Present Darkness (18 page)

Emmanuel understood the addictive power of taking risks. He had felt the empty spaces in civilian life after experiencing the roar of Spitfire fighter planes cracking the sky and the boom of Howitzers spitting hot shells onto the earth; your blood sang with adrenaline and every colour became brighter, sweeter and more fierce in the aftermath of all that noise and chaos. Days, months and years later you paid the price for living so far from the ordinary. Andrew Franklin was about to be presented with a bill for the moments he’d stolen from his drab suburban life.

17.

Emmanuel handed the night guard twenty pence and expected no change. The guard, a fat black man with a pockmarked forehead said, “Go down, down to the marshalling yard. Park. Then you must get out and walk straight, straight to shed number twenty five.”

Emmanuel followed instructions; found six cars, a police wagon and a pick-up truck already parked in the gravel square adjacent to a line of dirty locomotives. A freshly painted maintenance repair shop bordered the eastern edge of the lot.

“Come.” He held Davida’s hand and navigated the darkening yards, keeping the grid of tracks to the right and walking straight in the direction of the machine sheds and smaller workshops. Davida’s fingers squeezed tight around his, holding onto the one familiar thing in the bleak industrial landscape. Odours of oil and diesel fuel and the crunch of dirt underfoot leeched romance from the soft twilight. “Next one,” he said. A long iron building riddled with rust stood up ahead, a large “25” painted on its side. Davida’s steps quickened at the sound of music coming from inside. She was ready to dance and enjoy her night of freedom. A balding European man in greasy overalls sat on an upended crate and peeled an orange with a penknife. He flicked the skin onto the ground and looked up. Emmanuel pegged him right away: poorly educated, Afrikaner, rewarded with a job for life on the railroads for being born white.

“
Ja
?” The man stabbed the blade into the flesh of the orange and juice ran over his oil-stained fingers. He addressed Emmanuel but studied Davida from head to toe before his stare returned to the soft, cherry red lipstick on her mouth.

“I’m here to see Fatty Mapela,” Emmanuel said in Afrikaans.

“Fatty is inside but this is my shed. I guard the door.” The man answered in Afrikaans. “How badly do you want to get inside, mister?”

“Here.” Emmanuel scooped coins from his jacket pocket and held out the payment.

“
Nie
.” The doorman chewed a slice of orange with an open mouth. “A kiss from your hoer will do the trick.”

Emmanuel kicked the crate hard twice and the railway man toppled to the ground. The orange rolled free, collecting dirt. He stepped around the broken crate and pushed the door open. A quick squeeze on the hand and Davida followed, leaving the leering doorman chewing gravel.

“Why did you do that?” she whispered.

“Didn’t like his attitude,” he said. Like most English South Africans, Davida spoke very little Afrikaans. She had no idea the doorman had called her a whore.

They walked a long corridor bordered by small cubicles, mostly empty. From behind a closed door came the sound of chatter and music. The interior door was locked. He knocked twice and waited.

“Yes?” a female asked in a gravelly voice.

“Fatty? Open up. It’s the police.”

A metal bolt slid back and Fatty Mapela appeared in a silver cocktail dress specially modified to fit her extra-wide hips. The tight cap of her hair was dyed platinum blonde, the ends of her false eyelashes sharp enough to pierce leather. She cupped Emmanuel’s face between her palms and planted him an open-mouthed kiss. Davida’s hand tugged free.

“How long, how long?” Fatty massaged his shoulders, digging stout fingers into the flesh.

“Too long,” Emmanuel gave the expected answer and reached for Davida before she sprinted for the exit. “Fix told you I was coming?”

“Of course, yes.” Fatty backed into a wide room with hurricane lamps set onto individual tables draped in white cloth. A chrome jukebox flashed yellow and blue light onto a small dance floor on which three couples swayed to a crooning love song. Half a dozen European men shared tables with women ranging in colour from ebony to very nearly white. In a far corner, set hard against the rear wall, a collection of girls with glossy mouths and powdered cheeks waited for customers. Fatty had thoughtfully provided a selection of black, mixed-race and Indian girls.

“My brother said you were coming. He did not say you were bringing a friend, Emmanuel.” Fatty turned to Davida with a tight pink smile. “And such a young one, too, just out of the nest.”

“This is Davida.” He kept hold of her arm, felt the tension in her muscles at entering an unfamiliar world. “Meet Fatty Mapela, an old friend from Sophiatown.”

“No, no.” Fatty wagged a diamante-ringed finger. “More than a friend. I was your first girlfriend.”

“True,” Emmanuel said. “But I was not your first boyfriend.”

“What can I say? The men, they have always loved a piece of Fatty.” She ushered them over to a small table on the edge of the dance floor. “Whisky and water for you and, I think, a cola with a straw for the little girl.”

She ambled over to a long wood trestle table holding a variety of drink bottles and deliberately bent over from the waist to give the room a panoramic view of her silk-encased behind.

“Don’t mind her,” Emmanuel said to Davida as they sat down on folding chairs. “She likes to poke fun. It’s mostly harmless.”

Until it wasn’t, and the pokes and jabs became physical.

“Was she really your girlfriend?” The idea that a white boy—any boy at all—would pair up with this enormous black female with a throaty, almost male voice, disturbed Davida. Men, she thought, gravitated to soft, feminine beauty. Fatty was a wrecking ball in high heels.

“Yes, she was my first but it didn’t last long. She was uh …” He tried to find the most polite description of the relationship. “She was much more advanced than I was. The things she wanted us to do scared the hell out of me. We broke up after one day, which was a record even for Fatty.”

“You were lucky to escape,” Davida said. “She would have crushed you if she’d decided to get on top.”

Emmanuel laughed and circled Davida’s wrist with his fingers, enjoying the feeling of being out in the world with her. She wore a simple green dress with a scooped neck and a hem that fell well below the knee. Chosen by her mother to cool lustful thoughts, he assumed. The plainness of the dress combined with the dark fall of her hair hanging loose around her shoulders had the opposite effect to that intended by Mrs Ellis. The sight of Davida’s body moving under that layer of thin cotton was tantalising.

“Come and dance,” he said.

“Not yet.” She eyed the couples on the dance floor, their hips gyrating in close contact. “Maybe later when the music is livelier.”

The dancing couples groped and foraged across the racial divide with enthusiasm. Emmanuel scanned the room and the rusting iron walls. Most of the men were paired up and talking to women. A clutch of four European males leaned against the wall near the jukebox, leering at Fatty’s working girls, who smiled back at them. A small door at the back of the room likely led to rows of empty cubicles similar to the ones in the front corridor. These tight spaces would later be put to use with a blanket tossed on the floor and the lamps dimmed for privacy.

Fatty brought over a short whisky and a tall glass of cola with a straw and placed them on the table. She took a chair and sipped from the tumbler before handing it to Emmanuel. “How is your sister?” she asked.

“Still teaching. Still single.” He drank from the same glass. Both Mapela siblings practised their own form of Holy Communion. Fix smoked. Fatty drank. If he refused to share a glass, the conversation would end abruptly.

“Still a virgin, isn’t she?”

Emmanuel shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve never asked her.”

“You are a selfish, selfish man.” Fatty gave Davida a sly look. “While your sister sits with her knees pressed together you spread the leaves of this young bush and eat the fruit.”

Davida sipped at the cola, pretending indifference. She coughed when the liquid burned her throat on the way down. Emmanuel took a mouthful of Davida’s drink and tasted bourbon splashed with a dash of cola.

“On the house.” Fatty laughed, enjoying the joke. “I thought the little girl would like to try a grown-up drink. How long have you been out of school, child?”

“Two years now,” Davida replied, grey eyes dark with anger. “But what you say is true, I am young enough to be your daughter.”

“Oww … The child has sharp teeth. How many men have you bitten with those teeth, little one?” Fatty leaned back then and took in all of Davida. Emmanuel saw her switch to business mode, weighing up the potential worth of this beautiful, brown girl with a posh accent.

“Where’s your policeman husband?” Emmanuel asked.

“There.” Fatty pointed to a white man with close-cropped ginger hair. It was the Sergeant from the Sophiatown search who’d leaned against the police van and smoked to pass the time. The man checked the level of a bottle then picked out some bills from the moneybox on the table. He rolled them up and put them in his left sock. “He is one of my work husbands. Here for business only.”

“Can I speak to him?”

“After we dance, of course.” The music had switched to an up-tempo swing tune with trumpets and saxophone. Two couples stayed on the floor, twirling and bopping. The bass notes rumbled through the floor.

“Next one,” Emmanuel promised Fatty and grabbed Davida by the hand, giving her no choice in the matter. She jumped up from her chair. She had come out tonight to dance and shake off a year of solitude. They began awkwardly then found a groove. Their bodies swayed, swung away from each other and then moved together again. She was good. He was good enough to keep up with her. Soon Emmanuel’s breath shortened and he broke into a sweat. He’d dance till the soles of his shoes caught fire if it kept a smile on Davida face.

They stopped for a drink and the Sophiatown Sergeant took a seat at their table. The small windows had been shut to seal in the music and the voices of the guests, and the temperature had gone up a few degrees. Fatty stood at the door now, shouting questions to whoever waited on the other side.

“Cooper,” Emmanuel said. He didn’t offer an introduction for Davida who sipped bourbon and watched the couples left on the dance floor kick a jive.

“Labrant.” The Sergeant drank lager straight from a tall glass bottle, leaving a crust of white foam glistening on his top lip. “What can I do for you, Cooper?”

“Anything unusual about that search for the red Mercedes?” he asked.

“Now,
there’s
a question.” Labrant laughed, showing his yellowing teeth. “How long have you got?”

“All night, if necessary.”

“Here’s what happened. We got a call at the station; a tip-off about a stolen car. Okay, I’ll buy that. Then a street address and a description of the red car, which is pure bullshit if you know Sophiatown.” Labrant swallowed more lager, Adam’s apple chugging. “Hardly nobody has phones for a start. If they do, they don’t use them to call the police and point out the location of a luxury car. They walk down the road and talk to a cousin or a brother and the car is gone. To Mozambique, Swaziland, Rhodesia, you name it. It is not sitting alone in the township like an ugly sister at the ball. ”

Emmanuel already knew all this.

“You called Lieutenant Mason about the tip-off?”

“Course not. I mean, why the hell would I do that? Sophiatown is my town.
My
town.” Labrant cast a fond glance at the money tin on the bar and the European men and dark women who danced and laughed together without any regard for the new segregation laws. “Mason called me. Said he’d got a tip-off and that we could assist in the search but it was Marshall Square’s case. We were to wait for instructions. Translation; stay the fuck away from that car or I will have your nuts.”

“And did you stay away?” Emmanuel asked. Labrant was cut from old cloth, a bull-necked cop, corrupt but fiercely protective of his rights over his own turf.

“No fucking way,” the Sophiatown policeman said. “I went straight down there; found the alley with the branches in about three minutes. Then I went next door and put the hard word on a petty thief who I’ve had occasion to talk to over the years. The red car he knew nothing about, but he did spot two men sitting in a blue sedan parked on the corner. Two lit cigarettes, he said, and the engine still running. A couple of minutes passed and two more men come from nowhere, get in the back seat and they drive off. That was just before dawn.”

“Descriptions?”

Labrant shrugged. “White, maybe light skinned coloureds. It was too dark to get a good view.”

“Two men to stash and cover the Mercedes, and two for back-up in a getaway car,” Emmanuel said.

“That’s what I figured. So I took myself off to the station house and kept my trap shut. No way was that car a one man job but I got no proof of anything.”

“And even if you did have evidence, what good would it do to mess up whatever Mason was up to …” Emmanuel drank his whisky and water, enjoying the way the alcohol mixed with the painkillers that Zweigman had given him earlier. He’d taken four white beauties before leaving King’s house to put down his headache and dull the fear that came with taking Davida away from the safety of her father’s compound.