Let the Dead Lie (39 page)
'You've
got nothing, Cooper,' the tradesman said. 'The only way out of this mess is to
free Fitzpatrick and me and step away The colonel will do what he can to clear
your name of the double murder charge. That's the only way you'll escape the
rope.'
'I'm
tempted,' Emmanuel said. 'But I can't get past the fact that you killed three innocent
people. That just doesn't feel right.'
'You
don't have the power or the connections to do a thing about it.' The
tradesman's eyes lit with pleasure. 'Admit defeat and you might get a chance to
live out your days among the
kaffirs
and the Jews.'
Do it!
the Scottish sergeant major
roared out of the darkness.
Do it, soldier!
Emmanuel
rounded the table and slammed the tradesman's forehead into the wood surface.
The metal box slid over the lip and crashed to the floor.
'That
was for Jolly Marks,' Emmanuel said. 'And this is for Mrs Patterson and Mbali,
her maid.' He slammed the fair head down twice more and heard bones crunch.
Good. Blood dotted the wood tabletop and trickled from the tradesman's nose.
Even better. The tradesman moaned in pain.
'Sergeant.'
Shabalala laid a light hand on Emmanuel's shoulder. 'Detective
Sergeant...'
'Don't
worry,' Emmanuel said. 'I'm done.'
'No.
Listen.'
There
was the slam of doors and footsteps on the circular drive and in the garden.
Lana
ran to the window and peered out. 'More cars. There are two men on the clinic
porch. One of them looks like the major. There might be others.'
'Stay
here and keep an eye on the colonel and his friend.' Emmanuel gave the Browning
Hi-Power to Lana. He knew she could handle a gun. 'Do not untie them. No matter
what happens. Shabalala and I will go out.'
They
slipped through the side door and struck out for the winter vegetable patch.
Muted voices could be heard from the direction of the clinic. A man approached
with the collar of his lightweight coat turned up against the dawn chill.
'Fletcher?'
'The
major wants you.' The detective constable was ashen-faced and looked five
inches shorter than he had yesterday afternoon. 'He's waiting over at the other
house with the doctor.'
Emmanuel
and Shabalala moved fast and found van Niekerk leaning against the veranda post
of the clinic while Zweigman blocked the door. The newborn's cries had calmed.
'If
you're the cavalry,' Emmanuel said to the Dutch major, 'you're late.'
'The
plan was to get here an hour ago, right on the tail of the colonel,' van
Niekerk said and cast Constable Fletcher a sour look. 'We took a wrong turn off
the main road and ended up in a Zulu
kraal.
The chief was none too happy. He
thought we'd come to relocate him and his family to a native reserve.'
'You
gave the colonel directions to this place, didn't you, Major?'
'Yes.'
There was no shame or guilt in the admission. 'It was the easiest way to flush
out all the players and concentrate them in one place.'
'A
lot of things look easy from a desk,' Emmanuel said.
'Okay,'
van Niekerk said, 'I deserve that, but this is not how it was meant to turn
out. The plan was to get here before any damage was done.'
'He's
lying,' Zweigman said. 'He wants Nicolai, just like the other men.'
The
major lit up a cigarette and puffed. 'Let me explain the facts of life to you
all. Nicolai and his wife have caught the attention of the British secret
service, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian NKVD. There is no way
for Colonel Nicolai Petrov to slip quietly into the night and disappear. Much
as you'd like it to be so.'
'We're
just supposed to hand him over?' Emmanuel said. He caught movement out of the
corner of his eye. A handful of men scattered across the grass verge and
infiltrated the stone buildings. The door to the storeroom was kicked in and
the interior searched. The gagged man was dragged out of the woods and pushed
across the verge to a parked car. A startled bushbuck flew through the
vegetable patch and out to the drive. Amateur hour was over and the professionals
had arrived. This expeditionary force could do what they wished and yet they
stayed well away from the clinic.
'I'd
prefer that Nicolai came of his own free will,' van Niekerk said. 'His wife and
child can stay. That's the deal. Nicolai only.'
The
door to the main house swung open and the colonel and the tradesman were
bundled out and marched across the plateau by three armed men with blackened
faces. Stewart, the down-on-his-luck gambler, trailed behind. The last member
of the colonel's army, the decoy ditched at the river by Emmanuel and
Shabalala, was still out there somewhere.
'Will
they be punished?' Zweigman asked.
'Not
through the courts.' The major smiled. 'Nothing about this operation will ever
appear in print or in official records.'
Emmanuel
checked the positions of the commando raiders. They were gathered along the
perimeter of the clinic grounds ready for a second surge. Their blackened faces
showed no emotion. He didn't know what organisation they belonged to. Not that
it mattered. There was nothing to stop them smashing into the clinic and
securing Nicolai by force. With the operation officially blacked out they were
free to get the job done and damn the consequences. Emmanuel had seen what men
were capable of when the leash of law and order was cut. A few graves hidden in
the endless run of hills would never be found.
A
heavy silence descended. Neither Zweigman, Shabalala nor Emmanuel could
voluntarily place the sick Russian into the hands of an uncertain fate.
The
clinic door opened and Nicolai appeared. He marked the men waiting on the
perimeter and calmly buttoned his wool jacket.
'My
son's name is Dimitri,' he said to Emmanuel. 'Please make sure that he and
Natalya are safe. I cannot stay here and bring harm to you good gentlemen or to
my wife. I have done things . . . This day was always going to come.
Spasiba.'
He
walked across the porch and down the stairs. Major van Niekerk escorted him to
a line of blue sedans parked in the drive. He opened the back door of one of
them, Nicolai got in and the door closed with a thunk. Emmanuel moved forward
but Zweigman grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.
'Let
him go. Nicolai's time is almost at an end. The safety of his wife and son is
worth the sacrifice.'
'Yebo,'
Shabalala agreed.
The
car containing Nicolai pulled away from the circle of aloes and disappeared
into the wild winter grass. Van Niekerk strode back to the clinic with two
commandos on either side of him.
'Cooper,'
he called. 'Come over.'
Emmanuel
met van Niekerk halfway. Sunshine filtered through the tree branches but no
diffusion of light could soften the brute lines of the men's blackened faces.
Lieutenant Piet Lapping and Sergeant Dickie Heyns of the Security Branch. The
metallic taste of blood came to Emmanuel's mouth at the sight of pockmarked
Piet Lapping, experienced interrogator and sadist for the state.
'Well?'
the major prompted the Security Branch Officer.
Lapping
reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope, which he threw at
Emmanuel like a hunter slinging a stone. 'You've got more lives than a fucking
cat, Cooper,' he said before turning back to the parked cars. 'One day you're
going to run out.'
The
envelope hit Emmanuel's chest and he caught it before it dropped to the ground.
It was a plain manila rectangle, unmarked and unstamped, yet he recognised the
weight and feel of it. He double-checked the contents: a sympathy card to the
mother of the young communist found hanged in his jail cell. A single red rose
embossed with the message 'In your time of sorrow' was printed on the front.
This was the card he had delivered to a shack in Pentecost Township six months
ago and the reason he'd left the detective branch.
'Thanks
for getting this back,' Emmanuel said and pocketed the envelope. 'What did you
get out of this, Major?'
'A
promotion to colonel and the goodwill of the head of the Security Branch.' Van
Niekerk smiled. 'The reward for services rendered to the state.'
'And
the murder warrants for Mrs Patterson and Mbali?'
'Withdrawn.'
Lana
appeared at the corner of the winter garden with a cup of hot tea in her hand.
Cherry-red lipstick was perfectly applied to her mouth but her dishevelled hair
seemed to suggest that she'd just got out of bed and was ready to be talked
back between the sheets if the right man asked her.
'Ready
to leave in ten minutes?' van Niekerk said and sipped the tea Lana gave him.
'Of
course, Kallie.' She kissed the major on the cheek and then disappeared into
the garden. The Cape Town escape plan was back on track.
Emmanuel
handed over the detective branch ID and the race-identification card. The fine
for carrying false documents was the equivalent of six months' wages. Non-payment
meant prison time. It was back to swinging a sledgehammer at the Victory
Shipyards.
'Keep
them,' van Niekerk said.
'What
for?'
'Simone
Betancourt. You can keep the papers because of her.'
'I
don't understand,' Emmanuel said.
Simone
Betancourt was the first murder he'd ever worked, tagging alongside Inspector
Luc Moreau, a veteran detective on a mission to avenge the dead. A three-day
plunge into the smoky nightclubs and gambling dens of post-war Paris had led to
a cheap cornerside hustler named Johnny Big Boy Belmondo. Johnny was handsome
and big where it counted but light on brains. He'd killed and robbed the
washerwoman on the million-to-one chance that the sparkling stones in her
hairpin were real. An effort to pawn the jewellery revealed the diamonds to be
worthless cut glass. A life lost to stupidity and greed. The files were placed
in a cardboard box and stored in a dank room. Case closed.
Emmanuel
was surprised van Niekerk remembered the case. He'd mentioned it once over
drinks when the midnight-to-dawn squad were comparing notes on their 'first'.
'Five
days of R&R in springtime Paris and you could not let the dead lie. That's
a burden for a soldier but perfect for a police detective.' Van Niekerk sipped
the hot tea. 'Unlike you, I would have walked past. Unlike you, I would have
stayed locked in the hotel room with my girl.'
'I
didn't mention a girl.'
'With
you there's always a girl,' van Niekerk said.
Emmanuel
left that time bomb ticking. If the major knew about his night with Lana, then
a duel at sunrise was an option.
'The
detective branch is recruiting native talent,' van Niekerk said. 'Shabalala
would never rise above the rank of detective constable, but the pay is better
than in the foot police and he'd get to do more than shut down
shebeens
and arrest cow thieves.'
'Detective
Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala. Is that the
payoff for letting Nicolai go without a fight?'
'Yes,'
van Niekerk said. 'It is. Do you accept?'
The
bar was a dim cavern favoured by gamblers, taxi drivers and off-duty detectives
at the end of the night shift. Emmanuel and Inspector Luc Moreau stood shoulder
to shoulder at the counter, three drinks into the celebration of Johnny
Belmondo's arrest.
'Long
after the war has ended,' Inspector Moreau said, 'this fight against injustice
and cruelty will continue. This is how the world is rebuilt, Major Cooper, with
one small victory at a time.'
The
barman, an amateur boxer with cauliflower ears and a surly mouth, poured shots.
Luc Moreau lifted his glass.
'To
Simone Betancourt. May she rest with the angels.'
'To
Simone Betancourt.' Emmanuel downed the whisky and motioned for another round.
The
sun was rising and as the neon lights of Montmartre flicked off one by one, a
bright river of sunshine began to flow over the cobblestoned streets. Two young
prostitutes in high heels and low-cut silk dresses stopped to light candles at
a roadside shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Inspector
Moreau lifted his glass again. They had an unspoken agreement that this morning
they would hammer the bottle. 'To the other woman whose unjust death gave you a
thirst for justice.'
'What?'
Emmanuel put his whisky down.
'To
the woman whose memory brought you onto this case,' Moreau said. 'The dead
cannot be honoured if they are not named. Even the unknown soldier has a marked
grave, does he not?'
To
honour the dead and have no fear of them . . . well, that was easier said than
done. To bring them into the daylight and speak their names was dark magic. In
a dim Parisian bar, half a world away from South Africa, Emmanuel conjured her
into flesh: a silky-haired woman with green eyes and an easy laugh, careless
with her beauty. Tired from working long hours but certain that her son would
break free of Sophiatown and inhabit a world that she had only dreamed of.
