by Malla Nunn
‘Don’t worry,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Van Niekerk will reimburse me in cash.’ Working for a police colonel who did not stick to the rules had its perks.
‘Then we must go quickly to Dawson’s.’ The sun was lower in the sky now, signalling the rapid unfolding of the afternoon. Every moment put Gabriel deeper into the mountains and further out of reach.
‘Tea, gentlemen.’ Zweigman descended the stairs with two mugs. Daglish walked a step behind, carrying a tray with a teapot and two more mugs.
‘Thanks.’ Emmanuel accepted the creamy white tea from Zweigman and smelled the sweet overload of sugar. Lunch at the Paulus farm had left a greasy taste in his mouth. Shabalala’s meal would have been even less appealing, he knew: a cob of steamed corn washed down with fermented corn drink or a slab of stale bread slathered in lard. At Little Flint Farm they’d been offered nothing at all. He caught sight of the plate of biscuits on Daglish’s tray. Shabalala was already chewing shortbread and gulping tea.
Emmanuel ate two buttery slabs of shortbread and drained his mug. Fuel for the cross-country search.
‘That barely touched the sides,’ Daglish said and rested the tray on a middle step. ‘Another tea, Detective Cooper?’
‘For both of us, thanks.’ He held out his mug for a refill and Shabalala did the same. The gap with Gabriel Reed was widening but they’d never close it on empty stomachs.
‘Perhaps we should have killed a cow,’ Zweigman said with dry humour. ‘When did you last eat?’
‘A few hours ago,’ Emmanuel said. ‘But neither of us had much. We were at Covenant Farm – the Paulus place.’ He turned to Daglish. ‘They told us you were called to attend an injured workman on Little Flint Farm during the Easter holidays.’
‘Oh . . .’ The doctor held her now unbandaged wrist close to her chest as if the mention of Little Flint brought pain surging back into the joints.
‘I’d like to know what happened. In your own words.’
Daglish fidgeted, adjusting the angle of the teapot and fiddling with the silver spoons on the tray, placing them together and then pushing them apart. ‘I knew that night would come back for me,’ she murmured softly, the words coloured by regret.
‘Grab your tea and let’s walk around the garden, Doctor.’
‘Yes.’ Daglish didn’t argue. ‘Let’s walk.’
TWELVE
‘Five minutes,’ Emmanuel said to Shabalala. He and Daglish set off in an anticlockwise direction taking them through the garden and around to the front of the cottage. Daglish picked a fallen leaf off the path and threw it under an azalea bush.
‘The garden boy and the maid have the day off,’ she explained. ‘Talk spreads fast in Roselet.’
‘Did the Reeds phone you personally?’ Emmanuel stared out to the hills, his face turned from Daglish like a priest preparing to receive an admission of sin.
‘No.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘Constable Bagley came to the house and said there was a medical emergency in the valley. He drove me out to Little Flint.’
‘Was that usual?’
‘I prefer seeing patients here at the cottage. My husband Jim often has the car, so house calls are difficult. He’s away a lot.’
‘Jim’ and ‘difficult’ were given equal emphasis. There was no car in the driveway now and hadn’t been for the last two days. Maybe Margaret’s husband was on the wide open road, notching up car crashes. ‘The car was here that night but Constable Bagley insisted on driving me out to the farm. I thought it was odd at the time but the Reeds are the biggest landowners in the area and the police are the police.’
‘The farmworker needed your help,’ Emmanuel said. ‘You didn’t have a choice.’
‘That’s true.’ Daglish flexed her fingers, releasing tension in the joints. ‘I wouldn’t have refused even if I’d known about the situation at Little Flint.’ That she was honouring her oath to heal the sick and tend the wounded had not seemed to occur to her till now.
‘Go on,’ Emmanuel said. The doctor was ready to talk and he was there to listen. In this lifting of burdens lay the unspoken beauty of police work. ‘Tell me what happened after reaching Little Flint.’
‘Thomas Reed was waiting at the gate. He took us to the servants’ quarters at the back of the house. It was so quiet, I remember. Not a sound from the family or the servants in the other huts.’
A hushed silence crept into places in the aftermath of violence. The air felt as if it were robbed of sound, leaving a blank in its wake. Emmanuel knew that emptiness well. ‘The workman’s injuries were severe,’ Daglish continued. ‘A broken nose and a fractured eye socket. There was a lot of blood. The floor of the hut was covered in it.’
Enter the clean-up team, Emmanuel thought cynically. A fresh and growing pool of servant’s blood was enough to frighten the richest of landed gentry into action – a family’s reputation took generations to repair. ‘And Gabriel?’
‘Two broken fingers, cut knuckles and forehead, bruises to the arms and chest.’ Daglish snipped a spent bloom from a rose bush and twirled it between her fingers. ‘That was about seven months ago. They both pulled through. No major complications.’
‘Two happy endings,’ Emmanuel said. ‘What aren’t you telling me, doctor?’
‘It was Bagley, the way he was that night. He stood at my shoulder the entire time, blood soaking through his shoes, waiting for a prognosis on the workman. The moment I said, “He’ll live”, the monologue started.’ A black hawk glided high in the slate-blue sky above them, hunting. Daglish watched it for a minute. ‘Bagley told the workman he was lucky that baas Reed wasn’t going to lay assault charges against him or expel his children from the farm school. If he was a good boy and behaved, the job in the yards would be kept for him.’
‘Generous,’ Emmanuel said.
‘The whole episode was awful. I liked Bagley before that, thought he was a good policeman. The firm-but-fair kind.’
Emmanuel recalled Sampie Paulus’s bitter accusation that the local station commander acted like he was tucked in the pocket of the Reed family. ‘Amahle was around that night?’ he asked.
‘Yes, the girl was in Gabriel’s room, sitting on the end of the bed. There’s nothing unusual about a servant being in an injured person’s bedroom. At least, I didn’t think so until I started stitching the cut on Gabriel’s head.’ Daglish began walking again, circumnavigating the cottage. The path began to lead them back to the rear garden and to Zweigman and Shabalala. ‘The needle set him off. He tried to jump out of bed but she took his hands and talked to him in Zulu. I don’t know what she said but it calmed him down and he let me keep working so long as she was there.’
They walked on. Emmanuel waited.
‘Funny.’ Daglish frowned at the memory. ‘Gabriel speaks Zulu fluently. Better than English. The girl, Amahle, even had a nickname for him.’
‘Remember what it was?’ Maybe Mr Insurance Policy’s identity was about to be revealed.
‘Nyonyane. I think that was it. She said it over and over, like a chant.’
The doctor’s pronunciation was off by at least two syllables but close enough to make a guess. ‘Little bird,’ Emmanuel said. The name conjured a frail and vulnerable creature in need of protection from predators – not a boy who broke into homes, stole things and pushed an old man’s head into a wall. The name was all the more interesting because Zulu nicknames were given only after the true essence of a person was revealed to the name giver.
A workman at the Fountain of Light School had named Emmanuel ‘imvubu’, the hippo. The name had nothing to do with the animal’s size but with its nature. The hippo was considered a ‘mixed-up creature’, unruly and uncontrollable. Emmanuel spent four years living up to the name.
The rear corner of the house drew closer. Daglish stopped talking.
‘Holding hands, talking sweet. That’s all very lovely,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Now tell me the rest.’
The doctor’s face reddened and she said, ‘I finishe
d stitching the cut and made Gabriel sit up and take two aspirin, for the pain. He lay down again and pulled the girl onto the bed beside him. They didn’t kiss or touch but the whole thing was . . .’ She searched for the right word.
‘Intimate,’ Emmanuel suggested.
‘Shocking.’ Daglish stopped and picked at the petals of an azalea bloom to hide her embarrassment. ‘I’m no supporter of Prime Minister Malan and his Afrikaner volk but it was obvious that Gabriel and this girl were used to being in bed together.’
Like many of the English, Daglish played hide-and-seek with her own beliefs. The National Party at least said what they believed in: blacks and whites shall not, under pain of imprisonment, mix sweat and bodily fluids. They made no excuses, never blamed anyone else for their beliefs. People like Margaret Daglish couldn’t reconcile their discomfort at races mixing with their desire to appear enlightened.
‘You despise people like me, don’t you?’ Daglish kept tearing petals. ‘The middle-class English who pretend they want the best for Africa and the Africans but shudder at the idea that one of us might be going black.’
Going black. Such a quaint expression. Emmanuel hadn’t heard it in years. ‘Going native’ was the more usual way to express the deep-seated colonial dread of reverting to a primitive state. If left unchecked, this pull back to the wild would see white men and women squatting in grass huts, surrounded by naked children gnawing on impala bones.
‘You thought Amahle was pregnant,’ Emmanuel said, suddenly struck. ‘That’s why you didn’t want to conduct the examination.’
Daglish plucked the last bloom and dusted pollen from her fingers. ‘The Zulus have a saying, “When elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers.” I wanted to steer clear of the Reed family. Constable Bagley also. It was cowardly, I know.’
‘But understandable,’ Emmanuel said. Guilt was unproductive. ‘Constable Shabalala and I get to leave Roselet after the investigation is over. You don’t.’
‘I’ll survive.’ She began walking slowly to the rear of the house. ‘It turns out I was wrong about everything. Amahle was still a virgin.’
‘Zweigman confirmed it?’ Virginity didn’t rule out a sexual relationship. There were plenty of ways to scratch an itch.
‘He did,’ Daglish said. ‘Constable Bagley and I were the ones to jump to conclusions that night.’
‘Hold on.’ The town doctor’s comment got Emmanuel’s full attention. ‘You’re saying that Bagley was in Gabriel’s room with you?’
‘Oh yes. He stayed close to me during the whole visit.’ The smile faded. ‘Making sure I knew I should keep this quiet, no doubt.’
‘He was in the room the entire time?’ he pressed. Bagley’s every minute had to be accounted for, otherwise Emmanuel knew the constable would claim to have been elsewhere during Gabriel’s medical treatment.
‘From beginning to end.’ Despite the warmth of the day, the doctor rubbed her arms. ‘The expression on his face will stay with me for a long time.’ Emmanuel lifted an eyebrow to encourage her. ‘It was disgust mixed with desire. I think he hated Gabriel for being so morally weak but envied him at the same time.’
The Roselet station commander was a coward and a liar. That changed everything for Emmanuel. To hell with the police brotherhood, Bagley deserved whatever he had coming to him.
‘Maybe I was mistaken . . .’ Daglish hesitated before turning the corner of the cottage, anxious that she’d damaged the policeman’s reputation.
‘I’m sure you read the situation just right,’ Emmanuel said and quickened his pace. Constable Bagley was out in the hills with the native constables. That made the locked filing cabinet at the police station fair game.
Shabalala and Zweigman stood in the middle of the garden. They made a striking pair, a towering Zulu and a wizened German Jew both grinning at an image Zweigman was holding in a black leather wallet. Yet another picture of Dimitri, Emmanuel thought, the adopted genius baby. Shabalala’s continued enthusiasm for these pictures mystified Emmanuel.
‘Constable,’ he called to Shabalala. ‘Time to move.’
Shabalala turned, looking startled. Zweigman snapped the wallet shut and stuffed it into a pocket and out of sight. No smiles now, just an uncomfortable silence matched by a visible effort on both their parts to act normal.
‘Coming, Sergeant.’ Shabalala cut across the grass, hat tilted low to shade his eyes.
‘Dawson’s and then the police station.’ Emmanuel brushed off the image of his two closest friends huddled over a secret and excluding him. Obviously the picture in Zweigman’s wallet was for married men with children only. That was fine; he didn’t have time to coo over family snapshots.
‘What are my orders, Sergeant?’ The German doctor fiddled the edge of his wallet deeper into his pocket before approaching.
‘I’ll check with van Niekerk and let you know,’ Emmanuel said. ‘The colonel might want you to stay on. Or he might decide to send you home.’
‘I have every intention of staying on,’ Zweigman said. ‘I am the attending physician here at van Niekerk’s personal request.’
‘We’ll see,’ Emmanuel said. Predicting the colonel’s mood was an inexact science he’d never mastered. ‘Shabalala and I will be back soon.’
He turned to Margaret Daglish, who was hovering in the background. ‘Can you get our German friend more tea and keep him out of trouble till we get back?’
‘Tea will be easy,’ she said. ‘But after this morning, I can’t make any promises about avoiding trouble.’
‘A promise would be useless in any case,’ Zweigman said. ‘Detective Sergeant Cooper and trouble are best friends. They travel, eat and sleep together.’
‘I thought as much.’ Daglish smiled and the ghost of the bright young girl she must once have been – determined to rid the world of plague and pestilence – momentarily stirred to life.
Emmanuel and Shabalala started walking towards the car at the front of the house.
‘Detective Cooper.’ The town doctor caught up and spoke in a whisper. ‘There’s a spare room at the back of the house. Dr Zweigman is most welcome to use it.’
‘We’re here on police business. The department will pay for a room at the hotel where I’m staying.’
‘Yes, about that . . .’ Daglish stopped dead, forcing Emmanuel to stop too. ‘The hotel doesn’t take natives or certain types of Europeans.’
That took a second to translate. ‘No Jews,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ she replied.
Emmanuel rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. The right to discriminate was enshrined in law and perfectly legal, but he took the small, domestic tyranny of South African life as a personal insult. A distinguished surgeon denied a hotel room, a Zulu detective stuck at the rank of constable till death – it was all self-defeating bullshit.
‘Offer Zweigman the room,’ he said. ‘Tell him that Shabalala and I will be away for the night and you’d rather he spent the evening with a friend instead of strangers. Don’t mention the hotel.’
‘Of course not,’ Daglish mumbled and then added in the typically nervous way of the English when confronted with an embarrassing situation, ‘I’m so sorry about this.’
‘Not your fault.’ Emmanuel moved off before Margaret Daglish started in on how most folk in Roselet were good country people, kind-hearted and hospitable. Every South African was perfectly reasonable within the boundaries of their own families and their own race group. It was the point of crossover that killed them.
‘Grab the crowbar, Shabalala,’ Emmanuel said when the Chevrolet boot was open. They could shop for supplies later. He needed to burn energy. Now. ‘Let’s do some damage.’
*
The lock snapped under the force of the crowbar and the last drawer opened. Listed in alphabetical order with dates pencilled along the top right corner of each file, Roselet’s criminal history was neatly catalogued. Emmanuel threw the crowbar aside. It clanked on the concrete floor.
> ‘Check for the names Reed, Matebula and Paulus. Then see if Gabriel and Amahle have their own files,’ he said. ‘I’ll call the colonel while you search.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Shabalala was uneasy. Breaking and entering was against the law, even for the police.
‘Relax.’ Emmanuel picked up the telephone and dialled the operator. ‘Bagley’s not going to lodge a complaint. Believe me. If he does, I’ll toss him into a departmental hearing that will end his career.’
Shabalala began flipping through the files. ‘You have no wish for a peaceful life, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Maybe a wife and some sons and daughters will make you more cautious . . .’
Emmanuel smiled. ‘I’ll take the heat for this little break and enter, Shabalala. Your family is safe.’
The telephone in Durban was picked up. ‘What news, Cooper?’ The connection was clear, the colonel’s Dutch accent clipped and precise.
Emmanuel said, ‘Another dead body, sir.’
‘Black or white?’
‘A black man, killed in a similar way to the girl.’ He didn’t mention Mandla and the impi. The colonel wasn’t interested in native rituals and customs and they’d take too long to explain anyway.
‘Any Europeans on the list of suspects?’
‘Gabriel Reed. Youngest son of a rich farmer. Biggest farm in the valley. He was at the crime scene and had regular contact with the girl.’
‘Don’t be coy, Cooper,’ van Niekerk said. ‘If he was fucking her, then say so.’
‘They were physically close but she was a virgin at the time of death. Zweigman’s examination confirmed it.’
‘Cause of death?’ Van Niekerk was assimilating the facts and calculating what professional gain he might achieve from the investigation. A European killer added profile to a native murder. The press would swarm the court and the newspapers would splash photos of the accused killer under headlines like ‘White boy slays black lover’. Detectives and their superior officers fought each other for that kind of attention.
