Silent Valley

by Malla Nunn

  ‘Anything else?’ There could be more. Mr Bus Ticket reclipped the tie but his skinny fingers continued to twiddle the red bow from side to side.

  ‘She asked me if the ticket was refundable in case she missed the bus. I said we do not give refunds but that in her case I would.’ Bijay gave up on straightening the tie and placed both hands on the counter. Ink from the ticket stamp had stained his fingertips and nails dark blue.

  ‘Why the special treatment?’ Amahle might have purchased insurance using the same payment method as for Bagley. The thought was depressing.

  ‘I recognised the girl from before. When Constable Bagley found her and took her away before the bus came.’ Bijay tapped his thumb against the counter. ‘I had a daughter, same age, also bright and pretty. With God now for eleven years. It was because of her that I offered the refund. This Saturday or the next there are always seats on the bus.’

  ‘The ticket was issued for this coming Saturday, not last Saturday,’ Emmanuel clarified.

  ‘That is correct,’ Bijay said. ‘The ticket is still valid for travel.’

  ‘Philani did not have the five pounds or the ticket,’ Shabalala said quietly.

  Emmanuel moved away from the ticket booth. Bijay resumed working the pick between his teeth but leaned closer to the glass to catch any part of the conversation he could.

  ‘Philani was scared and running on Friday night,’ Emmanuel said. ‘If he had the five pounds he would have given it to his mother to hide.’

  Shabalala set the suitcase down and pulled at an earlobe, thinking. ‘The person who killed Amahle and Philani has the five pounds and the ticket.’

  ‘That would be my guess. But waiting for Saturday afternoon to see who turns up at the bus depot with a one-way ticket to Durban and a five-pound note in their pocket isn’t practical. General Hyland will have sent in the dogs by then and we have to be at St Thomas Anglican Church at ten a.m. for van Niekerk’s wedding. If we don’t show up, he’ll make our lives hell,’ Emmanuel said and realised with surprise that he actually wanted to see the colonel get married.

  He knew van Niekerk’s true nature, the cunning and secretive life he lived away from the garden parties and the lounges of decent society. Despite that ambitious, hidden life, Emmanuel admired this public declaration of unity van Niekerk was about to make. At least the colonel was striving to build a family and a home, the very things Emmanuel had promised his mother he would find for himself.

  ‘We cannot wait till Saturday, Sergeant, so we must ask questions of the one who was there with Amahle on the night she died.’ Shabalala retrieved the suitcase and tucked it under his arm.

  Emmanuel thought back to the crime scene and imagined it at night. He saw Gabriel holding a branch, standing guard over Amahle’s body as it lay on the ground under the stars. ‘Let’s get back to the valley,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Gabriel was gone when we woke up this morning, but he’s bound to turn up again sometime.’

  *

  The tangled green bush that screened the tunnel from the path was trampled flat, the branches snapped clean off and thrown on the ground. Emmanuel ducked inside. The roar of blood in his head was disorienting and the outline of the trees and plants pulsed and shook with each breath. He and Shabalala had run all the way from the Chevrolet up to the tunnel. It cut ten minutes off the journey but left a burning fatigue in every muscle.

  He straightened up and looked to the tunnel opening. Mandla Matebula stood on the rock ledge with a stabbing spear in one hand and a small shield balanced in the other. He was alone and at ease in the mottled sunlight breaking the tree canopy. The keloid scars crisscrossed the dark skin on his chest and shoulders with silver.

  Like the calm after a storm, the sergeant major whispered. I don’t blame you for being intimidated, Cooper, but don’t let it show, for Christ’s sake.

  Two more Zulu men, members of Mandla’s impi, appeared from fixed positions in the brush and blocked the exit.

  ‘This man is either very stupid or very brave to have come here,’ Shabalala said. ‘Even the son of a chief knows that if you touch one white person you declare war on them all.’

  ‘Mandla’s no fool,’ Emmanuel said. ‘He’s just showing up our weakness, having some fun at our expense.’

  ‘Let us walk, Sergeant.’ Shabalala moved to the ledge in front of the tunnel with unhurried steps. ‘Strength must meet strength.’

  Emmanuel followed, copying Shabalala’s confident stride. Every footfall on the rock surface sounded louder than the last. Mandla remained fixed in place, not concerned or frightened by the approach of two policemen. He simply waited.

  Check the doctors, Cooper. They could be lying in the tunnel with their guts all over the floor, the sergeant major said. After all, you did get involved in a clan fight and defended the men who attacked the Matebula kraal. Maybe Sampie Paulus was right. Maybe you should have left well enough alone.

  ‘Dr Daglish,’ Emmanuel called out. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ A stone bounced from the tunnel entrance and Margaret peered over the ledge. ‘No broken bones, Detective, just scared.’

  ‘Zweigman?’

  ‘Resting.’ Daglish’s brown cotton dress was rumpled and her blunt-cut bob frizzing at the ends but otherwise she looked fine. ‘Gabriel’s still out in the woods.’

  ‘We’ll be up in a minute,’ Emmanuel said. The doctor flashed Mandla a quick look and mouthed the instruction ‘Be careful’, before ducking into the tunnel.

  Underestimating the speed and strength of a powerful Zulu with a battle-scarred body was not a mistake Emmanuel would make but he was grateful for the warning all the same. He turned his attention to the rock ledge, unsure how to defuse the situation.

  Shabalala shot him a look that said, ‘Stop. Let me go first.’ He stepped within range of Mandla’s spear. ‘Have you come to wash your spear in our blood, son of the great chief?’ he asked. ‘Or is there another purpose to your visit?’

  ‘My spear has already been washed. Many years ago,’ Mandla said, an admission to wounding and perhaps even killing a person in the past. ‘Washing’ one’s spear in human blood made a man a man during Shaka Zulu’s military reign over a hundred years before. Mandla laid his weapon and shield down on the ground and crouched with his elbows balanced on the top of his knees.

  ‘I come with news,’ he said.

  ‘If you wish to speak I am listening,’ Shabalala replied with grace and squatted down to begin the conversation.

  ‘I will talk with the boss, not the servant boy.’ Mandla looked beyond Shabalala’s shoulder to Emmanuel, who stepped back to signal his distance from the interview.

  ‘In this matter,’ Shabalala said, ‘I am the boss.’

  Mandla digested that information with a frown, weighing up the possibility that a black policeman had real authority. True or not, there was nothing to be gained from walking away. ‘I led you to the gardener but you have not found the one who killed him or my sister Amahle.’

  ‘We are still looking,’ Shabalala said.

  ‘Looking must turn to finding. The great chief has called for a powerful sangoma to sniff out the witches he believes are responsible for the deaths.’ Mandla spoke without emotion. ‘I have heard him say that Amahle’s mother and her little sister have evil spirits in them that must be found and cast out.’

  ‘Do you believe this is true?’ Shabalala asked.

  Mandla treated the question with disdain. ‘Nomusa is a scared woman. The little sister is a child. There are no evil spirits or wizards, only liars and greedy men. Such as my father, the great chief.’

  Emmanuel inched closer at the mention of Amahle’s little sister. ‘If the sangoma believes there’s an evil spirit in the girl . . . ?’

  ‘She will be cast out of the kraal with her mother. No clan will give them shelter. They will live like ghosts out on the veldt, drifting and hungry.’ Mandla rubbed a scar on his shoulder, an old injury healed but not forgotten. ‘The chief’s fifth wife will
make sure of this.’

  The fifth wife who’d stood up in the middle of the funeral to get a clear view of Amahle’s body being lowered into the short grave.

  ‘My heart is heavy with this news,’ Shabalala said. ‘But there is no law against a sangoma working a spell unless a person is harmed. We can stop the ceremony if we are there, but once we are gone the chief will proceed with his plan.’ The harm to Nomusa and her daughter would come after the spell – when they were declared witches and cast out.

  ‘That is why you must find the person who killed Amahle and Philani before sunset tomorrow. That is when the sangoma will come to the kraal and pass judgement.’ Mandla stood up and collected his weapons. ‘The great chief cannot act against the word of the police once they have named the murderer.’

  Mandla jumped from the rock and landed with animal grace. His men moved aside to allow him access to the mountain path. They disappeared into the bush, three African men in a European century. Their ancient regiments of the eagle, the lion and the buffalo were long gone, along with their dominion over the land itself.

  Emmanuel walked over to Shabalala. ‘What was that really about?’ he asked.

  ‘Two things, Sergeant. With his good heart, Mandla wants vengeance for Amahle. With his bad heart, he wants to expose the great chief as a fool who must be removed and replaced.’

  ‘He’s planning a coup.’

  ‘Planting the seeds,’ Shabalala said. ‘The chief did wrong when he buried Amahle upright. If he is proved incorrect about Nomusa and the little sister being the witches responsible for the murders, then he will be further weakened. That is when Mandla will come for him. Not openly with a spear, but behind doors with poison or a blanket pressed onto the face.’

  ‘And everyone lives happily ever after?’

  ‘No.’ Shabalala looked away, embarrassed. ‘The great chief’s wives and children will be split up and given to other chiefs or to men who can afford to keep them.’

  ‘It’s the devil or the deep blue sea,’ Emmanuel said. ‘If the chief lives, Nomusa and her daughter will be outcasts. If he dies, they’ll be given away to strangers like cattle.’

  ‘This is the way of things.’

  Married off young, a wife, then a mother and finally a widow without a home to shelter her children: Amahle had looked ahead, seen her own future and said no.

  ‘I vote for giving Nomusa and her daughter the chance to start again, even if it’s in the house of strangers.’ Emmanuel moved to the tunnel entrance, mentally flipping through the pages of his notebook, searching for a vital piece of information that might have been overlooked. ‘We have a day and a half to crack this case, Constable Shabalala.’

  TWENTY

  Emmanuel looped back on one of three straggly approach paths leading to the shelter where Philani Dlamini’s body had been found. The clearest track, a well-trodden seam of dirt winding up from Covenant Farm to the crest of the hill and down again to the English enclave of Little Flint Farm, gave up nothing of value. Shabalala and Emmanuel wasted two hours walking up, down and along zigzagging lines that disappeared into the bush.

  Emmanuel then climbed onto the rock ledge. Shabalala was already there, sitting under the shade of a yellowwood tree. He shook his head to say that he too had found nothing on his search.

  ‘The thunderstorm washed the mountain clean,’ he said.

  Emmanuel stood in the shade. It was just after noon and the sun was high overhead. More frustration and wasted hours lay before them. ‘Someone besides the killer must have known Philani was here. He hid in the shelter for at least two days. He lit a fire, for god’s sake!’

  Interviews with the inhabitants of the Covenant Farm had come up empty. The Zulu workers claimed to have seen nothing and therefore had nothing to say to the police.

  ‘The housemaid and the labourers are scared that the great chief will say they were to blame for Amahle and Philani’s death if they talk,’ Shabalala said. ‘For them, it is best to keep quiet.’

  ‘Forget the servants,’ Emmanuel said. ‘What about Karin? She must hunt in these mountains every two or three days to keep meat on the table. There’s no way she didn’t know Philani was up here, no matter what she says.’

  But Karin had been insistent that she, like the servants, saw nothing out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the discovery of the body. Certified bullshit as far as Emmanuel was concerned, but he couldn’t prove otherwise.

  ‘There is still the schoolboy,’ Shabalala said.

  ‘If he ever comes back to the tunnel.’ Up before dawn and running through the mountains; it was easier to store water in your pocket than to hold on to Gabriel. No-one had seen him since the night before. ‘We can’t rely on him for anything.’

  ‘Perhaps we missed something at the place where Amahle’s body was found.’

  ‘I don’t think the killer left evidence at either crime scene,’ Emmanuel said. He was certain now that the murders weren’t crimes of passion but were planned and coldly executed. ‘Searching the area again won’t do any good.’

  A series of long whistles and the crack of a whip rose up to them from the foot of the hill. Sampie Paulus and his oxen were on the move. A thin wisp of smoke drifted from the chimney of Covenant homestead; another meal of stewed springbok on the stove for dinner and then again for lunch tomorrow. The mere thought of it made Emmanuel’s mouth feel greasy. He crossed to the edge of the rock, which provided a clear view of the main path that connected the Afrikaner farm to the English one.

  ‘Let’s give Sampie five minutes to leave the yards and we’ll head back down. I’m going to have another talk with Karin.’

  ‘The Dutch woman is hard like a stone in the river,’ Shabalala said. ‘She will not break.’

  ‘I know it,’ Emmanuel said. ‘But we’ve run out of people to question and leads to follow. We might as well chip away at the granite block, right?’

  ‘If you say so, Sergeant.’

  Sampie’s whistles grew faint and the bellowing of the oxen faded. Shabalala moved to Emmanuel’s side and they stood for a minute, hat brims tilted, jackets buttoned up, and brushed the grass and leaves off their suits.

  They jumped off the ledge together and landed on the mossy ground. The path was five yards ahead, cutting through stands of marula and stinkwood trees. Movement flashed between the trunks; someone was climbing up the hill from Covenant Farm.

  ‘Wait,’ Emmanuel said to Shabalala. ‘Bare feet or boots?’

  ‘Boots.’

  ‘Only two people at Covenant with boots, and one of them is driving a team of oxen in the other direction.’

  ‘The Dutch woman was also waiting for her father to leave.’

  Karin might be hunting or on her way to repair a fence. Emmanuel crouched down and Shabalala sank beside him, staying motionless as if stalking prey.

  The crunch of boots on dirt grew close, then Karin moved by at a clip with her .22 rifle slung across her shoulder. She radiated a focused energy. Within ten seconds she was gone.

  ‘Hunting,’ Emmanuel said but kept hidden. ‘There was something about her, though . . .’

  ‘The white flower.’ Shabalala pointed to his left ear. ‘Here.’

  ‘That’s it.’ The bloom had looked snow bright against the jet black of Karin’s hair. That a tough Afrikaner female in khaki pants and workboots would choose such a fragile ornament was intriguing. Emmanuel stood up. ‘Let her get ahead,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll follow.’

  Shabalala walked to the path and examined the soil, memorising the grid pattern left by the boots and the inward turn of the worn right heel. ‘When you are ready,’ he said. ‘The Dutch woman is moving fast and it is better to keep close to her but out of sight.’

  ‘On your lead, Constable.’

  Shabalala set off and Emmanuel followed. Karin kept to the track until it spilled over the mountain and dropped to the valley floor and they could see the far-off buildings of Little Flint Farm. At that point, she split away a
nd detoured into thick bush, which turned into a green tunnel of overhanging trees that blocked the sun. Shabalala crept ahead and looked down the tunnel that tapered off to an archway made of windswept branches. The air was cool under the trees. ‘Behind the branches,’ he said. ‘I will wait here, Sergeant.’

  ‘Why?’

  Emmanuel understood the answer before Shabalala could open his mouth. A moan came from the concealed area and then the sound of urgent breathing, growing quicker. Shabalala looked like he might turn and make a dash back to the sunlit path. Alone or with another policeman, the Zulu detective was not prepared to witness Karin’s private business.

  ‘Close your eyes and ears and stay put,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’ll see what’s going on.’ He edged forward, careful not to step on twigs and rustling leaves. The moans deepened, two voices working in concert but at different pitches.

  Emmanuel pressed closer. Karin’s rifle rested against a tree trunk like an umbrella left to dry on a porch. Shafts of sunshine breaking through the canopy lit the dim snuggery, surrounded on all sides by forest. Two figures, partially clothed, straddled a smooth rock platform. Karin, her pants unbuckled and hooked around her knees, ground her hips between a pair of smooth brown legs with white underwear dangling from a foot.

  ‘Are you my girl?’ Karin grasped a loop of brunette hair with her lean fingers and held it tight like a leash.

  ‘Ja . . .’ Ella Reed dug her heels into Karin’s backside, the skirt of her green dress pushed up around her waist. ‘Your girl. I promise.’

  Karin pressed Ella against the rock, controlling the rhythm of their coupling and drawing broken sobs from the Englishwoman’s mouth.

  Just when the job turns to shit and you’re ready to walk away, God sends you a little present . . . The Scottish sergeant major’s laugh was filthy. I paid good money to see a pussy grind in Naples but you get it for free, Cooper. You lucky bastard.