Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  “Perhaps we missed something at the place where Amahle’s body was found.”

  “I don’t think the killer left evidence at either crime scene,” Emmanuel said. He was certain now that the murders weren’t crimes of passion but were planned and coldly executed. “Searching the area again won’t do any good.”

  A series of long whistles and the crack of a whip rose up to them from the foot of the hill. Sampie Paulus and his oxen were on the move. A thin wisp of smoke drifted from the chimney of Covenant homestead: another meal of stewed springbok on the stove for dinner and then again for lunch tomorrow. The mere thought of it made Emmanuel’s mouth feel greasy. He crossed to the edge of the rock, which provided a clear view of the main path that connected the Afrikaner farm to the English one.

  “Let’s give Sampie five minutes to leave the yards and we’ll head back down. I’m going to have another talk with Karin.”

  “The Dutch woman is hard like a stone in the river,” Shabalala said. “She will not break.”

  “I know it,” Emmanuel said. “But we’ve run out of people to question and leads to follow. We might as well chip away at the granite block, right?”

  “If you say so, Sergeant.”

  Sampie’s whistles grew faint and the bellowing of the oxen faded. Shabalala moved to Emmanuel’s side and they stood for a minute, hat brims tilted, jackets buttoned up, and brushed the grass and leaves off their suits.

  They jumped off the ledge together and landed on the mossy ground. The path was five yards ahead, cutting through stands of marula and stinkwood trees. Movement flashed between the trunks: someone was climbing up the hill from Covenant Farm.

  “Wait,” Emmanuel said to Shabalala. “Bare feet or boots?”

  “Boots.”

  “Only two people at Covenant with boots, and one of them is driving a team of oxen in the other direction.”

  “The Dutch woman was also waiting for her father to leave.”

  Karin might be hunting or on her way to repair a fence. Emmanuel crouched down and Shabalala sank beside him, staying motionless, as if stalking prey.

  The crunch of boots on dirt grew closer. Then Karin moved by at a clip with her .22 rifle slung across her shoulder. She radiated a focused energy. Within ten seconds she was gone.

  “Hunting,” Emmanuel said, but kept hidden. “There was something about her, though . . .”

  “The white flower.” Shabalala pointed to his left ear. “Here.”

  “That’s it.” The bloom had looked snow-bright against the jet-black of Karin’s hair. That a tough Afrikaner female in khaki pants and workboots would choose such a fragile ornament was intriguing. Emmanuel stood up. “Let her get ahead,” he said. “Then we’ll follow.”

  Shabalala walked to the path and examined the soil, memorizing the grid pattern left by the boots and the inward turn of the worn right heel.

  “When you are ready,” he said. “The Dutch woman is moving fast and it is better to keep close to her but out of sight.”

  “On your lead, Constable.”

  Shabalala set off and Emmanuel followed. Karin kept to the track until it spilled over the mountain and dropped to the valley floor and they could see the far-off buildings of Little Flint Farm. At that point, she split away and detoured into thick bush, which turned into a green passageway of overhanging trees that blocked the sun. Shabalala crept ahead and looked down the channel that tapered off to an archway made of windswept branches. The air was cool under the trees. “Behind the branches,” he said. “I will wait here, Sergeant.”

  “Why?”

  Emmanuel understood the answer before Shabalala could open his mouth. A moan came from the concealed area and then the sound of urgent breathing, growing quicker. Shabalala looked like he might turn and make a dash back to the sunlit path. Alone or with another policeman, the Zulu detective was not prepared to witness Karin’s private business.

  “Close your eyes and ears and stay put,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

  He edged closer, careful not to step on twigs and rustling leaves. The moans deepened, two voices working in concert but at different pitches.

  Emmanuel pressed forward. Karin’s rifle rested against a tree trunk like an umbrella left to dry on a porch. Shafts of sunshine breaking through the canopy lit the dim snuggery, surrounded on all sides by forest. Two figures, partially clothed, straddled a smooth rock platform. Karin, her pants unbuckled and hooked around her knees, ground her hips between a pair of smooth brown legs with white underwear dangling from a foot.

  “Are you my girl?” Karin grasped a loop of brunette hair with her lean fingers and held it tight like a leash.

  “Ja . . .” Ella Reed dug her heels into Karin’s backside, the skirt of her green dress pushed up around her waist. “Your girl. I promise.”

  Karin pressed Ella against the rock, controlling the rhythm of their coupling and drawing broken sobs from the Englishwoman’s mouth.

  “Just when the job turns to shit and you’re ready to walk away, God sends you a little present . . .” The Scottish sergeant major’s laugh was filthy. “I paid good money to see a pussy grind in Naples but you get it for free, Cooper. You lucky bastard.”

  Emmanuel stepped aside, embarrassed at the sharpness of his desire to lap up every detail of the sexual encounter.

  “Give me a peek, Cooper. Go on, just one quick one before they finish. I’m asking you nice.”

  Emmanuel stayed put. Watching Ella and Karin through to the end would place him at a disadvantage when he questioned them: his guilt and his pleasure would show.

  “They’ll be too scared to say a word to you, soldier,” the sergeant major fumed. “Now get back there, Cooper, or I swear I will rip your fucking lungs out and use them as bagpipes.”

  “Too late,” Emmanuel said.

  The groans inside the natural amphitheater peaked and then ebbed to soft exhalations of breath. The love bite on Ella’s inner thigh must have happened during one of their more leisurely encounters, he figured.

  He reached for the rifle left against the tree trunk and slid it behind a bush. After a short interval, to allow time for pulling on panties and rebuttoning trousers, he turned back to the enclosed space.

  Karin held Ella’s glowing face between her hands. “Tomorrow?” she asked.

  “The day after.” Ella pressed a kiss against the Afrikaner woman’s rough palm. “My mother has one of her quacks coming to the house. This one uses magnets to draw out bad humors and cure migraine headaches and asthma.”

  “I’m no doctor,” Emmanuel said from the entrance to the secret place, “but your lungs sound just fine to me, Ella. Must be the fresh air and exercise.”

  Karin stepped in front of Ella to protect her. She glanced at the spot where she’d left the rifle. When she didn’t see it, she looked Emmanuel over and weighed her strength against his.

  “You’ll get the .22 back after the two of you answer some questions,” Emmanuel said, adding to Karin, “Even if you get through me, Constable Shabalala is waiting outside and he will pin you like a butterfly.”

  Ella stood up straight, with her brunette hair teased out and the neckline of her dress askew, but her sense of social superiority appeared intact.

  “My brother said you were off the case. You have no right to question us, Detective Cooper.”

  “Oh, I’m not here as a policeman.” Emmanuel knew the frosty accent was meant to put him in his place. “I’m just a private citizen shocked at witnessing an English and an Afrikaner woman having sex in public.”

  “What do you want, Cooper?” Karin became pragmatic. She understood how a snare worked. The harder you kicked, the tighter the wires pulled.

  “Tell me about Philani,” Emmanuel said. “You knew he was hiding in the shelter.”

  Karin and Ella exchanged looks, both searching for the least damaging solution to their dilemma. Talk to the policeman, or appear in the local court on immorality charges?

  “N
ot for the whole time,” Karin said. “I first saw him on Saturday night just before sunset collecting firewood near the shelter. He hid but I knew he was there.”

  “The second time?”

  “Sunday evening on my way home. It was dark and he had a fire going. He wasn’t too bright for a fugitive. I walked by and . . .” Karin hesitated and Ella stroked her arm with soft fingers. They’d obviously talked about the Philani situation before this. “A Zulu woman was with him. She was in the shelter, so I didn’t see her very well except for the brown buckskin with shiny beads on her shoulders. I heard her voice.”

  “Old, young, fat, skinny?” Emmanuel asked.

  “Young but not a girl. Confident-sounding.”

  “Saying what exactly?”

  “Something about personally talking to Chief Matebula,” Karin said. “I didn’t stop to listen.”

  “You should have told me this two days ago,” Emmanuel said. General Hyland would not have bothered to pick up the phone and kill the investigation if he’d known, or even suspected, that Amahle’s murder was a black-on-black crime.

  “I told Pa I was going to check traps on Sugar Hill on Friday, which is way in the other direction from here,” Karin said. “Sunday I said I was going to the river to pray at sunset and wouldn’t be home till after dark. If I’d told him about seeing Philani, Pa would have known I was lying about where I’d gone.”

  And the deeper truth, that she was sparking an Englishwoman on a rock bed in the woods, was unspeakable. Emmanuel personally knew the consequences of being caught and then judged a sinner. He didn’t wish it on anyone.

  Karin checked the position of the sun overhead. Each minute took her away from work that needed doing on the farm and buck that she had to hunt across the hills. Ella was a luxurious time-waster. “Can I go now?” she asked. “Pa’s expecting me back home.”

  “Can you remember any other details about this woman?”

  “No.” Karin straightened her belt buckle and checked that her shirt buttons were fastened. The white flower had fallen from her hair and lay crushed on the ground. “Confident, like I said. Not one of those Zulu women who don’t speak without getting a man’s permission first.”

  Karin’s observation fit with some of what Emmanuel had figured. The person who’d murdered Amahle and Philani got near enough to pierce them with a small, specialized weapon. This murderer killed with confidence and skill.

  “You can go,” he said to Karin. “If you double back here with your .22, Constable Shabalala will hear you and bring you down long before you get anywhere close. He’s half Shangaan, so don’t even try it.”

  In the pantheon of South African race groups, every tribe had a special talent. Zulus had a gift for fighting and fine beadwork, the Pondo were cunning with money and the Shangaan had a freakish ability to track animals across any terrain.

  Karin reached out a hand to Ella and said, “Come.”

  “Not yet,” Emmanuel said. “I have a couple of questions for you, Ella.”

  Karin hesitated, reluctant to leave her lover in their hideout with a man. If the situation were reversed, however, Emmanuel knew Ella would skip home without questioning Karin’s loyalty. No relationship was ever truly equal.

  “Day after tomorrow, then.” Karin threaded her fingers through Ella’s hair and kissed her on the mouth. She threw Emmanuel a hard look to reinforce that she, Karin Paulus, was boss of this English miss.

  Emmanuel retrieved the rifle and pulled back the bolt, ejecting the bullet from the breach before unclipping the magazine and removing the bullets. He returned the rifle to Karin. Karin disappeared into the lacework of trees and did not look back.

  “You called the murder in to the police in Durban, didn’t you?” he said, and turned to Ella, who now sat on the smooth rock with her legs crossed. No other white woman in the valley had a motive for making the call and access to a telephone.

  “Constable Bagley is one of my brother’s white kaffirs,” Ella said. “He’d have taken a couple of statements and closed the case. I wanted a proper investigation.”

  “Ahh . . .” Emmanuel let his disbelief show. “Calling in outside help had nothing to do with getting your big brother into hot water and watching him get burned?”

  “Thomas has everything his own way. It’s bad for his character.”

  “And he keeps pushing the marriage angle, which you’re, understandably, not so keen on.”

  Ella shrugged. “One day, maybe, but not right now.”

  Emmanuel suspected that Ella understood the preordained trajectory of her relationship with Karin. Girls from posh English families did not set up house with Afrikaner tomboys. They moved to grand homes with rich husbands and, if they felt the need, satisfied their desires as Ella did now—in secret and without promises.

  “How did you find out about Amahle?” he asked.

  “I went to the lake for a cigarette after dinner on Saturday night. Gabriel was in the boathouse babbling on about needing a pillow to help Amahle sleep on the hill.” Ella slid off the stone platform and straightened her skirt. “I got enough out of him to guess she was badly hurt or dead.”

  “You called the police knowing Gabriel would be implicated in whatever happened to Amahle?” The call to Durban was more than spite at an older brother’s power; it was lobbing a hand grenade into the family living room.

  “It was risky,” she admitted. “But there’s no way Gabriel could have hurt her. He was her baby.”

  “Amahle was like a mother to him?” Emmanuel asked.

  “She was more like a sister,” Ella said. “A big sister who didn’t care if he made a fool of himself in town or on family trips to the beach.”

  “Dr. Daglish and Constable Bagley thought there was more to the relationship than that,” Emmanuel said.

  “I don’t think it went that far. All the native men in the valley were after Amahle but she let Gabriel get close because he didn’t want her that way. They made their own little world together.”

  “The other housemaids must have thought their relationship was strange. I bet they didn’t like the extra pay Amahle received from your mother, either.”

  “None of the house servants liked Amahle,” Ella said. “Not really. She was different from them. She always wanted more and usually got it from my mother. The other maids stayed out of her way.”

  Emmanuel ran a mental inventory of the Zulu housemaids at Little Flint Farm: the older, nervous woman who’d waited on the porch to greet them and the shy laundry maid with a basket balanced atop her head. Neither looked “confident” but both of them knew Amahle and Philani well enough to get close without arousing suspicion. Shabalala had talked to the inside maids and the gardeners. He might have more details to add to the new information.

  “And you?” Emmanuel asked.

  “It worked out for me. Amahle got the run of the house. I got to take long walks in the hills instead of sitting indoors and sewing things for my glory box.” Ella was matter-of-fact. “I made sure to slip her a lipstick or a toothbrush once in a while just in case she’d read my diary and figured out about me and Karin.”

  That was where the luxury items in the cardboard box at the kraal came from: they were bribes from the little madam to buy a servant’s silence.

  “You didn’t like Amahle, either,” Emmanuel said.

  “Not at all, but she was clever, I’ll give her that. You couldn’t tell what she really loved and what she hated. She changed to suit whoever she was with. It was a good trick. I never learned it.” Ella picked up the crushed white flower and rolled it between her palms to mark them with its scent.

  “Keeping your true self hidden from others isn’t a trick,” Emmanuel said. “It’s a sacrifice.”

  Dutiful daughter, perfect servant, runaway and manipulator of sexual desire, Amahle was all these things. On dark country nights lit only by the moon and stars, what version of herself did she take to bed? “You can go.” Emmanuel stepped aside. “If you stay away too
long your mother and brother will be suspicious.”

  “They already are.” Ella paused under the arch of branches, looked at him and said, “You’re wrong about me, Detective Cooper. I do love her.”

  The thoughts he’d had on the longevity of Karin and Ella’s relationship had shown on his face as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.

  “Loving someone and loving to fuck them are two different things.” Emmanuel heard the cynicism in his voice. “Karin is a sport and a pastime. If your brother or your mother ever found out about her . . . what then?”

  Ella shrugged but broke off eye contact.

  “You’ll tell them that she forced you against your will. Then you’ll cry and they’ll believe you because the truth would be too hard to face. Good-bye, Karin. Hello, Stephen or Andrew or Harry, or whatever your future husband will be called. Now tell me what I’ve said isn’t true.”

  He had lived every chapter of the wrong love story as a teenager at the Fountain of Light Boarding School and knew there’d be no happy ending to Ella’s, just the taste of blood in her mouth after being discovered and the mark of her lover still on her skin—long after Karin was gone. Worse than physical pain was the shame and self-loathing on the face of the one who’d come to you at nightfall and promised it was forever.

  “You make it sound so mercenary.” Ella paled. “I don’t make the rules.”

  “Or the laws,” Emmanuel said, and immediately regretted it. If he was guilty of breaking any law it was the one that said, Look but don’t touch. Think but don’t act.

  “You wouldn’t tell . . .”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

  His own hypocrisy was breathtaking. After being caught with Maria, the predikant’s daughter, and brutally punished for the sin of fornication, he’d chased pleasure everywhere and found it. Love, he left alone. He’d given only a fraction of himself to Angela during their brief marriage and never let her get close enough to touch the darkness inside him. The old man, Baba Kaleni, saw the easy paths he’d taken and the opportunities for deep connection that he’d let pass. He was a passenger in life, a stowaway carrying only the baggage left to him by the war.