CHAPTER TEN

One forty-five. Electric streetlights lit the sleeping city. The tram lines were empty and the police cells full of drunks, bar-room brawlers and natives caught without the official passbook that allowed them to overnight in white urban areas.

Emmanuel let himself into Chateau La Mer with the key that Hélène had too kindly given him in the afternoon and went straight for the guest bathroom. His shoulder- blades and neck had begun to throb and the presence of the mad Scottish sergeant major hovered at the edge of the pain.

'Please be here ...'Emmanuel pulled the medicine cabinet open. His luck had to change. The last few hours had been a waste. He'd ignored Khan's errand and pushed ahead with the murder investigation. The Zion Gospel Hall was locked, and the Cat and Fiddle pub where Joe Flowers had knifed two men in a fight had gone out of business. Flashing Joe's mug shot to lowlifes in every drinking hole on the Point had turned up nothing. No white DeSoto with white hubcaps and a mermaid picture in the window either. He knew no more about the Flying Dutchman than what Jolly's sister had told him. In fact, all he'd managed to do was appear on Khan's radar.

'Christ above ...' Emmanuel shook his head. He was on a losing streak. The cabinet shelves were empty and wiped clean. He moved to the bedroom to continue the hunt.

A brown paper envelope lay on the quilted duvet. He upended the contents onto the bed and a pair of silver police-issue handcuffs and keys weighed down the luxurious cover. An official police ID card with his name, photo and detective sergeant's rank came out to rest next to a freshly printed race-identification card. Just like that. Two small pieces of laminated paper and he was white again, a detective again.

The race-identification card wove a dark magic. People lied and cheated to get the word 'European' on this square of green paper. Others turned their backs on South Africa for lack of it. How could such a small thing - a plastic-covered piece of paper - control an individual's whole world? One flimsy document and he could walk through the front entrance of Dewfield College, where his sister, Olivia, taught maths and science. He could sit in the manicured grounds, a stone's throw from a dozen white schoolgirls, and not be considered a moral hazard.

He threw the cards down and pressed his thumbs to his temples. The presence of the Scottish sergeant major continued to search for a breach. Emmanuel headed for the kitchen. He'd chew on cloves and garlic if he had to. Anything to hold back the Scotsman and the splintering pain gathering force behind his eye socket.

He switched on the kitchen light and found the pantry. Glass tubs of goose fat, tall cans of peaches suspended in juice, cake flour and jars of raw sugar: Hélène Gerard was thin now but this was a fat person's larder. He moved aside bottles of olive oil and checked behind them.

'Mr Cooper?' The French-accented voice was slurred. 'Is that you?'

'It's me.' Emmanuel stepped out of the pantry. 'Sorry to wake you, Mrs Gerard.'

'No matter.' Hélène leaned her weight against the long oak table that ran across the middle of the room. 'No matter.'

The gracious woman he'd met this afternoon had disappeared. In her place was a sloppy housewife with unpinned hair and a slack mouth. She straightened herself up in the overly dignified pose adopted by drunks trying to appear sober.

'Please . . .' She formed her words laboriously. 'How can I help? I told the major I would help you.'

'I'm fine. You should go to bed.'

'No. Whatever you want I can find it for you. Then you can tell Major van Niekerk that I did everything that I promised.'

Emmanuel glimpsed the panic in her eyes. 'Painkillers,' he said. 'I have a headache. That's all. Nothing the major has to know about.'

'Aahhaa...' Hélène sailed towards a ceramic tea canister like a rudderless ship and lifted the lid. She rifled inside and produced a bottle of pills. 'Not ordinary painkillers, Detective Sergeant Cooper. The best. It's morphine,' she whispered. 'For you.'

Morphine was a controlled drug. Was Hélène Gerard an opium eater as well as a drunk? Emmanuel checked her face, her eyes, and found none of the dreamy washout that morphine left behind. He knew the look from the war. He had seen wounded soldiers and even some of the doctors wrapped in those dreams.

'Please.' Hélène pushed the bottle into his hands. 'Take them. There are only a few left. They are yours.'

Emmanuel turned the glass bottle over and the pills rattled. He didn't trust himself. Four white beauties and he'd sail through the window and stretch out on a cloud till midday. And that was the problem with good drugs. They worked so long as you kept taking them. And if they were good, that's all you wanted to do: keep taking them.

He opened the bottle and shook out four pills, thought better of it and returned one to the container. Two for now and one against the possibility that he didn't crack the case; that's when he'd need calm. He screwed the aluminium top back in place and read the label. The pills were prescribed for a Vincent Maurice Gerard. Two months ago.

'Your husband?' he asked.

'That's right.'

'Doesn't he need the morphine any more?' Emmanuel was curious. There was no evidence of Vincent Gerard in the house. In fact, there were no family photographs of any kind on display.

'He copes without the pills.' Hélène took the bottle and replaced it in the tea canister then filled a glass with water and gave it to Emmanuel. 'You'll tell the major I helped?'

'Of course.'

'Don't forget.' She tottered out of the kitchen on unsteady pins. A chair toppled over in the hallway and Emmanuel heard a soft curse. Why was the French-Mauritian so desperate to please van Niekerk?

He swallowed two pills and slipped the spare into the breast pocket of his jacket. Not his jacket. It was Vincent

Maurice Gerard's property and on loan to him, along with the police ID, for a shrinking period of time.