CHAPTER TWELVE

The Swell Times cafe on South Beach sold scoops of ice-cream in waxed paper cups. Miss Morgensen chose chocolate and strawberry sprinkled with chopped nuts. Emmanuel stuck with vanilla. They strolled the beachfront on the lookout for a place to sit and talk. A vacant bench faced the ocean.

Miss Morgensen pointed to the 'Whites Only' sign. 'If members of my family can't sit down here, then I don't sit here either.'

'Well, that rules out the beach and the cafes,' Emmanuel said. 'This whole strip is for Europeans only.'

'Then we'll walk.'

'Happy to,' Emmanuel said and kept alongside the missionary. The ocean curled onto the sand and tanned families splashed in the waves. A tanker glided along the horizon line. He was comfortable in the silence. Sometimes the people he spoke to felt the need to fill it. Miss Morgensen was not one of them. She licked her spoon and admired the ocean.

'You're a servant of God,' Emmanuel said after a few minutes of quiet, 'but you're worldly enough to know that the murder of a child isn't going to go away. Silence won't give you, or any of your family, protection from the police. Talk to me now - or talk to somebody else later.'

Miss Morgensen paused and began walking, more slowly. 'Joe was a member of the Zion family for a short while,' she said. 'But it didn't take.'

'This was before he went to prison?'

'He left a few months before he stabbed those two poor men in a bar fight. He's a poor lost man himself.'

'What happened?'

'Joe's spirit was willing but his flesh was weak. Very weak. He got involved with one of the young sisters in the congregation and when money was tight he was happy for her to work the docks.'

'He was a pimp?'

Miss Morgensen's look said yes, but she couldn't bring herself to say it. 'We talked about these bad habits and we prayed for power to resist the devil but nothing changed. Then I discovered Joe had brought other young sisters into his arrangement and that's when he was told to find another family.'

Emmanuel had met a few murdering pimps back in Jo'burg. The victims were usually 'disobedient' girls who'd run away or customers who bruised the merchandise.

'Were Jolly and Joe members of Zion at the same time?'

'They were.'

'Jolly knew him?'

Miss Morgensen hesitated. 'Yes, he did.'

The missionary had earlier said that Jolly might have known his killer - now the connection between Joe and the murdered boy was established. Was there also a connection between the escaped prisoner and Mrs Patterson and her maid? Emmanuel remembered the sack of sugar toppled over in his landlady's kitchen. Maybe goods stolen off the docks linked the murders.

'Are any of Joe's girls still around?'

'A few are in the area, yes.'

'Names and addresses?'

'Let's see.' Miss Morgensen ate a scoop of chocolate. 'Stella is married to a policeman now. Newborn baby. Joe won't go anywhere near her. He tried it once and got a beating. Patty is around but I haven't seen her the last month or two. Anne is still a member of the Zion. She lives in the same building as the Marks family.'

It was worth a try. Joe wouldn't risk a return to the soup factory now he'd been spotted there. He'd be hunting for a new hiding place. 'What number?'

'You really think there's a connection between Jolly's murder and the Flowers boy?'

'There's a connection,' Emmanuel said. 'But I don't know what it is yet.'

Miss Morgensen contemplated the crash of the waves and said, 'I'd better take you. Anne will go out the back window the moment you knock on her door, and it's better for the family if we can clear up questions about Jolly's death without delay.'

'Better for all of us,' Emmanuel said.