by Malla Nunn
‘Hélène called me this afternoon. She said you’d brought a Russian couple to the house.’
Anger replaced the fear and Emmanuel stepped towards the major. He didn’t buy van Niekerk’s apparent ignorance. Someone had given away Chateau La Mer’s location to the man in the black Dodge.
‘I left Hélène tied to a chair, scared for her life. Vincent was stuffed, bleeding, into the servant’s room. You could have warned them about the raid but you threw them to the wolves.’
‘I had nothing to do with the raid. I’d never put that pressure onto Hélène and Vincent, not after what they’ve been through. I was in Durban North all night, toasting the future Queen.’
‘You were at a toffee coronation party till almost three thirty in the morning?’
‘The party just broke up twenty minutes ago.’ Van Niekerk pulled his black tie loose and dumped it onto the sofa. ‘And watch your tone, Cooper.’
‘You didn’t have to be there physically to be a part of the raid,’ Emmanuel said. ‘All you had to do was pick up a phone and call the Security Branch in.’
‘I’m drunk, Cooper.’ Van Niekerk rubbed his chin and cheeks. ‘But not drunk enough to call the Security Branch. For anything.’
Van Niekerk was a one-man republic. Personal power and authority were all that mattered in his world. Sharing any spoil with the Security Branch was out of the question, Emmanuel realised.
‘Can you make the major a pot of coffee?’ he said to Lana. ‘Black with a lot of sugar, please.’
‘Good idea, very good idea,’ van Niekerk said. ‘Bring it into my office with a packet of cigarettes. A couple of pieces of toast, too.’
‘Ja, one minute.’ Kitchen girl was on her list of jobs.
‘There’s a phone in the office.’ Van Niekerk followed Lana to the door. ‘Come with me, Cooper. I need to make a few calls.’
They entered the darkened room and lit the lamps. The major fumbled in a back pocket and retrieved a silver chain with three different-sized keys attached. He tried to align the key with the lock but scratched a mark into the wood surface of the desk drawer.
‘I’m stuffed,’ he said to Emmanuel and threw the keys across the desk. ‘You do it.’
Emmanuel unlocked the bottom drawer. Four leatherbound books lay inside. It wasn’t a fiction. Some men really did have little black books filled with the secrets of others. The dock surveillance lists were also there. Dozens of policemen slept through the night in ignorance while the evidence for their undoing was right here at van Niekerk’s fingertips. Were the sweat-making photographs uncovered during the Jacob’s Rest investigation stashed in one of the other drawers?
‘What do you need?’ Emmanuel said.
‘All of it.’ Van Niekerk sat behind the desk and unbuttoned his jacket. ‘We’ll have to call in a few favours before the night is out.’
Emmanuel removed the stack of books and placed them on the mahogany desk. His own name was in one of them, he was sure. Listed in which section - talented failure, hired hand or replaceable asset?
‘Thank Christ.’ Van Niekerk greeted Lana’s arrival with enthusiasm. ‘Over here, there’s a good girl. I need two cups black and a cigarette before I pick up the phone.’
Lana placed the tray on the desk and set out a plate with toast close to the major’s hand. She poured the coffee, added three sugars and stirred before setting the cup conveniently close to the plate. Next, she put a cigarette to her lips, lit it, drew on it and then handed it to the major. Emmanuel noted the red smudges of her lipstick on the filter. She had repainted her mouth. She began to pour a second cup of coffee.
‘Cooper can take care of himself,’ the major said quietly and Lana put the coffee pot down.
‘Can I do anything else, Kallie?’ Her smile was strained.
‘Go to bed and get some rest. You look like you’ve had a long night, you and Cooper.’
Even when drunk, the cunning Dutchman could grab information from the air quicker than the most experienced detectives.
‘Goodnight then,’ Lana said and left the office without glancing in Emmanuel’s direction. Major van Niekerk gulped his black coffee and arranged the books in a neat line. His fingers stroked the covers.
‘What happened tonight, Cooper?’
‘Lana was at La Mer when the raid happened. She helped get the Russians out.’
‘How did she get from here to there?’
‘I asked her to help translate this.’ Emmanuel brought out the Walther PPK and showed it to van Niekerk. ‘There’s a Russian inscription engraved along the side.’
‘Beautiful.’ Van Niekerk admired the gun before looking up at Emmanuel. ‘How did you know Lana spoke Russian?’
‘I asked her if she knew anyone who did,’ Emmanuel said. ‘She volunteered.’
‘Just like that?’
If snakes smiled, Emmanuel imagined, they’d look just like van Niekerk did now.
‘Yeah, just like that,’ he said, then, ‘Why did you sign my release papers, Major?’
‘I told you.’
‘You told me a lie. Now tell me the truth.’
‘When did you figure that out?’ the major said. Not many people got a step ahead of him. It made being caught out a rare pleasure.
‘The afternoon you dropped me at La Mer. Your voice was calm but your hands were sweating. Why did you sign?’
The major lit a fresh cigarette and said, ‘I got a call in the middle of the party to say you were in police custody and about to be booked on three murder counts. Would I like to help?’
‘How did this person know we were connected?’ He had kept all past history under wraps, even from Lana Rose.
‘A very, very good question. One that I asked myself immediately. Johannesburg and Durban are a long way apart. Only someone with access to detective branch records could have known we had once worked together.’
‘You got me out because you wanted to find out who was digging into your records?’
‘It was more than that, Cooper,’ the major said. ‘I wanted you set free and I wanted to know why the mystery caller was intervening. Prior to your arrest did you tell anyone your name and your old service rank?’
‘Never,’ Emmanuel said, then recalled the freight yards. ‘No, that’s not right. On the night of Jolly Marks’s murder I told two suspects I was Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.’
‘The man who called me got your name and service rank from somewhere. Maybe the information came from the suspects.’
‘Unlikely,’ Emmanuel said. ‘One of them is a schoolboy and the other is Durban’s dumbest gangster.’
‘The gangster … could he be a police informant?’
‘I can’t say for sure but it would be a stretch.’ Parthiv and Giriraj had kidnapped him from the yards because they thought he was a detective. Not once had they used an ‘in’ with the police to get out of trouble on the night of the murder.
‘Did you tell anyone else you were a detective sergeant at Marshall Square?’ Van Niekerk hit the question again.
‘No,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Absolutely. Why?’
‘Because if that’s true then your personal information had to be gathered at the scene of the Marks boy’s murder.’
A shiver prickled across Emmanuel’s back at the implication. ‘Someone else was in the yards that night, watching and listening. A policeman?’
‘It was someone who could rush through an information request on you and have it turned around in a single day. My name would have come up.’
‘Do you have any idea who called you?’ Emmanuel asked. During the course of the investigation he’d met only one person he suspected had access to high-level information: Afzal Khan.
‘A soutpiel.’ Van Niekerk used the derogatory term ‘salt dick’, an Englishman who had one foot in South Africa, the other foot in England and his penis dangling in the sea. ‘The voice belonged to an officious little shit
who thought a Dutch policeman and an ex-detective could be used and then dumped.’
Not even a close match for Khan.
‘Used to what end?’ Emmanuel said. He’d been released to find Jolly Marks’s killer.
‘We got the answer to that question tonight, Cooper,’ van Niekerk said. ‘Jolly Marks’s murder was the sideshow - the hook - locating the Russians was the main game. You were set free to find them. How did you manage that, by the way?’
‘The notebook,’ Emmanuel said and experienced the sharp satisfaction that came from finding the corner piece to a puzzle. ‘The information that led to the Russians was in the notebook but Jolly ditched it before the killer got to him. I think the notebook was the reason Jolly was killed.’
The satisfaction ebbed away and left a feeling of dread in his stomach. That’s what connected the three murders. The notebook.
‘Mrs Patterson and Mbali must have disturbed the killer when he came to the Dover to find the book.’
Good god above. If only he’d left the notebook in clear view instead of hiding it in the flour bin like a paranoid neurotic, two lives might have been saved. That decision couldn’t be reversed. He had to face the dangers of the present situation.
‘Now that I’ve located Nicolai and Natalya,’ Emmanuel said, ‘I’m expendable.’
‘Not as long as we have the Russians.’ Van Niekerk sprang to his feet and pulled a casement window open. Cool night air rushed into the room and he leaned out and yelled, ‘Barnaby, come here quick.’
The black nightwatchman ran onto the wide veranda and crouched down. ‘Yebo, Inkosi.’
‘Lock the gates,’ van Niekerk said. ‘Don’t let anyone in unless I give the okay. You understand? No one.’
‘I will do it.’ Barnaby took off across the lawns and seconds later the shudder of the huge gates scraping over gravel could be heard.
The major retrieved the silver chain and unlocked a dark wood sideboard with the largest of the keys. Handguns, single-and double-barrelled shotguns and two wood-and-steel crossbows were stored on specially designed racks.
‘Personal security concerns?’ Emmanuel asked dryly.
‘I hunt.’ Van Niekerk selected a pearl-handled Colt and a leather hip holster from the munitions buffet. He holstered the weapon before locking the cabinet, which had originally been designed to hold heirloom china. ‘That soutpiel has no idea who he is dealing with.’
‘We have the Russians, we have guns and we have high walls,’ Emmanuel said. ‘But there’s no point in us digging in. We need names and faces if we’re going to get out of this. We need to know who we’re up against.’
‘Let’s start with the obvious suspects.’ The major opened a black book, found an entry and dialled. It took a while for the person at the other end to pick up.
‘Howzit, Tonk?’ The conversation continued in Afrikaans, the language of Emmanuel’s childhood and of his secrets and fears. He rarely spoke it now. Durban offered few opportunities to practise the Taal and Emmanuel did not miss it, despite the fact that certain words and phrases came first in Afrikaans and had to be translated back into English in his head. The Dutch language belonged to his father and that was enough to sour the use of it for all time.
Van Niekerk hung up the phone.
‘It wasn’t the Security Branch,’ he said. ‘They have nothing till next Friday and that’s a raid on a union organiser’s house in Cato Manor. Could the men at Hélène’s have been regular police?’
‘I don’t think so. Detective Head Constable Robinson and Detective Constable Fletcher were staked out in front of Jolly Marks’s home this afternoon. They stuck by the rules for my release. The men outside Hélène’s house weren’t playing that game.’
‘Someone with rank and information is pointing the way.’ Van Niekerk shuffled the books around and reordered them, mentally scanning the contents for information. ‘A policeman. I’m sure of it.’
‘A professional.’ Emmanuel told the major about the black Dodge from the shooting on the Bluff and the calculated nature of the attack. ‘The man in the Dodge must have known the location of Hélène Gerard’s house before the incident on the Bluff because there’s no way we were tailed back there.’
‘That’s not possible … I was the only one with that information, Cooper.’
‘Maybe not.’ Emmanuel sat up straight. ‘The tradesman from the interrogation room. He bailed out a half block from the station. He could have followed us to Hélène’s. It was a simple tag-and-release operation: let a suspect walk free and see where he goes. Detectives use the same technique. Only this time it was used on us.’
Van Niekerk ran his finger over the list of names in the Point surveillance notebook. The lamplight was bright enough to pick up the glimmer of pleasure in his eyes.
‘I’m going to call some of my contacts and try to get the albino’s real name,’ he said. ‘You talk to the Russians and find out who they are and what they’re doing in Durban. We still need to figure out who killed Jolly Marks and the two women. Have you got anything?’
‘One more suspect - an American street preacher with no surname or address. Haven’t seen him since earlier this afternoon. He might have gone to ground.’
‘Find him. We need a head to slip in the noose for those murders,’ the major said coolly.
Three knocks rattled the office door.
‘Come,’ van Niekerk said and Lana dashed into the room dressed in the white silk dressing-gown she’d worn earlier. The neckline billowed open and a slender hand plucked the lapels closed.
‘It’s the old man,’ she said. ‘He’s soaked with sweat and his face is like ash. We need a doctor.’
‘Not good,’ van Niekerk muttered and reached for the first of the leatherbound books on the desktop. ‘My medical contacts are all in Jo’burg. I’ve got one name on the Durban list but he’ll be drunk till noon.’
Emmanuel took that information in. Without Nicolai, the men behind the clandestine operation would melt away but the three murder charges would stick. A hole had been torn into the breast pocket of Vincent Gerard’s silk jacket and a paper edge poked out. Emmanuel pulled out the stained postcard and read the scrawled invitation again.
‘I know a man,’ he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The dawn sky was the colour of a fresh bruise. Electric streetlights turned off in the city as the citizens of Durban rolled out of bed and into Monday morning. Emmanuel stood alone in the green blur of van Niekerk’s garden. There was much to be thankful for. A phone call had confirmed that Vincent and Hélène Gerard were shaken but unharmed. Nicolai was still alive and the major was working through his stack of black books in an attempt to pin down the identity of the tradesman. Still, he was uneasy. Dragging Daniel Zweigman from his medical clinic in the Valley of a Thousand Hills was selfish. The old Jew had saved his life once and it had put him in danger. To ask for help a second time was greedy
The heavy gates swung open and a dusty Bedford truck and a black Packard rumbled into the driveway. Emmanuel crossed the lawn and arrived at the front stairs moments after the truck’s engine cut. A small man with white volcano hair in full eruption clambered out the driver’s door clutching a battered doctor’s kit. Wire-rimmed glasses perched at the end of an aquiline nose. It was Zweigman in all his glory.
‘Dr Zweigman,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.’ The German’s voice retained its characteristic dryness. ‘Perhaps it will also snow today.’
They observed each other in silence. Emmanuel resisted the urge to brush the creases from the jacket and trousers of his battered silk suit. A cut cheek and discoloured neck muscles told their own story. Zweigman pushed his smudged glasses up with an index finger and Emmanuel saw that his hands, fine instruments of healing, were now calloused and rough. Lean times had found them both.
Zweigman smiled. ‘To be alive is the victory, Detective.’
‘Good to see you,’ Emma
nuel said and meant it. The dishevelled German had put him back together after the Security Branch beating and made sure that only a few scars remained. ‘Sorry to drag you from the clinic on short notice.’
‘It is no matter,’ Zweigman said. ‘The clinic is only open three days a week until more funds can be found for a nurse and more medicine. Your timing could not be better. Now, I have a surprise for you. Around here.’
Emmanuel edged along the front of the Bedford’s paint-flecked hood, still steaming with heat from the rough drive. A towering black man with broad shoulders rounded the bumper from the passenger side. He wore blue work pants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt under a khaki jacket.
‘Shabalala,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Sawubona.’
The Zulu constable from Jacob’s Rest and his right-hand man on the controversial investigation into the murder of an Afrikaner police captain was directly in front of him and larger than life.
‘Yebo. Sawubona, Sergeant Cooper.’ Shabalala said, returning the greeting and they shook hands.
‘What are you doing here, man?’ Emmanuel said. Hundreds of miles of dirt and tarred roads separated the tiny outpost of Jacob’s Rest in the Transvaal and the port city of Durban.
‘I have come from the clinic,’ Shabalala said. ‘My wife, Lizzie, and I are staying with the doctor.’
It would have taken Shabalala and his wife two days of hard travel on ailing public buses with cornbread and boiled eggs wrapped in cloth for sustenance on the journey. Emmanuel pushed away the feeling of shame. The Valley of a Thousand Hills was an easy two-hour drive from Stamford Hill. Only now, desperate, had he contacted the man who’d saved his life.
‘Come.’ Emmanuel invited them both into van Niekerk’s house. ‘We’ll get a coffee and I’ll fill you in.’
‘Good,’ Zweigman said. ‘Our official escort was not forthcoming with information.’
‘He was probably under orders not to say anything,’ Emmanuel explained as he climbed the stairs to the porch. The driver, one of van Niekerk’s men from the coronation party, probably didn’t know very much anyway. The major was a master at keeping his own counsel.
