by Malla Nunn
‘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 walking back towards 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 pay-off,’ 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 honour.’
‘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 practised turning cartwheels in the yard, the long strands of their brightly coloured 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.’ 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 you got the money from. Spoonfeed 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 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 goodnight.’
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 offence. 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 nestled 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 colour 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 colour 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 towards the house. They glanced at Shabalala once more from the stoep.
‘Bye bye, mister,’ said Rosie.
‘Goodbye,’ 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 nauseous. 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.’
NINETEEN
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 whisky 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 goodbye.’
‘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, the 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 whisky 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 cop 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 acknowledgement 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.’
Emmanuel turned left on Greyling. A yard after the café, a narrow path circled behind the shops. It had been worn in by the traffic of servants’ feet using the non-white entrances of the whites-only buildings. A kitchen boy sat on a wooden crate at the rear of the café peeling a sack of potatoes with a paring knife. The clank of cutlery came from the interior as the staff laid tables for the lunch special of roast lamb and mash.
Dawson’s General Store was next. Attached to the back of the business was a small house with a raised porch overlooking a scrappy yard and a chicken coop.
‘Around here.’ Emmanuel crossed to the raised porch and crouched down. The space below the deck was deep enough to conceal a child playing a game of hide and seek. ‘Check behind the stumps and on the ground for any uneven surface where a hole might have been dug and then covered.’
Shabalala worked from the opposite end, folded to half his height, crab-crawling around the edge of the porch. Chickens clucked and pecked for worms. Emmanuel reached below the wooden deck and pulled out a heavy canvas bag. Seeing that it was filled with dried corn, he shoved it back into place.
‘Sergeant. Over here.’ Shabalala hoisted a small black suitcase from deep under the porch. Spider webs and silvered snail trails covered the body and the leather handles.
‘That’s it.’ Emmanuel blew sand from the lock and snapped open the lid. Amahle’s new life was packed inside. Four dresses, a sweater and a pair of black shoes with red trim. ‘She was planning to come back for it.’
Bagley was right about Amahle being somewhere else after she’d finished satisfying his silent craving. In her mind she was here; the black suitcase grasped in her hands, bus wheels churning red dust into the air and then, just on sunset, the hazy outline of a city strung with electric lights growing up around her like a dream made of noise, traffic and possibilities.
‘No more,’ Shabalala said.
‘No more,’ Emmanuel agreed, thinking of Amahle’s unfulfilled scheme. How meticulous she’d been, even down to buying herself a travel insurance policy with a quick blow job on the roadside to ensure that next time Bagley was told to track her down and bring her back to Little Flint she wouldn’t be so powerless. He lifted each layer of clothing individually and checked for the five-pound payout.
‘Not a penny,’ he said, and shut the case. ‘If Amahle was planning to leave town, I can think of a place she might have spent the money Bagley gave her . . .’
Carrying the suitcase, Shabalala followed Emmanuel along the grass path, which hooked back onto the main street a few yards ahead. A black girl drew near with a chubby white baby tied to her back and another tow-headed child toddling alongside her. She stepped aside at Emmanuel’s approach and lowered her head to avoid the sin of making eye contact with a European man. The baby boy pressed fat fingers into the girl’s neck and rolled a pinch of skin between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the silky feeling.
The National Party split the population into groups based entirely on skin colour, but Amahle Matebula and this meek Zulu girl with a half-smile on her mouth had nothing in common but colour. Amahle, the beautiful one, could detect male weakness and possessed the au
dacity to dream of a future bathed in bright, saturated colours.
*
Bijay Gowda, Mr Bus Ticket, sat on a high stool behind the plate-glass window of a booth with the words TICKET MASTER stamped across the top in flaking green paint. In his late forties with thinning white hair, small black eyes and a prominent nose, Gowda resembled a human secretary bird nesting between the shallow counter in front of him and the open cabinet behind. The cabinet was crammed with scraps of paper, bundles of pens and pencils, and stacks of old newspapers rolled up and tied with string.
He worked a wooden toothpick into a gap between his canine and incisor teeth and watched Emmanuel and Shabalala approach the booth. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said and tucked the pick into his shirt pocket. ‘Where to? Johannesburg, the city of gold? Pietermaritzburg, home of the largest brick building in the southern hemisphere? Or Durban, city of golden beaches?’
‘No tickets today. But we need to ask you a few questions.’ Emmanuel peered through a smudged circle left on the glass by a previous buyer. Given their situation, it was best to act like the police but without the formal introductions. ‘Friday afternoon you sold a ticket to a young Zulu girl, white dress, good looking. Remember her?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Bijay said. ‘One-way ticket to Durban.’
‘Paid for how?’
‘Most definitely in cash.’ Bijay sat higher on the stool. ‘Credit and promissory notes are not accepted. Goods and services in lieu of money are not accepted. All tickets must be paid for and stamped at time of purchase.’ Mr Bus Ticket took the rules of his job seriously; a pencil stub, a booklet of tickets, an ink pad and a stamp were the tools he used to keep South Africa moving.
‘Using a one- or a five-pound note?’ Emmanuel asked.
‘A one-pound note.’ Bijay was confident. ‘Most definitely.’
‘You have a good memory to recall a single payment made five days ago.’
‘Roselet is not the Durban bus station, sir. We sell a limited number of tickets and most natives who come here buy what they need using coins, not notes.’ Bijay fiddled with the red bow tie clipped at the throat of his white shirt, accidentally pulling it loose in the process. ‘And it is as you say . . . the girl was pleasing to look at.’
