Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  “Sit.” Emmanuel threw his hat onto the counter, ready to start. The tick of the clock was loud in the silence.

  “Mind if I stand by the window and have a smoke?” Bagley asked.

  “Fine.” Emmanuel stayed close to the constable in case he was desperate enough to jump out of the window and make a run for it.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Bagley pulled a packet of Dunhills from his jacket and removed a cigarette. “Dirty white policeman. Poor, frightened black girl. You’re wrong. The situation with Amahle was the opposite of that.”

  “Dirty black girl and poor, frightened policeman?” Emmanuel didn’t blunt his sarcasm. He didn’t have time to listen to excuses. A simple what-happened-when story would do. “She was left in town by accident, you drove her back to Little Flint Farm. Then what?”

  “See, there’s your first mistake, Cooper.” Bagley lit up, drew deep and blew smoke from his nostrils. “She didn’t get left. She was hiding behind the general store, waiting for God’s Gift to come through. The farm manager held off driving back to Little Flint for fifteen minutes, got pissed off and then made tracks without her.”

  God’s Gift was the bus Emmanuel had just seen cruise Greyling Street into town. Amahle was not lost or left behind on that day, she was on the run.

  “Any idea where she was going?”

  “Pietermaritzburg,” Bagley said. “Then on to Durban. I found the ticket in her pocket after Reed called and said to find her and bring her back to the farm.” Bagley smoked. The memory of being dispatched to hunt down a servant girl as a priority still irked him.

  Emmanuel raised the window higher to get some fresh air.

  “Two buses. All the way to Durban. That’s a big move for a Zulu girl from the sticks,” Emmanuel said. He thought of the number of times he’d run away from the Fountain of Light Boarding School and failed to get to the city.

  “That’s your next mistake, see. That girl wasn’t a usual kind of native. She had two pounds and a map of Natal in her pocket and she wasn’t afraid of the journey or of me.”

  “No luggage?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  That surprised Emmanuel. The lipstick, toothbrush and nail polish scattered across the ground by Chief Matebula belonged to a girl with the desire to use them, even if it was in the distant future. Leaving without a suitcase or her box of luxuries made no sense.

  “Ja?” He prompted Bagley to continue. Loose threads could be tied up later.

  “Constable Shabangu walked her to the edge of town and I picked her up from there.”

  “Why walk out so far when the station is closer?”

  Bagley flicked ash into the yard. It took a minute for him to invent an answer as to why Amahle was diverted from the station to the outskirts of town. “I thought it would be better to keep the runaway thing under wraps. For the Reeds’ sake.”

  “That is unmitigated shit in a can, Cooper,” the sergeant major said. “Slam this fucker up against the wall and tell him to stop wasting your time. He was planning to diddle the girl and he covered his tracks from the start.”

  “Doing your bit to quell trouble with the natives . . .” Emmanuel flicked Bagley’s cigarette from his fingers. It flew out the window and fell to the ground, where it lay smoldering. He pressed a finger to the constable’s chest to get his attention. “You’re a bad liar and a coward. Let’s start again. I’ll tell you the real reason you sent Amahle to the crossroads and then you finish the story without mentioning your good intentions. All right?”

  Bagley nodded and looked away. He had no choice but to listen.

  “You wanted to fuck Amahle and you were afraid it would show if your wife saw the two of you together. You sent her outside of town to protect yourself. It had nothing do with the Reeds. Now it’s your turn, and make it quick.”

  Bagley kept his face turned away. “She got into the van. We drove. Not one word from her all the way to the turnoff to the valley. I admit I was thinking about it, what it would be like to touch her, but I swear that was it. Only thinking.”

  There was a biblical quote about adultery beginning first in the minds of men but the exact words escaped Emmanuel.

  “She started it. She reached over and put her hand on my thigh and then moved it higher to unbutton my trousers.” Bagley swallowed deep and focused outside the window. “I pulled over and parked. She finished what she started.”

  “Hand or mouth?” Emmanuel asked. Levels of intimacy mattered.

  “Both,” Bagley said. “But I swear to God I didn’t touch her. I kept my hands on the wheel the whole time.”

  “Well, that made it okay, then. Bet you didn’t make a sound at the end, either.”

  Mottled red spots appeared on Bagley’s neck and cheeks. Oh, he’d made sounds, all right, probably frightened the birds out of the trees and the rabbits out of their warrens. Bagley believed that hanging on to the wheel exempted him from admitting his involvement in the activity and, by extension, his enjoyment.

  “Afterwards”—Bagley flipped the cigarette pack back and forth in his pocket—“she buttoned my fly and sat back like nothing had happened. Not a word or a sly look. It was like she was somewhere else. I drove to Little Flint and dropped her off but I knew that one day I’d have to pay.”

  “Did you offer Amahle money?”

  “Of course not.” Bagley was offended by the suggestion. “That’s prostitution.”

  Emmanuel smiled to stop himself from laughing at Bagley’s ridiculous, prudish response. He said, “The moral high ground is expensive real estate, Constable. You can’t afford land there.”

  Outside, Shabangu, the Zulu constable, raked the yard. Across the field, Shabalala’s figure could be seen heading back to the station house. Time was flying.

  “Amahle paid a visit to the station on Friday,” Emmanuel said. “A few hours before she disappeared.”

  “There’s no connection between the two.” Bagley’s face pinched with fear and the words poured out. “I spent four months worrying myself sick about being found out, being arrested, losing my job, my wife, my family. When Amahle finally walked through the door that day it was a relief. Five pounds to buy peace of mind . . . I was happy to pay it and have the business over.”

  Five pounds took a bite out of a police constable’s wages, especially one with a wife and two young girls to support.

  “Until the money ran out and she came back for more,” Emmanuel said. “Blackmail is a long-term business.”

  “She wasn’t interested in a few pounds here and there. Not that one. Leaving Roselet was the goal. She said five pounds would keep her away for a long, long time, and I believed her.”

  Five pounds plus two pounds in pay put seven pounds in Amahle’s pocket by late Friday afternoon: a huge amount of cash for a servant girl. If the money left on the rock by Philani’s mother was the remainder of Amahle’s wages, where was the five pounds?

  “You’re lying about the payoff,” Emmanuel said. Gamblers at the track and sugar barons kept wallets with a lot of cash; country constables rattled loose change in their pockets. “Amahle died with nothing on her. Not a cent.”

  “Then someone must have stolen it,” Bagley said. “She left here with the money. On my honor.”

  “That’s not much to go on, Constable. Where did you get the five pounds from?”

  The clock ticked. The silence lengthened. Bagley wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He looked out of the window. His daughters practiced turning cartwheels in the yard, the long strands of their brightly colored hair trailing across the newly raked dirt, their milky limbs akimbo.

  “You have a wife and children, Sergeant Cooper?” the constable asked.

  “Neither,” Emmanuel said, not liking the drift of the conversation. The sanctity of family gave the guilty a dozen excuses for breaking the law, none of which he was interested in hearing. “How’s that relevant to the five pounds?”

  “Because I’d beg, borrow and steal to protect
my wife and girls. A single man can’t know that feeling.”

  “True, but a single man might have been prudent enough to refuse a French polish from a black teenager. Now tell me where you got the money from, Constable.”

  Bagley waved to his desk without shifting focus from his daughters, who were now stalking Shabalala across the width of the yard. “The petty cash box. I got it from there.”

  “You didn’t beg or borrow—you stole it,” Emmanuel said. Money in the petty cash box was for the purchase of paper, pencils, tea, sugar and other everyday items. Dipping into it was something of a police tradition. A handful of fake receipts covered the loss: easy money if the theft remained undetected but a disaster if it was discovered. Bagley risked his job to pay off Amahle. The alternative was worse: a sexual dalliance with a black juvenile, no matter how brief, meant the loss of his job, his reputation and his family if it was made public.

  “I did it for my girls and my wife,” Bagley said, and turned to Emmanuel. “For them. You understand?”

  “Admit you did it for yourself and maybe I’ll overlook where the money came from. Spoon-feed me more of the my-family-comes-first crap and I will pick up that phone and call in the theft. Your choice, Constable.”

  Bagley pushed a hand through his hair and breathed out. “If my wife knew I let a native touch me, even just a hug, that would be the end for us. I don’t want to be alone. That’s why I took the money.”

  “Good.” Emmanuel was ready to move on to the next area of questioning. “You were at the native location on Friday night, not far from Little Flint.”

  “Ja, I was.”

  “It was an easy trip to make between the two places, especially for a man in a car and five pounds to retrieve from a wild black girl.”

  “Look . . .” Bagley rushed to his desk and opened the top drawer. He fumbled for the station occurrence book, found it and flipped the pages to Friday. “Five forty-five, a fight reported in the location. Seven-fifteen, two men charged with grievous bodily harm and brought to the cells. I had dinner straight after. Ask the police boys about the location. They were with me every minute. My wife sat up in bed reading a book and came into the lounge after nine to say good night.”

  Bagley closed the log. He had a solid alibi and three reliable witnesses for the evening of Amahle’s murder. He didn’t kill her.

  “Why didn’t you write her name in the records straightaway and at least pretend to look for her?” Emmanuel was still puzzled by that.

  “God’s Gift leaves the bus depot at one-fifteen on Saturday afternoons. I hoped Amahle was on it. I prayed she was on her way to Pietermaritzburg and then to Durban.”

  That was the first truly honest thing Bagley had said without being prompted or threatened. Emmanuel glanced out of the window to locate Shabalala.

  Bagley’s daughters stood directly in the Zulu detective’s path with their hands on their hips. A white man might brush them aside and keep walking. A black man had to figure out the polite way to shake them off without causing offense. Emmanuel leaned closer to the open window and listened in.

  “What are you?” the younger girl demanded.

  “I’m a man,” Shabalala said.

  The sisters frowned, copper heads simultaneously tilting to the right as they weighed up Shabalala’s claim.

  “A special kind of man?” the older girl asked.

  “No. Just a man.”

  “You look different and you dress different from the normal kaffirs.” She examined Shabalala from head to toe, secure in her right to do so. “Where do you get your clothes from . . . a white person’s store?”

  “I did not buy these clothes from a store,” Shabalala said. “A friend made them for me.”

  “A girlfriend?” the younger girl piped in, sensing an opportunity to dig deeper into forbidden territory.

  “No,” Shabalala replied with a faint smile. “The woman who cut and sewed these clothes is named Lilliana Zweigman and she is just a friend.”

  “Our ma makes our dresses and our bloomers but nothing nice like you have.” The older girl plucked at the neckline of the brown cotton shift hanging on her frame like a potato sack. Biting her lip, she threw a nervous glance at the back door of the house and quickly took hold of Shabalala’s hand. She turned it palm up and pressed her own hand into it, comparing them for size.

  “Shivers,” she breathed. “Come see, Dolly.”

  The younger girl gaped at the sight of her sister’s small fist tucked in Shabalala’s palm like a fragile egg in a nest.

  “Move over, Rosie,” she begged. “Give me a turn.”

  Shabalala held out his other hand, a magician producing an ace of diamonds out of the air.

  “Look,” said Dolly. “The inside of his hand is almost the same color as ours.”

  Soon enough, Dolly and Rosie would not, on pain of death, approach a strange black man or allow any intimate contact across the color bar. In South Africa, this comparison of hands was strictly for children only.

  “Brilliant,” Dolly said when Shabalala slowly closed his fingers around each tiny fist and made them disappear altogether. “Not even Pa can do that.”

  “Girls!” a strident female voice called from the back door of the station commander’s house. “Come in now. Quick.”

  Shabalala released his hold and politely stepped back from the girls. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked away to Greyling Street, absenting himself from the yard.

  “But Ma . . .” Rosie said. “We’re not finished yet.”

  “Ja,” Dolly added. “Give us another minute.”

  “Come inside now!” Mrs. Bagley held the door open for her daughters, who moved with insolent slowness toward the house. They glanced at Shabalala once more from the stoep.

  “Bye-bye, mister,” said Rosie.

  “Good-bye,” said Shabalala. The girls slipped inside.

  Emmanuel turned from the window ready to give the you-didn’t-see-us-and-we-didn’t-see-you warning to the town constable. Bagley stood by the side of his desk looking pale and nauseated. His daughters’ interaction with Shabalala had raised a sweat on his brow.

  “Relax,” Emmanuel said. “Curiosity is not against the law.”

  “Not till they’re a few years older.” Bagley shut the occurrence book and slid it into the drawer. “Then that kind of curiosity most certainly will be.”

  19

  EMMANUEL GRABBED HIS hat and got ready to strike out into the main street with Shabalala. The station door opened. Detective Sergeant Benjamin Ellicott and Detective Constable John Hargrave, in baggy black suits and bright ties, filled up the frame.

  “Sergeant Cooper,” Ellicott said. “You look like shit and smell like a campfire.”

  Standing at just five-foot-six and weighing under eleven stone, Ellicott compensated for his compact frame with testosterone. He outclassed heavier opponents in the boxing ring at the police gymnasium and had the respect of the other detectives, who admired the speed with which he produced confessions.

  Hargrave was the older of the two by six years but a junior partner in both rank and intellect. The detective department record for drinking twenty whiskey shots in three minutes was his by a comfortable margin and it showed.

  Emmanuel leaned against the counter, careful not to rush his exit. “I drove out to the Kamberg to see the cave paintings and got lost on the way back to the car. Had to spend the night on a hill. Nearly froze my arse off.”

  “Was Cooper bothering you with questions pertaining to the investigation, Constable?” Ellicott walked into the room and plonked himself down in the station commander’s chair.

  “No, sir,” Bagley said. “Cooper came to say good-bye.”

  “You’re supposed to be back at West Street on General Hyland’s orders.” Ellicott stretched his legs out and linked his hands behind his head. “Why are you still here in the middle of my investigation?”

  “I’ve seen the paintings and now I’m on my way back to Durban.�
�� Emmanuel stepped around the end of the counter and edged past Hargrave.

  “Cave painting.” Ellicott’s disdain was clear. “I swear to Christ that you, that Dutch colonel and the Zulu are queer for each other.”

  Emmanuel said nothing and reached for the door handle.

  “Hold up, Cooper,” Ellicott said. “I’m not done.”

  Hargrave stepped closer to Emmanuel and waited for the order to grab a collar or twist an arm. His breath smelled of coffee and peppermint candy, both meant to disguise traces of alcohol. It didn’t work. The smell of stale beer and sour-mash whiskey emanated from the pores of his skin.

  “Ja?” Emmanuel glanced at Ellicott, who was relaxing behind the station commander’s desk as though it were his own. Constable Bagley made do with the window ledge.

  “You’re one of the newer kind of detectives who makes lists of facts but doesn’t trust his gut instinct. Am I right?”

  Emmanuel shrugged. Without the possibility of a fistfight Ellicott’s attention would soon drift.

  “Just wondering if you have any pointers for me and Hargrave on how to hold a suspect’s hand and talk sweet.”

  “You’ve been on the force longer than me, Sergeant.” Emmanuel gave Ellicott what he wanted: an acknowledgment of his superior experience. “There’s nothing I can tell you about being a cop that you don’t already know.”

  “That’s right, Cooper.” Ellicott loosened his tie, preparing for a long day at the desk as per General Hyland’s orders. “Now fuck off back to West Street.”

  “Glad to.” He escaped to the yard. Shabalala stood at the end of the police station driveway, waiting. Two black boys drifted by, slowing their pace to cast sideways glances at the black man dressed like a white baas.

  “Sergeant . . .” Shabalala nodded a greeting that asked: How bad was it?

  “Just the usual crap,” Emmanuel said. “Nothing worth repeating. And you?”

  “They said I must go back to Durban. But not with such nice words.”

  “And we will go back. Right after we’re finished. There’s something we need to check in town. I’ll fill you in on Bagley’s story while we walk.”