The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  In a filing cabinet, in a bottom drawer behind alphabetized records, was a blue velvet bag. Inside the bag was a bottle of expensive whiskey, a birthday present from an April gone by. Two ounces didn’t faze him. Maybe Wolffe was right, he thought. Maybe law and order were only effective if quickly dispensed. Maybe the example set was more important than the truth uncovered. A high union official is killed in a place of disrepute. Could a bathroom be called a place of disrepute? he wondered. Still, an untruth. Television material. Late-night television material, quietly censored, quickly forgotten. Fuck you, Major. That’s your game, your rules. I’ll make up my own, if you don’t mind. And even if you do.

  He drank a third shot, and a fourth. He dozed. Slowly, sleep exorcised him. But the face last envisioned belonged not to Jennifer, as he had expected. It belonged, instead, to a mysterious union official with endless waves of black hair, oval eyes, and a walking stick.

  Chapter 4

  Sylvia Mabasu’s body was found wrapped in a tarp at the bottom of an overgrown glen a thousand meters from the Peddie bus station. Her eyes were opened wide, expressing surprise and helplessness, but her mouth was contorted with pain.

  An Allenfield-FM helicopter transported the Port Elizabeth chief homicide inspector to the scene. The body had already been disturbed slightly, but the crime scene remained intact, barricaded from the top of the mountain down to the floor of the valley.

  The nylon rope wrapped tight around the victim’s neck looked eerily familiar. Blood vessels, popped purple and blue, glistened like quartzite around dark brown eyes. Bastard. Animal. Mansell talked himself into a state of calm.

  The Ciskeian Police Department was not

  staffed with a medical examiner. The nearest

  hospital was located eighty kilometers away. Mansell did the preliminary examination himself. A local doctor assisted.

  The body was past cooling. The initial tinge of decomposition hovered over it. Rigor mortis had come and gone. Time of death, the doctor estimated, was sixty hours before. Mansell made notes. There was bluish lividity of the mucous membranes, and the lips were a pale steely hue. A trace of froth still lingered about the mouth. They stood in a cool valley shaded by evergreens and oak. Ground cover and wild grass sweated away the last drops of morning dew.

  The groove in the victim’s neck, in depth and width, resembled that in Ian Elgin’s. The neck and jaw were scored with abrasions and contusions. Occlusion had occurred about the greater vessels of the neck, cutting off the supply of blood to the brain. She died quickly, thought Mansell with some relief, noting the discoloration. Both Mansell and the doctor fixed the cause of death as asphyxia due to strangulation.

  Merry and the local police combed the area from the scene all the way back to the bus station. A single dirt road wound down from the station into the valley, and then followed a stream southward. The body had been discovered thirty meters from the road. Since July third, the day of Sylvia Mabasu’s disappearance, two rain showers had passed over the region. One, the night before last, had been a downpour. They found no identifiable footprints or tire tracks.

  The tarp, heavily stained with machine oil and grease, was identified as one missing from the bus station’s repair shop. The foreman and three mechanics were thoroughly questioned. When the tarp had disappeared could not be determined, though it was obvious. The repair shop was closed and locked on weekends, unless an emergency arose. None had.

  Sylvia Mabasu was not known in Peddie nor in Ciskei, as far as the police could determine. She carried R15 and some change in a purse found with the body. The contents of the purse had not, apparently, been disturbed. The money was still inside a leather change pouch. A gold wedding band set with a pink tourmaline, Sylvia Mabasu’s most treasured possession and worth considerably more than the R15 in her purse, was still on the third finger of her left hand. Robbery was not considered a motive.

  The Ciskeian doctor thoroughly examined the victim to determine if she had been subjected to any type of sexual abuse. Physical evidence was completely absent. Except for the neck and face, the body was void of any signs of bruises, scratches, or wounds. The victim’s clothes were damp, though still clean and pressed, considering. The state of the clothes led Mansell to believe that the body had been carried, not dragged, from the road to its resting place. A statement on the size of the killer.

  There were limited signs of a struggle.

  The tips of the fingers were swollen. Two fingernails on the right hand were broken off. Mansell examined the fingernail scrapings on both hands for traces of blood, hair, or human tissue. What he found instead were traces of a dark blue material, plastic or rubber, beneath the nails of the index and ring fingers on the left hand.

  Attendants laid the body on the stretcher, and Mansell gazed down at Sylvia Mabasu. She was a fair-sized woman, 170 centimeters, he estimated. She displayed a muscle development that came with physical labor. A statuesqueness remained even with death.

  ****

  Blood oozed from the bottoms of Anthony Mabasu’s swollen feet. The hard bricks on which he’d been standing for the past sixteen hours were caked now with thick layers of dark brown.

  The interrogation chamber was located on the tenth floor of the Hall of Justice. It was bedroom-sized with padded walls, a card table, folding chairs, and bare bulbs.

  Three Security men paced about the cell. A fifth session began with old questions newly phrased. Security never expected resilience or strength from their Bantu detainees. They were becoming impatient. Pretoria was clamoring for a confession.

  A first officer, a spare, muscular corporal with a heavy beard and a forest of nostril hair, forced Mabasu’s jaws open. A second officer, with red armbands and sergeant’s stripes, poured a dark liquid into his mouth. Mabasu gagged, swallowed, and coughed. The liquid was chifir, a Finnish creation carried by Dutch explorers on extended sea voyages, and introduced to the African continent three centuries before. Chifir was a tea concentrated twenty times over. A Finnish miner would work fifteen hours straight on four ounces of chifir. A Dutch sailor would stand the watch for an entire night on two.

  A Zulu prisoner, standing on shards of fire brick in pools of his own blood, two-hundred-and-fifty-watt lights glaring in his eyes, and kidneys bruised by bamboo staves, would remain conscious if not coherent for thirty hours on a quart.

  The session started. Anthony Mabasu’s answers remained consistent.

  “Was Ian Elgin waiting in the sleep room when you came into the lounge, or was he sitting on one of the locker benches drinking a pop?”

  “No, boss, it wasn’t like that. His body was chucked inside one of the lockers by then.” Mabasu’s arms were numb except for his fingertips. “Sorry, boss, he was dead by then.”

  “Where did you steal the nylon rope from, Kaffir boy? The rope, Anthony, where did it come from?”

  Mabasu shook his head, twice, in slow motion. A bamboo baton slashed across his abdominal muscles.

  Veins popped from the thick neck of the interrogator. This was Major Hymie Wolffe’s forte. “How much money was Mr. Elgin carrying in his pockets, boy?” Wolfe hissed. “How much money was in his wallet? Was it worth a man’s life, boy? Was it?”

  “No,

  “No, it’s never enough, is it?” Wolffe brought his baton near the prisoner’s groin and jabbed. Mabasu sucked air and groaned.

  “We have your neckerchief, Anthony. Your bandana. Do you want it back now? The blood on it belongs to the man you killed.”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  Wolfe drew out a piece of paper from his breast pocket. He held it under Mabasu’s nose, shaking it rhythmically. The quaking sound reminded Mabasu of the sheet-metal roof on his house when the wind shook it at night.

  The sergeant snickered. “Tell him. Tell him about his wife,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mabasu. A baton thwacked the veins behind his knees. He coughed red tea out of the corners of his mouth.

  “Not yet,” whispered th
e interrogator. “I think not quite yet.”

  Purposely, the watch and ring had been withheld from the interrogation until this session. Wolffe withdrew the paper, gestured toward the table, and the corporal retrieved a plastic bag.

  Wolfe brought the watch into the light. He dangled it in the prisoner’s face. “The crawl space was a good hiding place, Kaffir, but not too original.” The ring dropped onto Wolfe’s stubby little finger. Mabasu’s eyes widened. “We found the ring and the watch in your house, Anthony. Under the floor. How do you think a jury will react to that?”

  Mabasu shook his head. He opened his mouth. His voice chimed like the sound of glass breaking in the distance. “They’re not mine. Believe me. They’re not mine.”

  The guards laughed. Wolfe stripped away his blue uniform shirt, exposing a sleeveless undershirt. His face glistened with sweat. His knee entered Mabasu’s groin with enough force to raise him off the bricks. Mabasu’s scream caromed off the walls, and his body fell limp against the rope. A diminuendo of soft yelping followed.

  Chifir was readministered.

  Mabasu shuddered involuntarily. His head snapped back. His eyelids parted a mere fraction. He felt Wolffe’s presence behind him. “Now, that’s a good ol’ boy,” Wolfe said.

  Mabasu felt the tip of the baton dance across his shoulder blades. Muscles constricted. He braced for the assault, but the baton withdrew. A piece of paper floated cloudlike before him. It was filled with handwritten words, but Mabasu’s vision was too blurred to see them.

  “Your dismissal from the union. Remember, Anthony? Mr. Ian Elgin was the one who got your ass fired from your dock job.” Wolfe used lies the way a woodworker uses a lathe. The baton and the paper added italics and boldface. “And the job you had now belongs to a twenty-two-year-old white Afrikaner. Your marriage is on the rocks. Elgin, the lousy bastard, was doing it to your wife. You knew it. We know how you felt, Anthony. We do. Hell, boy, you felt helpless. We’d all feel helpless under those circumstances. We understand.”

  ****

  The Ciskeian police were more than willing to release the body to Mansell’s custody. Violent crime in this Bantu republic was normally a product of wrath or robbery. A drunken husband bludgeons a lazy wife because his prize chicken has been used for dinner. A horse thief is hung from a tree with his own belt. A prostitute makes fun of a drunken client’s impotency, and he silences her with a pair of nylon stockings. Repentance is almost always forthcoming.

  Mansell charged the local police with the task of running down every compact car within a hundred kilometers of the scene, of photographing tire treads, of questioning owners. Yellow cars should be given priority, he told them. It was an arduous task, but not overwhelming. Cars were few in Ciskei. Most were incapacitated and gathering rust.

  The employees of the bus station would be questioned again. Other potential witnesses as well, but this was a second task for the local police. They knew their own people better than Mansell did, and he was not optimistic that anything concrete would come of it.

  The helicopter dropped them at the Fleming Street landing pad, one block from the Port Elizabeth police house. An ambulance drove the body to the station, where Steenkamp in Pathology and Chas du Toits in Forensic were awaiting it.

  Together, Mansell and Merry walked across the pad to the stairwell that took them below the overpass. The air was thick and dry, redolent of exhaust fumes and burning rubber. Two teenagers were tossing coins against a cement pillar. A portable radio shook with heavy metal.

  Mansell felt a clamminess beneath his shirt. What, he wondered, had Peddie smelled of? He remembered a calmness in the air, cool, pleasantly humid—a startling contrast to the winds along the coast. He remembered the stiffness of the people, surely the result of their fearful discomfort in his presence and the presence of violent death. He remembered a bramble of raspberry bushes and the yellowwood trees. But the smell?

  Anthony Mabasu had to be told, he thought.

  Did Anthony Mabasu know already?

  ****

  “This is a statement from your wife, Anthony,” said Wolffe. Mabasu strained, but it was useless trying to focus. “Shall I read it?” Mabasu moved his head. “No,” he uttered. “No.”

  The paper fluttered to the floor. Mabasu watched it settle.

  “She admits her affair with Ian Elgin,” Wolffe announced. “They used the sleep room as their bordello, Anthony. The cots. The floor. She admits craving it. She admits. . . . Do you want to know what she liked best, Anthony?”

  “Tell him.” The sergeant’s voice cracked with pleasure. “Tell us all.”

  Mabasu’s eyes brimmed with tears, tears that spilled down the hollows of his cheeks. The eyes closed. The taste of salt touched parched lips.

  Wolfe retrieved a water bottle from the table. He moved close. “I don’t blame you,” he whispered. “We don’t blame you one bit, Anthony. God, I respect you, boy. I cheer you. I would have killed the filthy bastard myself. If a man ever deserved to die. . . . A jury will be on your side, Anthony. A jury will have sympathy. My report will be sympathetic.”

  Wolfe pressed the bottle to Mabasu’s lips. The water spilled, dripping from his chin to his chest, and finally to the floor. The chifir lost its potency. Mabasu’s head bobbed against his chest, and he lost consciousness.

  ****

  Joshua Brungle emerged from the Hertz rent-a-car agency on Heugh Avenue, just north of the airport, at 12:21 in the afternoon. From the south, a blustery wind slashed over acres of willow thickets and gum-tree groves. Feather clouds curled and looped beneath a stoic orange sun.

  Disheveled but enthusiastic, Joshua piled into his GM sedan. He rewarded himself with a blast from the heater. His search had, at last, paid dividends.

  The tire was a special design of Michelin radials, as of this year standard equipment on all new Honda Civics imported into South Africa. Thus, their absence from the Tire Design Guide, Joshua thought. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed east on Heugh. By the time he was on M9 headed for Settler’s Way, he’d been patched into Nigel Mansell’s office.

  “The car can be purchased by consumers on special order,” Joshua said. “But according to the general manager at Hertz, seventy-five percent of the Civics in P.E. are rentals, ninety-five percent of those less than a year old. Most of the Civics go on the auction block after thirty-five thousand kilometers.”

  “We’ll assume it’s a current model to begin with.”

  “Agreed,” said Joshua. “The manager said he’d send us all the records of Hondas rented from his five agencies in P. E. and Uitenhage over the last three months by five tonight.”

  “Let’s concentrate on the last thirty days,” Mansell said. “Do the rest of the rental companies in town carry Hondas as well?”

  “Not the big ones, but the independents carry whatever they can get. Honda’s a popular model, apparently.”

  “It’s a start.” Mansell’s voice sounded metallic, fatigued. “The rest is footwork.”

  “And some luck. We might be looking for a yellow exterior,” Mansell explained.

  “We’ll find it,” Joshua said. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry as hell about Sylvia Mabasu, Nigel.”

  “She was a fine-looking woman. She deserved better.” Christ, Mansell thought. The perfect epitaph; perfectly trite, perfectly meaningless.

  “Have you heard anything from Richter?” Joshua asked. “Is he all right?”

  “He’ll live. They patched him up and sent him home. I didn’t think he needed the time off so I sent him out with the team looking for the source of our nylon rope and the chiffon scarf.”

  “Slave driver.”

  “We’ll congregate here at six,” Mansell added. “I’m on my way to the Hall.”

  The Hall of Justice was located on Chapel Avenue across from the Visitor’s Bureau and the public library. It housed the Crime Research Bureau and the judicial chambers of the appellate and provincial courts of the eastern province. The district office
of the Security Branch of the South African Police was also headquartered in the Hall.

  Nigel Mansell tried imagining the perfect day: the roses blooming, a gentle breeze off Algoa Bay, a warm sun slow-dancing in a cool, blue sky. He tried to imagine walking to Security headquarters on a day like that. On a day when his mood was cheerful and airy. It didn’t matter. Today, his mood could best be described as black. Today, the wind was sharp and chilling, and the roses wouldn’t bloom again for months. So he drove instead. He parked in a tow-away zone out front.

  The Hall of Justice was ten stories of smoked glass and chrome. Rectangularly boring, thought the chief inspector. Security Branch occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors, while the seventh floor was vacant.

  Revolving doors led to a cold reception room with gray tiles and tubular fixtures. A private elevator bank serviced the top three floors. A uniformed guard checked his I.D. Outside the elevator on the eighth floor, Mansell passed through mandatory metal detectors.

  Again his I.D. was scrutinized, but this time the sergeant at arms looked uncertain. “I’m sorry, Inspector. I ran it through twice, but clearance has been denied. I’ll get the duty officer. Excuse me.”

  Wolfe, Mansell thought as the duty officer scurried over.

  “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” asked Mansell. “Maybe Major Wolfe can straighten things out.”

  “The major is unavailable, Inspector. Might I help?”

  Mansell bent his head forward. He lit a cigarette. He crossed to a telephone on the reception desk and dialed district headquarters. The duty officer’s face paled when Mansell asked for the district commander. He waited two minutes. Their conversation lasted half that.

  Moments after Mansell hung up, Wolfe entered the reception area. He exuded the brutish air of a man who has just been reprimanded.