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the floor. They repeated the action with the trousers, leaving the captain naked and pale on the gurney. Sister Angelina discreetly draped a towel over the exposed genitals.
    “Poor Captain Pretorius.” Sister Bernadette placed the dangling arms back onto the gurney. “No matter what condition the body was in, I’d still know it was him.”
    There were no identifying marks. Was there something about the naked captain only the little nun could identify?
    Sister Bernadette lifted a dead hand. “There wasn’t a time I didn’t see this watch on him. Captain wore it always.”
    “He never took it off.” Hansie’s eyes were reddening. “Mrs. Pretorius gave it to him for his fortieth birthday. The strap is real crocodile skin.”
    Even under layers of dirt it was easy to see the quality of the watch. It was dull gold with a textured wristband. Elegant. Not a word that kept easy company with the meaty captain or his sons. Emmanuel lifted the hand. Fresh bruises stained the flesh along the knuckle ridge. Captain Pretorius had recently hit something with force. He made a quick note in his pad, then turned the hand over. A small collection of calluses was scattered across the tray-sized palm.
    “What kind of physical work did the captain do?”
    “He liked to work on engines with Louis. They were fixing up an old motorbike together.” Hansie sniffled.
    “No,” Emmanuel said. Some of the calluses had the soft, broken edges of newly minted blisters. This was the hand of a laborer who hauled and lifted right until the day he died. “I mean heavy work. Work that makes you sweat.”
    “Sometimes he helped Henrick out on the farm,” Hansie said softly. “If it was cattle dipping or branding time, he liked to be there to watch because he grew up on a farm and he missed the life…”
    Shabalala said nothing, just kept his gaze directed at the concrete floor where the captain’s uniform lay, torn and disregarded. If the black policeman knew the answer, he wasn’t inclined to share it.
    Emmanuel turned the cold hand palm down and stepped back. Perhaps the sons had an answer. He wrote “heavy work/ blistered hands” on the pad. The black lines held steady on the page. The medication had kicked in.
    Zweigman began a sweep of the body. “Severe trauma to the head. Appears to be the entry wound from a gunshot. Bruising to the shoulders, upper arm and underarm area…”
    From dragging the body, Emmanuel thought. The killer had to hold on tight and pull hard as a mule to get to the water. Why bother? Why not shoot and run off into the night?
    Zweigman continued down the body, paying meticulous attention to every detail. “Severe trauma to the spine. Appears to be the entry wound from another gunshot. Bruising along the knuckles. Blistering on the palms…”
    The German surgeon was completely focused on the task, his face lit by something close to contentment. Why, with all his obvious expertise, was he serving behind the counter of a decrepit general store?
    “Let’s wash him down,” Zweigman said.
    Sister Angelina wrung warm water out of a hand towel and began wiping the pale skin down with the no-nonsense touch of nannies throughout English and Afrikaner homes across South Africa. Forty-something years on, the captain was leaving life as he’d entered it, in the hands of a black woman.
    “No, no, no.” Hansie rushed forward, breathing hard. “Captain wouldn’t like it.”
    “Like what, Hepple?” Emmanuel said.
    “A kaffir woman touching him down there. He was against that sort of thing.”
    There was a tense silence, colored by the ugly tide of recent history. The Immorality Act banning sexual contact between whites and nonwhites was now law, with offenders subjected to public humiliation and jail time.
    “Go out and get some air,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll call you when I need you.”
    “Please. I want to help, Detective Sergeant.”
    “You have helped. Now it’s time for you to take a break. Go out and