Let the Dead Lie

by Malla Nunn

  ‘More undercover surveillance?’ Emmanuel said. ‘Something like that.’

  Emmanuel considered the proposal. Being this close to police work without being a policeman was like picking at a wound. If he stayed, the wound would never heal. The major didn’t have the power to reinstate him in the detective branch and nothing less would do.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘The hours are murder.’ Van Niekerk smiled. ‘I thought you’d say that.’ Music from the record-player in the garden blended with laughter and the splash of swimmers in the pool. Van Niekerk filled two tumblers with generous slugs of whisky from a drinks tray on the table and slid one across to Emmanuel.

  ‘Don’t rush off,’ he said. ‘Everything is on the house. No one will check your ID papers.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Emmanuel drank a mouthful. He had no intention of staying. A night with Lana Rose had eased the ache in him. For a little while.

  ‘Take some time to think about my offer,’ van Niekerk said. ‘The Victory is a waste of your time and your talents.’

  Emmanuel wasn’t entirely sure about that. He stood up and collected his hat from beside the chair. He smoothed the rim with his fingers. It was time to decide if he lived in the past or in the present.

  Emmanuel pulled his hat low onto his brow and took the stairs leading to the wide gravel driveway two at a time. Ornate steel gates guarded the major’s mini-estate. There were no devils or gargoyles placed at the entrance to ward off the evil eye, however. The devils, Emmanuel knew, were in the garden and splashing in the pool. There was plenty of evidence in the surveillance book to back up that statement.

  On the last stair he connected with a shoulder. A woman grabbed his arm to break her fall and Emmanuel looked up. The shock of recognition held him still for longer than was natural. It was Lana Rose, dressed in a scrap of white silk. A dozen questions pressed onto Emmanuel in the silence that fell between them. Was Lana one more girl for the pool or a paid professional brought in to reward van Niekerk’s men?

  She recovered first. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. Her dark eyes were fearful.

  ‘Business with the major.’

  ‘Did you say anything about last night?’

  Van Niekerk’s garden was jammed with men whose job it was to enforce the strict racial-segregation laws. Combine that with the belief, common among many of the police, that a white woman engaged in unlawful sexual adventures across the colour bar was on par with a child molester. Emmanuel understood her fear. He felt it too.

  ‘My business wasn’t about you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh …’ She cast a wary glance towards the white gabled house. ‘Will you tell him?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Van Niekerk’s ego was covered by a very thin skin. ‘I won’t ever do that. And you won’t either if you’re smart.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Her smile was filled with knowledge of things not learned in school. ‘I’m good at keeping secrets.’

  Emmanuel pushed his hands deep into his pockets to stop himself: he wanted to kiss her in full view of everyone then take her hand and lead her away.

  ‘Lana.’ The name was grunted from the top of the stairs. ‘Come now.’

  A ginger-haired man with a thick neck stood on the veranda with one hand resting casually against the leather holster of his Webley service revolver. A flattened nose and an eyebrow bisected by a silver scar testified to a round or two in the boxing ring. In the heavyweight division.

  ‘Are you deaf, girl? I said come quick. The major is waiting.’

  ‘Thanks, Emmanuel,’ she whispered and he moved away from the subtle floral scent of her perfume. The henchman cleared the stairs two at a time, furious that a civilian and a female ignored his direct order. He reached for Lana’s arm.

  ‘Touch me,’ she said, ‘and the major will hear about it.’

  The man backed away. He glared at Emmanuel, the only witness to his demotion from tough guy to flunkey. ‘You going to stand there all fucking day?’ he demanded.

  Emmanuel maintained eye contact but didn’t move. Life on the streets of Sophiatown had educated him in the ways of the bully. It was better to be knocked down than to back down. The heavyweight’s hand dropped from the gun holster and Emmanuel moved towards the gates.

  He had to retrieve Jolly’s notebook from the flour tin where he’d hidden it after getting home from Lana’s flat and post it to the Point police station. And then he was going to forget he’d ever chased murderers for a living. The memory of Lana Rose leaning against the kitchen cabinet with sleep-tousled hair and a coffee nestled between her palms drew his attention back to the major’s house. Emmanuel didn’t know for sure, but he suspected they were both flies caught in van Niekerk’s web and last night had been a brief flutter against the constraint.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The backyard of the Dover flats was empty. The dragon landlady was nowhere to be seen. Emmanuel made a dash for the stairs. Another encounter with the tight-lipped Englishwoman and his temper was going to flare.

  An upturned enamel bowl and spilled carrots were scattered across the back stoep. A knife with a shred of carrot skin clinging to the blade lay on the trimmed skirt of lawn. The Zulu maid had left a job half done. Odd.

  The flyscreen that led to Mrs Patterson’s lair banged against the back wall. Lancelot, the filthy Scottish terrier, shivered in the doorway. A radio played a World War II song heavy on the good cheer and the violin.

  The dog whimpered.

  Emmanuel crossed the lawn and scooped up the peeling knife. The blade was blunt and the tip was broken off; a useful weapon if one’s opponent were a slab of butter. He slipped it into his jacket pocket, held the screen door open and did a visual sweep. Mrs Patterson would kick him out of his flat immediately if he entered her home without permission. The dog retreated into a pile of dirty laundry. The interior of the flat was unlit. Something was wrong. Apprehension prickled the skin on the back of his neck but he kept moving forward. Raising Mrs Patterson’s ire was a risk he had to take.

  ‘Mrs Patterson?’ he called out, in case she was in the lounge room listening to wartime torch songs with her maid in the middle of the day with the curtains closed and the lights turned off. ‘It’s Emmanuel Cooper from upstairs. I’m coming in.’

  The dog snuffled its nose into the neck of a frilled nightgown on the floor and whined. The song on the radio assured the boys at the front that they’d be home soon.

  Emmanuel eased the laundry door open and entered the kitchen. It was hard to see. The drip of a tap punctuated the music floating in from the sitting room. He stepped towards the covered window and his feet slid from under him with a wet sound. The inky outline of the sink and the silver handles of the cupboards flashed by and he flipped backwards and landed hard on the floor. The breath was knocked from his lungs and pain shot up his spine. A heavy hessian bag marked ‘Export’ toppled over and raw sugar spilled across the tiles.

  Emmanuel turned to the right. The young Zulu maid stared straight at him with a startled expression. How, her open mouth seemed to ask, did I end up on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood? Emmanuel scrambled upright and steadied himself against the lip of the sink. He jerked the curtains open. Bloody handprints, his own, were stamped onto the sink’s white porcelain surface.

  Seams of black and pink liquid stained the material of his suit. Blood dripped from his sleeve and splashed onto the floor. His stomach churned but van Niekerk’s whisky stayed down. He wiped his hands against the legs of his pants and felt them shaking.

  Steady, steady on. Hold the line, soldier.

  The words stilled him; he took a deep breath and kneeled by the maid, a crumpled rag doll in a hand-me-down housecoat. Mbali. That was her name. It meant ‘flower’ in Zulu. Had she ever owned a dress of her own? Loops of blue cotton thread were sewn through her earlobes in place of earrings. Two dead children in two days. Only savages kill their own young. The maid had a single cut across her neck, just like Jolly. What connected a white boy w
ho worked the docks and a black servant girl who lived miles from the harbour?

  The darkened doorway of the next room exerted a magnetic pull on Emmanuel. He stood up and walked towards it. He stepped into the dusky room. The air smelled of wax polish, mothballs and the metallic scent of blood. Pieces of broken figurines were scattered across a Persian rug. An upholstered chair lay on its side. He fumbled the maid’s knife free from his pocket and moved deeper into the lounge. Marlene Dietrich crooned the anthem of the desert warrior, ‘Lili Marlene’, in her distinctive, mannish voice. Violins swelled and an accordion kicked in.

  ‘D-don’t move,’ a male voice stuttered. ‘Y-you’re under arr-arres-arrest.’

  Adrenaline cut Emmanuel’s reaction time to zero. He swung hard at the voice. A dark shape crumpled onto the flowered carpet in a blur of olive drab. Animal impulse propelled Emmanuel to swoop and land two more solid hits to the torso. The wooden handle of the knife bit into the flesh of his palm with every punch but he hung onto it.

  Cool steel touched his neck.

  ‘Drop the knife and get away from McDonald or I will shoot you,’ a cocky male voice said. ‘It’ll save the judge the trouble of sending you to the hangman.’

  The butt of the gun hit Emmanuel’s shoulderblade and he was slammed to the carpet. A boot pressed onto his throat. Olive drab uniform pants crossed his line of sight and, beyond that, Mrs Patterson’s feather duster, snapped in two.

  Emmanuel’s neck muscles ached. The smack from the Webley revolver would take days to heal. Handcuffs bit into his wrists.

  The door to the interview room opened and a slim man in grey flannel pants and a pressed shirt ambled in. It was the salt-and-pepper-haired detective from the crime scene at the freight yard. He nodded in greeting and placed a leather satchel gently on the floor. He’ll be the nice one, Emmanuel thought. The good detective.

  A second man swaggered through the door, ginger hair damp with perspiration, a heavy hand resting casually on a leather holster. It was the red-haired policeman flicked away like a fly by Lana Rose. Emmanuel shook his head. The Negro soldiers had an expression: ‘If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.’ Now Emmanuel knew how funny that was.

  Recognition flickered across the detective’s beaten features before he pulled up a chair opposite the interview table and sat down with his legs spread apart.

  ‘I’m Detective Head Constable Robinson,’ the good detective introduced himself. ‘And this is my partner, Detective Constable Fletcher.’

  ‘Two counts of murder, assault of a policeman, resisting arrest,’ Fletcher said. ‘You’ve had a very busy afternoon, haven’t you?’

  Emmanuel cleared his throat and the muscles constricted in protest. Robinson offered a glass of water and a smile. Emmanuel downed the water in one gulp.

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said. The smudge of blood his fingers left on the glass mocked that statement.

  ‘It was a coincidence,’ Fletcher said and scooted forwards, ‘you being in the flat when the policemen arrived to investigate a disturbance?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emmanuel said.

  ‘Ever been in the landlady’s flat before?’

  ‘No. I went in because I thought something was wrong.’

  ‘Is that why you were armed?’ Fletcher said.

  ‘What?’ Blood pounded in Emmanuel’s ears and the pressure in his head returned with a vengeance. A dark force seemed intent on breaking through the bones of his skull.

  Robinson reached down, opened the leather satchel and withdrew the kitchen knife. He tilted it so the electric light hit the metal and made it shine.

  ‘You had this weapon in your hand when the uniforms broke in,’ Robinson said. ‘Do you always carry a knife?’

  Emmanuel rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. The chain securing the handcuffs swung against his nose. He needed to make sense of things.

  ‘You’re aware that the landlady and the maid had their throats cut?’ Robinson continued.

  ‘The maid, yes. I didn’t see Mrs Patterson.’

  ‘Can you imagine how it looks? You with a knife and the victims sliced from ear to ear. What’s a judge going to make of that?’

  ‘It’s a blunt knife without a tip,’ Emmanuel said. ‘It couldn’t cut a sponge cake.’

  ‘You have a good knowledge of knives, then?’

  ‘Enough to know when one is blunt.’

  Fletcher picked up Emmanuel’s driver’s licence from the table and read over the details. It listed an outdated Johannesburg address. The licence hit the wood with a slap. The detective’s eyes reflected the utter contempt reserved for lowlifes.

  ‘Want to know what upsets me, Mr Cooper? The fact that a degenerate from Jo’burg thinks he can come to my town and commit all manner of filthy acts.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ Emmanuel repeated. The smooth surface of the concrete floor was inviting. It was the perfect place to rest an aching head. Then, an ice pack for the boot-print branded onto his neck.

  Robinson said gently, ‘Your neighbour Mr Woodsmith claims you had a fight with the landlady yesterday morning. Do you recall that incident?’

  Mr Woodsmith, the harmless window peeper, had supplied the police with a time-honoured motive for foul play: bad blood between the landlady and the lodger; a storyline lifted from Detective Tales. Emmanuel closed his eyes and focused beyond the pain that split his temple. Should he tell the truth or take evasive action?

  ‘There was no fight,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We talked about dogs. Small versus big.’

  ‘Mr Woodsmith claims the landlady was scared of you. Couldn’t wait for you to vacate the premises.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  Discs of light flickered across the room in a bright meteor shower. It was getting hard to hold up the weight of his head.

  The detectives’ attention was drawn away when the interview door swung inward. A young constable in an olive drab uniform entered and placed a shoebox onto the table with boyish awkwardness. White puffs of bloody cotton wool protruded from his nostrils. Fletcher patted the constable’s shoulder, a gesture that said, ‘We are both men bloodied in the fight against crime’. Stuttering constable to station hero; this afternoon would be a career highlight for the young policeman who’d taken blows from a vicious killer. His incompetence might even get him a medal from the police commissioner. The injured constable whispered something to Fletcher that made him smile.

  ‘What’s in here?’ Robinson, the good detective, reached into the shoebox once the constable had left the room. He extracted a bone-handled knife. It was Parthiv’s gangster switchblade. Emmanuel had forgotten it in his pocket when he’d rushed from Saris & All, then shoved it into a drawer. Out of sight, out of mind. He lifted his head a fraction. The uniforms had searched his room.

  Robinson dipped into the box again and produced Jolly’s notebook. He dusted off the cover and rubbed the white powder between his fingers, curious.

  ‘Where did the constable find this?’ he asked.

  ‘Wrapped in newspaper and hidden in a flour tin,’ Fletcher said with satisfaction. ‘In Mr Cooper’s kitchen.’

  ‘Strange place to keep something.’ Robinson flicked through the pages and then glanced at Emmanuel, waiting for edification on the notebook’s placement.

  Emmanuel didn’t even try to explain how an imaginary Scottish sergeant major’s warning had made him cautious to the point of paranoia.

  ‘The boy on the docks . ..’ Robinson handed the notebook to his partner. ‘What was it his ma said about him?’

  ‘Ran errands at the port. Collected food and booze for various people. Kept everything written in a book.’

  ‘You know a boy by the name of Jolly Marks, Mr Cooper?’ Robinson asked.

  The empty glass rattled against the metal chain of Emmanuel’s cuffs. The shakes were coming on strong. White clusters of light erased outlines of objects and people. The detectiv
es were soft Vaseline smears.

  ‘I can’t think,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I need painkillers … something for my head and my neck.’

  ‘Medicine’s not going to fix what’s wrong with you,’ Fletcher said. ‘The hangman will set you straight.’

  Emmanuel forced his chin up and tried to focus. The white-snow haze of his migraine blinded him.

  Your eye is fucked, soldier. The rough Scottish voice filled his head. I’ll tell you what they have. The Indian’s knife and the dead boy’s notebook. Now you know. Your eye’s not the only thing that’s fucked.

  Emmanuel rocked backwards. The glass flew into the air and smashed against the concrete floor. Darkness swamped him. Fletcher grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Faking illness?’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about going soft now.’

  ‘Wait.’ Robinson examined Emmanuel’s pale face and the sweat on his bruised neck. ‘The arresting constable clobbered him too hard. Probably knocked some bones loose.’

  ‘He’s pretending.’

  ‘Put him down, Fletcher.’ The order was given quietly. ‘Get Dr Brownlow in here to give him a once-over.’

  ‘No disrespect, sir, but—’

  ‘We have him on three counts of murder. All the evidence is right here on the table. I want him in top shape when he appears in court.’

  Emmanuel’s body slid to the floor.

  A small drop compared to the gallows, the Scots voice rasped.

  Emmanuel rested his head on his forearm. The absence of pain was pure joy. He felt better than fine. The fistful of codeine the doctor had pushed down his throat was working. The demented sergeant major’s voice was crushed into silence and happiness was five minutes’ sleep away.

  The door to the interview room opened. Emmanuel sat up.

  ‘Major.’ He greeted van Niekerk with a nod.

  The major was in full uniform: the pleats of his trousers and jacket ironed to a razor’s edge. A subtle floral scent mixed with whisky lingered on his person. No surprise as to how the perfume had been transferred to van Niekerk’s skin.