Let the Dead Lie (4 page)

'Oh...'
Lakshmi was taken aback at the answer and looked to the female elders for help.

The
woman in the pink sari lifted her face from her hands. 'Out, out, out,' she
said. 'Lakshmi, you stay.'

Aunties,
uncles and cousins left the room in single file. Parthiv tried to go with them
but was stopped dead by a pointed finger. He retreated to the edge of the cot.
Giriraj sank down by his side; both men miserable.

'You
said you were a detective.' Lakshmi frowned. 'Why did you lie to Amal and
Parthiv?'

'Habit.'

And
a longing to be a detective again. Six months ago his job was to speak for the
dead. Other occupations seemed inconsequential. He was, in his bones, still a
detective.

'Did
you get the sack from the police?' Lakshmi asked.

'I
was discharged.'

'Why?'

'I
didn't have a choice,' Emmanuel said. He'd gone up against the powerful police
Security Branch on his last official case and lived to tell the story. That
should have been enough. He should have been grateful to have his life back,
almost intact.

Lakshmi
nodded and waited for him to say more.

Emmanuel
shifted against the wooden backrest. He didn't want to remember how careless he
had been. Major van Niekerk was right when he'd said, 'Fucking with the
Security Branch out in the boondocks is one thing, Cooper. Fucking with them here
in Jo'burg where everyone can see ... that's slapping them in the face.'

And
that's what Emmanuel had done. He had maligned the most powerful
law-enforcement body in South Africa by delivering a letter to the mother of a
black man wrongly accused of murdering an Afrikaner police captain. The young
man, a member of the banned communist party, had hanged himself in his jail
cell on the eve of the trial. Or so the papers said.

'And
what was the content of this letter?' Major van Niekerk had asked Emmanuel after
calling him into his office at Marshall Square CIB in Jo'burg six months ago.
One of the cunning Dutch major's spies had alerted him to a Security Branch
investigation in which a Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper was named.

Emmanuel
had told the truth. Lying to the major was a waste of breath and time. 'I wrote
that I was sorry for her loss, that her son was innocent of the charges against
him and that he was beaten into a confession by the Security Branch.'

Van
Niekerk had absorbed the information and calculated the extent of the damage.
'That letter is enough to have you declared unfit to serve in the police force,
Cooper.'

'I
understand, Major.'

'Do
you also understand that as long as the Security Branch has that letter in
their hands they can do anything they want to you? And I can't help you.'

'Yes,'
Emmanuel had said.

He
had been careless and ungrateful. After returning from Jacob's Rest with broken
ribs and no one in custody for the murder of Captain Pretorius, the major had
shielded him from criticism and questions. He had come back to the city and
thrown that shelter away under the delusion that an unsigned letter, even one
that told the truth, could wash away the brutal aftermath of the investigation
in Jacob's Rest.

'One
other thing,' the major had said. 'There was also mention of a murder file being
sent over from the Sophia-town police.'

Sophiatown,
a chaotic jumble of brick and corrugated-iron houses and shacks just west of
Johannesburg, was home to a mix of blacks, Indians, mixed-race 'coloureds',
Chinese and poor whites. Overcrowded, poverty-stricken and violent, close-knit
and bursting with life and music, Sophiatown was an ugly and beautiful sprawl.
And until he was twelve, it was Emmanuel's home.

White
noise had roared in his ears. The sound he imagined drowning victims heard
before going under for the last time. 'Security Branch must have asked for the
police file on my mother's murder.' He was sure of it. 'They're going to use
the disciplinary hearing to make the information in the file public.'

The
police file raised awkward questions. Was Emmanuel's father the Afrikaner man
he grew up calling 'Vader', or was his father the Cape Malay owner of All Hours
Traders, where his mother had worked six days in the week?

The
major had studied a landscape painting of low green hills hanging on the beige
wall, then said, 'Security Branch are going to get you dismissed and then
they're going to get you reclassified from European to mixed race. And they're
going to do it publicly to inflict maximum damage.'

Emmanuel
knew the damage would not be limited to him. The attention drawn to the case
would taint everyone. His sister was bound to lose her teaching job at Dewfield
College, a 'European' girls' school run by 'European' staff. Major van
Niekerk's name would be dropped from promotion lists for allowing a man of
uncertain racial origins to rise above the rank of detective constable. Even
the Marshall Square detectives' branch would be open to attack. They might all
be dragged through the mud. Public humiliation and punishment was, Emmanuel
suspected, exactly what Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Security Branch wanted.

Emmanuel
knew that there was no one but himself to blame for this situation. He had
personally and with great deliberation planned a mission that even the most
naive GI could see was a clusterfuck waiting to unfold.

'I'll
take the punishment before they can hand it out,' he had said. 'I'll buy my own
discharge and request racial classification before they do.'

Van
Niekerk had mentally turned the suggestion over for a long while, then looked
at him. 'Fall on your own sword. It might work. Plus, your record will show a
voluntary discharge, not a dismissal. That might leave the door open for you
to come back when things cool down.'

Van
Niekerk's optimism had been dizzying. Neither of them would live long enough to
see the Security Branch learn to forgive and forget.

The
Major took a piece of paper from a drawer and slid it across the leather-topped
desk to Emmanuel. He pulled a pen from his pocket and placed it next to the
piece of paper. Emmanuel wrote out a request for discharge and backdated it to
Friday, two days before his letter to the black man's mother was delivered.

Van
Niekerk scrawled a looped signature on the bottom of the request and said, 'I
was going to call you in, anyway, Cooper, to tell you some news. I'm being
transferred to Durban next month. You should consider relocating out of Jo'burg
for a while.'

And
now here he was. In Durban . . . tied to a chair in a servant's room somewhere
on the outskirts of the city. Major van Niekerk had given him another chance
and he'd failed to follow the simple order 'Do not get involved'.

'I'm
a shipbreaker,' Emmanuel said again to Lakshmi. 'I went to the yards to find a
prostitute. End of story.'

'He's
lying, Maataa,' Parthiv said. 'He is a policeman. I swear it.'

'Check
me. I don't have a gun or a police ID.'

Lakshmi
knotted her fingers together. Physical contact with a sweat-stained male who
trawled the docks for prostitutes was akin to plunging her head into a sewer.

'Let
me see.' The woman in the pink sari stood and Lakshmi retreated into the
'kitchen' area. Emmanuel was pretty sure that Maataa meant 'mother' in Hindi
but this woman had the tenderness of rhino hide. Her dark eyes were rimmed with
kohl and devoid of sentiment. He shifted in the chair, conscious of his own
sweat and the stink of rotting potatoes that clung to his suit, which, even
when clean, looked old. The suit was the most respectable piece of clothing he
owned; all the buttons matched. Maataa opened the jacket to expose a pale blue
shirt and dark trousers.

'Look,'
she said to her son. 'No gun. No ID. No nothing.'

'But...'
Parthiv began and clearly
thought better of it. His mother was in charge now.

Maataa
rifled the other pockets and found the small coffee flask, a pencil and nothing
else. The van Niekerk notebook was safe in his back pants' pocket. The ID card
listing his age and race classification and his driver's licence were in a
drawer back at his flat. He never took them out any more. Let the tram
conductors figure out for themselves where he belonged. He was done trying.

'The
dead boy at the train yard,' Maataa said to Emmanuel. 'He was white?'

'Under
the dirt, yes, he was white.'

'You
know this boy?'

'He's
not a relation,' Emmanuel said. 'I've seen him around the dock area. That's
all.'

'Big
trouble.' The Indian woman narrowed her eyes. 'You will go to the police?'

'I
won't go to the police,' he said. 'It was a mistake to get involved.'

Maataa's
angular face drew closer. She smelled of cloves and a temple fragrance Emmanuel
couldn't name.

'You
are scared,' she said.

'Yes,
I am.' It was better to stay completely off the Security Branch radar.

'This
is very good.'

Maataa
crooked a finger towards Giriraj. He untied the rope binding Emmanuel's hands,
then returned to the bedroom space and awaited the next command.

'I
can go?' Emmanuel asked. He didn't want any misunderstanding.

'You
will keep your word. This I can see.' She searched Emmanuel's features and
frowned. 'What is it that you are . . . European? Mixed race? Or maybe you were
born in India?'

Emmanuel
said, 'You choose.'

Maataa
laughed at the idea that she would ever have that power. 'Ahh, you are a
naughty man. Go with Parthiv but do not go back to the harbour. There are
plenty, plenty clean women in Durban.'

'I'll
go straight home,' Emmanuel said.

He
was escorted from the small room by Parthiv. The night garden was fragrant and
cream flowers the size of babies' hands twirled in the breeze. He was free to
finish the last one or two hours of the van Niekerk job and forget that he'd
ever attempted to relive the role of detective sergeant. The memory of Jolly's
curled fingers was stark.

'What
were you doing in the freight yard?' he asked Parthiv when they stepped onto a
narrow driveway at the front of the house. The city of Durban glittered below.
Out on the dark mass of the Indian Ocean shone the lights of anchored
freighters awaiting the call into the harbour. Emmanuel guessed he was in
Reservoir Hills, a suburb created especially for the Indian population. Further
out on the urban edges was Cato Manor, the tin-and-mud catchment area set up
for the burgeoning black population.

'I
too was looking for a woman,' Parthiv confessed and unlocked the kidnap car, a
midnight blue Cadillac low to the ground and gleaming with chrome. 'My mother
wants Amal only to study, study and study. This is not good. He is clever but
he is not a man.'

Emmanuel
got into the front passenger seat and waited for Parthiv to fire the engine. Giriraj
stepped out of the side pathway and climbed into the back. He moved
surprisingly quietly for a big man. They reversed out of the sloping drive and
followed an unlit road edged with jacaranda trees.

'Why
the docks?' Emmanuel asked. The lowest class of prostitute worked the dockyards
and the vacant boxcars.

'There
was no choice,' Parthiv said. 'If I took Amal to a house where there are paid
Indian women, my mother would find out. She wants him only to make the good
marks and be a lawyer.'

'So,'
Emmanuel clarified, 'you took your little brother to the docks to find a woman.
Maybe even a white woman. As a treat.'

'Exactly.'
Parthiv smiled, happy his selfless motives were understood and appreciated.

Emmanuel
wanted to swing back to the house, find Amal and tell him, 'Never listen to
Parthiv. Unless you want to spend a few years in a tiny cell with a bucket to
crap in, keep studying. You can cure virginity quick. Jail goes on forever.'

'He's
still a child,' Emmanuel said. 'He'll find his own way in a few years.'

'What
happened to that boy in the alley,' Parthiv said, 'that could also happen to
Amal. Gone, just like that. Better to die a man.'

'Better
not to die at all,' Emmanuel said and tried to block the image of Jolly Marks
lying in the dirt. Collecting evidence was what the police did and Emmanuel
wasn't one of them any more. He was a civilian working for Major van Niekerk.
Still, the crime scene bothered him.

'Where
was the boy when you first saw him?' he asked.

Once
a few facts about the murder were in place he'd stop and let the Durban police
do their job. A dead white child was on the top of the 'murders that matter'
list. The detective branch would throw men and expensive overtime into solving
the case.

'The
boy was lying there,' Parthiv said. 'Blood everywhere.'

'This
is while you were looking for a prostitute?'

'
Jâ
,
same like you. We found one, red hair with a shiny purple dress and small
titties, but she wouldn't do it with a
charra.'
Parthiv was offended again at
the memory. 'I said, "Only one of us. Good money. No police to see
us." This whore said no! We kept going and he was there in the laneway,
dead as anything.'