---

The second in a crime series set in 1950´s South Africa when apartheid laws were first introduced.

---

1

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, MAY 28, 1953

THE ENTRANCE TO the freight yards was a dark mouth crowded with rows of dirty boxcars and threads of silver track. A few white prostitutes orbited a weak streetlight. Indian and coloured working girls were tucked into the shadows, away from the passing trade and the police.

Emmanuel Cooper crossed Point Road and moved toward the yards. The prostitutes stared at him, and the boldest of them, a fat redhead with a molting fox fur slung around her shoulders, lifted a skirt to expose a thigh encased in black fishnet.

"Sweetheart," she bellowed. "Are you buying or just window-shopping?"

Emmanuel slipped into the industrial maze. Did he look that desperate? Brine and coal dust blew off Durban Harbor and the lights of a docked cruise ship shone across the water. Stationary gantry cranes loomed over the avenue of boxcars and a bright half-moon lit the rocky ground. He moved to the center of the yards, tracing a now familiar path. He was tired, and not from the late hour. Trawling the docks after midnight was worse than being a foot policeman. They at least had a clearly defined mission: to enforce the law. His job was to witness a mind-numbing parade of petty violence, prostitution and thievery and do nothing.

He scrambled over a heavy coupling and settled into a space between two wagons. Soon, an ant trail of trucks would roll out of the yard, packed to the limit with whiskey and cut tobacco and boxes of eau de cologne. English, Afrikaner, foot police, detectives and railway police: the smuggling operation was a perfect example of how different branches of the force were able to cooperate and coordinate if they shared a common goal.

He flicked the surveillance notebook open. Four columns filled the faintly ruled paper: names, times, license plate numbers and descriptions of stolen goods. Until these cold nights in the freight yard he´d thought the wait for the Normandy landing was the pinnacle of boredom. The restlessness and the fear of the massed army, the bland food and the stink of the latrines: he´d weathered it all without complaint. The discomforts weren´t so different from what he´d experienced in the tin and concrete slum shacks his family had lived in on the outskirts of Jo´burg.

This surveillance of corrupt policemen lacked the moral certainty of D-day. What Major van Niekerk, his old boss from the Marshall Square Detective Branch, planned to do with the information in the notebook was unclear.

"Jesus. Oh, Jesus ..." A groaned exhalation floated across the freight yards, faint on the breeze. Some of the cheaper sugar girls made use of the deserted boxcars come nightfall.

"Oh ... no ..." This time the male voice was loud and panicked.

The skin on Emmanuel´s neck prickled. The urge to investigate reared up, but he resisted. His job was to watch and record the activities of the smuggling ring, not rescue a drunken whaler lost in the freight yard. Do not get involved. Major van Niekerk had been very specific about that.

The faint hum of traffic along Point Road mingled with a wordless sobbing. Instinct pulled Emmanuel to the sound. He hesitated and then shoved the notepad into a pants pocket. Ten minutes to take a look and then he´d be back to record the truck license plate numbers. Twenty minutes at the outside. He pulled a silver torch from a pocket, switched it on and ran toward the warehouses built along the northeast boundary of the freight terminus.

The sobs faded and then became muffled. Possibly the result of a hand held over a mouth. Emmanuel stopped and tried to isolate the sound. The yards were huge, with miles of track running the length of the working harbor. Loose gravel moved underfoot and a cry came from ahead. Emmanuel turned the torch to high beam and picked up the pace. The world appeared in flashes. Ghostly rows of stationary freight cars, chains, redbrick walls covered

---