by Malla Nunn
‘Yebo, friends,’ Shabalala agreed. ‘And that is why you will not do this alone.’
The statement stopped Emmanuel cold. He had worked five months at the Victory Shipyards breaking steel and hiding from the past when two hours away were comrades. He wasn’t alone after all.
Shabalala poured him a cup of tea. Zweigman put a cake on a plate and placed it in front of him.
‘It’s settled, Cooper,’ the major said. ‘Doctor Zweigman and Constable Shabalala will be non-combatants. Strategic backup, that’s all. Did the Russians have any leads?’
‘An American zealot preacher. Brother Jonah, he calls himself. He works the Point and the harbour. He was in the freight yards on the night the kid was killed. I think he might have something to do with Natalya and Nicolai, too.’
‘Why?’
‘Russians and Americans running around the docks in the middle of the night? Maybe it’s a coincidence …’
‘Do you know where he is?’ van Niekerk asked. ‘A list of favourite places?’
Emmanuel shook his head. ‘Nothing yet.’
‘He has no woman and no friends?’ Shabalala said. Such a thing was unthinkable for a Zulu. Social isolation was a form of living death.
‘No woman.’ Emmanuel drank a mouthful of black tea and remembered his joyride in the back of the Silver Wraith. He also remembered Miss Morgensen’s belief that Jonah had been in that car as well. Maybe Khan could help. He knew more than a little bit about what went on in the Point area and he gave money to charities to keep up appearances.
‘What about Afzal Khan?’ Emmanuel thought aloud.
‘Khan the Indian gangster?’ the major said.
‘The very one.’ A black-skinned man with a white bodyguard and a silver Rolls would be well-known to the police and to every citizen on the Point with eyesight.
‘Do you know where this Mr Khan is?’ Zweigman chose a piece of raisin cake and broke it into bite-sized pieces over his plate.
‘No idea,’ Emmanuel said. The door connecting the porch with the interior of the house opened. Lana stepped out in black trousers and a man’s white shirt, untucked. A cigarette dangled between her fingers. Smoking and in pants; no respectable venue in Durban would let her inside.
‘Phone call from Jo’burg,’ she said to van Niekerk. ‘He said it’s urgent.’
The major got to his feet and moved to Lana’s side. He stopped and said, ‘Cooper has to find your friend Khan the gangster. Can you get him in?’
‘Of course.’ Lana’s smile was brittle, the cigarette now pinched between her fingers. ‘I can try.’
‘Good girl.’ The major patted her on the cheek and disappeared inside.
It was decided: the ex-barmaid who slipped through the dark like a fox and shrugged off threats from guns, knives and very bad men would lead Emmanuel back into the lion’s den.
‘I’ll get out here,’ Emmanuel said and Zweigman pulled the dusty Bedford truck into a parking space on Timeball Road. They were a block from the address Lana had given him. ‘I should be back in under an hour. If not, drive back to the major’s house and wait there.’
‘Go well, Detective Sergeant.’ Shabalala raised a hand in farewell.
It felt good to have backup and even better to know Zweigman and Shabalala were a block away from any potential trouble. He started down Timeball Road, counting the building numbers along on the way. A boy ran past trailing a kite made from brown paper bags and butcher’s string.
Ahead, Lana stood outside 125, a squat brown building that might once have been a printing plant or a garment factory. It was an unremarkable structure but for the fleshy Indian man who stood on the front stairs smoking a cigarette. A trio of raw-boned adolescents with boxing gloves slung over their shoulders exited the building and ran down the stairs.
Lana turned at Emmanuel’s approach and his pace faltered. He’d seen her frightened, drunk and even softened by physical pleasure but he’d never seen her angry.
‘Hurry up for god’s sake,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be here all afternoon.’
‘I told you I was fine by myself. There’s no reason for you to be here.’ Was that his voice? Defensive and bruised and hard done by?
‘This isn’t a candy store.’ Lana took a round compact out of her bag, flicked it open and checked her reflection in the mirror: red lips, black eyeliner, silky black hair and a tantalising display of cleavage. ‘You need more than an address and money in your pocket.’
‘You could have left me to talk to him by myself.’
‘The major didn’t think that was a good idea.’ The tension in Lana’s body made it obvious that declining to help set up this meeting had not been an option.
‘I’m sorry,’ Emmanuel said. ‘To drag you into this.’
‘It’s my fault.’ She dropped the compact back into her bag and snapped the lock. ‘I was the one who asked you for a lift home, remember?’
That felt like a year ago and an hour ago. Memory seemed to bend time back on itself. One timeframe could not be changed. There were now less than seven hours left till the detective branch served the arrest warrant.
‘Come on,’ Lana said and climbed the stairs. The hem of her skirt swished against her bare legs and the heels of her sandals clicked on the hard surface. Emmanuel fell in beside her and she nodded a greeting to the Indian guard. Up close, Emmanuel saw that the guard was one of those men whose life was best summed up by a series of ‘ex’s. Ex-boxer, ex-wrestler, ex-bar-room bouncer.
‘Hello, Miss Rose,’ the man said and pulled the door open. Emmanuel slipped in behind Lana, grateful for the easy entry but disturbed by the familiar use of her name.
A bare boxing gym with three practice rings, a row of punching bags and an old weights bench were set out in a long room with a concrete floor. A taut black man skipped rope in a corner while an Indian and a coffee-coloured man sparred in a practice ring. An older white trainer with a flattened face called out, ‘Move your legs, you lazy bastard!’ It was unclear which boxer he was addressing. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and dirty socks. Emmanuel felt a burn in his chest: a combination of the odour and memories of bare-knuckled school fights.
Lana walked straight to the back wall. Despite the dress and perfume, she looked like a logical part of the scene. She opened the door and they entered a small room with bare walls and no windows. A line of wooden chairs was set up outside a second door against which Khan’s bodyguard, the British bulldog in a suit, lounged. Two Indian women and a mixed-race man sat with cheerless faces in the stark space.
‘Hell’s waiting room,’ Emmanuel whispered to Lana.
‘How else do you get an audience with the beast?’ she said and walked up to the bulldog, who straightened up from his slouch. ‘Tell Mr Khan that Lana wants to see him.’
‘He’s busy.’ The guard gave a lopsided smile. ‘I’ll let him know you’re here when he’s finished up.’
A strangled grunt came from inside the office and Lana moved back into the middle of the room without answering. An old Indian woman with a face crosshatched by worry lines sat on one of the hard wooden chairs twisting a lace hankie between henna-stained fingers. Emmanuel walked over to Lana, who peered into her handbag with a frown, searching for something.
‘Got any cigarettes?’ she asked and sorted through an assortment of lipstick, perfume and powder compacts with shaky fingers.
‘Afraid not,’ Emmanuel said and watched the frantic search for another minute. Lana was on a first-name basis with these citizens of Durban’s underworld but it didn’t make her any more comfortable. The sharp scrape of furniture moving across the floor came from the direction of the office and Lana snapped the bag shut.
‘This man you’re looking for.’ Her voice was tense. ‘Is he the one who killed Jolly Marks?’
Emmanuel knew she was making conversation to stop herself from imagining what might be happening behind the closed door.
‘Brother Jonah was in the yards on the night
Jolly was killed. That makes him a person of interest.’
The old lady in the corner gave up strangling her hankie and leaned forward. ‘The police say it was Indian boys who did the killing,’ she whispered. ‘Two of them. Maybe the Dutta brothers.’
Emmanuel was certain that he had not mentioned the Duttas’ involvement to anyone. Not even to the major. Only he and Giriraj knew that the brothers had discovered Jolly’s body. The prostitute had not named them. They were just charras: dark men in slick suits with the cheek to think a red-haired Englishwoman would have sex with anyone for money.
‘Who mentioned the Dutta brothers?’ Emmanuel asked the old woman.
‘No one.’ She threw a nervous glance at Mr Khan’s door and then fell silent. Nobody talked about Mr Khan except Mr Khan. That was the rule. If you broke the rule, something of yours got broken in return.
‘So, maybe it was the Indian men.’ Lana tucked a dark strand of hair behind an ear. ‘Like the railway policeman at the bar said.’
‘Someone has certainly been spreading the word.’
Emmanuel wondered if the police had taken Parthiv and Amal in for questioning and, if so, how they’d gone from a description of ‘two Indians in sharp suits’ to suspects with names. The old woman’s stare suggested that Mr Khan was involved. If so, had Khan obtained that piece of information direct from the rail yard or had one of the scores of Dutta aunties and cousins gossiped over a fence?
The office door swung open and a brown-skinned girl in a flowered dress staggered out. Emmanuel judged her to be around eighteen. She looked neither left nor right but straight ahead to the exit. The mixed-race man seated in the waiting room got to his feet and walked to her side. They shared the same looks: dark hair, brown skin and light green eyes. A father and daughter, Emmanuel thought. The man touched the girl’s arm but she shrugged him off in disgust and hurried out to the gym and the street. The man followed, his shoulders slumped.
Khan’s offer to supply Emmanuel with a woman, ‘any colour, any size’, took on a sinister edge. Sprinkled across Durban, in suburban houses, harbourside flats and shantytown shacks were females with debts to the Indian gangster. Just how had Lana made Khan’s acquaintance?
‘He’ll see you and your friend now, Miss Rose.’ The Brit waved them into the inner sanctum and then closed the door behind them.
The contrast with the waiting room was stark and, Emmanuel suspected, deliberate. Khan’s office had a hand-knotted Chinese carpet spread across the floor and was furnished with heavy wood cabinets that glowed with polish. A courtyard bright with blossoms and vines could be glimpsed through an open window. A sullen parrot peered out from a bamboo cage that dangled from a stand to the right of a wide oak desk.
Books, pens, loose paper, a black Bakelite phone and the heavy wooden box from the Rolls were pushed to the edges of the desk - on which, Emmanuel felt certain, the girl had paid off her father’s debt. Khan looked up from securing the top button on his baby blue shirt and smiled at Lana.
‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.
‘Namaste, Afzal.’ She walked over to a cabinet and lifted the hatch to reveal a bar stocked with non-alcoholic drinks. She tipped ice cubes into a tumbler and filled it with guava juice, then placed the drink within Khan’s reach. ‘This meeting is a favour for a friend,’ she said.
Emmanuel knew that the favour was for van Niekerk and not for him. He shrugged off the thought.
‘Mr Cooper.’ Khan’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘I said we would see each other again soon.’
‘You were right.’ Emmanuel made an effort to relax. How did Lana know what drink to pour the biggest Indian gangster in Durban?
‘So …’ Khan leaned back while Lana Rose slid the pens and loose paper back into place on the desktop and straightened the wooden smoking box. ‘Why are you here, Mr Cooper?’
‘I’m looking for Brother Jonah, the street preacher.’
‘You need salvation?’
‘Information. Brother Jonah can help.’
‘I only give information to friends,’ Khan said. ‘Fuck off.’
Lana moved to Khan’s side and leaned against the edge of the desk. She was close enough to straighten the collar of his shirt. ‘Consider him a friend of a friend,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Khan’s hand snaked out faster than a mamba’s head and encircled Lana’s wrist. The flesh of his thumb rubbed against the blue veins visible under her pale skin: an action that was both intimate and violent. ‘How good a friend is Mr Cooper?’
Emmanuel moved forwards but Lana kept him in place with a glance that said, ‘I will handle this.’ He eased back, repulsed by the beautifully furnished room, the luxury car, the custom-made suits. Afzal Khan spent a fortune to disguise the fact that he was just a thug.
‘Not too rough,’ Lana Rose said. ‘I bruise easily.’
Khan seemed fascinated by her skin, but the expression on her face was one of parental boredom. His fingers tightened their hold but she did not react.
The desk phone rang and Khan released her to pick up the receiver. ‘What?’ he barked into the mouthpiece, clearly annoyed that a pleasurable moment was spoiled.
Emmanuel motioned to Lana. The meeting was over. He’d find Brother Jonah himself if it meant lifting every garbage lid on the Point. The price of Khan’s help, to be paid by Lana, was too high. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. His anger made him feel twelve years old again, barefoot and running along a dirt lane in Sophia town with his sister’s tiny hand clutched in his. The sound of their mother’s cries for help made the night blacker and colder than any he’d ever known. With every step away from the three-room shack and its blood-splattered walls he’d promised himself that when he was older and stronger he’d stand up to men like his father and Afzal Khan.
‘Yes, let’s go.’ Lana grabbed her handbag from the desk and followed Emmanuel to the door. The Oriental rug muffled their footsteps but the click of the door handle was sharp.
‘Wait.’ Khan sat forward with the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder. ‘There is an address that might be useful.’
Emmanuel kept his back to the room for a long moment. Five minutes ago the information was out of reach and now it was being handed over for nothing. What was Khan up to?
‘If the address is useful, I’ll take it,’ Emmanuel said and moved back into the office. A muffled voice could be heard on the other end of the telephone line but it was impossible to pick up words. Khan scrawled something onto a piece of paper, folded it in half and slid it across the desk.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try this.’
Emmanuel opened the page to check the information. A Signal Road address was scribbled in bright red ink. The Indian man put the receiver down in the cradle and pulled the wooden smoking box across the desk. He lifted the box lid and extracted a pouch of tobacco and a stack of rolling papers. ‘Be careful. More than one person at the meeting might scare Jonah off and it would take hours to find him again.’
‘I’ll be alone,’ Emmanuel said trying to figure how Khan, with the weight of the Durban underworld on his shoulders, knew about Brother Jonah’s state of mind.
‘Good luck,’ Khan said and smiled. A bright spark of emotion lit up the dead centre of his pupils like the headlights of a ghost train in a tunnel.
Emmanuel left the office. Lana closed the door behind them. Funny how accents could bend words so they seemed to take on another meaning. Khan’s ‘good luck’ sounded strangely like ‘goodbye’. The people in the waiting room stared at them with a mixture of anxiety and envy.
‘Be quiet till we’re outside,’ Lana said, and they exited the building to the sound of boxers’ gloves smacking muscle. ‘Now keep moving in the direction of your car. Don’t look back and, for god’s sake, do not run.’
‘Okay.’
Emmanuel kept a quick pace and fought the urge to check the street behind them for danger. They skirted a group of grubby-faced white boys playing marbles on the pavement and walked on. Th
e Bedford truck came into view.
‘That’s us,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Keep going,’ Lana said when they drew level with the driver’s window. ‘We’ll stop behind the truck and talk there.’
Zweigman leaned out to say something but Emmanuel spoke first. ‘Give me ten minutes. I’ll tell you the news then.’
Lana ducked behind the truck’s covered tray and listened. The click of the boys’ marbles hitting together made the only discernible sound.
‘That was a nice move back in the office,’ she said after her breathing slowed to normal. ‘Pretending to walk out on Khan. He hates being ignored.’
‘I wasn’t pretending,’ Emmanuel said. Tiny red bruises marked the surface of her pale skin. ‘I don’t like the way he does business.’
‘You, me and the rest of Durban.’ Lana held out her hand. ‘Let’s see the address.’
He gave her the piece of paper. Khan’s ‘good luck/goodbye’ was fresh in his mind. Was the Indian man involved with Jolly Marks’s murder?
‘I know this place.’ She flicked the edge of the page with her fingernail. ‘It’s an old rope storehouse. Hasn’t been used for years. Not to store rope at any rate.’
‘How do you know that?’
The disquiet born in Khan’s office resurfaced. Lana had ties with both the police and the criminals in Durban. She was van Niekerk’s girlfriend but her loyalties might lie elsewhere.
‘My father was a stores supervisor.’ It was clear from Lana’s smile that his confusion amused her. ‘He worked in this building for five years before he retired. Khan owns it. It’s a strange place for a person to stay. There’s not much there besides shelves, pulleys and an outdoor toilet.’
‘A dead end?’
‘There’s something at the storehouse.’ Lana handed back the address. ‘Khan could have sent you away empty-handed but he didn’t. Don’t meet with this Brother Jonah alone. Take your men with you. It’s important to have backup.’
