CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

A whistle blew a long, sharp note and Shabalala eased the truck to a stop in front of a row of two-storey terraces with deep verandas overlooking tended squares of green garden. A black man watering a fruiting cumquat tree immediately turned, went back into the house and closed the door.

Shouts and the pounding of running feet came from the pavement. Emmanuel peered at the side mirror. Three black men in hard-worn clothes most likely picked at random from a mission charity basket flew across the street and disappeared into an alleyway. Another shrill whistle cut the air. Emmanuel scrambled out of the truck. He didn't want the others caught in a net intended for him. Zweigman and Shabalala joined him on the pavement.

A lanky black man in gumboots and blue overalls ran by, wild-eyed and sweating. The snarl of police dogs followed him.

'Black Maria,' Shabalala said and pointed to the street corner. A caged police van, painted grey and not black as the name suggested, lumbered into view. Native men and women of all shapes and sizes scattered before it, like marbles spilling from a schoolboy's pocket.

'A passbook raid,' Shabalala said without emotion. This was the job of the police. To round up all the natives without the proper passes and ship them back to the native locations. A black man without proper permission to be in the city was naked in the wind; a thing to be swept up and thrown out into the countryside.

'Hell of a raid.' Emmanuel pointed to four policemen with Alsatian dogs straining against leather leashes. A squad of foot policemen blotted out the wall of the building behind them in a solid box of olive drab uniforms.

'What is happening?' Zweigman pressed back against the truck, pale and trembling. 'Where are the police taking these people?'

Emmanuel sensed the depths of the doctor's fear and explained what was happening.

'I have heard but never seen.' Zweigman rubbed his forehead while he recovered from the old fear that had so clearly overtaken him.

A police whistle blew a piercing note. The uniforms broke rank and ran like a khaki tide into the main streets and the alleyways. The non-whites who did not run stayed still. The dog squad moved towards the Bedford and the Alsatians raked the sidewalk with their wet snouts, their mouths open, their canine teeth visible. An item of white cotton clothing hung from the pocket of the lead handler's trousers.

'You should get into the truck, Detective,' Zweigman said. 'It is better not to be seen.'

'I'll be fine,' Emmanuel said and turned to Shabalala. 'You stick close.'

'Yebo.' The native constable understood that out of uniform and without official police papers he was just another black man forced to account for himself in a white world.

A scrawny Indian man crouched in a doorway like a praying mantis. Even though Indians and mixed-race people didn't need passes to be in urban areas, the labourer kept his head bowed and his hands held up in a gesture of supplication. An Alsatian wheeled in the direction of the figure in the doorway and the handler loosened the lead. The dog leapt forward and snuffled at the Indian's clothes and hair, eager to establish a trace scent.

'Got something, boy?' The dog squad policeman urged his canine partner on. 'Got something?'

The Alsatian fell back, disappointed. The labourer remained glued in place.

'Go into the truck, Sergeant,' Shabalala said. 'I will be fine here with the doctor.'

'Not until I figure out what's going on.' This action was more than a raid to net illegal black workers.

Emmanuel pulled his van Niekerk-issued detective branch ID from his pocket and moved towards the line of police dogs. He zeroed in on a red-faced boy who was struggling to keep his dog under control. The fresh recruits responded better to rank and title. Cynicism was still a few years off.

'Constable.' He flashed the ID. 'What's going on? You've got the whole Point in uproar.'

'Where have you been, Detective Sergeant?' The uniform smiled and tussled with the dog lead. 'We got him.'

'Who?'

'The Indian who killed Jolly Marks.' The constable was dragged away by canine force and his words were cut by the whimper of the excited dogs. 'He ran but we'll find him.'

The Alsatians set off at a lope. Pedestrians scattered from the pavement and the way lay clear for the police hounds. The labourer in the doorway had not moved. Emmanuel had not moved either. The constable's cheerful promise was a heart stopper. Zweigman and Shabalala came over to him.

'They are not looking for you, Detective Sergeant,' Shabalala said. 'They are looking, I think, for an Indian man.'

Further down the street, the Alsatians stopped to examine a dignified Indian in a pinstripe suit. The scent didn't hold and the dogs set off again, panting.

'They're after the Indian who killed Jolly Marks.' Emmanuel repeated the constable's words even though there was no sense in them. Two Indian suspects had mysteriously shrunk to one. The sharp call of police whistles and the thundering of boots on the pavement meant that a fistful of money was being thrown at the apprehension of Jolly's killer. Someone had loosened the law-enforcement purse strings. This effort was for the arrest of a child killer. It was interracial. It was a propaganda opportunity that could not be squandered.

'A witness gave the police a description of two dark-haired Indian men who were seen near the crime scene. Now it's down to one Indian and they're pretty sure he's guilty,' Emmanuel explained. A slew of uniformed police cut across the end of Browns Road. He pointed to them. 'Look at the number of cops. The Black Maria is to mop up any stray natives flushed out in the search. Dozens of pass violators and a child killer caught in a single afternoon. Whoever is in charge of this operation is going to get a promotion.'

'You are no longer the prime suspect. The mistake has been rectified,' Zweigman said. 'You are free.'

'Someone let me off the hook and now an innocent Indian man is on it instead.' Emmanuel shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, bunched them into fists. 'Neither one of us is guilty.'

And there was still the outstanding matter of the double murders at the Dover apartments. Emmanuel felt certain that his name would still be on those arrest warrants.

'The man you talked to at the storehouse, he is the one the police are searching for?' Shabalala said when Emmanuel showed no joy at being released from the hangman's noose.

'No. Brother Jonah is white and American.'

'Then who are the police after with their guns and dogs?' Zweigman puzzled aloud.

'I think I know,' Emmanuel said and moved off the pavement for two black men who were running full pelt for the alley. Their rubber shoes, fashioned from discarded car tyres, hit the pavement with hard slaps. Two light-haired boys, similar enough to be twins, stuck their heads out of a stationary Chrysler and giggled at the chaos of the natives and the police running around in all directions.

On the opposite side of Browns Road, Amal Dutta lurched from door to door in a frantic search for something.

'Amal.' Emmanuel hurried across the asphalt and touched the boy's shoulder. The teenager's body vibrated with harried breath. 'Slow down. Stop. What are you looking for?'

'Giriraj.' Amal took a great lungful of air. 'I have to find Giriraj.'

'Why?'

'I... I...' His words petered out and Amal slumped against the wall, his lungs wheezing.

'Sit.' Zweigman appeared at Emmanuel's shoulder and spoke directly to the stricken boy. 'Sit down on the step and put your head between your knees. Good.' The doctor squatted in front of Amal and placed both hands on his shoulders. 'There is enough air for every living thing. Take a deep breath. And another. Good. One at a time.'

Shabalala wove through the crawl of traffic and joined Emmanuel on the footpath. A crowd of Afrikaner and English rail yard workers gathered on the corner of Point Road, all whispers and pointed index fingers. It was clear that, for once, the opposing European sides agreed on something. Emmanuel moved to block their view of Amal. Outraged citizens could so easily turn into a mob and community-minded action into a full-scale riot.

Balmy Durban was no stranger to savage outbreaks of bloodshed. Beer hall riots and inter-tribal fighting claimed dozens of lives. Anti-rent rise protests in the late forties had ended in the frenzied looting of Indian stores and the savaging of shop owners and innocent bystanders. The civil English facade was a hair's breadth away from chaos. And that was the essence of empire: the unspoken tension between civilised appearance and stark reality.

Emmanuel squatted next to Zweigman. Shabalala stood to protect their backs. The Zulu constable also felt the low tremor of suppressed violence that travelled in the air like an electric charge before a storm. Police guns were the thunder and lightning.

'Tell me,' Emmanuel said to Amal.

'The police are looking for Giriraj.'

'What for?'

'Because of the boy we found in the rail yard. Because of him.' Amal licked his lips, miserable. 'The policemen want him for that.'

'For the murder?'

'Yes.'

'Did you call and give them Giriraj's name?'

'No. Never.'

'Parthiv?'

'Not him either.'

'Who then?'

Amal glanced down the length of the street then leaned forwards. 'Mr Khan.' He whispered the name like a witch casting a spell. 'It was Mr Khan. He knew that Parthiv and I were in the rail yard near the boy's body. He said to Maataa, "If the police know this, they will arrest your sons. They will go to jail and they will hang for that white boy's murder".'

The meeting between the Duttas and Khan hadn't been a peace initiative. It was a promise of disaster for the Dutta family.

'Khan blackmailed your mother,' Emmanuel said.

'No.' Amal's smile was cynical. 'Mr Khan said it was an exchange of information.'

'Of course,' Emmanuel said. 'Tell me about this exchange of information.'

'Mr Khan said that the police did not have to know about me or Parthiv. He could fix this problem.'

'But...?' There was always a 'but'.

'The detectives knew that Indian men were in the rail yard. Mr Khan said he had to give the police something to use. Just one name in exchange for our freedom.'

'Giriraj.'

'Maataa said no. Parthiv said no. I said no.' Amal struggled to his feet. Emmanuel and Zweigman stood at either side of him while he fought back tears. 'Mr Khan told us that Giriraj was a bad man. A thief. A liar. That he stole from us and spent the money on prostitutes.'

Khan's informers had been working overtime. He probably knew more about Jolly's murder and the plan to capture Nicolai and Natalya than the detective branch did.

'Then,' Amal continued, 'he picked up the telephone and dialled a number and asked to talk to a . .. a . . .'

'Detective Head Constable Robinson.' Emmanuel supplied a name but Amal shook his head in response.

'No. It was a British Raj name.'

'What do you mean?'

'Two surnames joined together,' Amal said, then continued with the story. 'Whose name shall I give the police?' he finished, imitating Khan, then fell into an uneasy silence. The end of the story was being played out on the streets around them.

High-pitched whistles screeched like metal birds and police wheeled as people ran past them. Giriraj came flying around the corner, crossed the tarred road and poured on the speed. The white rail workers raised a shout and a group of them gathered and ran after the Indian man.

'Giriraj!' Amal shouted, but the Dutta family bodyguard was deaf to everything but the police whistles and the thunder of footsteps behind him.

Humans found it remarkably easy to turn against each other, Emmanuel thought. If someone was a different colour, had a wandering eye or was left-handed then turning against him became even easier. How elemental and comforting to believe that wrongdoing could be identified by a physical trait. The police and the others were after Giriraj, but all Indian men - fat, thin, tall and dwarfed - were, for the duration of the hunt, courting danger.

Amal took off after Giriraj and Emmanuel raced after him.

'Giriraj!' Amal's plea blew away on the wind.

Traffic crawled then stopped when a squad of uniformed policemen swarmed across the road and veered in the direction Giriraj had fled. Emmanuel glanced over his shoulder. Shabalala and Zweigman were still with him, and behind them were more rail workers and police. If they stopped they'd be trampled under the momentum of the crowd.

Amal slowed. Emmanuel grabbed his arm and urged him forwards. 'Keep running,' he said and dragged the boy along the pavement by force of will.

Ahead was a busy four-way intersection strung with electric tram lines and anchored on the corners by traffic robots. Trucks and cars idled at the red light. An ordinary Monday afternoon. Durban's image was still intact and bathed in winter light. Giriraj, trailed by pursuers, neared the corner.

The traffic light turned to green. Cars surged into the intersection. Giriraj jumped the lip of the pavement and hit the crosswalk in full flight. A car braked hard and a horn blared. Giriraj skirted the front bumper of a maroon Mercedes and disappeared behind a delivery van. A second vehicle blasted its horn, a long, sustained note of alarm. The electric lines of the tram shook with the force of a sudden deceleration. Brakes screeched. A flock of seagulls shot skyward.

Emmanuel found extra speed and cut in front of Amal. Traffic in the intersection seemed cemented in place. A sweaty man, four back from the lights, craned out of his driver's window to find the reason for the hold-up. Across the line of ornamented car bonnets, Emmanuel glimpsed a grey-haired woman with a hand held against her mouth; the universal sign of distress that he'd seen countless times at crime scenes and in war zones: a scream held back.

He edged past the delivery van. Heads were craned out of the windows of a tram. Two women on the sidewalk clutched each other's arms. A uniformed driver with his hat askew and his face red stood in the doorway of the tram. He was shaking.

'He ran ... he ran straight in front of me. I couldn't stop . . .'

Emmanuel cleared a path through a small circle of onlookers. Giriraj lay on the asphalt, his limbs arranged at the impossible angles affected only by the dead. The oiled surface of his bald head was riddled with cuts and a leather sandal had been thrown onto the opposite sidewalk. Emmanuel kneeled to check for a pulse. Zweigman joined him on the road and Emmanuel pulled back and let the doctor take charge. He suspected that they both knew the result of the examination. A mortuary van, not an ambulance, would attend the scene.

'Giriraj . . .' Amal broke through the circle of onlookers. 'Giriraj.'

Emmanuel stood up and tried to block Amal's approach. The boy scooted to the right and dropped to his knees beside the once mighty body of Giriraj, now crumpled and vacant.

'Help him,' Amal pleaded of the white-haired doctor. 'Please.'

'He is beyond help and beyond hurt,' Zweigman said. 'I am sorry. He is gone.'

The tram driver turned away and the ticket conductor patted his back with a rough hand in the way of a man unused to displays of emotion. 'I didn't see him . . .' The driver's voice was a coarse whisper. 'He ran out of nowhere. There wasn't enough time to stop.'

'I know.' The conductor sat his work companion on the footpath. 'Plenty of witnesses saw what happened. You won't get the blame.'

The pursuit teams, the rail yard workers and the police arrived in separate waves of blue and olive drab. A bulky sergeant, sweat-stained and fragrant, began moving the crowd off while the rest of the squad set up a human cordon around Giriraj's body.

'Step back,' the sergeant barked. 'This is a crime scene. Everyone back four steps.'

Emmanuel motioned Zweigman away from the body, then leaned down and spoke close to Amal's ear. 'Time to leave,' he said. 'Now.'

'I'll wait.' Amal was dry-eyed. 'I'll wait for the ambulance to come.'

Emmanuel checked the crowd. The stunned tram passengers and the disappointed rail workers struggled for a better view. Constable Shabalala stood head and shoulders above the gathering. Any minute now elements of the crowd would shift focus from the dead man to Amal. They would want to know who he was, this young man kneeling by the side of a child killer.

One of the uniforms stuck on crowd control called out, 'Did we get the right one, Sarge?'

'The witness is on her way,' the sergeant bellowed. 'She'll do a formal identification here on the spot.'

A whistle blew and the throng split. The tram passengers craned their heads towards the new movement. Detective Head Constable Robinson and Detective Constable Fletcher pressed through the crowd with the witness tucked safely between them.

Emmanuel crouched and took hold of Amal's wrist. 'If I have to break your wrist to save your life, I will. Now move.

Quickly.' He tugged the boy to his feet. They stood almost face to face with Fletcher and Robinson.

'Her?' Amal gasped in recognition and Emmanuel wheeled them both sixty degrees so the witness saw their backs.

Zweigman glimpsed the fear in Amal's face and felt the urgency of the ex-detective's movements. 'This boy is going to be sick,' he shouted. 'Make way. Please. Make way.'

The crowd and the police gave them plenty of room. A path opened and then closed like a zipper as bodies hemmed in behind them. Soon, all three were part of the great human tide. Emmanuel shouldered through the spectators and cut across to Shabalala. The Zulu constable was the perfect barrier to shelter behind. Zweigman joined Shabalala to form a line of cover. If the detectives looked in their direction they would see an old man and a tall native brought into the city to help his master with the heavy chores.

The detectives led the witness over to Giriraj's body and Robinson held on to her slender arm. She was unsteady on her feet and swayed with the breeze.

'Is that really the same woman?' Amal whispered in disbelief.

'Yes,' Emmanuel said. 'She's cleaned up.'

The prostitute from the rail yard had come dressed in a dark brown frock that buttoned to the throat and fell well below the knee. The loose garment covered the details of her body. Her face was free of make-up, her hair pulled back into a neat bun. A plain gold chain was her only adornment. Compared with the sparkling night-time wear she favoured, this was practically sackcloth and ashes. Still, there was something about her that didn't sit right. Despite all her efforts to appear respectable, an aura of sexual availability clung to her. Emmanuel couldn't figure out why. The prostitute held a hankie to her nose like a Victorian heroine in a penny dreadful novella, and he saw bright colour glint from the white cotton. She'd forgotten to remove the flecks of devil-red polish from her long nails.

Detective Head Constable Robinson drew in a breath and let it out slowly while the witness completed her pantomime display of shock and grief. He appeared uneasy, despite being on the brink of solving the brutal murder of a white child.

'This him?' Robinson asked.

'Jâ,' the woman said. 'That's the Indian. He followed Jolly Marks.'

The crowd murmured in response. The prostitute continued to stare at Giriraj's body, mesmerised. A memory flickered across her face and she stepped back, lost in thought.

'And . ..' Robinson prompted after the silence had dragged out long enough.

'He ... he had a knife in his hand,' she said.

A few women tut-tutted while their husbands rued the fact that the Indian was already dead and would not be dragged through the courts and then killed by the proper means - a rope and scaffold.

Amal grabbed hold of Emmanuel's jacket sleeve and whispered, 'That's a lie. Giriraj never carried any weapons.'

'I know,' Emmanuel said. 'But there's nothing to be done about it now. If she fingers you as one of the Indian men in the yard that night, the detectives will turn you inside out.'

'But this is wrong,' Amal hissed. 'This is all a lie.'

'Getting arrested won't make it right,' Emmanuel said.

He studied Fletcher's and Robinson's tensed shoulders and blank expressions. They sensed something was rotten too, but faced with a difficult case and a likely suspect who could no longer defend himself they let the scene play out.

'You sure it's him?' Fletcher scratched his neck and peered down at the collapsed heap of flesh. 'You told the crime scene guys that it was two of them: black-haired and in suits. This one is bald with sandals.'

The prostitute licked dry lips. 'I was scared,' she mumbled. 'He'd seen me. He said he'd cut me if I told the truth.'

'What kind of knife was it?' Robinson kneeled on the tarred road and patted Giriraj's body down with brisk hands. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small lump wrapped in white muslin. The prostitute leaned forward, a horse to a sugar cube.

'Hashish. No weapons.' Robinson threw the white wrapped nub to his partner and spoke to the star witness. 'Did you get a good look at the knife?'

'What?' The woman fiddled with the gold chain around her neck, her hungry gaze on the lump in Fletcher's palm.

'The knife,' Robinson repeated. 'What did it look like?'

'Sharp,' she said. 'I was scared. He said he'd cut me.'

Tricky situation, Emmanuel acknowledged. A spellbound crowd, a dead man and a distressed woman. No matter what Fletcher and Robinson thought of the witness's evidence, they were in no position to question it. A scared white woman trumped a dead Indian with a lump of African Black in his pocket any day. They had to play it safe and keep the witness and the crowd on side.

Robinson smiled. 'But you're not scared any more. You found your courage and decided to tell us the truth. Is that right?'

'Ja, that's right.' She spilled tears and the detective stood up and laid a hand on her shoulder. The crowd responded instinctively to the weeping woman. They projected the image of their own mothers, sisters or aunties onto her, no matter the reality.

Emmanuel wondered what the tears were for: the loss of Giriraj's tender alleyway ministrations or the cessation of the regular smoke delivery? Probably both. Giriraj had provided the streetwalker with pleasure and comfort in a life that had little of either.

'Very brave of you,' Robinson said, 'to come forward and identify Jolly Marks's killer.'

'I had to,' the woman sobbed. 'I had to . . .'

Stripped of make-up and washed with tears, the prostitute radiated a strange purity. Truth seemed to shine from her. Emmanuel figured that was because she was finally telling the truth. The decision to come forward and identify Giriraj was not hers. She had to. There was no choice involved.

The woman turned from Giriraj's body and stumbled blindly to the edge of the burgeoning crowd. Robinson snaked his heavy arm across her shoulder to weigh her down and stop her wandering. The spectators pressed against the ring of police cordoning off the scene.

'You've done well.' Robinson injected sincerity into the textbook interview wrap-up. 'We couldn't have solved this crime without you. Jolly's mother can sleep easy tonight.'

The prostitute's sobs increased and Robinson signalled Fletcher to clear the way. An eager uniformed constable parted the wall of blue overalls and the rail yard workers stepped back and assumed the stiff posture of an honour guard. Robinson guided the prostitute into the breach while the crowd looked on, mesmerised by the fragile white woman being led to safety.

'God bless you, miss,' a passenger on the halted tram called and fluttered a hankie in farewell. The prostitute gave a royal wave and disappeared into the corridor of blue.

Emmanuel craned above the sea of hats and heads to catch the dying moments of the drama. Tucked into the crowd but still in plain view, a British thug in a suit, whom Emmanuel recognised as Khan's bodyguard, watched the prostitute. Robinson held the witness steady and the rail workers ushered them through to an empty strip of pavement.

'Shameless,' Amal hissed. 'That woman is shameless.'

'She can't afford shame,' Emmanuel said. 'Any more than you or I can afford risking a heart-to-heart talk with the police.'

The rail workers began to drift back to the freight yard. For a moment, real justice had been within their reach, the Indian a half block away from punishment. Now all that was left was work. Lines of sooty railway cars in need of decoupling and mile upon mile of hypnotic steel track.

Khan's bodyguard wove through the dispersing workers but kept two paces behind the detectives and their star witness. He had the grace of a rhino on an ice floe and knocked shoulders with a man attempting to roll a cigarette. The impact spilled cut tobacco over the bodyguard's suit and drew a curse from the smoker. The prostitute glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of Khan's man. Her face was drawn with lines of fatigue but her eyes sparkled. Life on the docks was patterned after the ocean: a cycle of rising and falling tides. Giriraj's death had brought the streetwalker to the centre of attention, but the spotlight would only last a minute before shining somewhere else. Soon this drama would end and she would go back to a life filled with nameless men and dirty boxcars.

A pay-out, Emmanuel guessed. The sparkle in the prostitute's eyes when she saw Khan's man was anticipation. She had acted her role and now it was time to collect her reward: a few folded notes and a chunk of hashish to keep away bad dreams of the innocent man sprawled on the tarmac.

Afzal Khan was behind this perversion of justice but Emmanuel couldn't figure what the gangster had gained from it.

'Move back!' the sweat-stained sergeant in charge of crowd control yelled. 'Make way for the mortuary van.'

The spectators moved back slowly, reluctant to leave before the door to the van was locked and the blood washed from the road.

The conductor pulled the stunned tram driver upright and they inspected the damaged vehicle. 'A quick trip to the workshop and she'll be good as new,' the conductor said and shuffled his feet to cover the sound of the driver's quiet tears. The driver touched the faint dent in the front of the vehicle made by the contact with Giriraj's body.

'I am responsible for what happened,' Amal said. 'More guilty than the tram driver.'

'You are not to blame,' Emmanuel said. 'Mr Khan gave your family an impossible choice.'

'And how must I live with this feeling inside?' Amal said.

The mortuary van reversed at an angle and drew parallel with the stricken tram. The passengers filed down the stairs under the eager watch of a police constable and regrouped on the pavement. Two Indian girls in smart cardigan sweaters and A-line skirts split from the group and walked away. They had seen enough.

'Do more good than harm,' Emmanuel said to Amal and immediately regretted his words. He was perhaps the least qualified person to dispense wisdom on the subject of feelings. A taste for painkillers and the voice of the phantom sergeant major indicated that his own emotions were still a tangle - the result of a world war and a childhood that seemed to be a string of domestic battles. And this country with its pettiness ... He wondered what qualifications he had to tell anyone anything while he hung onto his white ID card and his detective's badge - no matter how temporary they might be.

He took another tack. 'Do not become Mr Khan,' he said.

Amal said, 'I can do that.'

The mortuary attendants - a fat coloured man and a muscular Indian, both dressed in medical whites - swung open the van's double doors and pulled out a trolley. A policeman picked up Giriraj's stray sandal and threw it on the corpse's chest.

The sweaty sergeant lit up a cigarette and smiled at the morgue staff. 'He's a big bastard. That's one hundred per cent pure Punjabi muscle. I'll finish my smoke and give you boys a hand.'

The attendants hung back. They would have to wait until the police sergeant was good and ready. Giriraj lay sprawled across the roadway; just another load to be picked up and stored for burial.

'Perhaps we should go,' Zweigman said.

They turned and left Giriraj in the care of the non-white attendants who would drive him in their non-whites vehicle to the non-whites section of the morgue where he would rest among other dark-skinned souls.

Ten doorways from the scene of the accident Maataa and Parthiv sat on the second step of a stone staircase that led to the front door of a garment import and export business.

Their shoulders touched. Clove cigarette smoke cocooned them from the bustle of the street. Maataa's glass bracelets jangled when she drew on the cigarette and handed it to Parthiv. They did not talk. They gazed at the pavement.

'Oh.' Amal was taken aback by the harmonious family scene. 'They were here all along.'

'Probably waiting for you,' Emmanuel said.

Amal hesitated then approached the stair. His mother shuffled over to make room. He sat beside her and all three kept the silence. Parthiv passed the cigarette back to his mother. She drew on it deeply and passed it to Amal. The baby of the Dutta family inhaled and coughed when the smoke hit his lungs. Tears ran down his face. Maataa did not laugh and Parthiv did not call him a weakling. They sat and finished the cigarette.

Amal was going to be all right, Emmanuel thought. And Parthiv had been handed a real-life lesson in what it took to be a hard man. He would never walk with quite the same swagger or lecture Amal on the fine points of criminality quite so often. The Dutta family might even emerge stronger from this defeat.

'What now?' Zweigman asked when the Bedford truck came into view. The street bustled with human traffic pouring away from the accident scene.

'We're going to have a talk with Khan,' Emmanuel said.

"This man will talk?' Shabalala sounded doubtful.

'We'll find a way,' Emmanuel said.

He caught sight of Robinson and Fletcher across the street. They were still talking to the prostitute. She'd stopped crying and her body was rigid with tension. Khan's bodyguard leaned against the wall of a coffee shop two buildings further up and looked on.

'I told you.' The prostitute's voice was shrill and her fingers twisted the gold chain that hung around her neck. 'He said he'd find me and cut me.'

The expression on both detectives' faces was a mixture of boredom and contempt. Being a policeman meant talking to liars every day of the week. Good ones. The whore was terrible at it.

Emmanuel checked his watch. Less than three hours was left before van Niekerk's deal expired. Still, he was impressed by Fletcher's and Robinson's perseverance. They knew something was wrong and they weren't ready to walk away. The truth mattered to them.

'Let's go to Khan's office.' Emmanuel turned back to Zweigman and Shabalala. 'His bodyguard is across the street there keeping an eye on the witness. That's one less obstacle to deal with.'

The Alsatian dogs could be heard around a corner. The Point was crawling with armed policemen as the mop-up of natives continued. They moved closer to the row of two- storey terraces where the Bedford was parked. Driveways split off the main road and led to warehouses. A Rolls- Royce Silver Wraith was parked in the loading dock of Abel Mellon - Dry Goods Wholesaler.

Emmanuel walked past the car and stopped when they were across the driveway and shielded by the walls of the next building. 'That's Khan's car in the loading dock,' he said to Zweigman and Shabalala. 'I think he's in it.'

'With all the police?' Shabalala said. 'That man is without fear.'

Emmanuel thought about it for a moment. It was an odd place for a well-known Indian gangster to park his Rolls.

Even Bergis Morgensen was able to identify Khan's car. A more cautious man would have stayed away.

'Maybe Khan has nothing to be afraid of,' Emmanuel said and took the stolen notebook from his pocket. He opened it to the letter 'A'. 'What did Amal say about the policeman Khan threatened to call?'

'He had a British Raj name,' Zweigman said.

'With two surnames,' Shabalala added.

Emmanuel scanned the entries, which were sparse and written in a sloping hand. Anderson. Advani. Absolem. He moved on through the Bs and Cs without finding a double-barrelled surname. The last name in the C listings, scribbled hastily in pencil, caught his attention and he read it aloud: 'Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper'.

Had Khan known who he was all along or was the entry more recent? He kept flicking through the alphabet. Time was winding down. Smith. Saunders. Sidhu...

'Here.' Shabalala pointed to an entry written along the vertical length of the page margin. Emmanuel turned the book sideways to read the name scribbled in black ink.

'Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick.' He smiled. 'Now that's a British Raj name.'

'What is that?' Shabalala pointed to a squiggle of letters that had been added to the front of the name, almost as an afterthought. The writing was smudged and almost illegible. Emmanuel tried and failed to make sense of the scrawl.

'May I?' Zweigman said and politely took the book. 'I have long experience reading my own handwriting.' The doctor pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and peered at the letters like a gypsy reading tea leaves. 'Col,' he said. 'C-O-L.'

'Colonel Edward Soames-Fitzpatrick,' Emmanuel said. Yes, that matched what van Niekerk had said about the voice on the phone: an officious little shit who thought a Dutch policeman and an ex-detective could be used and then dumped. A soutpiel. Emmanuel closed the phone book, thought again, thumbed to the letter V but did not find van Niekerk's name.

'Let's go get this bastard,' he said.

'With what weapons?' Shabalala asked.

Coming to battle without guns had been the ruin of the mighty Zulu army.

'This book.'