Present Darkness (31 page)

“How did they do that?” a male voice said. “They disappeared into the rocks!”

“Who cares how they did it? All I know for sure is that we’re in big fucking trouble. Help me push the car free. She might be good to drive.”

Emmanuel pressed his palms flat to the granite and worked around to a patch of starlight at the far end of the ledge. He jumped to a lower level, landing in a crouch. Shabalala was somewhere in this field of wild grass and boulders. The driver and his passenger swore a red streak as they struggled to push the wrecked Dodge free.

“We made it,” he said when the Zulu detective stepped out from the shadows and walked across the dry ground on cat’s feet.

“I had no doubts,” Shabalala answered.

The rock ledge where Emmanuel had sheltered cut a black slash into the rock face. How he’d gotten up that high, he had no idea.

28.

Mummified oranges lay scattered on the ground of an orchard planted in uneven rows. Their plan was to circle away from the crashed Dodge and then switch back in the direction of the river, giving the armed driver and his passenger a wide berth. From there they’d join Zweigman, Alice and Julie at Clearwater farm.

Emmanuel crossed the orchard, the dead fruit crunching underfoot. Branches threw shadows on the ground and a windmill creaked in the dark: a sound both lonely and bleak. He and Shabalala stayed silent, aware of a light shining up ahead. Lion’s Kill homestead, no doubt. They stopped at the treeline and looked out to a whitewashed structure so unloved that the moonlight hitting the silver roof turned it grey.

Gravel stretched from the edge of the orchard to the front door. Tyre marks criss-crossed the gravel but the yard was empty of cars and the traditional plantings of hardy aloes and lavender bushes.

“She said that a second car drove onto the farm this afternoon.” A light glowed in a front room. It might have been left on to guide the men in the Dodge back home. Or it might be illuminating an occupied chair.

“Maybe the visitor left,” Shabalala said from under the branches of a native tree. “Maybe the house is empty.”

There was only one way to tell. He’d promised Alice that he’d check what she’d called “the cell” for a new prisoner. He peered across the yard and made out a broken window boarded up with cardboard. The metal grate covering the opening was bent out of shape.

If his suspicions proved right then Davida had escaped being thrown into this very space by the big man.

“Sergeant.” Shabalala held out a cut stem with withered leaves. “Look.
UmPhanda.
The raintree.”

“Same as the branches hiding the red Mercedes.”

“The very same,” Shabalala said.

Emmanuel ran his hand over the trunk of a near tree and felt dried sap and raw timber where branches had been hacked off.

“This is the house of the men who beat the principal and his wife and then stole the car.” Shabalala nodded to the forlorn dwelling. “The big man and the little one.”

“I know it. The same men also broke into Fatty Mapela’s dancehall. If the big one had had his way, then Davida would be locked in that house right now. Let’s check the cell and be gone. When we’re back in Jo’burg we’ll find out who owns this place and drop the names to the Pretoria police.”

He stepped from the shadows onto gravel. White stones marked the perimeter of a hole dug out close to the side of the house; the braai pit that Julie had mentioned. Ash and bleached animal bones lay on the bottom. Shabalala went wide and scanned the area ahead. Emmanuel pressed to the wall and moved to the window in which the light shone.

He’d seen piss-poor farms before and had lived on one during adolescence, so the bleak interior of Lion’s Kill was no surprise. The uncurtained windows, paint peeling off the walls and dust on every surface were familiar. Likewise, the paraffin lantern on the fold-out table, the threadbare couch and the stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall. The beds would have lumpy sisal mattresses and the kitchen, a wood-burning stove that belched smoke.

“Empty,” he said of the room. “Swing around the back, check the other exits and entries. I’m going in.”

Shabalala lifted a brow. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“If that car engine starts up, those men will be back here soon. We have to move fast.” He crossed to the front door and turned the handle. The door opened. Folks in the country rarely locked their doors but they often kept loaded guns on hand in case of unwelcome guests. Shabalala disappeared into the night. Emmanuel slipped into the corridor of Lion’s Kill homestead. It was darker inside than he’d thought. The lantern glow drew him into the front room like a Neanderthal seeking fire.

He moved to the table. A paper-thin map, yellowed with age, spread over the tabletop. The words “Northern Transvaal” ran along the bottom in black ink: of all the things to find in a backwater farmhouse. He picked up the lantern and held it high to cast more light. A small detail snagged his attention and slowed his exit to the corridor. A black leather-bound bible lay on the arm of the couch, its thumbed pages slotted with strips of paper to mark the location of favourite verses. The men in the Dodge weren’t the praying kind and they’d be back as soon as the motor ticked over. He stepped into the corridor. The lantern flame threw circles of white light onto the walls and the wooden floors. Crickets chirped and the windmill turned outside. The two bedrooms each contained twin iron cots with unmade sisal mattresses and cotton sheets. There wasn’t much to see in the kitchen beyond a small dining table, a wood stove and a chipped cabinet stocked with mismatched cutlery.

A door led off to the side of the kitchen. Emmanuel opened it and entered a tacked-on annex made of thin wood panelling. Dust blew in under the gap between the concrete floor and the bottom of the walls. A flight of stairs led down to a subterranean space. The little room: Alice’s holding cell. His heart kicked harder with each downwards step; the old battlefield terror pressed a weight to his chest and coiled into his windpipe like a snake. He pushed his fingertips against the metal door and it swung open. Nothing good waited behind an iron door built below a wooden annex. He entered the concrete cell with the lantern held high. Shadows flickered. He moved deeper into the room and allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The rusting cot and mattress gave off the smell of sweat and dried blood. A primal dance, older than the advent of speech, had taken place here.

“Get in and then get the fuck out,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“That was the plan. Now follow it. This place gives me the shakes.”

No hostage, no reason to stay. One call to the Pretoria police and a carload of detectives would flood this cell with a bunch of foot police pinned behind them. Alice was white, thank God, and a worthy victim.

The soft shuffle of feet across the concrete floor snapped him around to face the door; too late to draw his weapon, too late to do anything but experience the rush of fear flooding his veins. A large man stood in the doorway.

“Keep the lantern high, unclip your weapon and kick it into the corner,” a familiar voice said. “I have my revolver aimed straight at your gut, just above the navel, and at this range I won’t miss.”

“Lieutenant,” Emmanuel said. “This is a surprise.”

“It’s a surprise and it isn’t, if you catch my drift,” Mason said. “You and I have business to settle. Now do like I said and drop your weapon.”

Emmanuel unclipped the Webley left-handed and placed the revolver on the floor. He kicked it, heard the barrel scrape against the rough concrete surface then come to a stop some place he could not see. The initial rush of fear drained. Meeting Lieutenant Mason again felt more like fate than coincidence.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Mason moved closer, let the lantern light find the black metal barrel of a Browning Hi-Power. “Have you made the connections?”

“Trying to,” Emmanuel said. “The gun pointed at me isn’t helping.” Thoughts rolled into black corners, leaving only a faint kind of sense. Mason here at Lion’s Kill. The bible belonged to him but so what? He found one clear thought and held onto it: Mason was far from the big house in Houghton. That’s what really mattered.

“Come on. A clever man like you must have some ideas.” Some men, less experienced than the Lieutenant, held their weapons too high and miscalculated the strain of the gun’s weight on their shoulders and wrists. Mason held the Browning like it was an extension of his hand. “Take a guess, Cooper.”

“You’re the detective who owns part of this farm and all of the local police.”

“Spot on,” Mason said. “And there are no local police, just a single constable. He and I have an understanding. He understands that I will beat the teeth from his head if he interferes with me and mine.”

“Me and mine” was an odd phrase to describe the men driving the Dodge. Emmanuel associated the term with blood relatives, family. Mason’s words still translated the same though: expect no help from the law. You are alone.

“What are you doing here, Cooper?”

“We ended on a bad note the last time we talked. I came to apologise, make sure there were no hard feelings.”

“Funny …” Mason said deadpan and slammed the butt of the Browning to Emmanuel’s head. Emmanuel felt the breeze generated by the gun slicing through the air and then the crunch of his bones hitting the floor.

“The first thing that you should know about me, detective kaffir-fucker, is that I do not have a sense of humour. Never have. Even as a child.” Mason kneeled down and the light from the fallen lantern threw shadows across his chalk-white skin. “Second thing is, I have a very short fuse. If you don’t answer my questions quickly, I will beat you down every single time there’s a delay. I will continue doing that till the mountains fall into the sea if necessary. Understand?”

“You sound like my father,” Emmanuel said. “He had a short fuse.”

In five minutes, maybe ten, Shabalala would come looking for him. All he had to do in the meantime was take a beating. He’d done it before and wasn’t looking forward to it. Mason rubbed the barrel tip of the Browning against his cheek; itching a scratch with the safety off and a finger on the trigger.

“Do you have children, Cooper?” The Lieutenant sounded genuinely interested.

“I’m single. How could I have children?”

Mason grinned. “Being single doesn’t mean anything in the world that we live in. And a man of your proclivities wouldn’t flash photographs of his half-caste offspring around the office. You could have a dozen little bastards stashed away.”

“I like non-white women.” Admitting to the lesser sin of fornication might camouflage the greater sin of unsanctioned procreation. “That doesn’t mean I’m ready to settle down and have a family with one of them … even if it was legal.”

“A man without a son leaves only bones when he dies. You waited too long, Cooper. Who’s going to bring flowers to your grave?”

“I’ll be buried on your land so I’m hoping you’ll do the honours once a year on my birthday. No carnations. Wildflowers are fine.”

“Here it comes …”

The punch lit up a constellation of stars behind Emmanuel’s eyelids. He fell back, breathing hard. Where was Shabalala?

“I did warn you.” Mason took a reasonable tone. “Now tell me what you’re doing on my farm.”

“Passing through, thought I’d say hello.” Emmanuel willed his muscles slack, like a drunk driver about to make impact with a wall. The Lieutenant’s fist connected with the weight of a brick thrown by a giant. Shabalala had better come soon.

“Tell me the truth,” Mason said, almost kindly. “Believe me when I say that beating you to a puddle gives me no pleasure.”

From the low vantage point of the floor, Emmanuel found that he believed Mason’s statement. The word “joyless” best described the Lieutenant’s attitude and perhaps the very fibres of his being. Happiness and humour were nowhere to be found, even outside the confines of this cell. Behind the dead-pools that were Mason’s eyes, Zweigman had glimpsed fear and sadness. Emmanuel saw only a void that couldn’t be filled. The years of boozing, violence and whoring had dug the pit deeper and made it impenetrable to light.

“Now that you’ve tracked me down, you’ve got nothing to say.” Mason rocked back on his heels, thinking. “Curious.”

“If you want my opinion, you could do more with this space, Lieutenant. Replace the broken window, get some curtains, put a rocking chair in the corner and you’ll have a nice reading room.” Every cut and bruise throbbed but he’d heard the soft crunch of a footstep in the gravel yard. Shabalala would enter the house soon, moving in the darkness; part of the darkness. Between them, he and the Zulu detective would take care of Mason. Somehow.

The Lieutenant remained still in the cell’s murky atmosphere. No fist, no slap, no reaction at all to the rocking chair comment. He spoke after a long pause. “When a person deliberately tries to provoke me to violence, I stop and ask why. Does that man enjoy being beaten or is he hoping, for example, to cover the sound of footsteps approaching the house? You brought friends with you.”

“I’m alone.”

“Are you sure about that, Sergeant Cooper? I hear a person moving around out there.”

“I came alone.” He emptied all thoughts of Shabalala from his mind. He imagined himself deep in a mountain stronghold and far from Mason’s probing gaze. Gravel hit the cardboard square pushed into the cell’s empty windowpane, killing the element of surprise.