by Malla Nunn
Emmanuel let Miss Morgensen continue her violent land clearing. He had used her, that was true, but even the infirm Mrs Flowers must know that Joe was only a moment ahead of the law.
The street came into view and the missionary stopped to get her breath back. ‘I thought you were investigating Jolly’s murder,’ she said, turning to him. Her cheeks were pink but her eyes had the calm of the sea after a storm.
‘I am. Joe’s escape and Jolly’s murder may be connected,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Was Joe Flowers a member of your congregation?’
‘We can’t talk here. Too many of my family live in the area and after that trick you pulled with Mrs Flowers it’s better if I’m not seen with you.’
‘Whither thou goest, I goest,’ Emmanuel said and had the unexpected pleasure of Miss Morgensen’s laugh.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Swell Times cafe on South Beach sold scoops of ice-cream in waxed paper cups. Miss Morgensen chose chocolate and strawberry sprinkled with chopped nuts. Emmanuel stuck with vanilla. They strolled the beachfront on the lookout for a place to sit and talk. A vacant bench faced the ocean.
Miss Morgensen pointed to the ‘Whites Only’ sign. ‘If members of my family can’t sit down here, then I don’t sit here either.’
‘Well, that rules out the beach and the cafes,’ Emmanuel said. ‘This whole strip is for Europeans only.’
‘Then we’ll walk.’
‘Happy to,’ Emmanuel said and kept alongside the missionary. The ocean curled onto the sand and tanned families splashed in the waves. A tanker glided along the horizon line. He was comfortable in the silence. Sometimes the people he spoke to felt the need to fill it. Miss Morgensen was not one of them. She licked her spoon and admired the ocean.
‘You’re a servant of God,’ Emmanuel said after a few minutes of quiet, ‘but you’re worldly enough to know that the murder of a child isn’t going to go away. Silence won’t give you, or any of your family, protection from the police. Talk to me now - or talk to somebody else later.’
Miss Morgensen paused and began walking, more slowly. ‘Joe was a member of the Zion family for a short while,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t take.’
‘This was before he went to prison?’
‘He left a few months before he stabbed those two poor men in a bar fight. He’s a poor lost man himself.’
‘What happened?’
‘Joe’s spirit was willing but his flesh was weak. Very weak. He got involved with one of the young sisters in the congregation and when money was tight he was happy for her to work the docks.’
‘He was a pimp?’
Miss Morgensen’s look said yes, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. ‘We talked about these bad habits and we prayed for power to resist the devil but nothing changed. Then I discovered Joe had brought other young sisters into his arrangement and that’s when he was told to find another family.’
Emmanuel had met a few murdering pimps back in Jo’burg. The victims were usually ‘disobedient’ girls who’d run away or customers who bruised the merchandise.
‘Were Jolly and Joe members of Zion at the same time?’
‘They were.’
‘Jolly knew him?’
Miss Morgensen hesitated. ‘Yes, he did.’
The missionary had earlier said that Jolly might have known his killer - now the connection between Joe and the murdered boy was established. Was there also a connection between the escaped prisoner and Mrs Patterson and her maid? Emmanuel remembered the sack of sugar toppled over in his landlady’s kitchen. Maybe goods stolen off the docks linked the murders.
‘Are any of Joe’s girls still around?’
‘A few are in the area, yes.’
‘Names and addresses?’
‘Let’s see.’ Miss Morgensen ate a scoop of chocolate. ‘Stella is married to a policeman now. Newborn baby. Joe won’t go anywhere near her. He tried it once and got a beating. Patty is around but I haven’t seen her the last month or two. Anne is still a member of the Zion. She lives in the same building as the Marks family.’
It was worth a try. Joe wouldn’t risk a return to the soup factory now he’d been spotted there. He’d be hunting for a new hiding place. ‘What number?’
‘You really think there’s a connection between Jolly’s murder and the Flowers boy?’
‘There’s a connection,’ Emmanuel said. ‘But I don’t know what it is yet.’
Miss Morgensen contemplated the crash of the waves and said, ‘I’d better take you. Anne will go out the back window the moment you knock on her door, and it’s better for the family if we can clear up questions about Jolly’s death without delay.’
‘Better for all of us,’ Emmanuel said.
The crippled man in the Victorian-era wheelchair was parked at the front of the crumbling flats, same as yesterday.
A straw hat was jammed onto his head to keep the midday sun off. Two mangy kittens burrowed into the blanket tossed over his paralysed legs.
‘Anne’s father,’ Miss Morgensen said when they reached the front door. ‘Used to be a railway shunter. Hit by a train. That’s all that’s left. Anne’s mother took off with another man about six months after the accident.’
They climbed to the second floor and Miss Morgensen rapped her knuckles on the door. There was a shuffle of feet inside the flat but no answer. Emmanuel manoeuvred closer to the wall and out of sight.
‘Sister Anne?’ Miss Morgensen said. ‘I won’t take more than a minute of your time.’
The door creaked open and a young white woman’s angular face appeared in the gap. Her stubby nose was dusted with freckles and her thick brown hair was cropped close to her skull; in the wrong light she could easily be mistaken for a boy. Red cold sores cracked the corners of her mouth. Miss Morgensen’s ‘holy temple’ blessing this morning had not erased the reality of life in the shadow of the port.
A tawny kitten slipped into the corridor and rubbed itself against the missionary’s leg. The woman undipped the chain lock and scooped the kitten up in her thin arms. It was hard to tell who needed milk most: Anne or the starving cat.
‘Have you got Pa’s medicine?’ The kitten dug its claws into Anne’s shoulder. ‘A few more days and he’ll be out.’
‘The clinic is waiting on supplies,’ Miss Morgensen said. ‘I’ll bring the medicine the moment it’s ready.’
‘Ja, sure.’ The young woman’s voice wavered when she caught sight of Emmanuel leaning against the wall. She reached for the door handle.
‘He won’t hurt you, Sister Anne. I’ll be with you the whole time.’
‘What’s he want?’
‘You’re not in trouble,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I just want to talk with you.’
Anne retreated into the flat and Emmanuel trailed close enough to grab her if she made a run for it. Winter light seeped in from the front window. Fingers of rising damp curled strips of green wallpaper from the walls and gave the flat a musty smell. A litter of kittens frolicked in a broken chest drawer and the overflowing contents of the sandbox added an animal odour to the small space. The peeling wallpaper and the grim poverty of this flat at the centre of a dilapidated mansion were one of the reasons for the National Party’s rise to power. In and around Durban, there were blacks that lived better than this. To the National Party and their constituents this was untenable. Anne scooped up a second kitten and held it to her chest. Her eyes flickered to the opened window, judging the distance to the street.
‘Have a seat, Anne,’ Emmanuel said and leaned back against the edge of the windowsill, legs outstretched. Casual body language to signal the fact that he wasn’t worried that she would make a break for it because, if she did, he would catch her. Anne slumped onto a tartan couch that had been mended with scraps from a box of random patches. She scratched a kitten behind the ears till its body vibrated.
‘Are you a friend of Joe Flowers?’
‘Used to be,’ she said.
‘Have you seen Joe lately?’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Ja, of course.’ The kitten leapt to the floor but she pulled it back by the tail and held it down by force. Cat claws dug through her cotton dress and into her skinny thighs.
‘You haven’t seen him at all? Like across the street or maybe near the Zion Church?’
The captive kitten squirmed free and streaked across the room to the safety of the drawer. Anne turned her attention to its tawny sibling burrowing into the crook of her neck. She massaged it with rough hands and avoided eye contact.
‘Last time I seen Joe was before he went to Durban Central, a long time back. I don’t know where he is now.’
‘What’s through there?’ Emmanuel indicated a hole in the wall that had once been a doorway.
‘That’s the bedroom.’
‘Can you show me?’
She dragged herself over to the entrance like a deep-sea diver working against the current. ‘My pa sleeps in the big bed and I sleep in the corner,’ she said.
A double bed and a narrow cot were neatly made up. A tallboy, half wardrobe size, held Anne’s and her father’s Sunday clothes. A porcelain ballerina with a missing foot pirouetted on a small side table. Emmanuel moved to the window at the back of the room. It was shut but the latch was open. Out the window, rusted iron stairs spiralled down to the common yard. An older Zulu woman hung wet clothes onto a wire line while a small white child drew pictures in the dirt with a stick. Even destitute Europeans could not live without help. A wooden gate, painted an optimistic yellow, opened from the yard to a nightsoil lane.
‘You ever use these stairs?’ he asked.
‘No. Never.’
A tin plate and a mug of the kind normally reserved for servants were laid out on the iron ledge just outside the window. Ants pulled breadcrumbs over the lip.
‘Never?’ he said.
‘Never.’
‘Okay, I believe you.’
Anne’s head dipped against the kitten’s fur to hide a smile. A lie swallowed whole by the police; if Joe came around she’d tell him the flat was safe and that the police detective was a fool. Fine by Emmanuel.
Still, there was something familiar about the room. Not from childhood but from the last few days. Emmanuel stepped closer to Anne and the sensation increased so he stopped and examined her. He’d seen her receive a blessing outside the Zion Church but that wasn’t it. There was something that made him feel that he knew her well enough to touch her. He leaned in. The scent of flowers was faint on her neck, a trace of something exotic in the broken-down room. The perfume smelled expensive. Like Lana Rose had worn at van Niekerk’s coronation party. Joe had been shopping for his ‘sister’.
‘Detective Sergeant,’ Miss Morgensen said, ‘Sister Anne has answered your questions fully and I believe it is time for us to move on.’
‘Of course.’ Emmanuel returned to the windowsill. He wrote Chateau La Mer’s phone number onto a page in his notebook then tore it loose and handed it to Anne. ‘If you see Joe, call me, or tell Miss Morgensen and she’ll contact me. Will you do that?’
‘Jâ. Of course.’
Emmanuel almost laughed at the easy promise. The only working phones in a two-block radius likely belonged to the bookmakers and the public bar keepers.
‘We’re done here, sister. Peace be with you,’ Miss Morgensen said.
‘And with you,’ Anne said and rushed to the door. She cracked it open to let them out. The purring kitten sunk its claws through the fabric of her dress again and burrowed its wet face against her nape. Red scratch marks appeared on the freckled skin of Anne’s neck and shoulder.
She enjoys it, Emmanuel realised: the simple combination of love and pain and need.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Back in the flat.’
‘What was it I witnessed, Detective Sergeant? Fatherly concern?’
‘Did you smell the perfume? Expensive.’ He held the front door open for the missionary, who stepped out into the bright winter light.
‘I… well, yes …’
‘I don’t think she bought it herself.’
‘You come from these people, I think.’ Miss Morgensen stopped by the antique wheelchair and adjusted the straw hat, which had slid down over the crippled man’s eyes. The kittens played with a piece of newspaper stuck between the wheel spokes.
‘I grew up surrounded by Annes,’ Emmanuel said. ‘The fact that I noticed her is what’s strange.’ Anne should have smelled of caustic soap and hard times. Not a subtle mix of lilac and spice.
‘Speaking of strange.’ The missionary gestured towards a skinny man in a dark suit spreading pamphlets in a semicircle around a wooden box. It was the preacher from the crime scene and the Night Owl cafe.
‘Bumped into him twice,’ Emmanuel said. ‘He works the harbour, doesn’t he?’
‘Three, sometimes four, times a week he hands out those leaflets and threatens everyone with damnation. What he does with the rest of his working hours, I can’t tell.’
‘That makes him strange?’
The preacher was Miss Morgensen’s competition. Both gathered souls that were notoriously hard to hold onto.
‘I pray for charity,’ she said. ‘But there’s something about Brother Jonah that makes me want to …’
‘Punch him?’
‘Yes.’ Her rumbling laugh startled the kittens and they scampered under the seat of the wheelchair.
‘I know the feeling,’ Emmanuel said. Any man who tried to drum up business at the scene of a child’s murder was no Christian.
‘Sister Bergis.’ The preacher lifted a cream felt hat and revealed shoulder-length black hair. He smiled and his lively brown eyes twinkled.
‘Brother Jonah.’ Miss Morgensen returned the greeting but did not break stride. Her fingers gripped the handle of her walking stick. Brother Jonah stepped across their path and shoved his hand at Emmanuel.
‘You’re new to these parts, aren’t you, brother? What’s your name so I might remember you in prayer?’
‘I don’t have a brother,’ Emmanuel said and shepherded Miss Morgensen around the fruit-box pulpit. She didn’t need protection but there was something in Brother Jonah’s smile, a hint of pity and condescension, that irked him. Or maybe it was his Jesus-like hair, which was brushed back from his forehead to reveal the sharp ‘V’ of a widow’s peak.
Emmanuel and the missionary walked on at a brisk pace till they reached the street corner.
‘What I said earlier about not knowing anyone suspicious around this area,’ Miss Morgensen said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ She jerked a thumb in Brother Jonah’s direction. ‘The last few weeks he’s been around the Point and the passenger terminal every hour of the day and the night, talking especially to the children.’
‘Jolly?’
‘I saw him with Jolly on Wednesday. They were walking past the terraces on Wellington Street. Brother Jonah had his arm around Jolly’s shoulder.’
‘That was the day before Jolly died?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘What time?’ Emmanuel asked. Brother Jonah was a white man in a black suit, which made him a match for the prostitute’s description .. . along with a thousand other males in Durban.
‘Around six fifteen. It was getting dark but I recognised them.’
‘You didn’t think it was strange at the time?’
‘We both work in this area and we know the same people. It didn’t seem odd.’
Emmanuel manoeuvred Miss Morgensen around the corner and out of Brother Jonah’s sight. Protecting witnesses from potential retaliation was second nature to anyone who’d worked in the detective branch.
‘What else?’
‘You’ll think I’m a silly old woman.’
‘Try me and we’ll see.’
‘Brother Jonah is not who he says he is. He disappears for days at a time and he keeps strange company in strange pla
ces.’
‘So do you.’
Most white people would run screaming from the abandoned soup factory and turn away from the native nightwatchman hiding his wife and children in the city.
‘Female intuition?’ Emmanuel suggested.
‘No. I followed him.’
‘Ahh …’
‘Brother Jonah arrived without the backing of a church or an evangelical mission.’ The missionary set off quickly and the end of her stick hit the pavement hard. ‘Yet he hands out money. Not much. A few bob to buy food or a school textbook. He doesn’t collect donations or ask for charity from the local shopkeepers. So where does the money come from?’
They turned onto Point Road where a line of customers waited in front of a kiosk. Among the cigarettes and newspapers were colourful handmade paper badges featuring Princess Elizabeth, the queen in waiting. The city would be lit up tonight, on the last day of May, in honour of her upcoming coronation. Record crowds were expected to witness Durban’s attempt to be ‘one of the most colourful coronation cities in the Commonwealth’. Brass bands and flag waving. Emmanuel made a mental note to stay away.
Miss Morgensen pushed her walking stick between two men and forced a space. The kiosk line parted like the Red Sea and they sailed through without breaking stride.
‘My motives were dishonourable, Detective Sergeant. I don’t like Brother Jonah. I wanted to catch him in sin. Envy led me down the path of temptation.’
‘Find anything?’
She paused outside a ship’s chandlery to catch her breath. A white and blue mural of a right whale and her calf breaking the ocean’s surface was tiled into the footpath. ‘He went to Larsen’s scrap metal yard near the black stevedores’ barracks. There’s an office at the back of the yard, away from the street. He was in there with another man.’
‘Doing?’
‘Talking,’ she said. ‘The blinds were drawn in the office so I hid by the side of the stairs and listened. They used English words but I didn’t understand what they said.’
‘For example?’ Emmanuel kept the ball rolling. She was ashamed of her unchristian behaviour and he was her confessor. Ask, listen and nod. A surprising amount of police work hinged on these three simple actions.