This brought the driver scrambling to his feet. Kramer elbowed him sharply, deep in the belly.
“Where to?” inquired Gershwin, as his henchman sank gasping beside him.
The stooge screwed his eyes up tight as if he dreamt of impalement.
“Ah, never you mind,” Kramer replied quietly.
“No, thank you, boss.”
“Hey?”
“I’ve got Number One Jewboy lawyer. He say Gershwin-”
“Sam Safrinsky? You’re going to need an advocate for the Supreme Court, not a solicitor.”
“Supreme? For a little trouble like this one? Mr Safrinsky he say I’ve got a good alibi, I just coming down by market side to look for Dodge and…”
Gershwin had noticed Zondi’s expression. So had some others and they had turned away.
“So Sam says it’s all right,” said Kramer. “But does Sam know also about Shoe Shoe?”
Gershwin’s lip curled. He stared back at Kramer without blinking. Then he looked down at what Zondi dropped on his knees. It was a head of red kaffir corn.
“There’s more,” Kramer said. “And it’s stuck under the Dodge that the traffic cops are keeping nice and safe for us.”
“My turn?” Zondi asked.
“No, I think Mr Mkize wants to go with us now. Actually, I’d thought of a little ride out to the kids’ paddling pond in Wilderness Park.”
Gershwin jerked upright.
“It gets around, doesn’t it?” Kramer chuckled to Zondi. “Funny thing is that only the people we want to believe it ever do. The magistrates hear about the park and just shake their heads. What liars these black buggers are.”
“And it’s not raining now, boss.”
Zondi came close to looking mischievous.
“On second thoughts, perhaps just a little chat in the office. What do you say, Gershwin?”
Gershwin got up with difficulty, his legs were not themselves, and presented his wrists.
“No cuffs,” Kramer said. “You have not far to go.”
Zondi took an elbow to guide him.
“Constable! Take these two canaries and put them in separate cells.”
“Yes, Lieutenant!”
“And no mats-you understand?”
“Suh!”
Kramer watched the constable carry out his orders, it was never safe for a policeman to be left on his own in the block. It was all done with surprising efficiency. Kramer was about to leave when a thought struck him.
“And constable, take the buckets out of those cells-we don’t want the bastards being too comfortable.”
Shoe Shoe had had to sit in it, right up to the end.
9
It was one hell of a night.
Gershwin Mkize’s final words were: “The steam pig…” Then he slumped, fell face first to the floor, and lay very still with his arse in the air.
Kramer and Zondi remained seated, staring at it dully. They thought they had broken the bastard. They thought they had taken him to the edge and dropped him over. Perhaps they had. But the posture seemed to proclaim an insolence that ended things the way they had begun.
Kramer raised a foot. Gershwin was just out of reach. His foot flopped. Zondi did not even make the attempt. They were both exhausted. Pooped.
Sure, it was all over-only Kramer’s body needed time to adjust to the idea. It was still running rough on a too-rich mixture of hot blood and gland juice. His face was flushed, his left temple pulsed quick as a toad’s throat, and his stomach hurt. His bladder, too, was under stress. One false move and he would be walking with his knees pressed together.
Outside it was morning.
One of those edge-to-edge mornings that make milkmen feel superior as they skim off its cream while the white boss sleeps.
By now, however, pint bottles stood half-empty among the cereal packets and Trekkersburg was hurrying along to keep the economy going boom boom boom. In the street, cars, lorries, buses and motorcycles had regressed to an assembly-line crawl; nose to tail, never quite going, never quite stopping, but getting someplace. Then right beneath the window, which was still covered by the slat blind, a giggle of secretaries paused to wait for a friend.
Kramer felt he must take a look; he suddenly craved their shower-fresh skins and crisp cotton blouses and sticky pink lipsticks. It was a mistake.
The sun speared him in the eyeballs. They bled red, robbing him of all but a glimpse of the girls as they tiptapped off with the latecomer. And worse: when he turned around he discovered that the light was the kind that turns a party’s gay litter into a squalid mess come dawn. This had been no party, but what the day did to his office was intolerable.
Every sordid item now declared itself in stark relief against its own sharp shadow; the coffee cups, the hose pipe, the crumpled packets, the wet towels, the plastic duck. The floor was a mess from smoking-and so was the air. Only the stench did not show up, although it was a close thing.
Then a passing schoolboy whistled across to a classmate and Kramer wondered at himself. It had been like this before and would be again. In a few minutes a fatigue party would be brought up from the cells. The scuff marks and cigarette smudges would disappear as completely from the parquet flooring as Gershwin’s thin bile. The towels would go down to the canteen and the duck and the rest of the stuff back into the cupboard. By nine the room-with its four cream walls, brown woodwork, two chairs and a desk-would be unremarkable as ever.
Which was the way he wanted to feel.
“Zondi, I’ve got to go, man.”
“Boss.”
“Send down for Khumalo to help you get this crap bag charged with Shoe Shoe’s murder on Saturday last. You said you’ve already charged the other two?”
“Straight away after I saw them at four.”
“Fine. Tell the prosecutor-think it’ll be Mr Oosthuizen this morning-that I want a week’s remand. He’ll fix it up. After that, you go home. I’ll ring the township manager if I need you before then, otherwise six on the dot outside here.”
Zondi nodded and reached for the telephone.
All the way down the passage Kramer kept his mind off his bladder. He did not want to give it any excuse for over-excitement. He made the white tiled wall just in time and was marvelling at one of life’s elementary pleasures when Sergeant Willie van Niekerk emerged from the cubicle behind him. He was the first Murder Squad man Kramer had seen in two days.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” Van Niekerk murmured with his customary civility, turning on the tap at the basin. There was no soap but he had brought his own in an envelope.
“How’s things?” Kramer asked, eyeing the Lifebuoy.
“ Ach, so so. Can’t grumble-got my reports finished last night. All up to date.”
“Oh, yes? Looking for work, are you?”
“Like the soap, sir?”
“Ta. I’ve got a nice little lot lined up for someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“Really? The case Colonel Dupe keeps starting to talk about?”
“What does he say?”
