A Beautiful Place to Die Part 6

The main street was empty. Lights from the garage made a yellow circle in the darkness. A fragment of memory flickered to life. He was running barefoot down a small dirt lane with the smell of wood fires all around him. He ran fast toward a light. The memory grew stronger and Emmanuel pushed it aside. Then he disconnected it.

4.

DOWN THERE."

Shabalala pointed to a corrugated iron shack anch.o.r.ed to the ground by rocks and pieces of rope: Donny Rooke's house since his fall from grace. Emmanuel pulled the sedan into the patch of dirt that was the front yard. The early-morning light did nothing to soften the hard edge of poverty.

He exited the car, and the first stone, sharp and small, hit him in the cheek and drew blood. The second and third stones. .h.i.t, full force, into his chest and leg. The stones. .h.i.t hard, and he lost count of them as he ran behind the car to take shelter. He crouched next to Shabalala, who calmly wiped blood from a small cut in his own neck.

"The girls." Shabalala raised his voice over the torrent of sound made by the pebbles. .h.i.tting the roof of the car.

"What girls?" Emmanuel shouted back.

Shabalala motioned to the front of the car. Emmanuel followed and risked a quick look out. Two girls, skinny as stray dogs, stood at the side of the shack, a pile of rocks in front of them. Behind them, a man with blazing red hair took off across the veldt.

"Go after him," the black policeman said, and filled his pockets with stones. "I will get the girls."

Emmanuel nodded and sprinted full speed across the dirt yard. A stone knocked his hat to the ground, another skimmed past his shoulder, but he kept the pace up, eyes on the redheaded man running into open country.

"Ooowww!" There was a high-pitched squeal, then the sound of yelping. Shabalala walked calmly toward the girls, his stones. .h.i.tting their target with sniper-like accuracy. The girls scuttled into the shack, seeking shelter.

Emmanuel cleared the side of the dilapidated vegetable patch and ran hard. The gap closed. Donny slowed to catch his breath, his hands resting on his knees. A minute more and Emmanuel body-slammed Donny, who toppled over with a groan. He held the redhead's face in the dirt for longer than he needed to, and heard the dust fill his mouth. The dents in his Packard meant he'd have to write a detailed damage report. He pressed down harder.

"Where you going, Donny?" He flipped the choking man over and looked down at his dirty face.

"I didn't do it. Please G.o.d, I didn't do anything to the captain."

He pushed a knee into Donny's chest. "What makes you think I'm here about Captain Pretorius?"

Donny started to cry and Emmanuel pulled him up with a jerk. "What makes you think I'm here to talk about Captain Pretorius?"

"Everyone knows." The words came out between broken sobs. "It was him that put me in jail. He forced me to live out here like a kaffir."

Emmanuel pushed Donny toward the shack. His cheek stung from where the stone had broken the skin and his suit was covered in dust. All in pursuit of a man with less sense than a chicken.

"There's your army." He shoved Donny between the shoulder blades and forced him to look at the girls, now crouched in the dirt next to Shabalala. They were hard faced and thin from living rough.

"Inside," Emmanuel said. "We're all going to have a talk."

The girls picked themselves up and slipped in through the rusting door. Emmanuel followed with Shabalala and Donny.

"Nice place," Emmanuel said. There wasn't a piece of furniture not propped up by a brick or held together with strips of rag. Even the air inside the shack was inadequate.

"I used to have a good home," Donny said from the edge of the broken sofa. "I was a businessman. Owned my own place."

"What happened?"

"I was-" Donny started, and then bent over with a groan. His right arm hung limp by his side.

"You hurt him," the oldest girl said. "You got no right to hurt him. He didn't do nothing wrong."

Emmanuel pulled Donny into a sitting position. He'd been rough with him, but no more. This pain was something else.

"Take your s.h.i.+rt off," he said calmly.

"No. I'm okay. Honest."

"Now." The faded s.h.i.+rt was unb.u.t.toned to reveal a collection of dark bruises spread out across Donny's stomach and chest.

"What happened?"

"Fell off my bicycle, landed on some rocks."

Emmanuel checked the tear-streaked face, saw the swelling at the corner of the weak mouth. "A rock hit you in the mouth as well?"

"Ja, almost broke my teeth."

Emmanuel glanced at Shabalala, who shrugged his wide shoulders. If Donny had taken a beating, he knew nothing about it.

"You were telling me about your business."

"Donny's All Goods. That was my shop."

"What happened?"

Donny pulled at an earlobe. "Border gate police told Captain Pretorius about some photos I brought in from Mozambique. He didn't like them and had me sent off to prison."

"What kind of photos?"

"Art pictures."

"Why didn't the captain like them?"

"Because he was married to that old piece of biltong and me here with two women of my own."

"He was jealous?"

"He didn't like anyone having more than him. Always top of the tree. Always putting his nose into everyone else's business."

"You didn't like him?"

"He didn't like me." Donny was in full steam now. "He stole my photos and my camera, then put me in jail. Now look at me. Skint as a kaffir. He should have been the one in jail. Not me."

"Where were you last night, Donny?"

Donny blinked, caught off guard. His tongue worked the corner of his bruised mouth.

"We was here all night with Donny," the older girl stated. "We was with him all the time."

Emmanuel looked from one hard-faced girl to the other. Their combined age couldn't have been more than thirty. They stared back, used to violent confrontation and worse. He turned to Donny.

"Where were you?"

The girl had given him time to collect himself. "I was here all day and all night with my wife and her sister. As G.o.d is my witness."

"Why did you run?" Emmanuel asked quietly.

"I was scared." The tears were back, turning Donny's face into a mud puddle. "I knew they'd try to pin it on me. I ran because I thought you'd do whatever they asked you to."

"We was here with him all the time," the child wife insisted. "You have to leave him alone now. We's his witness."

"You sure you were here, Donny?"

"One hundred percent. Here is where I was, Detective."

Emmanuel took in the sordid ruin that was Donny Rooke's life. The man was a pervert and a liar who'd sc.r.a.ped together a flimsy alibi, but he wasn't going anywhere.

"Don't leave town," he said. "I'd hate to chase you again."

The air outside Donny's squalid home smelled of rain and wild gra.s.s.

"Detective." Donny scuttled after them with Emmanuel's filthy hat as an offering. "I'd like my camera back when you find it. It was expensive and I'd like it back. Thanks, Detective."

Emmanuel threw his hat into the car and turned to face the scrawny redheaded man. "Just so you know, Donny. Those are girls, not women."

He slid into the sedan and gunned the engine, anxious to leave the shack behind. The car wheels b.u.mped over the potholed road and threw up a thin dust serpent in their wake.

"Where are the parents?" he asked Shabalala.

"The mother is dead. The father, du Toit, likes drink more than he likes his daughters. He gave the big one as wife, the small one as little wife."

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

The mechanical hum of sewing machines filled Poppies General Store as Emmanuel and Shabalala walked in for the second time. Zweigman was behind the counter, serving an elderly black woman. She pocketed her change and left with a parcel of material tucked under her arm. Zweigman followed and shut the doors behind her. He flipped the sign to "Closed," then turned to face his visitors.

"There's a sitting room through this way," Zweigman said, and disappeared into the back. Emmanuel followed. For a man about to be questioned in connection with a homicide, Zweigman was cool to the point of chilly. He'd obviously been expecting them.

The back room was a small work area set up with five sewing machines and dressmaker's dummies draped in lengths of material. The coloured women manning the machines looked up nervously at the police intrusion.

"Ladies." Zweigman smiled. "This is Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper from Johannesburg. Constable Shabalala you already know."

"Please introduce us," Emmanuel insisted politely. He wanted to get a good look at the seamstresses. Maybe there was something to Mrs. Pretorius's poisonous accusations. Zweigman did have access to five mixed-race women under the age of forty.

Zweigman's smile froze. "Of course. There's Betty, then Sally, Angie, Tottie, and Davida."

Emmanuel nodded at the women and kept a tight focus on their faces. He ticked them off with crude markers. Betty: pockmarked and cheerful. Sally: skinny and nervous. Angie: older and out of humor. Tottie: born to make grown men cry. Davida: a shy brown mouse.

If he had to lay money on Zweigman's fancy, he'd bet the farm on Tottie. Light skinned and luscious, she was the kind of woman vice cops used as bait in immorality law stings, then took home for a little after-hours R&R.

"Gentlemen." Zweigman opened a second curtain and led them into a small room furnished with a table and chairs. The dark-haired woman, so nervous yesterday, now poured tea into three mugs with a steady hand.

"This is my wife, Lilliana."

"Detective Sergeant Cooper," she responded politely, and waved him and Shabalala over to the table, which was set with tea and a small plate of cookies. Emmanuel sat down, senses on full alert. With a few hours' notice, the old Jew and his wife had rebuilt their defenses and nailed all the windows closed.

"Which one of those women are you ficken?" he asked conversationally, using German slang to sharpen the impact.

Zweigman flushed pink and his wife dropped the plate of cookies onto the table with a loud crack. There was a drawn-out silence while she collected the cookies and rearranged them.

"Please," Zweigman said quietly. "This is not the kind of talk for a man to have in front of his wife."

"She doesn't need to be here," Emmanuel answered. "We'll question her later."

"Take the ladies out for a walk, liebchen. The air will do you good."

The elegant woman left the room quickly. Emmanuel sipped his tea and waited until the front door closed. He turned to Zweigman, who looked suddenly stooped and worn down by life. There were tired circles under his brown eyes.

"That was cruel and unnecessary," Zweigman said. "I did not expect it of you."

"This town brings out the worst in me," Emmanuel answered. "Now, which one of those women is the lucky one?"

"None of them. Though I'm sure if you had your choice, you'd pick Tottie. I saw how you looked at her."

Emmanuel shrugged. "Looking was still legal the last time I checked the list of punishable offenses. Captain Pretorius thought you'd done a lot more than that."

"He was mistaken." The answer was clipped. "I walked the ladies home after dark because there was"-he struggled to find the right word in English-"a peeping man in the area. It was purely a safety measure."

"Really?"

"Constable Shabalala, please tell your colleague that I did not make the peeping man up."

Shabalala stared at the floor, uncomfortable at being included in the questioning. He cleared his throat. "There was a man. The captain looked but did not find anyone."

"No arrests?"

"No," Shabalala answered.

"The man would have been found if it was European women being hara.s.sed," Zweigman said. "The activity stopped and it was never mentioned again."