A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

Author:Malla Nunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Detective, Police Procedural, Murder, Police, Mystery & Detective, Mystery, Republic of South Africa, Fiction - Mystery, Africa, South Africa, Fiction, Mystery & Detective - Historical, Suspense, South, Historical, Crime, General, African Novel And Short Story, History
ISBN: 9781416586210
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-10-20T07:00:00+00:00

Harry the shell-shocked soldier was sitting on the post office steps when Emmanuel emerged from the one-room building with van Niekerk’s telegram safe in his pocket. It was early afternoon and the main street was bathed in shimmering springtime light. Down the road, a barrel-chested white farmer whistled a tune while his farm boys loaded his pickup truck with hessian sacks of fertilizer and seed.

“Little Captain”—Harry’s voice was a rough whisper—“Little Captain…”

The jangle of medals and an insistent tugging at his sleeve let Emmanuel know that the veteran was talking to him and not a mustard gas phantom.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper from Jo’burg,” he reminded the old soldier. “You met me at Tiny’s shop. Remember?”

“Little Captain.” Harry paid no attention to what he said. “Little Captain.”

Emmanuel didn’t correct Harry a second time. He had to get off the main street before the Security Branch got wind of his whereabouts and decided to convey their displeasure at his questioning of Erich Pretorius.

“How can I help you, Harry?” he asked.

“Tonight?” Harry’s bony hand curled around his wrist and held on. “Tonight, Little Captain?”

Emmanuel looked around to gauge how much attention was coming his way. None of the people walking along the street paid any mind to the unusual sight of an addled coloured man holding on to a white man’s wrist. Harry was the village madman: no one expected him to behave like a normal resident of Jacob’s Rest.

“Maybe tonight.” Emmanuel answered Harry’s question once he’d made sense of it. “Maybe tonight. I don’t know yet.”

“Good, good.” Harry’s smile lit up his face and revealed who he was before the war: a charming light-skinned man with his thoughts in the right order. “Good, Little Captain. Good.”

“Go along. I’ll come tonight.”

“Good, good.” The old soldier dropped his hand and turned in the direction of the police station. Emmanuel touched his shoulder and spoke close to his ear.

“Don’t go to the station, Harry. Captain Pretorius doesn’t live there anymore.”

“Home,” Harry said. “Home.”

Harry shuffled his way along the street like a daylight specter. Where would he be without Angie the bulldog to watch over him and without his play-white daughters? The world was an unkind place for old soldiers.

“Are you friends with Harry?”

It was Louis. He had materialized like an apparition in the spring sunshine.

“I’ve met him a few times,” Emmanuel said.

“He’s a soldier, just like you. But that doesn’t make him the same as you.”

“That so?”

Louis must have picked up information about his stint in the army from the brothers.

“We have to be on guard against our feelings for them,” the Pretorius boy said. “They can never be our spiritual equals, which is why we must remain separate and pure.”

The glow in Louis’s eyes made Emmanuel uncomfortable. This curbside sermon came out of nowhere and it reminded him of the hymn Louis sang behind Tiny’s liquor store.

“Was your father in the army?” A “brothers in arms” bond might explain Captain Pretorius’s decision to deliver the letters to Harry and to help the old man’s daughters gain white identification.

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