sake of a change of clothes.

“Thank you, Constable.” Emmanuel took the tea, aware of the crisp lines of the shirt he’d changed into half an hour earlier. The Protea Guesthouse, the boardinghouse where he’d thrown down his bag, then washed and changed, was in the heart of town, surrounded by other white-owned homes. Shabalala would have to wait for nighttime to wash the smell of the dead captain from his skin.

“Where’s your desk?” The front office, like the one at district headquarters, was reserved for European policemen.

“In here.” Shabalala stepped back and allowed him entry through the side door to a room that included two jail cells and a narrow space with a desk and chair. A row of hooks above the desk held the keys to the cells and a whip made of rhino hide called a shambok, the deadly South African version of an English bobby’s truncheon. A window looked out to the backyard, and underneath it sat a small table with a box of rooibos tea, a teapot, and some mismatched porcelain mugs. Tin plates, mugs and spoons for the native policeman rested on a separate shelf.

“What’s out there?”

Shabalala swung the back door open and politely motioned him out first. Emmanuel picked the black man’s tea up off the table and handed the tin mug to him. The police station yard was a dusty patch of land. A huge avocado tree dominated the far end and cast a skirt of shade around its trunk. Closer in, a small fire glowed in a circle of stones. Shabalala’s coat and jacket, wiped down from filthy to dirty by a wet cloth, hung over some chairs crowded around the outdoor hearth. A small sniff of the air and it was possible to imagine the smell of the police station’s Friday-night braai and fresh jugs of beer.

“Did you know the captain a long time?” Emmanuel’s tea was milky and sweet, the way he guessed Pretorius must have liked it.

The black man shifted uncomfortably. “Since before.”

Emmanuel switched to Zulu. “You grew up together?”

“Yebo.”

Silence breathed between them as they stood drinking tea. Emmanuel noted the tension in Shabalala’s neck and shoulders. There was something on the black man’s mind. He let Shabalala make the first move.

“The captain…” Shabalala stared across the yard. “He was not like the other Dutchmen…”

Emmanuel made a sound of understanding but didn’t say anything. He was afraid of breaking the fragile bond he felt between himself and the native constable.

“He was…”

Emmanuel waited. Nothing came. Shabalala’s face wore the curious blank look he’d noticed at the crime scene. It was as if the Zulu-Shangaan man had flicked a switch somewhere deep inside himself and unplugged the power. The connection was broken. Whatever Shabalala had on his mind, he’d decided to keep it there under lock and key.

Emmanuel, however, needed to know why the Security Branch was sniffing around this homicide.

“What clubs did the captain belong to?” he asked Shabalala.

“He went always to the Dutch people’s church on Sunday, and also the Sports Club where he and his sons played games.”

If the captain had been a member of a secret Boer organization like the Broederbond, Shabalala would be the last to know. He had to find a simpler way to track down the Security Branch connection.

“Is there another phone in town besides the one here at the station?”

“The hospital, the old Jew, the garage and the hotel have phones,” Shabalala said. “The post office has a machine for telegrams.”

Emmanuel swallowed the remainder of his tea. Two phone calls that he knew of had gone out regarding the murder. One to van Niekerk, who’d sooner eat horse shit than call in the Security Branch, the other to Paul Pretorius of army intelligence. It was time to go direct to the source, the family home, and find out what information it yielded.

“I’ll go and pay my respects to the widow,” Emmanuel said. “Is the captain’s house far from here?”

“No.” Shabalala opened the back door and allowed him to enter first. “You must walk to the petrol station and then go right onto van Riebeeck Street. It is the white house with many flowers.”

Emmanuel pictured a fence made from wagon wheels and a wrought-iron gate decorated with migrating springbok. The house itself probably had a name like Die Groot Trek, the Great Trek, spelled out above the doorway. True Boers didn’t need good taste; they had God on their side.

The late-afternoon sun began to wane and blue shadows fell across the flat strip of the main street. The handful of shops sustained themselves with a trickle of holidaymakers on their way to the beaches of Mozambique and the wilds of the Kruger National Park. There was OK Bazaar for floral dresses, plain shirts and school uniforms, all in sensible cotton. Donny’s All Goods, for everything from single cigarettes to Lady Fair sewing patterns. Kloppers for Bata shoes and farm boots. Moira’s Hairstyles, closed for the day. Then, on the corner, stood Pretorius Farm Supply behind a wire fence.

A handwritten sign was tied to the mesh: “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances.” Unforeseen. That was probably the simplest way to get a handle on the murder of your father. Inside the compound a black watchman paced the front of the large supply warehouse while an Alsatian dog, chained to a spike in the ground, ran restless circles of its territory.

Across a small side street was the garage Shabalala had told him about. The sign above the three petrol pumps read “Pretorius Petrol and Garage.” It was open, manned by an old coloured man in grease-covered overalls probably called in at short notice to supervise the black teenagers operating the pumps. Why wasn’t the town called Pretoriusburg? The family owned a big enough slice of it.

Emmanuel turned right onto van Riebeeck Street. The neat country houses with manicured beds of aloe and flowering protea had a deserted air. Garden boys, now usually finishing up for the day, were nowhere in sight. Dried laundry flapped on backyard lines. No maids. No “missus” or “baas,” either.

The news was out, he guessed. A quick glance down van Riebeeck confirmed it. A group of the captain’s neighbors was gathered in front of a house at the end of the street. Housemaids and garden boys, many of them gray haired despite the title, stood in a group two dwellings down: close enough to look on yet far enough to show respect.

A woman’s sob floated out into the afternoon. Emmanuel approached a wide gravel driveway choked with cars. An elegant Cape Dutch–style house nestled in an established garden. A dark thatched roof perched over graceful gables and gleaming whitewashed walls. Wooden shutters, the exact shade of the thatch, were shut against the world. A long veranda, decorated with flowerpots, ran the length of the house. There wasn’t a wagon wheel in sight.

Like the captain’s hand-tooled watch, the house was a surprise. Where was the bleached antelope skull he expected to find nailed over the doorway? He stepped past the front bumper of a dusty Mercedes and into the garden.

“Hey! Who you?” A hand settled on his shoulder and stayed there. A skinny white man with watery blue eyes stared him down. The crowd turned to examine the interloper.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.” He flicked his ID open and held it uncomfortably close to the man’s face. “I’m the investigating officer in this case. Are you a family member?”

The hand dropped. “No. Just making sure we all act decent toward Captain Pretorius and his family.”

Emmanuel returned his ID to his pocket and smiled to show there were no hard feelings.

“He’s okay, Athol. Let him by.” Hansie stood on the veranda in his filthy uniform, cheeks glowing an eggshell pink. Exercising his authority in public agreed with him.

“This way, Detective Sergeant.” Hansie waved him across the garden flushed with early spring color, and up the stairs that led to the imposing front door. Emmanuel took off his hat.

“I’ve come to pay my respects to Mrs. Pretorius. The family all here?”

“Everyone except Paul.” Hansie opened the front door and ushered him in. “Mrs. Pretorius and her daughters-in-law are seeing to the captain. The rest are out on the back veranda.”

They entered a small receiving area that led farther along to a series of closed doors, most likely the bedrooms. Hansie walked left into a large room dominated by heavy wooden furniture, the kind built to withstand generations of pounding by unruly boys and leather-skinned men. The polished tile floor was smooth as snakeskin under the yellow light of the glass-faced lanterns. An enormous sideboard covered in trophies and framed photos ran along one side of the room.