Thanks be to God.
Mbutu faced the woman. He waited for calm.
“Please, do not be afraid,” he soothed. “Your presence has unsettled some of the men. They have suffered great misfortune. They too are fugitives.”
There was no reaction from her.
“For them to help you, we need to know how you came to be here … to be certain that you do not pose a threat.”
A threat? How could they pose a threat?
“So … please … tell us. Who are you? Where have you come from?”
There was no answer, just a stony silence, the woman’s eyes locked on his.
“Take your time. How long …?”
Nothing.
“What is your—?”
The coughing fit returned. When it had passed, Mbutu asked the same questions in Afrikaans. There was still no response.
Please. Speak. Your life depends on it.
Some of the men yelled at the woman, frustration building.
A small voice cut in.
“She can’t talk.”
It was the child.
“She can’t talk?”
“No … not since …”
Mbutu squatted down so that he was at the girl’s level. She had beautiful pale blue eyes with a dark line around the rim of the iris. He looked straight into them. There were no tears. Whatever she had witnessed, she was beyond them. And then she fell into his arms and clung tightly to his neck.
Hendrik took control.
“Wait,” he said.
He walked towards his men and spread his arms wide, ushering them into a huddle.
“Child. What is your name?” Mbutu whispered.
“Emily.”
“Emily. I will look after you. You and your mother.”
After a minute, Hendrik walked back over. He spoke to the interlopers directly.
“Come,” he said. “You are safe with us.”
With great relief, the girl squeezed Mbutu’s neck, then he released her to fling her arms around her mother’s skirts.
Mbutu stood. He touched Hendrik’s arm.
“Thank you.”
Hendrik smiled.
“It is you who are lucky also,” he said.
Lucky?
“Habobe … the man you pushed?”
Mbutu nodded.
“He wanted to kill you too.”
* * *
The girl and her mother were taken in by the Nama women and given mealies and milk. The Nama may have fled their village but they were resourceful enough to have grabbed essential supplies, including a goat.
One of the women made a poultice from pulped leaves and laid it on the worst of the sunburn. The girl, in particular, was treated with tenderness. Some of the younger Nama children, wide-eyed and curious, loitered.
With the sun going down, the now shivering pair were gently warmed before the fire, though their frequent bouts of coughing did not abate.
Riding on Mbutu’s shoulders on the walk back, the girl had said little, but it was apparent she and her mother had been party to something awful… so awful it had robbed the woman of the power of speech.
Hendrik was of a like mind to Mbutu. There was no point in a forced, rushed interrogation. Tend to them, make them comfortable. The information would come much easier.
The Nama made swift work of the rabbits, which were now crackling on a spit; the others were diced and added to another bubbling broth.
With all that had happened, Mbutu had forgotten – but there they were, in the midst of the refugees, that small group of blind men sitting together, a pair of the Nama women tending to them. These were not men sightless from birth but ones familiarising themselves with their new condition.
Mbutu pulled Hendrik to one side.
“The men over there. What happened to them?”
Hendrik looked at the ground, mournful.
“It is better you hear from their own lips.”
He indicated that Mbutu should pick up a large earthenware vessel of the rabbit stew and led him over to the blind men. Mbutu helped pass a bowl between them. They appreciated his help. Hendrik then sat cross-legged before them.
There were five of them, their eyes unfocused, a wetness around their tear ducts – pus, mucus glistening in the firelight.
The Nama, Mbutu already understood, respected directness. In his translation for Mbutu, Hendrik was typically forthright.
“Our new friend wants to know how you came to be this way,” he said.
It was the oldest of the men who began, probably in his 40s, the whites of his eyes an inflamed red, the pupils cloudy. He dabbed at them with a large wet leaf.
“One day the soldiers arrived,” Hendrik translated. “Not ordinary soldiers but devil soldiers. Monsters. Faceless. Round eyes. Big round eyes …”
“Devil soldiers?” shrugged Mbutu, his scepticism a little too obvious, even to a blind man.
“Demons!” shouted another. “Demons!”
“They surrounded our village,” the older man continued. “No way in. No way out. They unleashed a terrible green spirit upon the people.”
A green spirit?
“Men, women, children … Only a few surv—”
“Survived?”
“Survived.”
Hendrik spoke in his own voice now.
“These men … They had been out hunting. But the green spirit …”
The green spirit?
“… It took their sight.”
A blind man got to his feet. He was young, muscular, angry.
“Kill all!” he yelled in English. “Green spirit kill all!”
There were arms round him, comforting him, pulling him back down.
Devil soldiers?
Mbutu could not tell them that he did not believe such superstition. He offered his sympathy. He thanked the men for speaking to him.
“It’s true,” came a small voice.
They turned. Standing there with a horse blanket round her shoulders was the young white girl, Emily.
“What the men said. It’s true.”
The girl had a preternatural world-weariness, as if recent events had simply sucked the innocence out of her. She began coughing.
“Come, child,” said Mbutu. “Do not be afraid.”
Hendrik poured her some water and she sat with them. Mbutu looked over. The mother was asleep. They probed the girl with gentle questions.
“My name is Emily Sutton,” she said. “I am seven-and-a-half years old.”
“Do you have brothers, sisters, Emily?” asked Mbutu.
“No.”
“Where are you from? From England?”
“Yes. The county of Staffordshire. My father … we lived in a rectory.”
“A rectory?” asked Hendrik.
“Her father, a vicar … a preacher. Is that right, Emily?”
“Yes. We had chickens. I had to collect the eggs. My friend Louisa from school. She came to play. I dropped the basket. The eggs broke. Papa wasn’t happy.”
“Eggs?” asked Hendrik.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Mbutu. “Go on.”
“Papa is a missionary. He wanted to spread the gospel. To come to Africa. We came to build a chapel … for the natives.”
“When? How long ago?”
“After my birthday.”
“When is your birthday?”
“March. March the 8th.”
“Nine months ago,” said Mbutu to Hendrik.
“It was very hot at first,” Emily continued. “Much hotter than England. But the people were nice. Nama, like you …”
She pointed at Hendrik.
“And some Orlom … Orlum?”
“Oorlaam,” Hendrik corrected.
Oorlaam. Good horsemen. Cattle raiders. Nama but with mixed slave blood.
“There was fighting?” asked Hendrik.
She shook her head. She fiddled with the hem of her pinafore dress.
“Papa told us of the war. It was far away.
God would protect us.”
God was protecting no one.
She looked up at them.
“And then …”
“Take your time. Let the words come,” said Mbutu.
“A few days ago—”
“How many days?”
“I don’t know … Soldiers. British soldiers—”
She stopped, unsure whether to continue. She tugged at her hem again.
“Please,” said Mbutu. “It is safe. If you tell us we can help you. What about the soldiers?”
“They marched into the village. They had men in the middle … between them … in a line, a column. They had chains.”
“White men? Black men?”
“White.”
“A lot of men?”
“Quite a lot. Yes …”
“How many do you think?”
Mbutu cast his arm around.
“More than here?”
“Yes.”
“How many more? A guess.”
“I don’t know. Lots more.”
“You say they had chains?”
She indicated that they were bound around their ankles and wrists.
“Chained together, to each other. They made them stop, come to attention.”
Convicts. No, prisoners of war.
“They put on hoods,” she said. “Made of cloth.”
“Cloth?”
“Like sacks, the cloth you make sacks with.”
“The men in chains put on hoods?” asked Hendrik, confused.
“No, the soldiers.”
“The soldiers put the hoods on the men in chains.”
She threw an incongruous and momentary chuckle, as if Hendrik had been duped by some riddle.
“No, silly,” she corrected in faux frustration. “The soldiers. They put the sacks … the hoods on themselves.”
“The soldiers?”
Devil soldiers?
“There was smoke.”
The green mist?
“It is as our sightless brothers have said,” said Hendrik.
“The soldiers, they had guns. Anyone who tried to leave, to escape … One man ran, his friends told him not to, and they shot him. He fell over. Didn’t move. He had his eyes closed like he was asleep. His wife, Kefane, she was upset. She cried. But then the smoke … Everyone in the village and the men in chains. People were coughing, being sick … They started falling asleep too.”
“My poor child,” soothed Mbutu.
“It burnt their eyes and their mouths. They coughed and there was foam. People were screaming, begging, running. But anyone who tried to fight the soldiers or tried to escape, the soldiers hit them. Hard. Or shot them. Like Kefane’s husband.”
“Your father?” asked Mbutu. “Is he …?”
For the first time, the girl allowed herself a tiny sob.
“I don’t know …”
“And your mother?”
“That’s when she … That’s why she—”
“You saw all this with your own eyes?” asked Hendrik.
She nodded.
“Then how did you escape?”
“Papa … The Oorlaam. They warned him. They said there would be trouble. They said the war would come. They told Papa to make plans. He didn’t want to. But, when the soldiers came, he took us into the chapel. Mama, myself … under the floorboards.”
“You hid?”
“Yes … Later we came out. Ran. The soldiers with the round eyes could not run too well. They fired at us. Missed. We’ve been hiding in the bush for, I don’t know … Mama thinks three days. Men on horseback … a patrol… have been searching.”
There was a sudden sense of purpose about Hendrik.
“Where is this village?” he asked.
The girl shrugged.
“You must wake the mother,” Hendrik urged Mbutu. “Now!”
He couldn’t fathom Hendrik’s angst but Mbutu went over and gently shook the woman. When she came to, she immediately went into panic mode, shaking again.
“Sh-Shhhhhh,” calmed Mbutu. “Please, your daughter, Emily, has been telling us of your plight … We need your assistance. Details.”
When Mbutu returned with his arm around the mother, the girl was trying to pronounce the village’s name but failing.
“Vanka … Vankalik-something …?”
It made little difference to Hendrik. The question was of its geography.
“Please,” he told the woman. “You must show us where.”
He took a stick and set to work on the blank canvas of the red dirt.
“Our camp,” he said, drawing an ‘X’.
He drew a long line. “Railway … Cape Town to Kimberley.”
The last word filled Mbutu with a pang of heartache.
You will get there.
“Please.”
Hendrik handed the stick to the mother. She tentatively made a mark out to the west of the X.
“How many hours from here?” asked Hendrik, impatiently. “By foot. How many hours?”
The woman shrugged. Hendrik suddenly seized her by the shoulders.
“You must tell us!”
The woman was shaking again. She turned her head away. Mbutu urged Hendrik to be gentle. It seemed unnecessarily forceful.
Mbutu put his hand gently on her arm.
“Please. The information is important. How many hours? Three, four, five, six …?”
She nodded at five.
“Five hours, you think?”
Yes.
Hendrik uttered an oath. No sooner had he done so than one of the Nama on sentry duty up on the edge of the rocky corral gave a shout. Hendrik scrambled up to him. Mbutu followed. Now he understood.
Dirt was kicked over the fire. The men on guard turned inward and urged the camp to be silent, for the mothers to quiet the infants.
In the twilight, you could see the silhouettes. Cantering across the bush was a cavalry patrol.
Chapter Eighteen
“Sir?
Someone was shaking Finch’s shoulder.
“Sir?”
He opened an eye. A Cape policeman was standing over him.
“Merry Christmas, sir.”
Finch felt horrible, groggy.
“You came to my room and woke me up,” he croaked, “just to wish me Merry Christmas?”
“No sir. I mean, I was just—”
“It’s all right, Constable.”
Finch hauled himself up slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. Not only was he dazed, he now had a throbbing head from the whisky. He felt parched, dehydrated.
It was daylight outside.
“What time is it?”
“Five o’clock, sir.”
“AM or PM?”
The constable, quite young, laughed, thinking Finch to be joking. He then realised he wasn’t.
“PM, sir.”
“Then to what do I owe the honour?”
The constable cleared his throat, as if making an announcement.
“Detective Inspector Brookman, sir, kindly requests your presence. If you wouldn’t mind …”
The policeman gestured to Finch’s jacket on the back of the chair.
“Is he going to arrest me?”
“What, sir?”
“Never mind.”
The young copper tried to help Finch to his feet.
“Damnit man, I’m not a cripple.”
Finch stood up. He gulped some water from the jug by the washstand, rinsed his face and hoisted his braces.
“Police cab outside, sir.”
* * *
When Finch arrived at the Wale Street police station, he understood right away what Brookman had meant by the city police being hard pushed to cope.
In contrast to the mortuary, the station proper was a riot of human activity. There were several handcuffed and boisterous drunks and pub brawlers, some with battered faces, being booked in. There was blood splattered over the parquet floor and up the whitewashed walls. The desk sergeant was having to y
ell to maintain order.
One man, with several front teeth knocked out, writhed and kicked at his captors like a snared animal. He was wrestled to the ground by three policemen. A truncheon was held fast across his throat.
As Finch was led down the corridor, he could hear more shouting. To the back of the station were the cells. He could see hands grabbing at the bars, rattling them.
Finch walked on past a pair of battered doors, which had the names ‘Interview Room 1’ and ‘Interview Room 2’ stencilled upon them.
The young policeman showed Finch into the room opposite, which turned out to be Brookman’s office. It was somewhat tatty, airless and with the desk piled high with papers. Though it had a window, it backed onto an alleyway. Dust danced in the few beams of sunlight that crept in from on high. The cork pin-board on the wall was an explosion of notices.
“Come in, Captain,” gestured Brookman, breaking off a discussion with the corporal from the mortuary. “Come in.”
The corporal promptly exited. Finch noticed a red-crowned peaked cap on the hat stand. An army NCO appeared. His khaki uniform was adorned with white webbing and an MFP armband.
Brookman introduced him as Staff Sergeant Harmison of the Military Foot Police. He was a well-built man of about 35 years of age whose bent nose and close-cropped hair lent him the air of a boxer.
Unexpectedly, the sergeant saluted, with an emphatic: “Sah!”
“Sergeant Harmison has been briefed on the particulars of the Cox case and will be carrying it forward.”
“Hear you were a friend of the deceased. My condolences, sah!” barked Harmison.
His accent was London. North, Finch thought. He nodded his acceptance. It was too complicated to redefine ‘friend’.
“You’ve got the post mortem results?” asked Finch of Brookman.
“Not yet. Krajicek will be over in a while. But I thought you’d be interested to know there’s been a development.”
“A development?”
“A witness has come forward.”
Harmison jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder.
“The cabbie … a darkie.”
Harmison led Finch across the corridor and through the door marked ‘Interview Room 2’. It was a miserable, stale, windowless pit, lit only by a dim bulb. The man sitting at the table was equally forlorn. He was Cape Coloured, that mélange of black, white, even Malay – legacy of the Dutch East India company’s imported slaves – that had come to constitute a race of its very own.
No Ordinary Killing Page 10