A Beautiful Place to Die (3 page)

Zweigman tapped a finger against the hard leather of his medical bag and appeared to give the question some thought.

They swung off Piet Retief Street with its white-owned businesses, and headed up General Kruger Road. Every street in Jacob’s Rest was the answer to an exam question on Afrikaner history.

“Are you qualified?” Emmanuel asked again.

The shopkeeper waved the question away with a flick of his hand. “I no longer feel qualified to practice medicine in any country.”

Emmanuel eased off the accelerator and prepared to swing a U-turn back in the direction of Poppies General Store.

“Ever been struck off the register in Germany or South Africa for any reason, Dr. Zweigman?” he asked.

“Never,” the shopkeeper said. “And I don’t answer to ‘doctor’ anymore. Please call me ‘the old Jew’ like everyone else.”

“I would.” Emmanuel pulled the car up in front of the Grace of God Hospital and switched off the engine. “But you’re not that old.”

“Ahhhh…” The sound was dry as parchment. “Don’t be fooled by my youthful appearance, Detective. Under this skin, I am actually the
ancient
Jew.”

Strange turns of phrase were one possible reason the oddball Kraut was sitting next to him, and not in some swank medical suite in Cape Town or Jo’burg.

“I think I’ll call you the peculiar Jew. It suits you better. Now let’s see your papers.” Friendship with a man crazy enough to choose shopkeeper above physician was not on his list of things to do. He just wanted to verify the qualifications, then get relief for the pounding in his head.

Sunlight caught the rim of Zweigman’s glasses when he leaned forward, so Emmanuel wasn’t sure if he’d seen a spark of laughter in the doctor’s brown eyes. Zweigman handed him the papers, the first of which were in German.

“You read Deutsch, Detective?”

“Only beer hall menus.” He flipped to the South African qualifications written in English and read the information slowly, then read it again. A surgeon, with membership in the Royal College of Surgeons. It was like finding a gold coin in a dirty sock.

Emmanuel looked hard at Zweigman, who returned his stare without blinking. There had to be a simple explanation for the white-haired German being in Jacob’s Rest. Deep country was the ideal place to bury a surgeon with shaky hands. Did the good doctor have a fondness for alcohol?

“No, Detective Sergeant.” Zweigman read his thoughts. “I do not hit the bottle at any time.”

Emmanuel handed the papers back with a shrug. Zweigman was more than qualified to do what was asked of him. That was all the case needed.

Far enough from the main buildings to create a buffer zone between the living and the dead, a round mud-brick hut worked double time as the hospital’s morgue and hardware storeroom.

Emmanuel paused under the shade of a jacaranda tree and allowed Shabalala and Zweigman to get ahead of him. The stooped doctor and the towering black man moved toward the morgue on a carpet of the jacaranda’s spent flowers. At the path’s end, Sister Angelina and Sister Bernadette administered spoonfuls of cod-liver oil to a row of ragged children while Hansie slept the dense sleep of the village idiot, with his head propped against the morgue door.

My team, Emmanuel thought. He stepped out of the shade and the headache hit him again. The thatched roof of the hut bled into the sky and the grass merged with the white walls of the buildings so that everything resembled a child’s watercolor. He pressed his palm hard over his eye socket, but the blur and the pain remained. By nightfall the headache would be a sharp splinter of hot light that shut down the eye completely. After the examination of the captain’s body was set up, he’d get a triple dose of aspirin from the sisters. A double dose for now and a single one he could chase with a shot of whiskey before bed. At least he knew where the liquor store was.

“Asleep on duty.” Emmanuel gave Hansie a sharp tap on the shoulder. “I could write you up for that, Hepple.”

Hansie jumped to attention to prove his alertness. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was resting my eyes,” he said, then caught sight of Zweigman. “What’s he doing here? I thought you went to fetch the Pretorius brothers.”

“We got lost.” Emmanuel sidestepped Hansie and pushed the door to the morgue open. It was cool and dark inside. He looked over his shoulder and saw Zweigman walk over to the sisters, who were flushed and uncomfortable in front of the man whose confidence they’d betrayed.

“Sister Angelina and Sister Bernadette.” The white-haired German gave no indication he’d been co-opted by the police. “Will you please assist me?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Sister Bernadette said. “Excuse us while we prepare the necessary things.”

The sisters marched the children toward the main building, where black and brown faces pressed up against the glass windows. The whites-only wing was empty. This afternoon the nonwhites would have something to tell their visitors. “The captain, ma big boss man Pretorius, he’s dead!”

“Doctor?” Hansie was fully awake and glaring at Zweigman. “That’s the old Jew. He’s not a doctor. He sells beans to kaffirs and coloureds.”

“He’s qualified to look at natives, coloureds and dead people,” Emmanuel said, and took refuge inside the darkened morgue. The pulsing behind his eye eased off a fraction but not enough. He switched on the examination light. Hansie and Shabalala stepped in and took up position against the wall. When the sisters got back, he’d ask for the painkillers right away. There was no way he’d make it through the examination with the harsh white light in the stifling mortuary.

He pulled the sheet back to reveal the captain’s uniformed body. Zweigman looked ready to deposit the contents of his stomach onto the concrete floor. His knuckles strained white against the leather handle of his medical bag.

“Were you friends with the captain?” Emmanuel asked.

“We were known to each other.” Zweigman’s voice was half its normal strength, the guttural accent more pronounced than before. “An acquaintance that, it appears, has come to a most abrupt end.”

Zweigman regained his color and started to clear a side counter with robotic precision. Was there the smallest hint of satisfaction in Zweigman’s comment about an abrupt end?

“Not friends, then,” Emmanuel said.

“There are few whites in this town that would claim me as a friend,” Zweigman said without turning around. He calmly rolled up his sleeves to his elbows and snapped open his medical kit.

“Why’s that?”

“I did not come here on the first Trekboer wagons and I do not understand how or even why one would play the game of rugby.”

Emmanuel shaded his eyes against the naked light to get a clearer look at Zweigman. His headache pounded behind his eyeball. Zweigman had gone from shock to calm in the blink of an eye.

“Where to, Doctor?” Sister Angelina entered the morgue with a huge bowl of hot water in her muscular arms. A starched white apron covered her nun’s habit, reaching to her knees.

Zweigman pointed to the cleared counter. Sister Bernadette shuffled in under a load of towels and washcloths. They set up in silence, moving like dancers in a well-rehearsed ballet. Zwiegman scrubbed his hands and forearms, then dried himself with a small towel.

“Doctor?” Sister Bernadette held out a white surgical robe with the name “Kruger” embroidered on the pocket in dark blue. Zweigman slid into the robe and allowed Sister Bernadette to knot the ties along the back. It was obvious they’d worked together before.

“What do you want from me?” Zweigman asked.

“Time of death. Cause of death and a signed death certificate. No autopsy.”

Emmanuel pulled out his notepad, but his headache blurred his writing into dark smudge marks.

“Detective?”

Emmanuel refocused and saw Sister Angelina in front of him with a glass of water in one hand and four white pills in the upturned palm of the other.

“Doctor says to take these right away.”

He swallowed the tablets and chased them down with the water. Double the dose, the way he always took it when the blurring wouldn’t go away. Perhaps “the clever Jew” was a better name for Zweigman.

“Thanks.”

“No need.” Zweigman turned to the body. The ghostly face shone white under the glow of the naked lightbulb. “Let us begin with the clothes.”

Sister Angelina picked up a pair of pruning shears, sliced along the stiff line of buttons that ran from neck to waist, then flicked the material out like the skin of a fruit to reveal the pale flesh of the captain’s bloated torso.

Emmanuel stepped closer. Until the blurring lifted, he needed to take it slowly and write all the information down in large slabs. Obvious details needed to marry to a one-or two-word description in the notebook—at least until he could see straight.

“Big” was the first word. The Pretorius brothers had inherited their height and strength from their father. The captain was six feet plus with a body built by physical labor.

“Captain still play sport?” Emmanuel asked no one in particular. The captain’s nose, broken and then crudely reset in the face, was probably the result of time spent on the muddy playing fields dotted throughout Afrikanerdom.

“He coached the rugby team,” Hansie said.

“And he ran,” Sister Bernadette continued. “He ran all over town and into the countryside sometimes.”

“Same time every day?”

“Every day except Sunday, because that was the Lord’s day.” Sister Bernadette sounded full of admiration. “Sometimes he ran in the morning and sometimes we’d see him run by well after dark.”

That would explain why the captain hadn’t piled on the fat like so many senior officers on the force. It was practically against police procedure to remain at normal weight after more than ten years in service.

“Yes.” Zweigman pulled a bootlace free from its knot. “Early morning or late at night. There was no way to tell when the captain would run by. Or when he’d stop for a friendly talk.”

Emmanuel wrote “Zweigman vs. Captain?” in his notebook. He sensed a sting behind the doctor’s words. He’d sniff out the details later.

“Oh, yes.” Sister Bernadette sighed. “The captain always stopped when he had the time. He knew all our little orphans by name.”

“Trousers.” Zweigman moved aside and Sister Angelina sliced each trouser leg open with her pruning shears. The top two buttons of the trouser fly were undone and the buckle of the leather belt had twisted open in the rough river current.

“Sister Bernadette,” Zweigman said. “Please remove the trousers while we lift.” He moved to position himself at the captain’s shoulders.

“Doctor, please.” Sister Angelina waved him aside and single-handedly pushed the captain’s deadweight into a sitting position while her miniature Irish partner pulled the dirty uniform free and threw it onto the floor. They repeated the action with the trousers, leaving the captain naked and pale on the gurney. Sister Angelina discreetly draped a towel over the exposed genitals.

“Poor Captain Pretorius.” Sister Bernadette placed the dangling arms back onto the gurney. “No matter what condition the body was in, I’d still know it was him.”

There were no identifying marks. Was there something about the naked captain only the little nun could identify?

Sister Bernadette lifted a dead hand. “There wasn’t a time I didn’t see this watch on him. Captain wore it always.”

“He never took it off.” Hansie’s eyes were reddening. “Mrs. Pretorius gave it to him for his fortieth birthday. The strap is real crocodile skin.”

Even under layers of dirt it was easy to see the quality of the watch. It was dull gold with a textured wristband. Elegant. Not a word that kept easy company with the meaty captain or his sons. Emmanuel lifted the hand. Fresh bruises stained the flesh along the knuckle ridge. Captain Pretorius had recently hit something with force. He made a quick note in his pad, then turned the hand over. A small collection of calluses was scattered across the tray-sized palm.

“What kind of physical work did the captain do?”

“He liked to work on engines with Louis. They were fixing up an old motorbike together.” Hansie sniffled.

“No,” Emmanuel said. Some of the calluses had the soft, broken edges of newly minted blisters. This was the hand of a laborer who hauled and lifted right until the day he died. “I mean heavy work. Work that makes you sweat.”

“Sometimes he helped Henrick out on the farm,” Hansie said softly. “If it was cattle dipping or branding time, he liked to be there to watch because he grew up on a farm and he missed the life…”

Shabalala said nothing, just kept his gaze directed at the concrete floor where the captain’s uniform lay, torn and disregarded. If the black policeman knew the answer, he wasn’t inclined to share it.

Emmanuel turned the cold hand palm down and stepped back. Perhaps the sons had an answer. He wrote “heavy work/ blistered hands” on the pad. The black lines held steady on the page. The medication had kicked in.

Zweigman began a sweep of the body. “Severe trauma to the head. Appears to be the entry wound from a gunshot. Bruising to the shoulders, upper arm and underarm area…”

From dragging the body, Emmanuel thought. The killer had to hold on tight and pull hard as a mule to get to the water. Why bother? Why not shoot and run off into the night?

Zweigman continued down the body, paying meticulous attention to every detail. “Severe trauma to the spine. Appears to be the entry wound from another gunshot. Bruising along the knuckles. Blistering on the palms…”

The German surgeon was completely focused on the task, his face lit by something close to contentment. Why, with all his obvious expertise, was he serving behind the counter of a decrepit general store?

“Let’s wash him down,” Zweigman said.

Sister Angelina wrung warm water out of a hand towel and began wiping the pale skin down with the no-nonsense touch of nannies throughout English and Afrikaner homes across South Africa. Forty-something years on, the captain was leaving life as he’d entered it, in the hands of a black woman.

“No, no, no.” Hansie rushed forward, breathing hard. “Captain wouldn’t like it.”

“Like what, Hepple?” Emmanuel said.