Present Darkness (21 page)

Perched on the top wrung of the iron cot, the girl pushed her head and shoulders under the rail. She gave one last push against the top on the iron cot, which crashed to the floor. Chin pressed to the dirt, she inched forwards. Fresh air touched her face, a luxury after the heat and stillness of the cell. The wooden rail scraped the top of her head and snagged the material of her dress. Outside, a yellow moon lit the yard and deepened the shadows under a scraggy line of fruit trees. One inch more and then another and another: the slowest escape in history. She scraped more dirt to clear a path and spat sand from her mouth. The scent of sagebrush and the sour tang of rotting citrus grew stronger. Soon the land would be hers, the open sky, the wide horizon and the finger of dirt road leading to a bigger road and then to the city. A night owl hooted and the soft whistle of wind called her out. Then came the sound of a car engine, still far off but getting louder. Twin headlights glowed in the darkness: the big man and his gang were on their way home.

She wiggled, pushed and clawed. The window rail scratched her skin and bruised the muscles on her back. The curve of her bottom snagged on the low wooden bar, holding her half in and half out of the small window. The headlights danced as the car tyres bounced over the road’s surface. If there was a god, he was a cruel one, to let her feel the wind on her face and smell the open bushlands just to take it all away now. The girl stopped, drew a shuddering breath and arched her body like a cat, bringing the full force of her spine and hips to the rail. Nerve endings screamed with pain. She repeated the move, obeying a pure animal instinct to escape.

How fast cars were, even in the dark, she thought. Speed gave the big man an unfair advantage and he already had the upper hand. Not tonight, the girl decided. Tonight I will prevail. She bucked and flexed, moved forward. The car stopped at the gates. There was time, maybe. The gates closed, the headlights were so bright. Fear tore through her. Animals chewed through their own limbs to get free. She snapped her body up against the bar, willing to exchange broken bones for an inch more space.

The car reached the gravel drive; a black shape menacing, like a predator. She twisted her hips and the wooden bar gave just enough room for her to slip under. Light swept the forlorn yard and the drought stricken orchard. She lay still, waiting for the engine to die and for darkness. The car parked. Raised voices came from the interior, a fight between the big man and the little one. No sign of the other vehicle carrying their friends. The lights went out. The girl cleared the low bar. Her ankle snagged against the wood. No, please. There’d be no second chances. She had to succeed or die in the attempt. She kicked at the window and smashed the glass. The car lights switched on, illuminating the house. The girl kicked again and broke free. Glass cut her skin, the pain only a faint whisper, barely registering.

Then she ran.

Male voices shouted filthy words all of them familiar to her. The engine coughed to life and the tyres gripped the gravel. They were coming after her. She jogged right and sprinted into the fruit trees.

“Get back here!” the big man shouted. “Now!”

She glanced over her shoulder; saw the car stalled between two gnarled trunks, the headlights shining into a part of the orchard where she was not. The big man hung an elbow out of the window.

“You know where you are, girl?” he called out. “A hunting reserve. The animals will tear you apart if I don’t get to you first.”

She’d take her chances with the wild animals. The night closed around her body like a shawl and she tore into the darkness.

19.

Emmanuel woke bruised and aching. The split skin on his knuckles and the pain in his feet from kicking ribs reminded him of the hard fight the night before. The fight itself he barely remembered. Muffled sounds, flashing colours and the sensation of hot blood burning through his veins were all that remained in his mind.

His palm rested on the sleek curve of Davida’s naked hip. Details of what they’d done against the wall in the rail yard, and again when they’d arrived home, were burned into his memory and would, Emmanuel suspected, remain undimmed until the pyramids turned to sand. With the exception of Rebekah, who was probably still sleeping beside Mrs Ellis in the cottage adjoining the big house, this small hut contained all he needed to live and die happy.

Footsteps crunched the garden path outside, breaking the bubble. He slipped out of bed, reluctant to face the world. The footsteps grew louder. He pulled on trousers, shoved the Webley into the waistband and shrugged on a shirt. He left the bedroom with a quiet tread and peered out of the front window. Dr Zweigman, wearing a plaid dressing gown, blue pyjamas and slippers hurried through the garden. Emmanuel opened the door before he knocked and stepped onto the porch. He closed the door with a soft click.

“The night duty guard rang the alarm.” Zweigman’s German accent intensified under stress, trampling vowels and elongating consonants. “There are men at the gate. They’ve asked for you, Detective Cooper.”

Emmanuel hit the path barefoot and in wrinkled clothes. Ribbons of soft pink coloured the sky as the sun rose through the trees. From the rear of the big house he saw them: three white men in dark suits. Their purposeful stride and tugged down fedoras indicated law enforcement. He moved out to meet them. Zweigman came along, bulking up the odds to two men against three.

“Fuck …” Emmanuel recognised Mason, flanked by the undercover detectives who’d helped search the Mercedes. Mason had crossed the threshold into Emmanuel’s private life and had brought the fight over the Shabalala investigation right to his doorstep. He quickened his pace, hoping to keep the Lieutenant far from the big house.

“You know them?” Zweigman asked while trying to tamp down strands of white explosive hair.

“Unfortunately, yes.” And they now knew where he lived, had found out somehow. Emmanuel confronted the trio halfway up the drive, realised only then that his shirt was unbuttoned, the Webley revolver tucked, township gangster fashion, into the waistband of his trousers.

“Cooper,” the Lieutenant said. “You appear to have spent the night fighting and fucking.”

Mason, by comparison, must have used the dark hours to wrestle the top off a whisky bottle or three. His pallor matched the grey dawn and red veins webbed the whites of his eyes. The Lieutenant had fallen off the wagon hard and lost his born again certification.

“What can I do for you, sir?” Emmanuel hooked up buttons to cover bruised and scratched skin. He could do nothing to conceal the blue mark left by a blow to the head during last night’s fight. Mason’s companions smoked in quiet, waking up with the help of nicotine: one wore mismatched socks and the other a gravy-stained tie. They’d been dragged from sleep and tumbled into clothes at short notice.

“Is there a place to talk, Cooper?” Mason asked.

“It isn’t my house so right here will do fine.”

“Pity.” The Lieutenant held up two splayed fingers, signalled for a cigarette. “I’d like to have seen how a sugar baron lives.”

So, Mason knew the Houghton estate belonged to Elliott King, sugar mill proprietor and owner of vast tracts of South Africa. Davida and Rebekah’s names might also be penned into Mason’s notebook. The thought brought a cold rush of fear, which Emmanuel pushed aside. Fresh from bed, barefoot and physically hurting from the fight at the club, projecting a confident demeanour was imperative.

“Find out why he’s here,”
the Sergeant Major’s voice said.
“Doesn’t smell right, does it? Him walking through the front gate, hung over, pale as a cut onion. And the other two have no bloody idea what’s going on.”

“Is this a social or a police call, Lieutenant?” Emmanuel asked.

Mason accepted a cigarette from the flap-eared detective and touched the tip to the lit end of the detective’s stub. He drew deep and held in the smoke before letting it drift through barely opened lips. “Where were you between eight and midnight last night, Cooper?”

“Here,” he said. “In the house.”

“You have a witness, I suppose?”

“I was with this man. Dr Daniel Zweigman. We discussed the war.” Using Elliott or Winston King’s name to plump up a lie was out of the question. They held the keys to the little hut, to Davida and Rebekah. He threw Zweigman a look, sent a subtle request for co-operation.

“You talked for four hours?” Mason said.

“It was a long war,” Zweigman replied.

Mason fixed the Jewish doctor with a sharp gaze. Zweigman returned the scrutiny with brown unblinking eyes. He hadn’t talked about the war with the Detective Sergeant last night, but he’d lived it and witnessed the rise and fall of tyrants. It took more than a cold stare to intimidate a Buchenwald survivor.

The Lieutenant abruptly switched focus and said, “Do you know a man by the name of Vickers Steyn, Sergeant Cooper?”

“No.” Emmanuel spoke too quickly, a fraction too loud. Fear bit deep. Mason had, by some means, made a connection between him and the shifty Afrikaner sitting outside shed twenty-five; and all before breakfast. How?

“Calm down, breathe deep and deny, deny, deny,”
the Sergeant Major instructed.
“Hold your ground and don’t say another word. Let Mason cough up the information.”

Emmanuel stretched out and yawned. Three people alone could tie him to the doorman. No way had they talked. Fatty Mapela and Labrant were in the business of making money, the financial rewards for turning police informants were considerably less than one night’s takings from their illegal operation. They’d stick with the cashflow. Davida, he could personally vouch for.

Zweigman scratched an unshaved cheek and flicked a twig from the hem of his dressing gown. Cars drove by on the street, loud in the silence.

“I will ask again and this time take a minute to think before you answer, Sergeant Cooper. Do you or did you know a man by the name of Vickers Steyn?”

“I’ve not heard that name before nor have I met any man by that name.” There. That should be clear enough. “Why do you ask, Lieutenant?”

“A white male matching your description was seen talking with Vickers last night.”

“Bullshit. Johannesburg is the biggest city in sub-Saharan Africa. How many males matching your description do you reckon there are? Hundreds, probably thousands, yet Mason zeroes in on you,”
the Scottish Sergeant said.
“What the fuck is he really doing here?”

“It must have been a detailed description to bring you out at dawn and with back-up,” Emmanuel said. In reality, the back-ups had backed away and now stood with hands thrust deep into their pockets, waiting to leave.

“Perhaps your witness made an error,” Zweigman said. Dawn’s low rays caught the frame of the doctor’s gold-plated glasses, refracting a sparkle of light. “Detective Cooper and I were in the house until late last night. He could not have been in two places at once.”

In less strained circumstances Emmanuel would have smiled. Given the chance the German doctor could easily have been a private investigator or perhaps a vaudeville actor.

“There’s been no mistake.” Mason aimed two fingers directly at the German’s heart, the smoke from his cigarette clouding the air. “You are lying to cover up for Cooper. I don’t know how things work in kraut land, but here in South Africa, providing a false statement is a punishable offence.”

“Are you familiar with Yiddish, Lieutenant?” Zweigman found more snagged twigs on his garment and picked them off one by one. “It’s a colourful language with many interesting expressions. Here is one that I particularly like, ‘a mewling cat catches no mice’. If your claim has teeth then stop making sounds and do something.”

“Lay charges or leave,” Emmanuel translated for the haggard police detective. Mason studied the doctor’s wild white hair and parchment-like skin with a bleak expression. The scrutiny served to condemn and to warn Zweigman that he had committed every physical detail to memory.

“Sir?” Big Ears nudged when the silence stretched to an uncomfortable length. The sun rose higher in sky, the world waking up and getting to work. If they left now there’d be time for a decent breakfast before the start of their shift.

“Are we finished here?” Emmanuel asked.

The damage done by a solid night’s drinking showed clearly on Mason’s face. He looked old, worn out. But not quite: beneath Mason’s hungover pallor and squinting eyes lurked a dark core of something that Emmanuel could not quite define.

“We’re done for now. See us out, Cooper.”

They walked to the guardhouse and left Zweigman alone on the curve of the driveway. The guard cradled a phone to his ear, talking to the big house, confirming the presence of law enforcement on the grounds. Emmanuel quickened the pace, decreasing the distance to the street. Davida might be awake now and wondering at the empty tangle of sheets and the rumpled pillow where he’d been. If she left the hut and came out of the garden and into plain sight in nothing but a thin cotton dressing gown, Mason would know, even through the blur of stale whisky, that she was important. He’d connect her to Emmanuel in a second.

Emmanuel greeted the watchman with a nod, ducked under the boom gate and turned right onto the sidewalk. He stopped in the shadow of the walls and waited. Now, at least, the house and grounds were out of sight. A group of white schoolgirls in blue smocks and knee-high white socks streamed in the direction of a bus stop on the street corner. The scent of shampoo and soap perfumed their wake. The back-ups stayed to the grass verge and waited for the girls to pass.