Kramer was four blocks away in the cells of the Trekkersburg Magistrate’s Court, talking to Pop van Rensberg, the sergeant-in-dcharge.
“Anything for you, Trompie old son,” Pop was saying, keeping an eye on the Bantu prisoners tiptoeing up to the tap outside his office door to fill tins with drinking water.
“Hey, Johannes, you old skelm,” Pop bawled. “Don’t tell me you’ve been at the ntombis again?”
A lanky prisoner looked up from the tap and smiled bashfully.
“Greetings, my father,” he said respectfully in Zulu.
Pop waved an affable paw.
“Just one of my old friends,” he explained to Kramer. “I tease him about the girls, say he’s a rapist-he thinks it’s helluva funny.”
Kramer glanced at the man.
“What is he then?” he asked.
“Buggered if I know, but he does it often enough. Now who was it you wanted in the end cell by himself?”
“Gershwin Mkize-he’s just been remanded.”
“Of course, Mr Banana. I’ve got names for them all you know. You see he-”
“Wears yellow. Will you get it moving, Pop?”
The sergeant took it good humouredly and waddled out into the hall bawling orders. His staff shepherded all the stray prisoners into their cells and took a yellow figure into one in the far corner.
Zondi came in through the grille from the court corridor and joined Kramer.
“Nice timing,” Kramer remarked. “He’ll have a week now to become a pretty boy again before he comes up in front of a court. But why wasn’t the remand earlier?”
“Big round-up last night for pass offenders. I gave your note to Mr Oosthuizen and he put Gershwin through in between cases.”
“Uhuh. Sam Safrinsky turn up to represent him?”
“Not a chance, boss.”
Pop returned to greet Zondi warmly.
“Hello, Cheeky,” he said. “Is this the way you want it?”
“Too quiet,” Zondi observed.
“He’s right,” Kramer agreed.
“Damn right,” Pop echoed, “you never know who you’ve got in here these days. Come on you lot, I want to hear you talking.”
His staff took up the cry, translated it, and immediately there was a babble of voices. After half a minute or so, it settled down.
“Fine,” Kramer said, and he and Zondi walked shoulder to shoulder down to the end cell.
Pop retired to where he could overhear nothing incriminating and joked with Ephraim, another old favourite. They enjoyed some good laughs.
Kramer had the broad piece of plaster ready in his hand before they entered the cell-the gauze which had kept it sterile was back in Pop’s wastepaper basket. And he applied it to Gershwin’s mouth before he could utter a single whimper.
They closed the door.
“Listen to me, Gershwin,” Kramer said. “I have come here this morning to ask you one question. When I take that plaster off I want just to hear your answer-nothing else.”
Gershwin nodded vigorously, clasping his handcuffed hands before him.
“No, we haven’t time to have a rehearsal,” Kramer went on. “Or to talk all day, too. Sergeant Zondi and I are going to give you half of something-if you lie, we’ll let you have the other half later.”
Gershwin cringed, trying to protect his head.
“First, the question,” Kramer went on. “Last night you used the words ‘the steam pig’. What we want to know is: was this some nonsense of yours-or was it something that Shoe Shoe said?”
Gershwin was mouthing frantically as Zondi took up his position behind him.
They concentrated on the soft parts of the body, the areas where there was no backing of bone to fracture or aggravate capillary damage through excessive resilience. One soft part was particularly favoured for its extreme sensitivity and relative isolation from vital organs.
They did it all with the fingers, never with the fist.
She kept her eyes on him all the time, which made Van Niekerk feel even more of a fool when he had to replace his revolver in its holster before leaving.
And she had such frightened eyes, that poor little old lady perched on the edge of the sofa in Mr Abbott’s showroom. Small wonder when you considered the way he had come in off the street.
Mr Abbott was hovering about waiting for him at the front counter.
“Any good?” he asked.
“I want words with you,” Van Niekerk growled. “What the hell do you mean making phone calls like that and having me think you had a bloody tiger around here?”
“Steady on, I said nothing about tigers.”
“You said you ‘couldn’t keep them’ without a fuss-what was I to think?”
“But you always fuss old ladies if you spring things on them. I didn’t want her upset. This is a business, after all! I thought you’d know how to handle it better than I.”
There was quite a considerable pause.
“Thanks, anyway,” Van Niekerk conceded. “It could have been something big. You never know.”
And with that he left Mr Abbott to console the old dear and send her on her way.
Van Niekerk was still smarting when he reached the office and found the Lieutenant and Zondi there making a mess of his crime sheet by writing in some nonsense all over the place.
“What’s all this?” he said, as brusquely as he dared.
“That’s what they’re saying down in Housebreaking,” Kramer chuckled. “Fanie Brandsma swears you were touching thirty by the time you passed their window.”
“I mean this ‘steam pig’ business,” Van Niekerk muttered.
“Oh, that? Well it just could be a lead.”
“Really?”
Kramer nodded. Now it was plain why he was in such unusual spirits.
“We’ve just paid a little call on our friend Gershwin Mkize,” Kramer explained. “We wanted to check on something he said last night, these three words.”
“And?”
“It seems that Shoe Shoe used them not once but often after realising why he was out there playing at scarecrows. In fact he kept saying to Mkize it was because of the Steam Pig that he was being done in.”
“He shout it many times,” Zondi quoted from his notebook. “He says all this trouble is trouble from the Steam Pig. It is a bad thing. It make even the white baas much frightened. He hear white baas telling friend that the Steam Pig will mean the end of his days.”
“Christ.”
“Yes, the link, Willie. These cases are definitely connected.”
“Did this Mkize say under whose orders?”
“He still says he didn’t know then. But thinking about it now he wonders if the Steam Pig wasn’t behind it.”
“So it’s a gang, Lieutenant?”
“Seems like it. Or somebody running a mob. What else could it be?”
“Dunno. But I’ve never heard of it.”
“You shouldn’t have if it’s any good.”
“True.”
“All the same, I want checks made. Zondi here will go round his informers. But I want you to be careful, hey? We don’t want to give any warnings.”
“Okay, boss.”
