A Beautiful Place to Die Part 13

The lieutenant took a long drag of his cigarette. "That's twice you've turned the questioning around onto us, Cooper. Once with d.i.c.kie and now with me. Must be force of habit, hey?"

"Must be," Emmanuel said, and upped the likelihood of being found out for withholding evidence. Piet Lapping was coolheaded and clever.

"So, you finally turned up." It was Paul Pretorius, looming in the doorway to the police cells.

"I was out working the case," Emmanuel said. The spit-and-polish soldier swaggered into the room and set himself up behind Hansie's desk.

"Tell me," Paul said, and leaned back in Hansie's chair, square jaw jutting out. "Why are all the suspects on your list whites?"

Emmanuel looked at Lieutenant Lapping. Who was in charge of this investigation, him or the tin soldier?

"Answer the question." The words barely made it out from between Piet's clenched teeth. Having Paul Pretorius along for the ride wasn't Lapping's idea. Some bigwig must have pulled strings.

"You think Jews are proper whites?" Emmanuel threw the question out and waited to see if the bait was taken.

"No," Paul replied without hesitation. "They're different from us, but we need their brains and their money to build a new South Africa. We don't have to worry about them mixing blood with us or the kaffirs because it's against their religion. Blood purity is part of their thinking."

"Are they the chosen people?" Emmanuel wondered out loud, and made a close study of the captain's second-born son. The man's barrel-like chest was puffed up like a bellows.

"They may have been the chosen people in the olden days, but it's our turn now. We've been given a covenant by G.o.d to rule over this land and keep it pure." Paul Pretorius leaned across the desk as if it were his own personal pulpit and continued his sermon. "In years to come, the world will look to us for guidance. You mark my words. We will be a beacon."

"Guidance in all areas or just-"

"Detective Sergeant Cooper!" Piet Lapping couldn't contain his frustration. "I said answer the question. How did you compile your list of suspects?"

d.i.c.kie and Paul were easy to distract but Piet kept his pebble eyes on the prize: relevant information. If Emmanuel were caught out, it would be by Lieutenant Piet Lapping.

"Preliminary inquiry found that Zweigman and Rooke both had motive. The captain suspected Zweigman of crimes under the Immorality Act and was known to have reprimanded him. Rooke blamed the captain for his arrest and imprisonment. Mrs. Pretorius supplied me with the names. Both suspects provided alibis."

"What about this man King?" Piet asked. "Was there bad blood between him and Captain Pretorius?"

"Not that I could find. They seemed to have liked each other. The captain even built his own bush hut on King's farm."

"Rubbish." Paul Pretorius leaned farther across the desk. "My father had nothing in common with that Englishman. They hardly knew each other."

"That doesn't change the fact that your father had a deal with King to retain some of the old family farm."

"Rubbish again." Paul waved the information away with a flick of his hand. "Anything King says about my pa is an out-and-out lie."

"Okay." Lieutenant Lapping ground his cigarette out. "Let's leave that for a moment. Anyone else on your list, Cooper?"

Emmanuel stopped himself from rubbing the lump at the side of his head. At the top of his personal list was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who'd smashed his skull, p.i.s.sed on him, and then stolen the evidence.

"I'm looking at another lead. A Peeping Tom who molested some coloured women a year or so back."

"Who was it?"

"Don't know yet," Emmanuel replied. "It's possible this man killed the captain to keep his secret hidden."

Paul snorted out loud. "No man, no white man in Jacob's Rest would interfere with coloured women. That sort of thing might happen in Durban and Jo'burg, but not here. Have you questioned any native or coloured men?"

"None of them presented as suspects," Emmanuel replied evenly.

"They're not going to hand themselves over." Paul spoke with blunt force. "You have to go in there and show them who's boss and then they'll start talking."

"Okay..." Lieutenant Lapping tried to keep the discussion on the rails.

"No, man, it's not okay." The seams of his blue army uniform stretched under the strain of Paul Pretorius's muscled bulk. "With your help, my brothers and I could shake the investigation up. Get information flowing instead of following up some stupid rumor put around by the coloureds to shift blame onto an innocent white man."

Piet pulled another cigarette from the pack and took his time lighting it before he answered. "You and your brothers are the injured party, but you are not the law. I am the law. Understand?"

"Ja." Paul looked almost sulky. For a soldier he didn't take orders very well.

"Good," said Piet, and took a drag of his cigarette. "When the time comes to get your brothers involved in the investigation, I'll let you know."

The lump on Emmanuel's head throbbed back to life. Giving the Pretorius boys a slice of the investigation would create the potential for disaster. Did the lieutenant support the idea of a family vendetta or was he just trying to keep Paul and his powerful backers on his side?

"You think there's something in the pervert story?" Piet asked.

Enough to make two angry coloured men threaten violence in an attempt to protect their women. The stalker was no storybook phantom.

"The new laws make men with particular appet.i.tes nervous," Emmanuel said. "Public humiliation and jail time are good enough motives for murder. Even here in Jacob's Rest."

"Any political leads?"

"Haven't looked into that yet. The bus boycotts and pa.s.s burnings haven't made much of an impact out here."

"Not yet." Piet was grim. "This resistance campaign is like a f.u.c.king disease. The whole country is set to go up in flames. There is nothing the comrades won't do to crush the government. They want a revolution. They want to destroy our way of-"

The door to the police station crashed open and the Pretorius men washed into the small room on a wave of crumpled black suits and beer fumes. Shabalala remained out on the porch, sober and impa.s.sive.

"Howzit? Howzit?" Henrick slumped against the edge of Hansie's desk and addressed no one in particular. His suntanned face was mottled with patches of red brought on by alternating bouts of crying and beer drinking.

"Detective Sergeant..." It was Hansie, lobotomized by a few drinks too many. "You find anything? You find anything good at King's?"

"Nothing," Piet Lapping said, and looked over at Emmanuel while he said it. All information was going out through the Security Branch, and the Security Branch alone.

Emmanuel kept quiet. He needed time to work out the calendar while Piet and d.i.c.kie crash-tackled their way through the political side of the investigation.

"You didn't find anything, Detective?" It was Louis, the only Pretorius male not gla.s.sy-eyed and slack-jawed.

"Nothing," Piet said.

Emmanuel shifted uncomfortably under Louis's continued scrutiny. Despite Piet's definitive answer, the boy was waiting for him to reply. He shook his head and made sure to keep direct eye contact.

Out of the corner of his eye Emmanuel glimpsed Shabalala moving quickly off the veranda and onto Piet Retief Street. There was the sound of a scuffle and a loud cry.

"Captain..." a drunken voice called out. "Captain! Please!"

"What the f.u.c.k is that?" Paul was on his feet, ready to play the commando.

"Captain. Captain. Please!"

The Pretorius men pressed out of the building in a rush. Emmanuel followed close behind and saw Harry, the old soldier, in the middle of Piet Retief Street. Shabalala was trying to guide him away, but the gray-coated man refused to move.

"Captain," he continued to bay. "Captain! Please...My letters..."

Paul and Henrick made it first down the stairs. One push on the chest and the skeletal old man fell back onto the hard surface of the road with his arms and legs askew.

"We buried my pa this morning." Henrick bent low over the crumpled figure. "Hold your tongue. Hear me?"

"My letters..." The warning pa.s.sed Harry by. He struggled to his feet and continued toward the police station. "Captain. Please. Come out."

Erich grabbed the addled soldier's face. "My father's dead. Now shut up."

Emmanuel pushed past Piet and d.i.c.kie, who watched the action with bemused smiles. Drinking and fighting were natural Sat.u.r.day-night activities and getting between white men and a feeble-minded coloured one wasn't worth the effort.

"Shut up." Paul grabbed the old soldier by the lapels and shook him like a dry cornstalk. Johannes and Erich joined their brother, and the medals on Harry's coat rattled a discordant tune as they pushed him from one to the other. Louis hung back.

Emmanuel approached the phalanx and felt Shabalala move with him. They shouldered their way into the circle and stood on either side of the old man.

"What you doing?" Erich's blood was high and ready to boil over.

"He's crazy," Emmanuel said quietly. "Constable Shabalala and I are going to take him home. His wife will do a much better job of beating the s.h.i.t out of him than you ever will."

"Home." Harry grabbed Emmanuel's jacket sleeve. "Not home. No. Not home."

"See?" Emmanuel said. "He'd rather stay here with you than go home to his wife."

"Not home." Harry's thin voice went up an octave. "Not home."

Paul laughed first, followed by his brothers.

"He sounds like an old woman, hey?" Erich imitated the sh.e.l.l-shocked old man. "Not home. Not home."

The laughter stepped up a notch and Emmanuel and Shabalala moved slowly out of the circle with Harry between them. They went down Piet Retief Street. They kept their pace measured and deliberate. Walking. Just walking home.

"Go back to your wife," Henrick called after them, his mood lightened by the violence and the old man's comic turn. "You lucky this time, Harry."

"Captain..." Harry whimpered softly. "Captain. Please."

"Here." Shabalala pointed to a small path that ran along one side of the police station. "Go here."

They slipped onto the path and moved briskly until they were out on the veldt. Harry turned back toward the station, his palsied hands held out like a beggar's.

"Captain," he said. "My letters."

Shabalala picked the old soldier up and raced along the narrow kaffir path. Emmanuel struggled to keep up with the black policeman who worked fast to put distance between them and the volatile Pretorius brothers. Guard dogs snarled and barked at a perimeter fence as they slipped past houses lit by the gentle flame of gas lanterns. Night began to fall.

Shabalala stopped at a rickety wooden gate and put the old man back on his feet. A sheen of sweat on the black constable's brow was the only indication he'd done more than stroll from the police station.

"This is his house," Shabalala said. "You must go in and give him to his wife."

"You're coming with me."

"Captain or Lieutenant Uys go in with the coloured people. Not me."

"The captain's dead," Emmanuel said. "Tonight, there's only you and me."

Shabalala nodded and followed him in through the gate and past a narrow vegetable patch that ran the length of the yard and pressed up against the back stoep of the house. Emmanuel pounded on the door.

"The letters." Harry started toward the gate. "The letters."

"Get him," Emmanuel said as the sound of footsteps approached the back door. "Police. We have Harry."

The door opened and Angie, the old soldier's wife, stepped out. She wore a brown cotton housecoat double st.i.tched along the collar and sleeves to reinforce the fraying material. Her dark crinkly hair was pulled up and stretched taut across the curve of huge plastic rollers.

"Where did you find him?" she asked curtly. Harry went walking almost every day. Most of the time he found his way home without trouble.

"Outside the police station," Emmanuel said.

"The letters," Harry wailed. "The letters."

Angie crossed the stoep in five quick steps. "You talk about the letters? You say about the letters, you stupid man?"

Emmanuel rested a warning hand on her shoulder, then withdrew it. "He's had a hit or two already. He doesn't need any more."

She saw the bruised flesh around her husband's left eye. "Who hit you, Harry?"

"I want the letters," Harry said. "I want the letters."

She addressed Shabalala. "Who hit my Harry?"

"Madubele. He and his brothers."

Angie took her husband's arm and led him into the small cinder-block house. She looked back toward the gate, fearful of what lay beyond it in the gathering darkness.

"Inside. Quick," she said to Harry, who shuffled in ahead of her.

Emmanuel followed without an invitation.

He signaled to Shabalala, who reluctantly stepped into the house and stayed with his back pressed against the closed door.

The cinder-block house consisted of two plain rooms joined together by a cracked seam of mud and plaster. The kitchen, a collection of mismatched pots and plates on a chipped sideboard, sat directly opposite a curtained alcove that contained a double bed and a small chest of drawers with a beveled mirror.

They were in the sitting area: four wooden chairs and a moth-eaten love seat that must have been transported by sea and bullock train from the mother country to the outer edges of southern Africa decades before. A round table with the diameter of a tin bucket displayed two photos in tarnished frames: one of Harry as a young soldier bound for the glory of the battlefield, the other a family portrait of Harry and Angie with a trio of white-skinned girls. The picture was identical in setup to the one he'd seen in the captain's house, a family group formally arranged against a plain backdrop. The traveling photographer had done a good trade in Jacob's Rest.

Harry sat on the edge of the double bed, his palsied hands resting unsteadily on his knees. Angie pulled the curtain closed around them. The clink of campaign medals was followed by the metal sigh of the springs as the old soldier lay down to rest.