by Malla Nunn
Shabalala cleared his throat and looked to the night sky, mortified by the doctor’s request. Respectable white women drank in separate ‘ladies’ bars’ with dress codes, tables and chairs. Chugging liquor in the company of cops was usually for whores and bar girls. How far outside the rules was Daglish willing to go?
‘It’s everybody’s bottle tonight,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Shabalala and I have already made a head start.’
‘You can’t be half-pregnant, Detective.’ The town doctor held out her hand for the bottle. ‘And I need a drink. Now.’
‘Of course,’ Emmanuel said and gave Daglish the brandy. No way on Earth would Shabalala take another drink from the bottle, and neither would he. Treating a middle-class woman doctor like one of the boys seemed disrespectful.
‘L’chaim.’ Daglish raised the bottle to the fire in a toast. ‘To life.’
She took a deep swallow and then another and tears stung her eyes. Emmanuel wondered how Daglish managed to keep this version of herself so well hidden. And also where she’d learned a Yiddish toast.
‘Danny Einfeld. Durban Medical School.’ She answered his silent query and drained the bottle in one long hit.
The jackal made a series of eerie yelps in the darkness. It was closer now. Shabalala threw a branch onto the fire and sparks floated up to the canopy of stars. Gabriel slept curled up on a bed of stolen clothing with his hands tucked under his head as a pillow. Zweigman breathed deeply, warmed by the flames, peacefully asleep in a pharmaceutical haze from the morphine in his bloodstream. Emmanuel crouched by the fire and felt the weight of worry and guilt lift from his shoulders. He made plans for tomorrow.
EIGHTEEN
Early morning sun broke the cloud cover and lit the twists and turns of the ‘Scenic Way’ that looped from the hotel to behind the police station. Emmanuel and Shabalala crouched in the grass and waited. Up before dawn and wearing the suits they’d slept in, they looked like gentlemen of the road planning the ambush of a travelling coach. A Zulu man crossed the stream at the edge of the field and walked towards them.
‘That’s him,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Don’t ask questions. Look him in the eye. Tell him you know about Bagley and Amahle. He has one, and only one, chance to grow a pair, tell the truth and be a man.’
‘He will hear me.’ Shabalala stood up with his arms hanging loosely by his side. Somehow the easy posture was more threatening than if he’d come out with his fists swinging. Shabangu, the Zulu constable, would talk.
‘We’ll meet under the sycamore tree in ten minutes and then I’ll run the same line with Bagley. Hopefully with information from Shabangu to use as a lever.’ Emmanuel split off in the direction of the police station.
He was confident that Ellicott and Hargrave, the replacements from Durban, would sleep late. Working on that assumption, Emmanuel and Shabalala had an hour to spring the two-part plan before returning to Daglish and the still-sleeping Zweigman.
The smell of coffee and bacon drifted from the back of the station commander’s house. Emmanuel turned the corner and looked into the empty yard. No sign of Bagley on the stairs. Breakfast must already be on the table. He crossed the raked-dirt square, passed the sycamore tree and peered through the station window. Also empty. He returned to the sycamore, making sure to keep the trunk between his body and Bagley’s house.
Eleven minutes later, Shabalala cut across the dirt yard with the stride of a prize-fighter.
‘Tell me,’ Emmanuel said, wanting just a slice of that glow.
‘Shabangu says that Amahle came to the attention of the police twice. First was the day in winter that she was left in town by accident. Constable Bagley was the one to drive her back to Little Flint Farm. The second time was Friday afternoon.’ Shabalala paused, enjoying the serious weight of the information he’d collected. ‘She came here and talked to the constable in the station house. Shabangu did not hear what was said but when Amahle left she walked like a queen with the water parting before her.’
‘Excellent. Ella Reed said something like that, too . . .’ Emmanuel grasped for the fragment of conversation and found it. ‘Amahle came back to the fitting room with change rattling in her pocket and she looked pleased.’
‘The constable gave Amahle money,’ Shabalala guessed.
‘Let’s find out from Bagley himself. Go into the station and sit at the station commander’s desk. I’ll bring Bagley through in a few minutes.’
‘But, Sergeant . . .’ Shabalala knew the rules. White policemen sat at desks in the front office; black policemen, like Victorian-era children, stayed out of sight in a back room until they were called.
‘Forget the rules,’ Emmanuel said. ‘This whole operation is off the books. We do as we like and live with the consequences. Sit down, fiddle with the pens, make a call if you like.’
‘I must pretend it is my desk.’
‘Yes. And don’t move from the desk no matter what Bagley says to you.’ That was insubordination and a punishable offence within the South African police force. ‘If Bagley actually has the guts to report our conversation to the district commandant, I’ll tell the commandant that you did it on my order.’
‘Sit, don’t move,’ Shabalala said, warming to the idea but not convinced of its wisdom. White men could take risks that remained impossible even in the dreams of black men and women. The detective sergeant took risks that no sane white man would even contemplate.
‘I’ll do the rest,’ Emmanuel said. The old coda, ‘Trust me’, was redundant. Faith, loyalty and trust kept them both above the quicksand in this clandestine operation.
Shabalala nodded and made for the front door of the station. A Land Rover packed with farm supplies destined for the valley and a rattling white and blue bus with the name GOD’S GIFT painted on the side headed into town. Shabangu, the Zulu policeman, slipped into the yard and began to collect windblown twigs and leaves from the ground before throwing them into a garbage drum. Emmanuel reached the back door of the police residence and knocked twice.
A handle clicked and a plain woman appeared, her fine strawberry-blonde hair scraped back in a bun. No more than thirty years old, she wore a green cotton dress that was modest even by nineteenth-century standards. It had long puffed sleeves and a long skirt that came down almost to the floor.
‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was hesitant and soft.
‘I’m here to see the station commander,’ Emmanuel said. The pity he began to feel for this woman, the same one he’d seen standing by the window and secretly spying on her husband chain-smoking at dawn, had no part in the plan.
‘Who should I say is asking for him?’
‘Detective Sergeant Cooper. Can you tell him that I’ll be waiting for him at the station.’
‘He’s in the middle of breakfast.’ The words came out fast as if she’d noticed a dangerous crossroads ahead and was steering to avoid a collision.
‘He’ll see me,’ Emmanuel said, and then added, ‘If the commander can’t make it to the station tell him I’m happy to come in and talk with him over breakfast.’
Bagley’s daughters pressed into the hallway. They stood on tiptoe and tried to see beyond their mother and into the yard.
‘Where is your friend?’ the eldest girl called out. ‘The black one?’
‘Hush now and back to breakfast.’ Mrs Bagley shooed the girls into a side room and shot Emmanuel a worried glance.
He tipped his hat and walked to the station house. Later tonight, when the sun was down and the moon high over the mountains, Mrs Bagley would most likely turn to her husband and ask in a soft voice, ‘What happened?’ Constable Bagley would look her in the face and say, ‘Nothing important.’ He’d lie to her, and not for the first time, Emmanuel was certain.
He ducked inside the low sandstone building and closed the door. The visual punch of a tall, solid Zulu man sitting behind a station commander’s desk was stunning and immediate. Shabalala was either a dream come true or a colonial nightmare brought to life, dependin
g on who was looking.
‘Suits you,’ Emmanuel said and pressed himself flat to the wall behind the door. The first thing Bagley would see was a world in reverse, a black man in the power seat. If that didn’t destabilise the Roselet station commander, nothing would.
Hurried steps tracked the width of the yard, growing louder.
‘Relax, for god’s sake,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Write your wife a note on official paper. Tell her how much you enjoy wearing a suit and sitting behind a desk like a fat white man.’
Shabalala smiled and lost the stiff posture of a thief caught lifting donations from the church poor box. He pulled a sheet from a drawer and selected a pen from the neat row laid out on the desk.
The station door swung open. Bagley stepped in, uniform pressed and black shoes shined, his face like a crumpled paper bag.
‘What the hell are you doing, boy?’ he asked, shocked by the sight of a black man sitting in his seat, touching his pens and papers.
Shabalala said, ‘Writing a letter to my wife in Durban.’
Bagley moved further in. ‘Is this Sergeant Cooper’s idea of a joke?’
‘Did you really think it was that easy to shake us off your tail, Mr Insurance Policy?’ Emmanuel shut the station door with a hard click and leaned against it. ‘Make a phone call to a farmer, get a general to breathe fire and get us sent home to bed without our supper?’
Bagley spun a half-circle, the telltale vein pulsing on his forehead. ‘It’s official. You are off the case, Cooper. The longer you stay, the worse trouble you’re in.’
Emmanuel looked over at Shabalala, still seated behind the desk. ‘Constable Bagley is worried for us. He left a hot bacon and egg breakfast to come over here and personally tell us that we’ve been naughty boys and that the headmaster – or is that the general? – is going to cane us.’
‘That was very kind of him, Sergeant,’ Shabalala said.
‘Ja, it was.’ Emmanuel refocused on Bagley. ‘You don’t have to fret about us, Constable, we’ve been in tougher spots than this. You should be worried for yourself, your family and your police pension.’
Bagley’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. ‘My pension is none of your business.’ The pension was a small but important reward for a lifetime of poorly paid work and formed the foundation of every policeman’s retirement fantasy. It was a monthly reminder that the sacrifices made to keep South Africa safe were remembered and rewarded.
‘I’m personally not in favour of taking the pension away from a cop who’s made one stupid mistake. We’re human and we fall as quick as the next man,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Amahle was young and pretty. Easy to see how it happened.’
‘Nothing happened.’ Bagley pressed his palm against the pulse point on his forehead. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea.’
‘So you lied about knowing Amahle because . . . ?’ Emmanuel left the sentence unfinished.
‘I knew it would look bad. Me knowing a dead black girl.’
‘Bullshit.’ Emmanuel went on the attack. ‘You gave her a lift to Little Flint Farm, pulled over at the side of the road and fucked her in the back of the van. That’s why you lied about knowing her.’
Zweigman’s autopsy proved that couldn’t be true but the accusation sent Bagley reeling back two steps. He bumped against the station counter, sweating. ‘That’s not what happened. I swear.’
Emmanuel dismissed Bagley with a look and said, ‘Pick up the phone, Shabalala. Have the operator put through a call to the vice squad in Durban. Tell them we have a tip-off for them. A high-profile case involving a married policeman and a dead girl.’
‘No.’ Bagley held out his hands, as if trying to stop time. ‘Wait. Please.’
‘I’m not waiting to hear more of your kak. Tell your story to the vice squad when they get here.’
The station commander placed a hand to his chest. ‘On the lives of my children, I will tell you the truth. Just put down the phone and let me speak.’
Emmanuel signalled to Shabalala to replace the receiver on the hook. ‘Okay, let’s talk.’
‘Just you and me.’ Bagley looked to the concrete floor. ‘I can’t say it in front of a kaffir.’
‘You mean Detective Constable Shabalala?’
Bagley cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes. Detective Constable Shabalala.’
Life at the top of the race ladder meant a long fall from grace when the earth shifted. Bad behaviour was expected of those on the lower rungs. A white man or woman given to bouts of violence or sexual misadventure let the whole European race down; they made nonsense of the moral superiority of whites.
Shabalala pushed away from the desk and stood up. ‘I will take a walk.’
‘Not too far,’ Emmanuel said and moved from the doorway. The clock on the wall read seven thirty-five. ‘Come back in ten minutes.’
‘Yebo, Sergeant.’
Bagley and Shabalala avoided eye contact as the Zulu detective left the room and began to walk across the yard.
‘Sit.’ Emmanuel threw his hat onto the counter, ready to start. The tick of the clock was loud in the silence.
‘Mind if I stand by the window and have a smoke?’ Bagley asked.
‘Fine.’ Emmanuel stayed close to the constable in case he was desperate enough to jump out the window and run for it.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Bagley pulled a packet of Dunhills from his jacket and removed a cigarette. ‘Dirty white policeman. Poor, frightened black girl. You’re wrong. The situation with Amahle was the opposite of that.’
‘Dirty black girl and poor, frightened policeman?’ Emmanuel didn’t blunt his sarcasm. He didn’t have time to listen to excuses. A simple ‘what happened when’ story would do. ‘She was left in town by accident, you drove her back to Little Flint Farm. Then what?’
‘See, there’s your first mistake, Cooper.’ Bagley lit up, drew deep and blew smoke from his nostrils. ‘She didn’t get left. She was hiding behind the general store, waiting for God’s Gift to come through. The farm manager held off driving back to Little Flint for fifteen minutes, got pissed off and then made tracks without her.’
God’s Gift was the bus Emmanuel had just seen cruise Greyling Street into town. Amahle was not lost or left behind on that day, she was on the run. ‘Any idea where she was going?’
‘Pietermaritzburg,’ Bagley said. ‘Then on to Durban. I found the ticket in her pocket after Reed called and said to find her and bring her back to the farm.’ Bagley smoked. The memory of being dispatched to hunt down a servant girl still irked him.
Emmanuel raised the window higher to get some fresh air. ‘Two buses. All the way to Durban. That’s a big move for a Zulu girl from the sticks.’ He thought of the number of times he’d run away from the Fountain of Light boarding school and failed to get to the city.
‘That’s your next mistake, see. That girl wasn’t a usual kind of native. She had two pounds and a map of Natal in her pocket and she wasn’t afraid of the journey or of me.’
‘No luggage?’
‘Not that I saw.’
That surprised Emmanuel. The lipstick, toothbrush and nail polish scattered across the ground by Chief Matebula belonged to a girl with the desire to use them, even if it was in the distant future. Leaving without a suitcase or her box of luxuries made no sense.
‘Ja?’ He prompted Bagley to continue. Loose threads could be tied up later.
‘Constable Shabangu walked her to the edge of town and I picked her up from there.’
‘Why walk out so far when the station is closer?’
Bagley flicked ash into the yard. It took a minute for him to invent an answer as to why Amahle was diverted from the station to the outskirts of town. ‘I thought it would be better to keep the runaway thing under wraps. For the Reeds’ sake.’
That is unmitigated shit in a can, Cooper, the sergeant major said. Slam this fucker up against the wall and tell him to stop wasting your time. He was planning to diddle the girl and he covered his tracks from the sta
rt.
‘Doing your bit to quell trouble with the natives . . .’ Emmanuel flicked Bagley’s cigarette from his fingers. It flew out the window and fell to the ground, where it lay smouldering. He pressed a finger to the constable’s chest to get his attention. ‘You’re a bad liar and a coward. Let’s start again. I’ll tell you the real reason you sent Amahle to the crossroads, and then you finish the story without mentioning your good intentions. All right?’
Bagley nodded and looked away. He had no choice but to listen.
‘You wanted to fuck Amahle and you were afraid it would show if your wife saw the two of you together. You sent her outside of town to protect yourself. It had nothing do with the Reeds. Now it’s your turn and make it quick.’
Bagley kept his face turned away. ‘She got into the van. We drove. Not one word from her all the way to the turn-off to the valley. I admit I was thinking about it, what it would be like to touch her, but I swear that was it. Only thinking.’
There was a biblical quote about adultery beginning first in the minds of men, but the exact words escaped Emmanuel.
‘She started it. She reached over and put her hand on my thigh and then moved it higher to unbutton my trousers.’ Bagley swallowed deep and focused outside the window. ‘I pulled over and parked. She finished what she started.’
‘Hand or mouth?’ Emmanuel asked. Levels of intimacy mattered.
‘Both,’ Bagley said. ‘But I swear to God I didn’t touch her. I kept my hands on the wheel the whole time.’
‘Well, that made it okay then. Bet you didn’t make a sound at the end either.’
Mottled red spots appeared on Bagley’s neck and cheeks. Oh, he’d made sounds all right, probably frightened the birds out of the trees and the rabbits out of their warrens. Bagley believed that hanging on to the wheel exempted him from admitting his involvement in the activity and, by extension, his enjoyment.
‘Afterwards . . .’ Bagley flipped the cigarette pack back and forth in his pocket, ‘she buttoned my fly and sat back like nothing had happened. Not a word or a sly look. It was like she was somewhere else. I drove to Little Flint and dropped her off, but I knew that one day I’d have to pay.’