Read Let the Dead Lie for Free Online Page B

might be.
    Emmanuel
stepped back and slowly made his way to the front doors of the Trident Shipping
Company. He wanted to run but that would be a mistake. Innocent bystanders
drifted away when the routine police work began. No bodies to see, no instant
arrests .. . just a big silver torch with a broken light and a bottle of
lemonade.
    The
entrance to the shipping office was decorated with a painting of Poseidon. He
walked in under the curve of the sea god's navel. Six open cubicles manned by a
mix of Indian and coloured men took up most of the space. In a glass-fronted
office in the back, a busty female in a green suit took dictation from the baas, a white man lounging behind a teak desk.
    The
turbaned Indian who'd slipped away from the crowd was seated at the second
cubicle. Emmanuel walked straight up. He had to get in and out of the office
quickly. An underfed coloured man with a pencil tucked behind an ear startled.
    'Can
I help you, sir?'
    'No,'
Emmanuel answered and drew level with the Indian clerk. 'Sir' meant the clerks
thought he was classified white and wouldn't challenge him.
    The
turbaned man sprang to attention; another demobbed soldier of the empire ready
to present arms. 'I have nothing to do with the dead boy, sir. Nothing.'
    'Saris
and All,' Emmanuel said. 'You know of a shop by that name?' That was the brand
stamped along the side of the wooden crate in Giriraj's room, and Maataa had
mentioned owning a shop. Two pieces of information that might lead back to the
Dutta family.
    'Saris
and All?' The clerk repeated the name, surprised and relieved by the
unexpected direction of the conversation.
    'Yes.
Do you know where I can find it?'
    The baas glared out of the glass window. He'd be out in a moment, Emmanuel figured;
annoyed that someone other than him was bossing his workers around.
    The
Indian man said, 'On Grey Street, I think, sir. Close to the Melody Lounge.'
    'Thanks.'
    The baas emerged from the glass fortress to investigate and Emmanuel exited the front
door. The crime-scene crowd was still five deep.
    'To
the side,' a rotund sergeant instructed the onlookers through a megaphone.
'Make way for the van.'
    The
crowd split and the black Dodge van drove through a breach in the barricade. A
balding man in a white double-breasted uniform opened the van doors and two
attendants carried a canvas stretcher out of the alley. Jolly Marks's body was
a small lump under the sheet.
    A
dark-skinned Onyati with a broad face pulled off his woollen cap and the rest
of the dockworkers did the same. They stood in silence until the van departed,
and then the leader of the Onyati began to sing. His men joined in and the
melody swept across the freight yards and Point Road.
    'Senzenina,
senzenina ...' The voices rose
in a powerful harmony. 'Senzenina, senzenina. Siyo hlangane ezulwini. Siyo hlangane ezulwini ...'
    'Kaffirs got no respect. This is no time
for singing,' the bearded Afrikaner man said.
    'It's
a funeral song,' Emmanuel told him. 'It says we will meet again in heaven. They
are singing the boy away so his soul won't remain trapped in the alleyway.'
    Emmanuel
had Constable Shabalala, the Zulu policeman on his last case, to thank for
that piece of knowledge. Shabalala had taught Emmanuel something else, too: at
some point today, out of the view of the white supervisor, one of the Onyati
would pick up Jolly's soul with the help of a small spirit twig and transport
it to a better place. The life of an Onyati was hard enough without the angry
ghost of a dead white boy to contend with.
    The
Afrikaner stared at the ground and listened to the second verse. The Onyati
song finished and the street became quiet. After a moment, the black men made
their way across Point Road and into the freight yards. Emmanuel moved through
the thinning crowd.
    'Like
blades of grass, we are cut down.' A southern American voice cracked the
silence left by the Onyatis' seamless switch from singing to working. 'Was the
poor boy found here, on this