Dust Devils (4 page)

Sunday ducked into the hut where she'd left her clothes. Felt her insides turn to liquid when she saw her aunt sitting on the dung floor, eating a packet of chips and waving away flies with her skinny hand. Sunday had prayed she wouldn't come. But here she was.

"You are late, Sonto." Calling her by her Zulu name, the name on her birth certificate. Her mother had always used the English, Sunday, and she'd held onto it. All she had left of her mother dead more than ten years.

"I'm sorry, Ma Beauty." As always, Sunday struggled to find a resemblance between this woman, dried-up as a tree root, and her sister, the angelic mother of her memory.

Sunday slipped out of the beaded skirt. Pulled on a white T-shirt and reached for her no-name-brand jeans hanging on a wire hanger stuck in a hole in the wall of the hut. Her aunt scratched in a bag and came out with the short gray pleated skirt Sunday had once worn to school. Before the flaking asbestos building with broken windows and a leaking roof had stood in the path of a veld fire and been eaten.

"Put this on," her aunt said. "It will make it easier for the inspector."

Sunday obeyed, tugged the skirt up over her narrow hips, smelling the smoke of another fire, long ago. Staring past the ugly woman, the air heavy with memories.

"Hey, girl, stop dreaming. Get a move on." Her aunt's voice pulling her back. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing, Ma."

The skinny woman scowled up at her. "You are broken, you?"

"No, Ma. I swear. I am not broken."

"You! If the inspector finds you are broken I will kill you, I swear!"

Sunday shook her head, slipped her feet into white tennis shoes without laces. She stood by the door, waiting for her aunt to rise.

"Where are the betrothal beads?"

Sunday forced back words of refusal and found the beaded necklace lying under her clothes: diamond shapes on a dark background. The sign that she belonged to a man. She hated it, hated the ugly old dog who had given it to her. Bought her with cattle. She wanted to break it, see the beads falling to the dung floor like blue and red rain. But she didn't. Hooked it around her neck, feeling like somebody's animal.

Her aunt stood, her one leg withered from an old curse. Complaining about the ache in her back, she ducked out of the low doorway, gasping. Stood panting like a hyena out in the bright sunlight.

Sunday folded her jeans and her work costume into a plastic shopping bag and left the hut. She followed her limping aunt along the footpath, a shortcut to the road, where Ma Beauty would flag down a minibus taxi to take them to town for the inspection.

The white cop stank of something sweet. Some perfume, mixed with his sweat and the smell of stale tobacco. The Boer was in shirtsleeves, necktie loose at his throat. He leaned across his desk and offered Inja a pack of Camels. "Smoke?"

Inja shook his head. He had no use for tobacco. The white man lit a cigarette, sucked in deep, then exhaled, never taking his eyes off Inja.

He'd clapped Inja on the back when they'd met, saying "Captain Hans Theron. Like Charlize, 'cept I got better tits." Laughing, showing his teeth. Speaking English with that accent like a bone was stuck in his throat.

Inja knew these white men. Boers. He'd killed enough of them back in the apartheid days, up in the bush war. Spent time in dark cells being interrogated by them. They smiled and joked while they tortured you. Inja buttoned his coat. Put his hands in his pockets. The office was as cold as a meat locker.

Theron was watching him. "So my friend, tell me how you found this piece of shit who killed Ben Baker."

Inja thinking,
I'm not your friend, you white pig
. But shrugging, staying relaxed in his chair. "It's part of an ongoing investigation. I can say no more."

For a scrawny man, Inja had a deep voice. A beautiful voice, able to summon the poetry of his ancestors when he spoke in Zulu. His English was less florid, but his voice still carried authority.

Theron ran a hand through his thick hair, looked past the beige vertical blinds that caught the breeze from the A/C and tapped the glass of the window. Stared out over Cape Town, the city that had a mountain growing out of its middle as if a giant mole rat had burrowed beneath, leaving high-rises and houses clinging to the lower slopes of the mound.

Theron turned to Inja. "Look, I'm not bloody stupid. I know your boss, the honorable minister of fucken justice, is also your tribal chief up in Zululand. And he was like this with Ben Baker." Holding up his hand, index and middle fingers squeezed together. "Right?"

Inja said nothing. Stayed as impassive as one of those soapstone carvings the tourists bought up in his home town.

The Boer shrugged. "Good luck to them. Couldn't give a shit. Couldn't care if they were screwing each other up the ass. But I'm hearing, lately, that Baker was under investigation. The opposition having another nerve jerk about corruption. That Baker was maybe going to talk to save that fat backside of his, ready to squeal about all the fucken money he's poured into your boss's pocket. Then he ends up dead. And you, a Zulu warrior far from home, got a dead fucker in your truck with Baker's cell phone in his jeans and the gun that killed him in his jacket. Makes me think, my friend. Makes me think."

Inja stared him down. Silent. Theron, cigarette dangling from his lip, opened his desk drawer and brought out a bottle of Klipdrift brandy and two glasses. Squinting through the smoke, he splashed three fingers of liquor into each glass and pushed one across to Inja.

Theron lifted his glass. "Good luck."

Inja didn't return the toast but he drank, smelling the sharpness of the fermented grape, feeling the burn of the alcohol warming him from inside. He liked brandy. Preferred it mixed with Coke, but he'd drink it neat.

"Look, Mazibuko, I'm not going to be a stupid cunt about this. I'm on my way out, I know that." He pinched the flesh of his cheek between thumb and forefinger. "We all know that white isn't this year's color. They put me in charge of the Baker investigation because they needed a fucken stooge. Someone to get his ass kicked by the media and the politicians till his nose bled. So, I'll take this body and this gun and I'll go to the press conference and I'll take the credit for cracking the case." Staring at Inja with those shrewd blue eyes. "But I'm gonna ask you just one more question, my friend."

Inja drank. Said nothing.

"Is this whole fucken thing gonna blow up in my face? Are you gonna make more shit down here or are you gonna get your black ass the hell back to Zululand?"

Inja shrugged. "My flight to Durban is booked for tonight."

Theron smiled his easy smile. The one that never reached his eyes. "Okay then." He poured himself another brandy, stretched the bottle across the desk. Inja covered his glass with his hand, pinky ring catching a shaft of sunlight that pierced the blinds.

The phone rang and Theron answered it. Swiveled in his chair, looking out the window. He grunted and said "Ja" a few times. Inja saw a photograph on his desk: a blonde woman with the face of a horse, smiling at the camera, her arms around two teenagers. The girl blonde, the boy dark haired like his father.

Theron finished the call and stood, shrugging on his suit jacket. "I've got to get to that press conference. Let me walk you out."

They left the office and headed toward the elevator. Theron pressed the button and almost immediately the doors slid open, revealing two young uniformed female cops inside. Half-breeds. They saluted Theron, who winked at them. The one giggled, caught the Boer's eye, then looked away. A blush on her high cheekbones. Theron jangled keys in his pocket, hummed to himself as they rode down. The elevator pinged and the doors opened onto the parking garage.

Inja's rental truck stood near the elevator, the garage nearly empty of cars on this Sunday afternoon. After he'd shown his ID to the cops at the diner they'd spoken to headquarters and one of them had driven into Cape Town with him, the other following in the cop car. The body of the Xhosa idiot had long been removed from the rear of the Toyota.

The Boer was speaking, "Interesting call I got, upstairs. A car went over the pass outside Franschhoek a few hours back. Silver Volvo. Burned out. Belonged to a woman called Rose Dell. Sound familiar?" Inja shook his head. "Worked for an organization Baker funded. Her name has come up a few times during our investigation. Heard rumors that Baker was screwing her. Apparently she was one of those hot pieces of colored ass." Laughing. "Lot hotter now."

They had reached the truck. Inja unlocked it, thinking of the sheep's head that he was going to eat on the way to the airport.

"Apparently the woman and her two kids were killed but her husband was thrown clear. He survived." Theron had Inja's attention. "Funny thing is, he's saying a black truck forced them off the road." The cop lifted a shoe and nudged the bullbar, where silver paint had been scraped onto the black. "You watch yourself now." Smiled. Turned to walk away.

Inja said, "Wait."

The Boer faced him. His smile even wider. "Something I can do for you, my friend?"

The stink of death almost made Dell lose his nerve and flee the police morgue. He sat in the lobby, spaced out from painkillers and shock, trying not to breathe. Waiting for a young police constable – a dead ringer for Rosie's younger sister – to come and lead him to the bodies of his wife and children.

It was a hot day and this part of the Cape had been affected by rolling power cuts for the last week. So, no matter how much disinfectant they sluiced onto the tiled floor, the smell of death was always going to win. Dell opened the door to the sidewalk and inhaled fresh air. Stood in the sunshine looking over the strip mall and taxi stand, up at the mountains where it had happened, not even three hours ago.

The clinic had given him a pair of flip-flops and a striped pajama top. He still wore his jeans. They carried the story of his birthday in bloodstains and rips. Almost fashionable.

He touched a hand to the bandage on his head. Another bandage wrapped his ribcage. He'd suffered lacerations and bruised ribs. The disintegrating windshield had left a filigree of superficial glass cuts on the skin of his back. Otherwise he was unhurt. Shock and grief, not injury, had felled him when he'd tried to walk away from the accident scene.

Really lucky
, the paramedics said as they scraped him from the blacktop and brought him back down to Franschhoek, to the clinic where everybody had been so bloody nice he'd nearly cried.
No crying
, he'd sworn to himself. Not yet. Not until he found out who'd killed his family.

"Mr. Dell."

He'd slumped down on the sidewalk like a homeless man, and looked up to see the cop standing over him. Her name was Constable Goliath, which was hilarious because she was tiny. Skinny brown arms sticking out from her short-sleeved blue uniform. The big black boots and the weapon holstered at her hip made her look like something from the manga cartoons the twins had loved.

"Mr. Dell, are you okay?"

Gripping the buff brick wall, he hauled himself to his feet. "I'm fine. Thank you, Constable."

She put a hand on his arm. "You really don't have to do this, you know."
Rrreeely.

Her accent made him think of Rosie's parents. He'd have to break the news to them. It would destroy her father, the man who had spent years driving a garbage truck to save up the money to get his exceptional daughter an education. To this day he battled not to call Dell "
Mr. Rob".

"We could get dental records sent from Cape Town tomorrow to make the identification," the constable said. "You shouldn't do this to yourself."

Dell shook his head. He had to do it. Otherwise none of this would be real. He'd put them in the ground and still not believe it had happened. "I want to. Take me to them. Please."