by Malla Nunn
“Yes, indeed.” Daglish joined Zweigman and they examined the affected skin with the same intensity that Emmanuel imagined lit the faces of stamp collectors and pornography enthusiasts when they encountered something new and rare.
“A few more hours,” Zweigman said, still puzzling over the mystery presented by the wound, “and we’ll have some answers and some educated guesses for you, Detective.”
“What next, Dr. Zweigman?” Margaret Daglish’s right hand hovered above a line of steel instruments arranged on a fresh bath towel that had been draped over a sideboard.
“Cotton wool and the small scalpel, please. Let’s see what’s causing this skin discoloration.” Zweigman glanced up from the examination bed and appeared surprised to find Emmanuel and Shabalala still in the room.
“We will see you both at noon,” he said, and resumed probing the flesh at the base of Amahle’s neck, his attention wholly absorbed in the task, a strange and subtle joy lighting his face. Emmanuel imagined that running a medical clinic in the Valley of a Thousand Hills was tiring, the days filled with whooping cough, smallpox vaccinations and broken limbs. Every operation was vital to the health of the isolated rural community and few of them challenged a man of Zweigman’s intellectual caliber.
“We’ll be at Little Flint Farm, if anything comes up. You have the telephone number, Dr. Daglish?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll call when the examination is done.”
Emmanuel moved to the cellar door and hesitated, remembering something.
“Does anyone in town sell insurance, Dr. Daglish?”
She looked up and frowned. “Not as a permanent job. A salesman from Sun Life drops in once a year. Usually in early January. We pay our premiums every month at the post office. Why?”
“Just curious.” Emmanuel left the root cellar before the sheet could be peeled back to reveal Amahle lying naked and vulnerable under the harsh electric light. He and Shabalala walked to the car. Neither of them wanted to imagine the scalpel blade slicing into the dead girl’s skin, exposing the secrets hidden in her blood and muscle.
“The little sister said the Afrikaner farmer was burning his field on the day Amahle met Mr. Insurance Policy.” Emmanuel dug out the car keys. “It can’t have been the real insurance salesman if he only comes to town once a year, in January.”
“Summertime.” Shabalala spoke across the hood. “When the fields are planted and there is no burning.”
“Exactly.” Emmanuel opened the door, slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine. “Ask around about a Mr. Insurance Policy when we get to Little Flint Farm but don’t spend a lot of time on it. This mystery man might have no connection to the murder. What we really need is a list of Amahle’s friends and enemies and the name of the last person to see her alive. Any ideas on where the gardener Philani might have disappeared to would also help.”
That was the job. Ask questions, cross-check the information and follow the leads till they led you somewhere or disappeared into the sand. Conducting a criminal investigation provided calm, purpose and direction for dealing with the chaos in the aftermath of a murder.
Without the law and the promise of justice for the victims, Zweigman was just a charnel-house sawbones and he and Shabalala mere undertakers.
7
EMMANUEL PULLED INTO the driveway of a beautiful sandstone building with a wraparound porch dotted with wicker lounge chairs. He cut the engine and looked over the rural scene through the dusty windscreen. Rows of bright yellow roses in the formal garden and the circular drive made of white river stone clearly stated, Servants, police and Jewish tinkers enter via the rear door.
A middle-aged Zulu maid in a green housecoat and blue sandshoes worn without socks rushed from the front door to the top of the stairs. She glanced at the car, then back over her shoulder, like an anxious actor who’d stumbled onto the stage before the other players were ready to take their places.
“Quick work,” Shabalala said. “She could not have come from the kitchen or the back of the house.”
Emmanuel pocketed the keys. “She must be the maid in charge of greeting visitors before their car doors are open.”
They got out of the Chevrolet and a scruffy dog of undetermined breed bypassed the maid and trotted toward them. It was rheumy-eyed and broad as a tailor’s table, and there was no bark and little bite left in the old hound.
“This one is not so bad.” Shabalala scratched the mutt behind the ears with rough fingers, instantly disproving the old belief that all black Africans were afraid of dogs. Although fear of German shepherds specially trained to attack native men on sight seemed perfectly reasonable to Emmanuel.
They crunched across river stones and stopped at the bottom step. The distant lowing of cattle and the shouts of workmen came from the rear of the property.
“Good morning.” Emmanuel nodded at the maid. “We are here to speak with the Reed family. Are they home?”
The maid waved a hand to a circle of wicker chairs on the porch. “Please come and sit. I will fetch the baas for you.”
“It would be better if we talked to all the Reeds, not just the one,” Emmanuel said, and made the shaded porch in four steps. “Is the madam inside?”
“The big madam is resting. The little madam is swimming.” The maid attempted a smile, gave up and pointed to the outdoor lounge chairs again. “Please sit and I will get the baas for you.”
“Fine. We’ll wait here.” Emmanuel crossed the polished hardwood floor and sank into a chair with three fat cushions. The maid had a set of instructions to follow and she would not stray from the script. Shabalala gained the top step with the panting dog at his heel. The maid twisted agile fingers together, flummoxed by the sight of a Zulu dressed in a big baas suit. Workers returning home from the underground mines of Johannesburg insisted that there were black men such as this in the city but she’d never seen one before.
“Umm . . .” Her glance flickered to the lounge chairs, off-limits to natives. Next came a check of the front entry, also off-limits. The stairs, too, had to be kept free of loafing gardeners and lazy delivery boys.
“Go, please.” Shabalala put the maid out of her misery and leaned against the porch railing, relaxed and easy. “I must wait here with my baas, Sergeant Cooper.”
That power arrangement the maid understood: one person to give orders and another to follow them to the letter. She retreated into the house and the slap of running feet echoed in the interior. A rear door opened and then shut. Emmanuel stood up.
“I don’t like being corralled,” he said, and began circling the porch to the back of the farmhouse. “Let’s look around for ourselves.”
“But the woman said—”
“Don’t worry.” Emmanuel understood Shabalala’s anxiety. If Reed’s orders were ignored the maid would be the one in trouble. Life was difficult enough for housemaids and garden boys without the police adding extra weight to their shoulders. “I’ll make sure the boss knows she did her job and I’m the one to blame. All right?”
Shabalala gave a self-conscious nod and they continued along the wide stone and hardwood porch. Formal gardens flanked the house, planted with rows of white roses, pink madonna lilies and flowering lavender bushes. Untamed bushes and wild grass pressed against the perimeter fence.
“Not bad,” Emmanuel said when the Reeds’ panoramic landholding came into full view. Green fields sloped to the shores of a silver lake, and beyond that a sandstone escarpment shimmered gold and red in the morning light. A lone swimmer, the little madam, moved through the water with languid overarm strokes. The rear porch was a perfect place to stand with a drink in hand and wonder what the poor people were doing.
“This man Reed is a white chief,” Shabalala said.
“Definitely.” Emmanuel walked down the rear stairs to a kitchen garden planted with rows of lettuce, tomato and spinach. “Let’s hope he’s more helpful than Matebula was.”
Two garden boys in blue overalls and tatty cotton hats
pulled weeds from between the crops and talked in low voices. The crunch of footsteps disturbed them and they glanced up. Seeing the two government men, they resumed work with extra vigor.
“I’ll take English, you take Zulu,” Emmanuel said quietly to Shabalala before peering over the hip-high fence enclosing the garden. He addressed the elder of the “boys,” a dark-skinned man with a fractured cheekbone that gave his face a jagged, uneven appearance. “Where is Mr. Reed?”
“There, ma’ baas.” The gardener straightened up and indicated a narrow lane leading to a far-off cattle yard shrouded in dust. The housemaid was almost there, running at a steady pace. “At the dipping station.”
Emmanuel touched a finger to his hat in thanks and took the concrete path. An almost physical quiet settled over the gardeners and he slowed till Shabalala and the old dog caught up. “Hear that?” he said.
“Yebo. They know we are here about Amahle and they are holding their breath.”
“The way superstitious people do when a funeral hearse passes by or they see a cripple in a wheelchair.” Emmanuel glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, the “boys” had stopped weeding and stood immobile amid the turned rows of earth, like statues sculpted especially for African gardens.
“I will come back and try to find out why they are so scared,” Shabalala said.
The path turned to gravel and then to dirt halfway to the cattle yards. Beyond the yards was the dipping station. A line of black farmworkers clustered along the side of a deep trench filled with chemical wash. The cattle were prodded with sticks through the sluice gates and into the bath till they emerged on the other side, dripping and immune from tick fever.
“That will be the Reeds,” Emmanuel said. “Looks like father and son.”
Two white men sheltered under the branches of a monkey apple tree, counting the dipped cattle before entering the numbers into individual notebooks. The younger Reed looked up when the maid arrived with her news. He cocked his head to the left, listening, and then dismissed the servant with a flick of his finger. She wheeled full circle and hit the homeward path. Both Reed men followed.
“Back to the house,” Emmanuel said. “The dipping station isn’t the right place to conduct an interview.”
Sharp whistles and shouts reverberated across the yards and reached all the way to the servants’ quarters and the back veranda. The noise and dust were good reasons for having the meeting on the porch. Maybe the Reeds were not trying to corral the police after all. Emmanuel tried to be more generous; rich and landed did not necessarily mean arrogant and controlling.
“You’re the detectives from Durban,” the younger Reed said when he and his father rounded the corner and found Emmanuel and Shabalala standing on the front porch.
“Detective Sergeant Cooper and Detective Constable Shabalala from West Street CID,” Emmanuel said, wondering how the young farmer guessed they were from Durban and not from Pietermaritzburg, the closest major town to the Drakensberg foothills.
“I’m Thomas Reed and this is my father, Ian Reed.”
A quick glance confirmed that father and son were real farmers, with dust on their skin and dirt under their fingernails. With an enormous piece of fertile land underfoot and a sprawling house high on a hill, the Reed men were highly enough placed in the world to not give a damn about appearances.
“Welcome. Welcome.” Reed senior squeezed his fingers around Emmanuel’s outstretched hand, a half smile playing on his lips. He was in his early seventies, with bushy gray brows and a vague expression in his hazel eyes, as if he’d forgotten some important fact and was trying to retrieve it.
“You’ve met Tubby, my eldest.” Ian Reed held on to Emmanuel’s hand. “He drives the car now. I sit in the back.”
“Nobody calls me Tubby anymore, Dad. It’s Thomas.” Young Reed touched his father on the shoulder. “Go sit down and add up the numbers on your list before we dip the next batch of cattle. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
“Of course, yes.” Ian Reed released his death grip on Emmanuel’s fingers and squinted down at the grubby notebook in his hand. Scribbled numbers, some half formed, bled off the sides of the paper. “Sunup to sundown, a farmer’s work is never done.”
“That’s right, Dad. Sit over there and finish your calculations.” Thomas physically turned the old man around and pointed to a wicker chair facing the driveway. “I’ll come just now, okay?”
Ian Reed wandered off, gripping the notebook like a life preserver keeping him afloat in a vast and boundless ocean.
“Five minutes,” Reed said. “We have work to do.”
Thomas Reed was dressed in khaki but the smooth English accent and the dismissive manner were sure markers of a South African king of the veldt. Under the dust and sweat Emmanuel smelled a posh public school education and elevated social connections.
“Just a few questions,” he said. “How long did Amahle Matebula work for your family?”
Thomas shrugged. “Hard to say. She was in and around the farm from the time she was a kid.”
“There were no problems with her that you know of?” Emmanuel fished out his notebook, eager to fill in the half-empty pages. “No fights or bad blood between her and the other staff, for example?”
Thomas motioned to the vast acres merging with the gentle hills. “We don’t have a lot of trouble on Little Flint, Detective. Our boys get a new set of clothing and a new pair of sandshoes at Christmas. At Easter they get double provisions of sugar and flour. The housemaids, also.”
“Good to know.” Emmanuel glanced at his blank page. Thomas’s response aggravated him. A young girl was dead and they could be discussing farming equipment for all the emotion he showed. “So, Amahle Matebula was a regular house servant who didn’t stand out in any way.”
“We employ fifteen, maybe twenty natives on Little Flint.” Thomas worked a fingernail over a seam of dirt on his thumb. “From my end, none of the servants are remarkable so long as they do their jobs right.”
That was country-fresh bullshit. Amahle was exquisite. Any man with a pulse would have noticed her crossing the yard or hanging up the laundry. Then again, Thomas Reed might be one of those rare white men so caught up in the differences between the races that they showed no interest in black or brown girls. Emmanuel didn’t trust those men.
“Any idea who killed Amahle?” he asked.
“None whatsoever,” Thomas said, and offered nothing more.
Shabalala moved back a pace and fixed his eyes on the peaked horizon. Frustration made his face appear carved from stone. If Amahle had been white, the farmer would be crying over himself at the loss of one so special.
“Constable . . .” Emmanuel sensed the tension in Shabalala. Standing by while Thomas shrugged off questions took effort, but there had to be a reason for his evasiveness and for his not once referring to Amahle by her name. “Get statements from the gardeners and from the housemaids. Find out who was the last person to see Amahle on Friday night. Same goes for Philani Dlamini.”
Thomas Reed frowned, the ingrained dirt on his thumb suddenly less important. “Philani’s not here. He didn’t show up for work on Saturday and again today.”
“Is that unusual?” Emmanuel asked.
“Very,” Thomas said. “He’s one of my best boys. He turns up rain or shine.”
“See if Amahle and Philani left the farm together,” Emmanuel said to Shabalala.
“I will ask, Sergeant.” The Zulu detective walked to the rear of the big house, his steps slowed to allow the old dog to keep up.
Emmanuel looked at Reed. “Did any of the workmen take a fancy to Amahle and have to be warned off?”
“I have no interest in the love life of kaffir girls.” The younger Reed turned to the circle of wicker chairs, ending the interview. “Come, Dad. It’s time to dip the next batch.”
His father got up and walked out to meet him, the notebook now scrunched to scrap paper in his fist.
“Is she coming back?”
Ian Reed whispered to his son.
“Who?” Thomas frowned.
“The one you were just talking about. The chief’s daughter.”
Thomas steered the old man away from Emmanuel. “Back to work now, Dad,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“If he comes home from school and she’s not here, there’ll be trouble,” Ian Reed muttered. “Your mother won’t like it. Not one bit. Not after last time.”
“Quiet, now, Pa.” Thomas gently prodded his father around the corner. Emmanuel lost the remainder of the conversation. No matter. He’d heard enough to know that Amahle Matebula was more than just a housemaid. He waited for Thomas’s response to the revealing comments.
“My father isn’t all there,” Thomas said when he reappeared solo from the rear of the house. “He mixes things up in his mind, gets his wires crossed. You can’t take anything he says seriously.”
Especially when it concerns a dead black girl, Emmanuel figured. While old man Reed was clearly losing the thread, there was enough substance in his words to have drained the color from Thomas’s suntanned face.
“One more thing.” Emmanuel ignored the tight lips and the tense shoulders encased in khaki. “I’d like to speak to your mother if she’s available.”
“Not today,” Thomas said. “She suffers from migraine headaches and needs bed rest. Feel free to telephone tomorrow morning. She might be better by then.”
Thomas Reed was so cool, it was almost as if he’d practiced his responses and knew them by heart. Every question was answered but nothing of value was revealed. The old man’s ramblings were the only spontaneous moment in the entire interview.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Reed. I know you have work to do.” Emmanuel cut the young farmer loose. He’d find another way into the family sanctum. “I’ll wait here till Constable Shabalala has finished collecting statements.”
Young Reed hesitated, weighing up the risks of leaving a policeman loose on the property. “Farms are dangerous,” he said. “Don’t wander off the paths or into the fields, Detective Cooper. For your own safety.”