Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  Emmanuel turned left on Greyling. A yard after the café, a narrow path circled behind the shops. It had been worn by the traffic of servants’ feet using the nonwhite entrances of the whites-only buildings. A kitchen boy sat on a wooden crate at the rear of the café peeling a sack of potatoes with a paring knife. The clank of cutlery came from the interior as the staff laid tables for the lunch special of roast lamb and mash.

  Dawson’s General Store was next. Attached to the back of the business was a small house with a raised porch overlooking a scrappy yard and a chicken coop.

  “Around here.” Emmanuel crossed to the raised porch and crouched down. The space below the deck was deep enough to conceal a child playing a game of hide-and-seek. “Check behind the stumps and on the ground for any uneven surface where a hole might have been dug and then covered.”

  Shabalala worked from the opposite end, folded to half his height, crab-crawling around the edge of the porch. Chickens clucked and pecked for worms. Emmanuel reached below the wood deck and pulled out a heavy canvas bag. Seeing it was filled with dried corn, he shoved it back into place.

  “Sergeant. Over here.” Shabalala hoisted a small black suitcase from deep under the porch. Spiderwebs and silvered snail trails covered the body and the leather handles.

  “That’s it.” Emmanuel blew sand from the lock and snapped open the lid. Amahle’s new life was packed inside. Four dresses, a sweater and a pair of black shoes with red trim. “She was planning to come back for it.”

  Bagley was right about Amahle being somewhere else after she’d finished satisfying his silent craving. In her mind she was here: the black suitcase grasped in her hands, bus wheels churning red dust into the air and then, just at sunset, the hazy outline of a city strung with electric lights growing up around her like a dream made of noise, traffic and possibilities.

  “No more,” Shabalala said.

  “No more,” Emmanuel agreed, thinking of Amahle’s unfulfilled scheme. How meticulous she’d been, even down to buying herself a travel insurance policy with a quick blow job on the roadside to ensure that next time Bagley was sent to track her down and bring her back to Little Flint Farm she wouldn’t be so powerless. He lifted each layer of clothing individually and checked for the five-pound payout.

  “Not a penny,” he said, and shut the case. “If Amahle was planning to leave town, I can think of a place she might have spent the money Bagley gave her . . .”

  Carrying the suitcase, Shabalala followed Emmanuel along the grass path, which hooked back onto the main street a few yards ahead. A black girl drew near with a chubby white baby tied to her back and another towheaded child toddling alongside her. She stepped aside at Emmanuel’s approach and lowered her head to avoid the sin of making eye contact with a European man. The baby boy pressed fat fingers into the girl’s neck and rolled a pinch of skin between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the silky feeling.

  The National Party split the population into groups based entirely on skin color but Amahle Matebula and this meek Zulu girl with a half smile on her mouth had nothing in common but color. Amahle, the beautiful one, could detect male weakness and possessed the audacity to dream of a future bathed in bright, saturated colors.

  Bijay Gowda, Mr. Bus Ticket, sat on a high stool behind the plate-glass window of a booth with the words TICKET MASTER stamped across the top in flaking green paint. In his late forties, with thinning white hair, small black eyes and a prominent nose, Gowda resembled a human secretary bird nesting between the shallow counter in front of him and an open cabinet behind. The cabinet was crammed with scraps of paper, bundles of pens and pencils and stacks of old newspapers rolled up and tied with string.

  He worked a wooden toothpick into a gap between his canine and incisor teeth and watched Emmanuel and Shabalala approach the booth. “Gentlemen,” he said, and tucked the pick into his shirt pocket. “Where to? Johannesburg, the city of gold? Pietermaritzburg, home of the largest brick building in the Southern Hemisphere? Or Durban, city of golden beaches?”

  “No tickets today. But we need to ask you a few questions.” Emmanuel peered through a smudged circle left on the glass by a previous buyer. Given their situation, it was best to act like the police but without the formal introductions. “Friday afternoon you sold a ticket to a young Zulu girl, white dress, good-looking. Remember her?”

  “Yes, of course,” Bijay said. “One-way ticket to Durban.”

  “Paid for how?”

  “Most definitely in cash.” Bijay sat higher on the stool. “Credit and promissory notes are not accepted. Goods and services in lieu of money are not accepted. All tickets must be paid for and stamped at time of purchase.”

  Mr. Bus Ticket took the rules of his job seriously; a pencil stub, a booklet of tickets, an ink pad and a stamp were the tools he used to keep South Africa moving.

  “Using a one- or a five-pound note?” Emmanuel asked.

  “A one-pound note.” Bijay was confident. “Most definitely.”

  “You have a good memory, to recall a single payment made five days ago.”

  “Roselet is not the Durban bus station, sir. We sell a limited number of tickets and most natives who come here buy what they need using coins, not notes.” Bijay fiddled with the red bow tie clipped at the throat of his white shirt, accidentally pulling it loose in the process. “And it is as you say . . . the girl was pleasing to look at.”

  “Anything else?” There could be more. Mr. Bus Ticket reclipped the tie but his skinny fingers continued to twiddle the red bow from side to side.

  “She asked me if the ticket was refundable in case she missed the bus. I said we do not give refunds but that in her case I would.” Bijay gave up on straightening the tie and placed both hands on the counter. Ink from the ticket stamp had stained his fingertips and nails dark blue.

  “Why the special treatment?” Amahle might have purchased extra insurance using the same payment method as for Bagley. The thought was depressing.

  “I recognized the girl from before. When Constable Bagley found her and took her away before the bus came.” Bijay tapped his thumb against the counter. “I had a daughter, same age, also bright and pretty. With God now for eleven years. It was because of her that I offered the refund. This Saturday or the next there are always seats on the bus.”

  “The ticket was issued for this coming Saturday, not last Saturday,” Emmanuel clarified.

  “That is correct,” Bijay said. “The ticket is still valid for travel.”

  “Philani did not have the five pounds or the ticket,” Shabalala said quietly.

  Emmanuel moved away from the ticket booth. Bijay resumed working the pick between his teeth but leaned closer to the glass to catch any part of the conversation he could.

  “Philani was scared and running on Friday night,” Emmanuel said. “If he had the five pounds he would have given it to his mother to hide.”

  Shabalala set the suitcase down and pulled at an earlobe, thinking. “The person who killed Amahle and Philani has the five pounds and the ticket.”

  “That would be my guess. But waiting for Saturday afternoon to see who turns up at the bus depot with a one-way ticket to Durban and a five-pound note in their pocket isn’t practical. General Hyland will have sent in the dogs by then and we have to be at the St. Thomas Anglican Church at ten a.m. for van Niekerk’s wedding. If we don’t show up, he’ll make our lives hell,” Emmanuel said, and realized with surprise that he actually wanted to see the colonel get married.

  He knew van Niekerk’s true nature, the cunning and secretive life he lived away from the garden parties and the lounges of decent society. Despite that ambitious, hidden life, Emmanuel admired this public declaration of unity van Niekerk was about to make. At least the colonel was striving to build a family and a home, the very things Emmanuel had promised his mother he would find for himself.

  “We cannot wait till Saturday, Sergeant, so we must ask questions of the one who was there with Amahle on the night she di
ed.” Shabalala retrieved the suitcase and tucked it under his arm, ready to move.

  Emmanuel thought back to the crime scene and imagined it at night. He saw Gabriel holding a branch, standing guard over Amahle’s body as it lay on the ground under the stars.

  “Let’s get back to the valley,” Emmanuel said. “Gabriel was gone when we woke up this morning but he’s bound to turn up again sometime.”

  The tangled green bush that screened the tunnel from the path was trampled flat, the branches snapped clean off and thrown on the ground. Emmanuel ducked inside. The roar of blood in his head was disorienting and the outline of the trees and plants pulsed and shook with each breath. He and Shabalala had run all the way from the Chevrolet up to the tunnel. It cut ten minutes off the journey but left a burning fatigue in every muscle.

  He straightened up and looked to the tunnel opening. Mandla Matebula stood on the rock ledge with a stabbing spear in one hand and a small shield balanced in the other. He was alone and at ease in the dappled sunlight breaking the tree canopy. The keloid scars crisscrossed the dark skin on his chest and shoulders with silver.

  “Like the calm after a storm,” the sergeant major whispered. “I don’t blame you for being intimidated, Cooper, but don’t let it show, for Christ’s sake.”

  Two more Zulu men, members of Mandla’s impi, appeared from fixed positions in the brush and blocked the exit.

  “This man is either very stupid or very brave to have come here,” Shabalala said. “Even the son of a chief knows that if you touch one white person you declare war on them all.”

  “Mandla’s no fool,” Emmanuel said. “He’s just showing up our weakness, having some fun at our expense.”

  “Let us walk, Sergeant.” Shabalala moved to the tunnel with unhurried steps. “Strength must meet strength.”

  Emmanuel followed, copying Shabalala’s confident stride. Every footfall on the rock surface sounded louder than the last. Mandla remained fixed in place, not concerned or frightened by the approach of two policemen. He simply waited.

  “Check the doctors, Cooper. They could be lying in the tunnel with their guts all over the floor,” the sergeant major said. “After all, you did get involved in a clan fight and defended the men who attacked the Matebula kraal. Maybe Sampie Paulus was right. Maybe you should have left well enough alone.”

  “Dr. Daglish,” Emmanuel called out. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” A stone bounced from the tunnel entrance and Margaret peered over the ledge. “No broken bones, Detective, just scared.”

  “Zweigman?”

  “Resting.” Daglish’s brown cotton dress was rumpled and her blunt-cut bob frizzing at the ends, but she looked fine otherwise. “Gabriel’s still out in the woods.”

  “We’ll be up in a minute,” Emmanuel said. The doctor flashed Mandla a quick look and mouthed the instruction Be careful before ducking into the tunnel.

  Underestimating the speed and strength of a powerful Zulu with a battle-scarred body was not a mistake Emmanuel would make, but he was grateful for the warning all the same. He turned his attention to the rock ledge, unsure how to defuse the situation.

  Shabalala shot him a look that said, Stop. Let me go first. He stepped within range of Mandla’s spear. “Have you come to wash your spear in our blood, son of the great chief?” he asked. “Or is there another purpose to your visit?”

  “My spear has already been washed. Many years ago,” Mandla said, an admission to wounding and perhaps even killing a person in the past. “Washing” one’s spear in human blood made a man a man during Shaka Zulu’s military reign over a hundred years before. Mandla laid his weapon and shield down on the ground and crouched with his elbows balanced on the top of his knees.

  “I come with news,” he said.

  “If you wish to speak, I am listening,” Shabalala replied with grace, and squatted down to begin the conversation.

  “I will talk with the boss, not the servant boy.” Mandla looked beyond Shabalala’s shoulder to Emmanuel, who stepped back to signal his distance from the interview.

  “In this matter,” Shabalala said, “I am the boss.”

  Mandla digested that information with a frown, weighing up the possibility that a black policeman had real authority. True or not, there was nothing to be gained from walking away. “I led you to the gardener but you have not found the one who killed him or my sister Amahle.”

  “We are still looking,” Shabalala said.

  “Looking must turn to finding. The great chief has called for a powerful sangoma to sniff out the witches he believes are responsible for the deaths.” Mandla spoke without emotion. “I have heard him say that Amahle’s mother and her little sister have evil spirits in them that must be found and cast out.”

  “Do you believe this is true?” Shabalala asked.

  Mandla treated the question with disdain. “Nomusa is a scared woman. The little sister is a child. There are no evil spirits or wizards, only liars and greedy men. Such as my father, the great chief.”

  Emmanuel inched closer at the mention of Amahle’s little sister. “If the sangoma believes there’s an evil spirit in the girl . . . ?”

  “She will be cast out of the kraal with her mother. No clan will give them shelter. They will live like ghosts out on the veldt, drifting and hungry.” Mandla rubbed a scar on his shoulder, an old injury healed but not forgotten. “The chief’s fifth wife will make sure of this.”

  The fifth wife, who’d stood up in the middle of the funeral to get a clear view of Amahle’s body being lowered into the short grave.

  “My heart is heavy with this news,” Shabalala said. “But there is no law against a sangoma working a spell unless a person is harmed. We can stop the ceremony if we are there, but once we are gone the chief will proceed with his plan.” The harm to Nomusa and her daughter would come after the spell—when they were declared witches and banished.

  “That is why you must find the person who killed Amahle and Philani before sunset tomorrow. That is when the sangoma will come to the kraal and pass judgment.” Mandla stood up and collected his weapons. “The great chief cannot act against the word of the police once they have named the murderer.”

  Mandla jumped from the rock and landed with animal grace. His men moved aside to allow him access to the mountain path. They disappeared into the bush, three African men in a European century. Their ancient regiments of the eagle, the lion and the buffalo were long gone, along with their dominion over the land itself.

  Emmanuel walked over to Shabalala. “What was that really about?” he asked.

  “Two things, Sergeant. With his good heart Mandla wants vengeance for Amahle. With his bad heart he wants to expose the great chief as a fool who must be removed and replaced.”

  “He’s planning a coup.”

  “Planting the seeds,” Shabalala said. “The chief did wrong when he buried Amahle upright. If he is proved incorrect about Nomusa and the little sister being the witches responsible for the murders, then he will be further weakened. That is when Mandla will come for him, not openly with a spear, but behind doors with poison or a blanket pressed onto the face.”

  “And everyone lives happily ever after?”

  “No.” Shabalala looked away, embarrassed. “The great chief’s wives and children will be split up and given to other chiefs or to men who can afford to keep them.”

  “It’s the devil or the deep blue sea,” Emmanuel said. “If the chief lives, Nomusa and her daughter will be outcasts. If he dies, they’ll be given away to strangers like cattle.”

  “This is the way of things, Sergeant.”

  Married off young, a wife, then a mother and finally a widow without a home to shelter her children: Amahle had looked ahead, seen her own future and said no.

  “I vote for giving Nomusa and her daughter the chance to start again, even if it’s in the house of strangers.” Emmanuel moved to the tunnel entrance, mentally flipping through the pages of his notebook, searching for a
vital piece of information that might have been overlooked. “We have a day and a half to crack this case, Constable Shabalala.”

  20

  EMMANUEL LOOPED BACK on one of three straggly approach paths leading to the shelter where Philani Dlamini’s body had been found. The clearest track, a well-trodden seam of dirt winding up from Covenant Farm to the crest of the hill and down again to the English enclave of Little Flint Farm, gave up nothing of value. Shabalala and Emmanuel wasted two hours walking up, down and along zigzagging lines that disappeared into the bush.

  Emmanuel then climbed onto the rock ledge. Shabalala was already there, sitting under the shade of a yellowwood tree. He shook his head to say that he, too, had found nothing on his search.

  “The thunderstorm washed the mountain clean,” he said.

  Emmanuel stood in the shade. It was just after noon and the sun was high overhead. More frustration and wasted hours lay before them. “Someone besides the killer must have known Philani was here. He hid in the shelter for at least two days. He lit a fire, for God’s sake!”

  Interviews with the inhabitants of Covenant Farm had come up empty. The Zulu workers claimed to have seen nothing and therefore had nothing to say to the police.

  “The housemaid and the laborers are scared that the great chief will say they were to blame for Amahle’s and Philani’s deaths if they talk,” Shabalala said. “For them, it is best to keep quiet.”

  “Forget the servants,” Emmanuel said. “What about Karin? She must hunt in these mountains every two or three days to keep meat on the table. There’s no way she didn’t know Philani was up here, no matter what she says.”

  But Karin had been insistent that she, like the servants, saw nothing out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the discovery of the body. Certified bullshit as far as Emmanuel was concerned, but he couldn’t prove otherwise.

  “There is still the schoolboy,” Shabalala said.

  “If he ever comes back to the tunnel.” Up before dawn and running through the mountains: it was easier to store water in your pocket than to hold on to Gabriel. No one had seen him since the night before. “We can’t rely on him for anything.”