A Beautiful Place to Die Part 36

The lights of Elliot King's homestead cl.u.s.tered on the horizon and glowed bright against the night sky. Emmanuel breathed deeply. He felt sick. In the back of the van, Shabalala cradled Louis Pretorius's body: an empty coc.o.o.n of flesh and bone now broken beyond repair. The Zulu constable was convinced that Louis's spirit was conjuring a violent revenge against them. The only way to avoid trouble, Shabalala said, was to take the boy's body back to his mother, but Emmanuel couldn't let that happen.

"Park close to the stairs," he said once they'd crossed the cattle grid at the entrance to the drive. They had to deliver Davida to her mother, then drive Louis to the nearest morgue. A police inquiry into the death was certain and a public inquest couldn't be ruled out. The spotlight would illuminate all the secrets of Jacob's Rest.

Hansie pulled in behind the red Jaguar in the driveway and cut the engine.

Elliot King and his picture-perfect nephew, Winston, stood at the top stair to the porch. The world was going to h.e.l.l while they sipped sundowners and admired their own little piece of paradise.

A black ranger in a Bayete Lodge uniform appeared from nowhere and stood guard at the front of the police van with a nightstick in his hands. Like all chiefs, the rich Englishman had his own private army.

King dismissed the ranger with a wave of his gin and tonic, and Emmanuel reached for the door handle. Davida grabbed hold of his arm. She trembled.

"I don't want to go out there," she said.

"Hepple," he instructed the constable, "go into the house and fetch the housekeeper, Mrs. Ellis. Tell her to come straightaway."

Hansie slid out of the driver's-side door and took the stairs two at a time. He crossed paths with the King men on their way down to the van.

"Your mother's coming," Emmanuel told Davida, and she pressed closer to his side. "I have to talk to King."

"Don't let them near me," she said.

"I won't," Emmanuel promised, and swung the door open and stepped out. King and Winston peered through the front window at Davida's huddled shape.

"Has she been hurt?" King demanded.

"Where's my Davida?" Mrs. Ellis stumbled down the stairs toward the triangle of white men standing between her and her daughter.

Emmanuel waved King and Winston aside so the housekeeper could coax Davida out of the vehicle and into the house.

"Take her inside. I'll take her statement in a little while. Stay with her until I get there."

"Statement?" The housekeeper was dazed and afraid. "Why does my baby need to give a statement?"

"Take her inside," Emmanuel repeated, "and get her a blanket and a cup of tea. Keep her warm."

"Davida? Baby girl?" Mrs. Ellis leaned into the van and put her arms around the balled-up shape hiding there. "It's Mummy. Come on, darling..."

Davida reached up and the two women clung tight to each other. Emmanuel stepped farther away and tried to block out the sobbing.

"Come on, baby..." Mrs. Ellis said, and led Davida toward the stairs.

Emmanuel watched the women disappear into the house. Soon he would talk to Davida about the man at the river.

"Did you do that?" Winston said. "Did you put those bruises and scratches on her, Detective Sergeant?"

"No."

"That was Louis," Hansie cut in. "He's the one who did it."

"Louis Pretorius?" Winston asked.

"Ja. He took her up to the mountain and washed her with stones under the water. He was trying to save her. That's what he said."

"He raped her?" King asked.

"I don't believe so." Emmanuel was sure that something else, possibly just as unpleasant and intrusive, had happened under the waterfall.

Winston seemed stunned and angry.

"I'll know more once I've spoken to her." Emmanuel kept King and Winston back from the van. He didn't like the look in Winston's eye.

"Well," Winston said. "Where is Louis? Is he in custody?"

"He's in the van with Shabalala," Hansie said. "Shabalala wants to take him back home to his ma but we can't. Not yet."

"What?" Winston moved fast toward the back of the van and grappled with the door handle. Emmanuel grabbed him, spun him around by the shoulders and pushed him hard toward the house. Winston turned to face him and stepped toward him again. Emmanuel stopped him cold with two hands on his chest.

"Move away from the van."

"He has to pay for what he did," Winston said.

"He will," Emmanuel said. "Now move away from the van."

Winston stared him down for a moment and Emmanuel recognized something in his look. Where had he seen that look before? Winston broke eye contact and strode in the direction of the house. King reached out a sympathetic hand but Winston pushed him away and climbed the stairs.

Something is going on, Emmanuel thought. Why is Winston this angry about the a.s.sault of a housekeeper's daughter?

"You need to move away," Emmanuel told King. "I don't want to see you or Winston within ten feet of this police van. Understood?"

King nodded. "What happens now?"

"I'll take Davida's statement and then we'll transport Louis to Mooihoek."

"You won't take him home?"

"No," Emmanuel said. "Go inside and finish your drink. Constable Hepple will escort you."

Hansie followed the Englishmen up the stairs and took up position between the stoep and the vehicle. Emmanuel unlocked the back doors of the police van and motioned Shabalala out.

The tension in the Zulu constable's face and body was obvious. "Are you all right?" Emmanuel asked.

"This one-" Shabalala pressed a hand against the doors. "He will cause trouble wherever he goes. He will try to take one of us with him to the other side. I feel it is so."

"If we bring him to his house, that will cause trouble also. He won't be easy to handle wherever we go."

"I know this." The Zulu policeman made eye contact with Emmanuel. "You must be careful, nkosana. Mathandunina knows it was you who found out about the mountain and it was you who took the little wife from him. You have touched her and he does not like this."

"I did no such thing."

"You put his blanket around her, that is what I mean, nkosana."

"So-" Emmanuel said after the surge of embarra.s.sment at his denial ebbed. How could a corpse know about the conversation in Davida's room or the quickening of his senses at the sight of her so close to the wrought-iron bed?

"What must we do, Shabalala? I can't see any way to avoid trouble over Louis."

"We must tell his mother where he is. Maybe if we do this, things will not go so badly for us."

"When we get to the place where his body will be examined," Emmanuel said, "I'll call Mrs. Pretorius and let her know where her son is."

"That is good." Shabalala still looked worried. "I will tell him and if he hears it correctly, he will not want more blood to be spilled."

"I'd like that," Emmanuel said. Less blood to be spilled. He'd spent three years hoping for that very thing and yet he'd come home and stepped right back into the company of the dead.

Emmanuel read the handwritten statement a second time and looked across the table at Davida. She was flushed and uncomfortable, as if the heat from the kitchen stove had suddenly gotten to her. Mrs. Ellis hovered close to her daughter's shoulder like a guardian angel afraid of failing a major a.s.signment.

"The man at the river. You sure you didn't see who it was?"

"Yes."

"Did you know the man who shot Captain Pretorius, Davida?"

"No." She was adamant. "I didn't see who it was. I don't know who it was."

"He sounded like the molester, is that right? Like someone putting on a voice?"

"Yes."

"Louis admitted to being the molester," Emmanuel said. "But he denied killing his father."

"You believe that mad Dutchman but you don't believe me?" Her gray eyes sparked with anger. "White men always tell the truth, that's what you policemen believe. It makes catching criminals easy. Just look for the dark skin, don't bother with evidence."

Her accent caught his attention. It was not quite to the manor born, but desperate to get there by any road possible.

"Where did you go to school, Davida?"

"What?"

"Tell me where you went to school."

"Stonebrook Academy." She paused. "Why?"

"Your accent," he said, "it's...elegant."

"So?"

"What are you doing in Jacob's Rest, working for the old Jew and his wife in their little rag factory?"

"My granny and my mother live here," she said. "I came to be with them."

"Surely you were meant for more? An accent like that doesn't come cheap."

"I like cutting patterns."

"Did you fail your matric, Davida?"

She flashed an angry stare at him, then thought better of defending herself against the insult to her intelligence. The dangers hidden in the answers she gave were suddenly clear to her. She shut her mouth tight.

"Tell him, Davida." Mrs. Ellis took up the fight on her daughter's behalf. "She pa.s.sed with flying colors and got accepted at the University of the Western Cape. Top of her cla.s.s in four subjects."

"What happened?"

"She came to visit Granny and me for the Christmas holidays and decided to stay on for a year. She'll be going to university next year, hey, Davida?"

Emmanuel sat forward, pulled toward Davida by a thread of understanding. All those days spent in the company of the old Jew and his wife, reading, dreaming of the world out there. He'd done the same thing at boarding school-gazed out over the dusty fields to the world beyond.

"Look at me, Davida," he said, and waited until she did. "You weren't going anywhere, were you?"

"No," she whispered.

"That's why the captain built the hut. A little place out of town for the two of you. A home."

"That's right."

"No..." Mrs. Ellis muttered. "This doesn't make sense."

Emmanuel maintained eye contact and the thread with Davida strengthened. Her breath became shorter.

"Pretorius made the arrangement for you to be his little wife...that's right, isn't it, Davida?"

"What?!" Mrs. Ellis broke from the perfect-servant mold and hit her palm on the tabletop. "You can't come into my house and talk to my daughter like this. My baby's got nothing to do with Captain Pretorius. She delivered some papers to him for Mr. King a couple of times but that was it."

Davida looked older and wiser than her mother by a hundred years when she leaned back against the tiles depicting pretty rural scenes and wrapped her arms around her waist.

"Ma..."

Silence filled the room for a moment.

"No. No." Mrs. Ellis stepped close to her daughter. "That life isn't for you, my baby. You're going to go to university so that you don't have to be that kind of woman. You're going to stand on your own two feet and have a profession."

"What country do you think we live in, Ma?" The question was full of sadness. "A coloured woman doesn't get to choose the life she wants. Not even after she's been to university. This, here, is how things are."