“That’s what Dr Strydom says, maybe Shoe Shoe know different.”
“And even if he didn’t, it would be a spoke man and that’s what really mattered to him?”
“Yes, boss.”
“And he would get Gershwin, too?”
“It seems like it, boss.”
Zondi borrowed the Lucky Strike to light his Texan off it. His expression was slightly sulky.
“ Ach, it’s good thinking, Zondi man-but why didn’t Shoe Shoe pull this one when they first got him four years ago? Why wait all this time?”
“Because they did not kill him, boss,” Zondi reminded Kramer, as tactfully as possible. “The most for assault would be fifteen years inside and then they would come back for him. Or maybe their friends would do it meantime.”
Kramer sat up. “Friends? Then this time he had to put everyone in the bag to make it safe!”
“That’s right, boss. Your white fellow, too.”
Jesus, with stakes that high it was a wonder they had been so confident that the exposure treatment would work. Zondi read his gaze out of the window.
“They probably left a man here to watch that Shoe Shoe died without any trouble,” he said.
“Okay, so you win. And if it hadn’t been for kaffir corn under the Dodge, we’d really have been buggered. Never even begun.”
The meat wagon arrived as if making deliveries in a district ravaged by rabid dogs. Every week Sergeant Van Rensberg handled on average a dozen bodies mangled in road accidents and his frenzied motoring was some sort of inverted reaction. As Kramer had once remarked, you could only feel safe with Van Rensberg if you were already on one of the two trays under the curious pitched roof which covered the back of the Ford pick-up.
The mortuary sergeant came coughing and hawking out of his dust cloud, trying to find a handkerchief. He was a colossal man. The combination of banana fingers and thighs that stretched trousers taut made the search quite something.
Kramer cuffed the grin off Zondi’s face and then the pair of them got out, averting their eyes.
Van Rensberg reached them, turned his broad back on Zondi, and saluted Kramer. A very excellent salute that should have been available for all recruits to study. A text book salute slow enough for Kramer to note the wide gleam down Van Rensberg’s right forearm. So he had not found what he sought after all.
“Hear you’ve got a real farty one for me, sir.”
“Sorry, Sergeant. He’s been out in the sun for a day or so.”
“That’s all right, sir-I’ll get your Bantu to put him on the tray.”
Kramer glanced over his shoulder.
“Sergeant Zondi’s not a big man.”
“ Ach, he can roll him, sir.”
“Fine, but just wait for the doctor first, hey?”
“Okay, sir.”
It was a long wait. Kramer and Zondi spent it on the humdrum of investigation; measuring the distance between the road and the body, calculating the wheelbase of the car which had left the tracks, making rough sketches and compiling notes. Van Rensberg followed them about, talking with inordinate nostalgia of his days on the beat down in Durban where, it appeared, he had done little else than solve famous cases. It soon became obvious that a flash of executive genius had given him the dead for company.
Dr Strydom stepped out to a warm welcome from him.
“So we meet again, Doc?”
“You’d think once a day was enough, Sergeant. What is it this time, Lieutenant?”
“Bantu male, a cripple.”
“Oh?”
“Your old friend Shoe Shoe.”
“What has he been up to?”
“Nothing. For too long.”
“I must see this.”
And away he trotted, blinding himself by pulling the rubber apron over his head and nearly falling right over the corpse. He took a long look.
“It’s not often these things affect me, but I must say Lieutenant this really gets my goat. It’s the most bloody inhuman…”
Obscenities failed him.
“I’d say the girl had it easy by comparison,” Kramer murmured.
“Too right you are. Quick and clean. Nothing in this axilla but bugs.”
“What?”
“Armpit,” Van Rensberg explained smugly. That was another thing about him: he had all the irritating traits of medicine’s sucker fish.
“Fetch the tray, Sergeant Van Rensberg,” Kramer ordered.
“Come,” Van Rensberg ordered Zondi.
“Yes, there’s not much more I could tell you now,” Dr Strydom said. “I think you’re right, it’s exposure. I’ll do a check for poison and anything else I think of. No bruises of course, no need to be.”
“The important thing is: how long?”
“Oh, at least three full days out here-today’s Wednesday-make it Saturday.”
Zondi slouched up, dragging the tray behind him.
“Are we finished now, Doctor?”
“He’s all yours, Van Rensberg. I’ve just got an internal check to do tomorrow.”
“Right you are, Doctor. Hear that, Zondi? You can use your foot to push him over. Just lay the tray alongside- like so. Now shove hard, man.”
Shoe Shoe went over slowly with a long belch like a reveller leaving his bench for the straw. A group of startled dung beetles, suddenly exposed in the middle of a round damp patch on the ground, scuttled for cover.
Kramer felt suddenly much happier about missing his lunch; one of the beetles had gone up his trouser leg.
“Shall we leave it to the experts?” Dr Strydom suggested.
“Fine,” Kramer replied, stamping the intruder free on the way back to the road.
“By the way, were the lab reports satisfactory on the girl, Lieutenant?”
“Not bad.”
“And you’ve seen Matthews?”
“Yes, we had our little talk. Quite a good bloke actually. Careless.”
“We all are some time or another.”
“No, I mean he even had her eye colour down wrong in his file-which he only bothered to fill in after you rang.”
“They’re brown.”
“Yes, but he swears they’re blue. Although I bet he never looked before yesterday.”
“How extraordinary! Old Georgie Abbott does, too.”
Kramer stopped short.
“It’s more than that then, it’s bloody peculiar. Now I just took a look through the slits and saw brown-did you open them properly?”
“Yes, in the prescribed manner.”
“Which is?”
“Are you doubting my word, Lieutenant?”
“No, man, don’t get in a knot. I just wanted to know.”
“Like this then; fingertips on the temples, thumbs facing in on the eyelids, a gentle push up.”
“I see.”
“Where does that get you?”
