A Beautiful Place to Die Part 20

"I'm sorry..." she said. "I'm keeping you from your investigation. You could be using this time to hunt down the killer and bring him to justice."

"I do have some people to talk to. I'll let you know if there's a breakthrough."

Grief and vengeance would be Mrs. Pretorius's constant companions for the next few months.

Emmanuel left through the garden. He needed to see Erich Pretorius soon, but first he was going to ask Miss Byrd, the coloured postal clerk, for his second favor in as many days.

"Where is the nkosana?" Emmanuel asked the black teenager manning the pumps at the Pretorius garage.

"Office." The stick-legged boy pointed to a room adjoining the mechanical repair shop.

Emmanuel knocked twice on the door labeled "Pretorius Pty. Ltd." and waited for an answer.

"Whozit?"

"Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper."

"What is it?"

Emmanuel pushed the door open. If he got through this encounter without a fist to the chin, he'd consider himself lucky. The third Pretorius son was in a filthy mood and the interview hadn't even begun.

"What do you want?" Erich looked up from a stack of paperwork on his desk.

"The polite thing to say is 'How can I help you?'" Emmanuel said. Spare parts and piles of old invoices littered the office. Unlike his mother, Erich Pretorius was comfortable with disarray.

"You want something?" Erich pushed the unfinished paperwork away from him and sat back in his chair.

"This must be a good business," Emmanuel said, and studied a farm supply calendar highlighting the latest in tractor technology. "A corner position on the main street. You've done well."

"I do okay. What's it to you?"

"I'm just saying that business must be good, especially now you're the only garage in town."

Erich leaned across the desk with a smile that promised a world of pain. "Who's been whispering in your ear? That coloured?"

"King was the one who explained to me that your next payment is due here." Emmanuel returned to the calendar and tapped a finger to Tuesday.

"What payment?" Erich sneered.

"Fire insurance," Emmanuel said. "Or don't you need to pay it now your father is dead?"

Erich was on his feet in a half second. "What the f.u.c.k has the payment got to do with my pa dying?"

"He was the only one keeping the deal on the level." Emmanuel felt the heat coming off Erich. He was about to combust with rage. "With your pa out of the way, there's no proof you owe Anton a thing."

"You think I'd kill my own father for a hundred and fifty pounds?"

Emmanuel stood his ground as the Afrikaner brick rounded the desk and moved toward him.

"People have been killed for less, Erich." He kept his tone amiable and calculated how fast he could make a dash for the door if need be.

"Get out." Erich was close enough to spray spit. "Get out of my place, you piece of English s.h.i.+t."

Emmanuel didn't move. Erich was loud, but he was used to being second in command. He was the muscle of the Pretorius household, not the brains, and he'd fold as soon as it was clear who was boss.

"Where were you the night your father was murdered?" Emmanuel asked calmly.

"I don't have to answer that," Erich said.

"Yes, you do." Emmanuel stared the furious man down and showed no fear in the face of hopeless odds. The Afrikaner was big enough to break his jaw with one swat.

"I was with my family." Erich broke off eye contact. "My wife and our maid can vouch for me. We were all up at eleven PM PM with little Willem. Croup." with little Willem. Croup."

Emmanuel pulled out his notebook. "I'll have to talk to your wife and verify your alibi."

"Fine by me," Erich said without hesitation. "She's just around the corner. Moira's Hairstyles is her store."

Moira's Hairstyles, set on the main street, was another slice of Jacob's Rest belonging to the Pretorius clan. The captain's family didn't need the pro-white segregation laws to give them status. They were doing fine without the official leg up given to whites under the new government.

Emmanuel sized up the man-mountain standing in front of him. He might not have killed his father, but was he angry enough about the debt to arrange a severe form of punishment for him?

"How do you feel about paying all that money to a coloured?"

"I got no choice." Erich swung back to his desk with a grim expression. "Pa said if I don't pay, that p.r.i.c.k Englishman Elliot King will have the town crawling with Indian lawyers."

Emmanuel made a sound of understanding. Indian lawyers were universally acknowledged as being on par with the Jews when it came to brains and ambition.

Erich opened a drawer and retrieved a bulging paper bag.

"One hundred and fifty pounds." He let the bag fall onto the desktop. A bundle of twenty-pound notes slid out. "I'd shove it up your a.r.s.e but I have to deliver it to the old Jew this evening."

"What was your father thinking?" Emmanuel mused out loud. "Making you give money to a Jew to pay to a coloured?"

Erich kept his temper in check. "You're clever," he stated. "But not clever enough to make me confess to a murder I didn't commit. I never in my life raised a hand to my father."

"You were angry with him, weren't you?"

"Of course," Erich said. "Ask the boys out there. They'll tell you we fought about the payments. If the old Jew stuck to his story, I'd have to hire a lawyer to defend me. Then I'd have to close up shop for the trial, which could last weeks and weeks. In the end it was a h.e.l.l of a lot cheaper to pay the money and be done."

Interesting that the captain hadn't argued the right and wrong of his son's actions with him. He'd gotten to Erich through the hip pocket. It was about the money. Mrs. Pretorius lived in a world governed by a moral code, but her departed husband had been a pragmatist.

"Does your ma know about the fire?" Emmanuel asked. He was curious to see the degree to which Willem Pretorius kept his wife's fantasy world intact.

"No." Erich blushed, an odd sight in a man so big. "Pa thought it was best if we didn't bother her with...um, details."

"I see."

Willem Pretorius had succeeded at concealing many of the, um, details, but somewhere along the line he failed to safeguard all his secrets. Someone knew about the stone hut. Someone knew about the stash of goods in the safe. The theft of the evidence was not random. The wooden club proved that the perpetrator was prepared to commit violence to keep one step ahead of the law.

While Captain Pretorius had kept watch on the people of Jacob's Rest, someone had watched him as well.

"Is that all?" Erich crammed the money back into the bag, an activity that clearly incensed him.

Emmanuel decided to take a run at his "white man gone to black" lead. He had to follow every avenue in the hope that one of them led him back to the stolen evidence.

"Your father was tight with the nonwhites, wasn't he?"

"Pa grew up with the kaffirs but he wasn't a kaffirboetie if that's what you're getting at."

Kaffirboetie, brother to the kaffir, was one of the most potent insults to sling at a white man who wasn't a native welfare worker.

"Do you think any of the whites believed he was too close to the natives?"

"Maybe some of the English. You people have a hard time understanding that we don't hate the blacks: we love them. They're in and out of our homes, with our children and our old people. Blacks are family to us."

"Like Aggie?"

"Exactly. She's useless, but Pa kept her on because she's been with us since I was in nappies. Aggie was a second mother to me and my brothers."

Emmanuel didn't dispute Erich's sentiments. His feeling for the old black woman with the gnarled hands was genuine. The wheels fell off the Afrikaner love cart, though, the moment nonwhites wanted to be more than honorary members of the blessed white tribe.

"So." Emmanuel slipped his notepad into his pocket. "No problems among the whites that you can think of?"

"None," Erich said.

That brought him back to Sarel Uys. He was the one white person to exhibit real animosity toward the captain's ties to Shabalala. How much bitterness did the jealous policeman have stored in his gut?

"Thanks for your time." Emmanuel finished with the standard sign-off to an interview. "I'll call in at Moira's Hairstyles on my way back to the station."

"Do that," Erich said, and dumped the money back into the drawer.

Emmanuel closed the office door behind him. The sound of the telephone receiver lifting off the cradle filtered through. Erich was calling his commando brother at the police station to report on the questioning. The Security Branch would have an ear to the phone as well.

The police station was a no-go area for the rest of the day. He had to find another place to conduct his business, somewhere across the color line.

11.

EMMANUEL STEPPED OUT of Moira's Hairstyles and headed straight onto the kaffir path. Everything had checked out. Little Willem was up with croup at eleven of Moira's Hairstyles and headed straight onto the kaffir path. Everything had checked out. Little Willem was up with croup at eleven PM PM and again at two and again at two AM AM. The black maid, Dora, was willing to swear on the life of her own sons to that effect. Erich Pretorius might be a human flamethrower, but he was safe at home on the night of the murder.

The captain's third son was a long shot, so it was no surprise to learn that he'd had no direct physical involvement in the homicide. Evidence at the crime scene pointed to the killer's lack of physical strength. Erich was capable of pulling a loaded freight train to Durban in an afternoon. The killer had a cool head. Erich was seventy percent muscle and thirty percent combustible fuel.

Emmanuel crossed a vacant lot thick with weeds and untidy clumps of gra.s.s. It was close on lunchtime and the street was quiet when he turned a sharp right in the direction of Poppies General Store. The old Jew sat behind the long wooden counter, reading a book. The hum of sewing machines filtered out from the back room. Zweigman glanced up as he entered.

"Detective."

Emmanuel had come to ask for use of the shop telephone but he'd remembered something else.

"How did Captain Pretorius know you were a qualified doctor?" he asked. Zweigman the surgeon and Zweigman the storekeeper still seemed at odds to him. If Sister Angelina and Sister Bernadette had kept their promise, Zweigman would have remained just another Jew trading his wares in the marketplace, practically invisible.

"Knowing things was the captain's speciality," Zweigman replied drily.

There was more. Emmanuel could see it in the German's face, in the peculiar way he held his head tilted slightly to the side when he spoke. When Shabalala withheld information, Emmanuel suspected it was to protect the memory and reputation of his childhood friend. Who was Dr. Zweigman protecting?

Emmanuel wrote "time of doctor recommendation from Shabalala" onto a clean page in his notebook. When did the captain tell his black right-hand man to see Zweigman instead of Dr. Kruger if he needed help? Was it before or after the little boy was run over in front of the store? If it was before, then the captain had advance knowledge of Zweigman's true status.

"I've come to ask you for the use of your phone," Emmanuel said.

"There is a telephone at the police station for just such business." Zweigman's brown eyes burned with enough curiosity to kill six cats.

"The homicide case and the police station have been taken over by the Security Branch." Emmanuel told the truth. "I need another place to carry out my investigation."

"You are reopening the case involving the molester?"

"That and a few other things," Emmanuel said, thinking of the files lying in their safe hiding place, waiting to be read. He'd report to van Niekerk and send out feelers for new information first, though.

"If that is so..." Zweigman reached below the countertop and retrieved a weighty black telephone connected to miles of fraying cord. "I am happy to do you this favor, Detective Cooper. You may call from the back room."

The women sitting at the sewing machines looked up when they entered, this time with less trepidation. He nodded at each of the seamstresses and made sure to give Hot Tottie an extra-long pa.s.s as he followed Zweigman through to the sitting room. Focusing on the show pony was a sure way to cover up his connection with the shy brown mouse at the captain's hut.

Tottie's emerald green eyes sparkled with amus.e.m.e.nt. She was a queen and he was yet another supplicant come to lay his desire at her door.

Davida was laying out a paper pattern onto a cutting table under Lilliana Zweigman's guidance. Her head, covered by a green scarf, remained bowed. She gave no indication he'd talked to her and touched her and asked her to keep his secrets safe.

"Here." Zweigman placed the black Bakelite phone on the tea table and indicated a chair. "My wife and the ladies will come through this room to go out to the backyard in twenty minutes. Lunch break."

"I won't be that long." Emmanuel sat down and pulled the phone toward him. Zweigman left the room and Emmanuel waited until the busy hum of the sewing machines started up again. The fragile Lilliana had stopped all activity until her husband emerged unharmed from the back room. Something in the past still cast a shadow over the Jewish couple. How many people in towns and villages and cities lived with the firsthand knowledge that nothing is safe? History, written with the help of bullets and firebombs, swept away everything in its path.

He rang through to the operator and waited to be connected to district headquarters. The line was clear.

"Cooper?" Van Niekerk's voice was clipped hard. Something was going on at the office.

"Yes, sir."

"Call me back on this number in ten minutes. Local area code." The major gave the number, then cut the line without explanation. The familiar beep, beep, beep beep, beep, beep came down the line, followed by the operator's voice. came down the line, followed by the operator's voice.

"You've been disconnected, sir. Shall I try again?"

"No. Thank you." Emmanuel hung up and checked his watch. Ten minutes gave van Niekerk just long enough to walk the two city blocks from headquarters to a public telephone box. The Security Branch had flushed the major out of his private office and onto the streets.