The Water Man's Daughter (21 page)

“The company has asked me to take you to another part of the city. A township, really, where your father worked.” As soon as the lie is out Nomsulwa feels better. She doesn’t bother to think about how she will align her story with the conversation with Dadoo that Claire will inevitably have. She just focuses on the hopeful expression on Claire’s face.
“I have some work to do there too, so it would be great for both of us to go. If you’re up for it.”

“I was hoping to do more research here. I’ve been thinking about what you said and I think there’s a way for the water company to change its billing structure and redistribute the cost so that the townships aren’t hit so hard.”

Nomsulwa licks her lips. She is getting nervous, one lie running into another. Her normal state of being these days, she thinks. “Well, this is a big water project. It’s a newly settled community. A famous one. And the company put in the system of pipes and water delivery from scratch. It might be a good test case … for your research.” Nomsulwa can barely get the last word out.

“They’re trying to get me out of their way, aren’t they, the company.” Claire says this more to herself than Nomsulwa. “Rushing me off to one anonymous water project after another.”

“Come, Claire. I’d like you to see the work that I do, too.”

Claire purses her lips and frowns. Nomsulwa steels herself for the rejection.

“If it’s only a short trip, I guess. We can go, sure, why not.”

“Pack a bag with a few things. We’ll probably have to stay a night or two.” Nomsulwa feels a jolt of excitement when she admits this. Claire shows no change in demeanour. “We’ll take off first thing in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Great. Then I’ll see you early tomorrow morning.”

Nomsulwa exits awkwardly, but she is smiling. Claire
will come, even if it seems like a plot to keep her away from the investigation. Even if Nomsulwa had to make up stories to make it happen. For a second she imagines they are preparing for a vacation. When the door to the hotel room closes, she lets reality slip away just enough to feel excited.

D
ADOO’S SECRETARY WAS CURT ON THE PHONE
. Zembe pressed her for details of the man’s whereabouts and finally, after more cajoling than she liked, the secretary revealed that Dadoo was at the treatment plant northwest of the city.

“The towers near the highway?” Zembe asked.

“The very ones,” the secretary answered dryly. “So, you see, he cannot be reached at the moment.”

Zembe is not interested in exchanging phone calls with the man who lied about Matthews’s whereabouts the night he died. This warrants a face-to-face confrontation. Surprising him at work would give Zembe an advantage.

The treatment plant was the proud industrial bellwether for Johannesburg’s townships. When the plant, erected almost a decade earlier, began operation, the townships celebrated. Here, with the towers so close to their small homes, was the promise of equal rights, equal treatment. Zembe celebrated too, sure that the new plant indicated governmental commitment to improved service. No more broken pipes, no more service cut-offs because of pressure problems. The bulbous concrete sisters rise higher than anything
for miles around. Their open lids emit steam constantly, and a sad, stale smell blankets the immediate area around them.

Inside the plant things are different. Visitors meet the alternating hot noise of machinery and quiet, cool, stagnant ponds. Everything is intricately wound around itself. Pipes move in incredible patterns around the walkway, which travels at complicated angles around the reservoirs. Zembe has been told by the man at the front desk that Dadoo is in the left antechamber. When Zembe looks at him blankly, he radios the workgroup.

“Can you tell Dadoo a –” The man raises his eyes at Zembe.

“Captain Zembe Afrika.”

“– a Captain Afrika is here to see him … Right. Ja.” He tells Zembe, “You’re to meet him there. Follow the blue grate. It will lead you.” Then he turns back to his computer screen.

Zembe sees Dadoo before he sees her. He is bent over a large sheet of white paper, running one chubby finger down a list. The smell in this part of the plant is particularly strong. She fights the instinct to cover her nose. It is too sweet, too plastic, as if the air can’t really have oxygen among all those chemicals.

“Mr. Dadoo.” Zembe taps him on the shoulder.

“A moment, please,” Dadoo says into the paper.

Zembe waits. Takes in the noise around her, lets it wash over her. She has to maintain her composure, but this plant is more unfamiliar than she expected. A person could be lost
in here. A body, too. Zembe shakes her head. She wonders for a moment why Dadoo wouldn’t bring Matthews here, rather than an abandoned yard in the township. The body would never have been found. But then she realizes that she has just slotted the regional director of Amanzi into the role of murderer. May as well accuse the President himself of treason and call it a day.

“Yes, Ms. Afrika. What is so urgent that it could not wait until I was back in the office?”

“I want to go over the night Matthews died again.”

“I have told you everything I know.” Dadoo takes off the hard hat perched on his oblong head and wipes the sweat from his temples.

“Perhaps we could go somewhere a little quieter.” Zembe has to yell, even though Dadoo is not five feet from her. He sighs, says something Zembe can’t hear to the man working next to him, and then leads the way out of the maze of pipes towards one of the pools of murky water. The noise recedes. The smell intensifies, but Zembe won’t let herself react.

“Okay. Again. Start from the meeting.”

“The meeting was in his hotel. It went late. When I left, Peter was at the bar.” Dadoo makes an exasperated noise.

“And you did not go anywhere? After that?”

Dadoo pauses. For a second, Zembe thinks that she might have stumbled across the wall, that point at which the effort of lying outweighs the benefits and people give up on the charade.

“I left him at that hotel and went home. He was with the councillors. There were many people there when I left.”

“You did not go to a bar in the entertainment district? You did not drink and dance until late that night? You did not escort Matthews home to his hotel – alone?”

Dadoo is a small man. He’s all wiry limbs and bulky middle. So it is surprising when the man Zembe outsizes two to one turns on her ready to pounce.

“Don’t bloody come to my plant, interrupt my day, and accuse me of lying! Your parameters are clear. Investigate the gang system in that township you live in. Figure out who dumped him in an abandoned yard and arrest them.”

Zembe stands firm in her spot next to the pool of water. “I am trying to investigate a murder, Mr. Dadoo. A murder investigation is not like a carjacking. It’s not a question of taking a few statements and then finding the car, blown out and abandoned in the suspect’s front yard. I need to recreate the night, look at all the angles.”

“You want to look at all the angles?” Dadoo’s excited bobbing gets worse with Zembe’s calm response. “Look at those thugs in the township who attack my men, run them off their yards with knives and sticks, dig up the pipes we bury to run water to their houses. Last time Peter and I were there, our tires were slashed. Did you look into that? The night before our meeting, an entire block of piping was stolen. If you want to find people with the inclination and the motive for this kind of monstrous …” Dadoo catches his breath, “monstrous …” he says more quietly,
“thing, then perhaps you should look at your own people.”

Zembe prides herself on her ability to maintain her composure. Throughout her career, as hotheaded young men lost promotions and assignments because of blow-ups on the job, a suspect who said the wrong thing during an arrest, Zembe kept calm. She has turned it into an art, this keeping calm. But the way Dadoo is now panting, satisfied after his tirade, the way he said, “your own people” … Zembe can feel something building inside her and she knows, just as she knows the time to wake up every morning for church, she knows she will not be able to control herself this time.

“Thank you for your time,” Zembe mumbles. She walks past Dadoo, along the walkway, and follows the chugging mess of machinery to the front entrance. As she walks she lets the methodic whoosh of steam and pipe calm her. She resolves to investigate Dadoo like he’s the only suspect they have. She resolves to force his fat head on that stick-like neck to explode with frustration when he sees the kind of manpower and scrutiny Zembe will bring down on him.

Once out in the open air, Zembe notices her hands are shaking.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Z
EMBE ARRIVES AT THE OFFICE
ready to redirect her men to the water company’s offices. Over the long drive home from the plant and the quiet night in front of the television half-listening to the parade of soap operas on Simunye, Zembe planned: If Mandla and Dadoo
had an arrangement that Matthews threatened, they would have had more than enough motive for a murder. Money, Zembe knew, was at the heart of almost all township murders, heartbreak and anger being too commonplace to warrant wasting bullets. Mandla understood township geography, and he knew about the 28s, their methods and their telltale post-mortem mangling of the corpse. Dadoo had the cars, the access. Matthews trusted him.

But, instead of the quiet hum of an office beginning the day, Zembe walks into a massive mobilization in the Phiri police station. Sipho is standing just inside the main doorway on his cellphone. He is barking orders, while Tosh, frightened and earnest, runs back and forth moving officers around the wide-open room that houses the detectives’ desks.

Sipho’s voice rises. “I need three extra men and one more car … No, not national, no city guys, please. Send me someone from another district near here and make sure they’re well-behaved. I’m going to canvas the township … Yes, I know it’s a long shot … just get me the men and the car.”

Zembe walks up to Sipho and doesn’t wait for him to finish his call. “What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know what you said to Dadoo, but he’s furious. He wants us to scour the township, find any evidence linking known
PCF
members to the murder.”

“A canvas makes no sense. People gossip, give us false information. They hate us too much out here, Sipho. There is nothing to gain from giving information and a lot to gain
from making us run around on false errands. There’s a reason we never do this.”

“We know the area where the
PCF
is strongest. That will help us weed out the false stories from the real ones. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what we think. National’s orders. Thanks to you, we now know just how many strings Dadoo has to pull.”

“You’ve told the officers to focus on
PCF
houses?”

“Yebo.”

“This is a witch hunt.”

“Might be. Then again, if you’d found the steel they stole, we might not have been faced with this problem in the first place.” Sipho turns around and continues giving orders to the officers. It takes another twenty minutes for the room to clear out. Sipho walks towards the door.

“Leaving me to sort out all the crap this is liable to bring in?”

“Yebo, sisi. It’s your fault this happened. What did you say to Dadoo, anyway?”

Zembe opens her mouth to tell Sipho her theory. She at least could warn him that Dadoo is lying. But Sipho’s expectant look, his frown, cause her to rethink her strategy. Openly pursuing Dadoo will lead to nothing. She needs to find a back door to the truth.

“Nothing. I asked him his whereabouts the night of the murder.”

“Humph. Bit of an overreaction. Ah, well. Maybe we’ll find those pipes in this chase down the rabbit hole.”

I doubt it
, Zembe thinks to herself. She nods to Sipho
and retreats into her office. No time to warn Mira. She prays he has had a chance to move the steel. She settles in, sure now that she will have to look into the councillors and Dadoo on her own.

Z
EMBE IS SURPRISED WHEN A FEMALE OFFICER
returns to the station only an hour later with an older woman in tow. She is stooped. Her skin is worn, leathery against her pronounced cheekbones. Her lips purse in a constant expression of disapproval and she is still clutching her wooden spoon in her left hand.

“Sanibonani.” Zembe removes herself from behind her desk where she has been searching through the paltry file the office has on Matshikwe. “Ninjani?”

Zembe’s officer launches right into an explanation. “Mama Afrika, she heard something that night. She lives close and she heard –”

Zembe puts one finger on her lips and silences the young officer. She turns to the woman. She recognizes her from many community meetings. She is active in the
PCF
. Florence. Her name is Florence.

“Sawubona mama, tell me what you told this officer.”

Florence begins to speak very quickly. “I live right by Pim’s spaza. The street next to it.”

The officer interrupts again. “It’s right in the neighbourhood. Other
PCF
women live in her area.”