No Ordinary Killing
Page 37
“Accor7ding to the official version of events, Rideau parks the drunken Cox there,” he said.
“… and his coat.”
“Note that he does so himself. Unusual when this place is crawling with valets and sycophants.”
“But not implausible. If he were trying to be discreet …”
“True. And then he goes back inside to settle the bill. Or so he claims.”
“And Kilfoyle?”
Annie looked up and down.
“Kilfoyle comes from where?”
“His apartment is over that way,” Finch pointed.
At the opposite end to the slip road, there were steps leading up out of the square.
“We know he was walking home when he stopped to help Finch. He then carried on his way, supposedly turning back after a change of heart.”
“Look!” Annie whispered.
They hadn’t seen them arrive, maybe they had been inside, but a pair of Military Foot Police were now standing guard outside the club.
Finch and Annie kept in the shadows and edged back round behind the taxi rank.
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
“There’s still a question I have to ask.”
Keeping to the blind side, they went to the first cab and stood alongside the driver.
“Excuse me,” asked Finch.
The Coloured cabbie looked down.
“Baas?”
“Do you know a man named Pinkie Coetzee?”
The man rolled his eyes.
“What’s he done this time?”
“Nothing. Nothing like that. He’s not in trouble at all. He helped us the other day. We want to thank him.”
“Well he’s not here. Not driving.”
“His evening off?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Dismissed. Doesn’t work here anymore.”
“He got the sack?”
“Two days ago.”
“What on earth for?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Guessing the usual.”
“Surely you mean the incident? The one with the British officer?”
“Don’t know about that, baas. You have to ask him.”
Finch and Annie exchanged a glance.
“You know where we can find him?” she asked.
“Don’t know his address but my guess is he’ll be at Sammy’s.”
“Who’s Sammy?”
“A bar owner.”
“Where’s this bar?”
“Bo-Kaap.”
She looked to Finch, he nodded.
“Can you take us there?” Annie asked.
The cabbie’s face lit up like a beacon.
“Are you crazy, lady?”
“Crazy? Crazy why?”
“Come on, Missy. You … the gentleman …”
“Why on earth not?”
He phrased it delicately.
“It’s not your neighbourhood.”
“An unfamiliar neighbourhood is the least of our worries,” snapped Finch.
The cabbie shrugged again.
“Whatever you say, baas.”
They made to climb aboard.
“Oh, one other thing …” said Finch.
“Baas?”
“… can you describe me?”
“Describe you?”
“Yes. What do I look like? What am I wearing?”
The cabbie was growing tired of the nonsensical interrogation.
“I don’t know … hat, suit …”
The driver twisted himself right round. Alongside the cab door, with the canvas roof up, they were almost obscured.
“The colour of my suit?”
In the glow of the gaslight, some ten yards away, it was obviously near impossible to tell. The cabbie shook his head.
“My face?”
The cabbie hunched his shoulders again.
“Look like a man with a lot of questions.”
“Captain?!”
Annie was frantic. She pointed out through the other side of the cab. A man had entered the square, limping along, turning this way and that. He had a white handkerchief bound round his left hand. Payne.
“Sammy’s Bar, Bo-Kaap,” barked Finch to the driver. “Go, go, go!”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The bar was at the top of a cobbled street that ran upward towards Signal Hill. As they ascended, Annie sensed right away that she was in a different Cape Town. Even in the thin gaslight she could see that the tightly-packed terraced houses with their odd, sideways facing stoeps, were brightly coloured – painted orange, pink, yellow, lime green …
There was a heady waft of spices and smell of tobacco, the sounds of gentle conversation. Up and down the road were huddles of dark-skinned men in kufi skullcaps, some in long, baggy shirts. She saw the outline of a domed building … a mosque?
People were turning to look at them. On the walled stoeps, women in headscarves stared.
“What are we doing looking for a bar in this part of town?” she asked.
They had been walking up the centre of the road. Finch stepped to the kerb and approached a middle-aged man wielding a broom, sweeping around the front step of his house.
The man didn’t seem offended. He pointed up the slope, the direction in which they were headed.
Brookman had filled him in on some of the local details and he imparted the salient facts to Annie – the Cape Malays formed one of the oldest communities in the city, descendants of the slave labour that the Dutch East India Company had shipped back from their colonies in Java and Malacca. They had brought their religion with them, part of the great spread from Asia.
Like other ethnic groupings in the Cape they were now of mixed race, the result of 200 years of intermingling between those of African, Asian and European stock that placed them under the definition ‘Coloured’ distinct from ‘black’ The Cape Malays were just one sub-set.
As Brookman had made clear, there was a real sense of grievance building amongst the Coloureds of whatever religious stripe. There were some powerful Cape Malay voices in local politics. While it had generally been accepted that the industrious Coloureds were pro-British, they had been denied the opportunity to do their bit for the Cape’s defence, turned away at the recruiting posts.
What with the Cape Dutch, it was rumoured that groups were arming themselves as a precaution in case civil relations soured further.
As they neared the top of the slope, they began to hear music – a lively, rhythmic dance tune. Finch picked out a wild trumpet that was studding the air with frenzied staccato volleys. Around it there was laughter, gaiety. The bar was on a street corner. Outside, the crowd had spilled onto the pavement.
There were equal numbers of young men and women fraternising enthusiastically, flirty or coquettish, all seemingly enjoying themselves. Annie, victim of obsessive chaperoning, felt rather jealous.
There was no hostility as they approached, just a general bemusement that a white middle-aged man in a too-tight flamboyant suit and his rather bedraggled female companion should have ventured into these parts.
The bar, they saw, was not actually called Sammy’s, rather The Hundred Yard Bar, though no one, thus far, had referred to it so.
Inside, more heads turned, then twisted back again and got down to business, which consisted, almost to a man … and woman … of enjoying the band.
There were bright paper garlands hanging from the low rafters between the lanterns. Beneath them, amid the packed clientele, couples danced in up-close free-form association.
Through the thick smoke, to Finch’s eye, the ensemble was an unorthodox arrangement – steel-strung guitar, a plucked double bass and rudimentary drum kit. Over the top came that trumpet, played by a skinny man with closed eyes, his heaving ribcage outlined against his shirt, completely lost in the music – his wild and excited toots zipping up and down the scales, every outlandish flourish greeted with cheers.
They squeeze
d their way through the throng, towards the bar. It was really just planks mounted on bricks, behind it crates of pale ale that looked suspiciously like they had been intended for the army. The barman was a large man in a sweaty white singlet over which hung a brightly coloured floral shirt. He sucked on a toothpick.
“Good evening,” Finch yelled. “Are you Sammy?”
“Who wants to know?” he said and went back to wiping glasses.
“My name is Captain Finch.”
The man eyed him up and down.
“You police?”
“Army.”
“There are no guns here.”
“I’m a doctor, Medical Corps. I’m not interested in firearms.”
He stacked some glasses behind him then returned to his wiping.
“I don’t mean to be rude, Captain, but two white folks come here to my bar, it’s not common. White folks come here, usually spells trouble.”
The tune finished to an eruption of whoops and cheers. The bar was suddenly besieged.
“This is not a good time,” he said.
“I’m afraid this is a matter of urgency.”
There was already one young woman working overtime to keep up with demand as people shouted and jostled and rattled coins. They were begging Sammy to serve them, too.
He huffed, raised his hand to indicate that he would be one moment, and bellowed back over his shoulder.
“Gertie!”
A generously-proportioned woman hustled through the doorway and took over his spot. Sammy the barman then went round the side and beckoned them over.
“Can I ask you a question, Sammy?” said Annie.
“Go ahead, Miss.”
“Your place. Why is it called the Hundred Yard Bar?”
He smiled and waved his hand towards the street.
“Down there … the Malays … the mosque …”
She nodded.
“Municipal law prevents me from selling alcoholic beverages within one hundred yards of it.”
He pointed to the floor. Just in front of the bar, a white line had been painted across the stone.
“That there is the legal limit.”
She laughed. He did too. But then his face turned serious.
“Now, what is it you really want?”
Finch spoke loudly and clearly.
“We’re looking for a man named Pinkie Coetzee.”
There was no reaction.
“Pinkie Coetzee. Cab driver. Do you know him? We were told he could be found here.”
Sammy took a packet of cigarettes that had been tucked into the fold of his shirtsleeve, removed one, lit it, sucked in the smoke then exhaled, head pointing upwards, adding a lungful to the great smog that hung under the ceiling.
“Pinkie? I might do … Why?”
“He’s not in any trouble,” stressed Finch. “Far from it. In fact, he’s been of great help, to us and to the police.”
Sammy did not appreciate mention of the police.
“But I need to make sure he’s okay … He’d been hurt, you see—”
The man dropped the cigarette on the floor, ground his foot on it and indicated that he needed to get back to pouring beer.
“Sure, I know Pinkie,” he said.
He jabbed a thumb towards the rear. There was a pair of French doors, the woodwork battered and faded, a crack running diagonally across one pane.
They pushed the doors open and stepped through into a small yard. There was a lit candle on an empty bench table, intended as a romantic retreat. But in the light of it, a man was lying face-down on the ground in a stupor.
“Pinkie?”
Finch rushed to him, shook him and turned him over.
“This is your star witness?” asked Annie, incredulously.
Finch tapped Pinkie gently on the cheeks. He groaned. He was dishevelled, his shirt and trousers soaked in sweat, beer and vomit.
He half opened his eyes. They were bleary, bloodshot. It took a moment for him to register. Finch’s presence here was evidently wildly out of context.
“Heer Dokter?”
Annie exited.
“Please, no more, Dokter,” Pinkie added. “You already cost me my job.”
“If there’s anything I can do?” said Finch. “Speak to Inspector Brookman, speak to the taxi company …?”
Pinkie was not incapacitated enough to prevent him issuing a sardonic smile.
“Nothing you can do,” he said, his voice weak, pained. “You know full well.”
Annie returned with a jug of water. She handed it to Pinkie who, in one go, half drank it down, half sloshed it over himself.
“Pinkie, I’m afraid Nurse Jones here and I must ask you a few more questions.”
Pinkie turned his head to eye Annie.
“I wish I never picked up that officer. Look where helping got me.”
“Lives depend on it.”
Finch pulled out his own cigarettes. He put two in his mouth, lit them and then passed one to Pinkie, who drew long and hard. Finch then produced his wallet. He opened it and brandished a ten shilling note.
“You think you can just buy me … the poor Coloured boy?”
Pinkie half-heartedly snatched at the money anyway.
Finch made an ‘uh-unh’ noise, the kind one makes when admonishing a child, and pulled it back.
He explained as clearly and succinctly as he could about their theory – that there could have been two Good Samaritans – one the Fancy Dan, the man who put Cox in the cab initially then walked away; two, a second man who returned to climb on board beside Cox.
Pinkie sucked on his cigarette.
“Yes,” he said, “if that’s what you say, I suppose there could have been two.”
“The ring, the diamond ring,” asked Annie.
“When did you see it on the man’s hand? … When he gave you the address card, or when he returned to help on board Major Cox …?”
“Or both times?” added Finch.
Pinkie was fading, his eyelids closing. Finch slapped his cheek again. Harder this time.
“Come on Pinkie, ten shillings.”
“First time. I saw … first time only,” he whispered.
Finch turned to Annie.
“He conflated the two men, Kilfoyle and Rideau, just like we thought. He believed they were one and the same. Easy to do.”
She nodded.
“But I’m not sure,” Pinkie then added.
“Why?” said Finch.
“Because, Heer Dokter, look at me …”
He began a phlegm-rattle chuckle. It was hurting him but, the more it hurt, the more he laughed.
“I am drunk now. I was drunk that night, too.”
“Shit,” uttered Finch, with a tagged-on ‘sorry’ for Annie’s benefit.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Our theory. It still pans out.”
Finch lay Pinkie back down … and tucked the ten shilling note into his filthy shirt’s top pocket.
“What do we do now?” Annie sighed.
Finch stood and looked out across the Cape Town rooftops and dotted night lights.
“I don’t know. Find out what the hell was so incendiary about some documents that would have driven a man to sewing them into his jacket.”
“Or squirrel things away behind a false panel in a wardrobe.”
Finch grew animated again. He was itching to do something.
“What?” she asked.
“Only place we haven’t visited together …” he said, “…the only bit of crime scene we haven’t re-examined is Cox’s guest house. There must be something there. Maybe something Mrs Du Plessis neglected to tell us – she was pretty circumspect with her information. And if our red-haired friend has got our scent, then we’d better get out of here fast.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
They took another short tram ride and hopped out at the stop on High Level Road. Ans Du Plessis was a tough customer, Finch explained, but neither immune to reason, nor – on account
of the business with the letters – sentiment.
He wondered now whether those love letters had been sliced from his own jacket not as some means to blackmail but under the mistaken assumption that they might have been the documents that had been passed between Cox and Moriarty. Had they even thought, for a moment, that he – Finch – was Moriarty?
Other than the chirp of crickets, the silence of the neighbourhood was in stark contrast to that of Bo-Kaap. Up the slope of Atlantic View Drive there was the glow of lighting from within the houses but – as they stopped outside – not from the Esperanza guest house itself.
Finch undid the picket gate catch and let Annie pass through. As they mounted the wooden steps, the noise of the crickets stopped.
“What time is it?” he asked.
She twisted and turned to try and catch the gaslight on her watch, but to no avail.
“Can’t tell … Must be after ten.”
Finch pulled open the fly screen, rapped the knocker then pressed his face to the glass with its ornate ship and its billowing sails. There was no light from within.
“Probably in bed,” he said.
“You’d have thought there’d be a guest up.”
“Either out on the town or gone. Who knows? What with the Big Push, everyone might have moved on.”
He rapped again. Hard. Nothing.
No windows were open. Annie went around the side passage. She tried the back door and the ground floor windows.
“All shut up back there, too.”
“Only one thing for it,” he said.
Finch got out his penknife and jabbed it into the lock, then rattled the brass, oval-shaped knob with its beaded surround.
“You’ll never do it like that,” tutted Annie.
From under her beret, she pulled out a hairpin about three inches long, then another the same. She crouched down, inserted both into the lock and worked them together.
The mechanism went ’click’.
“How on earth …?” spluttered Finch.
“My brother,” she said, pushing open the door. “Don’t ask.”
They stepped inside and closed it gently behind.
He called out a ‘hello’ and a second one for good measure.
Save for the heavy, resonant tick of the large carriage clock there was no sound.
Maybe, as Ans Du Plessis had said, the word had spread. Murder had been bad for business.