by Malla Nunn
‘And what was the content of this letter?’ Major van Niekerk had asked Emmanuel after calling him into his office at Marshall Square CIB in Jo’burg six months ago. One of the cunning Dutch major’s spies had alerted him to a Security Branch investigation in which a Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper was named.
Emmanuel had told the truth. Lying to the major was a waste of breath and time. ‘I wrote that I was sorry for her loss, that her son was innocent of the charges against him and that he was beaten into a confession by the Security Branch.’
Van Niekerk had absorbed the information and calculated the extent of the damage. ‘That letter is enough to have you declared unfit to serve in the police force, Cooper.’
‘I understand, Major.’
‘Do you also understand that as long as the Security Branch has that letter in their hands they can do anything they want to you? And I can’t help you.’
‘Yes,’ Emmanuel had said.
He had been careless and ungrateful. After returning from Jacob’s Rest with broken ribs and no one in custody for the murder of Captain Pretorius, the major had shielded him from criticism and questions. He had come back to the city and thrown that shelter away under the delusion that an unsigned letter, even one that told the truth, could wash away the brutal aftermath of the investigation in Jacob’s Rest.
‘One other thing,’ the major had said. ‘There was also mention of a murder file being sent over from the Sophiatown police.’
Sophiatown, a chaotic jumble of brick and corrugated-iron houses and shacks just west of Johannesburg, was home to a mix of blacks, Indians, mixed-race ‘coloureds’, Chinese and poor whites. Overcrowded, poverty-stricken and violent, close-knit and bursting with life and music, Sophiatown was an ugly and beautiful sprawl. And until he was twelve, it was Emmanuel’s home.
White noise had roared in his ears. The sound he imagined drowning victims heard before going under for the last time. ‘Security Branch must have asked for the police file on my mother’s murder.’ He was sure of it. ‘They’re going to use the disciplinary hearing to make the information in the file public.’
The police file raised awkward questions. Was Emmanuel’s father the Afrikaner man he grew up calling ‘Vader’, or was his father the Cape Malay owner of All Hours Traders, where his mother had worked six days in the week?
The major had studied a landscape painting of low green hills hanging on the beige wall, then said, ‘Security Branch are going to get you dismissed and then they’re going to get you reclassified from European to mixed race. And they’re going to do it publicly to inflict maximum damage.’
Emmanuel knew the damage would not be limited to him. The attention drawn to the case would taint everyone. His sister was bound to lose her teaching job at Dewfield College, a ‘European’ girls’ school run by ‘European’ staff. Major van Niekerk’s name would be dropped from promotion lists for allowing a man of uncertain racial origins to rise above the rank of detective constable. Even the Marshall Square detectives’ branch would be open to attack. They might all be dragged through the mud. Public humiliation and punishment was, Emmanuel suspected, exactly what Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Security Branch wanted.
Emmanuel knew that there was no one but himself to blame for this situation. He had personally and with great deliberation planned a mission that even the most naive GI could see was a clusterfuck waiting to unfold.
‘I’ll take the punishment before they can hand it out,’ he had said. ‘I’ll buy my own discharge and request racial classification before they do.’
Van Niekerk had mentally turned the suggestion over for a long while, then looked at him. ‘Fall on your own sword. It might work. Plus, your record will show a voluntary discharge, not a dismissal. That might leave the door open for you to come back when things cool down.’
Van Niekerk’s optimism had been dizzying. Neither of them would live long enough to see the Security Branch learn to forgive and forget.
The Major took a piece of paper from a drawer and slid it across the leather-topped desk to Emmanuel. He pulled a pen from his pocket and placed it next to the piece of paper. Emmanuel wrote out a request for discharge and backdated it to Friday, two days before his letter to the black man’s mother was delivered.
Van Niekerk scrawled a looped signature on the bottom of the request and said, ‘I was going to call you in, anyway, Cooper, to tell you some news. I’m being transferred to Durban next month. You should consider relocating out of Jo’burg for a while.’
And now here he was. In Durban … tied to a chair in a servant’s room somewhere on the outskirts of the city. Major van Niekerk had given him another chance and he’d failed to follow the simple order ‘Do not get involved’.
‘I’m a shipbreaker,’ Emmanuel said again to Lakshmi. ‘I went to the yards to find a prostitute. End of story.’
‘He’s lying, Maataa,’ Parthiv said. ‘He is a policeman. I swear it.’
‘Check me. I don’t have a gun or a police ID.’
Lakshmi knotted her fingers together. Physical contact with a sweat-stained male who trawled the docks for prostitutes was akin to plunging her head into a sewer.
‘Let me see.’ The woman in the pink sari stood and Lakshmi retreated into the ‘kitchen’ area. Emmanuel was pretty sure that Maataa meant ‘mother’ in Hindi but this woman had the tenderness of rhino hide. Her dark eyes were rimmed with kohl and devoid of sentiment. He shifted in the chair, conscious of his own sweat and the stink of rotting potatoes that clung to his suit, which, even when clean, looked old. The suit was the most respectable piece of clothing he owned; all the buttons matched. Maataa opened the jacket to expose a pale blue shirt and dark trousers.
‘Look,’ she said to her son. ‘No gun. No ID. No nothing.’
‘But…’ Parthiv began and clearly thought better of it. His mother was in charge now.
Maataa rifled the other pockets and found the small coffee flask, a pencil and nothing else. The van Niekerk notebook was safe in his back pants’ pocket. The ID card listing his age and race classification and his driver’s licence were in a drawer back at his flat. He never took them out any more. Let the tram conductors figure out for themselves where he belonged. He was done trying.
‘The dead boy at the train yard,’ Maataa said to Emmanuel. ‘He was white?’
‘Under the dirt, yes, he was white.’
‘You know this boy?’
‘He’s not a relation,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’ve seen him around the dock area. That’s all.’
‘Big trouble.’ The Indian woman narrowed her eyes. ‘You will go to the police?’
‘I won’t go to the police,’ he said. ‘It was a mistake to get involved.’
Maataa’s angular face drew closer. She smelled of cloves and a temple fragrance Emmanuel couldn’t name.
‘You are scared,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am.’ It was better to stay completely off the Security Branch radar.
‘This is very good.’
Maataa crooked a finger towards Giriraj. He untied the rope binding Emmanuel’s hands, then returned to the bedroom space and awaited the next command.
‘I can go?’ Emmanuel asked. He didn’t want any misunderstanding.
‘You will keep your word. This I can see.’ She searched Emmanuel’s features and frowned. ‘What is it that you are … European? Mixed race? Or maybe you were born in India?’
Emmanuel said, ‘You choose.’
Maataa laughed at the idea that she would ever have that power. ‘Ahh, you are a naughty man. Go with Parthiv but do not go back to the harbour. There are plenty, plenty clean women in Durban.’
‘I’ll go straight home,’ Emmanuel said.
He was escorted from the small room by Parthiv. The night garden was fragrant and cream flowers the size of babies’ hands twirled in the breeze. He was free to finish the last one or two hours of the van Niekerk job and forget that he’d ever attempted to relive the role of detective
sergeant. The memory of Jolly’s curled fingers was stark.
‘What were you doing in the freight yard?’ he asked Parthiv when they stepped onto a narrow driveway at the front of the house. The city of Durban glittered below. Out on the dark mass of the Indian Ocean shone the lights of anchored freighters awaiting the call into the harbour. Emmanuel guessed he was in Reservoir Hills, a suburb created especially for the Indian population. Further out on the urban edges was Cato Manor, the tin-and-mud catchment area set up for the burgeoning black population.
‘I too was looking for a woman,’ Parthiv confessed and unlocked the kidnap car, a midnight blue Cadillac low to the ground and gleaming with chrome. ‘My mother wants Amal only to study, study and study. This is not good. He is clever but he is not a man.’
Emmanuel got into the front passenger seat and waited for Parthiv to fire the engine. Giriraj stepped out of the side pathway and climbed into the back. He moved surprisingly quietly for a big man. They reversed out of the sloping drive and followed an unlit road edged with jacaranda trees.
‘Why the docks?’ Emmanuel asked. The lowest class of prostitute worked the dockyards and the vacant boxcars.
‘There was no choice,’ Parthiv said. ‘If I took Amal to a house where there are paid Indian women, my mother would find out. She wants him only to make the good marks and be a lawyer.’
‘So,’ Emmanuel clarified, ‘you took your little brother to the docks to find a woman. Maybe even a white woman. As a treat.’
‘Exactly.’ Parthiv smiled, happy his selfless motives were understood and appreciated.
Emmanuel wanted to swing back to the house, find Amal and tell him, ‘Never listen to Parthiv. Unless you want to spend a few years in a tiny cell with a bucket to crap in, keep studying. You can cure virginity quick. Jail goes on forever.’
‘He’s still a child,’ Emmanuel said. ‘He’ll find his own way in a few years.’
‘What happened to that boy in the alley,’ Parthiv said, ‘that could also happen to Amal. Gone, just like that. Better to die a man.’
‘Better not to die at all,’ Emmanuel said and tried to block the image of Jolly Marks lying in the dirt. Collecting evidence was what the police did and Emmanuel wasn’t one of them any more. He was a civilian working for Major van Niekerk. Still, the crime scene bothered him.
‘Where was the boy when you first saw him?’ he asked.
Once a few facts about the murder were in place he’d stop and let the Durban police do their job. A dead white child was on the top of the ‘murders that matter’ list. The detective branch would throw men and expensive overtime into solving the case.
‘The boy was lying there,’ Parthiv said. ‘Blood everywhere.’
‘This is while you were looking for a prostitute?’
‘Jâ, same like you. We found one, red hair with a shiny purple dress and small titties, but she wouldn’t do it with a charra.’ Parthiv was offended again at the memory. ‘I said, “Only one of us. Good money. No police to see us.” This whore said no! We kept going and he was there in the laneway, dead as anything.’
‘Anyone come out of the laneway?’
‘No.’
‘You hear anything? Voices? An argument?’
‘Nothing. We was quiet because the police, they see Indians more quickly than they see white people.’
‘Did you notice any other men in the area?’
Was Jolly’s murder connected to a bad deal? Did he see something he shouldn’t have?
‘No one,’ Parthiv said and fiddled with the dial of the radio despite all the stations being off air till daylight.
‘But you knew the boy.’ Emmanuel pushed ahead. ‘Tonight wasn’t the first time you’d seen him. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘You a cop,’ Parthiv said. ‘For sure.’
‘I’m not.’ Emmanuel knew he’d pushed too far. ‘I was just curious.’
Parthiv’s voice swelled with panic. ‘You’re working undercover, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not an undercover policeman,’ Emmanuel said. Or any other kind of police, he reminded himself. ‘Once you’ve dropped me at the freight yards, you and I will never see each other again.’
‘For real?’ Parthiv said.
‘For real.’
The Cadillac sped through the empty streets and zipped past municipal parks with deserted swings and scrappy cricket pitches. They soon arrived at the Point freight yards. A drunk zigzagged along the footpath and a stray dog pawed at the contents of a toppled garbage can. There were no police wagons, no crime scene barricades and no guard positioned at the entrance to the alley where Jolly Marks still lay undiscovered and alone.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ Emmanuel said. Parthiv responded with a humourless snort and swung a U-turn back towards the city centre. Red tail-lights dimmed and then disappeared. Emmanuel scooped loose coins from his pocket. The closest public telephone box was within visual distance of the Point police station. A risky position for what he had in mind.
He flipped his jacket collar up like a second-rate hood in one of Parthiv’s gangster films and ducked into the red and cream circular booth. A tattered telephone directory dangled from a metal chain. He thumbed the pages to the list of police stations and fed coins into the slot.
‘Sergeant Whitlam.’ The voice on the other end was gruff. The morning shift and a soft bed were still hours away. ‘Point police.’
‘There’s a body in the alley behind the Trident shipping office.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Listen carefully, Sergeant Whitlam. This is not a hoax or a joke. Send someone out to the alley behind Trident shipping. A boy has been murdered.’
‘Who is this, please?’
Emmanuel hung up. It had come to this: anonymous phone calls in the dead of night to speed the wheels of justice. He retreated into the shadows and crouched across from the entrance to the alley, like a thief. Five minutes ticked by and then ten. Every second magnified just how ludicrous the situation was. He was a grown man hiding in the dark, with no option but to watch and wait. The sensible thing was to get up and walk away.
A gangly foot policeman with sleep-tousled hair turned up to conduct the search a quarter of an hour later. Twenty years old at most, Emmanuel figured, not cynical yet but certain that the charge office sergeant had sent him out to chase a waste-of-time tip-off. The constable entered the narrow pathway with his torch on high beam and re-emerged quickly, gasping for air. The subtropical night was still and the policeman’s rasps could be heard across the width of the road. Nausea, shock and disbelief … Emmanuel waited for the young man to go through the emotions that came with the discovery of a murder victim. The constable wiped his nose with a sleeve and pulled the police whistle free. A long and mournful note sounded across the Point.
CHAPTER THREE
It was 6.45 a.m. and the morning light was soft on the shopfront awnings and the tidy red-brick houses sitting behind tidy red-brick fences and trimmed hedges. Emmanuel buttoned his grubby jacket, plastered down errant strands of hair and approached Dover, the Edwardian-style apartment box that housed his ‘fully furnished short-term accommodation’. The cross-town tram rumbled off towards West Street in the heart of the city, the lion’s share of the seats reserved for white office workers, clerks and perfumed shop girls. Non-whites were squashed into the last six rows of the carriage in a press of saris, khaki suits and pre-packed lunch pails.
He approached the entrance to the Dover flats slowly, the better to judge the chances of slipping in the side gate. He’d waited to see a guard posted at the murder scene before turning for home. That was a mistake. Mrs Edith Patterson, the landlady, was out on the front footpath pulling up weeds from cracks in the pavement. Her purple hair was wound tight over rollers. The brass ring that held the keys to her building clanked together against the green material of her housecoat as she worked to tame nature.
The black maid, a slight Zulu girl in a patchwork dress, collected the debris and
made neat piles ready to be swept up. Rows of paper Union Jacks were strung along the fence to celebrate Princess Elizabeth Windsor’s imminent coronation. A dirty Scottish terrier panted down the stairs, trotted to Mrs Patterson and attempted to mate with her arm.
‘No, Lancelot.’ The landlady shook off the dog. ‘Bad boy!’
Emmanuel did a half turn towards the tram stop. He’d try his luck later.
‘Mr Cooper.’
Mrs Patterson was now standing up, a much better vantage point from which to look down her nose at him. He walked over to her and smiled. Buttoning the jacket was a mistake, he realised. It only made him more pitiful: as if he really believed a simple gesture could wipe the smell from his clothes or rearrange the muddy creases in his suit. He unbuttoned his jacket in a show of defiance. Five months at the Dover and he’d never been late making the monthly rent. He was still paid up one week in advance. That counted for something.
‘Mr Cooper.’ The landlady’s brown eyes narrowed. ‘Are you going to make me regret my decision to take you on?’
She pointed to the hand-painted sign nailed under the building’s name, which read ‘Europeans and well-behaved Mauritians allowed. No Exceptions’. Well-behaved Mauritians being a code for any light-skinned, mixed-race person willing to pay the inflated rent and refrain from bringing bar girls into the room for a night of mattress thumping.
‘My car broke down and I missed the last tram,’ Emmanuel explained while the mangy terrier began an unsuccessful liaison with the mailbox pole.
Mrs Patterson pursed her lips. She waited for Emmanuel to make an apology or show regret for confirming her worst suspicions about mixed-race men. He relaxed his shoulders, kept eye contact and said nothing. He’d explained himself enough for one day. The maid’s hand hovered above an unplucked weed, held there by the sudden tension in the air.
Mrs Patterson broke eye contact first. ‘I run a good house. A clean house.’ She brushed dirt-flecked hands against her housecoat and the keys at her waist chimed. ‘I thought you understood that, Mr Cooper.’
