The Water Man's Daughter (22 page)

“Thula wena,” Zembe says to the officer, and then motions for the woman to continue. Inside, her heart is sinking.

“The night this sisi was speaking about there was a commotion outside. Very early. The dogs were barking and scrapping.”

“Which night, Mama?”

“The night before they found the water man.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No, I didn’t do laundry that week. The water ran out before I had a chance. There’s no other reason to go out back. The walk over the sand is too hard on my legs.”

It’s not much to go on. Zembe understands that this could easily have been someone cutting through the backyard, early for work or drunk late. It could have been a smaller animal, like a rabbit, caught between a pair of dogs. She will not think about what else it could mean now. Instead, she picks up her bag and motions Florence to lead them out of the station into the buggy.

The drive is short, a few blocks to the main street, then into the winding, smaller paths of Phiri. Zembe stops in front of Florence’s house, opens the door for the old woman, and follows her to the backyard. Two dogs are lying in the heat. Their tongues are hanging out of their mouths, pink and shimmering. Little piles of excrement sit like carvings on the outskirts of the area where the dogs lie. It stinks back here, even with the wind. Zembe picks her way around the shit. The dogs do not budge.

“These dogs, Mama?”

“Yebo. Those.”

Zembe reaches to the ground and feels the sandy bed.
Her hand scrapes the grains and then touches hard surface, concrete. The sand is a uniform yellow. If there is any evidence it might have filtered through onto the concrete floor.

Zembe stands up and asks Florence for a broom or brush.

“Anything you have inside, Mama.”

Florence returns with a small hand broom and a dustpan.

Zembe stoops and sweeps, centering on the area closest to the dogs. Her officer, abandoning Florence on the stoop, begins to clear the periphery, giving her room to work alone. As they move away the covering the stink intensifies. It is only the wind that saves Zembe from choking on the high acid smell of urine and shit. The concrete reveals itself, pockmarked and cracked from so many years of wear. The dogs stand, and the smaller one begins to follow her lead, scratching at the ground, sniffing for treasure buried in the hard earth.

It takes ten minutes for Zembe to clear the sand from the centre of the yard. In front of Florence and the officer is a stain, large enough to be from more than a small mishap, rusted enough to be unmistakable: blood. She walks around it, measuring roughly with her feet. This is not big enough for a murder scene. Perhaps it is a foot in diameter – a little smudge on one end might extend that measurement to a foot and a half. No one committed murder in this yard, but something bled onto the ground. It could have been an injury; it could have been a missing heart. Then again, it could have been an unlucky rabbit.

Stains that are older than three months are useless and Zembe has to take a sample assuming it will be too old to analyze. She takes out a kit she has brought with her, just in case, and scrapes three samples from the stained area and two from the outlying area to use as controls. Then she takes out her cellphone and dials the office.

“I’ve found something. Send down three officers and a large sieve.”

“Where will I find that?” The man on the other end of the phone sounds panicked at the thought of not fulfilling this request. Perhaps the pressure of this case has been affecting the other officers more than Zembe has realized.

“Get them to take the buggy to their houses. They can find their own sieves, then meet me at the corner of Tshiawelo and Phisanterkraal.”

Zembe motions for the young officer beside her to get into the buggy.

“Go find a sieve too. We have to be sure to catch any trace evidence in this yard.”

The woman nods and crosses the street to the car door.

Florence, undisturbed by the deep red-brown mark in her backyard or the police officer standing with her arms crossed waiting for reinforcements to arrive, wanders back into her kitchen, wooden spoon back in her hand.

Zembe will send the samples to the paternity unit. The forensics lab, one of three in the country, will be too slow, even with the priority given to this case. It has been only a couple of years since they began
DNA
testing and Zembe
would need a court order to get her sample in the door. She has used the paternity unit before, and a blood-type match will be enough – at least enough to derail her attack on the Amanzi official. She has no choice. She imagines the gross bobbing of Dadoo’s head as he hears, satisfied that he was right. It infuriates her. She hopes that the sample comes back as animal, or old, or corrupted – anything to make it clear that this hunt for township troublemakers is a waste of time.

Z
EMBE ACTS AS THOUGH SHE IS UNDER A TIGHT
deadline. She has a grace period while the blood sample is processed, but she knows that the window of opportunity to pursue Dadoo is closing. She opens the file and takes out a photocopy of the Central Sun bar receipt found near Matthews’s body: 11:53 p.m. and a single beer. The receipt places Matthews in the hotel bar just before closing. Matshikwe and Dadoo could have both been there, ready to pounce.

Zembe finds the name of the officer supervising the hotel investigation and dials the national office.

“Hello, this is Captain Afrika calling. Is,” she checks the name again, “Siya Lulethi there?”

A scratchy voice announces the Joburg traffic news while Zembe waits. She sits for at least five minutes drumming her fingers in time to the background sounds. Her fingers fall left to right and then reverse their order, they purr on the desktop.

“Hello, Lulethi here.”

“Sawubona sisi, unjani? It is Zembe Afrika speaking.”

“Ngisaphila. Wena?”

“Nami ngiyaphila. I am calling about the Matthews case.”

“The dead white guy? Must be causing you quite a headache. It’s been a long time and you’ve got nothing, I hear.”

“You’ve been talking to Sipho.” Zembe grimaces on her end, but maintains a high-pitched, friendly tone.

“He did stop by. How can I help you?”

“I see that you did the interviews at the Central Sun. I was wondering if you found anything interesting there.”

“It’s a dead end, sisi. The staff all account for their whereabouts that night. Half of them couldn’t tell Matthews from any of the other company men who run through there.”

“What about the room?”

“We did a search, nothing. The bed wasn’t slept in the night he died, which fits with the time of death. All usable fingerprints found in the room belonged to hotel staff. They were all on the database at the hotel. All irregulars belonged to the victim.”

“What about the rest of the hotel?”

“What do you mean, sisi?”

“Did you search the rest of the hotel? Other rooms? The dining room? The bar?”

“There was no need.”

“Did you get a list of guests and patrons in the bar and restaurant?”

“No. There were no signs of a struggle. Plus, the guy
was killed in the township, not in a busy hotel in the middle of downtown.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have no evidence he was killed in Phiri.”

“But you found bloodstains in a nearby backyard.”

“I know. Listen, thank you for your help.”

“You don’t think he was killed in town, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“You won’t find anything at the hotel, sisi. Trust me.”

Zembe doesn’t want to continue this conversation. The more she tells this officer the more Sipho will know. She doesn’t want him back in her office breathing down her neck over a little hunch.

“Do me a favour. Don’t say anything to Sipho just yet, okay?”

“Whatever you say. I don’t want to get involved in this mess.”

“Thanks, I guess. Sala kahle.”

“Okay, Afrika. Talk to you later.”

Zembe goes to the hotel in her own car. She parks in the driveway and shows the eager doorman her credentials before bounding up the staircase to the revolving front door. She ignores the whoosh of cold air and glinting lights in the lobby, does not turn her head up and wonder at the adorned ceiling, the religious paintings on the wall that use oil paint not faded or marred by dust.

The man at the front desk greets her with a bland expression. She responds by sliding her badge over the counter. He
turns to the back room, and it is only a minute before an older coloured man in a suit emerges, clearly the manager. He knows immediately what the police visit is about and seems quite frustrated by the return of meddlesome cops.

“We have opened that room already, ma’am. Your officers spent a week combing through the place. When they left we were assured that the investigation in our hotel was closed.”

“I understand. But it’s not the room I’m interested in.”

“I see.” The man’s face falls. Zembe can see him predicting a whole new set of closures. Police presence in an international hotel can’t do much for business.

“I need to speak with the staff from the bar the night Mr. Matthews went missing.”

“I believe our staff were cleared of any involvement in the matter.” He makes no move to assist Zembe.

“I just want to talk to them about what they remember. Nothing formal.”

The man sighs and picks up the telephone. After muttering into the receiver for a minute, he pokes his head out towards Zembe.

“Misha, one of our bartenders, will be with you momentarily. The other staff from that night are not on shift today, you will have to check back later.”

“Can I get their names?” Zembe asks.

He mutters into his phone some more.

“Josef Alben. Thabo cleaned up before closing. And then Misha …”

Zembe jots the names down on the cover of the file
and lowers herself onto one of the antique benches situated just to the side of the front desk. Now she has time to study the room. It is like a church, but one worshipping a different god. The colours, all red and gold, are wrong for the size of the room. There are no windows, but it is so bright from all the lights, Zembe wishes she had brought sunglasses.

A young woman enters, tentative and beautiful. She pushes her blonde hair behind her ears and sits at the other end of the bench.

“Misha?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she answers, hands rubbing each other in her lap.

“Were you working the bar three weeks ago? It was a Tuesday night, the night before the water company executive was found murdered.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“That night, do you remember a group of men? There would have been several of them. They came in late.”

“A lot of them?”

“Yes, a white man, at least one black man, an Indian man, maybe more. They might have had girls with them.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You don’t remember that night?” Zembe doesn’t want to push too hard.

“I remember there was a table of drunk men but they were all coloured. They came in late, very drunk. I remember them because I had to take the loudest one up to his room.”

“Is this something the bartenders do often here?” Zembe can’t understand why the shy girl is moonlighting as an escort for the hotel.

“Oh no, nothing like that. I just, er … encouraged him to follow me out of the bar. He was getting out of hand. By the time we got into his room he was on the verge of passing out. I left him on the floor, actually, sound asleep.”

“Oh.” Zembe pauses. “And you’re quite sure there was no Indian man with a white man, a Canadian?”

“Wait. There was a pair of men at the bar. I didn’t talk to them, but I heard them arguing. I’m pretty sure one was American or, I guess, Canadian. Maybe the other guy was Indian.”

“Arguing?”

“The one guy, he, ummm.” Misha is thinking of a way to put it. Zembe can see her editing. She gives her an encouraging nod, hoping to end the censorship. “He kind of yelled at the other guy, the white guy. I mean, he was frustrated that he was drunk and there was some mention of punishment, and I didn’t really want to know, you know? I’m not sure what he did then, but he was gone by the time I got downstairs.”

“And the white man?”

“Gone too.”

“Anyone else in the bar?”

“I’m sure there were others at that time. There may have been some girls. But there always are one or two picking up a client around that time. I really only remember
kicking Fika out at the end of the night. He’s a regular. Stays here all the time when he is in town from Durbs. Sat with us till the bitter end. I did a sweep of the place and closed up shop with Thabo.”

“That took how long?”

“About twenty minutes altogether.”

“Did either of the men order a beer?”

“A beer? No. We wouldn’t have served them if they did. They were sloshed. Honest.”

Misha has gained steam, is feeling more comfortable. But she has entirely confused Zembe. This story doesn’t match Dadoo’s version, confirming that he’s hiding something. But it doesn’t put Mandla at the scene at all. She finds it hard to believe that the little Indian man from the water company lured Matthews outside, into a taxi, took him to the township, and killed him. Mandla must have been involved somehow.