“I’m going to use the phone,” Kramer said, making for the bedroom door. “Just you take a look at that lot on the piano meantime.”
Zondi obliged. He found the entire contents of the writing bureau, plus other assorted effects, arranged neatly along the lid-but not in the usual twin categories of “personal” and “business”. For, as Kramer had repeatedly stressed during the briefing, there was nothing remotely personal among it all with which to begin a pile. Not a letter, a postcard, or even a snapshot.
What there was hardly made absorbing reading; two receipt books, one full and the other just begun; a ledger for tax purposes; a notebook containing pupils’ names, more than a year’s bills all stamped “paid”, and a reminder from a jeweller’s about a repair. The collection, however, provided the first answer of the day by explaining where all the flowers had gone-or many of them anyway. Miss Le Roux had not taken private pupils in the ordinary sense but appeared to have had some arrangement with St Evelyn’s School for Girls round the corner. It was a boarding establishment and term had ended a fortnight before.
Kramer came in looking pleased with himself.
“I’ve got a bloke who’ll look at the tape tonight,” he said. “Find any trace of the adult pupils there?”
“Nothing, boss. Maybe she did not want to pay tax on the fellows.”
“Could be.” The thought had occurred more than once, yet it still struck Kramer as being very out of character. The records were meticulous and Miss Le Roux plainly knew nothing of less hazardous tactics such as loading an expense allowance.
Zondi started switching off the lights. He was right, it was time to get going-every minute was worth double until news of the investigation broke. Kramer gathered the papers into a music case, collected the tape and went out on to the small verandah. He just caught a glimpse of someone ducking away from Mrs Bezuidenhout’s kitchen window.
The night was wild.
Seen from the air, Trekkersburg was a green-grey mould at the bottom of an unfired bowl. Now, over the brim of blunt mountains to the west, came pouring a hot, thick wind which swirled dead leaves aloft like sediment and infused every living thing with its strange agitation. The wind did not come often, but when it did things happened.
Which suited Kramer down to the ground. He delighted in it, wondered why he had not noticed it before. Each bluster made him more impatient as Zondi fiddled with the front door, making quite certain the lock was secure. So he started alone down the short path and out through the side gate. He found himself in a small lane once used by the night-soil cart, it being a very old part of the town. The lighting was poor but he made his way down it quickly enough to have the car revving loudly by the time Zondi caught up. Then he drove off as if the leopard-skin seats had snarled.
Kramer dropped Zondi outside the city hall and headed for 49 Arcadia Avenue where-according to the telephone directory-Dr J. P. Matthews had his home and surgery. It was well after eleven but the man was a physician and this an emergency call. The tape expert was an amateur, a proofreader at the Gazette, who would not be home until 1 a.m.
Zondi had been left with instructions to find Shoe Shoe. He was to wheel him in his wheelbarrow to the corner of De Wet Street and the Parade and wait there to be picked up.
Only four years back Shoe Shoe had been an up-and-coming mobster with a pay-night protection racket just beyond Trekkersburg in the Bantu township of Peacehaven. Every Friday he had twenty men at the bus terminus who would escort breadwinners home at R1 a time. Not a vast sum but on a good night-particularly after some idiot had refused the service and was brutally reprimanded-the takings were nothing to be sniffed at.
Then he had foolishly decided to move in on the Kwela Village terminus, thinking his only competition would be from a few young toughs who stopped once they had sufficient for drink and a dolly. The thing was he had never heard of any trouble there. Why he had heard nothing was ultimately made terrifyingly clear.
Come the first Friday night, his scouts returned with a shock report: the Kwela terminus was already being worked and so subtly that the passengers were bled dry even before they reached the shadows. No one had been able to detect how it was done.
When Shoe Shoe received the news calmly, they felt bewildered and nervous. Normally he reacted to any upset with a tantrum of appalling ferocity. But these were new men, they had not known him long enough to realise that he had got places by a careful study of what he reverently called Big Time.
And this was Big Time all right. It excited Shoe Shoe tremendously, making him repeat Big Time in every other sentence. It also made him determined to discover the system and apply it in Peacehaven, where a street- lighting project threatened to inhibit his present methods.
So he sent all his men in the following week. It was risky but worth it. Anyway, they had strict instructions to do nothing but watch. Big Time would be far too busy to notice.
Wrong again. Big Time decided to set an example-and extend its operations to Peacehaven. Which meant that when Shoe Shoe eagerly answered a knock on his door around midnight, he opened it on Big Time and bad times.
It happened very quickly. He was held down on his sagging divan and had his Palm Beach shirt ripped from tail to collar. A match flared briefly. The first prick of the spoke came near his coccyx-just his legs were to go; a minor infringement. Then the point began to tickle its way up. His arms as well. Higher still. The spinal cord was punctured.
It was a clean wound and healed in three days. The neurologist at Peacehaven Hospital found this evidence of sterile procedure even more disturbing than the impressive display of anatomical insight. He mentioned it to Dr Strydom. The DS shrugged and said that as there was nothing the hospital could do, it was rather ridiculous admitting such cases when there were so many patients that some had to sleep under beds occupied by more serious cases.
So on the fourth day Shoe Shoe was discharged before breakfast. Two porters carried him out and set him down on the lawn a few yards from the exit gate. There he sat, with a small plaster visible through his torn shirt, until eleven o’clock when the sun baked a thirst within him that made him call out for help.
It arrived in the form of Gershwin Mkize, following up a hot tip. Gershwin ran the beggar circus in Trekkersburg, often travelling far into the bush for his exhibits positioned strategically about the town, and he was always on the lookout for new attractions. This one needed no improvisation.
The State pension would provide half a loaf of bread a day. Gershwin could offer two loaves, a little meat, a pot of beer and a roof-plus the comradeship of other unfortunates who, between them, could assist in intimate matters such as feeding, dressing, moving and evacuating.
Shoe Shoe accepted without a word and seldom spoke again. A Bantu constable, fresh from the police college, made a few ineffectual inquiries. Shoe Shoe gave him an outline then clammed up. The constable’s superiors criticised the spelling in his report and left it at that. After all, this time society had been left better off by a crime.
Now Kramer wanted him to break that silence. He did not relish the thought of working over a man four parts dead already, but he was prepared to go beyond strenuous coaxing. He knew the link was tenuous. But he also knew that Shoe Shoe must have seen his assailants and thereafter maintained a particular interest in anything concerning bicycle spokes.
Kramer turned into Arcadia Avenue and slowed down. About half way along his headlights glinted off a brass plate and he killed the engine to glide up on the grass verge. As he got out he noticed half a dozen cars parked outside the house on the other side. Their owners were no doubt gathered to celebrate a golden anniversary, it was that sort of neighbourhood.
He took the path in four paces and rang the bell.
Dr Matthews was in the hall balancing on one leg. By extending the other as a counter-weight, he had been just able to retain his hold on the telephone receiver while using his free hand to grasp the doorknob. He grinned feebly. Just a smile in return would have been charitable.
“Police,” Kramer said, and walked past into the surgery, closing the thick door behind him.
He was immediately struck by the quiet and the stink of ether. Another man whose profession demanded soundproofing-and another cue to stop breathing through his nose. He went over to see if any of the windows were open behind the long, moulting drapes. Not one. Not touched in fifty years if the rest of the room was anything to go by. He noted the Victorian furniture, the quilted leather, the tassels, the instruments laid out in what resembled
