The Water Man's Daughter (8 page)

“What’s up?” Nomsulwa asks the question when she is still a good ten feet from the door of Zembe’s car. Her body is tall and thick, strong but with the curves of a woman, it casts a long shadow. She makes no move to come closer.

“Avoiding me, sisi?”

“I wasn’t.” Nomsulwa scoffs.

“You always run out the back way when you are finished?” Nomsulwa doesn’t answer. “Well, you don’t have to worry, something else has made your pipes seem like a bar fight in comparison.”

Nomsulwa looks up, taking a few steps forward. “What has?”

“Look at you taking an interest in police work. And I thought you were only good for breaking laws. Never mind what has happened. Has your cousin said anything about Kholizwe being back in town?”

Nomsulwa frowns. “Why?”

“If he is, my guess is that Mira knows about it.”

Nomsulwa moves the sand with her shoe, swiping back and forth in a surprisingly graceful movement. It clashes with her hunched shoulders and baggy pants. She
runs a hand through her twists, flopping them slightly in the other direction.

“Who says he’s in Phiri?”

“Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but the police are looking into a murder. A white man, a foreigner. I can’t move forward on it if I don’t know the lay of the land around here and Kholizwe always seems to be the missing piece. Mira’s the best connection I’ve got. And if I remember correctly, you owe me a favour or two.” Zembe hopes that divulging this minimal information is the right move, hopes it will convince Nomsulwa to poke around. She is a girl in with the wrong crowd, but she has a moral compass that Zembe respects. She always has. “Could you just get your cousin to call my office tomorrow?”

“Where was the man killed?” Nomsulwa is not exactly volunteering her services.

“Stop asking questions about investigations you have nothing to do with. Just be glad I’m not arresting you. Find me Kholizwe and I promise to leave Mira out of it.”

“Mira had nothing to do with any murder!” Nomsulwa really is ready to run now. Zembe needs her to calm down, be convinced that cooperation is the best – the only – path to take, given their recent midnight escapades.

“Find me Kholizwe, and you won’t have to worry.”

A
S THE NEXT WEEK BEGINS
, Z
EMBE DECIDES TO
approach the gang investigation with more vehemence. The national office turned up nothing in Matthews’s room
and there were no hits on any of the hotel employees. No one reported anyone suspicious entering or exiting Matthews’s floor. It seems the entire hotel was populated only by the most respectable visitors in the short time the water man stayed there. The receipt for the beer is tossed under the thick report. Zembe plans to follow it up, but with no correlating leads it is unlikely that she’ll be able to discover anything new.

There is no easy way to access the gang systems in the townships. In prison they are in your face: people wear their colours in discreet ways, a rip in the shirt, a pant leg rolled up, but their declaration of membership is brazen. Out here, the signs are harder to pick up. The whole world knows who to watch out for, but no one is willing to let the police in on the secret.

She decides to make her way to the edge of the informal settlement on her own. She has a hunch that knocking on a few doors might elicit more information than following the elusive thread of the 28 gang and their leader, Kholizwe. She suspects from Nomsulwa’s reaction that the man is in town. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be easy to find.

She checks in with the front desk of the station. “I am leaving. Are there any messages before I go?”

“Yes, one, robbery at the petrol station in Phiri, the taxi drivers are requesting senior attention.”

Zembe nods. The minibus drivers regularly throw their weight around to get the word out that they’re looking for someone in their bad books, but they don’t need police to
help with a robbery investigation. They do more police work themselves in a week than Zembe’s team has managed in months. Through a system of payoffs and violence, they have created a sub-legal order of their own. Many police units treat the drivers themselves as a gang problem. They point out that the drivers specialize in beatings, brutal ones, for those who trespass on their turf. People who go to them with complaints will often see the culprit they identified bruised and beaten the next day. But they are an arm of the law in her township, whether she acknowledges it or not. And, like it or not, this is a good chance for Zembe to barter for her own investigation. The drivers know the most about what goes on after dark in the township. She will stop at the petrol station first.

Z
EMBE DRIVES UP TO A THREE-WAY STOP AND TURNS
around a bright red post holding up the far edge of a white canopy. The concrete around the petrol station is cracked and lines sneak in and out of potholes, run under the two pumps, and continue towards the small store at the far end of the lot. Everything is red and white except for a green
BP
sign hung above the road. There is yellow tape strung across the door of the store, probably stolen from a construction site in the city. The air smells of gasoline. It looks like a crime scene from an American movie.

She parks her car next to the store and ducks under the yellow tape. Inside, four men are arguing in loud voices. The smell of gasoline intensifies in there. The fattest man, flesh
sagging from his small frame, slams down a bottle of Diet Coke and then turns and grins at Zembe.

“Mama Afrika.”

“Sanibona, ninjani?”

“Siyaphila. Ulate.”

“Late? I didn’t realize you were paying my salary,” Zembe retorts.

The fat man stands up. His head is too small for the rest of his body and it makes him look more like a cartoon character than a powerful member of the township community.

“Some bloody tsotsi from Diepkloof came in here last night while my cousin was working. Cleaned out over two thousand rand.”

“I assume you can identify the culprit?”

“Of course. My cousin saw him coming a mile away. He’s been asking for trouble for a while now.”

“I see. Then perhaps you don’t need my help?”

“Aren’t you going to send it out on the radio, tell your buddies in Diepkloof about our man?”

“I might.”

“I think you should.”

The three other men have stopped talking, they sip their glass-bottled sodas in unison and watch Zembe. The fat man has his thumbs hooked into his jean pockets. He doesn’t look at Zembe while he speaks to her – he’s using the other three as his eyes.

“I need a favour,” she says.

“We don’t give favours to police.”

“I don’t send wires out for suspects without evidence. That means a search, shutting down the petrol station for at least a day, maybe more. Seizing the contents inside, asking witnesses to come down to the police station, answer questions.”

“Fine, we won’t need your radio. We have our own way of communicating with Diepkloof. But I don’t want to think about what might happen to the dumb tsotsi who did this.”

“You don’t know where the culprit is. If you could find him you wouldn’t be talking to me in the first place.” Zembe crosses the dirty floor. She steps on a peanut shell and it cracks under her black shoes. She considers for a moment just who this burglar might be: a student at the university who doesn’t often hang around the township? A visitor from another district? Another driver, travelling through? She stands close enough to the man that her face will at least register in his peripheral vision. “I need information about the 28s. We’re looking into them for a bigger crime, something you don’t want to be involved in. Let me know how I can get to them, just one of the members, and I’ll send out your hit on the radio, make sure your guy hears about it, too.”

“The dead ghost?”

Zembe grimaces. It would be only a matter of time before more of the details leaked to the rest of the township. “Yes. We’re looking for his killer.”

The fat man sits down. The three behind him stop sipping and look away from Zembe, in unison still. The walls
of the store, already close and buckling, feel as if they are pressing in. The fat man’s face goes slack.

“I can’t help you.” The man sits down.

“Then no radio, no report.”

“The 28s don’t operate here much, and when they do, it’s mostly through their runners. We don’t deal with them. We don’t even know who they are. The drivers don’t mess with the Numbers. No one does.”

“You won’t help me?”

“It’s not possible, Mama Afrika. Not possible.”

Zembe turns away and steps on another crunching shell. The three background players resume their banter, but in whispers. The fat man follows Zembe out of the building.

“Will you send out the report?” he asks.

“Why should I?”

“It has helped in the past to have us on your side.”

“I need something more from you than pesky phone calls if we are going to cooperate.”

“Ask me something I can deliver on next time.”

“Yes, well, I’ll look forward to that.”

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, Z
EMBE HEARS FROM
D
ADOO AGAIN
. The water company’s secretary asks her to hold and then his voice crackles through the old phone’s earpiece.

“You were supposed to update me, but I’ve heard nothing.”

Zembe responds too quickly. “There’s nothing you need to know.”

“I trust that any updates will be faxed directly to my office.”

“Of course.”

“There is something I would like to speak to you about. I called the national supervisor, a Mr. Sipho Thizwe, about this, but he hasn’t returned my call.”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Matthews has a daughter. She is insisting on travelling to Johannesburg.”

“Coming here?”

“I’m sure she won’t be a significant inconvenience, but as you can imagine, we don’t have the time or manpower to deal with her vacation on top of the fallout from this … er … incident.”

Zembe has half a mind to ask him why she should care about a girl’s pilgrimage to see the place where her father died.

After a brief pause, Dadoo continues, “It would be a great help, to me and the company, if your office could supervise her trip.”

“Pardon me?”

“I have already booked the hotel. All that is needed is an escort and a schedule of events. Some of those I can handle, like a tour of the company and the sites where Mr. Matthews worked, but we must make her feel as comfortable as possible while she is here. The project is already suffering from too much bad press. An unhappy family member would not help matters.”

“Mr. Dadoo, you can’t seriously expect my township station to play tour guide for some white kid?”

“That is precisely what I am asking.”

“Can’t be done. Sorry.”

“That is disappointing. I will have to call the
SAPS
national director and tell him of our quandary. He is a member of our board, you see, so the girl’s happiness directly affects his own financial well-being.”

Zembe pauses, takes a deep breath. “Fax me her itinerary. I’ll figure something out.”

“That is most kind of you, Ms. Afrika.”

She hangs up and takes a moment to think about how Dadoo has manipulated her. On top of the difficulties of this investigation, she now has to find a tour guide. Someone she can trust to keep the kid out of the way.

There is a small knock at the door and before she can answer Tosh sticks his head in.

“This fax just came for you.”

That was fast. Dadoo must have been desperate to get the girl off his hands.

“And Commissioner Thizwe called again. He seems agitated.”

Zembe takes the fax from Tosh’s slim hands and glances at the grey type. She finds information about the girl and her arrival date; there is no time to get money together to hire someone. No money either, but that is beside the point. She needs someone she can control, who will do exactly what she
says. She moves quickly to her desk and picks up her bag.

“I’ve got an errand to run. If Sipho calls, tell him his friends at the water company have priority and I’ll get back to him when I get a chance.”

Tosh protests, but she is already out the door and on the way to her car.

Z
EMBE FINDS
N
OMSULWA PERCHED ON THE FRONT
steps of the community centre. Her light skin looks fire-black from far away, and shadows from a cap she’s fingering fall across her face, making it darker still. She looks tough – is tough, Zembe corrects herself, a girl who ran with the boys’ gangs for most of her childhood. And now a woman who stands up to powerful politicians on a regular basis. But there is a soft side to her too, an instinct to mother that brings many young children off the streets and into the offices of her organization to help paint banners or make phone calls. That side makes Zembe feel better about her decision to trust Nomsulwa with the Matthews girl. Despite her reluctance to help in the search for Kholizwe, she will agree because she owes Zembe. But she will do a good job because she cares too much not to.

“How is your mother? Feeling better?” Zembe is genuinely concerned. Mama Sithu has been failing quickly over the past few years and the change in her has been surprising for all her friends, especially for ones like Zembe who do not get the time to visit often.

“A little. Her emphysema acts up less in the cooler months,” Nomsulwa answers matter-of-factly. Zembe wonders why Nomsulwa refuses to acknowledge their past, never mentions the many nights she spent with her family, the time her mother would have considered her a close friend – before she moved too far away for visits to be practical.

“Give her a kiss from me.” Zembe responds with a heartfelt smile.

“Uh huh.”

“I remember when we used to spend hours walking door to door fundraising for church. And on the street corners …” Zembe tries to remind Nomsulwa. “We would hold court in those days.”

“Mama, I have a meeting to go to, I –”

Zembe launches in, stopping her escape. “I need a favour.”

“I already called Mira and told him you wanted to speak with him. He’ll get in touch. He just has his own schedule.” Nomsulwa smiles at her small joke.