CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A white DeSoto four-door with silver trim and white hubcaps was parked in the shadow of the ocean liner moored at the Southampton Street pier. A muscular black man in fresh blue overalls buttoned to the collar worked a cloth over the car's wheel arch while a crew of Zulu stevedores loaded the ship's cargo hold and chanted a work song. Sun-kissed passengers leaned over the railing and enjoyed the sound of black Africa at work.

The man acknowledged Emmanuel's approach with the wide smile offered by servants to Europeans. Emmanuel did not disabuse him.

'Greetings/ the man said and continued buffing the vehicle with long, even strokes the way a stablehand might groom a horse.

'Nice car,' Emmanuel said and pretended to study the silver chrome that ran along the vehicle's side. Instead he studied the cleaner. His hands were smooth and his clean fingernails were clipped short.

'Does the baas have a car also?' the black man asked without looking up from his work. The weather, automobiles and the coronation of the English queen were all safe things to talk about with white men.

'No car,' Emmanuel said and caught sight of the two-tone leather shoes peeking from the bottom of the overalls. The soles were unworn and the laces new. They were not an employer's throwaways. If this man turned out to be just a humble domestic then Emmanuel would eat the shoes for dinner.

'I'd like to talk to the Flying Dutchman,' he said.

That got the car cleaner's attention. He glanced up. The wide smile contracted a fraction but he managed to hold it in place by force of will. 'Hiya ...' He made a sound of regret. 'I'm sorry, ma baas, but I do not know about this man. Sorry, ma baas. Sorry.'

'You can cut the baas, sorry ma baas routine. Take a good look at me. I'm not a policeman. I just want to find the Flying Dutchman.'

The man twisted the cloth around his finger then slowly examined Vincent Gerard's borrowed suit. The silk tie, the imported-quality fabric, the hand-sewn buttons . . .

'What is it you want with the Dutchman?' he said, still cautious.

'I'll tell him myself,' Emmanuel said. 'It's private business.'

'Private?' The black man whistled. 'That's an expensive word in South Africa, ma baas. A man must pay and pay for these private things.'

'I've got money,' Emmanuel said. Van Niekerk's bankroll was now 'stay out of jail' money. Twenty-five hours and both he and the stack of notes might be signed into police evidence.

'Who told the baas about the Dutchman? I must give a name or he will not come.'

Mentioning Jolly Marks this early in the negotiations might scare the Dutchman away Dead children had that effect. Not giving a name would definitely send the Dutchman packing. He pulled out Jolly's notebook and showed the mermaid sketch. 'Will this do?'

The man's dark brown eyes studied the picture, weighing up the potential risks and rewards of taking on a new client. 'Wait here and I will see.' The black man shoved the cleaning cloth into a pocket and disappeared behind a row of sheds at the side of the two-storey passenger terminal. Emmanuel rested against the DeSoto. The sun was still well above the horizon line.

'Union Jack flags. Union Jack buttons . . .' An Indian street vendor carted a bucket of coronation decorations along the pier. The sunshine was warm on Emmanuel's skin but he could not enjoy it. Seeing the pale man hidden behind the newspaper had brought back the big question: Why had he been released from police custody? He had a feeling that the real reason for the forty-eight-hour deal was more complex than van Niekerk had said.

A black man in a dark green suit, white shirt and green tie stepped out from behind the storage sheds and walked quickly along the planks of the wharf. Blue overalls were folded neatly over his arm. Emmanuel squinted into the afternoon light. The man opened the boot of the DeSoto, threw in the overalls and retrieved a dark grey fedora with a green satin trim. Three minutes behind the sheds and the servant in overalls had become a 'town Jack', street-wise and sharp, who had never hoed a field or herded cows back to the kraal at dusk.

'You?' Emmanuel said. The wild-haired mermaid winked from an illustrated cardboard square neatly stowed in the clean boot. Faint clip marks bit into the top edge of the sign.

The black man angled the brim of the fedora so his expression was unreadable. 'Don't I look Dutch, ma baas?'

'Like windmills and tulips,' Emmanuel said.

And maybe that was the point of the name. Here was a black man whose ambition ignored the colour barrier.

'Do you want to go to the same place as your friend?' the man asked after he'd locked the boot and wiped his own fingerprints off the chrome with a handkerchief.

Emmanuel drew a blank. What friend?

'The one who came to me with the boy's picture. Do you want to go to the same place that I took him?'

The boy's picture . .. Jolly had given the sketch to someone else to use as an introduction to the cagey Dutchman.

'Jâ. The same place,' Emmanuel said. 'How much to take me?'

'Two pounds for transport there and back. Cash upfront.'

That was nearly a month's rent. A jail cell, on the other hand, was free. He crossed the man's palm with two portraits of the king and wondered where the ride would take him.

'What's your proper name?' he said. 'I can't have someone called the Flying Dutchman knowing my secrets.'

'It is Exodus.' The man rustled the pound notes between his thumb and forefinger before tucking them carefully into his breast pocket. He pulled the door open and waved Emmanuel inside. 'That is my church-given name. We Basotho had to leave our land and come to the city just like the people in the Bible.'

Maybe that was true but Emmanuel doubted it. Multiple names gave multiple covers to hide behind. It might take the police weeks to unravel the connection between Exodus and the Flying Dutchman.

The polished leather interior of the DeSoto smelled of fresh beeswax and the plush carpets were springy underfoot. Two metal clips were glued above the passenger window. That's how Jolly's sister, Susannah, had seen the mermaid. Her picture was hung against the glass: a coded invitation to Durban's underworld.

Exodus reversed out of the parking space and drove along Quayside Road towards town. Rows of wide-fronted warehouses gave way to Art Deco apartment buildings and balconied hotels with dress-circle rooms facing the Esplanade and Natal Bay. Golden veins of sand threaded the water. A solitary grey heron fished the shallows while men with buckets, spades and turned-up trousers mined the tidal shoreline for worms. The Bluff headland, covered in wild green, protected the harbour from the open sea.

'So...' The Basotho man tilted the rear-view mirror to get a better view of the passenger seat. 'Is the baas married? Got a girlfriend maybe?'

Emmanuel wasn't bothered by the scrutiny Vincent Gerard's high-class suit was better than a clown disguise. The reflection in the mirror was a million miles from the reality of his life.

'A girlfriend,' he said. Memories of Lana Rose were still fresh while the wedding ring indentation on his finger was now faint. Three years had not been a long enough time for the weight of the gold band to leave a permanent mark.

Dark fingers drummed against the steering wheel. 'And she is a good woman?'

'Sure.' Two lies in a row and the ride was five minutes old. A man in this kind of job couldn't expect the truth from his customers. 'Tell me,' Emmanuel said. 'Will the right amount of money get me anything I want?'

A fine suit and a fine car were two things normally out of reach of a black man. Money made it all possible. And Jolly Marks was somehow hooked into this operation. The cigarettes and sweets were not charity; they'd been earned.

Exodus shook his head. 'There are those who work the docks who will help scratch any itch. I am not one of those men. I do not do the young boys and the girls. Also, the man who likes to draw blood from a woman with his fists, I cannot help. These are my rules.'

That criminals and thugs loved rules and chivalrous codes had always amused Emmanuel. Firebomb a restaurant, murder a police informer, terrorise an entire community: that was all right as long as no children or dogs or old ladies were harmed. The rules were, in Emmanuel's experience, the laziest way a man had to convince himself of his own worth. In any case, the rules were fiction. They all came with a dozen out clauses.

'Story around the docks is that you did business with that kid Jolly Marks,' he said and waited for the car brakes to slam. A conversation about a dead European child was dangerous territory for a man in Exodus's position.

"That boy is good with the numbers, like a machine,' Exodus said with a smile. The easy two-pound payment had put him in a good mood. It was more than most non-whites made in a month. 'For him to keep track of five different hands in a poker game, that is nothing.'

Exodus used the present tense and Emmanuel realised why. He'd left town on Friday morning and had only just returned. The Basotho man didn't know Jolly was dead.

'You use him as a card counter?'

'For card games at Europeans-only parties. Better money than working the docks. Safer also.'

Durban, the most English of all South African cities, appeared easygoing, but influx-control gates at every major entry road kept most black people corralled in the sprawling township of Cato Manor. It was not possible for a native man to stumble upon the mathematical talents of a white child by accident.

'How did you know Jolly was good with numbers?' Emmanuel asked.

'My mother's sister. She is a cleaner at one of the houses on Point Road, the one run by the fat Irishwoman who wears the men's clothing. You know it?'

'No.'

'The boy's father brought him into the house to do card tricks for the cat women and their customers. This is how my aunty knew about the numbers.'

It was always behind closed doors that race groups mixed.

The DeSoto slowed to a crawl along a deserted stretch of Edwin Swales Drive. A drunk slept off a hard night in the doorway of a ship repair yard. Out here, it was a dead quiet Sunday afternoon.

'I took this boy Jolly to three parties only.' The black man glanced over his shoulder, suspicious. 'How is it that the baas knows these things unless he is a policeman?'

The 'baas, ma baas' would come thick and fast while Exodus planned an escape strategy.

'I'm not a policeman,' Emmanuel said.

'How do you know this boy worked for me?'

'Give me two pounds and I'll tell you,' Emmanuel said. If he didn't stem the panic, Exodus might swing a U-turn back towards town.

'And why must I do that?'

'Because my sources are private and private is an expensive word in South Africa. A man must pay and pay for these private things. Right?'

Exodus laughed and said, 'I think that maybe you are not a policeman.'

'No, but I am in a hurry. My girl wants me back in time for the coronation lights.' A few more hours on this job and lying would come easier than breathing.

The industrial buildings thinned and a mangrove swamp grew up, thick and tangled, along the water's edge. A gang of juvenile boys with jutting elbows and scraped knees sprinted across the road with home-made fishing rods over their shoulders. The bridge spanning the Umhlatuzana Channel was a slender umbilical cord connecting the Bluff to the more cosmopolitan confines of Durban town.

'Are we crossing over the bridge? Or heading back to the passenger terminal?' Emmanuel asked. "That's the two-pound question.'

The DeSoto rumbled across the bridge. He had his answer. The road sloped upwards towards the spine of the headland. Small houses occupied the cusp of land overlooking swamplands and the harbour wharfs. European women gossiped over low fences while men in overalls tinkered with car skeletons or burned off the weekly rubbish in tin drums perforated with oxygen holes. The windblown petals of a kaffirboom tree painted the dirt verge red.

Two Union Jack flags flew from a makeshift line strung across the front garden of a brick house. Across the road, a white banner with the word 'Republic' fluttered from the front fence of an equally small dwelling.

'English versus Afrikaner,' Exodus said. 'One side is for the Queen and her country and the other side is for Prime Minister Malan and a republic.'

'Are you taking bets on the winner?' Emmanuel asked.

The odds had swung behind Malan, the ex-Dutch reformed church minister with pants hitched high over his prosperous gut. He was in London for the coronation but was talking up plans for an independent South Africa while the bones of British soldiers interred in the fields of Zululand and the Transvaal turned in their graves.

'I must give more money now that Malan and his people are the chiefs. Many laws to break means many bribes to pay the police. But to say the truth . . . both the Dutch and the British, they can go and dance off a cliff. No hard feelings, baas.'

Emmanuel shrugged to indicate that no offence was taken. Reclassification from white to mixed race had forced him outside the confines of the white world. From the perimeter he had experienced the singular truth that governed the lives of a majority of non-white South Africans: the weight of the boot on your back, Boer or British, was equally heavy.

'Look at this clown.' Exodus drew focus away from his bold remark and indicated a fair-haired youth who tore circles into a field of dirt with a motorbike. Smoke and dust blew from the tyres. Two girls looked on from the edge of the field, vaguely impressed by the roar of the engine and the smell of burnt fuel.

'Rough and tough from the Bluff. That's what we say in town. Have you been out to this place before?'

'First time,' Emmanuel said. Almost six months in Durban with nothing to show but rough hands and corded muscle. The loop between the Dover flats and the Victory Shipyard was almost the entire orbit of his universe.

The DeSoto climbed steadily upwards then swung left onto a road that followed the spine of the headland. A thick blanket of vegetation covered the slopes and spread down to the edge of the bright ocean water. A breeze blew in a stench of soured pork and fish.

'That is the whaling station,' Exodus said. 'They are cutting and boiling the fat in big vats. Will you still be able to enjoy your visit?'

'I'll give it my best shot. And my name is Emmanuel.'

This afternoon would be special if it led to one of the last people to see Jolly Marks alive. Possibly. Maybe. Hopefully. Words for a prayer, not a police investigation. Facts, hard evidence, witnesses. That's what he needed to stay out of jail.

They peeled off the main road onto a dirt track that cut into a mass of thornbush and creeping triffid weed. A white mailbox marked the presence of a dwelling somewhere in the thicket. Red dirt, blue sky and fifteen different shades of green surrounded the car. The sound of an automobile driving on the main road receded into the quiet.

The DeSoto bumped downwards and the silver teeth of the front grille levelled the underbrush to lawn. The chrome hood ornament, a bust of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, cast a steely gaze into the bush.

'We are here.' Exodus pulled into an untidy lot overshadowed by ancient Natal mahogany trees. A tumbledown house occupied a square of land that had been cleared of all vegetation. A flock of glossy starlings perched along the broken fence line, their feathers iridescent in the sunlight.

'You sure this is it?' Emmanuel said.

A deserted dwelling off the main road and far from prying eyes was the perfect setting for a shakedown. Men who used Exodus's services were easy targets. Rob them and they rarely reported the theft to police. Rough them up and they sometimes hit back but mostly they crawled into a corner and licked their wounds, their shameful secret safe.

'This is the place,' Exodus said. 'I left them here. It was pitch black but we found the mailbox and then the house.'

Them. More than one person had been dropped off in the dead of night. He opened the car door and the caustic stench of the whaling factory brought the smell of death. It was too late to back out now. If he mentioned the word 'police' Exodus would drive away without a goodbye. The two pounds were already in his pocket.