by Malla Nunn
‘You’re incapable of performing an examination?’ Emmanuel said and held the doctor’s gaze. Something more than a sprained wrist was behind this refusal.
‘Not a full and proper examination. That would be impossible.’ Dr Daglish leaned closer and added in an anxious voice, ‘You should get another doctor. One from out of this area.’
‘I see. Where do you suggest we look?’
‘Pietermaritzburg or Durban,’ came the swift reply. ‘A qualified physician who can stay in Roselet for a few days and then leave after the work is done.’
Emmanuel reflected on what Daglish was really saying: Amahle had to be examined by an objective stranger with no local ties who’d sign off on the medical findings and clear town before the shit hit the fan.
‘An outside doctor can be arranged,’ he said.
‘That’s for the best,’ Daglish said with a strained smile. ‘I’m happy to assist the visiting doctor with medical supplies.’
Dodging the examination was one thing, but Emmanuel wasn’t going to let the town doctor walk away from the case altogether. ‘It will take time for the relief doctor to get here and we need somewhere to keep the body until then. Can you help?’
Margaret Daglish looked at the hearse-like Chevrolet surrounded by garden flowers. The colour drained from her cheeks and remorse registered in her eyes: a response prompted by the death of a young girl or by her own cowardice in refusing to perform the examination, it was impossible to say.
‘There’s a basement at the back of the house,’ she said. ‘It’s dark and cool inside. She will be safe there.’
‘May we move her in right away?’
‘Of course.’ The doctor blinked hard and pointed to the side of the house. ‘Follow that path to the rear. The land slopes down to a door that opens directly into the basement. I’ll have the room open and ready.’
Emmanuel and Shabalala headed for the Chevrolet. Safe. Loved. Beautiful. Protected. The words from his notebook played on his mind. Amahle had been blessed, but with every blessing came a shadow. Envied. Hated. Feared. Harmed. Those words might also apply to the dead girl.
‘The constable did not look for her and now the doctor will not examine her.’ Shabalala seemed to read Emmanuel’s mind. ‘What is there to fear from a Zulu girl?’
‘You think Dr Daglish is lying about her wrist,’ Emmanuel said. Outside of the traditional kraals and the native locations, black women had no power and influence. Amahle’s name, her existence, should have been of no consequence to a white medical doctor.
‘She is hurt. But not so badly.’
‘I got the same impression.’ Emmanuel opened the passenger door. ‘The doctor doesn’t want her name on the examination report or the death certificate. Maybe she’s afraid of what she’ll find.’
‘There is only one wound on the girl.’
‘I’m talking about wounds that can’t be seen.’ A dirt-flecked foot fell out from under the tartan blanket and Emmanuel covered it up again. ‘An old broken bone, long healed. Internal bruising. Rape. Pregnancy. The examination might uncover something no-one wants to know.’
‘The doctor is not responsible for Amahle’s bad fortune,’ said Shabalala. ‘She has nothing to fear.’
‘Well, she’s scared of something. Or someone.’ And that someone was most likely a European. Black-on-black violence was expected, accepted. A white killer, however, would bring something new and dangerous into Dr Daglish’s world.
Emmanuel moved aside and Shabalala lifted the girl into his arms with the strength of a river carrying a leaf.
‘Let’s give her to the doctor and get back to the station. Van Niekerk will be wanting an update.’ Emmanuel followed the path to the rear of the cottage. ‘Then we’ll find a place to throw our bags down for a couple of days.’
The sound of Shabalala’s voice behind him whispering to the dead girl slowed Emmanuel’s steps. He was not superstitious or religious but an old feeling resurfaced, one born in combat and shared with all front-line soldiers. Time was finite. It was fickle. It ran out. Fate or the God that you didn’t believe in could pull the plug and walk away.
During the war, he’d fought for a world where girls grew into women and then to old women surrounded by their grandchildren. That Amahle’s life should be so easily wasted in peacetime Emmanuel took as a personal insult.
*
On the third try, the telephone operator found a clear line between the Roselet police station and Colonel van Niekerk’s study in Durban.
‘What did you find, Cooper?’ The Afrikaner colonel skipped the usual formalities. They knew each other too well for small talk.
‘A Zulu girl. The daughter of a local chief.’ Emmanuel sat behind Bagley’s neat desk, which faced green fields and distant mountains.
‘Fuck!’ van Niekerk said. ‘I was hoping to break you and Shabalala in on a bigger case.’
The colonel’s disappointment at Amahle’s skin colour reflected the hard truth: reputations were not built on solving black homicides.
‘It’s enough that we’re out of the city and working a murder case,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Picking up the garbage’ was the phrase used by the other white detectives at the West Street CID branch to describe the jobs Emmanuel was assigned. Four suicides, two drowning victims, three pickpockets, a putrefied old lady dead for four weeks and a serial panties thief with a penchant for lace – that was the grim tally of his cases for the last three months. Shabalala’s case list was equally depressing. It was payback for re-entering the detective branch under the protection of an ambitious Dutch colonel who refused to play the role of dumb Boer for the predominantly English police force.
‘It’s a start,’ van Niekerk conceded. ‘Need anything?’
‘The local doctor has backed away from the case at a hundred miles an hour. We have to get someone from outside the area to perform the examination.’
‘Get the old Jew.’ Van Niekerk could have been ordering a drink from a bar or demanding a meal be reheated. ‘He’s qualified and he’s only a few hours away.’
‘No,’ Emmanuel said automatically and then rephrased the objection. ‘I’d rather not get Dr Zweigman involved in police business, Colonel. He has family obligations and a clinic to run.’
The Dutch colonel was not used to hearing the word ‘no’ except, perhaps, from his virginal English fiancée. There was a brittle silence before he said, ‘Finding another doctor won’t be a problem, Cooper. I’ll make a few calls.’
‘Much appreciated, Colonel.’ Emmanuel’s fingers flexed around the telephone cord. A suggestion from van Niekerk was really a de-facto order. Giving up without a fight on having ‘the old Jew’ conduct Amahle’s medical examination was out of character. Or perhaps the colonel felt the examination of a black girl’s corpse was not worth fighting over.
‘Who called the case in, sir?’ Emmanuel asked, curious.
‘It was an anonymous tip-off from a local woman. A European. The constable on duty figured the victim was white as well.’
‘I understand.’ Emmanuel saw the bigger picture. The out-of-town murder of a European (as van Niekerk assumed) provided the perfect opportunity to get the names Cooper and Shabalala back on the board at the European and native detective branch. Van Niekerk had, with characteristic patience, waited for the right moment to move them up the ladder to a more powerful position.
And Emmanuel had repaid that loyalty by sleeping with Lana Rose. An excusable error for a hormonal teenage boy but not for a grown man able to weigh up the risks and consequences. Running, still running towards trouble. Nonetheless, he wasn’t sure he’d take back the night with Lana, even if he could.
‘Everything okay, Cooper?’ Van Niekerk spoke over the soft whir of a ceiling fan. Durban was humid this time of year, the air thick enough to carve into ribbons.
‘All fine this end, sir,’ Emmanuel said. ‘We’ll interview the girl’s family and friends and report any news tomorrow afternoon.’
‘No problem, Colonel.’ Emmanuel dropped the heavy Bakelite handle onto the cradle and pushed the phone back onto the grooves marked on the table surface. Bagley had a specific place for each pen and notepad, he noticed.
White clouds bloomed on the horizon, backlit by shafts of early afternoon sunlight. A white woman had reported the murder. One of the European-owned farms in the Kamberg was the most likely source of the call. Why the tip-off was directed to the Durban detective branch when Constable Desmond Bagley of the Roselet police lived less than fifty miles from the crime scene was a mystery.
FOUR
Forty or so members of the local Zion Christian Church, known as Zionis, gathered by a wide river. They clapped and swayed in rhythm on the sandy bank as they sang ‘Come, Holy Spirit, Dove Divine’. In the middle of the river, a girl in a white robe with green trim rose up from the water, newly baptised, to shouts of ‘amen’ and ‘hallelujah’. A second group of Zionis clustered around a wood fire with their hands held out to the flames while water dripped from their gowns and pooled at their feet.
‘How do we find him?’ Emmanuel asked.
‘The mothers sitting with Amahle said that Baba Kaleni is the head of the True Israelites congregation,’ said Shabalala. ‘I do not recognise any of the markings on the robes, so we will have to ask.’
Looking around as they walked along the compact dirt path, Emmanuel noticed half a dozen different robes; some trimmed in black, others in moss-green. A group of women in pale blue and navy-blue collars sat on rocks by the river sharing an orange. Two men with leopard-skin trim stacked Bibles into a wheelbarrow to be transported back to church.
‘Different congregations wear different robes,’ Emmanuel said and wondered why that distinction had never been clear to him before. Perhaps he’d never looked closely enough.
‘Yebo, Sergeant. My church wears green robes with a white cross.’
Shabalala was full of surprises. The Zion Church mixed Christian and traditional African beliefs. Men like Shabalala, who operated in the white world, generally did not admit to an association with a church that allowed polygamy and practised animal sacrifice.
‘I thought you were Anglican,’ Emmanuel said. He remembered the Zulu detective standing outside a red-roofed church in the town of Jacob’s Rest.
Shabalala closed in on the group huddled around the fire. ‘I belong also to the Anglican Church,’ he said.
‘Laying a bet both ways.’ Emmanuel couldn’t resist the chance to get under the Zulu policeman’s skin. ‘That’s cheating, my man.’
‘God in his infinite wisdom understands all and forgives all, Sergeant,’ Shabalala answered with a smile. ‘That is what makes him great.’
‘And here I took you for an Old Testament guy.’ Since returning from the war, Emmanuel had kept almost completely to himself except for his odd three-way friendship with Shabalala and the Jewish doctor Zweigman. He’d met them both a little over a year ago during an investigation into the murder of a corrupt Afrikaner police captain. Together they’d faced violence and almost certain death and remained close even after the case was shelved and forgotten.
Just for a moment, while they walked and worked by the river, Emmanuel allowed himself the illusion that he and Shabalala were two ordinary cops with no barriers of place or race between them.
‘Now I see that you’re strictly New Testament,’ he continued. ‘With a god that lets you slip out the back door of the church and run barefoot across the veldt like a heathen; I’m not sure I trust you any more, Constable.’
‘Two churches are better than none,’ Shabalala said.
Emmanuel laughed at the deadpan comment and the sound disturbed the sudden quiet. The recently baptised Zionis huddled silently around the fire like a flock of white-feathered birds banding together before a storm. One day, Emmanuel supposed, he’d get used to the hunched shoulders and the averted gaze of non-whites about to be questioned by the police but today it still made him uncomfortable.
He caught the attention of a man who looked up from the flames. ‘Baba Kaleni,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Ah . . .’ The man squeezed water from the sleeve of his damp gown, playing for time. ‘Ah . . .’
‘I am Kaleni.’ The words came from the far right of the fire. A Zulu man shrugged on a dry robe with the help of a young girl. His beard was dazzling white but his age was impossible to tell. His sagging right shoulder and arthritic fingers indicated long years lived under harsh conditions, but his clear brown eyes and smooth round face gave the impression of a child.
‘You are the police,’ Baba Kaleni said and smiled a greeting.
‘That’s right.’ Emmanuel introduced them both and puzzled over Kaleni’s beaming expression. Back in the city, only gangsters, prostitutes and simpletons smiled at the police.
Kaleni pointed to a rock protruding from the veldt more than a hundred yards away. ‘That is a quiet place to sit and to talk.’
The shivering band of True Israelites bunched around the flames had all perfected the subtle African art of looking away while listening in.
‘After you,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Yebo, inkosi.’ Baba Kaleni started out across the grasslands with slow deliberation, the muscles of his right shoulder slumped. The young girl who’d helped him into his robe ran up and held out a tattered Bible, as if it were a shield and the old man poised to enter a mighty conflict.
‘Ngiyabonga, Sisana. You are a fine child.’ Kaleni patted the girl’s braided hair and gripped the good book awkwardly in his left hand. ‘Go now. All is well.’
The girl returned to the embrace of the True Israelites and inserted herself between two large women. Kaleni struck out again towards the rock without glancing back.
‘I will walk with you,’ Shabalala said and fell in by the preacher’s side. Emmanuel held back and let the two Zulu men go ahead. The gap had to be wide enough for Kaleni to be certain that a European detective was not overhearing the conversation. ‘White cop/black cop’ was the homegrown South African version of the ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine used by police across the globe, and just as effective.
Occasional Zulu words carried to him on the breeze during the walk over flat terrain. Emmanuel caught ‘water’, ‘bread’ and ‘blood’ but didn’t try to make connections. Shabalala would report on the conversation later. A few feet ahead, the flat rock split the red earth to make a natural platform.
‘Please, sit.’ Baba Kaleni motioned to the rock in the same way a prosperous farmer might offer a seat in his kitchen to a guest.
Shabalala climbed on first and found a spot to the rear of the warm stone. He squatted down with his broad hands resting on the curve of his knees and his fedora pulled low on his forehead. It was a signal for Emmanuel to lead the conversation.
‘Take the shade,’ Emmanuel said to Kaleni in Zulu. ‘I have protection from the sun.’
The old man squeezed into the shadow cast by a paperbark thorn and rested his right arm on his lap. The river now looked like a thin silver ribbon on the horizon, the church members gathered on its distant banks smudges of white, blue and green.
‘Tell me everything you remember about this morning, from before finding Amahle to what you did afterwards,’ Emmanuel continued in Zulu.
‘It happened like this. I awoke before the sun and dressed. It was dark in the hut but my wife is very neat and my church hat, my robes and my Bible were placed just so. My wife has always been like my right hand and a true helper.’
‘A blessing . . .’ Shabalala mumbled before the preacher set off again, describing in minute detail the chill of the water in the wash bucket in the hut and the texture of the breakfast porridge, eaten cold and without milk.
Emmanuel breathed in the scent of dirt and
crushed grass and waited for Kaleni’s recollections to reach the crime scene.
‘After many miles of walking my legs grew tired and I stopped to rest. That is when I came away from the path.’ Kaleni traced a finger over a tear in the Bible’s worn cover. ‘And that is when I saw her. The daughter of the chief.’
‘Saw her where?’
‘Under the fig tree. I . . .’ He shook his head, embarrassed. ‘I thought maybe the chief’s daughter was sleeping. Even though the dew was wet on the leaves and the dawn just breaking.’
‘Did you see anyone else in the area?’ Emmanuel hoped his patience would be rewarded with a name or a physical description of the man who’d guarded Amahle’s body.
There was a pause, a mere pulse of a heartbeat, before Baba Kaleni said, ‘I saw no-one, inkosi.’
‘You absolutely sure?’
‘The chief’s daughter was alone.’ The tear on the Bible cover widened under the rub of the old man’s fingertips. ‘Of this I am certain.’
‘So it was just you and her on the mountain?’ Emmanuel leaned closer and established eye contact. This was the first pressure point in an interview, letting a witness know he wasn’t fooling anyone, certainly not a city detective who had heard some of the most accomplished liars in the world doing some of their best work. The eye contact also contained a hint of a threat. It was a ploy but worth a try.
‘The chief’s daughter was alone,’ Kaleni said again. ‘Of this I am certain.’
‘All right.’ Emmanuel let it go. The old man had his story and he was sticking to it. ‘Describe the place where Amahle was lying.’
‘Under the fig tree with flowers all around. There was a red blanket rolled up and placed under her head.’
‘Did you put it there?’ Emmanuel had checked the tartan blanket after leaving the crime scene. It was pure wool and made by Papworth’s Fine Fabrics in Cape Town. There was no name on it to identify the owner.
‘No.’ A glimmer of a smile curved the older man’s lips. ‘But that I owned such a blanket. It would keep me warm in winter. My wife also.’
Emmanuel dug his pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘After you found her?’ he prompted.