Let the Dead Lie (27 page)

Shabalala
and Emmanuel sat down on the top stair of van Niekerk's veranda and looked out
across the harbour to the Indian Ocean. To Emmanuel's eyes, Shabalala had not
changed. The murder of his closest friend, Captain Willem Pretorius, eight months
ago had not diminished his physical being in a way that could be seen. Maybe
that was because Shabalala was a black man in South Africa. His pain had to be
contained on the inside.

'Have
you travelled well, Sergeant?' the Zulu constable asked.

'I
have travelled far,' Emmanuel said. 'And things go well with you?'

'I
am older,' Shabalala said and his statement lingered in the air. Neither of
them had escaped the past.

'You
have been many weeks at the clinic?' Emmanuel asked. Something about the
constable's earlier statement regarding his visit to Zweigman didn't sit right.

'My
wife Lizzie and I stay with the doctor,' Shabalala said and Emmanuel
understood. The Zulu policeman and his wife were not visiting the medical
clinic; they now lived in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, far from Jacob's Rest
and the bush farm where Shabalala had grown into a man.

'Why
did you leave?'

'I
became uneasy.'

'I
see.'

The
murder investigation had uncovered secrets that gave Shabalala the knowledge to
destroy both lives and reputations in the small town of Jacob's Rest. Silence
was one of the Zulu constable's strengths but the very fact that a black man
carried such information would have been the cause of tension, fear and even
hatred.

'The
Pretorius family,' Emmanuel asked. 'Did they come after you?' The Afrikaner
clan, rulers of the town of Jacob's Rest, had the most to lose if the real
reason for their father's murder was ever revealed.

'No,'
Shabalala said. 'The brothers keep to themselves and are quiet. Mrs Pretorius,
she has moved from the big house and out to the farm of her fourth son. She is
not seen much in town.'

A
Zulu neighbour in Sophiatown had a saying: 'Never plant a poisonous tree in
your backyard. One day your children might be forced to eat the fruit.' The Pretorius
family and everyone involved in the investigation had, in some way, been
poisoned.

'I'm
sorry you had to leave your home,' Emmanuel said. If he'd walked away from the
case and let the Security Branch do as they pleased, things would have been
different. Shabalala's job and life would still be on track.

'The
right thing was done.' The Zulu constable was staunch. 'There can be no shame
in that.'

The
front door swung open and Zweigman shuffled out of the house. He perched
between Emmanuel and Shabalala on the brick stairs, the medical bag balanced on
his knees.

'What's
wrong with him?' Emmanuel said.

'Nicolai
is being eaten away from inside. There is a growth in the stomach, which will
grow larger with time. I've seen it before.'

'How
long?'

'Impossible
to predict,' Zweigman said. 'A few days, maybe a few weeks or months. All that
can be done is to make him comfortable. I have given him a shot of painkiller.'

'Can
he be cured?'

'I
do not believe so, Detective. There is no way to reverse the disease.'

'And
the woman?'

'She's
close,' Zweigman said. 'When the child comes, I believe that Nicolai will take
leave of us. The upcoming birth is perhaps what keeps him alive.'

'To
hold a child in your arms,' Shabalala said. 'That is the thing.'

Zweigman
rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses bit into the skin and said
quietly, 'Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of one's
youth. Happy is the man who has a quiver full of them; he shall not be ashamed,
but shall speak with his enemies at the gate.'

'Yebo
,' Shabalala agreed. "This
is the truth.'

The
biblical quote sounded like a lament to Emmanuel. Zweigman and his wife had
once had children. Shabalala had once had a best friend. And Emmanuel himself
had once had a job with the detective branch and a sister he could talk with
openly. All destroyed by the fire of life. The magnetic force that drew the
three men back together after eight months had a name; it was not fate or
destiny or luck. It was loss.

Nicolai
Petrov sat upright in the guest bed with the black and white photographs from
the suitcase spread over the covers. The drug had softened the lines of pain
around his mouth. Natalya gazed into a mirror and experimented with perfumes
and lotions. Emmanuel pulled up a chair opposite Nicolai and sat down.

'Stills
from Natalya's films?' he said.

'Some,'
Nicolai said. 'She made many more. Dozens. These are the ones she wishes to
remember.'

'Where
was this one taken?' Emmanuel indicated the photograph of Joseph Stalin on the
soft brown velvet couch.

'Moscow,'
Nicolai said. 'Comrade Stalin was moved to tears when
Triumph in Berlin
was shown. Natalya played the role of a field
nurse.'

'Stalin
was a friend?'

'The
great leader did not have friends. He had enemies and he had those wise enough
to fear him.'

'What
camp did you and Natalya fall into?'

'Natalya
was one of Iosif's favourite actresses,' Nicolai said and began to collect the
photos. Emmanuel noticed the Russian man's strong arms and shoulders for the
first time. In his prime he would have towered above the crowd.

'What
was your relationship with him?'

'I
was an errand boy.' Nicolai shrugged. 'When Comrade Stalin died, everything
that he loved was thrown out in the garbage. Natalya's work was part of the old
regime . . . the corrupt regime. My work was no longer recognised. We left
while we had the chance. It seemed the wise thing.'

Errand
boy. It was an interesting turn of phrase coming from a man who was built like
a Borodino class battlecruiser and whose hands looked like they could snap a
spine.

'What
kind of errands?' Emmanuel said.

'I
did what I was ordered to do.'

The
Nuremberg defence worked just as well for members of the Russian security
service as it did for the Nazis. An errand run on Stalin's order would surely
have ended in blood.

'You
worked for the NKVD?'

'Yes.
I was a colonel.'

Well,
that explained the interest in the couple. The Americans, the English and even
the Russians would consider the capture of a colonel in the NKVD a coup. South
Africa's home-grown version of the NKVD, the Security Branch, would also be
desperate for a taste of the action.

'Why
Durban?' Emmanuel asked. The unmarked passports and the winter clothes
suggested that South Africa was not the Russian couple's final destination.

'A
last resort,' Nicolai said. 'We went first to England but things did not work
out for the best.'

'Tell
me.'

Nicolai
shifted against the tower of pillows and peered at Emmanuel with the sharp gaze
of an experienced interrogator. 'You are with state security?'

'No,
the detective branch. I'm just wondering why men with guns are after you and
Natalya.'

'Men
that you have twice saved us from.' The grizzled Russian leaned forward and
Emmanuel caught a glimpse of the old Nicolai; brutal and strong. 'Why did you
do this?'

Emmanuel
didn't move back or blink. He recalled the statement Shabalala had made on the
front porch and repeated the essence of it. 'Helping you was the right thing.'

'A
dreamer ...' Nicolai mumbled and packed all the photographs away in the
cardboard box. He jammed the lid into place and rested both massive hands on
the top in an apparent effort to keep the past from spilling out.

'We
defected to England,' he said after a lengthy pause. 'I took a file with me.
The names of people the NKVD suspected of being British spies.'

'To
trade for your safety.'

'Yes.
The first two months were perfect. We were given a safe house and passports in
exchange for the file. I was questioned many times by MI5 and the sessions
were recorded. I told them everything I knew.
Then ...
a British agent was arrested in Stalingrad and my old masters offered to trade
him back.'

'For
you?'

Nicolai's
smile was tight. 'Yes. The British had the file and many hours of recordings
taken during questioning. They didn't need me any more. I was only of value in
a trade.'

'You
know this for a fact?'

Nicolai
chuckled. 'I brought other things out of Russia. I paid one diamond bracelet
and two Black Sea pearls for details of the exchange. Natalya and I got out the
night before they planned to come for us.'

'You're
still valuable to them,' Emmanuel said. 'That's why they've come after you. The
trade is still on.'

'Yes.'
Nicolai was matter-of-fact. 'I have hunted men myself and I know that the hunt
does not stop until the target is trapped or dead.'

That
meant the tradesman would keep up the pursuit but Emmanuel's focus was
elsewhere. Three civilians with small and ordinary lives were gone: their light
extinguished forever. International intrigue was for the spooks that moved red
dots across a map of the world and determined the fate of governments. The job
of detective, on the other hand, was simple. A detective spoke for the dead. A
detective sought justice for the boy lying in the blood and dirt, for the Zulu
maid who'd never owned a new dress, for the sour Englishwoman with purple hair
wound over plastic rollers. Their murders were his business. Solving their
murders was also the only way he could avoid the gallows.

'You
found your way from the docks all the way to that house in the woods.' Emmanuel
turned the conversation back to the last few days. 'How did you do that?'

'That
was nothing. Getting Natalya to love me . . . that was the challenge.' Nicolai
smiled at his self-absorbed wife, proud of her beauty and her youth. Stalin's
henchman, hero of the people, captured not by a Panzer tank division but by a
blonde with eyes the colour of arctic water. Zweigman's diagnosis of the
situation was correct. Without Natalya, Nicolai would probably have given up
long ago. 'I could not let them take us to a gulag. My darling wife would not
have survived.'

Oh
yes, she would have. Emmanuel had met a few Natalyas during the war. The
beautiful and blessed females destined to sleep in feather beds and eat fresh
bread no matter if the Communists, the Fascists or the Allies were in charge.

'Tell
me what happened when you came ashore at the passenger quay,' Emmanuel said.

'We
had only an address so we went to the yard with the wagons to see if there was
a train to catch. Railway lines going all ways. Natalya and I, lost and in the
dark. Scared also. Natalya thought there was a man who followed us from the
ship.'

'How
did you find your way to the house?'

'A
boy helped us.'

'Tell
me about the boy.'

'Ten
years maybe. Skinny with dirty clothes.'

'Was
this boy alone or with someone?'

'Alone.
He tried to run from us, and then he saw that Natalya was pregnant. I showed
him the address for my cousin's house. That is when he made the picture, with
the message "please help", which we gave to the black man with the car.'

'There
was no one with the
boy ...
no one near him?'

'He
was alone,' Nicolai stated.

Emmanuel
edged forward in his seat. 'What did he do after he gave you the drawing?'

'He
disappeared into the shadows.'

Unbelievable.
The Russian couple knew less than the English prostitute. Another dead end.
Emmanuel worked his way backwards through Nicolai's recollections, like an
alchemist searching for gold in the dross.

'Can
Natalya describe the man who followed you from the ship?'

Nicolai
shrugged, his energy drained.

'Ask
her,' Emmanuel said. 'Did she see him?'

The
conversation between Nicolai and Natalya was brief. Natalya scooped cold cream
from a jar and rubbed it into her face while talking.

'White
. . .' Nicolai translated. 'Black
suit.. .'

This
was where it would all end, Emmanuel was sure. A white man in a black suit.

'Dark
hair,' Nicolai continued. 'To the shoulders. Like a wild Cossack.'

Emmanuel
swung around to face Natalya. He touched his shoulders to indicate the length
of hair and the Russian beauty nodded. Fingers together, he drew an imaginary
widow's peak onto his forehead.

Natalya
rolled her eyes at his pantomime and said,
'Da.'

Yes.

Brother
Jonah had been near Jolly when he died. He had attended a late-night meeting in
a scrapyard where the term 'Ivan', a slang term for a Russian, was used. He
talked like a soldier on a mission. And, if Miss Morgensen was to be believed,
he was also an associate of Afzal Khan.

Emmanuel
left Nicolai to his memories and went in search of van Niekerk and a fresh set
of clothes. He had less than nine hours to find the preacher.