Present Darkness (55 page)

“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.

Mason threaded through them; some with arms full of books, others pushing strands of silky hair under the brims of their wide hats. The girls broke apart, the hum of violent energy emanating from Mason pushing them aside as if repelled by a magnetic force.

“Something’s chewing a hole through that bastard’s guts,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“I still don’t know what the hell he’s doing here. Have you figured that out?”

“Not yet.”

“Then stop skulking around corners, boyo. Stick the boot in and shake some teeth loose. Get the fucker to react.”

“Poke a stick into the hornets’ nest, you mean?”

“Affirmative.”

Mason veered off the footpath and into the shade of the boundary wall. He stood with both hands resting on his hips and the butt of his Webley revolver visible in its holster.

“Cut him down, soldier.”

“Stay off the bottle, Lieutenant,” Emmanuel said. “You look like shit.”

Mason’s lips thinned. He hitched a thumb in the direction of the King family compound. “Hide behind these walls and that rich man’s money but remember that when you leave I’ll be waiting. I will find you and that coloured bitch you were dry humping on the dance floor last night. That is a promise.”

“It sounded more like a threat but I catch your drift. Here’s some advice for you, Lieutenant. Don’t come to this house again or that rich man will have your police card, your firearm and your pension with a single phone call. That’s a promise, not a threat. You understand the difference?”

Mason swam in a small slime pond. Neither a member of the feared secret police or highly ranked enough to manipulate government ministers, he drew power from a tight gang of undercover police. He could inflict damage, though.

“That advice goes for you guys also.” Emmanuel widened the threat of legal action to include the two detectives working back-up. They shuffled their feet, scratched at their necks and glanced away to the traffic of native servants streaming to work in European owned houses. They’d heard enough to be uncomfortable, which suited Emmanuel fine.

“Warm up the car, boys,” Mason said. “I’ll be along in a moment.”

The detectives crossed the blacktop to a police issue sedan parked under the branches of a red-blossomed flame tree. Mason twirled a finger in the air. Big Ears cranked the engine, turned on the radio and left the motor running. Orchestral music drifted from the vehicle and across the road: the choice surprised Emmanuel.

Mason leaned close, blue eyes gleaming. “Get the fuck out of my town, Cooper. You have twenty-four hours. After that, I will come after you. That is not an idle threat. It’s a guaranteed certainty.”

He walked to the car, got in and slammed the door. The black sedan pulled away from the curb, carrying off its deadly cargo to the strains of a classical symphony.

*

Barefoot and with a firearm tucked under wrinkled clothes, Emmanuel stood a while to contemplate Mason’s warning. Aaron Shabalala and the Brewers hadn’t been mentioned or even alluded to. The fight at Fatty’s illegal dancehall and Vickers Steyn’s murder were the reasons behind the dawn visit.

“Mason knows the men who took a beating at the club last night,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“How else could he connect you with an Afrikaner doorman working the arse end of a rail yard? That bullshit ‘man matching your description’ story is true. The Lieutenant had eyes and ears at the dance. And Davida called your name out once that I recall.”

Emmanuel scrambled to remember if he’d made the same mistake and identified Davida to the masked thugs. No. He’d been careful. Only Fatty Mapela knew her name and she’d sooner chew through her own tongue than talk to the police.

“Davida’s safe for now, but not for much longer. Mason wants me out. He’ll be back and he will tear this house apart.”

*

“The infamous Lieutenant Mason.” Zweigman and Emmanuel walked the wide curve of the drive with the sun falling warm on their shoulders and the sky turning a deep blue overhead. “I did not expect him to be so tall or so sad.”

“Sad?” That description felt a hundred miles in the opposite direction to the truth.

“Yes,” Zweigman insisted. “And scared. More scared even than you were, Detective.”

“Mason came armed with a gun and death threats.” The doctor’s smudged glasses must have distorted reality. “Do you really expect me to have sympathy for the devil?”

“No, but think on it. Half-drunk, stumbling through the dawn to make unsubstantiated allegations …” Zweigman laid a gentle hand to Emmanuel’s arm. “Those are the acts of a desperate man, not a strong one.”

“Zweigman has something,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“If those were Mason’s men at the dance club he’d be furious but also shit scared right now. So frightened he practically confessed to a personal involvement in last night’s balls up.”

“All right.” The Scotsman and the German made good sense. “Scared, I understand. It’s sad that I’m still having trouble with.”

“I saw it behind the bluster and the aggression. Many of the SS officers at the camp carried this unhappiness also; as if all the power in the universe could not fill the hole in their chests where other men had hearts,” Zweigman said. “Why did Mason come here?”

“To warn me off.”

“The Brewer case?”

“No. Mason’s confident that the Brewer investigation is closed. He came to frighten me into leaving town.”

“Why?” Zweigman asked the obvious question. “You pose no threat to him.”

Emmanuel thought through the elements and said, “Some masked men tried to rob an illicit dance club last night. I was there. They killed the doorman on the way out, probably to stop him identifying the ringleader. The men left with broken ribs and no money but I did see one of the them clearly enough to pick him out in a line-up.”