by Malla Nunn
A handwritten sign was tied to the mesh: “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances.” Unforeseen. That was probably the simplest way to get a handle on the murder of your father. Inside the compound a black watchman paced the front of the large supply warehouse while an Alsatian dog, chained to a spike in the ground, ran restless circles of its territory.
Across a small side street was the garage Shabalala had told him about. The sign above the three petrol pumps read “Pretorius Petrol and Garage.” It was open, manned by an old coloured man in grease-covered overalls probably called in at short notice to supervise the black teenagers operating the pumps. Why wasn’t the town called Pretoriusburg? The family owned a big enough slice of it.
Emmanuel turned right onto van Riebeeck Street. The neat country houses with manicured beds of aloe and flowering protea had a deserted air. Garden boys, now usually finishing up for the day, were nowhere in sight. Dried laundry flapped on backyard lines. No maids. No “missus” or “baas,” either.
The news was out, he guessed. A quick glance down van Riebeeck confirmed it. A group of the captain’s neighbors was gathered in front of a house at the end of the street. Housemaids and garden boys, many of them gray haired despite the title, stood in a group two dwellings down: close enough to look on yet far enough to show respect.
A woman’s sob floated out into the afternoon. Emmanuel approached a wide gravel driveway choked with cars. An elegant Cape Dutch–style house nestled in an established garden. A dark thatched roof perched over graceful gables and gleaming whitewashed walls. Wooden shutters, the exact shade of the thatch, were shut against the world. A long veranda, decorated with flowerpots, ran the length of the house. There wasn’t a wagon wheel in sight.
Like the captain’s hand-tooled watch, the house was a surprise. Where was the bleached antelope skull he expected to find nailed over the doorway? He stepped past the front bumper of a dusty Mercedes and into the garden.
“Hey! Who you?” A hand settled on his shoulder and stayed there. A skinny white man with watery blue eyes stared him down. The crowd turned to examine the interloper.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.” He flicked his ID open and held it uncomfortably close to the man’s face. “I’m the investigating officer in this case. Are you a family member?”
The hand dropped. “No. Just making sure we all act decent toward Captain Pretorius and his family.”
Emmanuel returned his ID to his pocket and smiled to show there were no hard feelings.
“He’s okay, Athol. Let him by.” Hansie stood on the veranda in his filthy uniform, cheeks glowing an eggshell pink. Exercising his authority in public agreed with him.
“This way, Detective Sergeant.” Hansie waved him across the garden flushed with early spring color, and up the stairs that led to the imposing front door. Emmanuel took off his hat.
“I’ve come to pay my respects to Mrs. Pretorius. The family all here?”
“Everyone except Paul.” Hansie opened the front door and ushered him in. “Mrs. Pretorius and her daughters-in-law are seeing to the captain. The rest are out on the back veranda.”
They entered a small receiving area that led farther along to a series of closed doors, most likely the bedrooms. Hansie walked left into a large room dominated by heavy wooden furniture, the kind built to withstand generations of pounding by unruly boys and leather-skinned men. The polished tile floor was smooth as snakeskin under the yellow light of the glass-faced lanterns. An enormous sideboard covered in trophies and framed photos ran along one side of the room.
The photographs covered several generations of the Pretorius clan. There was a girl in ponytails playing in the snow, then a dour-faced clergyman surrounded by an army of equally humorless children. The next photo showed a young Captain Pretorius and a pretty woman in her twenties seated on a park bench. Then an image stopped Emmanuel in his tracks. The Pretorius boys, ranging in age from five to fifteen, stood shoulder to shoulder in their Voortrekker Scout uniforms. It was night and their faces and uniforms gleamed in the light of the flaming torches held high in their hands. Their eyes stared out at him, hard with Afrikaner pride. Emmanuel thought of Nuremberg: all those rosy-cheeked German boys marching toward defeat.
“The Great Trek celebration,” Hansie said. “Captain and Mrs. Pretorius took us Voortrekker Scouts on a trip to Pretoria for the ceremony. We got to throw the torches into a huge fire.”
Emmanuel remembered his own trip to the same celebration well. He remembered the heat of the flames breathing onto his face and the uncomfortable feeling that he was outside the circle of those selected by God to be pure.
“I read about it in the papers,” he said, and moved on to the next photo. Paul, as big and thick necked as his brothers, in army uniform, then a Pretorius family portrait no more than a year or two old. He focused on the youngest son, who was finer boned than his brothers, with a sensitive mouth and messy blond hair that fell over his forehead. The captain and his wife had run out of brawn by the time it came to making Louis.
“An Englishman came through town with his camera and charged one pound to take a photo. We have one in our house showing me with my ma and sisters.”
They moved through to the kitchen, where two black maids laid cold meat and slabs of bread onto a giant platter. A third maid, white haired and ancient, sat at the small table and sobbed in quiet bursts.
“That’s Aggie,” Hansie whispered. “She’s been with the family since Henrick was a baby. She’s not so good anymore, but the captain wouldn’t let her go.”
They passed a dining room dominated by a wooden table and chairs that carried a whiff of the Bavarian forest. Large windows looked out onto the vine-covered back veranda where a group of older men, rough farmers in khaki, stood together in a tight bunch.
“The fathers-in-law,” Hansie explained. They stepped out of the house and onto the veranda. Six children, from knee to shoulder height, played with a wooden spinning top that wobbled and bounced between them. A young black girl rocked a fat white baby on her knee. The Pretorius brothers held their own council out on the garden lawn. All except Louis.
Emmanuel approached them. Erich started straight in.
“Hansie here says it was the old Jew who looked Pa over. How’s that?”
“Checked his papers myself. Everything was in order. He was qualified to conduct the examination.”
He waited for angry denials, but none came. The brothers stared back at him, expressions unchanged.
“Pa was right.” Henrick’s speech was a beat too slow, thanks to an afternoon of steady drinking. “He always said the old Jew had something to hide.”
“Shifty,” Erich threw in. “Who else but the old Jew would lie about something like that, hey? Probably doesn’t know how to tell the truth. No practice.”
The Pretorius brothers were halfway to being wrecked, and in no hurry to slow the ride.
“Did your father and the old Jew have a disagreement lately?”
“Not for a while,” Henrick said. “Pa went to see him a couple of times this past year just to talk to him about how things work here in Jacob’s Rest. Give him guidelines, like. To keep him clear of trouble.”
“Good of him,” Emmanuel said mildly, recalling Zweigman’s comment about the captain dropping in for a “friendly chat.” “You think the old Jew resented your father’s help?”
Henrick shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Enough to kill him over?” Emmanuel plowed ahead, exploiting the brothers’ relaxed state of mind. Sober, it was hard to find a wedge into them.
Erich snorted. “Him, kill my pa?”
“The old Jew’s scared of guns,” Henrick explained. “Won’t touch them. Won’t even sell bullets from his shop.”
“He couldn’t strangle a chicken without help,” Johannes said.
“Couldn’t piss on a fire without his wife aiming it for him,” Erich added with a mean-spirited giggle that set the brothers laughing.
Emmanu
el let the laughter subside. In a few hours, when the whiskey bravado had worn off, they’d feel the full weight of their father’s murder, and remember that the killer still walked free among them.
“Pa, look. Look, see,” a boy of about ten called out from the veranda as the spinning top wobbled down the stairs and rolled onto the grass. The children followed in a rush of high-pitched squeals.
Henrick grabbed a tiny girl and threw her into the air. The other children crowded around, begging for a turn. Emmanuel wondered where the youngest brother was hiding himself.
“Where’s Louis?”
“In the shed,” Henrick said. “He’s been in there all day working on that bloody bike.”
“Ja.” Erich ruffled the hair of a child in front of him. “Go see if you can get him out, Hansie. Ma will need his help soon.”
Hansie turned to the far end of the garden where a small shed stood flush against the back fence. Behind the corrugated iron structure, flat-topped trees threw their shaggy branches up against wide-open sky.
“I’ll come with you.” Emmanuel broke from the family group and fell into step with Hansie. A man’s shed was a good place to start feeling out the man himself. Something about the captain had marked him out for a violent death, and something about his death had caught the attention of the Security Branch. No time like the present to try to find out why.
Hansie knocked on the shed door. “Louis. It’s me.”
“Come.” The door swung open and Louis, a boy of about nineteen, stepped back to allow them entry. With a featherweight’s build, the captain’s youngest son was more finely drawn than the photo in the house suggested. If the other brothers were rock, Louis was paper.
“Louis, this here is the policeman from Jo’burg.” Hansie performed the introductions in a rush, embarrassed about taking an adult role in front of his teenage friend.
“Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper,” Emmanuel said, and shook Louis’s hand. There was strength in the boy’s grip that belied the softness of his appearance.
“Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper.” Louis repeated the title as if memorizing it, then saw the grease stains on Emmanuel’s hand. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ve made a mess of you.”
“It’s nothing.” Emmanuel wiped his hands clean with his handkerchief and Louis moved back toward a pile of engine parts laid out on an old rug. The restored body of a black Indian motorcycle rested up on blocks close to the rear door.
Louis kneeled down and continued cleaning pieces of metal with a rag. His whole body shook with the effort he expended. “I’ve been cleaning parts all day and I forgot…”
“What’s this?” Hansie squatted down next to his friend. “I thought you finished the engine already.”
Louis shook his head. “Have to wait on a part to come from Jo’burg. Do you know much about engines, Detective?”
“Not much,” Emmanuel answered truthfully. The right-hand side of the shed was the hunting area. A pair of giant kudu horns hung above a gun rack holding three sighted rifles. Below the guns was a beautiful Zulu assagai, a warrior’s spear, complete with lion hide bindings. Under the spear was a wooden desk with two drawers. To the left side of the shed engine parts and tools surrounded the Indian motorcycle. Diagrams and calculations were stuck to the wall under a manufacturer’s illustration of the dismantled motorbike in its prime. The organization of the shed indicated a clear and methodical mind. The back door was propped open with a brick to let in the afternoon breeze and it wasn’t hard to imagine the captain happily at work here.
“You know a lot about engines.” Emmanuel stepped over the spare parts and headed for the hunting desk.
“Oh, no,” Louis said, “Pa is the one who knows all about fixing things.”
There was an awkward silence, then the loud clank of metal on metal made by Louis sorting through a pile of spanners with shaking hands.
“You can finish the bike, hey, Louis.” Hansie pumped enthusiasm into his voice. “Get that coloured mechanic to help and you’ll have it going in no time.”
“Maybe,” Louis said quietly, then began sorting the cleaned screws and bolts into neat piles on the floor. Emmanuel watched the compulsive behavior for a moment, then moved deeper into the shed. Grief made people act in strange ways; it could rip them open or close them right down.
A check of the guns found them clean and unused. Inside the desk, Emmanuel found newspaper articles on rural pursuits like the art of biltong making and the proper care of hunting knives. He kneeled down and peered into the empty drawer cavity.
“Looking for dirty magazines, Detective?” Louis asked.
Emmanuel caught the hard edge of the boy’s stare.
“You want to show me where he hid the magazines, Louis?” he asked casually, aware it was a clumsy attempt to catch the boy out, but worth a try.
Louis flushed pink and began sorting through the spanner box again. “No, because there aren’t any. My pa was very clean that way. If you knew him you’d understand.”
“That’s right.” Hansie took up the fight on Louis’s behalf and threw Emmanuel a look of disgust.
“I wasn’t the one who mentioned dirty magazines,” he pointed out. Did the captain have a secret stash somewhere? Or was Louis worried about a dog-eared magazine hidden somewhere in his own bedroom?
Two maids and a garden boy hurried past the back entrance to the shed without slowing pace or looking in. The three figures disappeared into the darkening veldt.
“What’s this?” Emmanuel pointed to the grass pathway the servants had taken.
“A kaffir path. The kaffirs use them to get around,” Hansie said. “They run all through the town and join up near the location. It’s quicker than using the main roads.”
“People don’t mind?”
“No. Nobody uses the paths in town after eight-thirty. There’s big trouble if a kaffir is caught walking along here between then and sunrise.”
“You ever use them?”
“They’re kaffir paths. For kaffirs.” Hansie had the dumbstruck look of an idiot asked to explain the facts of life to an imbecile. “Coloureds use them sometimes, but we never do.”
“Then how do you know they’re not used at night?” Emmanuel stepped out of the shed and onto the path.
“The captain,” Hansie replied. “He ran along these paths three or four times a week. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes at night. Shabalala took care of the paths near the location.”
Emmanuel moved deeper into the veldt as a second group of house servants, determined to clear the white part of town before curfew, jogged by singing. Emmanuel knew the song:
“Shosholoza, shosholoza…Kulezontaba…”
The song translated roughly to “Move faster, you are meandering on those mountains. The train is from South Africa.” The sound of the word “shosholoza” was like the hiss of a steam train itself.
The servants’ rhythmic chant drifted back and he felt the African night warm on his skin and hair. The voices of the servants grew softer and he turned toward the captain’s house.
“How often did you and Lieutenant Uys patrol?”
“We patrolled when the captain asked,” Hansie said. “Once we went out every night for a week, then not again for a long time. It wasn’t a regular-type thing.”
“Random,” Emmanuel said, aware of the simple genius underpinning the captain’s system. Zweigman was aware of the close scrutiny of the patrols and didn’t like it. How much did the captain see and hear as he crisscrossed the town at constant but irregular intervals? Had he uncovered a secret someone was willing to kill to protect?
Emmanuel reentered the shed where Louis packed the last of his tools into a red metal box. The boy appeared engrossed in his task, but there was a tightness in his shoulders that suggested an alert and mindful presence.
“Hey, Louis.” The shed door swung open and Henrick stepped in. “Get yourself cleaned up, it’s time for supper and Ma needs you.”
“Ja.”
Louis ducked out past his elder brother and made his way quickly toward the house. He scuttled up the stairs and across the veranda like a crab racing for safety on a rock ledge.
“Ma will see you now, Detective,” Henrick said. “She’s not doing so well, so make it quick.”
“Of course,” Emmanuel said. Henrick’s boss-man act was starting to get on his nerves.
Lamplight flickered over a group of young women in mourning clothes who were gathered around a small blond woman in an oversize armchair. Her pale face, lined with grief, was all cheekbones and wide mouth. It was still possible to see vestiges of the young beauty who had married a hulking policeman and produced five sons to swell the ranks of the Voortrekker Scouts and the Dutch Reformed Church.
“Who is this?” she asked. Emmanuel felt her blue eyes focus on him for the first time. “Who is this person?”
“The detective,” Henrick explained from the doorway. The room was now a female space that he did not want to enter. “Detective Cooper has come from Jo’burg to lead the investigation. He’s going to help find out who did this to Pa.”
Mrs. Pretorius sat forward like a sleepwalker awakened. “What are you doing here? You should be out there, arresting whoever did this evil thing.”
“I need your help. I know it’s hard, but there are some things only you can tell me about your husband.”
“Willem.” It was the first time the captain’s name had been spoken. “My Willem is gone…”
The tiny woman howled in anguish, her body swaying back and forth like a marionette on broken strings. Emmanuel sat down, breathed deeply, and allowed himself to observe but not connect. Disconnection. That was the trickiest part of the job, the one in which he excelled.