Present Darkness (33 page)

“Shh … quiet now. I need to think.” Mason got a chair from the table and placed it directly in front of Emmanuel. He sat with his arms resting across the top rail, the Browning hanging loose in his right hand. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Lenny’s friend.”

“Don’t know.”

“Bullshit. She’s at Clearwater. I’ll stake my life on it.”

“You mean you’ll stake Leonard’s life on it,” Emmanuel said. “After the Pretoria police dig up that orchard he’s the one who’s going to swing. And you’ll swing with him, Crow.”

Crow’s hand shook, sent the gun barrel jigging right to left. “I’m clean. Getting those girls was Lenny’s idea. He kept them to himself.”

So Alice was right. More than one girl had occupied the cell before her.

“Shut it,” Mason said. “Cooper is lying but not well enough to fool me. Ten years working undercover, I can sniff out a liar blindfolded.”

“Is that why you read over my files … to catch me out in a lie? And how many times did that happen, Lieutenant? Not once, I’m guessing. I’m from Sophiatown, I was born lying to men like you.”

A flicker of emotion crossed Mason’s face. Fear, followed by the determination to export that fear to others.

“Clever will get you just so far, Cooper. You are in my house now. It’s not like any place you’ve been before.” He nudged the tip of his shoe into Leonard’s ribs. “Get a chair and sit next to me, Lenny.” He waited for his son to take a seat directly opposite Shabalala. “Where did you first encounter these two men?”

“By the river fence. They ran down to the bank and we chased them.”

Mason nodded. “They moved from the mountains where the torch lights were shining, down to the river and then back in the direction of the farmhouse.”

“I never thought of it that way but, ja, that’s what they did.”

Emmanuel caught the moment the geography clicked in Mason’s head and could think of no way to undo it. Shabalala brushed dirt from his trousers, pretending a calm that neither of them felt.

“You came on foot from Clearwater,” Mason said with undisguised pleasure. “Somebody that side saw the whore and you came to the rescue. You risked your skin and the Brewer girl’s statement for a tramp that nobody will miss, not even her clients. What kind of a fool does that?”

Emmanuel shrugged off the question.

Mason rubbed the stubble on his chin. “In all the rush I forgot to make the proper introductions. This is Leonard Hammond. My son. His mother and I never married so he kept her name. He gets his looks from her and his height from me. From both of us he inherited some very bad habits. Tell Sergeant Cooper and this kaffir the ways that you have erred.”

Lenny hesitated and received a fatherly nod from Mason. “I drink, I steal, I take the Lord’s name in vain, I lie, I fight, I bare false witness, I … I …”

“Come. Don’t be shy. Tell Cooper the worst of your habits … the one that gives you the most pleasure.”

A second hesitation on Lenny’s end prompted a second nod of approval from Mason. Emmanuel wondered where this conversation was leading.

“I take women off the street and teach them the error of their ways.”

“All kinds of women?”

“No. Just the bad ones.”

Mason turned to Emmanuel while he talked. “Tell me about the woman Cooper danced with at the rail yards. Was she one of the good ones?”

Emmanuel tried to keep a neutral expression and knew he’d failed when Mason smiled.

“A mix of both,” Leonard said. “She danced like one of the cheap ones but up close she smelled of roses and talked like a girl who does music lessons. I wanted to bring her home.”

“Of course you did,” Mason said. “You found a diamond in the rubble and wanted to keep it. Unfortunately that gem already belonged to Cooper. He thrashed the white off your skin when you laid hands on her.”

“If he hadn’t surprised me I would have had him.”

“No, that would not have happened. Do you want to know why?” Mason continued before Leonard replied. “A man will fight, give everything he has, to protect what he loves. Is that not so, Cooper?”

Emmanuel shrugged stiff shoulders and heard the breath sucking in and out of his lungs. He dared not talk for fear that he’d beg Mason to leave Davida out of their business, to forget that she ever existed. Or worse still, that he’d threaten acts of violence he was in no position to dish out. Either way he’d sound weak.

Mason’s smile widened. “Yes, I thought it was something like that. You’d kill for that girl … almost did, in fact. And I know where she is. Figured it out just now.”

Emmanuel said nothing.

“
Ja
, really. See, I did my homework. I asked around about your private life and got back zero. What I do know is that you’re not the type to fuck and run, not least with a woman like that one. You’d take the night and then steal the morning in bed with your coloured bit.”

“Interesting theory,” Emmanuel said.

Mason laughed, discovering a sense of humour. “Oh, I’m on the money. I see the truth in your eyes. There’s no hiding it, Cooper. Your woman is in that Houghton house … probably waiting for you right now with the sheets turned down.”

Emmanuel turned to Shabalala, seeking a guideline. He could not control his expression. He’d lost the ability to hide the fear and rage churning inside. His brain had taken the long hike back to Sophiatown days when his father, vengeful and self-pitying drunk that he was, smashed the chairs and plates that he’d neglected to break the week before.

Shabalala turned, gave him a calm face and deliberately looked to the window. Emmanuel did the same. Moon-shadows streaked across the dusty glass. Beyond the glass, black sky and stars.

“There’s something out there,” Crow said. “We can’t hear it but the kaffir can.”

“Rubbish,” Mason said. “Cooper and his friend came here alone. Heroes don’t need back-up. Isn’t that so, Sergeant?”

A second piece of gravel hit the window, too loud to be windblown, too deliberate to be ignored. Crow swivelled and took aim at the glass. Leonard pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade; both of them skittish as alley cats.

“Go out there, Crow,” Mason said. “Check the house perimeter and report back.”

“Yes, sir.” Crow slid the revolver into the waistband of his pants and headed out. The front door opened the same time as a stone hit the window, fracturing the glass. Cracks fanned across the surface to make a webbed pattern.

“How many out there?” Mason asked Emmanuel.

“Don’t know. It must be the wind.” For once he spoke the God’s honest truth, which sounded like a lie.

“Answer or I’ll gut the kaffir like a bush pig.” Leonard stood and pushed his knife to Shabalala’s jugular vein.

30.

A rock smashed a hole in the fractured window, showering shards of glass into the room. Fragments pinged against the table and the hardwood floors. Leonard pitched forward, stuck in the neck by a splinter. Shabalala pushed the couch backward to avoid the knife blade. The sofa flipped. Emmanuel hit the floor, raising dust. He sucked in a breath, aware of bodies slamming and rolling to his right. A thin whistling sound came from outside the broken window. Animal heads stared from the wall like high court judges sitting on the bench. He had no idea what had just happened.

A hand slapped the side of his head. He sat up, caught a glimpse of Mason standing ashen-faced in the doorway. The fear and sorrow that Zweigman had seen hiding behind the Lieutenant’s face now seemed to leak from every pore of him. Emmanuel swivelled right to follow Mason’s gaze. Leonard sprawled across the ground with his body pinned under Shabalala’s weight. A knife handle protruded from his chest, the blade stuck deep into his sternum. Blood leaked across his shirt. His blank blue eyes stared at the ceiling.

“Go after the father, Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “The son has passed over.”

Emmanuel followed Mason into the house’s dark interior. The journey led through the kitchen to the top of the stairs that led to the cellar. All light died on the third rung down. He crouched and crossed the threshold of the concrete cell. He jagged to the left and in the direction of the discarded Webley revolver.

Mason’s voice floated from the pitch black. “My boy is the reason I read through your files, Cooper. I wanted to know how a white kaffir from the slums made it to the detective branch instead of checking in and out of prison. How did you slither out of that hole? Why didn’t Leonard find the right path? He won’t have that chance now. Your kaffir stabbed him. Took my son …”

Emmanuel could not think of anyone more deserving of being stabbed to death than Leonard. He inched across the concrete floor with both hands sweeping the surface for a touch of metal.

“Leonard tried to do good,” Mason said. “He got me the original surveyor’s map showing the boundaries between the native reserve and Lion’s Kill. The new boundaries will stand now that there’s no proof to contradict our land claim. My son got me the river.”

“He could have bribed an official at the Lands Department to lose the map like a normal person.” Emmanuel could not let that sugar-coated version of Leonard’s actions pass.

“The Brewer bitch took the map from the office, told everyone it had been misplaced. Leonard knew that she and her kaffir-lover husband were going to let the blacks from the reserve have it. If she’d done that, ‘Lions Kill’ would have turned to dust in the drought.”

“Your son beat Martha Brewer into the emergency ward and Ian Brewer into the grave for that map on the table upstairs?” Wars had been fought over access to water and cities had fallen for the lack of it. Water in a dry land had a price above rubies.

“All things considered, one murder in exchange for river frontage is a good deal,” Mason said. “Lenny understood that.”

“Leonard got what he deserved. It’s just a pity he died so fast,” Emmanuel said and heard Mason suck in a breath as if he’d been hit in the gut.

“I’m going to kill you and your friends, Cooper. Afterwards I will drive to that house in Houghton and introduce myself to your woman. Not a polite introduction, you understand. I will share the present darkness of my soul with her and leave her in pieces.” Mason’s feet scuffed the floor as he moved closer.

Emmanuel blocked images of Davida and Rebekah from his mind, blocked out the fear. His left hand extended and touched a handle, then the metal barrel of his Webley. He righted the gun in a two-handed grip; arms locked in firing position.

“You’ve got nothing to say?” Mason’s voice came from directly ahead. “Are you afraid she’ll enjoy my …”

Emmanuel squeezed off two shots and heard a grunt, then the sound of Mason’s body drop. Footsteps pounded the cellar stairs and the light from a lantern cut through the gloom. Mason lay on the floor. Blood trickled from two wounds on the left side of his chest. “Let me live.” The Lieutenant grinned, enjoying a private joke with God or the Devil. “I promise not to tell anyone about her.”

Emmanuel pressed the muzzle to Mason’s heart and pulled the trigger once more. Shabalala moved into the room and the light from his lantern grew brighter. Emmanuel reached into Mason’s pocket and removed Cassie’s statement before blood soaked the paper. He gave it to the Zulu detective. They walked out in silence.

31.

Emmanuel, Shabalala, Julie and Zweigman trekked the moonlit veldt and came to the edge of the river. Behind them, lost in the great stretch of aloe and thorn trees, stood the Lion’s Kill homestead, home to two corpses inside and Crow, lying broken at the bottom of the braai pit. Zweigman and Julie had seen Alice safe to the native reserve and doubled back to Lions Kill armed with a slingshot and cunning. They’d risked their lives so that he and Shabalala might defeat the enemy. And they had.

Shabalala hesitated then said, “We cannot carry the blood of the dead and wounded with us. We must wash before going back to the world of ordinary things.”

They had all brushed up against death to varying degrees. He and Shabalala had killed with a knife and a gun. Zweigman had bloodied his hands examining Mason and Leonard to confirm their departed status and Julie had driven Crow into the braai pit under a hail of stones.

“We can do that,” Emmanuel said.

He felt certain that Shabalala recognised the dangerous pleasure he’d taken in killing Mason and thought it possible that the Zulu detective had taken equal satisfaction in killing Lenny. The killer in both of them had to be washed off and left behind. They undressed together, stripped down to cotton undershorts and, in Julie’s case, a threadbare vest and knickers. The water ran silver around Emmanuel’s ankles and swirled to his thighs and chest the deeper he walked. He dived. The current rinsed the stain of Mason’s blood from his hands. Mason wanted the river. Now he was part of it. Emmanuel broke the surface and gulped warm air. Shabalala and Zweigman bathed either side of him, the water beading on their skin.

“Look,” Julie whispered.

Two lionesses walked along the bank with the grace of wild-born things. They crouched and lapped at the water, the river’s silver surface reflecting in their eyes. Thirst extinguished, they turned and disappeared into the bushland.

“No lions on Lion’s Kill, you said.” Emmanuel gave Shabalala a look. Legend had it that Shangaan hunters could track a drop of rain in a thunderstorm.