Present Darkness by Malla Nunn

liquid and scuffed shoe prints were visible in the dirt path.
    “Men with shoes,” Emmanuel said.
    “Just so.” The Zulu detective nodded encouragement, the way he’d likely have done when one of his own sons identified their first spoor trail. “Three men were here. Two with shoes, one barefoot.”
    “Mr Parkview and two unknowns.” Three unidentified males a dozen yards from the crime scene.
    “The men with shoes walked in the direction of the house. The barefoot man came onto the path behind them. This is the place they met and the man you found in the bushes was stabbed.”
    “Mr Parkview followed behind the two men?”
    “Yes and no, Sergeant. He came from in there.” Shabalala crossed the path and disappeared into a stand of mango trees heavy with fruit. A crumbling stone wall marked the boundary of a derelict orchard. The Zulu detective stepped over the barrier and peered into the shadows. Emmanuel followed and caught a glimpse of metal in the underbrush.
    “Back here, Constable.” He crouched and parted the branches of a shrub with white star-shaped flowers. A garden fork lay half-buried in leaves. Rust blooms and dried blood coloured the prongs. “This is the weapon that was used on the man in the hospital. The spacing of the four prongs match the stab wounds in his back.”
    Shabalala studied the pitchfork and said, “There is a shed in the trees. Maybe that is where the fork came from.”
    “Hold on a moment.” Emmanuel looked out at the overgrown fruit trees, their foliage pierced by the waning light. “Were all three men in this area?”
    “No. Only Mr Parkview walking barefoot through the row of mangoes to the path with the blood.”
    “All right.” He drew a crude sketch of the Brewers’ yard in his notebook, marking the location of the pitchfork, the path to the house and the leaf pile where the black man collapsed. “Now show me the shed.”
    Emmanuel and Shabalala trampled across an abandoned vegetable garden to a stone and iron building overgrown with climbing vines. The door was open. They peered inside. The air was musty, the walls hung with rusting garden tools. Two small windows gave dim light. An old wardrobe, a chest of drawers, broken chairs and a dozen cracked plant pots colonised the rear of the shed. A camp bed with sheets and a turned down blanket was pushed to the left of the door in a cleared space.
    “He slept in here.” Emmanuel indicated a pair of brown shoes and a kerosene lantern placed neatly by the side of the metal bedframe. The floor had been freshly swept. “A space was made for the bed but there’s nothing to say he actually lived here.”
    “You are right.” Shabalala crouched on the threshold, mapping the last movements of the mystery man. “He slept in the bed and then went out through the orchard to the path where he met the other men.”
    “And was stabbed. Probably with a pitchfork from this room.”
    “That is what I believe.”
    “Why was he here to begin with?” Emmanuel moved into the room, stripped the blanket from the bed and searched under the sheets and the pillow for information that might identify the man at Baragwanath hospital. He found a pair of darned socks stuffed into the brown shoes. The shoes themselves were worn and cracked. “The Brewers must have known he was sleeping in the shed. He had their address in his shirt pocket.”
    Shabalala said, “Maybe the prints on the path will lead us to the other men, Sergeant.”
    “It’s worth a try.” Emmanuel left the shack, frustrated. Interviewing Martha Brewer officially was impossible now that he was “on holiday”. There must be a quick way to identify Mr Parkview and find out how he met the sharp end of a pitchfork on Friday night. Shabalala wove through the trees quickly in order to beat the setting sun. Shadows fell across the narrow path and grew longer. The Zulu detective kept a steady pace for a minute and then stopped within sight of the back fence. He peered into a