by Malla Nunn
‘Have you been following me all day?’
A car and a handgun were tools of the police trade, easily picked up by two members of the detective branch. Fletcher or Robinson, both in the standard dark suits favoured by plainclothes detectives, could have been the figure lurking on the street corner this afternoon.
‘Nah. Got lucky,’ Fletcher said. ‘We passed around a hat at the station for Jolly’s ma to help out with funeral costs. Saw you and the old lady leave when we came to drop off the donation and decided to stake the place out.’
‘Stuck in the car all day,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Hell of a way to spend a Sunday.’
‘Got lucky a second time. Robinson had to take his little girl to a princess tea party so we came back after sunset. Bingo. There you were, sitting on the steps like a fucking welfare worker.’
Emmanuel checked Susannah. Her eyes were shut tight and the baby doll was clutched in her arms.
‘Third lightning strike with Joe,’ Emmanuel said. This explained the run of dead ends that had come his way in the last two days. Fletcher and Robinson had stolen his luck.
‘Thanks for Joe.’ Fletcher winked. ‘My name is going to look good in the newspaper.’
‘Don’t forget the free drinks,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Dangerous prisoner apprehended. The public loves a hero.’
The heavyweight detective’s battered face lost its friendly expression. ‘Arse out on the street,’ he said. ‘With a mouthful of gravel.’
‘If the hangman doesn’t get me first,’ Emmanuel said. Fletcher grinned.
Emmanuel bent over to retrieve the scattered contents of Joe Flowers’s pockets and the yard tilted. He sat cross-legged and waited for the fog to clear. Susannah tiptoed to his side and kneeled on the cracked cement. The baby doll had evidently fallen asleep and she held it still. Emmanuel collected the rolling tobacco and the ripped Bioscope ticket stamped with today’s date. Joe had spent the afternoon in the dark, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and watching Joan Crawford chew the scenery as a scarred Swedish beauty with revenge on her mind.
Emmanuel examined the tobacco. It was rough-cut and cheap with not a hint of chocolate or honey. There never had been much sense to be found in the idea that Joe was the killer or the shooter on the Bluff, but the possibility had been something, like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
‘Did you ever see Joe drive a car?’ he asked Susannah.
‘No, he doesn’t have a car. Not even a bicycle. He runs good though.’
‘That he does,’ Emmanuel said.
Joe’s stable of sisters was down to one so even a bicycle would be luxury transport. And there was the little matter of a lack of a driver’s licence, which was no bar to Joe actually driving but added another layer of improbability. Three days on the run and Joe’s main concern had been his sick mother.
‘Is Joe going to eat the stew Anne made for him?’
‘Not tonight,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Has Joe gone back to jail?’ ‘Yes, he has.’
‘That’s where my pa is,’ Susannah said. ‘Do you have a ma and pa?’
‘No.’
‘A sister?’
‘Yes, but she’s not here in Durban.’
‘Has she gone away like Jolly?’
‘Something like that.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A sleepy nightwatchman in a knee-length wool coat and fingerless gloves waved Emmanuel through the gates and onto van Niekerk’s gravel driveway Fruit bats circled overhead and the coronation lights lit up the city centre. He parked in front of the two-storey Victorian pile and considered his next move. Coming empty-handed to van Niekerk’s door was not a pleasant feeling. Flowers, who possessed neither a knife nor a car nor indeed sufficient levels of cunning to commit three murders, was off the list of suspects. A quick drive through the Point had failed to locate Brother Jonah, the sole person left to investigate. All he had was a Russian couple who’d presented Jolly Marks’s note to the Dutchman, and a handgun.
He took the Walther from the glove box and rested it on his lap. The Cyrillic letters engraved in the metal might provide an explanation as to why the Russians were being hunted by a man driving a black Dodge. Emmanuel pressed his fingers into the side of his skull. The spare morphine pill would be useful right now.
Are you going to sit there stroking your gun all night, Cooper, or are you going to go and tell the major that Flowers was a dead end? Maybe he has afresh lead for you to chase up or maybe he can extend the deadline, the sergeant major said. You’ve got fuck all to lose. Joe’s in Central. Brother Jonah is AWOL. Exodus has fucked off to Port Elizabeth and the Russian is lights out. As for the pregnant woman … well, take it from me, even if she could speak English, you do not want to disturb her sleep if you want children of your own down the track. Now get in there and ask for help.
‘Don’t breathe a word while I’m in there,’ Emmanuel said and slid out of the Buick. He locked the car door and tucked the Walther into the waistband of his trousers. Being comfortably crazy was a fact he’d rather keep to himself.
Fine, the sergeant major said. I’ll keep a lid on it but I’m not going to wait for permission to save your arse when the time comes. I’m a soldier not a bloody nursemaid. Have we got a deal?
‘Yes. We have.’
Emmanuel took the veranda steps two at a time and pressed hard on the bell. A velvet Nat King Cole recording crooned into the night. Imagining van Niekerk sucking on a pipe while enjoying a mellow tune lifted Emmanuel’s mood. The door opened and Lana Rose peered out through a curtain of cigarette smoke.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.
‘I’ve come to see the major.’ It was a shock to see her half dressed in van Niekerk’s house after dark.
‘The major’s at a coronation party in Durban North. A proper coronation party with roast beef and trifle with claret for dessert. Larnies only. No house models or ex-barmaids allowed.’
‘Larnies’ was South Africa’s unique name for swells, the quality, the upper crust, the cream that rose to the top through good blood and money. Sugar barons, factory owners, judges and doctors with a handful of London-based actors begged away from the Bulawayo theatre season in Rhodesia to add dash to the mix.
‘The major runs with that crowd?’ Emmanuel was surprised. Few Afrikaners made it into the larnie bracket in Durban, the English epicentre of South Africa.
‘In five years the major will run that crowd,’ Lana said. ‘Him and that toffee-nosed fiancée of his.’
That was quick work. In less than six months the major had a fiancée, an on-the-side girlfriend and a clutch of policemen under his influence. Van Niekerk had a plan. He always did.
Lana drew deep on her cigarette and leaned forwards, a movement that caused her to sway unsteadily. ‘You’ve got a cut on your cheek.’
‘Rough night,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘Don’t be stupid. There’s ice in the cooler and the major will be home soon.’
Emmanuel hesitated but Lana was already heading for the lounge room. She wore black satin-heeled shoes and the hem of her white silk dressing-gown swished against her bare legs. He closed the front door. Until Nicolai was rested and well enough to talk there was nowhere else to go.
‘I’ll put ice in a serviette. Or I can try and find some …’ Lana searched for the right word . . iodine. That’s it. Iodine.’
‘Ice will do.’ Emmanuel entered a large room with two leather couches and a hostess trolley laden with bottles of liquor. A full ashtray and a scatter of imported women’s magazines covered a low coffee table. Gilt-framed landscapes of the Cape vineyards adorned the walls. Lana tipped a handful of ice into a cotton serviette.
‘Sit,’ she said.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Emmanuel took the ice pack and pressed it to the imprint of Fletcher’s fist. Getting comfortable with Lana Rose on van Niekerk’s couch seemed dangerous.
Lana poured whisky into a tumbler. ‘Are you in trouble, Emmanuel?’
>
‘A little.’
Lana offered him the glass and he drained half of it. It was going to be a long night and, he feared, an unrewarding one.
‘What else can you expect when you’re one of Major van Niekerk’s boys?’ Lana said. ‘Trouble comes with the job.’
‘I’m not one of van Niekerk’s boys.’ He was an ex-soldier and an ex-detective sergeant who’d fought through France and brought murderers to justice. Being called a boy stung more than the cut cheek.
‘Of course you’re not.’ Lana ground her cigarette out in the ashtray and sank onto the couch opposite. ‘And I’m not his girl.’
This exquisite room was only a few miles from her flat in Umbilo but separated from it by an ocean of money If Lana won a string of trifectas at the July handicap then she might end up in a house like this. In reality, she had bet herself on the major and won a temporary seat in the winner’s circle.
‘Okay,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’m van Niekerk’s boy and you’re his girl.’
‘And that is why we are both here, waiting for him.’
An awkward silence stretched out. The sound of a distant rocket, part of the coronation celebration, echoed across the harbour. Doing nothing while the clock ticked down to arrest and imprisonment on three murder counts was unacceptable. Emmanuel leaned towards Lana who was massaging a thumb into the arch of her right foot. The satin shoes were for show not for comfort.
‘Are you from Durban?’ he asked.
‘I was born in Umbilo. The furthest I’ve been is Pietermaritzburg.’ There was regret and impatience with the smallness of her world.
‘Do you know anyone who can read Russian script? I need a Russian sentence translated.’
‘Are you teasing me, Emmanuel?’
‘Teasing you about what?’
Lana’s eyes were almost black in the lamplight. ‘Do you know what it’s like having a German mother and a Russian father in Durban? The last outpost of the British Empire? Do you know what it’s like to be different here?’
‘Yeah,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I know what that’s like.’
Twelve years of running on the streets of Sophiatown and mixing with the blacks, coloureds and Indians; a ‘white kajfir’ in the eyes of other whites. Four years at an Afrikaner boarding school pretending to be one of God’s chosen had done nothing to obliterate the memory of feeling like an outcast.
Lana tilted her head and peered at him, searching his face for proof that he understood. Difference in South Africa meant exclusion. Difference meant that a sense of belonging was always just out of reach. He looked back at her with the eyes of another outsider.
Lana lit a fresh cigarette from a pack that claimed to be the number one choice of doctors and nurses and took a long draw.
‘I speak Russian,’ she said. ‘Just enough to get me out of trouble with drunken sailors and con men claiming to be the last surviving Romanov.’
‘Can you read the script?’
‘A word or two.’
So the icon image in the medicine cabinet wasn’t just for decoration. Lana was part Russian. Emmanuel pulled the Walther from the back of his waistband. The safety was on. He kept the gun in his hand but turned it so the text was visible. Lana raised an eyebrow in response.
‘You need a gun translated?’
‘Yes.’
Lana reached for the Walther and Emmanuel held it back. The combination of too much whisky, too many cigarettes and the major’s engagement to a toffee-nosed larnie made Lana unpredictable.
‘The safety is on,’ she said. ‘And the major will be back once he’s tried to get into his fiancéeâs panties and failed. Again.’
Emmanuel handed over the gun. The personal information about the major’s virginal fiancée he could have done without. Imagining van Niekerk fumbling with buttons and groping for a breast made him human, almost vulnerable, and Emmanuel knew that was a lie.
‘Sit down and relax. Finish your drink.’ Lana threw herself back onto the couch and the silk gown parted to reveal the smooth line of a calf and the curve of a knee. She examined the engraving on the Walther’s nickel plate with a frown.
Emmanuel sat on the opposite couch and downed the rest of his drink, eyes to the floor. Skin, silk and the dark cascade of hair over an exposed shoulder were all now out of bounds.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘One of the words is “people” but the rest is too complicated for me to translate,’ she confessed. ‘I do know it’s a presentation weapon. A gift. Who does it belong to - someone important?’
‘Not sure.’ Nicolai Petrov was a sick old man with a heavily pregnant wife and two forged American passports. If he had been a hero of the Soviet Union it wasn’t helping him find safety in South Africa. ‘What do you know about presentation firearms?’
‘My father collected guns. Mausers, Colts, Brownings and two Nagants engraved with the Russian imperial eagle given to him by Csar Nicholas himself. For meritorious service. That was the story after one bottle of vodka. After two bottles, the Nagant came with a country estate, a dacha and a lake. All lost in the revolution, of course.’ Lana ran a fingertip over the engraved text. ‘The owner is Russian?’
‘Yes. That I do know.’
‘And you have his Walther.’
‘He gave it to me.’
‘A straight blowback-operated semi-automatic with double action, walnut grip and a chrome finish engraved with a personal message. This gun is for keeps.’
Jesus wept! Where does a woman learn such filthy talk? the sergeant major whispered. You could build a skyscraper around the steel beam that’s shot up under my kilt.
Emmanuel brushed his hand over his face to dislodge the brusque Scottish voice. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I took the Walther from him.’
‘And he took it from a German.’ She pointed to a detail on the metal barrel. ‘Look.’
Emmanuel got up and reluctantly approached Lana. The words ‘close enough to taste’ sprang to mind when he sat down next to her on the couch. Cigarettes, whisky, expensive perfume and cordite: the thrilling scent of a bad girl who knew her firearms.
‘A German imperial eagle.’ Lana pointed to the chequered walnut grip. ‘That’s where the Walther stamp would normally be.’
The thing about war was that guns changed hands on a regular basis, both voluntarily and involuntarily. They were another spoil traded and smuggled and propped up in display cabinets during peacetime, like postcards from the violent frontier.
‘An officer’s firearm,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Taken from a high-ranking German and given to a Russian after the war.’
‘But?’
‘The man who owns it doesn’t strike me as army, navy or air force. And his wife is not military barracks material either.’
‘Ask them,’ Lana said.
‘They’re out of action for a few hours.’
‘Tumble their drawers and cupboards and see what you find. People leave all sorts of things lying around in plain view.’
That was just the kind of illegal, no-holds-barred approach the Scottish sergeant major advocated.
‘No drawers or cupboards to check. But there is one thing. An old suitcase.’ Natalya had risked her life to retrieve the leather bag from the house on the Bluff.
‘Let’s check it,’ Lana said. ‘Maybe there’s something in it that I can make sense of.’
‘No.’ Emmanuel stood up quickly. ‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘Why?’
‘The major.’
‘He’s in Durban North sucking gin and tonics.’
‘You were expecting him.’
Lana got to her feet and tucked the Walther into the pocket of her silk dressing-gown. ‘Let him man his own pump for one night. It will do him good.’
The manning of the major’s pump is a thing for the two of you to sort out. In private and without my help, Emmanuel thought. He motioned for the Walther PPK. ‘Domestic arrangements aren’t my strong point so I’ll be on my way.’
/> ‘You asked for help, Emmanuel,’ Lana said and headed for the door. ‘Have another drink. I’ll be out in five minutes.’
‘I have eighteen hours to solve a triple murder,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Don’t drag me into a personal situation with the major. Things are already too complicated.’
‘Eighteen hours.’ Lana considered him for a moment. ‘In that case, I’ll be out in two minutes.’
He stepped towards her. This insanity was going to stop now. ‘This isn’t a game. Three people are dead. Find another way to punish van Niekerk for being engaged to a larnie, one that doesn’t involve getting in harm’s way.’
‘Do you know what girlfriends and house models do, Emmanuel? They wait and they serve. That’s it. Pet goldfish have more exciting lives.’
‘If you want excitement take up hunting. This is a criminal case with guns, knives and very bad men.’
‘That sums up my life so far,’ she said. ‘You’re twenty-four years too late to protect me from harm, but it’s nice that you tried.’
She disappeared into the interior of the house and Emmanuel slumped down on the couch. Stopping her would be a snap. She was half drunk. Easy prey. But maybe there was something in the suitcase: a piece of information that could turn the case around.
‘Ready?’ Lana had changed into a blue cotton dress with a high neckline and a wide skirt that fell well below the knee. A woven straw bag dangled from her wrist: the Walther’s new home. Flat walking shoes and a face wiped clean of make-up transformed her from femme fatale into the hometown sweetheart that soldiers of every stripe had fought to return to.
It was a sleight of hand.
‘Eighteen hours,’ she said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The polished leather creaked and the silver locks snapped open at the first push. Clothing toppled out and scattered across the table on Chateau La Mer’s red-brick porch where Helene Gerard had set them up before disappearing inside. Emmanuel sifted through layers of lined coats, dresses, thick sweaters and cable-knit scarves. Nicolai and his wife had no plans to stay in subtropical Durban.