5
Every silver lining has its cloud. Kramer forgot that in his new-found enthusiasm. He picked up a pair of winter vests, bust size forty-four, and edged around to the cash register.
“A present for my ma,” he said loudly.
“I’m sure she’ll like them, sir,” replied the Widow Fourie, opening a hairclip with her pearly front teeth and sliding it in above one ear.
Kramer glanced around for the supervisor and then leaned forward.
“I’ve got some news for you,” he whispered. “The boy was murdered after all-really murdered, I mean. Not sexually.”
“Oh, yes? That’ll be one rand sixty-four cents.”
The Widow rang up the sale and held out a hand for the money.
“ Ach, listen! There’s no reason for you to be frightened now. It’s all straightforward. Tomlinson needn’t take the kids in his car anymore. I’ll come round to the flat tonight and explain properly. I know that you-”
“One sixty-four, sir.”
“But we found out this morning-”
“That it wasn’t sexual?”
“Not exactly…”
“Well!”
“Well what?”
“Nothing’s changed, has it?”
“Bloody hell!”
“Now the super’s coming. If you get me into trouble, boy, that’s you finished. Pay up.”
“You know sodding well I haven’t got a mother!” he protested.
The supervisor pounced, taking him from behind.
“Is the customer not entirely satisfied with his purchase?” she inquired menacingly.
Kramer turned with a smile the supervisor closed like a zip. In the manager’s office at Woolworth’s, Miss Hawkins was a gawky giantess who kept a moist eye on underwear, soft goods, and haberdashery-a decent enough old soul, given to overefficiency. But shoplifters, shopgirls, and swains recognized a dangerously repressed morbido when they saw one. Some even trembled.
“They’re lovely vests,” Kramer said. “No trouble at all.”
Miss Hawkins breathed heavily.
“I was just saying to the assistant that I thought she’d undercharged me,” he added, looking to the Widow Fourie for support. He got none.
“Is that the correct figure, Fourie?”
“Yes, Miss Hawkins.”
Kramer handed over two rand notes. His change was returned without so much as a formal smile. The bag was dumped before him. The Widow Fourie moved away to serve a bare-breasted Zulu matron in a mud headdress.
This was hardly the way to treat a gentleman.
“Just a minute!” Kramer called out.
The Widow Fourie somehow caught the bag of vests he tossed over to her. She was bewildered.
“On second thoughts, they’d better be for you, popsy, seeing you’re going to be all alone these cold nights.”
Miss Hawkins indulgently let him pass unimpeded.
The Swanepoel family lived behind the station at one end of town. This did not, however, place them on the wrong side of the tracks. Far from it, they were part of a most influential community. Proof of this was to be found in records of Trekkersburg’s recent history: before the vast railway township was abruptly (some said illogically) transferred there from the loyalist hinterland, the city had always managed to return an opposition member of Parliament-it had never succeeded since.
Of course the swiftness of the operation left its mark on the place. The Swanepoels’ home was basically similar to the thousands surrounding it because this simplified construction, although an element of variety had been introduced by building the bungalows in pairs and making one the mirror image of the other. Each stood square on its quarter-acre plot, well fenced in by stout wire mesh, with its silver corrugated-iron roof covering a lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, stoop, and three bedrooms. A separate structure, also in yellow brick, served to accommodate a car, a servant, and gardening equipment. The land in front of the dwellings was leveled for threadbare lawn and that at the back left rough for maize or pumpkins. When you really came down to it, the properties were as unremarkable as rows of passenger coaches in a marshaling yard.
A single tree would have made all the difference, Kramer mused, noticing another pack of sulky dogs patter by.
“Something wrong?” Zondi asked quietly, turning the Chev into Schoeman Road.
Hell, it showed so that even kaffirs could tell. No reply.
“Sorry, boss,” Zondi mumbled in apology.
But he was smart. He knew. He had guessed when Kramer erupted from Woolworth’s and ordered him to get his finger out and the show on the road, and then sat beside him gazing with glum intensity at Railway Village as if he had never seen it before. Being a family man in his own right, Zondi understood the importance of a warm woman and a flat full of friendly children. He deserved better than a silent rebuke.
“Just a pain in my arse, man-it’ll go away.”
Zondi laughed hopefully.
The Swanepoel house had a white police constable lounging outside it in a van and the curtains still drawn behind the burglar-proofing.
“Good morning, Lieutenant, sir.”
“What’s up? Why’re you here?”
“Colonel Muller’s orders, to keep the neighbors and press away.”
“Any trouble?”
“No, sir. Only one old dear being nosy so far. Dominee Pretorius is inside-the doctor’s just been.”
“Oh, yes?”
“The parents are both under sedation.”
“Jesus! What is this, a radio play? I’ve got questions to ask.”
“Bonita’s all right, though.”
“Come again?”
“Bonita Swanepoel-the boy’s big sister.”
“Okay, I’ll start with her. Sergeant Zondi’s going to take a look at the kaffir on the premises. Don’t let anyone in till I’m finished.”
“Sir.”
Kramer ignored the path, the doormat, and the brass knocker shaped like the Voortrekker Monument near Pretoria. He rapped softly with his knuckles.
The door immediately opened a crack.
“Dominee? It’s Lieutenant Kramer.”
The minister silently bade him enter.
“I want to see Bonita.”
“Shhh! Not so loud. Bonita? Well, I’m not too sure that she’s-”
“Don’t waste time, please. This case is probably more serious than we thought last night.”
While he was gone, Kramer opened the curtains and the windows. In no time at all the faint smell of ether from the injection rubs vanished. The room became a size larger with the sun in it and the vases of plastic flowers-mostly arum lilies-lost their funeral parlor gloom.
There was a large number of framed photographs scattered among the African wood carvings and miniature sport trophies. The small Instamatic ones on the radio-phonograph gave tilted glimpses of a holiday by the sea- Boetie must have taken them because he featured in none. On the bookcase, empty except for a pile of women’s
