When next the music stopped and again nobody came out, Kramer had had enough.
“We’ll be here all day waiting for this lot,” he said. “Look, I’m going inside to see Byers in his control room. We haven’t the time to mess around.”
He strode rapidly over to the entrance, pushed through the doors and headed for the small door at the far end of the hallway. But on his way down he paused for a quick glance through the windows of the chapel door.
It was empty.
“Back again so soon, old boy? Did you leave something?”
Kramer turned slowly to face Byers.
“I thought there was a funeral on,” he said.
“Oh, no, the people outside are here for some dedication service or other down in the Garden of Remembrance. A plaque, I think.”
“It was the music.”
“Don’t tell me. I’ve had endless trouble ever since you left. You know those new tapes I mentioned? With a choral effect to help the singers along? I just couldn’t get the balance right. That’s what you must have heard, I’ve been juggling about with them in the lunch break.”
“You must think I’m a proper fool.”
“Not at all, old boy. But didn’t you notice you couldn’t hear the devil dodger’s voice in between?”
“Who?”
“The clergy.”
“No, I wasn’t expecting to.”
“Quite so-music carries much better than voices and it’s louder for a start. Do you know anything about tapes, by the way?”
An odd look came over Kramer’s face. He suddenly felt he knew something about one tape in particular-but he had to be sure.
The librarian at the Trekkersburg Gazette gave the impression of an irritable man with Right-wing views. Those that knew him well, however, realised that this was only his way of keeping the Left-wing editorial staff at bay. Given half a chance they would be yelling for files all day and never allow him time to bring his cuttings up to date.
In fact he was the sort of man who gave the African schoolmaster all the help he could possibly need in compiling potted biographies of the city councillors.
“I am most grateful,” Zondi told him. “My pupils will be delighted to make better acquaintance with the leaders of our fair city.”
And with that he opened the file on Councillor Terence Derek Trenshaw.
Kramer believed in expedience. It was expedient to put Zondi on to collecting background details, expedient to have the increasingly truculent Van Niekerk confined to the office, and expedient to have Mrs Perkins wake her dear little Bobby although he did not get up until three.
Bob Perkins was delighted.
“So the tape’s important after all?” he asked, hunting about for it. “I didn’t think so, with your leaving it with me.”
“Have you got a portable?”
“Oh, this thing can plug in anywhere, I’ll take an adapter. Here you are.”
He handed Kramer the tape.
“Fine, then let’s go.”
Mrs Perkins went out to the garden gate to wave them off. She flinched nervously when Kramer let out the clutch and left some tyre tread behind with her.
“Going far?”
“Just around the corner.”
“Barnato Street?”
“Ja.”
“Smashing. What do you want me to do?”
“Play the tape.”
It was Bob’s turn to flinch as Kramer began braking outside No. 223 and then changed his mind so abruptly that the delivery boy ahead of them owed his life to a decimal point. The Chev finally stopped four houses down on the far side of the old night-cart lane.
“How about some real detective stuff then, Bob?”
“Great! What must I do?”
“You see that lane there? It leads up the side of the property we’re interested in. All we have to do is go up it very quietly until we get to a gate in the wall, on the other side is a cottage-I’ll go first and open the door. Then you come. Nobody can see you until you are right by the door because there are some high bushes. Step across that part smartly and I’ll tell you the rest.”
“Check.”
Kramer hid a smile as they got out.
And it all went exactly as planned, with Bob making the leap into the cottage like a true Springbok.
Kramer looked through the lace curtains at the kitchen windows on the far side of the garden. Miss Henry was hovering about the maid Rebecca. They were sharing the washing-up.
“Okay, now all you’ve got to do is get that recorder of yours going and we’re away.”
“Over here?”
“Just push the sofa from the wall if the plug’s hard to reach.”
Bob gave it a shove with his knee and it rolled aside on well-oiled casters. Then he knelt down to fit the reel.
Miss Henry was pouring water from a kettle into a tea pot over the sink.
“Hurry it, if you can, Bob.”
“Won’t be a sec. I suppose you noticed someone else has had a deck here before?”
Kramer spun from the windows.
“Where?”
Bob pointed to an area of the carpet which had been covered by the sofa. There were four slight impressions in it like those made by the rubber cushions at each corner of a tape recorder.
“Run it to the last piece, where there isn’t so much missing.”
“Right. Fast forward wind coming up.”
Miss Henry was still in the kitchen.
“One more thing, Bob: can you play it loud as a piano?”
“If you like. I’ve got one hell of a wattage on this.”
“Like a piano.”
“That’s set. I made a note about volume on the box.”
He talked too much. Miss Henry had gone. Kramer swore silently.
“Countdown?”
“Zero. Let’s have it, Bob.”
Kramer started as the first faltering notes of Greensleeves plunked out. Then he sat down on the carpet beside Bob to listen.
The sound he had expected began very softly in a very high key. It gradually built in strength and then started wavering from one side of the scale to the other. It did not come from the amplifier.
Rebecca was having the shrieks in the kitchen.
The pianist’s fingers tripped over a chord and there was a pause. The chord was repeated slowly and then the tune went on.
Rebecca was in the garden now and so was Miss Henry, almost crushed in the Zulu maid’s terrified embrace.
The tape snapped.
“Hell, I’m sorry. That was a lousy splicing.”
“Perfect, my friend.”
