by Malla Nunn
Emmanuel and Shabalala trampled across an abandoned vegetable garden to a stone and iron building overgrown with climbing vines. The door was open. They peered inside. The air was musty, the walls hung with rusting garden tools. Two small windows gave dim light. An old wardrobe, a chest of drawers, broken chairs and a dozen cracked plant pots colonised the rear of the shed. A camp bed with sheets and a turned down blanket was pushed to the left of the door in a cleared space.
“He slept in here.” Emmanuel indicated a pair of brown shoes and a kerosene lantern placed neatly by the side of the metal bedframe. The floor had been freshly swept. “A space was made for the bed but there’s nothing to say he actually lived here.”
“You are right.” Shabalala crouched on the threshold, mapping the last movements of the mystery man. “He slept in the bed and then went out through the orchard to the path where he met the other men.”
“And was stabbed. Probably with a pitchfork from this room.”
“That is what I believe.”
“Why was he here to begin with?” Emmanuel moved into the room, stripped the blanket from the bed and searched under the sheets and the pillow for information that might identify the man at Baragwanath hospital. He found a pair of darned socks stuffed into the brown shoes. The shoes themselves were worn and cracked. “The Brewers must have known he was sleeping in the shed. He had their address in his shirt pocket.”
Shabalala said, “Maybe the prints on the path will lead us to the other men, Sergeant.”
“It’s worth a try.” Emmanuel left the shack, frustrated. Interviewing Martha Brewer officially was impossible now that he was “on holiday”. There must be a quick way to identify Mr Parkview and find out how he met the sharp end of a pitchfork on Friday night. Shabalala wove through the trees quickly in order to beat the setting sun. Shadows fell across the narrow path and grew longer. The Zulu detective kept a steady pace for a minute and then stopped within sight of the back fence. He peered into a stand of banana plants.
“Let’s check it,” Emmanuel said of a second stone and iron outbuilding hidden in the Brewers’ urban forest. This one was smaller than the last, with a hole in the roof and no windows: possibly a disused storage shed. Shabalala pushed the door open and automatically stepped aside to allow a European first entry.
Shapes swam in the gloom. Emmanuel found a box of matches on the floor and struck a match. Light flickered over a mattress rolled on the ground and a white candle stub pressed onto a chipped saucer. Shabalala picked up the candleholder and touched the wick to the flame.
A half-bottle of Jamaican rum, lipstick, a spray of pink roses in an old jam jar and an opened packet of cigarettes were set on top of an upturned fruit crate placed next to the mattress.
“What is this place for?” Shabalala asked even though the gritty tone in his voice said he already knew.
“A girl comes here in secret. She puts on make-up and has a drink and a smoke. You roll. You slip away and come back again until the day you’re caught out by her father.”
The teenage Emmanuel might have found this shack and furnished it with all the essentials for sex. Shortly after giving up on being a decent Christian youth, he’d learned very fast how to be bad.
“What’s really changed?” his Sergeant Major whispered. “You still sneak through the bush to sleep with a girl you’re not supposed to touch. Except that now, if Mason catches you, that little family you’ve made? He’ll tear it apart. So you’d better decide quick smart what you’re prepared to do to keep your girls safe.”
“Everything.”
“Good boy.”
Emmanuel leaned against the wall, able to imagine for the first time the terror of having a child in danger. The thought of what he’d do if anyone, including the police, raised a hand to his daughter, Rebekah, chilled him.
“You will go to war to protect your little girl,” the Sergeant Major said with approval. “And I’ll be with you, soldier.”
“Aaron and the school principal’s daughter?” The stony look on Shabalala’s face indicated he disapproved of the idea.
“Did you let your parents pick your girlfriends, Constable?” Emmanuel opened the lipstick and drew a line across his palm. The red had a bright metallic shine; the same colour that had streaked the back of Cassie’s hand on the night of the break-in. “You can ask Aaron yourself tomorrow when we visit juvenile hall.”
The Zulu detective lowered the candle and the semi-darkness hid the mattress, the alcohol and the cigarettes. Police uncovered secrets. The Detective Sergeant, in particular, had a gift for digging up big ones. A loud click in the garden caught them both by surprise. Shabalala blew the candle out and they simultaneously crouched in the dark. Emmanuel pulled the door closed, breathing deep and slow. The sound of human voices and the snap of twigs drew near.
“I don’t see it,” a man’s voice said.
“Look again.” Another male answered. He was farther away, his voice faint. “Keep going in.”
Footsteps crunched through the underbrush, moving in the direction of the storage room. A burnished sky stretched over the hole in the roof, glowing orange. The detectives remained tense but calm: the soldier and the hunter possessed experience enough to wait out a threat while preparing for action.
“There’s nothing here but bush and more bush.” The voice was close, almost breathing through the stone walls. “Are you sure this is the place?”
An indistinct answer came back, the words swallowed by the wind in the treetops. Footsteps receded. Voices trailed off into the distance. Emmanuel stood up slowly, ears strained for the sound of movement outside the storeroom.
“They have gone nearer to the house,” Shabalala said in a low voice. “Two men, maybe more. Looking for something.”
“Give them a minute. If Mason or his men catch us digging around here, things will get unpleasant.”
“Then let us wait, Sergeant.”
Tongues of dark grey coloured the orange patch of sky visible though the hole in the roof. Birds roosted in the trees, calling loudly to each other about the sun going down. Minutes ticked by. The voices faded.
“Time to go,” Emmanuel said to Shabalala. “Keep low and head back to the path.”
“Yebo.” The Zulu detective cracked the door and slipped into the garden. The cry of birds was deafening. They heard the chug of distant car engines. The dirt path lay empty, the twilight fading fast. Shabalala stopped by the area of blood spray and shoe prints and frowned. The soil had been brushed over, the evidence of the attack destroyed by the scrape of a heel.
Emmanuel split off the path and pushed into the fruit orchard, heart thumping. The shrub with the white star-shaped flowers shimmered in the gathering darkness. He kneeled and bent back the branches.
“The pitchfork is gone,” he said.
12.
Buses, bicycles and pedestrians streamed along the broad, flat expanse of Main Road where it entered Sophiatown. The air hummed with the sounds of thousands of people talking, singing, and arguing. Tonight, the citizens of the township with money would wash off the working week in dance halls and shebeens, the illegal drinking holes squeezed into shacks and living rooms. Those without money would try to get some, by various means.
Emmanuel slowed, shifted down a gear and swung left into Bertha Street. Shabalala, Zweigman and Emmanuel rode in silence. Lieutenant Mason had out-played them. He parked in front of a wide brick house with bars on the windows. A slender youth lounged on the front stairs with his fedora pulled low onto his forehead and tilted at a sharp right angle despite the darkness.
“This is not my brother’s home, Sergeant,” Shabalala said from the back seat. Zweigman rode up front. “His house is nearer to the corner.”
“I know.” Emmanuel switched off the engine and flipped the door handle. “We need a drink and this is the safest place to park a car in Sophiatown on a Saturday night.”
Zweigman and Shabalala followed him out of the Ford and onto the pavement. T
he man on the stairs moved to the front gate with a loping stride. He wore a baggy pin-striped suit and a grin that promised trouble.
“White man,” he spoke in a high soprano voice. “You and your friends are too trustworthy. This is Kofifi. The streets are full of thieves who will take your ride and that fine suit also.”
“It’s not you that I trust. It’s your boss. There’s no stealing or fighting allowed on his block. This is still Fix Mapela’s house, correct?”
The guard’s sly fox expression faltered. He was new to the job, with more attitude than experience. “Who wants to know?”
“Tell him the white kaffir said hello and make sure nothing happens to my car.” Emmanuel moved off with unhurried steps, knowing that Zweigman and Shabalala would follow. They caught up and slipped to either side of him. Lights burned at intermittent intervals along the road, brightening the houses of the lucky people with enough money for electricity.
“Who is Fix Mapela?” The German doctor wiped his glasses with the tail of his shirt. He’d seen more patients in three hours at Baragwanath than would normally attend a full day at his medical clinic in the Valley of a Thousand Hills; an experience both humbling and exhausting.
“Fix is a friend.” Emmanuel took a sharp left into a passage between buildings. “I grew up with him.”
“What does this friend do that he needs a guard and bars on all his windows?”
“He fixes things. Like his name says.”
Zweigman made a disparaging sound. “Does he also break things, I wonder?”
“Frequently.” They crossed over pot-holed black top and Emmanuel took a quick left into a narrow passage where the buildings crowded together more tightly. Rough laughter and the rattle of dice came from one direction. From another came the sound of a hymn being sung over dinner.
“Almost there.” They walked the pavement of a street lined with Indian- and Jewish-owned shops selling just about anything. Two sharp lefts brought them behind a wide building with prison-style windows. A rickety flight of stairs led up to a cinderblock house with a flat tin roof. Music and the smell of beer and cigarettes came from the building.
“Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “This is not a place for policemen.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Emmanuel climbed to the door. The Zulu detective and the German doctor stayed put. He motioned to them. “Come on. It’s a nice place. I guarantee there won’t be any trouble. We can sit and plan tomorrow.”
Shabalala hesitated and then took the stairs two at a time, deciding it was better to sit with the Detective Sergeant than to lie awake in a strange bed, worrying for Aaron’s future and for his wife Lizzie’s heart. He stopped halfway and gripped the handrail, waiting for a sudden dizziness to pass. Zweigman placed a hand on the Zulu man’s shoulder and said, “When was the last time you ate, my friend?”
“I do not remember. Maybe yesterday.”
“There’s a kitchen inside.” Emmanuel pushed opened the door. “We’ll order before we sit down.”
The illegal bar was a long, narrow room with scarlet walls and two cracked mirrors in place of windows. Cigarette smoke hung over the crowded tables. In the back corner, a couple clung to each other in drunken love. The clientele was a mix of louche black men and women with time to kill and enough money to buy booze. The “shebeen queen”, a middle-aged battleaxe with cherry-dark skin and flat facial features, pushed through the throng. The red and white checked dress and the triple strand of fake pearls looped around her neck probably came from the Indian shop but she wore them like they were priceless. She stood in front of Emmanuel and placed her hands on her hips.
“I don’t allow trouble,” she said over the noise of rough laughter. “And the white men who come into my place always make trouble.”
“Not us,” Emmanuel said. “We’re looking for a drink, food, and a quiet place to talk.”
“Then go to church. Or the Synagogue.” She winked at Zweigman and flashed a hard smile. “There is drink but no quiet place. You can stand in lover’s corner with your friends. That is the only space I have.”
“We’ll have a couch in the back room.” Emmanuel took out his wallet and handed over a note. “One bottle of the house beer with three glasses, funeral rice, grilled chicken livers and coleslaw. Please.”
“You know my place?” She stuffed the money down the front of her bra, which was more secure than a bank vault. Men had lost fingers trying to gain access.
“From when it was Mama Leslie’s house,” Emmanuel said. “A long time ago.”
“Go,” the shebeen queen spoke with a grudging respect. A white man knew the workings of her bar, the hidden room for the clients who had private business and also the most popular items on the menu. That was a rare thing. “See if there is room.”
“Thank you, mama.” Emmanuel moved off through the crush of bodies sweating alcohol and perfume. The noise and the anticipation of immediate gratification in the patrons’ faces held the familiarity of home. He pushed aside a lace curtain; five or so mismatched sofas were squeezed into a smaller room with a painted-over window. All seats were taken but for a dingy four-seater in the back corner. They sat down, drawing curious glances from the other drinkers.
“Is it certain that the men who took the fork work for Mason?” Zweigman asked when the beer and a bowl of yellow rice were set down on a small table by a kitchen hand.
“It looks that way to me.” Emmanuel waited for Shabalala to take some rice and then helped himself.
“The men could have been the actual criminals returning to the scene to cover their tracks,” the German doctor said after a sip of beer. “They had even more to gain from the theft of the fork than the Lieutenant.”
“They were not the same men.” Shabalala joined in. “Their footprints do not match.”
Zweigman worked a mound of rice onto his spoon, thinking out loud. “The two groups must have communicated with each other,” he said. “How else did the men who searched the garden know about the fork in the bush?”
“Mason.” Emmanuel was certain the Lieutenant was the link. “Either he’s personally involved with the crime or taking money to cover up for someone else. I don’t know which.”
“Lieutenant Mason, two points, and us, zero,” Zweigman said, referring to the “successful” car search and the disappeared pitchfork.
“That’s the score. We’ll visit Aaron tomorrow. All he needs to do is provide the name of one person who saw him walking through Sophiatown on Friday night.”
“I will talk with him but …” The Zulu detective chewed the rice slowly, searching for the right words. “I do not know if he will speak the truth to me.”
“You are his father.” Zweigman leaned back while a fat-armed woman in a blue housecoat and a white headscarf delivered the rest of the food. “He is your son.”
“Yebo. This is so but Aaron now belongs to the oldest child of my mother. He is my brother’s son through me. It was decided ten years ago.”
The laughter from the front bar and the heated whispers of the couple cuddling on the adjacent sofa seemed to magnify the stillness in Shabalala’s voice.
“How did he come to be your brother’s son?” Emmanuel asked. This practice of “giving” children to other members of the family was a familiar concept in Sophiatown.
“The son of my mother had a wife, two children and much money. With this money he bought a car and with this car he took his family to see the ocean in Natal. On the way home to Johannesburg it grew dark and the car hit a cow on the road. The wife and children died.” Shabalala took a mouthful of beer and then another. “He married again but no children, no children with the second wife. That is when my father came to me and said his eldest child was heart-sore. He needed a son to make things whole again.”
“Could you not refuse?” Zweigman asked. Dead children were at the heart of his own sorrow, having lost all three of his own offspring in the German death camps.
“My father lived by the o
ld ways. For his eldest son to die without issue, that was a thing he could not stand. He said that Lizzie and I must share our good fortune and in turn Aaron would be blessed with education and with money. This man, my father, gave me life. His request could not be refused. That is the Zulu way.” Shabalala cleared his throat to dislodge the hard lump that had formed around his larynx since hearing about Aaron’s arrest. “My wife’s youngest child has been well taken care of. He came home to us on the holidays, just as if he was still ours.”
“Surely your brother knows where Aaron went on Friday night?” Emmanuel said. Sophiatown was not entirely the lawless free-for-all most people believed it to be. Good families still worshipped in church and drank no liquor. Their children attended school and youth clubs supervised by the clergy. Shabalala’s son did not belong to the streets as Emmanuel had.
“The son of my father has a lung sickness.” The Zulu detective opened his hands in apology. “He is at a special hospital outside Pretoria. For three weeks he has been there. On Friday morning his wife went to visit for the weekend. The priest at Aaron’s school said he would keep watch over him. This was to be his first time alone in the house.”
They ate amid the chatter of bar patrons and of drunken singing. Emmanuel’s thoughts were equally noisy. A boy left alone for the weekend might have a girl over for a drink or hold a party for a group of friends. An empty house presented the perfect opportunity to play grown-ups. Yet Aaron, according to his own statement, chose to walk the streets aimlessly and alone. Mason took advantage of that lie. Could Cassie Brewer really be worth climbing the gallows for?
13.
The curtain that divided the secret room from the public area opened and the couple on the next couch sat up, nervous as impala at a watering hole. Three men in baggy suits and two-tone shoes walked into the room with predatory grace. Emmanuel topped up the beer glasses and kept eating, hoping that his companions would follow his lead and stay absolutely calm. Zweigman scooped up more chicken livers. Shabalala divided the remaining coleslaw between the three plates. Good. They were in tune.
