Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  “No,” Gabriel said. “She paid.”

  A large cowlike antelope grazing the upper reaches of a mountain slope distracted Gabriel’s attention. He pressed his nose to the window and fogged the glass with his breath. The thread that held him in the previous conversation broke. “Taurotragus oryx. Common eland.”

  After that, the scientific and common name for a Cape chestnut tree, a wild hare, a yellow butterfly and a spray of purple wildflowers tumbled out of Gabriel like milk from a broken jug. Emmanuel shifted down to third gear and took a wide bend in the road, waiting for an opportunity to reintroduce the topic of Amahle. The turnoff to Covenant Farm was two miles ahead. Gabriel would be out of the car and running barefoot through the hills before the hand brake was up.

  “Please don’t,” Daglish said to Emmanuel. “He’s scared. Naming everything twice makes him feel safe. Let’s give him time to calm down.”

  “All right.” That was a fair suggestion. He had enough information to light a fire under the station commander and see which direction he ran in. Gabriel’s fact train rolled on, some species cataloged twice in a row and at astonishing speed.

  “Do you think the constable killed her?” Daglish whispered.

  “Bagley admits to being in the native location on Friday night. He claims he made two arrests. The station occurrence book will verify the story or prove if it’s a lie. The native police had to have been there as well.” Prying information from the Zulu police was a job for Shabalala. “How far is the location from Little Flint Farm?”

  “Ten or so miles.”

  “Close enough for Bagley to hit both places on the same night.” The fine details didn’t hold together, though. Putting down a fight on a native reserve, arresting two men and then hiking into the hills to murder a black girl required a combination of luck, impeccable timing and an invisibility cloak: a white policeman on a native pathway would be seen and deferred to and then whispered about in the safety of huts and kraals. Repeating the same feat over the next two days to murder Philani would have required superhuman abilities.

  “Bagley’s involved with Amahle’s murder,” Emmanuel said. “But I don’t know how. Not yet.”

  He parked the car close to the Covenant Farm turnoff, unlocked the boot and unpacked the supplies. Blue shadows lengthened over the hills. The sun balanced on the horizon, sinking fast. Emmanuel shouldered the heaviest pack and Gabriel led the way through a group of white pear saplings that glowed in the last light of the day. Prehistoric ferns with fronds like giant green hands reached for the sky.

  Bagley slipped out of his mind. The constable was tomorrow’s problem. The burnished sky closed over the treetops. He appealed to God, the good fairies and the breath of wind lifting the leaves to keep Zweigman alive till he arrived with Dr. Daglish. You have Amahle and Philani, he reasoned, surely that’s enough. Why take an old Jew?

  The blood-soaked dressings turned to ash in the fire. Twigs and leaves crackled and glowed. Emmanuel threw Zweigman’s shirt into the blaze and watched it burn. Shabalala added the doctor’s rumpled jacket, stiff with dried blood. Smoke billowed into the night air. The high-pitched yelp of a black-backed jackal calling its mate to a kill broke the quiet night.

  Emmanuel found the bottle of homemade peach brandy stolen from Covenant Farm and pulled out the cork. He offered the first hit to Shabalala, who hesitated. Blacks and whites did not drink from the same bottle unless they were park vagrants or insane.

  “There’ll never be a better time to start drinking,” Emmanuel said, and pressed the bottle closer.

  Shabalala accepted the brandy and took a mouthful, coughing when the 80 proof alcohol hit his stomach. He handed the bottle back to Emmanuel. They drank in silence and watched the last fibers of Zweigman’s jacket vanish in the coals.

  “What now, Sergeant?” Shabalala asked.

  “We wait,” Emmanuel said. And pray and make promises and bargain with the universe: my life for his, my blood to replace the red pool staining the surface of the rock. Zweigman had a wife and son to go home to, people who needed him. Emmanuel had a sister he called on the first Sunday of the month. No promise was sacred enough to tip the scales in Zweigman’s favor but Emmanuel knew no other way to fill the black hole inside of him.

  “Done for now.” Daglish pulled the feather blanket over Zweigman’s bare chest and stood up to stretch her cramped muscles. The entire operation, from cleaning the wound to stitching the cut and applying fresh dressings, was completed at ground level and by firelight. “He’s lost a lot of blood. It will take a day or two for him to recover enough strength to move.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Emmanuel said. He offered three small words in exchange for Zweigman’s life. It was all he had.

  “I was pushed before I jumped.” Daglish moved to the fire and held her hands up to the flames. “Just as well.”

  Emmanuel looked at Margaret’s face in the firelight. It glowed. “I think you like being up here, a witch doctor in the wild,” he said.

  “Yes, I think I do,” Daglish said. “And now I’d like a drink, if you don’t mind.”

  Shabalala cleared his throat and looked to the night sky, mortified by the doctor’s request. Respectable white women drank in separate “ladies’ bars” with dress codes, tables and chairs. Chugging liquor in the company of cops was usually for whores and bar girls. How far outside the rules was Daglish willing to go?

  “It’s everybody’s bottle tonight,” Emmanuel said. “Shabalala and I have already made a head start.”

  “You can’t be half pregnant, Detective.” The town doctor held out her hand for the bottle. “And I need a drink. Now.”

  “Of course,” Emmanuel said, and gave Daglish the brandy. No way on earth would Shabalala take another drink from the bottle, and neither would he. Treating a middle-class woman doctor like one of the boys seemed disrespectful.

  “L’chaim.” Daglish raised the bottle to the fire in a toast. “To life.”

  She took a deep swallow and then another and tears stung her eyes. Emmanuel wondered how Daglish managed to keep this version of herself so well hidden. And also where she’d learned a Hebrew toast.

  “Danny Einfeld. Durban Medical School.” She answered his silent query and drained the bottle in one long hit.

  The jackal made a series of eerie yelps in the darkness. It was closer now. Shabalala threw a branch onto the fire and sparks floated up to the canopy of stars. Gabriel slept curled up on a bed of stolen clothing with his hands tucked under his head as a pillow. Zweigman breathed deeply, warmed by the flames, peacefully asleep in a pharmaceutical haze from the morphine in his bloodstream. Emmanuel crouched by the fire and felt the weight of worry and guilt lift from his shoulders. He made plans for tomorrow.

  18

  EARLY MORNING SUN broke the cloud cover and lit the twists and turns of the “Scenic Way” that looped from the hotel to behind the police station. Emmanuel and Shabalala crouched in the grass and waited. Up before dawn and wearing the suits they’d slept in, they looked like gentlemen of the road planning the ambush of a traveling coach. A Zulu man crossed the stream at the edge of the field and walked toward them.

  “That’s him,” Emmanuel said. “Don’t ask questions. Look him in the eye. Tell him you know about Bagley and Amahle. He has one, and only one, chance to grow a pair, tell the truth and be a man.”

  “He will hear me.” Shabalala stood up with his arms hanging loosely by his side. Somehow the easy posture was more threatening than if he’d come out with his fists swinging. Shabangu, the Zulu constable, would talk.

  “We’ll meet under the sycamore tree in ten minutes and then I’ll run the same line with Bagley. Hopefully with information from Shabangu to use as a lever.” Emmanuel split off in the direction of the station house.

  He was confident that Ellicott and Hargrave, the replacements from Durban, would sleep late. Working on that assumption, Emmanuel and Shabalala had an hour to spring the two-part plan before returning to Daglish
and the still-sleeping Zweigman.

  The smell of coffee and bacon drifted from the back of the commander’s house. Emmanuel turned the corner and looked into the empty yard. No sign of Bagley on the stairs. Breakfast must already be on the table. He crossed the raked-dirt square, passed the sycamore tree and peered through the station window. Also empty. He returned to the sycamore, making sure to keep the trunk between his body and Bagley’s house.

  Eleven minutes later, Shabalala cut across the dirt yard with the stride of prizefighter.

  “Tell me,” Emmanuel said, wanting just a slice of that glow.

  “Shabangu says that Amahle came to the attention of the police twice. First was the day in winter when she was left in town by accident. Constable Bagley was the one to drive her back to Little Flint Farm. The second time was Friday afternoon.” Shabalala paused, enjoying the serious weight of the information he’d collected. “She came here and talked to the constable in the station house. Shabangu did not hear what was said but when Amahle left she walked like a queen with the water parting before her.”

  “Excellent. Ella Reed said something like that, too . . .” Emmanuel grasped for the fragment of conversation and found it. “Amahle came back to the fitting room with change rattling in her pocket and she looked pleased.”

  “The constable gave Amahle money,” Shabalala guessed.

  “Let’s find out from Bagley himself. Go into the station and sit at the station commander’s desk. I’ll bring Bagley through in a few minutes.”

  “But Sergeant . . .” Shabalala knew the rules. White policemen sat at desks in the front office; black policemen, like Victorian-era children, stayed out of sight in a back room until they were called.

  “Forget the rules,” Emmanuel said. “This whole operation is off the books. We do as we like and live with the consequences. Sit down, fiddle with the pens, make a call if you like.”

  “I must pretend it is my desk.”

  “Yes. And don’t move from the desk no matter what Bagley says to you.” That was insubordination and a punishable offense within the South African Police Force. “If Bagley actually has the guts to report our conversation to the district commandant, I’ll tell the commandant you did it on my order.”

  “Sit, don’t move,” Shabalala said, warming to the idea but not convinced of its wisdom. White men could take risks that remained impossible even in the dreams of black men and women. The detective sergeant took risks that no sane white man would even contemplate.

  “I’ll do the rest,” Emmanuel said. The old coda, Trust me, was redundant. Faith, loyalty and trust kept them both above the quicksand in this clandestine operation.

  Shabalala nodded and made for the front door of the station. A Land Rover packed with farm supplies destined for the valley and a rattling white and blue bus with the name GOD’S GIFT painted on the side headed into town. Shabangu, the Zulu policeman, slipped into the yard and began collecting windblown twigs and leaves from the ground before throwing them into a garbage drum. Emmanuel reached the back door of the police residence and knocked twice.

  A handle clicked and a plain woman appeared, her fine strawberry-blond hair scraped back in a bun. No more than thirty years old, she wore a green cotton dress that was modest even by nineteenth-century standards. It had long puffed sleeves and a long skirt that came down almost to the floor.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice was hesitant and soft.

  “I’m here to see the station commander,” Emmanuel said. The pity he began to feel for this woman, the same one he’d seen standing by the window and secretly spying on her husband chain-smoking at dawn, had no part in the plan.

  “Who should I say is asking for him?”

  “Detective Sergeant Cooper. Can you tell him that I’ll be waiting for him at the station house?”

  “He’s in the middle of breakfast.” The words came out fast, as if she’d noticed a dangerous crossroads ahead and was steering to avoid a collision.

  “He’ll see me,” Emmanuel said, and then added, “If the commander can’t make it to the station, tell him I’m happy to come in and talk with him over breakfast.”

  Bagley’s daughters pressed into the hallway. They stood on tiptoe and tried to see beyond their mother and into the yard.

  “Where is your friend?” the elder girl called out. “The black one?”

  “Hush, now, and back to breakfast.” Mrs. Bagley shooed the girls into a side room and shot Emmanuel a worried glance.

  He tipped his hat and walked to the station house. Later tonight, when the sun was down and the moon high over the mountains, Mrs. Bagley would most likely turn to her husband and ask in a soft voice, What happened? Constable Bagley would look her in the face and say, Nothing important. He’d lie to her, and not for the first time, Emmanuel was certain.

  He ducked inside the low sandstone building and closed the door. The visual punch of a tall, solid Zulu man sitting behind a station commander’s desk was stunning and immediate. Shabalala was either a dream come true or a colonial nightmare brought to life, depending on who was looking.

  “Suits you,” Emmanuel said, and pressed himself flat to the wall behind the door. The first thing Bagley would see was a world in reverse, a black man in the power seat. If that didn’t destabilize the Roselet station commander, nothing would.

  Hurried steps tracked the width of the yard, growing louder.

  “Relax, for God’s sake,” Emmanuel said. “Write your wife a note on official paper. Tell her how much you enjoy wearing a suit and sitting behind a desk like a fat white man.”

  Shabalala smiled and lost the stiff posture of a thief caught lifting donations from the church poor box. He pulled a sheet from a drawer and selected a pen from the neat row laid out on the desk. The station door swung open. Bagley stepped in, uniform pressed and black shoes shined, his face like a crumpled paper bag.

  “What the hell are you doing, boy?” he asked, shocked by the sight of a black man sitting in his seat, touching his pens and papers.

  Shabalala said, “Writing a letter to my wife in Durban.”

  Bagley moved farther in. “Is this Sergeant Cooper’s idea of a joke?”

  “Did you really think it was that easy to shake us off your tail, Mr. Insurance Policy?” Emmanuel shut the station door with a hard click and leaned against it. “Make a phone call to a farmer, get a general to breathe fire and have us sent home to bed without our supper?”

  Bagley spun a half circle, the telltale vein pulsing on his forehead. “It’s official. You are off the case, Cooper. The longer you stay, the worse trouble you’re in.”

  Emmanuel looked over at Shabalala, still seated behind the desk. “Constable Bagley is worried for us. He left a hot bacon and egg breakfast to come over here and personally tell us that we’ve been naughty boys and that the headmaster—or is that the general?—is going to cane us.”

  “That was very kind of him, Sergeant,” Shabalala said.

  “Ja, it was.” Emmanuel refocused on Bagley. “You don’t have to fret about us, Constable, we’ve been in tougher spots than this. You should be worried for yourself, your family and your police pension.”

  Bagley’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. “My pension is none of your business.”

  The pension was a small but important reward for a lifetime of poorly paid work and formed the foundation of every policeman’s retirement fantasy. It was a monthly reminder that the sacrifices made to keep South Africa safe were remembered and rewarded.

  “I’m personally not in favor of taking the pension away from a cop who’s made one stupid mistake. We’re human and we fall as quick as the next man,” Emmanuel said. “Amahle was young and pretty. Easy to see how it happened.”

  “Nothing happened.” Bagley pressed his palm against the pulse point on his forehead. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “So you lied about knowing Amahle because . . . ?” Emmanuel left the sentence unfinished.

  “I knew it would look bad
. Me knowing a dead black girl.”

  “Bullshit.” Emmanuel went on the attack. “You gave her a lift to Little Flint Farm, pulled over at the side of the road and fucked her in the back of the van. That’s why you lied about knowing her.”

  Zweigman’s autopsy proved that couldn’t be true but the accusation sent Bagley reeling back two steps. He bumped against the station counter, sweating. “That’s not what happened. I swear.”

  Emmanuel dismissed Bagley with a look and said, “Pick up the phone, Shabalala. Have the operator put through a call to the vice squad in Durban. Tell them we have a tip-off for them. A high-profile case involving a married policeman and a dead girl.”

  “No.” Bagley held out his hands, as if trying to stop time. “Wait. Please.”

  “I’m not waiting to hear more of your kak. Tell your story to the vice squad when they get here.”

  The station commander placed a hand to his chest. “On the lives of my children I will tell you the truth. Just put down the phone and let me speak.”

  Emmanuel signaled to Shabalala to replace the receiver on the hook. “Okay, let’s talk.”

  “Just you and me.” Bagley looked to the concrete floor. “I can’t say it in front of a kaffir.”

  “You mean Detective Constable Shabalala?”

  Bagley cleared his throat and said, “Yes. Detective Constable Shabalala.”

  Life at the top of the race ladder meant a long fall from grace when the earth shifted. Bad behavior was expected of those on the lower rungs. A white man or woman given to bouts of violence or sexual misadventure let the whole European race down; they made nonsense of the moral superiority of whites.

  Shabalala pushed away from the desk and stood up. “I will take a walk.”

  “Not too far,” Emmanuel said, and moved from the doorway. The clock on the wall read 7:35. “Come back in ten minutes.”

  “Yebo, Sergeant.”

  Bagley and Shabalala avoided eye contact as the Zulu detective left the room and began walking across the yard.