by Malla Nunn
Footsteps thundered closer, a cloud of dust rising behind the attacking impi. Shabalala and Emmanuel sprinted hard and hit the path just short of the sage bush marker.
“Take the rear impi.” Emmanuel pulled out his police ID and unclipped his holster. “I’ll take the attackers.”
The detectives stood back-to-back, shoulders squared, projecting a confidence that neither of them felt. The advancing impi pressed closer, their spears gleaming in the sun.
“Stop! Police!” Emmanuel held up his ID, a shield of sorts backed by the power of the white government. He reached for the Webley revolver, snug in its leather holster, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to escalate the confrontation. “Drop your weapons. Now!”
The leader of the attacking group kept coming, undaunted by Emmanuel’s laminated piece of paper. He was tall, with a starkly handsome face built of sharp angles and taut skin. Keloid scars, silver in the sunlight, spread across his chest and shoulders. The men behind him slowed but did not stop, either.
Emmanuel switched to Zulu.
“Two steps back. Now.” He moved to meet the challenge, index finger pointed, his voice loud and dark with menace, just like the training manuals of the South African Police Force instructed. “I will not ask you again.”
Shabalala turned and stood at Emmanuel’s right shoulder, adding muscle to the police order.
The leader of the new impi stopped and seemed to weigh the risk of pushing the attack. “You speak Zulu very well for a European,” he said in English, and allowed his stabbing spear and shield to slip to the ground.
Emmanuel stepped closer.
“Hands up where I can see them,” he said. “Your men also.”
The four Zulu soldiers held on to their weapons and shields, unwilling to act without a direct order from their commander.
“What will it be?” Emmanuel asked. “Shall we talk or fight? I’m happy either way.”
The man smiled. “Only a fool brings spears to fight a policeman with a gun.”
He signaled his men to lay down their arms on the grass. They complied.
Emmanuel kicked the spear out of the lean man’s reach.
“Name,” he said.
“I am Mandla, the great chief Matebula’s eldest son.”
Mandla. It meant “the strong one.”
“Your mother?” Emmanuel asked. Mandla could be Amahle’s full blood brother, so remarkable was their shared physical beauty.
“My mother is La Matenjuwa. First wife of the great chief.”
“First son of the first wife,” Emmanuel said. Mandla was a chief-in-waiting and Amahle’s half brother. “What business do you have here?”
“I come to collect the great chief’s daughter.” Mandla turned to the impi guarding the pathway. “Her body is the property of the Matebula clan. You have no right to be here.”
“You come without honor,” the oldest male of the original impi shouted. “You insult the dead and the ancestors with your violence.”
Mandla’s head snapped back and his lips thinned. “A child belongs to the father, not to the mother. The girl must return with us to her father’s kraal as the law says.”
“He who fertilizes the egg but has no time for the chicks is no father, even among the Zulu,” the elder man replied.
Shabalala sucked in a breath at the accusation and again eased around so he had Emmanuel’s back.
“Move off ten paces,” Emmanuel ordered both sides of Amahle’s family. “Empty palms facing out where I can see them.”
The men obeyed, unhappily.
“Listen to me carefully.” Emmanuel spoke in a calm voice. “We are the detectives in charge of investigating Amahle’s death. She is your sister and your niece, but for the time being she belongs to us. The police. We will say how and where she travels. I know this is difficult for all of you, but it is the way it must be.”
He turned to make eye contact with the elder who’d escorted them to the ring of grieving women.
“Is this understood?”
The man took a deep breath, still angry. “It is, ma’ baas,” he said.
Allowing Amahle to pass into the care of the South African police was worse than giving her back to her father’s house, but there was no other choice. The police were stronger than all the valley clans put together.
Emmanuel turned to Mandla and said, “Is this understood?”
Mandla bowed without subservience and replied, “I hear you.”
Acquiescing to the detective provided Mandla with a tactical retreat. Emmanuel suspected that Mandla would agree to every request, bend to any threat, but do whatever the hell he pleased as soon as the police drove out of the valley. Beyond the fence lines of the white-owned farms Mandla and his father, the great chief, were the law.
“We cannot leave the girl out on the veldt, even with a guard,” Shabalala whispered. It was official procedure to leave murder victims in situ until the mortuary van arrived to pick up the body. “We must take her now while it is still daylight.”
“Agreed,” Emmanuel said, and motioned to Mandla and his men. “Take up your shields and return to your father’s kraal. Place your spears at the base of that boulder until we are gone.”
He didn’t trust Mandla to walk away without a fight. The great chief’s heir was obviously used to being in command, and returning to his father’s home without Amahle’s body was a blow to his authority.
“As you say.” Mandla turned and moved swiftly to the crest of the hill. He stopped at the top where he’d first appeared and squatted in the grass, flanked by his men, daring the detectives to drive him off.
“We’ve made an enemy,” Shabalala said.
“The first of many,” Emmanuel replied.
Amahle was no ordinary Zulu girl. She was the daughter of a chief, loved and fought over. What dangerous emotions had she stirred in both Zulu and European hearts when she was still alive?
3
EMMANUEL EASED THE black police Chevrolet down a dirt track running between the Roselet Police Station and the station commander’s house, a small sandstone building with lavender bushes planted on either side of the front steps. The main street was quiet, but he couldn’t risk the chance that a pedestrian walking home from church might look in the backseat and discover a dead black girl lying there.
“The station commander and his family are home,” he observed. A sparkling police van was parked in front of the stone house. Beyond it, in the shade of a sycamore tree, two glossy-haired girls in blue pinafores crouched beside a small anthill and poked sticks into the entrance, enjoying the insects’ panic. They looked up in unison at the sound of the car and ran for the back door, calling, “Pa, come quick!” and “Visitors!”
“We’ll take Amahle to the local doctor after we’ve introduced ourselves here. See what he can tell us about the wound on her back.”
“I will explain things to her,” Shabalala said, and Emmanuel got out of the car and stood facing away from the Chevrolet. The conversation between Shabalala and Amahle unnerved him, made him think of the millions of war victims left to cross into the realm of the dead alone. He understood the necessity of these conversations for a Zulu worried about unsettled spirits—he just wished the dead would tell Shabalala who killed them.
“She will wait here for us,” the Zulu detective said when he emerged from the car. “It is a hard thing to do. Her mother, Nomusa, is calling to her spirit to come home.”
“We’ll be as quick as we can,” Emmanuel said. “But we’ll need to determine cause of death.”
He and Shabalala knew, however, that if the medical exam proved inconclusive Amahle might have to be transported to the closest morgue for a full autopsy. A long delay could increase the tension they had seen on the hill. It would also give the family ample time to imagine the body of their loved one splayed naked on a cold table with her harvested organs in steel buckets.
“Let’s check in with the station commander and get on our way,” he said
.
The fly-screen door to the sandstone house swung open and the girls who’d been tormenting ants in the backyard ran to the porch railing. They leaned their elbows on the wooden beam and studied the newcomers. Their pale skin, curls and hazel eyes made Emmanuel think of curious elves.
“Look,” the older girl yelled over her shoulder. “Like we said. Visitors.”
“There.” The little sister added a pointing finger. “In the yard.”
“Thank you, my lovelies.” A solidly built white man in a green Sunday suit walked out behind the girls and ruffled their hair. In his mid-thirties, he had wide shoulders, cropped red hair and the kind of skin that burned and peeled rather than tanned.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” he asked, green eyes bright with interest. His accent was County Clare Irish worn thin by decades of living in South Africa.
“Constable Bagley?” Emmanuel paused and gave the station commander time to get used to the sight of two strangers in his garden . . . one of them a six-foot-plus Zulu man dressed in a hand-tailored suit. “I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper from the West Street CID in Durban. And this is Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala of the Native Branch.”
“Yebo, inkosi.” Shabalala greeted the constable in the traditional way, with his hat off and held to his chest as a sign of respect. Roselet was a white farming town and its citizens would have the traditional expectations of blacks: that they work hard, say little and recognize the order of things.
“Oh . . .” The commander seemed surprised. He bent down and said to the older girl, “Go inside and tell Mum that I’ve got work but I’ll be in just now. Okay, my sweetheart?”
“Ja, okay, Daddy.”
The girls retreated slowly, clearly fascinated by Shabalala. Their town was populated with the familiar: European parents, European friends, black house servants and a handful of brown and Indian children they were not allowed to speak to or play with. How rare and exciting to see a Zulu man in a suit standing side by side with a white man.
“Constable Desmond Bagley, station commander of the Roselet police.” Bagley came down off the veranda and squeezed Emmanuel’s hand once, hard. Shabalala got a courteous dip of the head. “You’re a long way from home. What brings you all the way out here, Detective?”
“You didn’t get the message,” Emmanuel said, and looked over at the station entrance. The handwritten note was still pinned to the door. That meant he’d have to tell Bagley, face-to-face, about a murder committed in his own district.
“One of my police boys is normally here to open the station and take messages but both of them are at a baptism service in the valley,” Bagley said. “I’ve just come in from church myself. Has something happened that I should know about?”
“A murder in the Kamberg Valley,” Emmanuel said, hoping that Bagley’s feeling of inadequacy at being the last to know would fade in time.
“My God . . .” Red tinged the constable’s face. “Who?”
“Amahle Matebula,” Emmanuel said. “A young Zulu girl.”
“Amahle . . .” Bagley frowned and glanced off to the station house. A pulse throbbed visibly in a vein on his forehead. “The name sounds familiar.”
“She was reported missing on Saturday morning,” Emmanuel said. “By her family.”
“Let’s see . . .” Bagley dug a pack of Dunhill Cubas from his jacket pocket and punctured the foil top with his fingernail. The telltale vein throbbed harder. “Friday night there was a fight out on the native location, two arrests. Saturday there was a stock theft from Dovecote farm and then a break-in at Dawson’s General Store. The boys and I had our hands full.”
“Sounds like it.” Emmanuel was unimpressed by the rural crime wave gripping Roselet. Bagley was lining up excuses for failing to act on the trifling matter of a missing black girl. “Is Amahle Matebula’s disappearance listed in the station occurrence book, Constable?”
“Forgetting” to enter a formal complaint was the easiest way to shelve an inconvenient investigation.
Bagley dug out a cigarette and tapped the cut end against his wrist. “I’m just trying to remember the details.”
“Take your time,” Emmanuel said, and waited in silence. Sloppy police work, no matter the case, was inexcusable. Bagley would get no help from him in covering up a failure of duty.
“That’s right.” The constable fumbled a box of matches from his pocket, struck a match and lit up. “A Zulu boy came in on Saturday morning, said this girl Amahle hadn’t come home from work on Friday. The details are in the occurrence book.”
“What time did the boy come in?” Emmanuel asked. Despite Bagley’s efforts to appear nonchalant, the vein on his forehead said otherwise.
“Around seven a.m.” He flicked ash into the garden bed and smiled, apologetic. “I’ll be honest with you, Sergeant. I didn’t think for one minute it was serious. Missing girls normally turn up after a few days.”
“Was Amahle known to the police?” Emmanuel asked. Beautiful black girls with a wild streak inevitably showed up in local police records attached to underage drinking offenses or carnal knowledge investigations. “A list of previous offenses would be a good place for us to start looking for suspects.”
“Saturday morning was the first time the girl’s name appeared on the record,” Bagley said. “The Kamberg Valley natives are very traditional and keep to themselves, so that’s no surprise.”
True. But being off the police offenders list didn’t necessarily make Amahle a girl without a history. Only members of the Zulu community would be able to provide a detailed portrait of who she was in life.
“Would the native constables have any idea what might have happened to her?” Emmanuel asked. The black and white communities overlapped in specific work locations: the kitchen, the garden, the farmyard and the nursery. Segregation laws kept them apart in the bar and the bedroom.
“It’s like I said.” Bagley took a deep draw of nicotine and focused on the note fluttering on the station’s front door. “The last two days have been a busy time for us.”
Not one phone call was made or one question asked about Amahle Matebula’s disappearance. Missing persons were the bane of police work, but Emmanuel had no doubt that things would have been different if Amahle had been blond with blue eyes, freckles and a snub nose. At least Bagley had the grace to look uncomfortable about his negligence.
“I admit I should have looked for her, Sergeant. But you understand how things work . . .”
Emmanuel understood perfectly how things worked. It pained him.
“Inkosi Bagley. Inkosi Bagley . . .” a voice called from the grassy field behind the station. Two black men dressed in the distinctive white robes worn by members of the Zion Native Church ran toward them, sweating and out of breath.
“Constables,” Bagley said when the two native policemen stopped short at the sight of Shabalala, now standing with his hands resting on the hood of the Chevrolet. It was an oddly protective gesture considering the passenger in the car was already dead.
“What is it, Shabangu? Spill the news. These men are also police,” Bagley said to a gaunt man with a receding hairline; the man’s ankle-length robe was splattered with mud and stained with sweat.
“A murder in the valley,” Shabangu said to the patch of dirt at Bagley’s feet. “Chief Matebula’s daughter was found this morning near to Little Flint Farm. Baba Kaleni saw her with his own eyes.”
“Where is Kaleni now?” Emmanuel asked Shabangu. “We’d like to talk to him.”
“He is at the river baptism, inkosi. You must take the walking track that is four miles past the sign for Little Flint Farm. By the rock that looks like a dog’s head.”
“Thanks,” Emmanuel said, and turned to Bagley. “We need to see the local doctor. If there is one.”
There would be no local hospital. Roselet was too small.
“Dr. Daglish lives right here on Greyling Street.” Bagley indicated the road running parallel to the station. “What
do you need a doctor for?”
“To examine the body.” Emmanuel moved to the Chevrolet. “How will we know which house is the doctor’s?”
“Take a left onto Greyling. It’s the sixth house on the left. There’s a yellow fence and a wild pear tree in the front.” Bagley crossed the yard while he spoke, drawn to the black Chevrolet by the implication of Emmanuel’s words. He peered through the back passenger window at the outline of Amahle’s body under the tartan blanket. “It’s a beautiful house,” he said. “You can’t miss it.”
Emmanuel paused before getting into the car. “I’ll need to use the station telephone when we get back. I have to call Durban.”
“Of course, Sergeant. Whatever the boys and I can do to help. Just let me know.”
“Much appreciated. We’ll scratch around for leads and get you and the native constables on board with the investigation right away.”
“When you’re ready, you know where to find us.” Bagley retreated to the front steps, his cigarette smoked down to the butt. “The station is at your disposal.”
Emmanuel imagined a headline across the cover of the monthly police magazine: “City detectives receive a warm welcome and offers of help from the local uniform branch.”
The lack of departmental rivalry should have pleased him, but instead he was irritated. Pride and loyalty to your town and your people demanded more than a passive, “When you’re ready you know where to find us.” Bagley surrendered control of a murder case in his own territory without a struggle. Only a bone-idle policeman did that.
Emmanuel reversed the Chevrolet onto Greyling Street. Roselet’s main thoroughfare was a wide dirt lane with shops for local white farmers and tourists escaping the humidity in the city. The street also included a farm supply depot, a small café decorated with blue and white gingham curtains and a general store with DAWSON’S painted across the window in gold leaf.
“The mother was right,” Shabalala said when the police station was out of sight. “The constable did not look for Amahle.”