A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

skin. He picked up a cotton dress, discarded on the floor, and handed it to the older girl. She stood up and allowed him to get a good look at her. The flat stomach and small high breasts, the thatch of strawberry blond hair covering her mons. And most arresting of all, the defiant sexual invitation glittering in the dark brown eyes.
    “We have to get to the funeral,” he said to Shabalala. Brassy young girls did nothing for his libido.
    “Yebo,” the black policeman answered with relief. The squalor of the shack was beginning to get to him, too.
    “If I have to come back here again,” Emmanuel said to Donny, “you’re going to get a double dose of what Captain Pretorius gave you. That’s a promise.”
    “Ja, of course, Detective.” Donny was giddy with relief. “Everything I said is true as the Bible. I swear on my mother’s grave.”
    The older girl flashed Emmanuel a look of disgust when he passed by.
    “Scrotum licker,” she said coolly in Afrikaans, certain that the English detective had no taste for girls. Emmanuel made his way out to the sunlight.
    Donny followed them to the car, shirt open like a tent flap. “Detective, if you find my camera—”
    Emmanuel slammed the car door behind him and flicked the key. “I’ll make sure to bring it to you.” Emmanuel eased the car into first gear. He gave it some juice. Donny and his sad dirt yard were soon behind them.
    “Did Captain Pretorius get rough with people?”
    “No,” Shabalala answered firmly.
    “Why Donny?”
    “That one”—Shabalala motioned in the direction of Donny’s receding figure—“he came to the station and asked Captain Pretorius for his camera. The captain said he did not have such a thing and Rooke called him a liar and a thief.”
    “Captain Pretorius give him a tap or two?”
    “No, but I think maybe Captain remembered what this man said to him.”
    Emmanuel turned onto the main road leading back to Jacob’s Rest. The image of Pretorius’s bruised knuckles was clear in his mind, as were the faces of the townsfolk when they talked about their murdered police captain. “Righteous” and “upstanding” were two words that came up frequently. That was the problem. The righteous also believed in punishment and retribution.

    “Up here,” Emmanuel instructed a puffy-eyed Hansie, who jumped onto the car’s mudguard. “Tell me when you see him.”
    Hansie rubbed his swollen lids and squinted at the mass of people pouring out of the graveyard of the Dutch Reformed church. First came the blacks who had been on the outer rim of mourners, then the coloureds, then the inner core of whites. The whole district had turned out for the funeral. Every inch of space on the street leading to the church was taken up by bicycles, cars, and tractors driven in from outlying farms. Many more blacks from the location had come into town on foot. The captain’s death had turned Jacob’s Rest into a bustling metropolis.
    “Well?” Emmanuel prompted. Shabalala had been invited into the Pretorius family’s honor guard, which left Hansie as his only source of local intelligence. The phrase almost made him laugh.
    “I can’t see him,” Hansie said. “Maybe he didn’t come.”
    “If he’s alive, he’s here. Keep looking.”
    “I am.” Hansie sulked as the crowd pressed out of the church grounds.
    A curvy brunette made her way toward the street. “Is that Elliot King with the brown hair and the big breasts?” Emmanuel said.
    “No.” The young policeman hiccupped in surprise. “Mr. King has light hair.”
    Emmanuel thought Hansie was joking, but there was no spark in the dense blue eyes, just a teenaged yearning to be close to the sweetie jar. A powerful mix of sadness and longing had sucked the last spark of energy from a brain that had no backup generator.
    “Go,” Emmanuel said. It was time to cut his losses and find an alternate source of local knowledge. Hansie was as much use to him as a blind parrot. “I’ll see you