Present Darkness (10 page)

*

Emmanuel pushed through the uniformed police in the foyer of Marshall Square station and took the corridor that led to the holding cells. Five minutes, he reasoned. He needed five minutes to get a truthful alibi from Aaron before talking face to face with Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala in an hour.

“You’re wasting your breath,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“The boy’s sewn up tight. You’ll not get anything from him.”

“I have to try.”

“Then make it fast. Mason will come down on you like camel shit if he finds out you’re visiting his prisoner.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

The smell of cigarette smoke and rising damp intensified the closer Emmanuel got to the rear of the station house. The grim walls and poor ventilation gave the overnight prisoners a taste of things to come should they be remanded to a proper jail: a certainty in Aaron Shabalala’s case.

The duty sergeant, a bony Irishman with a thatch of greying hair, got to his feet when Emmanuel reached the tight space that housed the “non-whites” lock-up. Fitzpatrick was on permanent post at the entrance to the native holding cells; a job usually reserved for black constables who’d passed the written test but showed a poor talent for actual police work. Fitzpatrick had taken the demotion to a “kaffir” post rather than accept early retirement from the force for the arthritis in his hands. Emmanuel had worked with him years before.

“Howzit, Cooper?” The Irishman stubbed out a cigarette with his twisted fingers and automatically lit another.

“I’m in top shape, thanks.’ Emmanuel took off his hat and stopped in front of the small desk covered in newspapers and cigarette ash. “Is your costume unpacked?”

Next week, Fitzpatrick would play the role of Father Christmas at the annual Police and Public picnic. The highlight of his year, Emmanuel had no doubt.

“The boots need a polish but the suit is ironed and ready to go,” Fitzpatrick said. “What brings you to the dragon’s den, Detective Sergeant?”

“A word with a juvenile prisoner, Shabalala. He came in late last night.”

“I know the one.” Fitzpatrick reached for a key ring hooked to a wooden peg on the wall. “Third berth on the right. Do you want access?”

“Yes. Better than talking through the bars.” That he could, with a nod, be granted the keys and have a blind eye turned to whatever happened in the cell, was standard police practice. He entered the holding area. The customary inmates of the overnight lock-up filled the first two cells; drunks with their limbs sprawled across the concrete floor, thugs with skewed noses and thick necks sitting on the narrow cots and, in the majority, ordinary black men caught without their passbooks.

Aaron Shabalala sat in the gloom and stared at his open palms. He was the sole occupant of cell three; a rare luxury that Emmanuel assumed had been granted on Mason’s personal request. The prime suspect in the Brewer murder case would leave Marshall Square without a scratch. Johan Britz, the Afrikaner lawyer, would find no evidence of misconduct or police brutality that might cast doubt on the outcome of the investigation. Mason’s attention to detail was chilling. Emmanuel considered himself forewarned: he was dealing with a meticulous and dangerous force.

Aaron turned at the sound of footsteps and stood up to face Emmanuel as he unlocked the door and entered the cell.

“Go in hard, Cooper. Crack him open. He has to talk.”

“They found your prefect’s badge in the stolen car,” Emmanuel said. “They are going to charge you with murder, theft and making a false statement to the police. What do you say to that?”

Aaron stepped closer. His jaw clenched. “I say that if the Brewers were a black family and I was a white schoolboy visiting their home, I would not be in this cell but sitting at home with a cup of tea. What do you say to that, Detective?”

“Well …”
the Sergeant Major breathed.
“I wasn’t expecting him to come out fighting.”

“Me neither.”
He’d seen grown men go to water at the mention of a murder charge. Aaron was made of stone—like his father.

Emmanuel regrouped. “We both know that the system isn’t fair or just but you’re not helping yourself by lying about your alibi.”

“I have a second question for you.” Aaron remained impassive. “If a black girl accused a white boy from a good school of a crime would the police believe her and arrest that boy?”

“We can talk hypothetical situations all day long but the justice system isn’t facing a murder charge. You are.”

“Then let it be so.” Aaron returned to the cot and sat down. He stared into his cupped palms, seeking what Emmanuel did not know.

“He’s angry and I think he’s scared,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“But he’s a tough little bastard …”

Emmanuel let the silence fill up the room. He took a risk.

“I know your parents,” he said. “Seeing you hang will break them into pieces.”

Aaron’s looked up surprised and then turned his face away. A noisy breath caught in his chest. Bullseye, Emmanuel thought.

“You are trying to help me. I know this,” Aaron said. “But I should not be here. And the men in the cells without passbooks should not be here. I hope they find those responsible for Principal Brewers’ death. But it was not me.”

10.

Johannesburg’s slang name,
E’goli
, the city of gold, didn’t apply in the township. Nothing sparkled or shone. Emmanuel saw only rusted iron and peeling paint from the vantage of the raised brick porch where he stood with Zweigman and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala on either side of him. The German physician and the Zulu detective absorbed the news of Aaron’s arrest on a murder charge in silence. A blood orange sun glowed through the haze of smoke from cooking fires.

“Don’t leave it like that,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“You owe the Zulu your life, soldier. Tell him that you will do whatever is necessary to get his son out of this fix. Tell him that you will break every bullshit rule to make Mason pay for framing Aaron.”

“Mason fixed that search,” Emmanuel said. “I’m going to find out why.” He kept the dark turn of his own thoughts about the Lieutenant to himself.

“What must we do now to help my youngest born?” Built tall and broad-shouldered and with muscle where other police his age carried a layer of fat, Shabalala was not content to stand and talk in the backyard of his brother’s house.

“Let’s start at Baragwanath hospital. Mason and his team won’t bother interviewing the man from the garden now the case is solved. He could give us something.” Emmanuel paused. “Fair warning, though: Lieutenant Mason is dangerous. He’ll come after us when he finds out we’re asking questions about the Brewer case and he won’t do it gently.”

“When do we start?” The German doctor cemented his place in the investigation without waiting for an invitation.

“Straight away.”

“Yes, that is good,” Shabalala said, ushering them through the quiet brick home, which had the luxury of a separate kitchen and dining area. A permanent housing shortage gripped the township, with almost every room in every house rented out to lodgers. Not so here. Emmanuel wondered what Shabalala’s brother did for a living to afford such privacy.

They emerged into a shallow yard with a dusty gum tree. Swallows winged through the air and dipped over the rooftops. A group of children played hopscotch on a dirt grid.

“Should the hospital visit prove unsuccessful there is also the girl who gave the statement to you, Sergeant,” Zweigman said on their way to the car. “You think she is lying, correct?”

“Yes,” Emmanuel said. “I also think Aaron is lying about where he went last night. They’re both hiding something.”

A strained silence followed the observation while the three of them considered the reasons a black boy and a white girl would lie about an ordinary Friday night.

*

A cream and green hallway led to a ward packed end to end with black men on iron cots. Family groups clustered around the sick, the women fanning the air to make a breeze, while children played on the linoleum floor and men smoked cigarettes to pass the time. The able-bodied sat up in bed eating boiled eggs and roast corn brought from street vendors outside the hospital gates. Others lay listless and dazed in the heat. A few slept like the dead, arms tossed above their heads, eyes half-closed. Every bed was taken. Two dozen more men lay on the floor, packed together like human tiles.

“Mr Parkview.” A nurse in a red and white uniform and a starched cap stopped at the foot of a hospital cot and glanced at the doctor’s notes. Light slanted into the ward through the open windows and gave her dark skin a copper shine.

“This one will live,” she said.

Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman drew closer. The man, renamed for the suburb in which he’d been found, lay under a thin cotton sheet. He’d been heavily sedated and remained deep in a dreamless sleep. Blood seeped through the bandage wrapped around his head. Zweigman leaned over the cot, batted away a feeding fly and gently lifted the edge of the gauze to check the wound.

“Please, sir. That is for the doctors to do, not the day visitors.” The nurse was polite but firm, the proper combination of tones to use when reprimanding a white man in public.

“Excuse me, sister.” Zweigman smiled an apology. “You understand how vain we doctors are. I stitched this cut by torchlight and wanted to check my work.”

“You are the one?” the nurse asked with raised brows. Zweigman nodded. She moved off quickly to the waiting area, skirting a one-legged man in a wheelchair who wore a miner’s boot on his remaining foot.

Emmanuel crouched by Zweigman’s side and looked over the third victim of the break-in at the Brewers’ house. He was tall and slender with holes cut into both his earlobes for the display of ornaments; empty cotton reels and circular clay plugs were popular choices. The fashion for male ear piercing was dying out in the cities but continued in the tribal enclaves in the bush. Mr Parkview might have travelled from the country, in which case a passbook and a travel permit were vital. A black man without the proper papers ran the risk of imprisonment if caught by the police.

“The head wound is healing well, but we will not get answers to our questions this afternoon,” Zweigman said. “There are also the multiple wounds to his back to consider. It might be many days before he is ready to talk.”

Shabalala crouched at the opposite side of the bed, shoulder muscles tense under his white cotton shirt. For the first time that Emmanuel could remember, the Zulu detective looked tired. A fifteen-hour train journey with bad news at the other end and no help from the police would exhaust anyone.

“Gentlemen, all that we have lost is time.” Zweigman recognised the signs of frustration in the two detectives. “This man will live. And when he is well, the truth will be told.”

A white man in his twenties moved through the ward, accepting an orange from a visiting grandmother and refusing a pinch of snuff from a bald man wrapped in a blanket. The duty nurse touched his sleeve and pointed to Zweigman.

“I’m Dr Botha,” the young physician said when he reached Mr Parkview’s cot. Dr Botha had dark, slicked back hair and a mouth the colour of a cut pomegranate. “And you are the jungle man who sewed up a blunt force trauma wound and four pitchfork punctures on a blanket in the backyard of house in Parkview.”

“Guilty.” A faint smile touched the German’s mouth. The title “jungle man” pleased him. “I had wondered what weapon made those wounds. Now the mystery is solved.”

“Look.” Botha gestured to the nurse and together they rolled the patient onto his side. Four blood spots dotted the bandages wrapped around his torso. “One of my first emergency cases was a gardener who tripped over some roots and fell onto his own fork. This injury is exactly the same, only deeper.”

Botha settled the patient onto his side and the nurse hitched the thin sheet around his naked shoulders. Emmanuel moved to stand next to Shabalala. Maybe the injured man
was
the gardener, inherited along with the house and the car by Cassie’s mother.

“A pitchfork isn’t the sort of weapon you bring to a crime scene and then carry home again. We’ll search the Brewers’ yard and find the fork that made those injuries.”

“Take me to where you found this man and I will find the weapon,” the Zulu detective said without a trace of vanity.

“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” Emmanuel said. Johannesburg sprawled across miles of dry high veldt; the black hospital and the European suburbs were kept well apart by laws that split the city into white and non-white areas. Zweigman, however, continued a conversation with Dr Botha.

“A surgeon. You don’t say?” Botha beamed. “What are the chances of a qualified surgeon happening onto a police investigation and operating on the spot?”

“Very slim,” the German replied.

Experience alone gave Zweigman the rank of senior physician. A graduate of the Charité Universitätsmedizin in Berlin, specialist surgeon to that city’s wealthy and then general practitioner to the inmates of Buchenwald concentration camp, Zweigman’s knowledge of the world and of medicine was unique.