Present Darkness (35 page)

“Well written, with a strong place and time, and believable characters,
kudos to Emily Bestler Books/Washington Square Press for bringing this
series to American mystery fans.”
—Barbara Ford, Goodreads

“Nunn writes beautifully, with evocative, almost cinematic, descriptions of the
landscape and of Cooper’s tumultuous past.”
—Shelfawareness.com (starred review)

“The suspense is irresistible, and the mystery sustains itself well. This is a
wonderfully effective addition to Nunn’s already masterful series of novels.
—Historical Novel Society

Published by Xoum in 2014

Xoum Publishing

PO Box Q324, QVB Post Office,

NSW 1230, Australia

www.xoum.com.au

ISBN 978-1-922057-86-0 (digital)

ISBN 978-1-922057-87-7 (print)

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright below, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Text copyright © Malla Nunn 2014

Cover and internal design and typesetting copyright © Xoum Publishing 2014

Cataloguing-in-publication data is available from the National Library of Australia

Cover design by Xou Creative, www.xou.com.au

Word count 77,000

For you, the reader

PROLOGUE

JOHANNESBURG, DECEMBER 1953

Friday night. A dirt lane on the outskirts of Yeoville, where cars came out of the city then disappeared in the direction of the four-way intersection that led to the suburbs. The girl paced out the number of steps between the mouth of the alley and the vacant lot at the far end. Some men liked to lay her down in an open field. Most preferred to position her against the wall of the dark lane itself. After the urgency left them, they got into their cars and drove back to the flat sprawl of Johannesburg suburbs; nice places, with names like Sandton, Bedfordview and Edenvale. The girl liked to feel the money in her hands for a moment before she took it to the darkest part of the alley, pulled out the loose brick she knew was there, and shoved the bills behind it.

Between men, she stood halfway down the alley—in the shadows, but easy to see if one knew where to look. Squeezed between high brick walls and strewn with crushed kaffir weeds, the lane was ideal for clients with ten minutes to spare between knocking off work and heading home.

The sweep of car headlights lit the walls of the lane at intermittent intervals. The moonlight was faint and partially blocked by the roofline of the adjacent building. She didn’t mind the gloom. It softened the hard line of her jaw and smoothed the acne scars on her right cheek. She liked the darkness. In the dark she was perfect.

The sound of feet crunching the dirt broke the quiet and the girl looked up. Car lights swept past, briefly illuminating the dirt strip. A white man stood at the end of the alley, just emerged from the vacant lot. He was tall, big across the shoulders, and still. He wasn’t so much standing in the alley as blocking it.

A chill travelled up the girl’s legs and into her belly.

“Sorry, hey. Bad timing.” Fear sharpened her performance and she sounded every inch a slum-born English prostitute working for coins. “I’m just finished for the night.”

He moved towards her: big and getting bigger. Sure-footed. In no hurry. The girl backed away, worn heels scraping the dirt. Cars passed on the main road.

“Okay, wait.” She glanced over her shoulder and calculated twenty steps to the safety of traffic and people, maybe twenty-two. “Wait. Let’s talk. We can work something out. What is it you want?”

“Everything,” he said.

On another night and with another client she might have joked, “All right. But it will cost you.”

Not this time. She turned and sprinted for the alley exit. Images of a roadside trench and the cold weight of the earth covering her naked body one shovel-load at a time flashed through her mind. Every drop of street cunning accumulated over the hard years told her that the big man would take her blood and her bones. But he would pay nothing for what he took.

Seventeen, sixteen, steps more to the main road. In truth, she lost count. It didn’t matter. The traffic was louder, the headlights brighter. She risked a look over her shoulder. The man sauntered the dirt lane with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He couldn’t catch her at that pace. She was almost safe. Home now, quickly. Turn the handle, slip inside and lock the door.

She turned back and slammed hard into a wiry body. The impact knocked her off balance and breath rushed from her lungs. Her shoulder smacked the ground and dirt filled her mouth. She looked up, dazed. A second man crouched down and cupped a hand over her mouth. His palms smelled of raw sugar; such a sweet scent amid the stench of urine and kaffir weed in the laneway. Then realisation came quickly. There were two men in the alley and together, they’d netted her like a bird.

The one holding her down said, “Make sure she’s white. He’s strict about that.”

The man who’d blocked the exit to the vacant lot slotted a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. The flare of a match briefly lit his face, which was clean-cut and handsome. His black hair was combed back from his forehead. A dream client. He squatted and held the flame inches from her face. Heat licked her pockmarked cheeks.

“White and ugly,” he said and leaned closer. “Do you want to ride home with me tonight, sweetheart?”

The wiry one still blocked her mouth with his hand. She shook her head. Twin funnels of smoke snaked from the handsome man’s nostrils and he smiled.

1.

Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper hurried through the ramshackle garden, jacket unbuttoned in the night-time heat. A fat moon tangled in the branches of a jacaranda tree and the air carried the smell of fresh cut grass and the tree’s shameless purple flowers. It was a perfect Friday night to sit with his daughter Rebekah’s chunky brown arms laced around his neck while Davida sat barefoot on the stairs. Instead, he was at a crime scene in Parkview, in the flashing lights of a street cruiser.

Blue police barricades encircled a brick house with weeds growing from the gutters. The barriers were a physical reminder that the inhabitants had passed through the veil of the everyday and into a darker world of blood and broken things. Emmanuel crossed the crime scene perimeter and left ordinary behind.

“Detective. Sir.” A gangly white policeman reeking of sweat and vomit moved off the house stairs. He’d been inside, Emmanuel guessed, and seen something he wouldn’t forget. “Lieutenant Mason said to go straight in, Detective. Sir.”

A cluster of young uniformed constables stood on the porch. Two more guarded the front door. Middle-class, European victims always brought the force out in force.

“Sergeant Cooper, Marshall Square,” Emmanuel said to the police on door duty. They stepped aside. He stepped in.

Broken furniture littered the entrance and ripped telephone wires snaked across the oak floorboards. Glass from a wrecked hallstand reflected a mosaic of light onto the ceiling. Emmanuel took a deep breath. A single phone call he received minutes before the end of the shift had made the difference between being with Davida and Rebekah and being here, in chaos.

“What a mess, hey?” Detective Constable Dryer, a big-boned Afrikaner with thinning brown hair combed over a bald spot, stood in a doorway to the right of the wreckage. Dryer’s most useful character trait was his ability to state the obvious.

“Uh huh,” Emmanuel said. The white and yellow telephone wires interested him. The actual telephone lay further down the hallway, the receiver torn clean from the cord attaching it to its base. Stripping the wires from the wall might be a sign of extreme caution or violent rage. No way to tell which yet. An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

“Animals. Who else would do this so close to Christmas?” Dryer hooked his broad thumbs into his belt, which gave his beer gut room to move. “You wait and see, Cooper. The Police Commissioner will work us like dogs till this case is closed. No leave. No overtime. We can kiss our holidays goodbye.”

“Bad timing,” Emmanuel said. Dryer liked to complain. If he worked for the postal service, the mailbags would be too heavy. Emmanuel let him gripe. The man was background noise and part of what Emmanuel had agreed to endure in order to secure a short-term transfer from Durban to Johannesburg. He’d worked his boss Colonel van Niekerk hard for the transfer and knew that the favour would have to be repaid in the future—with interest. Seeing Davida and Rebekah every day, however, was worth the heavier workload, and Dryer was no worse than most of the detectives he’d worked with in other places.

Broken glass crunched underfoot and a tall, pale man with a thin, humourless mouth stepped out of a room further down the corridor. “Detectives,” he said. Black hair, black shoes and an unwrinkled black suit gave Lieutenant Walter Mason a grim, funereal appearance. “Cooper.” Mason crooked a finger. “In here, with me.”

Emmanuel kept to the left of the corridor, careful to avoid disturbing the debris. A living room with lime green carpet, a brown corduroy sofa and a tinsel-laden Christmas tree appeared untouched. Four silver photo frames were arranged in a straight line on the mantle. Sounds of quiet sobbing came from deeper in the house.

“There’s no time for delicacy, Cooper,” Mason said. “The ambulance officers have to get through. Dryer, clear a path.”

“But …” the Afrikaner started to complain. Mason’s icy expression killed the words in his mouth. “Right away, sir.”

Emmanuel approached the doorway where the Lieutenant stood. Oak floorboards creaked underfoot. The air smelled of rusting copper after the rain. Emmanuel knew the odour well. It was the hot, wet funk of blood; a scent etched deep into his memory. He’d smelled too much of it on the battlefields of France during the war.

“Go on.” Mason motioned into a bedroom bathed in bright electric light. The metallic smell intensified. A shirtless white man lay on the cream-coloured carpet; pale arms and legs splayed at bizarre angles. Swollen to twice its natural size, the man’s face resembled a grapefruit left to rot in the field. Stained teeth showed through a split bottom lip. He had been horribly beaten. He might live to midnight.

“Ian and Martha Brewer,” Mason said. “A high school principal and a secretary at the office of land management. Not the usual victims of such a violent crime.”

Emmanuel skirted the bed and found the principal’s wife. She was a tiny thing; a puppet with cut strings propped up against the mattress base. Blood clotted her dyed blonde hair and stained the neckline of her pink cotton nightdress. A pulse point fluttered at the base of her neck, weak but steady. The ambulance siren howled from the front lawn and set the neighbourhood dogs to barking.

“Stay here, Cooper. I’ll see the medics in.”

“Yes, sir.” Emmanuel remained crouched and looked around. Middle-class ruin blighted every surface of the room. The wall behind the quilted bedhead was sprayed with an arc of rust-coloured splatter. Summer dresses and plain cotton shirts spilled from broken dresser drawers. The wardrobe had also been riffled.

“In here.” Mason directed two white men into the bedroom. Each carried a canvas and wood stretcher underarm and a medical kit in hand. “See to the woman first.”

Emmanuel stepped into the corridor, gave the attendants room to work. They kneeled on the stained carpet, staunching blood and bandaging wounds. Their hands were soon soaked, the knees of their trousers blotted red. Martha Brewer’s body made a small hollow in the canvas as they carried her to the ambulance, taking a path cleared through the hallway rubble by Dryer.