by Malla Nunn
‘Almost.’ Emmanuel gave the crocheted blanket to Lana then unbuttoned the coat taken earlier from the Russians’ suitcase and swung it across Nicolai’s shoulders.
Shabalala unhooked the long wool scarf from around his own neck and gave it to Lilliana, who wore bed slippers and a quilted dressing-gown fastened by a sash.
‘Lizzie?’ the constable asked the assembled group when it was clear that his wife was not hiding in the bush.
‘She’s in the clinic with the doctor. The pale man from the car is headed there,’ Emmanuel said.
Shabalala crept forwards but stopped when the short man from the stoep appeared in the space between the storehouse and the clinic. He hesitated at the building’s edge, too nervous to advance.
‘Hello … anyone there?’ The question was called out in a quavering schoolboy’s voice.
‘Here,’ Lana called back softly. Emmanuel turned to stop her but she was already up and moving to the shed. ‘I’m hurt. Help me.’
‘Wait, Sergeant,’ Shabalala whispered. ‘She is bringing him to us.’
‘Please, help me,’ Lana called again and the man moved in her direction, still wary but compelled by the primal need to help a wounded female. He stepped out of the light from the clinic window and into the darkness. Shabalala waited till he reached the edge of the brush then grabbed him around the waist and pulled down hard. The man slammed into the ground and Emmanuel kept him there with a knee to the chest.
‘Quiet.’ Emmanuel pressed his hand to the man’s mouth. ‘Take off the sash for your gown, Lilliana. We need it.’
The German woman set the rolling pin down and untied the fabric sash. It took almost a full minute; fast, given that her hands shook with the shell-shocked jitters of a war veteran. Which, Emmanuel realised, was exactly what she was. Despite never having worn a uniform, Lilliana Zweigman, like him, had seen too much of the war.
Emmanuel tore the fabric in half and gagged the man, then tied him to a tree trunk with the second half. He turned on the flashlight. Nicolai was sweating heavily in the frigid air.
‘He needs medicine,’ Shabalala said.
‘The … medicine …’ Lilliana stuttered,’… in our house. The medicine.’
‘The other man is still in there,’ Emmanuel said. ‘We have to get him out of the way and then concentrate on getting the tradesman. The locked door will keep the others safe for a while.’
‘I’ll handle the man at the house,’ Lana said with chilling confidence and set off along the back perimeter of the clinic buildings like a cat stalking her prey.
Shabalala whistled low. ‘Ah … a man must have the heart of a lion to stop that one.’
A gunshot roused the birds roosting in the trees. There was a brief twitter of discontent before quiet was restored.
‘Stay here with Nicolai,’ Emmanuel said to Lilliana. ‘Don’t come out until I say it’s safe. If anyone comes back here, hide. Understand?’
The German woman nodded and Emmanuel ran with Shabalala to the corner of the storeroom overlooking the grass verge. The tradesman stood on the clinic stoep. White splinters showed out of a new bullet hole in the wooden door.
‘Come out,’ the tradesman said. ‘Or I’ll keep shooting. It’s a small building. I’ll hit something eventually.’
He shot the door again and the lock shuddered under the impact. Natalya’s childbirthing cry turned into a yelp of fear.
‘Double around to the drive,’ Emmanuel said to Shabalala, who was crouched next to him. ‘Set up on the other end of the porch. We’ll press the tradesman from both sides.’
Shabalala slipped into the bush and Emmanuel lifted his head higher to get a better view of the stone building. Lantern light spilled out from the front windows, bright enough to see by.
The clinic door opened and Zweigman stepped onto the stoep. The shattered wood panel closed behind him. A lock turned. The German doctor raised his hands in the air. Emmanuel kept below the level of the porch and inched closer.
‘Move,’ the tradesman said to Zweigman. ‘I want the Russian colonel.’
‘He is not here. Only his wife is inside.’
‘Hand her over.’ The tradesman’s voice was hard. ‘I want her out here, now.’
‘You cannot have her,’ Zweigman said. ‘She is in labour and cannot be moved.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘No,’ Zweigman said. ‘I will be the judge of that. This is my clinic and she is my patient.’
Emmanuel peered over the veranda edge. The tradesman had the gun barrel pressed to Zweigman’s forehead but the doctor stood still.
‘Get out of the way or I will kill you.’
‘So be it,’ Zweigman said. ‘But I will not move.’
Yesterday afternoon, in the rope storehouse, the tradesman had said the ‘boss’ didn’t want any more civilian casualties. The stubborn old Jew was about to make himself the exception to the rule.
‘Fucking kike …’ The tradesman grabbed Zweigman by the lapels and lifted him into the air.
Emmanuel surged up the steps, taking them two at a time, and knocked the tradesman sideways. Their bodies slammed into the clinic wall and the gun clattered to the stoep. Emmanuel pinned the pale man against the stone wall. They grappled.
‘Get the gun!’ Emmanuel shouted to Zweigman. ‘Get the gun.’
Zweigman retrieved the gun and lifted it to hip height. Thank god. Emmanuel did not know how much longer he could keep the tradesman pinned. The German threw the revolver off the stoep and into the garden.
‘Christ above,’ Emmanuel muttered. Fear of guns was fine in theory but Zweigman’s phobia had lost them the advantage. He tightened his hold on the tradesman’s arms but felt no slackness in the muscle, no sign of weakening. The fight would last a while longer. Where the hell was Shabalala?
‘Doctor.’ The lock to the clinic door clicked open and Lizzie peered out. ‘Doctor, hurry. It is time.’
Zweigman hesitated, torn between two crises.
‘The baby is almost here,’ Lizzie said and the German disappeared into the stone building. The shattered door closed and the lock clicked.
‘Back down,’ the tradesman said when he failed to break Emmanuel’s hold. ‘I work for Major van Niekerk. He sent me here.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You’re an idiot, Cooper.’ The tradesman’s breath smelled of cool mints. ‘This clinic is in the boondocks. How do you think I found it at night? I was given detailed instructions by the major himself. He wanted the Russians extracted with no civilian casualties.’
‘He could have done that when the Russians were under his roof in Durban,’ Emmanuel said, but a poisonous seed had been planted. Van Niekerk was the only one who knew for sure where he and the Russian couple were hidden. Lana had even called to confirm their final destination.
‘The Berea house was too public. Van Niekerk wanted to keep his name out of this. He gave you and the Russians up to my boss in exchange for a promotion.’
Emmanuel’s grip slackened. He’d seen the major talking to the soutpiel colonel on Point Road. Were they arranging the deal then? The tradesman sensed the doubt in Emmanuel. He threw his head forward and delivered a full-force headbutt, a Liverpool kiss that knocked Emmanuel off balance. He staggered back.
‘You just don’t know when to stay down, Cooper.’
The tradesman moved to deliver a king hit but his fist was caught by Shabalala’s giant hand and crushed. The Zulu constable forced the pale white man face down onto the stoep. After a few moments of groaning and flailing, the tradesman collapsed exhausted.
‘You are hurt, Sergeant?’ Shabalala asked.
‘Just my pride,’ Emmanuel said and patted the tradesman down for weapons. He was clean.
‘Where’s the other gun?’ he asked.
The tradesman laughed and Emmanuel checked the main house. A gun could be trained on Lana right now. He quickly walked to the stairs.
‘Keep that one down,�
�� he said to Shabalala. ‘I’ll check on Lana at the Zweigmans’ house.’
‘You’re in big trouble, kaffir,’ the tradesman said. ‘Hope you like prison food.’
Shabalala settled his weight onto the tradesman’s back and smiled. ‘This one will not move,’ he said.
The rolling silhouettes of mountains were now visible in the breaking dawn. Night lifted and early birds began their chorus. The murmur of the river came from deep in the valley. Nicolai rounded the corner of the stoep, moving slowly. A tall man stood at his shoulder. A jab to the back pushed Nicolai forward. The third gun was accounted for.
‘Colonel Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick,’ Emmanuel said and enjoyed the surprised look on the tall man’s face. ‘The commander in chief.’
‘Detective Sergeant Cooper.’ The colonel squared his shoulders. ‘Move aside.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘The South African police.’
“The police aren’t interested in Nicolai. He’s committed no crimes in South Africa.’
‘This is a national security matter.’
Bullshit. With a silver spoon.
‘Where’s the Security Branch?’ Emmanuel kept an easy tone. ‘They’re in charge of national security.’
A baby’s cry came from inside the clinic, weak at first and then much stronger.
‘My baby,’ Nicolai said. ‘I want to see my child.’
The colonel pushed the gun barrel hard into the Russian’s back. ‘Let Dennis off the floor and we’ll leave peacefully, Cooper. If you don’t, someone will get hurt.’
Dennis? Dennis was a guy who went to the pub on Friday nights then staggered home to listen to a BBC radio serial with a cup of hot Bovril. The newborn wailed again and Emmanuel focused on Nicolai, who was still a valuable asset.
‘Walk to me, Nicolai,’ Emmanuel said. ‘The colonel needs you alive. I promise he’s not going to shoot.’
Nicolai hesitated, torn between fear of death and the desire to hold his newborn child. He took a halting step and then another towards the clinic. Fitzpatrick moved to the side and aimed the gun at Emmanuel.
‘You’re right. I’m not going to kill the Russian. He’s too valuable. You and the kaffir are another matter.’
Sweat trickled between Emmanuel’s shoulderblades. A gun barrel aimed mid-chest was a problem but of more concern was Lilliana Zweigman, who crept across the grass with the wooden rolling pin held above her head. She had taken off her slippers to move more quietly but her whole body shook. Stop, slip away and stay safe, Emmanuel begged silently. Lilliana had survived a long and miserable war. She could not die in the soft light of an African dawn.
‘Look -‘ The tradesman tried to shout a warning but Shabalala gagged him with a hand and kept his pale head pinned to the stone floor of the veranda. Nicolai walked slowly towards the stairs and his stumbling feet covered Lilliana’s advance.
‘Let my man up,’ the colonel said. ‘Or I will shoot the kaffir.’
Swing wide, swing hard and inflict maximum damage. Emmanuel’s instructions were loud in his head but remained unspoken. Instead he stepped back and kept the colonel’s focus on the porch.
‘There’s no need to hurt anyone,’ he said. ‘Lower the gun. You’ll get what you came for. Just put down the gun.’
Lilliana whipped the pin through the air. The impact was bone crunching. A shot thundered from the firearm and lodged in the wall of the storeroom as Fitzpatrick toppled into the dewy grass. Emmanuel jumped the steps and stamped on the colonel’s hand till his grip on the gun weakened.
‘Go,’ he said to Nicolai. ‘Go and see your child.’
‘Da. Yes.’ The Russian man climbed the stairs, drawn on by the newborn’s insistent wail. He hit his palm against the door. ‘Natalya. Natalya?’
Zweigman opened the clinic door for Nicolai and checked for wounded on the stoep and in the garden. He saw his wife in the pre-dawn light, an avenging domestic goddess with a rolling pin in her hand and an unconscious man at her feet.
‘Lilliana.’ Zweigman closed the gap between them fast. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
Emmanuel pocketed the colonel’s gun: a Browning Hi-Power that could easily have put both Lilliana and Shabalala in the grave. He flipped the prone figure over and slapped him hard on the cheek.
‘Please.’ Zweigman kneeled beside the dazed man and completed a quick examination. ‘An egg-sized contusion and a hairline skull fracture. He will make a full recovery.’
‘Good,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I need him alive and talking.’
‘In a short while, when the disorientation clears up,’ Zweigman said and got to his feet. He moved to Lilliana’s side. ‘Oh, liebchen, did you do that?’
She nodded.
The doctor took his wife in his arms and held her. ‘I am so proud of you.’
Lilliana’s strange hiccuping laughter turned to sobs that shook her body. A woman’s cries normally chilled Emmanuel. Yet now, only a few feet away from Lilliana’s heartbreak, he felt no need to run. He would have given his life to bring his own mother back but the past could not be bargained with or changed. He had spent hours, weeks and years picking apart his memory of that night in Johannesburg to find the moment when the twelve-year-old Emmanuel could have stopped her death. No one’s life should be held ransom to the past while the world kept spinning. Lilliana was in pain but alive and here to see another day.
The colonel swore and Emmanuel checked his condition. Sweaty and thin-lipped but with a spot of crimson on the cheeks.
‘Shabalala,’ Emmanuel called. ‘Bring that one to the doctor’s house and we’ll secure both of them.’
‘Yebo.’ Shabalala hauled the tradesman to his feet and led him down the stairs and across the plateau to the Zweigmans’ stone dwelling. Lana appeared at the corner of the kitchen garden with the last remnant of the colonel’s ragtag army in tow: a nervous youth with greased hair and heavy jowls who’d been left to search the Zweigman house.
‘Are you hurt, Emmanuel?’ Lana said. ‘I heard shots.’
‘I’m fine. Who’s he?’
‘This is Stewart.’ The young man mumbled hello. ‘He owes Mr Khan twenty pounds, which he was told he could work off if he gave him a hand tonight. He says he didn’t know about the guns or the Russians.’
‘Mr Khan told us it was a parcel pick-up,’ Stewart said. ‘It was supposed to be easy.’
Emmanuel hit the colonel between the shoulderblades. ‘A national security matter and you recruit boys with gambling debts.’
‘I didn’t recruit anybody,’ the colonel said. ‘Dennis was in charge of that.’
‘Oh, I understand.’ Emmanuel pushed the colonel in the direction of the main house. ‘You’re not responsible for this fuck-up. The men under your command are the problem.’
‘What about them?’ Lana indicated the Zweigmans, still locked together.
‘They’ll be all right,’ Emmanuel said. In truth he couldn’t remember seeing the couple so close.
The doctor turned to his wife. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let us go and meet the baby. He has white hair and big lungs.’
So, Nicolai has a son, Emmanuel thought and he prodded the colonel into the big house. Jolly Marks and Mbali, the Zulu maid, had been someone’s son and daughter. Their deaths and that of the landlady had to be accounted for.
‘Sit,’ Emmanuel said to the colonel when they entered the small kitchen where Shabalala already had the tradesman handcuffed to a chair. The wood-fire stove crackled. Lana filled a kettle and placed it on a burner while Stewart, the hapless gambler, slouched in the adjoining room and pretended to read one of Zweigman’s medical tomes. Emmanuel pushed Fitzpatrick into a chair and secured his hands with ties taken from the curtains. The colonel sat with a stiff back and a stiff upper lip.
‘Check the Dodge, Shabalala,’ Emmanuel said. ‘See if there are any more weapons hidden.’
‘Yebo.’ The constable went out the side door and cut towards the black ca
r. A rooster crowed and a golden light brushed the treetops.
‘I can’t wait to see van Niekerk,’ the tradesman said. ‘I’m going to tell him how you fucked up tonight and then I’m going to tell him you fucked his girlfriend. You’ll be lucky to keep your teeth.’
Lana tensed but set up a row of teacups on a sideboard. Her escape route to Cape Town, funded in part by van Niekerk’s generous financial contribution to her everyday expenses, was now in doubt.
‘Why would the major believe a word you say?’ Emmanuel asked.
‘Because I saw you with my own eyes. Van Niekerk won’t be happy paying for something that’s being handed out for free. If you uncuff me now, he’ll never have to know.’
‘You followed me to Lana’s flat and then to the Dover the next morning,’ Emmanuel said. The man leaning against the wall of the hardware store with the newspaper hadn’t been a civilian waiting for a bus. ‘But first you had to tail me from the bar to Lana’s apartment. Why follow me at all?’
‘Van Niekerk’s orders. He doesn’t trust you.’
‘No, that’s not it.’ Emmanuel was certain. For all his faults, the Dutch major had always shown absolute trust and faith in him. The tradesman had tailed him long before van Niekerk was involved in the investigation. ‘You were in the freight yard on the night of Jolly’s murder. That’s how you knew to follow me. You were there. And you probably had Brother Jonah on lookout as well.’
The tradesman’s eyes were cold. ‘You’re a drowning man, Cooper.’
Shabalala entered the kitchen with the same dented toolbox the tradesman had brought with him to the interrogation room. He rested it on the tabletop.
‘No guns,’ the Zulu constable said. ‘Just this.’
The metal box, for all its plainness, exerted a strange power over the occupants of the kitchen. No one moved. Then Lana stepped back, anticipating an unpleasant surprise.
Emmanuel undipped the box and opened the lid. The scent of chocolate and vanilla-flavoured tobacco wafted out of it. He removed three hand-rolled cigarettes.
‘A gift from Mr Khan,’ he said. ‘He helped you recruit your little army. An unstable preacher and a group of unlucky gamblers who don’t know one end of a gun from the other.’