Present Darkness

by Malla Nunn

  Emmanuel pulled the incomplete incident report closer and scribbled words into the margin. He switched to Afrikaans, Johan Britz’s first language and his own. “I’m calling for some friends. Their son’s being charged with three counts of assault, one of manslaughter, vandalism and theft.”

  “Is that all?” Britz said a dry tone. “You think the boy might be innocent of one or all of the charges?”

  “I’m not sure.” Emmanuel was honest. “His alibi is full of holes and we found his prefect’s badge in a car stolen from the crime scene.”

  “Bad start,” Britz breathed down the line. “Was the search executed according to protocol?”

  “I can’t prove it wasn’t.”

  “Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

  “I’ll spell it out.” Mason’s name in English or Afrikaans would be easily recognisable. The Dutch alphabet made it harder to decipher. He cupped his palm around the mouthpiece and gave each letter quickly.

  “Lieutenant Walter Mason,” Britz confirmed after a long pause, during which the scratching of a pen on paper was audible. “That’s two pieces of bad news, Cooper. I’ve never encountered this Mason myself but he comes with a reputation.”

  “Anything to do with fire?”

  “And brimstone. The guy is trouble. And now he’s found Jesus, right? It’s a hell of a case to hand me just before Christmas, my friend.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you calling from Marshall Square, right now?”

  “Ja.” It was a risk to call Britz from the station, but Emmanuel needed to move fast to protect Aaron while Shabalala was travelling to Jo’burg.

  “Get off the phone right now, Cooper. I’ll call at the station house later this afternoon. In the meantime, keep out of Mason’s way and stay the fok out of trouble.” Britz hung up.

  “I’ll try,” Emmanuel said into the static on the end of the line. Britz’s advice came too late. He was in an illegal relationship with a mixed-race girl, had a secret family and was at odds with a superior officer over a potential dirty investigation: he was already in trouble.

  “You speak Afrikaans like a Dutchman.” The sound of Lieutenant Mason’s voice traced an icy finger down the length of Emmanuel’s spine. “I bet you talk Zulu like a native, too.”

  “White kaffirs,” Emmanuel said. “We speak a bit of everything.”

  “Handy for police work.” Mason, jacket hitched behind the butt of his Webley service revolver, moved deeper into the room. “Marshall Square will be poorer for your loss.”

  “Am I’m going somewhere?”

  “You’re going home, Cooper. Or to wherever it is that you’ve booked your holidays.” The bright fire in Mason’s eyes held no warmth. “I bet you’re heading to Mozambique. It’s a good spot for a single man. You can choose from any amount of activities, some of them not available here in South Africa.”

  Mason was fishing. He had to be; alluding to the multi-racial, skin diving available in the Portuguese colony was simply a crude way to force a reaction.

  “Who’s going to Mozambique?” Dryer appeared at the tail end of the conversation, a whisky mug gripped in his fist. “Is that where you’re heading for Christmas, Lieutenant?”

  “No. The dry heat of the veldt suits me better. I was suggesting a tropical beach Christmas to Cooper.”

  “He’ll never get a booking this late in the month. It’s school holidays.” Dryer rested his rump on the edge of the desk. “Besides, he’s staying here in Jo’burg.”

  “Sergeant Cooper is free to go wherever he likes for the Christmas break, Dryer. He’s on short-term transfer to the Marshal Square Detective branch. We locals will finish up the Brewer investigation. It’s all paperwork from now on in.”

  “My transfer ends on Tuesday,” Emmanuel said, more to cover up the fact that he’d momentarily forgotten that the sprawling mass of Johannesburg was not his town any more. He was a Durban detective playing house in Jo’burg with Davida and Rebekah. He didn’t want that game to end.

  “That’s your last day. I talked to your commander, Colonel van Niekerk, and we both agreed you’ve earned the extra three days leave. We might not have found the Brewers’ car without your help.” Gratification flashed across the Lieutenant’s face, bright and sharp as a knife blade. “Your holidays begin immediately.”

  “Aghh …” Dryer made an anguished sound. “Lucky you, Cooper.”

  Emmanuel smiled and accepted his apparent good fortune. Mason’s manipulations simultaneously enraged and impressed him. The Lieutenant was ruthless. Mason had managed to make him seem a hero and dismiss him from the case at the same time.

  “I’ll finish my report and pack up.”

  Emmanuel sat and wrote. Mason was well on the way to framing Aaron Shabalala for a murder he likely didn’t commit. The Lieutenant’s abuse of police power flicked a switch inside Emmanuel and he felt a familiar rage begin to grow.

  “A pleasure working with you, Dryer. You too, Negus.” He made the rounds of the room after finishing the incident report, shaking hands, mouthing the right words. The biggest pile of horseshit he saved for last.

  “It’s been an honour serving with you, Lieutenant. Have a good Christmas.”

  “Safe trip back to Durban.” Mason’s handshake was a deliberate, iron grip. “Give my regards to Colonel van Niekerk.”

  Emmanuel left the European detective’s room with his jacket buttoned up and his temper pushed down. He imagined Mason with a broken nose and a bloodied suit; his ribs cracked by a steel-toed boot. Adrenaline pumped through him just as it had on the night his mother lay stabbed and bleeding on the floor of their Sophiatown shack. Clutching his sister’s hand tightly, he had run barefoot and scared through the dirt maze of the township calling for help, which came too late. He’d gone to war to bury that terrified, angry boy. Mason had resurrected him, though. Well, to hell with that, he thought. I’m going back in.

  “Calm the fuck down, soldier.” The voice of Emmanuel’s old Sergeant Major emerged from a long hibernation inside his head. A concrete bunker of a Scotsman, quick-tempered and foul-mouthed, conflict was his natural state of being. “If you go back into that room you will beat the skin off that bastard or worse.”

  He took a deep breath and adjusted to the presence of the phantom Sergeant Major. The Scotsman lived deep in a psychological trench in Emmanuel’s mind and despite it being months since his last appearance, remained impervious to anything but a heavy dose of morphine.

  “Listen to me, boyo. If Mason survives the beating he’ll have you up on charges and in the brig before you can say ‘Fuck you, sir.’ If he dies, you’ll spend the rest of your sorry life sharing a cell with undisciplined scum, some of whom you helped put there. Either way you lose, Cooper. You’re no good to Shabalala in jail. If a police review board digs up your little secrets and charges you with immoral activity, you’ll not hold Davida or your little girl again for Christ knows how long.”

  The Scotsman was right, but the urge to do harm remained.

  “Get out of this station, soldier. Right this minute. That’s an order.”

  Emmanuel walked the length of a corridor decorated with framed pictures of the queen and Prime Minister Malan. White noise filled his head with the roar of a distant ocean. He took the stairs, shouldered through a throng of foot police gathered in the foyer and broke out into the light of a bright, hot afternoon. City noise washed around him: car engines and horns, the clatter of trams and the shuffle of Saturday shoppers streaming along the sidewalks.

  “Mason never did trust you, lad.”

  “He didn’t shut me out either,” Emmanuel said. “I was in the Brewers’ bedroom. I interviewed Cassie and Aaron. Something changed after Mason got that phone call during the Shabalala interview.”

  “Mason needed a detective with brains last night. This afternoon, he needs ‘yes, sir.’ He needs men who’ll back up that bullshit car search without question and then piss off on holidays. You don’t qualify.”
>
  “Then why take me on the search for the Mercedes?” He knew the answer but needed to hear it said out loud.

  “He wanted you to find the car. Detective Sergeant Cooper, the cop from the township with a clean reputation; you were perfect for the job. Your presence made the search credible. You killed off any stink of corruption. Now, Mason is done with you.” The Sergeant Major laughed low and rough in the back of his throat. “You’ve been fucked without even being kissed, Cooper.”

  *

  Emmanuel pushed through the uniformed police in the foyer of Marshall Square station and took the corridor that led to the holding cells. Five minutes, he reasoned. He needed five minutes to get a truthful alibi from Aaron before talking face to face with Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala in an hour.

  “You’re wasting your breath,” the Sergeant Major said. “The boy’s sewn up tight. You’ll not get anything from him.”

  “I have to try.”

  “Then make it fast. Mason will come down on you like camel shit if he finds out you’re visiting his prisoner.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  The smell of cigarette smoke and rising damp intensified the closer Emmanuel got to the rear of the station house. The grim walls and poor ventilation gave the overnight prisoners a taste of things to come should they be remanded to a proper jail: a certainty in Aaron Shabalala’s case.

  The duty sergeant, a bony Irishman with a thatch of greying hair, got to his feet when Emmanuel reached the tight space that housed the “non-whites” lock-up. Fitzpatrick was on permanent post at the entrance to the native holding cells; a job usually reserved for black constables who’d passed the written test but showed a poor talent for actual police work. Fitzpatrick had taken the demotion to a “kaffir” post rather than accept early retirement from the force for the arthritis in his hands. Emmanuel had worked with him years before.

  “Howzit, Cooper?” The Irishman stubbed out a cigarette with his twisted fingers and automatically lit another.

  “I’m in top shape, thanks.’ Emmanuel took off his hat and stopped in front of the small desk covered in newspapers and cigarette ash. “Is your costume unpacked?”

  Next week, Fitzpatrick would play the role of Father Christmas at the annual Police and Public picnic. The highlight of his year, Emmanuel had no doubt.

  “The boots need a polish but the suit is ironed and ready to go,” Fitzpatrick said. “What brings you to the dragon’s den, Detective Sergeant?”

  “A word with a juvenile prisoner, Shabalala. He came in late last night.”

  “I know the one.” Fitzpatrick reached for a key ring hooked to a wooden peg on the wall. “Third berth on the right. Do you want access?”

  “Yes. Better than talking through the bars.” That he could, with a nod, be granted the keys and have a blind eye turned to whatever happened in the cell, was standard police practice. He entered the holding area. The customary inmates of the overnight lock-up filled the first two cells; drunks with their limbs sprawled across the concrete floor, thugs with skewed noses and thick necks sitting on the narrow cots and, in the majority, ordinary black men caught without their passbooks.

  Aaron Shabalala sat in the gloom and stared at his open palms. He was the sole occupant of cell three; a rare luxury that Emmanuel assumed had been granted on Mason’s personal request. The prime suspect in the Brewer murder case would leave Marshall Square without a scratch. Johan Britz, the Afrikaner lawyer, would find no evidence of misconduct or police brutality that might cast doubt on the outcome of the investigation. Mason’s attention to detail was chilling. Emmanuel considered himself forewarned: he was dealing with a meticulous and dangerous force.

  Aaron turned at the sound of footsteps and stood up to face Emmanuel as he unlocked the door and entered the cell.

  “Go in hard, Cooper. Crack him open. He has to talk.”

  “They found your prefect’s badge in the stolen car,” Emmanuel said. “They are going to charge you with murder, theft and making a false statement to the police. What do you say to that?”

  Aaron stepped closer. His jaw clenched. “I say that if the Brewers were a black family and I was a white schoolboy visiting their home, I would not be in this cell but sitting at home with a cup of tea. What do you say to that, Detective?”

  “Well …” the Sergeant Major breathed. “I wasn’t expecting him to come out fighting.”

  “Me neither.” He’d seen grown men go to water at the mention of a murder charge. Aaron was made of stone—like his father.

  Emmanuel regrouped. “We both know that the system isn’t fair or just but you’re not helping yourself by lying about your alibi.”

  “I have a second question for you.” Aaron remained impassive. “If a black girl accused a white boy from a good school of a crime would the police believe her and arrest that boy?”

  “We can talk hypothetical situations all day long but the justice system isn’t facing a murder charge. You are.”

  “Then let it be so.” Aaron returned to the cot and sat down. He stared into his cupped palms, seeking what Emmanuel did not know.

  “He’s angry and I think he’s scared,” the Sergeant Major said. “But he’s a tough little bastard …”

  Emmanuel let the silence fill up the room. He took a risk.

  “I know your parents,” he said. “Seeing you hang will break them into pieces.”

  Aaron’s looked up surprised and then turned his face away. A noisy breath caught in his chest. Bullseye, Emmanuel thought.

  “You are trying to help me. I know this,” Aaron said. “But I should not be here. And the men in the cells without passbooks should not be here. I hope they find those responsible for Principal Brewers’ death. But it was not me.”

  10.

  Johannesburg’s slang name, E’goli, the city of gold, didn’t apply in the township. Nothing sparkled or shone. Emmanuel saw only rusted iron and peeling paint from the vantage of the raised brick porch where he stood with Zweigman and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala on either side of him. The German physician and the Zulu detective absorbed the news of Aaron’s arrest on a murder charge in silence. A blood orange sun glowed through the haze of smoke from cooking fires.

  “Don’t leave it like that,” the Sergeant Major said. “You owe the Zulu your life, soldier. Tell him that you will do whatever is necessary to get his son out of this fix. Tell him that you will break every bullshit rule to make Mason pay for framing Aaron.”

  “Mason fixed that search,” Emmanuel said. “I’m going to find out why.” He kept the dark turn of his own thoughts about the Lieutenant to himself.

  “What must we do now to help my youngest born?” Built tall and broad-shouldered and with muscle where other police his age carried a layer of fat, Shabalala was not content to stand and talk in the backyard of his brother’s house.

  “Let’s start at Baragwanath hospital. Mason and his team won’t bother interviewing the man from the garden now the case is solved. He could give us something.” Emmanuel paused. “Fair warning, though: Lieutenant Mason is dangerous. He’ll come after us when he finds out we’re asking questions about the Brewer case and he won’t do it gently.”

  “When do we start?” The German doctor cemented his place in the investigation without waiting for an invitation.

  “Straight away.”

  “Yes, that is good,” Shabalala said, ushering them through the quiet brick home, which had the luxury of a separate kitchen and dining area. A permanent housing shortage gripped the township, with almost every room in every house rented out to lodgers. Not so here. Emmanuel wondered what Shabalala’s brother did for a living to afford such privacy.

  They emerged into a shallow yard with a dusty gum tree. Swallows winged through the air and dipped over the rooftops. A group of children played hopscotch on a dirt grid.

  “Should the hospital visit prove unsuccessful there is also the girl who gave the statement to you, Sergeant,” Zweigman said on th
eir way to the car. “You think she is lying, correct?”

  “Yes,” Emmanuel said. “I also think Aaron is lying about where he went last night. They’re both hiding something.”

  A strained silence followed the observation while the three of them considered the reasons a black boy and a white girl would lie about an ordinary Friday night.

  *

  A cream and green hallway led to a ward packed end to end with black men on iron cots. Family groups clustered around the sick, the women fanning the air to make a breeze, while children played on the linoleum floor and men smoked cigarettes to pass the time. The able-bodied sat up in bed eating boiled eggs and roast corn brought from street vendors outside the hospital gates. Others lay listless and dazed in the heat. A few slept like the dead, arms tossed above their heads, eyes half-closed. Every bed was taken. Two dozen more men lay on the floor, packed together like human tiles.

  “Mr Parkview.” A nurse in a red and white uniform and a starched cap stopped at the foot of a hospital cot and glanced at the doctor’s notes. Light slanted into the ward through the open windows and gave her dark skin a copper shine.

  “This one will live,” she said.

  Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman drew closer. The man, renamed for the suburb in which he’d been found, lay under a thin cotton sheet. He’d been heavily sedated and remained deep in a dreamless sleep. Blood seeped through the bandage wrapped around his head. Zweigman leaned over the cot, batted away a feeding fly and gently lifted the edge of the gauze to check the wound.

  “Please, sir. That is for the doctors to do, not the day visitors.” The nurse was polite but firm, the proper combination of tones to use when reprimanding a white man in public.

  “Excuse me, sister.” Zweigman smiled an apology. “You understand how vain we doctors are. I stitched this cut by torchlight and wanted to check my work.”