message for you to be here tonight. I want to know what happened to that dog in Greenside-you know, Regina.”
“She’s dead.”
“But how?”
“The servant said she’d been killed by a burglar.”
“ Really? He didn’t tell me that.”
“The boss found it early in the morning and told him to bury it. He said there had been something round its neck. Like a wire.”
“I didn’t know the house had been robbed!”
“No, it wasn’t. The servant thought the bloke must have run away in case there was another dog.”
“When was this?”
“They found the dog on Sunday.”
“I thought so.”
“Is that all? It’s a funny question to ask, Danny. I thought it was something important. Let’s see if Gogol will give some old bananas.”
“Know something? I really got to like that horrible dog,” said Danny suddenly, as surprised by his outburst as Rampaul.
And it looked like a job for the Masked Avenger.
A thunderstorm of appalling ferocity was inevitable at the close of such a day.
Trekkersburg, which lay in a hollow on rising ground like the dent a head makes in a pillow, felt the final stages of the fever coming on just after seven. The weight of hot air pressing down on the town turned chill, then hot, then chill again. It started moving restlessly from side to side, setting weather vanes spinning. Strange, dislocated sounds were heard. Limbs of trees shivered. A thick, stifling blanket of black cloud was drawn up to blot out the bare bulb of the moon. The hallucinations began: it was as though, far above, a gigantic tin roof was being bombarded with boulders; as if each flash of lightning was a sear of pain through a reeling mind. A shuddering climax was reached. The rain came like a muck sweat.
Kramer stirred.
He sat upright behind the wheel of the Chev and opened his window a little. The night smelled as fresh and clean and inviting as Miss Lisbet Louw. A few minutes more and the downpour would ease off enough for him to dash across into Aloe Mansions. It was a great pity he had not been able to park any closer to the flats any sooner.
But the storm had forced him to rest and that was, perhaps, a good thing. He had been on the go for nearly forty-eight hours, counting the time spent half-dozing in court the day before. And really a man owed it to himself to keep enough energy in reserve to cope with the unexpected challenge. Miss Louw, for instance.
The rain belted down.
Kramer shifted his knee to avoid a drip that had found its way in under the rubber seal around the windscreen. The water was astonishingly cold. He found another leak in the same place on the other side. That was the trouble with police vehicles: you never knew where they had been.
The rain tried even harder.
Kramer watched it glut the gutters and then overflow over the road, creating huge, splash-pitted mirrors that tried vainly to reflect an orderly pattern of warm lights from the flats above.
The rain was remorseless.
The hell with having no coat. Kramer leaped out and ran.
To arrive at No. 36 soaked through-although it was not until after he rang the bell that he realized this. His thin suit had put up as much of a fight as a cigarette end in a urinal.
The door swung inward.
Miss Louw was also sopping wet. She had a towel round her body and another round her head.
“Oh, you poor man,” she said and pulled him inside.
“But, miss-” he began.
“Quick, through there before you ruin the hall carpet.”
Kramer found himself shut in a steam-filled bathroom, blinking rapidly, and unable to examine his expression in the misted looking glass. He was certain, however, it was a winner.
“I’m going to dress now,” Miss Louw called out. “The lady next door has a tumble dryer so you put your clothes outside and I’ll take them round. That’s everything, mind. It won’t take long.”
“Hey?”
“Come on, Lieutenant. Be sensible.”
She clattered off in her wooden sandals.
Well, well, that was the first of his three wishes granted-in her flat five seconds and she was yelling for him to get them off. The trouble with wishes was you had to be so specific or they sometimes misfired. Not that this was physically possible with the other two he had in mind.
The suit jacket was easy enough to remove but the trousers and shirt had Kramer grunting and hopping about. If only he had worn underpants that day he would have felt much happier. As it was, she might think he was withholding some ghastly secret. So he added his shoulder holster to the soggy pile as a distraction.
And pushed it all out into the passage.
“Won’t be two minutes,” Miss Louw told him as he sat on the edge of the bath warming his feet in her water.
She was back even sooner.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but Mrs. Turner’s just put in a load of nappies she must have. She’ll do yours straightaway after. Why not come out and have some coffee meantime?”
The Smith amp; Wesson. 38 made one hell of a fig leaf.
“In what, miss?”
“Oh, damn, all the towels are damp. Isn’t there something behind the door?”
Kramer looked at it and shuddered.
“Maybe you could lend me a coat?”
“Not one that would come near to fitting you. You’d tear them.”
“You live alone?”
“Of course.”
That was promising anyway.
“Okay, but no laughing, hey?”
Miss Louw looked most beautiful when she laughed. The pupils of her blue eyes were like eclipses of the moon with a sparkle of stars all around. Her teeth were narrow and neat and just right for the wide, sensuous mouth. Only the tip-tilted nose stayed serious, although the nostrils dilated a fraction.
He had to laugh, too. It was not every day a senior CID officer made his entrance clutching the voluminous folds of a nylon negligee about him.
Then their laughter halted abruptly.
Kramer experienced a different sense of embarrassment and so, apparently, did she. There had been an uncanny exchange of something intimate between them, too subtle for him to catch.
“Nice place you’ve got,” said Kramer, finding an excuse to take his eyes off her.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Shall I get the coffee now?”
He sat down, crossed his legs firmly, and watched her pour two cups in the kitchenette alcove. Zondi would have given his full approval to such a rump. What a perfect complement it made to the full bosom. That was better.
“Did you come to see me about Hennie?”
“No, Boetie Swanepoel. You’ve heard by now, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“And…?”
“I think it’s horrible. An innocent child like that.”
“Is that how he struck you?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
