the pressed suit and green-striped tie. In Jo’burg he looked smart and professional. On the veldt with men who smelled of dirt and diesel fuel, he was out of place.
“Constable Hepple says there are five of you.” He returned the brothers’ stares and noticed the areas of redness around their eyes and noses.
“Louis is at home with our ma. He’s too young to see this.” Henrick took a swig from the flask and turned away to hide his tears.
Erich, the Enforcer, stepped forward. “The army is letting Paul out on compassionate leave. He’ll be home tomorrow or the day after.”
“What unit is he in?” Emmanuel asked, curious in spite of himself. Six years out of service and his own trousers and shirtsleeves were still ironed sharp enough to please a sergeant major. The army had discharged him, but it hadn’t let him go.
“Paul’s in intelligence,” Henrick said, now flushed pink from the brandy.
Emmanuel calculated the odds that brother Paul belonged to the old guard of the intelligence corps—the one that broke fingers and smashed heads to extract information. Exactly the kind you didn’t want hanging around an orderly murder investigation.
He checked the brothers’ posture, the slack shoulders and unclenched hands, and decided to take control of the situation while he had a moment to do so. He was on his own with no backup and there was a murder to solve. He started with the classic opener guaranteed to raise a response from idiots and geniuses alike:
“Can you think of anyone who would do this to your father?”
“No. No one,” Henrick answered with absolute certainty. “My father was a good man.”
“Even good men have enemies. Especially a police captain.”
“Pa might have got on the wrong side of some people, but nothing serious,” Erich insisted. “People respected him. No one who knew him could do this.”
“An outsider, is your guess?”
“Smugglers use this stretch of river to go in and out of Mozambique,” Henrick said. “Weapons, liquor, even Commie pamphlets, they all come into the country when no one is looking.”
Johannes spoke for the first time. “We think Pa maybe surprised some criminal crossing over into SA.”
“A lowlife bringing in cigarettes or whiskey stolen off the docks in Lorenzo Marques.” Erich took the flask from Henrick. “Some kaffir with nothing to lose.”
“That casts the net pretty wide,” Emmanuel said, and studied the full length of the riverbank. Farther upstream, an older black man in a heavy wool coat and khaki uniform sat in the patchy shade of an indoni tree. Two frightened black boys nestled close to him.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Shabalala,” Henrick answered. “He’s a policeman, too. He’s half Zulu, half Shangaan. Pa said the Shangaan part could track any animal, and the Zulu part was sure to kill it.”
The Pretorius brothers smiled at the captain’s old explanation.
Hansie stepped up eagerly. “Those are the boys who found the body, Detective Sergeant. They told Shabalala and he rode into town and told us.”
“I’d like to hear what they have to say.”
Hansie pulled a whistle from his breast pocket and blew a shrill note. “Constable Shabalala. Bring the boys. Make it fast.”
Shabalala rose slowly to his full height, over six feet, and made his way toward them. The boys followed in the shadow he cast. Emmanuel watched Shabalala approach and instantly realized that he must have been the policeman who’d set up the series of native men to guide him to the crime scene.
“Quick, man!” Hansie called out. “You see that, Detective Sergeant? You tell them to hurry and this is what you get.”
Emmanuel pressed his fingers into the ridge of bone above his left eye socket where a headache stirred. The country light, free from industrial haze, was bright as a blowtorch on his retina.
“Detective Sergeant Cooper, this is Constable Samuel Shabalala.” Hansie performed the introductions in his best grown-up voice. “Shabalala, this detective has come all the way from Jo’burg to help us find out who killed the captain. You must tell him everything you know like a good man, okay?”
Shabalala, a few heads taller and a decade or two older than any of the white men in front of him, nodded and shook Emmanuel’s outstretched hand. His face, calm as a lake, gave nothing away. Emmanuel made eye contact, and saw nothing but his own reflection in the dark brown eyes.
“The detective is an Englishman.” Henrick spoke directly to Shabalala. “You must use English, okay?”
Emmanuel turned to the brothers, who stood in a semicircle behind him.