Free A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn Page B

It’s easy for emotions to get heated up when there’s an element of danger.”
    “Ah…” Zweigman had regained his composure. “How your mind works: always looking for the dirty secret. I will repeat. I am not and never was ‘ficken,’ as you so gently put it, any of the women in my wife’s employ.”
    “Captain Pretorius came to see you a couple of times this year. What for?”
    “To give me advice. Don’t be seen with women other than my wife after dark. Don’t let my employees become too friendly. Don’t go to social get-togethers with coloureds or blacks. Don’t forget you are a white man and not one of them. Would you like me to go on?”
    “You didn’t like him.”
    “That is correct.”
    “Did you kill him?”
    “I did not.” Zweigman took off his glasses and wiped them down on the front of his shirt. “I do not own a gun or know how to use one. Anton the mechanic across the road and my wife Lilliana will both tell you that I was here in the shop until after ten trying, unsuccessfully, to balance the store accounts.”
    Emmanuel wrote the witnesses’ names down. He had no doubt they’d supply Zweigman with gold-plated alibis. Two suspects both accounted for during the hours Captain Pretorius was shot. His thin list was washed out on the first full day of the investigation. It was time to join Hansie in the door-to-door. He had to turn over some rocks and see what spiders crawled out from underneath.

    Emmanuel sat upright in bed, mouth open, gasping for breath. He was in darkness and sweat beaded on his skin. Deep in his stomach he felt the familiar ache of fear. He slid a hand over his body, to check for injuries. The bullet wound on his shoulder had long since healed and the cut on his cheek from Donny’s insane girl blitzkrieg was only a nick. No knife, no blood.
    He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The dreams came and went, but never with the woman. She was new. No way to know who she was. The cellar in his dream was in darkness, always. The pattern of events the same: a bombed-out town. The patrol moving on foot from one ruin to the next, checking and double-checking for the enemy. A routine sweep of a wine cellar. He turns to leave. The blade slices deep into his flesh and he falls forward into darkness and pain.
    That was the dream, played out in an eternal loop. Every door-to-door he conducted as a detective brought up memories from the bottom of the well. Things weren’t so bad now. He didn’t scream anymore, or reach for a light to bring himself back to reality.
    Emmanuel breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and imagined the corner of the cellar again. The smell of the woman fills the space. His ex-wife? No, her scent was English tea rose and iced water. Angela, so polite and restrained, would never claw and lick and bite. Sex was for the half hour before bedtime. Primal cellar fucking was not her thing. Fucking was not her thing.
    He lay back down. The woman was no one he knew from his waking life. Surely he’d remember if she was. Why hadn’t the dream ended with them falling, naked and warm, into a black morphine sleep?
    The sound when it came was crisp and distinct. A footstep on the gravel pathway leading to his door. He held still. This was not a dream. This was Jacob’s Rest and the crunch of gravel was close and getting closer. He slid off the bed and moved in the darkness toward the door. Moonlight spilled in from a crack in the curtain. He crouched close to the handle. The screen door opened, then closed just as quickly. Then the sound of something heavy pressed against the mesh, and the footsteps grew fainter.
    Emmanuel pulled the door open hard. Across the yard, a figure moved quickly into the shadow of a sprawling jacaranda tree and slipped into the night. Emmanuel charged at the screen door, ready to fly. The door jammed, held closed by the weight of a whitewashed stone borrowed from the garden edging. He pushed again, and the door gave way.
    “You!