Present Darkness (67 page)

“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.

“There aren’t any lions,” Julie said. “There haven’t been any since before I was born.”

*

Emmanuel undressed in the candlelight and climbed into bed. Davida turned like a flower seeking the sun and kissed him on the mouth, drawing him closer. He tasted mint on her tongue and spread his palms flat against her back. They fit together, skin to skin and heart to heart.

“You smell of dirt and rain,” she said.

“I washed in a river,” he said, though washing and actually getting clean were two separate things.

“Why?” She tangled her fingers through his hair and shook loose grains of sand. “Did you get dirty?”

“Yes,” he said. He couldn’t explain. To truly understand, Davida would have had to be there, standing on the moonlit riverbank with Shabalala, Zweigman and Julie.

Bed springs creaked and Emmanuel smiled against the warmth of Davida’s neck. He was washed clean in the river and reborn in her arms. This perfect state would not last; could not. He knew it. The present darkness that Mason talked of had the country in a grip that would not let it go. Now had to be enough.

He smoothed Davida’s hair against the pillow. He loved the contrast of dark and light created by her cinnamon skin against the cream sheets. Moonbeams glanced the white candles on the bedside table, the yellow flowers in the vase on the windowsill and the bronze of Davida’s mouth. So many colours together, he thought, and every one of them beautiful.

EPILOGUE

TWO DAYS LATER

Emmanuel smoothed the newspaper flat, careful not to disturb Rebekah who slept pressed to his chest. He skimmed the headline,
‘Four Bodies Found on Northern Transvaal Farm,’
and read the article.

… The Pretoria police yesterday unearthed the remains of four unidentified women buried on an isolated farm outside of Rust de Winter. Acting on a tip-off from a neighbour, the police raided the property and made the grim discovery. Two men with long criminal histories, Leonard Hammond and Danny Crow, were killed during the raid. A senior policeman, Lieutenant Walter Mason, was shot at close range and died at the scene. The Police Commissioner praised the brave actions of the Pretoria Detectives Branch and the constables who helped search the grounds.

Once again the South African police force has proved its worth. A brave man, Lieutenant Walter Mason, was lost during the operation but good ultimately defeated evil. Let us take time over the Christmas break to remember those who work so tirelessly to keep our country safe.

A black and white photograph of two Pretoria detectives accompanied the write-up. In the photo, the detectives leaned on shovels with their shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. Sweat patches under their armpits proved that South Africa’s policemen were determined to restore order after the chaos.

Emmanuel remembered it differently. In reality it was Shabalala who’d located the shallow graves. Shabalala had insisted that the shovels be put aside and the bodies uncovered by hand so as to show respect for the victims. In the end, the truth mattered little. The local police got the glory while he and Shabalala walked away from three dead white men with no public explanation necessary. No charges would be laid. No internal police investigation would ever reveal the poison inside the police force’s own ranks.

Thanks to Colonel van Niekerk.

“I’ll fix it,” the Dutch Colonel said when Emmanuel took the precaution of calling his boss to report Mason’s death. “The last thing the Commissioner needs is a dirty detective thrown onto his doorstep before Christmas. I’ll call him. Explain that the lieutenant he praised in the newspapers a few days ago was part of criminal gang that kidnapped and murdered women.”

The pleasure in van Niekerk’s voice was sharp: the thrill of gaining the upper hand an unexpected Christmas present. The Police Commissioner now owed him a debt. A substantial one. And the Pretoria detective branch would not forget who threw them the biggest case of their careers.

Emmanuel touched Rebekah’s head, felt her silky hair and fragile bones. He remembered Lion’s Kill … He closed his eyes and he was back in the grim yard where the noon sun beat down and the windmill creaked. Black sedans and blue police vans choked the driveway. A mortuary van idled at the front door. Four mortuary attendants carried out the bloated bodies of Mason and Lenny on stretchers. Flies fed on the dried blood of their wounds.

Shabalala stood in the shade of a grapefruit tree with a human skull cupped in his palms. “Four,” he said when Emmanuel joined him in the orchard. “Their bones are scattered all around. The graves were shallow and the animals dug them up.”

That could have been Davida …
the thought hit Emmanuel hard, took the breath from his lungs.
Those bones could belong to my woman, my wife. Or my little girl, fifteen years on.

“Are you all right?” a voice came from far and near at the same time.

The soft exhalation of Rebekah’s breath tickled Emmanuel’s neck. He opened his eyes. Davida stood an arm’s-length away, alive and radiant in the morning sunlight. His girls were safe and Lion’s Kill was just another place to forget.

Davida’s gaze flicked to the newspaper. “You were there,” she said.

“Yes. I was.”

He’d decided to tell Davida the truth and to keep lies for the outside world. This situation, however, called for some omissions. The identity of the man who’d grabbed her at Fatty’s club and how close she’d come to the horrors of Lion’s Kill, he would keep a secret.

“Those poor women.” Davida read the story over Emmanuel’s shoulder. “You did a good thing. You stopped those men from hurting more people.”

“That’s what I have to remember,” Emmanuel said. “The good.”

He focused on all the things that went right.

There was Alice, rescued and then restored by Zweigman’s skilled hands. Tough, unbreakable Alice. The girl had more guts than any soldier Emmanuel had ever known. Dropping her back into her old life felt wrong: a waste of potential and a missed opportunity.

“She would make a wonderful nurse,” Zweigman said when Alice woke early to help mix a solution of milk and honey for the Singleton children’s infected eyes.