Present Darkness Read Free

been riffled.
    “In here.” Mason directed two white men into the bedroom. Each carried a canvas and wood stretcher underarm and a medical kit in hand. “See to the woman first.”
    Emmanuel stepped into the corridor, gave the attendants room to work. They kneeled on the stained carpet, staunching blood and bandaging wounds. Their hands were soon soaked, the knees of their trousers blotted red. Martha Brewer’s body made a small hollow in the canvas as they carried her to the ambulance, taking a path cleared through the hallway rubble by Dryer.
    “The husband is finished,” Mason said when the ambulance roared onto the asphalt road with sirens screaming and Ian and Martha Brewer strapped into the back. “With God’s grace the wife will survive the night.”
    “Yes, by the grace of God.” Emmanuel made more right noises. Some days it seemed that all he did was lie by omission.
    “I didn’t take you for a praying man, Cooper,” Mason said. The only real colour in the Lieutenant’s face was in his eyes: they were a bright blue. Ice cubes had more warmth.
    “I keep my hand in.” Emmanuel examined the telephone wires to avoid discussing religion with Mason, a born-again, praise the Lord Christian. For twelve years the Lieutenant had worked undercover operations, all the while enjoying regular access to his two great loves: sour mash whisky and free pussy. Then a Gospel tent preacher saved him and now he served a joyless god who frowned on all forms of pleasure, even laughter.
    “So it’s true,” Mason said. “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
    “I never met any,” Emmanuel said. That his superior officer knew he’d been a combat soldier during the war and not part of the rear-echelon army was a detail to consider later.
    “All this for a box of jewellery and a stack of bills hidden behind the underwear drawer.” Mason gestured to the broken furniture. “The love of money is truly the root of all evil.”
    “The living room hasn’t been touched,” Emmanuel said. “There’s a row of silver picture frames on the mantle. Why expend so much energy and leave those behind?”
    “It wouldn’t be the first time a robbery became a murder.”
    “True.” Burglars caught in the act killed dozens of people every year and maimed a few more besides. “But this level of violence seems excessive, almost personal in nature.”
    Sobbing came from the rear of the house.
    “That’s the daughter you hear.” Mason stalked the length of the corridor, crunching debris. “Negus is babysitting her in the kitchen till one of the station secretaries arrives. She needs a female touch.”
    In police code “female touch” meant “the witness is hysterical and won’t stop crying, even though we’ve told her to”. Emmanuel followed Mason and glanced into a room with an upended single bed, a ransacked wardrobe and walls papered in a yellow canary design: a teenager’s bedroom, presumably the girl’s.
    “The police secretary is coming from out Benoni way. She won’t be here for another half an hour at the earliest.” The cold-eyed Lieutenant paused outside a closed door and glanced at Emmanuel over his shoulder. “I want you to get in there and try to calm things, Cooper. If I remember right, you’re good with women.”
    “I’ll do my best,” Emmanuel said. Good with women? He tried and failed to come up with a source for Mason’s observation. They’d never worked together nor even had a beer at the local bar. The undercover operations squad were a tight unit. They believed in secrecy and money. Emmanuel had stayed far away from them his whole career—and especially since arriving back in Jo’burg.
    Dryer sniggered, sure that Mason was referring to a party in Dryer’s imagination at which Emmanuel and the Lieutenant had shared in a repast of whores lain on by an obliging Madam. Dryer was an idiot.
    “In here.” Mason opened the door to a ruined kitchen. Silver cutlery and smashed containers littered