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In Pretoria, police are hunting a killer who is targeting the homeless, but 82 years ago in Johannesburg, another kind of predator had detectives forming an unlikely alliance.
Mavis Davids struck a deal with the stranger in the big black car. She opened the passenger door, got in, and disappeared into the night.
It was 1937 and in Europe Adolf Hitler's land grab continued, South Africa was still struggling through an economic depression and Johannesburg had a killer stalking its streets.
The killings had even brought an unlikely truce to the city.
No longer were police harassing the sex workers who stood on the street corners; they now protected them.
Each sex worker had at least two detectives watching over her.
When the client drove off with a sex worker, a detective would scribble the licence plate in his incident book.
The city's super-sleuth of...