A Beautiful Place to Die (29 page)

“You’re cruel,” she said.

Emmanuel stayed quiet for a moment. He’d gone too far.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s get back to the riverside. Is there anything else you can tell me about the man who shot Captain Pretorius? Anything at all will help.”

It took her a while to recover from the terrifying specter of the courtroom and the public fallout from the murder trial.

“He was quiet,” Davida said. “Like a cat. I didn’t know he was there until he was right behind me.”

“You were frightened and crying,” Emmanuel reminded her. “Hearing anyone would have been hard.”

“I know but…it was like the time the Peeping Tom grabbed me. I didn’t know he was there until right before he jumped. It was like that.”

“Was the killer’s accent the same as the man who grabbed you?” Emmanuel asked. No matter which way the case turned, the molester was always there, like a shadow.

“They both sounded strange.” She looked directly at him, the connection clicking into place. “Like someone putting on a voice.”

Well, if she was lying about the man at the river, he couldn’t fault her performance. She looked amazed not to have made the link before now between the killer on the riverbank and the molester.

Emmanuel digested the new information. It supported his sense that the captain’s murder was tied to small-town secrets and lies and not part of an elaborate Communist plot to derail the National Party government.

He stood up and brushed the creases from the front of his trousers. Two days ago he’d believed Davida was a shy virgin who shrank from the touch of men not of her own “kind.” That perception was now a confirmed pile of horseshit and he was forced to give serious credence to her version of events regarding the captain’s murder. He no longer trusted his instincts when it came to the captain’s little wife.

Was that because, as the sergeant major suggested, there was something in her that stirred him? Emmanuel avoided looking at the wrought-iron bed and resisted the flood of uncensored images that came to him in a rush. Of all the times for his libido to rise from the dead, this would have to be the worst. Davida Ellis was a mixed-race woman and a key witness in the murder of an Afrikaner policeman: the devil’s very brew.

Emmanuel turned his back on the bed and faced the window where she stood. “When did you take up with Pretorius? Before or after the molester stopped?”

“After. The first time the captain came into this room was to interview me about the attacker. That was the end of December.”

“Do you remember being asked anything unusual by the captain?”

“Well…” She considered her answer. “Everything about the interview was strange. Not like with Lieutenant Uys, who asked three questions and then chased me out of the police station.”

“Strange in what way? Tell me about it.”

“Captain came here to this room by himself.” She let that breach of protocol sink in. “He asked me to sit down on that chair and close my eyes. I did and then he asked me to think about the man who’d grabbed me. He asked a lot of questions. Was the Peeping Tom bigger or smaller than me? I said bigger but not by that much. What was his skin like? Rough or smooth? I said smooth with only a little roughness, like a man who works with his hands now and then. Did his skin smell of anything in particular? Coffee, cigarettes, grease, or soap—any of those things? I said no but his hands did smell familiar. Captain told me to keep my eyes shut and try to remember. Where had I come across the smell before?”

“Did you remember?”

“I said that Anton’s hands smelled the same way. Like crushed gum leaves.”

“You think Anton’s the Peeping Tom?”

“No,” Davida said. “Anton’s hands are rough, like sandpaper, and his arms are hard with muscles. The man who grabbed me had soft hands and a smaller body than Anton’s.”

He didn’t ask her how she knew those intimate details about Anton. Presumably she had done a lot more than take the air when she went out walking with the lanky mechanic.

“How did Captain Pretorius react when you told him about the smell on the molester’s hands?” There was no mention of the gum leaf smell in the record of interview typed up and filed after the captain’s informal visit to the old servant’s quarters. There had to be a reason for the omission.

Davida shifted uncomfortably, and then seemed to realize that both her reputation and the captain’s were lost beyond any hope. Head up, she spoke to Emmanuel directly, in much the same way as Granny Mariah had outside the church.

“My eyes were closed. I didn’t see his face but I know he was pleased. He stroked my hair and said, ‘You’re a clever girl to remember that, Davida.’ I opened my eyes and he was halfway out of the door.”

What was it about the town of Jacob’s Rest? The heat, the isolation, or maybe just the proximity of the race groups appeared to make the exercise of power over others irresistible. Emmanuel himself had almost touched Davida’s wet hair outside the captain’s stone hut because he’d tasted the thrill of knowing that she was under his command and would keep his secrets safe. Wasn’t that feeling of power just an extension of the white induna fantasy that the National Party was now enacting into law?

“Did you ever tell Anton about the connection with the Peeping Tom? Ever ask him what the crushed gum leaf smell was?”

“Captain Pretorius came back here three or four days later and it was hard to talk to Anton after that. I don’t know what the smell was and the captain never mentioned it again.”

“Did you always call him Captain?”

The bold act evaporated and Davida went back to looking at the magic spot in front of her right toe. “He liked to be called Captain before and during and then Willem afterward.”

Yes, well. A relationship with a morally upstanding Dutchman with a taste for pornography and adultery was bound to come with a dizzying level of complications and arcane rules. Emmanuel glanced around the room and took note of the hastily made bed and the dust motes dancing over the painted concrete floor. It seemed that Willem got all the neatness he needed at home and then came to this room to wallow in the mess.

“Did you visit Pretorius at the stone hut?” he asked. The stone hut that was kept as fastidiously clean as the locked study in the immaculate Cape Dutch house but without the help of a maid.

“Yes, I did.”

“When you’d finished calling him Captain Pretorius and then Willem, did you clean for him?”

She looked up, gray eyes sparking with indignation. “I’m not a maid,” she said.

No, she wasn’t a maid and not overly fussy about housekeeping on the whole. Somebody had cleaned the stone hut to a hospital-ward level of cleanliness. The only thing missing was the astringent smell of pine antiseptic. “Was the captain fussy about the interior of the hut? You know, did he have a place for everything and everything in its place?”

“No. He didn’t care so much about keeping neat.”

“Not in this room and not at the hut,” Emmanuel said. In every other respect Willem Pretorius had kept himself very neat indeed. The immaculate white house with his immaculate white wife, the starched police uniform and spotless undershirts were all outside indications of his clean and spotless soul. Flip a coin and you got the shadow Willem, slumming naked in an unmade bed with a smile on his face. Why was the stone hut so clean? The captain hadn’t been expecting any visitors.

“What were you doing at the hut?” Emmanuel asked.

“Getting the photos.” She was nervous now, her shoulders straightening as she pulled herself out of her slouch. “I didn’t want anyone to find them.”

“Did your mother clean up the hut, Davida?”

“No.”

“What did your father think about your relationship with Captain Pretorius? Did he approve?”

That threw her and she cupped a hand to her flushed cheek. “What are you talking about? My father died when I was a child. In a farm accident.”

“I thought Willem Pretorius arranged for a bride-price to be paid to your father in exchange for you.”

“Wh—what? Where did you get that from? That’s a lie.”

“Which lie are we talking about? The one about the bride-price or the one about your father being dead?”

Davida quickly hid her fear and confusion in her shy-brown-mouse persona. “I told you the truth about Captain Pretorius and myself. I even told you what we were doing when he got shot. Why would I lie to you now, Detective Sergeant Cooper?”

“I don’t know.” He noted the correct use of his title. “But I’m sure you have your reasons.”

He walked to the door, conscious of Shabalala waiting outside and of the gathering speed of the investigation. He had to make the connection between the molester and the captain’s killer real enough to stand up in court. He needed evidence.

“Are you going to take me to the station?” she said.

“No.”

The Security Branch and the Pretorius brothers were the last people he’d expose her to. She was safe so long as she remained an anonymous coloured woman working for an old Jew in a shabby local store. Once she’d been revealed as Captain Willem Pretorius’s doxy, the knives were going to come out and the punishment for her transgressions would be fierce.

“What do I do now?” She sounded lost now that everything about her secret life had been exposed.

“Stay here. You can help your granny in the garden but don’t leave the property until I get back and tell you it’s okay to move around.”

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled the door halfway open, then stopped. “What happened back in April?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

She hesitated, then said, “I had a miscarriage. Dr. Zweigman made sure everything was cleaned up and healed, but the captain thought he killed the baby. They had a fight about it. I never talked about Dr. Zweigman with the captain after that and I never talked about the captain with Dr. Zweigman, but we all knew.”

“I’m sorry,” Emmanuel said, and stepped out of the room and into the garden. He was sorry to have ever heard of Jacob’s Rest. He was also sorry to discover that the disconnect switch, the one that allowed him to endure the grisliest murder investigations without getting emotionally involved, no longer worked.

17

C
RUSHED GUM LEAVES…”
Emmanuel said to the mechanic after he and Shabalala had made their way back to the garage. “What do you use on your hands that has that particular smell?”

Anton rummaged in a wooden bucket and pulled out a tin can stamped with an impression of a slender leaf with jagged thunderbolts spiking out from it. “Degreaser. Us mechanics use it to clean up. It gets the dirt up from around the nails and between the fingers.”

“Who would use this particular cleaner?” Emmanuel pried open the top and sniffed the thick white slurry. The gum leaf smell was intense. “Just mechanics, or anyone fixing machinery?”

“Well, it’s not cheap, so it wouldn’t be used by someone fiddling around with their bicycle or bore pump. The only other place I’ve seen this stuff in town is at the Pretorius garage.”

“Is that where you get your supply?”

Anton laughed. “Good heavens! Can you imagine Erich Pretorius letting me buy anything from his place? No, I get my little sister to bring back two or three cans when she comes home from Mooihoek for the holidays. She’s at boarding school there. She was only down this weekend because of the funeral.”

“You’d notice if a can was missing?”

“Definitely. I string my supply out over the year. Like I said, it’s expensive. December’s supply has got to last to Easter, then I have to stretch the next one to August.”

“December and August?” Emmanuel gave the can of precious cleaner back to Anton and pulled out his notebook. Something was nudging his memory. “Why those months in particular?”

“School holidays,” Shabalala said. “My youngest son comes home also at these times.”

The molester was active during two distinct periods: August and December. Emmanuel gave his notes a quick check. That was right. He checked specific dates with Anton. The attacks occurred during the holidays and at no other time of year. The attacker might be partial to schoolgirls. Or on school holidays himself.

“Gentlemen.” Zweigman appeared holding a container of his wife’s butter cookies as an entrée into the conversation. “My wife will be upset if I do not deliver these as promised.”

“The molester? What made you think it was a white man?” Emmanuel asked.

“I have no proof. Just a feeling that the color of his skin is the reason why he was not caught and brought to trial.”

“Okay.” Emmanuel included all three men in the conversation. “Let’s assume the molester was a Dutchman. Are there any white men that you know of who are only here in town for the big school holidays?”

Zweigman, Anton, and Shabalala all shook their heads in the negative. Emmanuel moved on. “Which white boys were at boarding school last year? I’m talking about boys over the age of fourteen.”

“The Loubert boys, Jan and Eugene,” said Anton. “Then there was Louis Pretorius and, I believe, the Melmons’ son, Jacob. I don’t know about the Dutch boys out on the farms.”

“What about Hansie?” It was a ludicrous thought but Emmanuel had to cover as many bases as he could. Whittling down the suspect list by scraping together pieces of information on white schoolboys was a primitive science at best.

“Training,” Shabalala answered. “The constable was at the police college during the last half of the year.”

“The boys who were away at school last year? Did any of them ever get caught on the kaffir paths after dark?”

“Louis and the Loubert boys,” Anton replied. “They were using the path to obtain…um, things that the captain thought were unhealthy.”

“Liquor and dagga from Tiny? Is that right?”

“Ja.” Anton lifted his eyebrows in amazement. “I thought only Captain Pretorius and the coloured people knew about that. It was kept pretty quiet.”

“Small town,” Emmanuel said. “Which of those three boys would have access to the cleaner?”

“Louis for sure,” Anton answered again. “The boy is always messing around with engines and fixing things up. He’s good with his hands and Erich lets him have whatever he wants from the garage.”

“Was Louis home for the August and December holidays?” Emmanuel asked Shabalala.

“Yes,” Shabalala said. “He came back for all the holidays. The missus does not like him staying too long away.”

That was three out of three for Louis. He knew the kaffir path almost as well as a native, he was home for the holidays, and he had easy access to the gum-scented cleaner. Those facts alone warranted an interview even though the idea of the boy as the molester still seemed ludicrous.

Emmanuel went back to the bit about Louis being good with his hands. On the first day of the investigation Louis had given the distinct impression that his father was the mechanical whiz. He’d said as much.

“I thought the captain was letting Louis help him fix up an old motorbike,” Emmanuel said.

“Other way around. The captain was helping Louis. There’s not much that boy doesn’t know about engines, but the captain was always asking for help after he’d stuffed something up.”

“You think Louis is capable of finishing that Indian motorbike without help?”

“Completely.” Anton placed his precious supply of antigrease cleaner into the wooden bucket. “Beats me why he went to Bible college when he should have been working at his brother’s place. Being a mechanic suits him a hell of a lot better than being a pastor.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t suit his mother.” Mrs. Pretorius had a pretty clear idea about her youngest son’s future: a future free of oil stains and overalls.

“The school holiday inquiry is an interesting one,” Zweigman broke in politely. “But that does not explain why the attacks stopped in the middle of the Christmas holidays and have not recurred.”

“You’re right. December twenty-sixth was the last reported attack. That still leaves how much of the holiday?”

“The first week of January,” Shabalala replied so softly that Emmanuel turned to him. The Zulu constable looked just as he had on the banks of the river the moment before they pulled Captain Pretorius from the water. His face carried sadness too deep to be expressed with words.

“The Drakensberg.” Emmanuel remembered Hansie’s drunken ramblings out on the veldt. When had the captain sent Louis “a long way away” after discovering the drinking and dagga smoking? “Is that where he was, Shabalala?”

“Yebo,” the Zulu man said. “The young one, Mathandunina, was taken by the captain on the first day of January to a place in the Drakensberg mountains in Natal. I do not know why.”

Emmanuel scribbled van Niekerk’s name and phone number and a query onto a page in his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to Zweigman.

“Call this number and ask this man, Major van Niekerk, if he has an answer to this question. Constable Shabalala and I will be back within the hour. If not, look for us in the police cells.”

It was five past twelve and Miss Byrd was sitting on the back steps of the post office, chewing on a canned-meat sandwich made with thick slices of soft white bread. She was startled to see both the detective sergeant and the Zulu policeman walking toward her.

“The engine part that Louis Pretorius is waiting for? Has it come in yet?” Emmanuel said.

“It came the day before his father passed. Tragic, hey? Captain not getting to ride the motorbike after all the hard work he and Louis put into it. To be so close and not…”

“I thought Louis was coming to the post office every day to check for the part?”

“No.” Miss Byrd smiled. “He calls in to collect the mail for his mother. He’s very considerate that way, a very sweet young boy.”

“Yes, and Lucifer was the most beautiful of all God’s angels,” Emmanuel said. He and Shabalala walked back onto the kaffir path. They started as one toward the captain’s shed. He’d told the Zulu constable about the attack in the stone hut and the mechanical rattle he’d heard just before passing out.

“Looks like he dismantled the bike after he finished it, so no one knew he had transport.” Emmanuel took a guess at the sequence of events. “I’m willing to bet that Pretorius didn’t know anything about the engine part arriving from Jo’burg.”

“He said nothing of it to me.”

They picked up the pace and jogged in unison across the stretch of veldt that swung around the back of the police station and curved past the rear fence line of the houses facing onto van Riebeeck street. The noon sun had burned away the clouds to reveal a canopy of blue.

“You don’t have to come in,” Emmanuel said once they’d stopped outside the shed door. “Right or wrong, this is going to cause big trouble.”

“That one inside.” Shabalala hadn’t even broken a sweat on the run. “He is the only one who knew which kaffir paths the captain was running on. I wish to hear what he has to say to this.”

Emmanuel gave the door a shove with his shoulder, expecting resistance, but found none. The door swung open to reveal the darkened interior of the work shed. He stepped inside. Both Louis and the motorcycle were gone. Emmanuel walked over to the spot where the Indian had been resting on blocks and found a large oil stain but nothing else.

“The little bastard’s taken off on his motorbike. You have any idea where he could have gone, Shabalala?”

“Detective Sergeant—”

Dickie and two new Security Branch men wrestled the Zulu constable from the open doorway, then shoved him back onto the veldt. Lieutenant Piet Lapping entered wearing a sweat-and ash-stained shirt and rumpled pants. Lack of sleep had made his craggy face look like a bag of marbles stuffed into a white nylon stocking.

“Lieutenant Lapping.” Emmanuel smelled the anger and frustration coming directly off Piet’s sweat-beaded skin and concentrated on remaining calm. The Security Branch couldn’t nail him for anything. Not yet.

“Sit down.” Piet indicated the chair in front of the hunting desk. Dickie and his two bulldozer pals followed and took up positions at either side of the door. Emmanuel did as he was told and sat down.

“Dickie.” Piet held out his hand and took a thin folder from his second in command, which he held up for closer inspection. “You know what this is, Cooper?”

“A file,” Emmanuel said. It was the information folder delivered by special messenger on the day he’d gone to Mozambique.

“A file…” Piet paused and rummaged in his pants pocket for a cigarette. “Sent especially to us by district headquarters. Have you seen this particular file before, Cooper?”

“No, I have not.”

Piet lit his cigarette and allowed the flame from his silver lighter to burn longer than necessary before snapping it shut with a hard click. He placed the file gently onto Emmanuel’s lap.

“Take a good look at it. Open it up and tell me if you see anything unusual about the contents.”

Emmanuel cracked the yellow cover and made a show of checking the inside before closing the file and resting his hands on the folder.

“It’s empty.”

“Hear that, Dickie? It’s empty.” Ash from the lieutenant’s cigarette fell onto the file but Emmanuel did nothing to remove it. “It’s obvious to me now that Cooper was promoted quick smart because he’s sharp. He’s got it up here, in the kop, where it counts. Isn’t that so, Detective Sergeant?”

Emmanuel shrugged. They weren’t having a conversation. Lieutenant Lapping was running through the standard textbook interrogation warmup that demanded the interrogator make at least some attempt to extract information via voluntary confession. Beating suspects was hell on the hands and the neck muscles, and from the look of him, Piet was coming off a heavy night in the police cells.

“I’m not angry.” The lieutenant went down on his haunches like a hunter checking a spoor trail. “I just want to know how the fuck you managed to extract the contents of a confidential file while it was under lock and key.”

Up close, Emmanuel saw the blue smudges of exhaustion under pockmarked Piet’s eyes and smelled the gut-churning mix of blood and sweat coming off his person. It was a rank abattoir fug overlaid with the mild lavender perfume of a common brand of soap.

Emmanuel did his best not to pull back from the Security Branch officer. “Maybe district headquarters forgot to include them,” he said.

Piet smiled, then took a deep drag of his cigarette. “See, with any other team of police, I’d buy that explanation. But this is my team and my team doesn’t make mistakes.”

“I’d go back to district headquarters and see who typed the report and posted the file,” Emmanuel suggested.

“Done all that,” Piet replied almost pleasantly. “And what I found was this. You, Detective Sergeant Cooper, were the person who helped the messenger sign the folder in to the police box when it arrived in town.”

“I was being polite. One department of the police is supposed to help another department, isn’t it?”

“My first thought is that your close friend van Niekerk tipped you off about what was in the folder. You knew the file was coming and somehow you managed to lift the contents. Did one of those spinsters at the post office let you into the police box? We’ve been too busy to ask them in person but I think an hour alone with me will get them to open up, so to speak.”

The Security Branch operatives laughed at Piet’s provocative turn of phrase and Emmanuel sensed the group’s anticipation at the possibility of questioning two country maids. Affable and trusting Miss Byrd with her fondness for feather hats. Five minutes in Lieutenant Lapping’s company and she’d be broken for good.

“Why are you chasing postal clerks? I thought you had a Communist in the bag, ready to confess. Did something go wrong at the station?”

Piet’s dark eyes were dead at the very center. “The first thing you will have to accept, Detective, is that I am smarter than you. I know you took those pages and I will find out how. I will also find out why.”

“No confession, then? What a shame. Paul Pretorius was certain it would only take an hour or two for the suspect to open up, so to speak.”

Piet smiled and the dark center of his pupils came alive with a bright flash of intent. “I promised Dickie that he could work on you if the time ever came, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to enjoy seeing you crack myself.”

“Like you cracked the suspect at the station?” Emmanuel said. A Security Branch officer he might be, but Lieutenant Lapping had superiors to report to, generals and colonels hungry for a victory against enemies of the state.