by Malla Nunn
‘Jim is home,’ Daglish said. ‘I can’t walk out the moment he walks in.’
‘Because your job is to be here, waiting for him, whether he’s on the road for days at a time or at home for one night,’ Emmanuel interpreted.
She scraped a fingernail against the door, chipping away at the surface. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking of me, Detective Cooper.’
‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘I do.’ The emotional cycle of the heavy drinker was a lesson Emmanuel’s father had taught him by personal example. Two lagers and the world became grand and every joke funny. Four drinks and the tide turned. Six empties, and every wrong, every hurt, was unearthed.
‘I can get you supplies from the surgery, anything you need, but I can’t help beyond that. I’m sorry.’
‘I need you, Dr Daglish. Not a roll of bandages and a bottle of iodine.’
The music stopped abruptly, replaced by the faint clink of ice rattling against glass. Footsteps creaked on the wooden floor.
‘Go back to your car and wait there.’ Daglish spoke quickly. ‘I’ll bring my medical bag as soon as I can.’
‘Dr Zweigman won’t pull through without your help,’ Emmanuel said. ‘And I promise to get you there and back safely.’
The footsteps reached the door. Daglish sucked in a breath and held it.
‘What are you doing out there, Margaret?’ The accent was public school mixed with officers’ club.
‘Talking to a patient,’ Daglish said. ‘Won’t be long.’
‘We’ve just run out of ice and the bloody maid has disappeared.’
‘I’ll get a bag from Dawson’s.’ She pressed a finger to her mouth to signal for quiet. ‘Five minutes.’
‘What you should do is sack the maid. Hauling ice is a kaffir’s job, for Christ’s sake, and you made a big enough fool of yourself in town this morning.’
‘Yes, of course. Won’t happen again.’
A grunt and a rattle of ice cubes in glass preceded Jim’s retreat to the lounge room. Emmanuel waited for Daglish to relax her shoulders and breathe normally. He understood the situation. Jim needed ice. If it was supplied in enough quantity to drown a few bottles, then a messy sleep on the couch instead of a fight was a possibility.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Daglish looked over Emmanuel’s shoulder and frowned. ‘Did you bring him to my house, Detective?’
Gabriel was out of the Chevrolet and tracing his dirty fingers across the Mercury convertible’s wheel arch. Sliding into the pristine leather seats and honking the horn was the next step. Exasperated, Emmanuel said to the boy, ‘We had a deal.’
‘I waited five minutes.’ The teenager leaned over the hood and admired the mellow light bouncing off the waxed surface. He looked as though he could stay there till nightfall, nose to the paint.
‘Leave, please,’ Daglish said. ‘I’ll get my medical bag and bring it to you at Dawson’s. Then you can help Dr Zweigman. Cross my heart.’
Freedom of choice was fine in theory but a bitch in practice. The spirit of the old soldier who’d hauled him through ghost towns reappeared in Emmanuel.
That’s the way, soldier. Take the offensive. The sergeant major assumed control. Zweigman is down, bleeding out on a hillside. The choice here is life or death. The rules of war apply. You will do whatever is necessary to get Daglish into the car.
Emmanuel walked to the back of the car and unlocked the boot.
‘Is it time to go already?’ Gabriel asked. He looked up from the ground where he’d crouched down to count the spokes on the wheel.
‘Yeah,’ Emmanuel said.
The boot’s big enough for the job, the sergeant major confirmed. Make sure the radio is turned up loud on the drive out of town in case she tries to kick her way out. Tying her up will help.
Daglish would have to be rendered innocuous and contained, military language for captured and imprisoned. Emmanuel knew he’d do it easily and without conscience. The sergeant major was right, the rules of war applied.
‘Dr Daglish will pack a special bag and deliver it to us at Dawson’s General Store.’ He walked around to the front of the car, leaving the boot cracked open an inch.
‘Mr David Dawson,’ Gabriel said. ‘Cash Only.’
‘That’s him.’ The one time Emmanuel had been into the general store with Shabalala the surly shopkeeper had shadowed their steps, calculating every purchase on scrap paper and mumbling, ‘Cash only. No credit. Store policy.’ Emmanuel had wondered at the time if local whites received similar treatment or if the peculiar behaviour was reserved for European visitors and black detectives; clearly Dawson distributed his paranoia fairly across all the race groups.
Emmanuel glanced at Daglish now, calculating her height and weight. She was taller than the average woman and reasonably strong. He’d have to surprise her in order to disable her and load her into the car. ‘I’ll take those supplies now, Doctor. Jim’s ice has to wait.’
‘Of course.’ She forced a smile. ‘The supplies are in the cellar.’
Follow close but not too close, Cooper. Give her an item to carry to the boot. That will get her in place.
Gabriel finished counting the silver spokes and stood up, satisfied with his inspection of the car. Daglish stepped back, wary of him. Gabriel smiled and said, ‘Dr Margaret Daglish, Play Happy, and Mr Jim Daglish, Empty Bottles.’
‘What did you say?’ The doctor flinched as if she’d been slapped.
‘Dr Margaret Daglish.’ He pointed directly at Daglish’s solar plexus. ‘Play Happy.’
‘Where did you get that name from?’ she asked. The dry sound of her swallowing could be heard in the still garden.
Gabriel shrugged and traced the sleek outline of the Mercury convertible from bonnet to boot, unaffected by the doctor’s stunned expression.
‘Play Happy and Empty Bottles.’ Daglish repeated the nicknames with a bleak smile. ‘Clever Gabriel.’
‘Every tree and rock has a special name.’ Emmanuel felt like Shabalala defending Baba Kaleni’s ability to rip the bandages off the hidden wounds of his own past.
‘Not a special name – the right name,’ Daglish said. ‘All the time I’ve spent smiling and pretending to be happy while the maid hides the empty bottles in the back shed. It’s pitiful. Even the boy can see that.’
Gabriel’s unintentional cruelty exposed the rot at the centre of Daglish’s life. She stood amid the spring green, looking lost. A moment before, the garden was a welcoming place. Now, with her sadness out in the open, it seemed cold and artificial – a stage set for an imaginary life. Her eyes welled with tears.
Patience, the sergeant major said. Don’t rush things, Cooper. Let her have a wee weep if she needs to. She’ll be easier to handle afterwards.
‘We were fabulous ten years ago,’ Daglish said. ‘I was the smartest woman in the room and Jim was the best-looking South African air force pilot on the base. It was a match made in heaven. That’s what it felt like at the time. Then the war ended. Jim found work managing a garage, then supervising a construction site and then running a café; then a dozen more things, none of them lasting more than six months. I kept practising medicine, earning most of the money. No children. Now look at us. Play Happy and Empty Bottles.’
‘Going from saving the world to pouring coffee is a hard transition to make,’ Emmanuel said. Every ex-soldier suffered the stress of returning to civilian life and some never quite got there.
‘You feel sorry for him.’ Daglish wiped away tears.
‘I feel sorry for you both,’ Emmanuel said. Christ, he’d switched soldiering for policing because he needed to create order out of chaos and to uphold some notion of good regardless of the consequences. He’d kept fighting the war long after the war was over. His marriage disintegrated while he chased an ideal.
Vera Lynn’s ‘When the Lights Go on Again’ hit the turntable in the cottage.
‘This used to be my favourite song,’ Daglish said. ‘I couldn’t wait for the war to b
e over. Oh, the life I was going to have!’
One more minute, laddie. Get yourself together. Saving Zweigman is more important than this lass’s domestic drama. The sergeant major liked to remind Emmanuel of mission objectives.
‘Well, the war is over, the lights are back on and the boys are back home but I’m living in the dark.’ Daglish turned to Emmanuel, her mind set on a new course of action. ‘What kind of wound?’ she asked with sudden resolve.
‘A stab wound to the right shoulder. Deep. Bleeding through the dressing.’
‘It’ll need cleaning and stitching and re-dressing.’ Daglish interrupted Gabriel’s detailed examination of the Mercury’s antenna by opening the driver’s side door and motioning to the sleek leather seats. ‘You can play inside till Detective Cooper and I come back. Promise not to move?’
‘Promise.’ Gabriel slid onto the two-tone leather seat and smoothed his fingers across the steering wheel, delighted.
‘That will hold his attention for a while,’ Daglish said and took the side path to the basement, her journey accompanied by Vera Lynn’s yearning ode to the joys of peacetime. ‘Tell me what we need, Detective.’
Do what the lady says, Cooper, the sergeant major said. She’s a volunteer now, not a conscript.
Emmanuel accepted the unfolding miracle without examining it. The universe, and Vera Lynn, had spoken.
It wasn’t Zweigman’s time to go.
Not today.
*
The temptation to speed down the main road and clear town quickly was great, but Emmanuel controlled the impulse. He carried irreplaceable cargo: a boot crammed with medical supplies for Zweigman’s treatment, food and blankets, Gabriel’s encyclopaedic mind and Daglish’s rediscovered courage.
‘Look,’ Gabriel pointed to the general store. ‘Cash Only.’
A thin white man in a blue and white striped grocer’s apron stalked a fat white tourist with a Brownie reflex camera slung around his neck.
‘Who’s that?’ Daglish joined in the game and pointed out a sallow woman wrestling a tiny boy onto the back of a Ford pick-up truck packed end to end with ragged children.
‘Mrs Beatrice Carson,’ Gabriel said. ‘Baby-a-Year.’
Daglish laughed and wound the window down to get air. She was riding high on the crest of freedom but five hours from now, with nothing but starlight to illuminate her own dark corners, Emmanuel suspected the wave would crash and Daglish would find herself stranded on a hillside with four strangers, wondering how her life had drained away.
Emmanuel slowed at the entrance to the police station and checked the parking lot. Constable Bagley and two white men in baggy blue suits and crushed fedoras stood near a black police Chevrolet: Detective Sergeant Benjamin Ellicott and Detective Constable John Hargrave of the West Street CID had arrived.
Gabriel shuffled across the seat to the window to get a better look at the three men in the police station yard. He pushed a fingertip to the glass.
‘Constable Desmond Bagley,’ he said. ‘Mr Insurance Policy.’
SEVENTEEN
Ten miles out of town, with blood still roaring in his ears, Emmanuel loosened his death grip on the steering wheel. He had driven ten miles trying to calm down and suppress the urge to slam on the brakes and shake answers about Mr Insurance Policy out of Gabriel Reed. But getting to Zweigman was the first priority. He kept the speedometer at sixty and ignored Daglish’s muffled gasps when stones pinged against the undercarriage and red dust coated the windscreen. He checked the rearview mirror and tried to figure out the best way to unlock the knowledge trapped in Gabriel’s brain while driving fast down a corrugated road.
‘The names you give the trees and animals come from science books. How do people get their names?’ he asked.
Gabriel lolled against the warm leather seat, watching light patterns flicker across the interior walls of the car. ‘The people tell me who they are.’
‘I see.’ Emmanuel didn’t see at all but saying otherwise might throw the boy out of the conversation. He tried another tack. ‘Mr Bijay Gowda is Bus Ticket because he sells bus tickets?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mrs Beatrice Carson is Baby-a-Year because she gives birth every year.’
‘Of course.’
‘And Constable Desmond Bagley is Mr Insurance Policy because he sells insurance to the Zulus in the valley?’
‘Not all of them,’ Gabriel said. ‘Just Amahle.’
Daglish caught the drift of the conversation and laced her fingers tightly together. She glanced out the window. Late afternoon sun hit the tops of the marula trees and long shadows fell across the road. It was too late to turn back now.
‘Insurance is expensive,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’m sure Constable Bagley was a nice insurance agent who gave Amahle a policy for free.’
‘No,’ Gabriel said. ‘She paid.’
A large cow-like 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 names 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 turn-off to Covenant Farm was two miles ahead. Gabriel would be out of the car and running barefoot through the hills before the handbrake 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 catalogued 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.’ Prising 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 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 turn-off, 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 dried 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-back
ed jackal calling its mate to a kill broke the quiet night.
Emmanuel found the bottle of home-made 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 eighty proof alcohol hit his stomach. He handed the bottle back to Emmanuel. They drank in silence and watched the last fibres 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 favour 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.’
