by Malla Nunn
The woman turned from Giriraj’s body and stumbled blindly to the edge of the burgeoning crowd. Robinson snaked his heavy arm across her shoulder to weigh her down and stop her wandering. The spectators pressed against the ring of police cordoning off the scene.
‘You’ve done well.’ Robinson injected sincerity into the textbook interview wrap-up. ‘We couldn’t have solved this crime without you. Jolly’s mother can sleep easy tonight.’
The prostitute’s sobs increased and Robinson signalled Fletcher to clear the way. An eager uniformed constable parted the wall of blue overalls and the rail yard workers stepped back and assumed the stiff posture of an honour guard. Robinson guided the prostitute into the breach while the crowd looked on, mesmerised by the fragile white woman being led to safety.
‘God bless you, miss,’ a passenger on the halted tram called and fluttered a hankie in farewell. The prostitute gave a royal wave and disappeared into the corridor of blue.
Emmanuel craned above the sea of hats and heads to catch the dying moments of the drama. Tucked into the crowd but still in plain view, a British thug in a suit, whom Emmanuel recognised as Khan’s bodyguard, watched the prostitute. Robinson held the witness steady and the rail workers ushered them through to an empty strip of pavement.
‘Shameless,’ Amal hissed. ‘That woman is shameless.’
‘She can’t afford shame,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Any more than you or I can afford risking a heart-to-heart talk with the police.’
The rail workers began to drift back to the freight yard. For a moment, real justice had been within their reach, the Indian a half block away from punishment. Now all that was left was work. Lines of sooty railway cars in need of decoupling and mile upon mile of hypnotic steel track.
Khan’s bodyguard wove through the dispersing workers but kept two paces behind the detectives and their star witness. He had the grace of a rhino on an ice floe and knocked shoulders with a man attempting to roll a cigarette. The impact spilled cut tobacco over the bodyguard’s suit and drew a curse from the smoker. The prostitute glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of Khan’s man. Her face was drawn with lines of fatigue but her eyes sparkled. Life on the docks was patterned after the ocean: a cycle of rising and falling tides. Giriraj’s death had brought the streetwalker to the centre of attention, but the spotlight would only last a minute before shining somewhere else. Soon this drama would end and she would go back to a life filled with nameless men and dirty boxcars.
A pay-out, Emmanuel guessed. The sparkle in the prostitute’s eyes when she saw Khan’s man was anticipation. She had acted her role and now it was time to collect her reward: a few folded notes and a chunk of hashish to keep away bad dreams of the innocent man sprawled on the tarmac.
Afzal Khan was behind this perversion of justice but Emmanuel couldn’t figure what the gangster had gained from it.
‘Move back!’ the sweat-stained sergeant in charge of crowd control yelled. ‘Make way for the mortuary van.’
The spectators moved back slowly, reluctant to leave before the door to the van was locked and the blood washed from the road.
The conductor pulled the stunned tram driver upright and they inspected the damaged vehicle. ‘A quick trip to the workshop and she’ll be good as new,’ the conductor said and shuffled his feet to cover the sound of the driver’s quiet tears. The driver touched the faint dent in the front of the vehicle made by the contact with Giriraj’s body.
‘I am responsible for what happened,’ Amal said. ‘More guilty than the tram driver.’
‘You are not to blame,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Mr Khan gave your family an impossible choice.’
‘And how must I live with this feeling inside?’ Amal said.
The mortuary van reversed at an angle and drew parallel with the stricken tram. The passengers filed down the stairs under the eager watch of a police constable and regrouped on the pavement. Two Indian girls in smart cardigan sweaters and A-line skirts split from the group and walked away. They had seen enough.
‘Do more good than harm,’ Emmanuel said to Amal and immediately regretted his words. He was perhaps the least qualified person to dispense wisdom on the subject of feelings. A taste for painkillers and the voice of the phantom sergeant major indicated that his own emotions were still a tangle - the result of a world war and a childhood that seemed to be a string of domestic battles. And this country with its pettiness … He wondered what qualifications he had to tell anyone anything while he hung onto his white ID card and his detective’s badge - no matter how temporary they might be.
He took another tack. ‘Do not become Mr Khan,’ he said.
Amal said, ‘I can do that.’
The mortuary attendants - a fat coloured man and a muscular Indian, both dressed in medical whites - swung open the van’s double doors and pulled out a trolley. A policeman picked up Giriraj’s stray sandal and threw it on the corpse’s chest.
The sweaty sergeant lit up a cigarette and smiled at the morgue staff. ‘He’s a big bastard. That’s one hundred per cent pure Punjabi muscle. I’ll finish my smoke and give you boys a hand.’
The attendants hung back. They would have to wait until the police sergeant was good and ready. Giriraj lay sprawled across the roadway; just another load to be picked up and stored for burial.
‘Perhaps we should go,’ Zweigman said.
They turned and left Giriraj in the care of the non-white attendants who would drive him in their non-whites vehicle to the non-whites section of the morgue where he would rest among other dark-skinned souls.
Ten doorways from the scene of the accident Maataa and Parthiv sat on the second step of a stone staircase that led to the front door of a garment import and export business.
Their shoulders touched. Clove cigarette smoke cocooned them from the bustle of the street. Maataa’s glass bracelets jangled when she drew on the cigarette and handed it to Parthiv. They did not talk. They gazed at the pavement.
‘Oh.’ Amal was taken aback by the harmonious family scene. ‘They were here all along.’
‘Probably waiting for you,’ Emmanuel said.
Amal hesitated then approached the stair. His mother shuffled over to make room. He sat beside her and all three kept the silence. Parthiv passed the cigarette back to his mother. She drew on it deeply and passed it to Amal. The baby of the Dutta family inhaled and coughed when the smoke hit his lungs. Tears ran down his face. Maataa did not laugh and Parthiv did not call him a weakling. They sat and finished the cigarette.
Amal was going to be all right, Emmanuel thought. And Parthiv had been handed a real-life lesson in what it took to be a hard man. He would never walk with quite the same swagger or lecture Amal on the fine points of criminality quite so often. The Dutta family might even emerge stronger from this defeat.
‘What now?’ Zweigman asked when the Bedford truck came into view. The street bustled with human traffic pouring away from the accident scene.
‘We’re going to have a talk with Khan,’ Emmanuel said.
“This man will talk?’ Shabalala sounded doubtful.
‘We’ll find a way,’ Emmanuel said.
He caught sight of Robinson and Fletcher across the street. They were still talking to the prostitute. She’d stopped crying and her body was rigid with tension. Khan’s bodyguard leaned against the wall of a coffee shop two buildings further up and looked on.
‘I told you.’ The prostitute’s voice was shrill and her fingers twisted the gold chain that hung around her neck. ‘He said he’d find me and cut me.’
The expression on both detectives’ faces was a mixture of boredom and contempt. Being a policeman meant talking to liars every day of the week. Good ones. The whore was terrible at it.
Emmanuel checked his watch. Less than three hours was left before van Niekerk’s deal expired. Still, he was impressed by Fletcher’s and Robinson’s perseverance. They knew something was wrong and they weren’t ready to walk away. The truth mattered to them.
‘Let’s go to Khan’s office.’ Emmanuel turned back to Zweigman and Shabalala. ‘His bodyguard is across the street there keeping an eye on the witness. That’s one less obstacle to deal with.’
The Alsatian dogs could be heard around a corner. The Point was crawling with armed policemen as the mop-up of natives continued. They moved closer to the row of two-storey terraces where the Bedford was parked. Driveways split off the main road and led to warehouses. A Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith was parked in the loading dock of Abel Mellon - Dry Goods Wholesaler.
Emmanuel walked past the car and stopped when they were across the driveway and shielded by the walls of the next building. ‘That’s Khan’s car in the loading dock,’ he said to Zweigman and Shabalala. ‘I think he’s in it.’
‘With all the police?’ Shabalala said. ‘That man is without fear.’
Emmanuel thought about it for a moment. It was an odd place for a well-known Indian gangster to park his Rolls.
Even Bergis Morgensen was able to identify Khan’s car. A more cautious man would have stayed away.
‘Maybe Khan has nothing to be afraid of,’ Emmanuel said and took the stolen notebook from his pocket. He opened it to the letter ‘A’. ‘What did Amal say about the policeman Khan threatened to call?’
‘He had a British Raj name,’ Zweigman said.
‘With two surnames,’ Shabalala added.
Emmanuel scanned the entries, which were sparse and written in a sloping hand. Anderson. Advani. Absolem. He moved on through the Bs and Cs without finding a double-barrelled surname. The last name in the C listings, scribbled hastily in pencil, caught his attention and he read it aloud: ‘Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper’.
Had Khan known who he was all along or was the entry more recent? He kept flicking through the alphabet. Time was winding down. Smith. Saunders. Sidhu…
‘Here.’ Shabalala pointed to an entry written along the vertical length of the page margin. Emmanuel turned the book sideways to read the name scribbled in black ink.
‘Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick.’ He smiled. ‘Now that’s a British Raj name.’
‘What is that?’ Shabalala pointed to a squiggle of letters that had been added to the front of the name, almost as an afterthought. The writing was smudged and almost illegible. Emmanuel tried and failed to make sense of the scrawl.
‘May I?’ Zweigman said and politely took the book. ‘I have long experience reading my own handwriting.’ The doctor pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and peered at the letters like a gypsy reading tea leaves. ‘Col,’ he said. ‘C-O-L.’
‘Colonel Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick,’ Emmanuel said. Yes, that matched what van Niekerk had said about the voice on the phone: an officious little shit who thought a Dutch policeman and an ex-detective could be used and then dumped. A soutpiel. Emmanuel closed the phone book, thought again, thumbed to the letter V but did not find van Niekerk’s name.
‘Let’s go get this bastard,’ he said.
‘With what weapons?’ Shabalala asked.
Coming to battle without guns had been the ruin of the mighty Zulu army.
‘This book.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman approached the parked Rolls-Royce almost shoulder to shoulder. The rear window of the luxury car was open and smoke drifted out from the interior. Khan was home. Two black employees of Abel Mellon Dry Goods sat on the loading dock enjoying a cup of tea and a bag of fried fat cakes. They watched the odd trio for a moment and then went back inside the building.
Emmanuel slammed the phone book against the passenger window of the Rolls. ‘Is this yours, Khan?’ he asked. ‘My friends wanted to take the book to the police station but I convinced them to talk to you first.’
A lock clicked. The silver door opened. Emmanuel stepped aside and waited for the cloud of smoke to clear. Chocolate wrappers littered the carpeted floor of the limousine and the scent of cannabis bud was strong. Khan’s eyes were bloodshot and hooded.
‘You’re supposed to be gone and gone,’ he said.
‘Not yet.’ Emmanuel peered into the Rolls. The Indian gangster was alone. He must have started smoking the moment he knew Giriraj was dead.
‘Move over,’ Emmanuel said.
Khan paused and then scooted across the leather seat. Emmanuel climbed in but kept the door open to the fresh air, and to Shabalala and Zweigman, who watched the main street for the arrival of the detective branch.
‘You threw Giriraj to the dogs,’ Emmanuel said. ‘What was that worth to you?’
Khan’s eyes darkened. ‘In this country,’ he said, ‘a man like me has to make his own luck. Where’s the reward for being good if you are non-white? I will never be able to live in the Berea or sit on a bench on the Esplanade.’
‘The government made you into a criminal?’ Emmanuel didn’t believe that for a moment. Fascist dictatorship or ballot-box-stuffing democracy, men like Khan fed off human weakness for personal gain. ‘What exactly did you get for Giriraj?’
Khan lit up another hand-rolled cigarette and leaned back into the leather. ‘Giriraj was worth two trading licences in Zululand and one here on Marine Parade.’
Non-whites were granted a limited number of licences to set up businesses or to trade in areas of the country that were officially closed to them.
‘A good deal,’ Emmanuel said dryly. ‘Who did you give Giriraj up to - Soames-Fitzpatrick?’
Khan smiled and drew on his smoke. ‘If you live past this afternoon, Cooper, I’ll hire you. Muscle men I can buy by the pound. Men with brains are another matter.’
‘Tell me about the colonel.’ Emmanuel checked his watch. Two and a half hours to go before the detective branch issued the warrants. If he didn’t get answers soon, he’d be employed in the prison laundry or farmed out to a widget factory at ten pence an hour till the execution date … that’s if the tradesman didn’t get to him first.
‘I never met this Fitzpatrick,’ Khan said. ‘But he called me to ask for help. It’s like I said: smart men are hard to find.’
‘You hired men for him … men like Brother Jonah?’
‘Very good.’ Khan removed a piece of loose tobacco from the tip of his tongue and flicked it to the carpet. ‘Now I understand why Lana Rose is fucking you. She has a weakness for clever policemen.’ The Indian man’s smile was filthy. ‘Tell me, do you and the Dutch major take turns? Or do you have her at the same time?’
Emmanuel grabbed Khan by the throat and exerted a steady pressure against his larynx. ‘Even stupid police are a step up from a gangster who makes a young girl pay off a family debt on his desktop and then trades a human life for money.’
Shabalala thumped on the roof of the Rolls and Emmanuel let go of Khan who drew in a ragged breath and slumped back in his seat. Emmanuel looked into the alley.
‘They have come for you,’ Shabalala said.
Emmanuel got out of the Rolls. Detective Constable Fletcher and a young foot policeman he did not recognise were walking towards the car with hands to their gun holsters. The loading bay door was locked and the wall behind the car was over seven feet high. There was nowhere to go.
Emmanuel raised his hands and approached Fletcher. He wanted to put some distance between himself and the two men who’d followed him into danger. This was his problem. The burden of the two murders at the Dover could not be shared.
‘You’re early,’ he said.
‘Shut up, Cooper.’
Fletcher grabbed Emmanuel’s arms and pinned them to his back. Steel handcuffs bit into his wrists. The constable undipped the Walther from its holster and stared at the shiny silverwork like a child who’d won the lucky dip. Fletcher pushed Emmanuel roughly towards the main road.
‘You’re in the shit,’ he said. ‘There’s no getting out of it this time.’
‘Where are you taking him?’ Zweigman asked and was ignored by the detective constable and the young policeman.
A black Ford was parked at the kerb
with the engine chugging. Fletcher opened the door and pushed Emmanuel into the back seat. The door slammed shut.
‘Thank Christ.’ Major van Niekerk was in the driver’s seat and his face was tense and hard. He was in neat civilian clothing and freshly shaved.
The door opened again. Zweigman and Shabalala stood on the sidewalk with Fletcher, who now had the Walther held loosely in his hand while the constable who stood in the background sulked over the loss of the pretty gun.
‘In the back,’ the major said. ‘Now.’
Zweigman and Shabalala clambered into the Ford without question and waited for an explanation. Emmanuel sat squashed against the window and regained his calm. The major looked over his shoulder.
‘You need to get out of Durban, Cooper,’ he said. ‘The warrant for your arrest will be issued in a couple of hours and it will take me longer than that to find out who’s actually running the mission to secure the Russians. I’ve got a name but I’m not a hundred per cent sure it’s the right one.’
‘Colonel Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick,’ Emmanuel said. ‘He hired Afzal Khan to help him.’
‘Fuck. I thought it was someone else. How’s Khan involved?’
‘He just helped frame a man named Giriraj for Jolly’s murder and threw him to a mob on the Point. Poor bastard got hit by a tram before they could arrest him. The charge will stick. Khan also bought a witness. That’s one of the murders cleared from the board.’
‘Leaving the other two for you.’ Van Niekerk checked the side mirror and the pavement for movement. ‘This is a mop-up operation, Cooper. With the three murders cleared all that’s left is to bring in the Russians. I’ll handle Khan in person but you have to disappear till things are set straight.’
‘Where to? Your house was my fallback position.’
‘A place called Labrant’s Halt. It’s a way station in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Lana and the Russians are already on the way. They’ll wait for you there.’