big deal because, I suppose, with a female and a bloody snake like that wrapped around her neck, it must have-”
“Still there, was it?”
“Here’s the photos-Kisten did a quick job.”
Kramer played patience with them for a while.
“How come if she knocked its brains out on the wall it was still round her neck?”
“Doc Strydom says they’ve got funny nervous systems; probably locked in a spasm. You know how the wogs say that a snake can’t die till sunset, doesn’t matter what you do to it.”
“Cut its head off with a spade and it still jumps around hours later, you mean?”
“Ja. Doc’s going to check with the snake park for more details to put in the thing he’s writing.”
The photographs were tossed aside. They were irrelevant to the matter in hand, and Kramer was niggled at being thwarted. He had a very clear picture of the manager and an equally clear idea of what he would like…
“ Six!” he said. “What is today in Trekkersburg? And don’t give me bloody Monday!”
“Wash day?” Marais postulated, with pleasing swiftness.
“Spot on. Think how the bugger was dressed. It all looked new to me. Even if it wasn’t, tell me who doesn’t wear his best casuals at the weekend? On Saturday arvie, or Sunday? Who goes to the trouble to posh himself up for the postman and a bloody coon boy? He didn’t have any appointments. For two hours, hey? Who goes near a nightclub in the daytime? When exactly was Mr. Joseph Ngcobo admitted to the premises? With wine bottles all over the place? Dead bugs in the passage?”
Marais began to pace about, clicking his thumb against his front teeth. Then he stopped suddenly.
“What are we saying, sir?” he asked, very solemnly.
“Just this: that Monty ‘Publicity Stunt’ Stevenson may have reached the club before Ngcobo, checked to see if the girl had pinched anything maybe-and saw certain advantages of a commercial nature in the situation.”
“Christ! You’d have to be cool to do that!”
“And what did your pal Gardiner have to say about him?”
Marais slapped his thigh in self-recrimination. “But I didn’t bother with times when I interviewed Ngcobo! I’m sorry, but it seemed-”
“No longer it isn’t. But you got times from Stevenson?”
“Under oath.”
“And Ngcobo’s address? Bantu Men’s Hostel?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“The night is young,” Kramer observed lightly.
Sergeant Kloppers and his clipboard barged into Strydom in the post-mortem room, almost dashing a jar of lungs to the floor. His night was over.
“I’m for home!” he declared defiantly.
Strydom looked round at the clock over his bifocals and frowned. “You were off most of the afternoon, so what nonsense is this? You can’t expect every week to run smooth as the last. We’re having a heavy run, that’s all-and that’s why I took the trouble of offering you a break while I was detained at Peacevale. You were gone three hours.”
“Peacevale I heard about!” snapped Kloppers.
“We can’t all spend our day worrying to tell you-”
Kloppers began to stab rudely at his list.
“The Peacevale coon, okay. But then? White female in a G-string. A white abortion. A-”
“Term miscarriage!” Strydom corrected, goaded into uncharacteristic pedantry.
“A whatsit. But then? A coon full of glass. And now-”
“ Ach, for crying out loud, who said we were going to try and get through them all tonight?”
“Ah,” said Kloppers, “ah, but you just come and see what else I find in my fridge!”
Strydom stalked through into the other room. “That happens to be mine,” he said coldly. “And I agree, you had better go home. What’s more, tomorrow I’m having a word with your superiors-you’re not fit for the job!”
“Suits me fine!” Kloppers shouted from the door.
And Nxumalo, who had taken the python in his stride, wondered if Sergeant Van couldn’t possibly come back soon.
Gardiner laid the prisoners’ sole prints and his originals on the desk in front of Kramer, who had just made a start on Stevenson’s statement.
“One fits,” he said, “the other doesn’t. Could have been one of Lucky’s biggest boys. I could-”
“Whoa, there! What’s the prisoners’ story?”
“Real skelms, those two. Saw a chance and took it. Zondi had been held up by an informer ringing, so he gave them the brush and they admitted. He’s handed the case over to Sithole and told him to ask for a remand to keep the thing quiet meantime.”
“And the prints in the till?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but the one that wasn’t Lucky’s belongs to one of these. Him.”
“And we don’t keep sole prints on file.”
“Some, but this other one doesn’t match. We forget them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Bet you the gang will hit again tomorrow,” Gardiner offered as a parting remark. “I would, if I was that good but only got myself peanuts.”
It did not help to have the obvious put into words. Kramer was plunged into bleak thought so overwhelming that he almost missed hearing what Marais returned to report.
“The cleaner Ngcobo was himself early this morning,” he told Kramer. “And he went into the club actually with Stevenson before ten. Wine bottles are for the Indian waiters to collect when they come on. He isn’t paid to clean the passage. But he did say one thing: in his belief, the boss has been bluffing all along that he didn’t know Zulu, because when Ngcobo went to tell him about the sick missus, for once the boss knew straight away what he meant.”
4
So Tuesday began with the prospect of a certain good and a particular evil being done in Trekkersburg.
While it also began as the day that Mickey Zondi and the lieutenant had mutually agreed to take off so that they would be free to help the Widow Fourie with her move.
No changes of plan were made, however, despite the threat of a clash of interests later, and all was to proceed as arranged.
Which meant a very early start at 2137 Kwela Village on the outskirts of the city. Or two starts, really, as Zondi rose before his family to tidy the living room. This was completed eventually with about a dozen sweeps of the broom across the rammed earth floor. Then he put six handfuls of maize porridge in a pot on the Primus stove, found the bowls, and hunted for the golden syrup. He discovered it in a tin inside another tin that had water in the bottom to keep the ants off. Miriam was a resourceful wife, as her lacy tablecloth of cleverly scissored newspaper showed. And, having domestic details now forced upon him by circumstance, Zondi also admired how she had fashioned a new handle for her flatiron from cotton reels. Miriam, who took in washing and mending, hoped one day-when the electricity was put in-to have saved enough for a steam presser.
The porridge popped and bubbled, breaking his reverie.
Zondi lowered the flame and went into the other room, clapping his hands loudly to wake the five children. He regretted this as he did so, because it would have been good to study their faces in repose. They saw little of each other.
But hungry offspring rouse quickly. The twins were up in an instant, and had not even rolled away their mattress before the others, in the big parental bed, started fighting.
“ Hau, hau, hau! What nonsense is this?” Zondi scolded. “Put on the rest of your clothes and I will feed you some breakfast. You! Not so fast!”
