Present Darkness 1 DETECTIVE SERGEANT, EMMANUEL COOPER crossed the ramshackle garden, jacket unbuttoned in the nighttime heat. A fat moon tangled in the branches of a jacaranda tree and the air carried the smell of fresh-cut grass and the tree''s shameless purple flowers. It was a perfect Friday night to sit with his daughter Rebekah''s chunky brown arms laced around his neck while Davida sat barefoot on the stairs. Instead he was at a crime scene in Parkview, in the flashing lights of a street cruiser. Blue police barricades encircled a brick house with weeds growing from the gutters. The barriers made a physical reminder that the inhabitants had passed through the veil of the everyday and into a darker world of blood and broken things. Emmanuel crossed the crime-scene perimeter and left ordinary behind. "Detective.
Sir." A gangly white policeman reeking of sweat and vomit moved off the house stairs. He''d been inside, Emmanuel guessed, and seen something he wouldn''t forget. "Lieutenant Mason said to go straight in, Detective. Sir." A cluster of young uniformed constables stood on the porch. Two more of them guarded the front door. Middle-class, European victims always brought the force out in force.
"Sergeant Cooper, Marshall Square," Emmanuel said to the police on door duty. They stepped aside. He stepped in. Smashed furniture littered the entrance and ripped telephone wires snaked across the oak floorboards. Glass from a broken hall stand reflected a mosaic of light onto the ceiling. Emmanuel took a deep breath. A single phone call he''d received minutes before the end of the shift had made the difference between being with Davida and Rebekah and being here, in chaos. "What a mess, hey?" Detective Constable Dryer, a big-boned Afrikaner with thinning brown hair combed over a bald spot, stood in a doorway to the right of the wreckage.
Dryer''s most useful character trait was his ability to state the completely fucking obvious. "Uh-huh." Emmanuel made the right noises. The white and yellow telephone wires interested him. The actual telephone lay farther into the hallway, the receiver torn clean from the cord attaching it to the base. Stripping the wires from the wall might be a sign of extreme caution or violent rage. No way to tell which yet. An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.
"Animals. Who else would do this so close to Christmas?" Dryer hooked his broad thumbs into his belt, which gave his beer gut room to move. "You wait and see, Cooper. The police commissioner will work us like dogs till this case is closed. No leave. No overtime. We can kiss our holidays good-bye." "Bad timing," Emmanuel said.
Dryer liked to complain. If he''d worked for the postal service, the mailbags would be too heavy. Emmanuel let him gripe. The fleshy Afrikaner was background noise and part of what Emmanuel had agreed to endure in order to secure a short-term transfer from the coastal city of Durban to the flat sprawl of Johannesburg. He''d worked his boss, Colonel van Niekerk, hard for the transfer and knew that the favor would have to be repaid in the future-with interest. Seeing Davida and Rebekah every day, however, was worth the heavier workload, and Dryer was no worse than most of the detectives he''d worked with in other places. Broken glass crunched underfoot and a tall man with a thin, humorless mouth stepped out of a room farther down the corridor. "Detectives," he said.
Black hair, black shoes and an unwrinkled black suit gave Lieutenant Walter Mason a grim, funereal appearance. "Cooper." Mason crooked a finger. "In here with me." Emmanuel kept to the left of the corridor, careful to avoid disturbing the debris. A living room with a lime-green carpet, a brown corduroy sofa and a tinsel-laden Christmas tree appeared untouched. Four silver photo frames were arranged in a straight line on the mantel. Sounds of quiet sobbing came from deeper in the house.
"There''s no time for delicacy, Cooper," Mason said. "The ambulance officers have to get through. Dryer, clear a path." "But ." The Afrikaner started to complain. Mason''s icy expression killed the words in his mouth. "Right away, sir." Emmanuel approached the doorway where the lieutenant stood.
Oak floorboards creaked underfoot. The air smelled of rusting copper after the rain. Emmanuel knew the odor well. It was the hot, wet funk of blood: a scent burned deep into his memory. He''d smelled too much of it on the battlefields of France during the war. "Go on." Mason motioned into a bedroom bathed in bright electric light. The metal smell intensified and burned Emmanuel''s throat.
A shirtless white man lay on the cream-colored carpet, pale arms and legs splayed at bizarre angles. Pulped and swollen to twice its natural size, the man''s face resembled a grapefruit left to rot in the field. Stained teeth showed through a split bottom lip. He had been horribly beaten. He might live to midnight. "Ian and Martha Brewer," Mason said. "A high school principal and a secretary at the office of land management. Not the usual victims of such a violent crime.
" Emmanuel skirted the bed and found Martha Brewer. She was a tiny thing, a puppet with cut strings propped up against the mattress base. Blood clotted her dyed blond hair and stained the neckline of her pink cotton nightdress. A pulse point fluttered at the base of her neck, weak but steady. The ambulance siren howled from the front lawn and set the neighborhood dogs to barking. "Stay here, Cooper. I''ll see the medics in." "Yes, sir.
" Emmanuel remained crouched and looked around. Middle-class ruin blighted every surface of the room. The wall behind the quilted bed head was sprayed with an arc of rust-colored splatter. Summer dresses and plain cotton shirts had spilled from broken dresser drawers. The wardrobe had also been rifled. "In here." Mason directed two white men into the bedroom. Each carried a canvas-and-wood stretcher underarm and a medical kit in hand.
"See to the woman first." Emmanuel stepped into the corridor, gave the ambulance crew room to work. They knelt on the stained carpet, stanching blood and bandaging wounds. Their hands were soon soaked, the knees of their trousers blotted red. Martha Brewer''s body made a small hollow in the canvas as they carried her to the ambulance, taking a path cleared through the hallway rubble by Dryer. "The husband is finished," Mason said when the ambulance roared onto the asphalt road with sirens screaming and Ian and Martha Brewer strapped into the back. "With God''s grace the wife will survive the night." "Yes, by the grace of God.
" Emmanuel made more right noises. Some days it seemed that all he did was lie by omission. "I didn''t take you for a praying man, Cooper," Mason said. The only real color in the lieutenant''s face was in his eyes: they were a bright blue. Ice cubes had more warmth. "I keep my hand in." Emmanuel examined the telephone wires to avoid discussing religion with Mason, a born-again, praise-the-Lord Christian. For twelve years the lieutenant had worked undercover operations, all the while enjoying regular access to his two great loves: sourmash whiskey and free pussy.
Then a gospel tent preacher saved him and now he served a joyless god who frowned on all forms of pleasure, even laughter. "So it''s true," Mason said. "There are no atheists in foxholes." "I never met any," Emmanuel said. That his superior officer knew he''d been a combat soldier during the war and not part of the rear-echelon army was a detail to consider later. "All this for a box of jewelry and a stack of bills hidden behind the underwear drawer." Mason gestured to the wrecked furniture. "The love of money is truly the root of all evil.
" "The living room hasn''t been touched," Emmanuel said. "There''s a row of silver picture frames on the mantel. Why expend so much energy and leave those behind?" "It wouldn''t be the first time a robbery became a murder." "True." Burglars caught in the act killed dozens of people every year and maimed a few more besides. "This level of violence seems excessive, almost personal in nature." Sobbing came from the rear of the house. "That''s the daughter you hear.
" Mason stalked the length of the corridor, crunching debris. "Negus is babysitting her in the kitchen till one of the station typists arrives. She needs a female touch." In police code, female touch translated to "the witness is hysterical and won''t stop crying, even though we''ve told her to." Emmanuel followed Mason and glanced into a room with an upended single bed, a ransacked wardrobe and walls papered in a yellow canary design: a teenager''s bedroom, presumably the girl''s. "The police typist is coming from out Benoni way. She won''t be here for another half an hour at the earliest." The cold-eyed lieutenant paused outside a closed door and glanced at Emmanuel over his shoulder.
"I want you to get in there and try to calm things, Cooper. If I remember right, you''re good with women." "I''ll try," Emmanuel said. Good with women? He couldn''t think where Mason''s comment came from. Dryer sniggered, sure that Mason was referring to a party in Dryer''s imagination at which Emmanuel and the lieutenant had shared in a repast.