Present Darkness (57 page)

“All right,” Emmanuel relented. “But no knives or guns.”

“You take your gun,” Fix said. “I will bring a knife. A small one. Just for show. That is fair, no?”

Zweigman gave a small groan and Shabalala stared at a crack in the linoleum floor with a blank expression. Emmanuel saw beneath the mask. The Zulu detective disagreed with the decision to include Fix Mapela in the investigation. They’d already used up a week’s worth of violence and intimidation when questioning Andy Franklin earlier. With Mason poking about Emmanuel’s private life he did not have the time or the inclination to explain the complex web of childhood dreams and poverty that tied him to a township gangster. Besides, Fix was right. Bakwena would answer their questions with Fix in the room.

“Let’s go,” Emmanuel said.

“We will take my car.” Fix clapped hands like a child invited to a party. “In matters of business it is best to arrive armed and in style!”

21.

Painted heavenly blue, the ‘Eternal Rest’ funeral home comprised a stout brick hall and a long wood-working shed for the construction of the simple pine boxes in which most of the township dead were buried. The smell of sawdust and the clank of hammers reached the street.

Fix led the way into the main building. His trade made him well acquainted with township funeral homes. Some gangsters got public farewells with a casket and flowers, others a shallow grave on vacant land with only the sky to say goodbye.

“In here.” Fix pushed open a door to a stifling hot office with a polished cross hanging on the back wall. A broad-shouldered black man with a scrim of white hair clinging to the back of his skull sat behind a desk, reading a newspaper. All the major newspapers in fact: English language, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa.

“Mr Mapela.” The man stood up and tugged his waistcoat straight. “One of your colleagues has passed and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“No, no.” Fix grinned. “I bring you three live friends with questions in their mouths.”

Bakwena’s attention shifted from Emmanuel to Zweigman and then to Shabalala, as if mentally fitting their bodies into the right sized caskets. He gave up trying to connect these three, disparate men and said, “I will be happy to answer whatever questions you have regarding the passing of a loved one. Put your minds at ease, gentlemen. Eternal Rest provides only the best service.”

Fix snorted. “Who do you think they’ve come to bury—their sister?”

Bakwena forced a smile and indicated a row of seats in front of the desk. “Be seated, gentleman. I will help if I can.”

“Very wise,” Fix said. “To refuse my friends is to refuse me.”

Bakwena sat and linked his fingers together. He nodded, giving permission for the questioning to begin.

“What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?” Emmanuel asked, having seen a dented black car parked outside Eternal Rest and witnessed first-hand Bakwena’s overly polite manner. White men in authority generally lapped up this “good native” drivel and the prison guard was no exception. The funeral director pursed his lips to consider the question.

“The name is unfamiliar to me,” he said in his deeply timbered voice.

A hard, metal click broke the silence that followed Bakwena’s denial. Emmanuel glanced sideways. Fix wiped the blade of a flick knife against the leg of his pants and then proceeded to dig dirt from under his fingernails with the tip. He remained relaxed, an apex predator passing time before a kill. Zweigman blew out a small breath, stunned by the sudden, subtle escalation of tension. Shabalala studied Bakwena’s face, probing for the truth.

“I’ll ask you again, just to be sure,” Emmanuel said. “What’s your connection to Aaron Shabalala?”

Bakwena breathed deeply and looked down at his linked fingers. “I am sorry, gentlemen. I don’t know the Shabalala of whom you speak.”

Emmanuel pulled out his notebook at roughly the same time that Fix lunged across the desk and slammed Bakwena’s right hand flat to the wood surface. The motion sent newspapers scattering across the floor. Sweat broke out on the funeral director’s brow. The Fix effect was instant.

“You lie to my brother, you lie to me. It is the same thing and liars, they make me nervous.” Fix held the knife at eye level and the blade danced from side to side in his agile fingers. “When I am nervous, I make mistakes.”

The point of the blade sliced down between Bakwena’s splayed thumb and index finger. Fix stabbed the point into the surface of the desk between the next two fingers and then the next. Metal found flesh on the last stab and blood leaked from the cut. Bakwena yelped in pain: a strange, high sound coming from a man of such solid build.

“You see?” Fix gestured to the blood. “That is the kind of mistake that happens when I am nervous.”

Zweigman shuffled forward but Emmanuel raised his hand, signalling him to stop. There would be time to doctor the wound after Bakwena told the truth about knowing Aaron and not before. Besides, Fix never left a job half-done. Calling him off was nearly impossible. Emmanuel leaned across the desktop and noticed that Shabalala had not moved an inch or flinched away as a result of Mapela’s attack.

“Last chance to tell me everything before my brother trims your fingers for you,” he said. Fix laid the flat of the knife blade against the first and then the second knuckle of Bakwena’s index finger, then flipped it so the sharp edge touched bare skin.

“I hardly know the boy.” The funeral director blinked away the trickle of sweat running into his eyes. “We met only a few times.”

“Go on.”

“He was a new member of the Call to Action Group. I thought him too young to join but the others said we needed new blood and fresh minds. He came to three of our planning meetings.”

“What does this action group plan on doing?” The name suggested something rash.

“Fighting fire with fire,” Bakwena said. “The National Party and the Dutch only respect what they fear. We have been too peace loving and it has gained us nothing. If we resist, the government will take notice of our grievances. To win this fight with the government, we must be an army. We must go to war.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never been in the army or gone to war,” Emmanuel said. A battle plan on paper and an actual battlefield strewn with disassembled bodies were only distantly related: one remained a neat idea while the other reflected a flesh and blood cost. Still, he could hardly argue the point. Fix had loosened Bakwena’s tongue in minutes. Violence worked.

“What exactly were your plans?” Emmanuel asked. Action took effort while talk cost nothing. The Call To Action Group might have been merely a forum for complaints.

The funeral director squirmed and clamped his lips together to seal in a confession. Fix flipped the knife into the air, caught it on the fly and stabbed the blade at Bakwena’s right eye. The tip stopped inches from the dark pupil. Bakwena’s eyeball reflected in the silver surface.

Emmanuel tensed but sat still. He breathed. He let the knife do its work. Neither Shabalala nor Zweigman moved.

“A train line supplying the gold pits … not a passenger train, you understand?” The funeral director remained glassy-eyed and unblinking. “We wanted to strike fear into the government and the rich barons who own the mines. We weren’t going to harm the mothers or their children, just destroy the equipment that keeps the white man in power.”

“Clean fights don’t exist,” Emmanuel said. “Somebody always gets hurt.”

“Aaron was there when you talked of destroying trains?” Shabalala asked. The penalty for treason was life imprisonment with only annual visits from loved ones.

“He came to the planning meeting on Friday night. We studied a map and made a list of places to destroy the track.”

Fix withdrew the knife and tucked away the blade. “Heavy business,” he said. “Kicking the white man in the wallet. I like it.”

Bakwena wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and instantly soaked the thin cotton. “Better to kick the white man there than to kill his women and children,” he said.

Shabalala leaned across the desk edge so the funeral director had no choice but to meet him eye to eye. “Why would the boy join a group such as yours? He is from a good family with a good mother and father.”

“It was because of the father that he joined,” Bakwena explained. “The white hospital refused to treat his father’s lung sickness even though they have many machines and empty beds. The father offered money but the doctors sent him away. Now the father is dying far from home.”

“A great hurt made worse …” Fix mused. “That is the white man’s way.”

“This explains Aaron’s weak alibi,” Emmanuel said. “Telling the truth meant putting everyone else at the planning meeting in the dock for treason. Aaron limited the danger to himself.”

Would Bakwena have done the same?
Emmanuel wondered.

“I understand,” the Zulu detective replied. “He stayed quiet to save the others from prison.”

“How committed are you to the revolution?” Emmanuel asked Bakwena.

“The revolution is my life’s work.” The funeral director’s rich voice was perfectly suited to giving church sermons and delivering fiery speeches from the political stage. “I will not rest till every black African is given equal rights in all things. I am not alone in this. There are many, many more who feel as I do.”

“Good,” Emmanuel said. “You have a chance, right now, to turn your words into actions. Go to the Sophiatown police station and make a formal statement. Tell them that Aaron Shabalala came to your house on Friday night at around 9.30 and stayed for an hour. That’s all it needs to be. Sixty minutes. Give him an alibi.”

Bakwena said, “My politics are well known to the police. I myself am very well known here in Sophiatown. The police will use this opportunity to question my friends, my family … everyone that I know. The Call To Action Group will be in danger.”

“Tell them that Aaron came to discuss the cost of a funeral. His father is sick. It makes sense.”

What would it take to move this armchair revolutionary from behind a desk? A miracle, Emmanuel suspected.

“The risk is too great my friend,” Bakwena said. “One wrong word and the Sophiatown police will call in the Special Branch to investigate. Every chain has a weak link. The Special Branch will find that link and break it. All of us who were at the planning meeting will be condemned to life in prison. Better to sacrifice one life than five.”

“So long as that life isn’t yours.” Andrew Franklin’s cowardice and Bakwena’s ruthless self-preservation were symptoms of their broken country. “Aaron didn’t break during questioning but you, the great leader, can’t promise the same.”

“Shabalala is strong. He will keep his silence while we work to overthrow the government. We will achieve our goal and South Africa will be free. Shabalala’s sacrifice will be remembered in the history books. I gave him my word.”

“For what it’s worth,” Emmanuel said. The funeral director had the voice of a revolutionary but lacked the necessary courage to save one of his own men from the gallows.

Fix twirled the knife, ready to end this endless talk, talk, talk. “Five minutes,” he said. “I will make this man do as you please, brother.”

“I don’t doubt it but we can’t control him once he walks into the police station.” They needed a definitive solution to Aaron’s dilemma: one that didn’t call Lieutenant Mason’s attention back onto the Brewer case. A statement quietly lodged over the Christmas break would likely go unnoticed until well after Johan Britz had had the time to unpick the police investigation.

“
Two
minutes,” Fix begged. “Our dove will sing the right tune.”

“Mr Bakwena has no power but in words,” Shabalala observed. “First he will sing for us then he will sing for whoever has him trapped in a cage. He will exchange the lives of the others to save his own. Of this I am sure.”

Emmanuel rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension there. If Lieutenant Mason or the Special Branch offered Bakwena a deal, he’d likely take it. The funeral director didn’t have the strength to pull Aaron from the fire. They had to find another way.

“The girl.” Zweigman spoke up for the first time. “She is the true weak link. We know that she lied. We have proof. Now we must get her to tell the truth.”

Mason would, sure as summer rain, present the red Mercedes Benz and Aaron’s school badge into evidence. If Cassie withdrew the statement naming Aaron, the Lieutenant had little more than a “receiving stolen goods” charge. Six months in a juvenile facility was preferable to waiting out a death sentence in the company of hard criminals. Johan Britz could whittle six months down to three if Cassie reneged on her statement.

“She’s our best chance,” Emmanuel agreed. Especially now that Andrew Franklin had confessed to their relationship.

“Shit, man.” Fix slid off Bakwena’s desk with a click of his tongue. “You are too soft. You must be tougher than your enemies and more cruel, or you will never win.”

“Remember that piece of advice when next you meet Lieutenant Mason,”
the Sergeant Major said.
“The prize for runner-up will be a free trip to the hospital or six feet under.”

“I’m going to be the last man standing,”
Emmanuel responded to the voice in his head. Aaron’s freedom and Davida and Rebekah’s safety depended on it. He gave Bakwena a last fleeting glance on the way to the door. That Shabalala’s son had lied to protect other people, no matter how unworthy they were of the sacrifice, was a small compensation and provided only cold comfort in the circumstances.