Let the Dead Lie (30 page)

'Salvation
is my major occupation.' Brother Jonah wiped sweat from his neck and dried his
fingers on the towel. 'But I pick up odd jobs here and there to feed the body.'

The
major muscles of his back and arms moved beneath the skin. It was a body that
didn't take much feeding.

'What's
this job?' Emmanuel asked, stopping short of the circular white glow that hit
the concrete floor. His eyes adjusted to the contrast between darkness and the
manufactured light of a huge overhead lamp positioned a foot or so above head
height. Smaller lamps with bare bulbs shone directly into a glass box resting
on a laminated tabletop. A pile of ripped newspaper and grass was heaped inside
the glass container. Heat radiated from the lit circle.

'Helping
nature,' Brother Jonah said and entered into the lamp glow. 'Come take a look.'

Emmanuel
edged closer but held back till he was certain there was no movement on the
outer edges of the circle. He mentally fixed the position of the back door and
slipped the Walther back into its hip holster.

'See.'
Brother Jonah pointed into the pile of grass and ripped newspaper. Three pale
blue eggs lay in a hollow scooped into the middle of the man-made nest. 'Had
them under heat for twenty hours already. They'll be ready to hatch soon.'

'You're
incubating eggs.' Emmanuel removed his hat and fanned his face. The heat lamps
raised the temperature but not high enough to warrant removing every stitch of
clothing. That decision was a personal one, made, he suspected, because the
preacher simply liked being naked.

'Who
are you working for?' he asked. He had to make a spoonful of sense out of
Brother Jonah's incubator before turning the interview back to Jolly Marks and
the Russian couple.

'Mr
Khan. He's crazy about exotic parrots and birds. Likes to rear them by hand.'
Brother Jonah thumped the muscles of his chest and arms with tight fists and
sucked in deep breaths. 'You should get that jacket and shirt off, Brother
Emmanuel. Get the heat into you. It opens up the lungs.'

'I'm
fine. So, you work for Mr Khan.'

'Now
and then.' Brother Jonah began a series of deep knee squats. 'A monkey could do
this job but Mr Khan likes to have white men working for him and he pays for
the privilege.'

'I'm
sure he does.' White staff was the ultimate symbol of power for a non-white
man. Proof that money could turn the world on its head and make it spin
anticlockwise.

'Sister
Bergis looks down on me, I know.' Brother Jonah moved on to knee lifts. 'But
I'm not on the teat of a rich missionary society. My work is funded out of my
own pocket.'

'Khan
pays that much for egg incubation?' Emmanuel let a trace of disbelief colour
the question. Selling stolen whisky was a good business with a regular customer
base. That was probably how the preacher earned his keep.

Brother
Jonah stopped the exercise routine and placed both hands on his hips. 'You
shouldn't listen to Sister Bergis,' he said. 'Lonely women have powerful
imaginations. They fill their time with stories. That comes from an empty
womb.'

The
preacher stared beyond the circle of light to something on the far wall.
Emmanuel turned, anticipating the swing of a club or a fist, and saw a full-length
mirror propped against the wall. Brother Jonah admired his reflection in the
looking glass: he was clearly a man who believed he was formed in God's own
image.

'Yeah,
Sister Bergis has some crazy theories about you,' Emmanuel said, facing the
preacher with a smile. 'She thinks you were a soldier. A fighter. I told her
you were a man of peace. That you probably sat the war out in a conscientious
objector cell.'

'I
fought in the Pacific.' The veins on the preacher's forehead stood out in
anger. 'Hand to hand with the Japs. Europe was a cakewalk compared to what we
did out on those islands. And that was just the half of it.'

'The
Pacific. That was hard fighting.'

'And
for what?' Brother Jonah stripped the towel loose and dried the sweat from his
legs and chest. 'The Russians have half of Europe under Godless sway and we
handed Japan back to the Japanese. The world's more dangerous than ever,
Brother Emmanuel. I expect that's what's brought you to me. The pitiful state
of things.'

He
certainly hadn't come for the naked preacher show that was being lived out in
three inglorious dimensions within arm's length. 'I'm here to talk about the
murder of Jolly Marks. Why do you think he was killed?'

'The
will of God.' Brother Jonah resecured his towel. 'We have to accept it, even
when we don't understand it.'

'You
were in the freight yards that night,' Emmanuel said. 'I thought you could give
me a more down-to-earth perspective on what happened. Maybe tell me what you
were doing there.'

Brother
Jonah stilled. 'That information is given out on a need-to-know basis and I
determine that you do not need to know a thing. Get my drift?'

'I
can place you in the yards on the night Jolly Marks was killed.' Emmanuel
continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. 'You followed a pretty blonde girl
from the passenger wharf. What more do I need to know? You're not a man of God;
you're a night crawler. Did Jolly know that?'

'I'm
a soldier in the Lord's army,' Brother Jonah said quietly and adjusted a heat
lamp to shine a more direct light. 'My guess is that you're an undercover
policeman. Am I correct? Nothing wrong with that job, but you're not equipped
or trained to handle this kind of situation, son.'

'How
hard can it be if you're involved?' Emmanuel said. The 'son' tag riled him. There
was a fifteen-year age difference at most between them. A couple of thousand
miles separated the European and Pacific theatres of war. Brothers in arms
maybe but even that was a stretch. Besides, one unstable father was enough to
last two lifetimes.

'See,
that's your ignorance talking,' Brother Jonah said. 'The personnel for every
mission are hand-picked to ensure victory. I was chosen and you were not.'

'Chosen
to murder children and old ladies?' Emmanuel laid on the contempt. 'That's some
mission you were hand-picked for. The angels must be pleased with the three new
souls you sent up.'

'Your
wires are crossed. This mission was recon. Forward scout, locate and identify.
No casualties reported.'

'You
were there but no one got hurt on your watch.' Emmanuel translated the military
speak into plain English. 'Jolly had his throat slit. That qualifies as serious
hurt even by Pacific war standards.'

'Same
place, same time, different universe,' Brother Jonah said. 'Here's a heads up
from me: if you want to find that boy's killer, look for a sick individual with
an eye for children. A devil in disguise.'

A
pigeon flew off a beam in the roof.

'I'm
looking at him,' Emmanuel said.

'Jesus
Christ.' Brother Jonah the preacher took a back seat to Jonah the battle-weary soldier.
'I took an oath before God and man and the whole Pacific Ocean. No more blood.
Not one drop to be spilled by my hand so long as I live. Amen. Hallelujah. I
did go forth and I did sin no more.'

That
sounded mighty convincing but Emmanuel needed facts, not biblical quotes. 'You
were in the freight yard that night?'

'Nothing
illegal about walking from the passenger terminal to Point Road.'

'Was
Jolly Marks there?'

'Caught
a glimpse of him, sure.'

'You
didn't speak?'

Brother
Jonah shrugged. 'No. He was working. I was working.'

Emmanuel
loosened his tie. The lamps magnified the tropical winter heat twofold and his
mouth was fast becoming an arid hollow. The pressure in his head was beginning
to build. He'd need to drink a gallon of water the moment he left the
storehouse.

'Did
you see anyone else that night?' he asked.

'Shadows,'
Brother Jonah said, then smiled at a sudden memory. 'Oh yeah, and a bald Indian
man tuning a white whore's motor in an alleyway. Sounded like he found her
starter button and pressed it real good.'

Giriraj
and the prostitute.

'No
one else?'

'Nope.'
The preacher fiddled with his ponytail, twisting his lanky hair around bony
fingers.

'So
my witness was wrong,' Emmanuel said. 'There wasn't a blonde girl and an older
man in the yard that night.'

'Not
that I remember.'

'You
didn't follow them from the passenger quay?'

'I
did not.' Brother Jonah adjusted the lamps again, careful not to make eye
contact. His face and arms were beaded with sweat despite the recent wipe down.
Everything he'd said about Jolly Marks had the ring of truth, but he'd lied
about shadowing Natalya and Nicolai from the passenger quay. Nicolai was the
'Ivan' talked about at Larsen's scrap metal yard.

'Who
hired you to follow the Ivans?' Emmanuel said. 'Was it Khan? The police?'

The
preacher hesitated, thrown by the use of the slang word for a Russian, then
said, by rote, 'That's classified.'

Emmanuel
tried to establish a clearer picture of events. Brother Jonah believed he was
God's soldier, hand-picked for a specific duty. He admitted being in the rail
yard and even to seeing Jolly Marks but believed 'the mission' was pure
reconnaissance. Maybe Jonah was the one blindsided by all the spook bullshit.

'Here's
something I think you really do need to know,' Emmanuel said. 'Jolly Marks
talked to the Russians that night. He helped them get to a house on the Bluff.
Someone killed him to try to get that information.'

'Crap.
A night crawler messed with that boy.'

'No.
He was killed to get to the Ivans.'

'Forward
scout, locate and identify.' Brother Jonah jabbed a finger in Emmanuel's
direction. 'That's all.'

'That
was just the first part of the plan,' Emmanuel said gently. He knew what it was
like to be a soldier and to march through night and day, from one fight to
another, on the orders of commanders who controlled the big picture and told
you nothing. 'The real aim was to capture the Russians and exchange them. Jolly
was a civilian casualty.'

Jonah's
wiry body tensed and a flicker of doubt crossed his face.

'Tell
me who's in command of this mission and together we can sort this mess out,'
Emmanuel said.

A
metal shelf rattled in the dark and the tortoiseshell cat from the steps
streaked into the circle of light and crashed against a table leg. The glass
egg container skated across the laminate but hit the raised metal edge of the
tabletop and held steady. Pigeons flew up towards the pitch of the ceiling.

'I
must have left that door open.' Brother Jonah grabbed the cat by the scruff of
the neck and held it aloft. 'How many times do I have to tell you to stay out,
miss?'

Emmanuel
stepped back from the cat's claws and the incubator lights cut out. The
storehouse plunged into darkness. Two torch beams swung between the shelves
and threw discs of light onto the walls. Fast, running footsteps clacked across
the concrete floor. Emmanuel dropped to his knees and crawled in the direction
of the back door. His head hit a steel shelf. He moved to the left and
reoriented himself.

'What
the hell is going on?' Brother Jonah shouted. 'Who is that?'

A
high-powered beam located the preacher's face and he held a hand up to shield
his eyes. The cat flexed its back and broke free. A spill of light from the
torch gave a candle's worth of illumination. Emmanuel glimpsed the outline of
the back exit and moved towards it. A second beam split the dark and shone on
the door handle.

He
was trapped.

'Still
locked,' a male voice called. 'He's in here somewhere.'

Emmanuel
turned sixty degrees. Brother Jonah's reflection bounced off the full-length
mirror resting against the wall. His impulse was to rush but the rusted
discipline of the battlefield held the reins steady. He crawled to the mirror
and levered it forwards so there was enough space to squeeze in behind. He
pressed his body behind the glass and rested the weight back. Escape was
impossible. Invisibility was the second-best option.

'Mr
Khan is going to hear about this!' Brother Jonah railed. 'You are going to be
in a shitstorm of trouble. Mark my words.'

'Where
is he?' a cool voice said. 'Where's Cooper?'

'Who
the hell is Cooper?' The preacher's voice crackled with ill humour. 'And get
that light out of my face. I can't see a damn thing.'

Emmanuel
stayed still and tried to figure out what was happening on the other side of
the mirror. There were two men with high-powered torches. Not Fletcher or
Robinson of the local police. One well-modulated voice: educated South African.
The other, local but far less polished.

'Cooper.'
Anger heated the cool voice. 'The man you were talking to. Where is he?'

Emmanuel's
heart thundered. He placed the voice. It belonged to the tradesman from the
police station. He was sure of it.