by Malla Nunn
‘Did we win, Sergeant Cooper?’ Zweigman asked. He was propped against the wall of the tunnel, scratching his arms and legs, a common side-effect of the morphine in his bloodstream.
‘Try not to speak.’ Daglish tucked the ends of the blanket around Zweigman’s shoulders. ‘You need to rest.’
Drugged up and stitched up, the German doctor still refused to take orders. He waved Daglish away and said, ‘Tell me the news.’
Emmanuel got up and walked over to Zweigman. He leaned in close to stop the injured doctor from moving. A full night and day of drug-induced sleep had made Zweigman stronger but he was not completely out of danger yet.
‘We did not win and the news is not good,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Our main suspect, a maid at Little Flint Farm, has alibis for the times of both murders. She’s in the clear and our interview list has nobody on it.’
Mercy Mhaule left work on Friday and made a quick round of all the kraals with unmarried good-looking males either resident or temporarily away digging the mines in Jo’burg. She treated her unmarried status as a disease to be cured by the end of the year. She’d even detoured to the Matebula kraal on the advice of a friend who said the great chief might be on the prowl for a new wife. On Sunday, she attended a morning church service, had lunch with her cousins and then attended a late prayer meeting before bed. Mercy had a dozen witnesses for both nights and no marriage proposals.
‘Shabalala . . .’ Zweigman scratched his bristled chin and neck, drifting in and out of the present. ‘I saw him. Now he’s gone.’
‘Shabalala’s checking a trapline that he set this morning.’ Emmanuel glanced at the fading red light in the sky. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘And Lilliana and Dimitri are well?’
The thought of how close Zweigman’s wife and son had come to losing their husband and father raised the hair on the back of Emmanuel’s neck. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re both fine.’
‘Lilliana worries too much but Davida is strong. She’ll adjust to her new life. Her mother will help. So will we.’
‘Davida?’ Emmanuel asked. The Zweigmans had taken Davida in and sheltered her in their home in the isolated town of Jacob’s Rest. The German couple and their surrogate mixed-race daughter remained close, though Zweigman rarely mentioned her in Emmanuel’s company.
‘Shhh . . . she needs sleep,’ Zweigman said.
‘Is she sick?’ Emmanuel leaned closer and tried to get Zweigman’s attention. He wanted to know that Davida was happy and that his own reckless actions with her had not ruined her chances for love and peace.
Okay, so fucking the girl was a wee bit naughty, the sergeant major said. But it was one night, over a year ago, Cooper, She’s probably forgotten about it by now. Or is that what you’re worried about . . . being a footnote?
Emmanuel shrugged. He wasn’t sure why the memory of Davida refused to fade
‘I should have learned to play guitar,’ Zweigman mumbled and scratched an earlobe. ‘Instead I learned the accordion. My mother said it would make me popular at parties . . .’
‘Rest,’ said Emmanuel. The German was floating in time and space and morphine. ‘I have to help Dr Daglish build a fire.’
‘Good woman. If I was ten years younger and the man I used to be . . . but those days are gone . . .’ Zweigman slipped under the blanket and yawned. ‘One summer holiday Lilliana and the children ran barefoot across the grass and tried to catch fireflies with a net. I saw the moon in the lake.’
Zweigman drifted off to sleep and Emmanuel left the cave to forage for dry wood. He’d dream of Davida Ellis tonight and relive the memory of her running across the veldt in a white nightdress, out of his life forever. Where was she now?
The sun set and the evening star ascended. Red colour faded to charcoal on the horizon and then the black night closed around them. This time tomorrow the future of Amahle’s mother and sister would be decided by the sangoma. While beautiful in spring, this landscape turned harsh and cold in the wintertime. Snow fell on the mountains and food became difficult to find. How long could mother and daughter survive, outcast and alone, before they joined Amahle in the village of the ancestors?
*
A hand crept under the edge of the brocade curtain Emmanuel used as a blanket and moved towards his gun holster. He lay still and waited for dreams and reality to separate. The hand reached the brass clip and tugged at the leather. No dream. This was real. Emmanuel reached out and grabbed a bony wrist. He sat up and gripped the thief’s wrist tight. Gabriel struggled to break free, sweating heavily in the waning firelight. The Kings Row College uniform had deteriorated further and dirt streaked his face.
‘What are you doing?’ Emmanuel whispered. Zweigman, Daglish and Shabalala were asleep around the night fire, wrapped in sheets and curtains from Gabriel’s trove of stolen treasure.
‘I’m taking your gun,’ Gabriel said.
‘What for?’ Emmanuel let go of the schoolboy and checked his watch. Quarter past four, just before dawn.
‘To kill the red queen. She’s roasting a baby in the coals.’
The army hospital in England where Emmanuel recuperated after he’d been shot during the war housed lunatics with homicidal urges, living corpses balled up in corners and night ghosts that prowled the wards, trying to find their way home. The experience taught Emmanuel respect for the strength of the mind to manufacture its own reality. He could hear it in Gabriel’s voice: the red queen was real.
‘Tell me about the red queen,’ he said.
‘She’s down there.’ Gabriel pointed to the darkened forest. ‘I looked all day and then I found her.’
‘Why do you want to kill her?’ Emmanuel applied gentle logic, trying to find the core of the boy’s fantasy world.
‘She’s the one who made Amahle fall asleep on the mountain.’ Gabriel rocked back and forth, agitated by the memory. ‘She used bad magic but if I kill her she can find Amahle and bring her back from the other side.’
Emmanuel kicked free of the curtain and reached for his shoes. When the cupboard was bare, the most farfetched ideas opened up as possibilities. The movement brought Shabalala shuffling across the rock and into the dawn world of witches and red queens.
‘Sergeant?’ The greeting was also a request for information.
‘I found her,’ Gabriel said. ‘The woman who cast a spell on Amahle. Emmanuel won’t let me have his gun. Do you have one?’
‘No.’ Shabalala leaned closer to the feral schoolboy and whispered, ‘What is this woman’s name?’
‘The Red Queen,’ Gabriel said.
Emmanuel exchanged a glance with Shabalala and got a small shrug in return. Evil witch, red queen or silver unicorn, there were no other leads to follow.
‘Take us to this woman,’ Shabalala said to the boy. ‘Emmanuel will bring his gun in case she tries to cast a spell.’
Gabriel stood up and buttoned his jacket, the way he must have when lining up for daily inspection at the college. ‘We must move fast,’ he said after looking at the Webley still in its holster. ‘Before she flies away.’
Emmanuel shoved his feet into shoes and Shabalala did the same. Gabriel jumped down from the mouth of the tunnel to the lower level and sprinted into the forest. They followed him, guided through trees and thick ferns by the sound of his footsteps. Pale blue dawn lit the path.
Keeping up with Gabriel and Shabalala demanded all Emmanuel’s concentration and he lost track of time and direction. The woods thinned and they cut across a stony field dotted with aloes. A spark of red pricked the darkness.
Gabriel slowed. ‘Her fire,’ he said.
They moved from the field and through a sparse grove of marula trees. Smoke from the fire carried the scent of charred flesh and burning herbs. Emmanuel closed down his emotional reactions. Whatever lay in the coals could not be changed, only accepted and then buried.
‘Slowly . . .’ Shabalala cautioned. ‘Or she will hear.’
‘Quickly,’ the boy replied. ‘
Or she’ll disappear.’
A mourning dove flew from the trees at their approach and the sound of its wings beating the air acted like a warning siren. Roosting birds twittered and called in alarm. Emmanuel glimpsed a human figure rising from the fireside.
‘That’s her,’ Gabriel called out. ‘The Red Queen.’
The figure swung away from the flames and melted into the treeline with quick steps. Shabalala broke into a run. Flashes of a tan colour appeared between the tall trunks. Emmanuel split to the right, moving parallel to Shabalala in case the fleeing figure cut back towards them.
The blinks of tan disappeared and Emmanuel stopped to try to get his bearings. The pounding of footsteps faded somewhere in the distance and then disappeared into the sound of birds. He turned full circle, disoriented. Light glowed between reedy trunks, and he headed in the direction of the light, dreading what he’d find in the coals.
Gabriel Reed hunched close to the fire, fascinated by the object thrown into its heart. He shifted position when Emmanuel came closer but kept his eyes on the blaze. ‘That’s the baby,’ he said.
The organs of a child were deemed the most powerful for casting black muti spells, and those of a foetus even more so. Smoke stung Emmanuel’s eyes and the radiant heat of the fire burned hot against his skin. He stopped on the edge of the sandy area, unable to move closer. The smoke and flames mirrored the dream in which he stumbled through burning cinders, searching for something he could not see. The presence of a dead child sharpened the fear. Somewhere in the rubble of his nightmare, hidden in the ash clouds, there was a woman and a child wrapped in cotton. He knew that now.
One step at a time, soldier, the sergeant major said. There’s no way here but forward. Complete the mission.
Emmanuel walked across the sand and looked directly into the smouldering core. Charred black flesh split to reveal ivory-coloured ribs and a row of teeth. Emmanuel leaned closer. The set of the molars didn’t seem right.
‘Find me a long stick, Gabriel. Let’s get a better look.’
The boy jumped up and foraged in the underbrush before returning with two young branches stripped of their leaves. Fascination with the charred body had clearly overwhelmed any desire to find and kill the Red Queen.
He gave Emmanuel a branch and they scraped the remains out of the fire and onto the sand. A spine, ribs and hollowed eye sockets confirmed the mass had once been a living being. Emmanuel crouched down and worked the tip of the stick along the jaw line, which was long and slender and definitely not human.
‘A small animal,’ he said. ‘Could be anything. A puppy or a newborn impala.’
‘A baby,’ Gabriel insisted.
‘Yes,’ Emmanuel agreed. ‘But not a human one. Shabalala might know what it is.’
The sky lightened and individual plants and rocks became visible. Worrying about Shabalala hadn’t occurred to Emmanuel until that moment. The Zulu detective was fast and strong but what if this black muti actually worked and he was chasing an opponent with dark powers?
Crap times twenty. The sergeant major spat the words. Keep yourself busy, for Christ’s sake, Cooper. Shabalala will be back directly.
Emmanuel took the advice. He walked around the fire, widening the circle on every rotation, looking for evidence of the woman’s identity. Gabriel followed, carefully fitting his bare feet into the tracks left by Emmanuel’s shoes.
A silver bead nestling in the curve of a brown leaf glistened like a dewdrop. Emmanuel picked it up and placed it in the palm of his hand.
‘Look.’ Gabriel crouched near a rock. ‘Another one and another one.’
Silver beads had scattered across the ground and rolled into dirt hollows. Karin Paulus had said something about beads the day before. Emmanuel picked up a dozen of them and put them in his jacket pocket.
‘They belong to the witch,’ Gabriel said. ‘She has them on her shoulders and her back.’
That was it. Karin said the woman in the rock shelter with Philani wore tan buckskin decorated with shiny beads around her shoulders. A shawl of some kind.
‘Describe the witch to me,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Black skin, wearing a red crown.’ A police sketch artist would struggle with that physical description.
‘Is she tall or short?’
‘She’s full.’ Gabriel continued picking silver from the dirt, taking delight in each individual bead. ‘But she’s hungry.’
‘She’s fat.’ Emmanuel took a stab at the answer. He’d spent long English winter evenings playing charades with his in-laws in their stuffy living room decorated with porcelain Siamese cats. He hated guessing games.
‘No.’ Gabriel pocketed his haul. ‘She’s full, not fat.’
‘All right.’ Emmanuel tried another approach. ‘Everyone has two names. The one that people call them and the special one that you make up. Right?’
‘Ja.’
‘What’s the Red Queen’s other name?’
Gabriel frowned. ‘I don’t know what it is, Emmanuel. We’ve never been introduced.’
‘But you’d recognise her if you saw her again?’
‘Of course.’
Not that it mattered a great deal. An unbalanced schoolboy was not ideal witness material. His word would have to be backed up by real evidence or, better yet, a signed confession from the woman.
Gabriel swivelled at the sound of running steps thundering towards them. Emmanuel unclipped his holster. It could be Shabalala, or the woman returning to collect her black muti object.
The Zulu detective broke out of the treeline and stopped by the fire to catch his breath. His face was slick with sweat and two days of rock-tunnel living showed in the wrinkled suit and dirty trouser cuffs. Together with Gabriel, the three of them here at the fire could join a soup kitchen line for vagrants and not attract attention.
‘She hid and I lost her.’ Shabalala mopped sweat with a handkerchief. ‘When the daylight came I found her trail and followed her across the field to Chief Matebula’s kraal. There is a loose branch in the fence. That is how she got back inside.’
‘She probably loosened it herself,’ Emmanuel said and wondered how many young, ‘confident-sounding’ women lived in the Zulu family compound. ‘Karin heard the woman in the shelter talking to Philani about Chief Matebula. Plus Gabriel and I found these . . .’ He scooped the beads from his pocket and held them out for Shabalala to see. ‘Karin said the woman’s shoulders were covered with brown buckskin and beads.’
‘Her shoulders were covered?’ The Zulu policeman fixed Emmanuel with a sharp look.
‘Yes.’
‘You should have told me this, Sergeant.’ Shabalala worked the handkerchief across his brow but not fast enough to hide the expression of irritation on his face. He was pissed off. ‘It was important.’
‘I forgot to mention it,’ Emmanuel said. Where was his mind at the time . . . on the case or reliving Karin and Ella’s grind? ‘My apologies.’
Shabalala looked away, embarrassed at showing his emotions. He said, ‘It is all right, Sergeant. We learn as we go.’
Having his words repeated back to him made Emmanuel laugh. ‘That’s right, Constable, we do. Now tell me why a shawl is so important.’
‘Married women cover their shoulders and heads. Single women do not.’
‘Staking out Little Flint Farm and talking to Mercy was a waste of time.’ They had lost a whole afternoon sitting in the bush for nothing.
‘Maybe not.’ Shabalala stared into the dying flames, thinking. ‘Mercy went to the Matebula kraal on Friday evening because her friend heard the chief was looking for a new bride.’
‘That’s right,’ Emmanuel said.
‘How was the great chief going to pay for this new wife?’
‘You’re the Zulu expert, Shabalala. You tell me.’
‘With cattle. Many cattle if he wished to purchase a pretty young girl.’
‘And the chief likes pretty things,’ Emmanuel said. Each of the five women gathered in
the wives’ area at Amahle’s funeral was attractive, with sleek skin and curves. Wife number one, Mandla’s mother, and Nomusa were outstanding beauties.
‘Five wives, many children to feed and a kraal to keep.’ Shabalala thought out loud. ‘There was one certain way for the great chief to obtain cattle to fund his desire for a sixth wife.’
‘Amahle,’ Emmanuel said and the connections clicked into place. ‘He needed Amahle’s bride price to buy another wife for himself.’
‘I think that was why the chief was angry and buried his own daughter so disgracefully. He was a child denied sugar.’
Emmanuel moved closer to the fire. The glowing red coals released a bittersweet odour. He reviewed the investigation. Every motive for the murder, from robbery to lust and jealousy, had been examined and none of them could be supported. ‘Amahle was killed to stop the chief from marrying again.’ That complex motive would not have occurred to Emmanuel in a lifetime of reworking the case. ‘Which of the wives would go that far?’
‘The one who has the most to lose,’ Shabalala said. ‘The one with no children to support her in old age and no friends among the other wives.’
Emmanuel remembered the fifth wife standing up to view Amahle’s corpse while the other women screamed in anguish. Another detail came back to him: the high ochre tower of her hair woven with beads and fibres to make a stiff red crown. Gabriel’s uncanny gift for names hadn’t yielded a supernatural metaphor after all – the fifth wife was the red queen.
‘I can’t imagine that being married to Matebula is a life worth killing for,’ Emmanuel said.
‘The starving fight over scraps, Sergeant. The youngest wife has nothing without the chief’s favour. No children, no money, no allies.’