A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn Read Free Book Online Page A

way he guessed Pretorius must have liked it.
    The black man shifted uncomfortably. “Since before.”
    Emmanuel switched to Zulu. “You grew up together?”
    “Yebo.”
    Silence breathed between them as they stood drinking tea. Emmanuel noted the tension in Shabalala’s neck and shoulders. There was something on the black man’s mind. He let Shabalala make the first move.
    “The captain…” Shabalala stared across the yard. “He was not like the other Dutchmen…”
    Emmanuel made a sound of understanding but didn’t say anything. He was afraid of breaking the fragile bond he felt between himself and the native constable.
    “He was…”
    Emmanuel waited. Nothing came. Shabalala’s face wore the curious blank look he’d noticed at the crime scene. It was as if the Zulu-Shangaan man had flicked a switch somewhere deep inside himself and unplugged the power. The connection was broken. Whatever Shabalala had on his mind, he’d decided to keep it there under lock and key.
    Emmanuel, however, needed to know why the Security Branch was sniffing around this homicide.
    “What clubs did the captain belong to?” he asked Shabalala.
    “He went always to the Dutch people’s church on Sunday, and also the Sports Club where he and his sons played games.”
    If the captain had been a member of a secret Boer organization like the Broederbond, Shabalala would be the last to know. He had to find a simpler way to track down the Security Branch connection.
    “Is there another phone in town besides the one here at the station?”
    “The hospital, the old Jew, the garage and the hotel have phones,” Shabalala said. “The post office has a machine for telegrams.”
    Emmanuel swallowed the remainder of his tea. Two phone calls that he knew of had gone out regarding the murder. One to van Niekerk, who’d sooner eat horse shit than call in the Security Branch, the other to Paul Pretorius of army intelligence. It was time to go direct to the source, the family home, and find out what information it yielded.
    “I’ll go and pay my respects to the widow,” Emmanuel said. “Is the captain’s house far from here?”
    “No.” Shabalala opened the back door and allowed him to enter first. “You must walk to the petrol station and then go right onto van Riebeeck Street. It is the white house with many flowers.”
    Emmanuel pictured a fence made from wagon wheels and a wrought-iron gate decorated with migrating springbok. The house itself probably had a name like Die Groot Trek, the Great Trek, spelled out above the doorway. True Boers didn’t need good taste; they had God on their side.

    The late-afternoon sun began to wane and blue shadows fell across the flat strip of the main street. The handful of shops sustained themselves with a trickle of holidaymakers on their way to the beaches of Mozambique and the wilds of the Kruger National Park. There was OK Bazaar for floral dresses, plain shirts and school uniforms, all in sensible cotton. Donny’s All Goods, for everything from single cigarettes to Lady Fair sewing patterns. Kloppers for Bata shoes and farm boots. Moira’s Hairstyles, closed for the day. Then, on the corner, stood Pretorius Farm Supply behind a wire fence.
    A handwritten sign was tied to the mesh: “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances.” Unforeseen. That was probably the simplest way to get a handle on the murder of your father. Inside the compound a black watchman paced the front of the large supply warehouse while an Alsatian dog, chained to a spike in the ground, ran restless circles of its territory.
    Across a small side street was the garage Shabalala had told him about. The sign above the three petrol pumps read “Pretorius Petrol and Garage.” It was open, manned by an old coloured man in grease-covered overalls probably called in at short notice to supervise the black teenagers operating the pumps. Why wasn’t the town called Pretoriusburg? The family owned a big enough slice of it.
    Emmanuel