Free A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn Page A

disappeared into the back. Emmanuel followed. For a man about to be questioned in connection with a homicide, Zweigman was cool to the point of chilly. He’d obviously been expecting them.
    The back room was a small work area set up with five sewing machines and dressmaker’s dummies draped in lengths of material. The coloured women manning the machines looked up nervously at the police intrusion.
    “Ladies.” Zweigman smiled. “This is Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper from Johannesburg. Constable Shabalala you already know.”
    “Please introduce us,” Emmanuel insisted politely. He wanted to get a good look at the seamstresses. Maybe there was something to Mrs. Pretorius’s poisonous accusations. Zweigman did have access to five mixed-race women under the age of forty.
    Zweigman’s smile froze. “Of course. There’s Betty, then Sally, Angie, Tottie, and Davida.”
    Emmanuel nodded at the women and kept a tight focus on their faces. He ticked them off with crude markers. Betty: pockmarked and cheerful. Sally: skinny and nervous. Angie: older and out of humor. Tottie: born to make grown men cry. Davida: a shy brown mouse.
    If he had to lay money on Zweigman’s fancy, he’d bet the farm on Tottie. Light skinned and luscious, she was the kind of woman vice cops used as bait in immorality law stings, then took home for a little after-hours R&R.
    “Gentlemen.” Zweigman opened a second curtain and led them into a small room furnished with a table and chairs. The dark-haired woman, so nervous yesterday, now poured tea into three mugs with a steady hand.
    “This is my wife, Lilliana.”
    “Detective Sergeant Cooper,” she responded politely, and waved him and Shabalala over to the table, which was set with tea and a small plate of cookies. Emmanuel sat down, senses on full alert. With a few hours’ notice, the old Jew and his wife had rebuilt their defenses and nailed all the windows closed.
    “Which one of those women are you ficken?” he asked conversationally, using German slang to sharpen the impact.
    Zweigman flushed pink and his wife dropped the plate of cookies onto the table with a loud crack. There was a drawn-out silence while she collected the cookies and rearranged them.
    “Please,” Zweigman said quietly. “This is not the kind of talk for a man to have in front of his wife.”
    “She doesn’t need to be here,” Emmanuel answered. “We’ll question her later.”
    “Take the ladies out for a walk, liebchen. The air will do you good.”
    The elegant woman left the room quickly. Emmanuel sipped his tea and waited until the front door closed. He turned to Zweigman, who looked suddenly stooped and worn down by life. There were tired circles under his brown eyes.
    “That was cruel and unnecessary,” Zweigman said. “I did not expect it of you.”
    “This town brings out the worst in me,” Emmanuel answered. “Now, which one of those women is the lucky one?”
    “None of them. Though I’m sure if you had your choice, you’d pick Tottie. I saw how you looked at her.”
    Emmanuel shrugged. “Looking was still legal the last time I checked the list of punishable offenses. Captain Pretorius thought you’d done a lot more than that.”
    “He was mistaken.” The answer was clipped. “I walked the ladies home after dark because there was”—he struggled to find the right word in English—“a peeping man in the area. It was purely a safety measure.”
    “Really?”
    “Constable Shabalala, please tell your colleague that I did not make the peeping man up.”
    Shabalala stared at the floor, uncomfortable at being included in the questioning. He cleared his throat. “There was a man. The captain looked but did not find anyone.”
    “No arrests?”
    “No,” Shabalala answered.
    “The man would have been found if it was European women being harassed,” Zweigman said. “The activity stopped and it was never mentioned again.”
    “Did you have occasion to comfort the scared women?