by Malla Nunn
Next, Emmanuel pulled out a rusty penknife. The white paint from the handle flaked off in his hands.
‘Jolly Marks’s knife, taken from the crime scene. You heard my name and my old police rank on the night of the first murder. You’ve been chasing me ever since. Waiting for me to find the Russians.’
‘Why would I remove a piece of incriminating evidence from the scene?’ the tradesman said. ‘That makes even less sense than your other theories.’
Emmanuel considered the child’s weapon for a moment. Keeping it made sense if you discounted common sense and went deeper.
‘There was a private in my platoon,’ he said. ‘A quiet lad from Liverpool, ordinary. Or that’s what I thought until another soldier found a necklace made from human teeth hidden in his rucksack. The private claimed it was a harmless souvenir but he enjoyed looking at the necklace the same way a dog enjoys digging up old bones to chew on. You kept the penknife for the same reason.’
‘You’re sick, Cooper,’ the tradesman said.
Emmanuel foraged under layers of newspaper stuffed into the box to keep the contents snug and touched a handle. He withdrew a scalpel with dried blood splattered over the edges of the silver blade. Very much a grown-up’s weapon.
‘No theories or conjecture,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave that to the judge and the jury.’
The colonel sat bolt upright at the mention of a trial. ‘The mission was to find the Russians and secure them. He’s the one who lost them in the freight yard and then killed the boy for his notebook. That went against my direct orders. I said no civilian casualties.’
‘Mrs Patterson and her maid, Mbali?’ Emmanuel pressed for more information.
‘Same thing,’ the colonel said. ‘Get the notebook and get out. That was the plan. He turned the whole exercise into a bloodbath, in direct contravention of my orders.’
‘You are responsible for your men, Colonel.’
‘I’m not in charge,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘MI5 wanted the Russians but they didn’t want to ask the National Party for help … not with Malan in London talking about a republic run by Afrikaners. They decided to take an informal approach. They recommended Dennis and assigned me to get the job done.’
Informal approach? The job? The British security agency had used the colonel to do their dirty work. If the mission succeeded, the glory was theirs; if it failed, they could deny any knowledge and leave Fitzpatrick to hang.
‘Three people died,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Against my direct orders.’
If the colonel mentioned his ‘orders’ one more time Emmanuel would have to kill him. There was more to leadership than barking commands down a phone line.
‘Stop talking, Fitzpatrick.’ The pale-skinned killer was unnaturally calm in the face of the colonel’s attempt to dump full responsibility for the failed mission into his lap. ‘Make excuses up the chain of command, not down. The word of an ex-detective, a kaffir and a barmaid? Save your breath.’
The tradesman was right, Emmanuel knew. Unless Major van Niekerk backed him, the allegations of three murders and an international conspiracy to capture a member of Stalin’s inner circle would not stand. Jolly Marks’s death was already neatly pinned on Giriraj, and even with the scalpel there was no real evidence to link the double homicide at the Dover to the tradesman. The contents of the metal box would look like nothing more than a desperate attempt by a reclassified ex-detective to clear his name.
‘You’ve got nothing, Cooper,’ the tradesman said. ‘The only way out of this mess is to free Fitzpatrick and me and step away The colonel will do what he can to clear your name of the double murder charge. That’s the only way you’ll escape the rope.’
‘I’m tempted,’ Emmanuel said. ‘But I can’t get past the fact that you killed three innocent people. That just doesn’t feel right.’
‘You don’t have the power or the connections to do a thing about it.’ The tradesman’s eyes lit with pleasure. ‘Admit defeat and you might get a chance to live out your days among the kaffirs and the Jews.’
Do it! the Scottish sergeant major roared out of the darkness. Do it, soldier!
Emmanuel rounded the table and slammed the tradesman’s forehead into the wood surface. The metal box slid over the lip and crashed to the floor.
‘That was for Jolly Marks,’ Emmanuel said. ‘And this is for Mrs Patterson and Mbali, her maid.’ He slammed the fair head down twice more and heard bones crunch. Good. Blood dotted the wood tabletop and trickled from the tradesman’s nose. Even better. The tradesman moaned in pain.
‘Sergeant.’ Shabalala laid a light hand on Emmanuel’s shoulder. ‘Detective Sergeant…’
‘Don’t worry,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’m done.’
‘No. Listen.’
There was the slam of doors and footsteps on the circular drive and in the garden.
Lana ran to the window and peered out. ‘More cars. There are two men on the clinic porch. One of them looks like the major. There might be others.’
‘Stay here and keep an eye on the colonel and his friend.’ Emmanuel gave the Browning Hi-Power to Lana. He knew she could handle a gun. ‘Do not untie them. No matter what happens. Shabalala and I will go out.’
They slipped through the side door and struck out for the winter vegetable patch. Muted voices could be heard from the direction of the clinic. A man approached with the collar of his lightweight coat turned up against the dawn chill.
‘Fletcher?’
‘The major wants you.’ The detective constable was ashen-faced and looked five inches shorter than he had yesterday afternoon. ‘He’s waiting over at the other house with the doctor.’
Emmanuel and Shabalala moved fast and found van Niekerk leaning against the veranda post of the clinic while Zweigman blocked the door. The newborn’s cries had calmed.
‘If you’re the cavalry,’ Emmanuel said to the Dutch major, ‘you’re late.’
‘The plan was to get here an hour ago, right on the tail of the colonel,’ van Niekerk said and cast Constable Fletcher a sour look. ‘We took a wrong turn off the main road and ended up in a Zulu kraal. The chief was none too happy. He thought we’d come to relocate him and his family to a native reserve.’
‘You gave the colonel directions to this place, didn’t you, Major?’
‘Yes.’ There was no shame or guilt in the admission. ‘It was the easiest way to flush out all the players and concentrate them in one place.’
‘A lot of things look easy from a desk,’ Emmanuel said.
‘Okay,’ van Niekerk said, ‘I deserve that, but this is not how it was meant to turn out. The plan was to get here before any damage was done.’
‘He’s lying,’ Zweigman said. ‘He wants Nicolai, just like the other men.’
The major lit up a cigarette and puffed. ‘Let me explain the facts of life to you all. Nicolai and his wife have caught the attention of the British secret service, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian NKVD. There is no way for Colonel Nicolai Petrov to slip quietly into the night and disappear. Much as you’d like it to be so.’
‘We’re just supposed to hand him over?’ Emmanuel said. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A handful of men scattered across the grass verge and infiltrated the stone buildings. The door to the storeroom was kicked in and the interior searched. The gagged man was dragged out of the woods and pushed across the verge to a parked car. A startled bushbuck flew through the vegetable patch and out to the drive. Amateur hour was over and the professionals had arrived. This expeditionary force could do what they wished and yet they stayed well away from the clinic.
‘I’d prefer that Nicolai came of his own free will,’ van Niekerk said. ‘His wife and child can stay. That’s the deal. Nicolai only.’
The door to the main house swung open and the colonel and the tradesman were bundled out and marched across the plateau by three armed men with blackened faces. Stewart, the down-on-his-luck gambler, trailed behind. The last member
of the colonel’s army, the decoy ditched at the river by Emmanuel and Shabalala, was still out there somewhere.
‘Will they be punished?’ Zweigman asked.
‘Not through the courts.’ The major smiled. ‘Nothing about this operation will ever appear in print or in official records.’
Emmanuel checked the positions of the commando raiders. They were gathered along the perimeter of the clinic grounds ready for a second surge. Their blackened faces showed no emotion. He didn’t know what organisation they belonged to. Not that it mattered. There was nothing to stop them smashing into the clinic and securing Nicolai by force. With the operation officially blacked out they were free to get the job done and damn the consequences. Emmanuel had seen what men were capable of when the leash of law and order was cut. A few graves hidden in the endless run of hills would never be found.
A heavy silence descended. Neither Zweigman, Shabalala nor Emmanuel could voluntarily place the sick Russian into the hands of an uncertain fate.
The clinic door opened and Nicolai appeared. He marked the men waiting on the perimeter and calmly buttoned his wool jacket.
‘My son’s name is Dimitri,’ he said to Emmanuel. ‘Please make sure that he and Natalya are safe. I cannot stay here and bring harm to you good gentlemen or to my wife. I have done things … This day was always going to come. Spasiba.’
He walked across the porch and down the stairs. Major van Niekerk escorted him to a line of blue sedans parked in the drive. He opened the back door of one of them, Nicolai got in and the door closed with a thunk. Emmanuel moved forward but Zweigman grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Let him go. Nicolai’s time is almost at an end. The safety of his wife and son is worth the sacrifice.’
‘Yebo,’ Shabalala agreed.
The car containing Nicolai pulled away from the circle of aloes and disappeared into the wild winter grass. Van Niekerk strode back to the clinic with two commandos on either side of him.
‘Cooper,’ he called. ‘Come over.’
Emmanuel met van Niekerk halfway. Sunshine filtered through the tree branches but no diffusion of light could soften the brute lines of the men’s blackened faces. Lieutenant Piet Lapping and Sergeant Dickie Heyns of the Security Branch. The metallic taste of blood came to Emmanuel’s mouth at the sight of pockmarked Piet Lapping, experienced interrogator and sadist for the state.
‘Well?’ the major prompted the Security Branch Officer.
Lapping reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope, which he threw at Emmanuel like a hunter slinging a stone. ‘You’ve got more lives than a fucking cat, Cooper,’ he said before turning back to the parked cars. ‘One day you’re going to run out.’
The envelope hit Emmanuel’s chest and he caught it before it dropped to the ground. It was a plain manila rectangle, unmarked and unstamped, yet he recognised the weight and feel of it. He double-checked the contents: a sympathy card to the mother of the young communist found hanged in his jail cell. A single red rose embossed with the message ‘In your time of sorrow’ was printed on the front. This was the card he had delivered to a shack in Pentecost Township six months ago and the reason he’d left the detective branch.
‘Thanks for getting this back,’ Emmanuel said and pocketed the envelope. ‘What did you get out of this, Major?’
‘A promotion to colonel and the goodwill of the head of the Security Branch.’ Van Niekerk smiled. ‘The reward for services rendered to the state.’
‘And the murder warrants for Mrs Patterson and Mbali?’
‘Withdrawn.’
Lana appeared at the corner of the winter garden with a cup of hot tea in her hand. Cherry-red lipstick was perfectly applied to her mouth but her dishevelled hair seemed to suggest that she’d just got out of bed and was ready to be talked back between the sheets if the right man asked her.
‘Ready to leave in ten minutes?’ van Niekerk said and sipped the tea Lana gave him.
‘Of course, Kallie.’ She kissed the major on the cheek and then disappeared into the garden. The Cape Town escape plan was back on track.
Emmanuel handed over the detective branch ID and the race-identification card. The fine for carrying false documents was the equivalent of six months’ wages. Non-payment meant prison time. It was back to swinging a sledgehammer at the Victory Shipyards.
‘Keep them,’ van Niekerk said.
‘What for?’
‘Simone Betancourt. You can keep the papers because of her.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Emmanuel said.
Simone Betancourt was the first murder he’d ever worked, tagging alongside Inspector Luc Moreau, a veteran detective on a mission to avenge the dead. A three-day plunge into the smoky nightclubs and gambling dens of post-war Paris had led to a cheap cornerside hustler named Johnny Big Boy Belmondo. Johnny was handsome and big where it counted but light on brains. He’d killed and robbed the washerwoman on the million-to-one chance that the sparkling stones in her hairpin were real. An effort to pawn the jewellery revealed the diamonds to be worthless cut glass. A life lost to stupidity and greed. The files were placed in a cardboard box and stored in a dank room. Case closed.
Emmanuel was surprised van Niekerk remembered the case. He’d mentioned it once over drinks when the midnight-to-dawn squad were comparing notes on their ‘first’.
‘Five days of R&R in springtime Paris and you could not let the dead lie. That’s a burden for a soldier but perfect for a police detective.’ Van Niekerk sipped the hot tea. ‘Unlike you, I would have walked past. Unlike you, I would have stayed locked in the hotel room with my girl.’
‘I didn’t mention a girl.’
‘With you there’s always a girl,’ van Niekerk said.
Emmanuel left that time bomb ticking. If the major knew about his night with Lana, then a duel at sunrise was an option.
‘The detective branch is recruiting native talent,’ van Niekerk said. ‘Shabalala would never rise above the rank of detective constable, but the pay is better than in the foot police and he’d get to do more than shut down shebeens and arrest cow thieves.’
‘Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala. Is that the payoff for letting Nicolai go without a fight?’
‘Yes,’ van Niekerk said. ‘It is. Do you accept?’
EPILOGUE
Paris, France; April 1945
The bar was a dim cavern favoured by gamblers, taxi drivers and off-duty detectives at the end of the night shift. Emmanuel and Inspector Luc Moreau stood shoulder to shoulder at the counter, three drinks into the celebration of Johnny Belmondo’s arrest.
‘Long after the war has ended,’ Inspector Moreau said, ‘this fight against injustice and cruelty will continue. This is how the world is rebuilt, Major Cooper, with one small victory at a time.’
The barman, an amateur boxer with cauliflower ears and a surly mouth, poured shots. Luc Moreau lifted his glass.
‘To Simone Betancourt. May she rest with the angels.’
‘To Simone Betancourt.’ Emmanuel downed the whisky and motioned for another round.
The sun was rising and as the neon lights of Montmartre flicked off one by one, a bright river of sunshine began to flow over the cobblestoned streets. Two young prostitutes in high heels and low-cut silk dresses stopped to light candles at a roadside shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Inspector Moreau lifted his glass again. They had an unspoken agreement that this morning they would hammer the bottle. ‘To the other woman whose unjust death gave you a thirst for justice.’
‘What?’ Emmanuel put his whisky down.
‘To the woman whose memory brought you onto this case,’ Moreau said. ‘The dead cannot be honoured if they are not named. Even the unknown soldier has a marked grave, does he not?’
To honour the dead and have no fear of them … well, that was easier said than done. To bring them into the daylight and speak their names was dark magic. In a dim Parisian bar, half a world aw
ay from South Africa, Emmanuel conjured her into flesh: a silky-haired woman with green eyes and an easy laugh, careless with her beauty. Tired from working long hours but certain that her son would break free of Sophiatown and inhabit a world that she had only dreamed of.
‘To my mother,’ Emmanuel said.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing is solitary work made possible with the help of others. I thank the following: Imkulunkulu, the great, great one. The ancestors. My siblings Penny, Byron and Jan and their partners Brian, Monique and Keith for opening their homes to my family every summer. To Dr Gerald Lazarus and Dr Audrey Jakubowski-Lazarus, Lynne and Andrew Shear, Laura and Saul Goldstein and Elyse De Jong who allowed us to crash their summer holidays. A generous family is a blessing beyond words.
My husband Mark, a true partner in everything that I do. You make the impossible possible. My children Elijah and Sisana, two bright and beautiful sparks who light up the world and start fires with equal ease.
Darryl Robinson for the beautiful author photographs.
Kerrie McGovan and Burcak Muraben for dressing me in goose down and leather for my winter trip to America.
Hannah and David Shear for making a home for me in New York, complete with snowfall and a cat curled at my feet.
Rose and Eric Campbell for use of their lovely beach cottage for writing retreats. Steve Worland and Georgie Parker for friendship and arranging the keys.
Literary agents Sophie Hamley of the Cameron Creswell Agency and Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management who do an amazing job of getting my work out into the world.
For historical and cultural help special thanks to Terence King, author, police and military researcher and historian. Also, Helenore Labuschagne for her valuable memories and Kevan Mardan and Uschie Bischofberger for a fun but informative tour of Durban. Any errors or omissions are entirely my own.
Deepest thanks to the stellar Pan Macmillan team for making my dreams a reality. Maria Rejt in London. Rod Morrison and James Fraser in Sydney. I am in good hands. Editors Emma Rafferty and Sophie Orme who guided me out of blind alleys and helped me find the best version of my story.