properly understand. So what did he know of what went on in the world? Only one thing: you mustn’t do anything to a girl until you’re both married and the Lord gives his blessing.”
“A good world to grow up in, I suppose.”
“Boetie was very lucky. But in freak circumstances like this, it cost him his life.”
The Chev slithered off the main road, clattered over the cattle grid, and started up the last stretch through the wattles, making a brace of guinea fowl catapult into the undergrowth. An approaching Mercedes and then a Peugeot pulled over to allow them to pass.
“ Ach, no,” said Pembrook, “even then I find it hard to believe. He must have heard somewhere that married women fool around.”
“But is that how he saw Mrs. Jarvis? That’s the crux of it. Whose statue stands outside the Voortrekker Monument? A mother’s. Heroic mothers fill the history books in primary schools. And when you are still a kid, what woman is the one you can least imagine doing wrong?”
“Your mother?”
“And what was Mrs. Jarvis?”
“Sally’s mother,” Pembrook responded, very peeved with himself.
“Unthinkable.” Kramer chuckled and stopped the car.
He had parked again above the third and last hole of the pitch-and-putt course. Straight across the other side were the trees in which Boetie had been found; to their left, and cutting off their view of the rest of the golf course, was a windbreak of firs.
“Maybe that was staring me in the face, sir,” Pembrook said, “but do you know more?”
“We can guess. Here is Boetie; a month gone by, no corpse left to prove anything different from what Strydom found, and Caroline giving him a hard time. So, like we said, he challenges her and ends up on the carpet in Jarvis’s study. Gets the balls chewed right off him and is told to get the hell out and not come back. Note, Jarvis did not know at this stage what Boetie had said to his daughter.
“Right; by now, I reckon, Boetie has had enough. Kids can fight bloody dirty when you push them and Jarvis’s patronizing attitude towards Afrikaners no doubt got a showing. Also Boetie’s personal investigation has been brought to an end: he had to hand the matter over to us or forget it. What would be more natural than for him to hurl the lot in Jarvis’s face? Tell him what he saw his daughter doing. Tell him about the Midnight Leopards. Threaten him with what was to come when he got down to the station.”
Pembrook, plainly pained to disagree once more, drew in the dust on the dashboard.
“If he’d done that, sir, Jarvis would have more than chewed the balls off him.”
“Right.”
This time Zondi’s excuse for an exit was seeing a butterfly settle on a distant arum lily. He darted off after it.
“You must ride two horses at once, Pembrook,” Kramer said, surprisingly mildly. “Jarvis knew that despite the fact Boetie had the wrong female, the substance of what he said was correct. The real police would not necessarily make such a mess of it.”
“Hell, sir, but then why let him go?”
“Because silencing there and then could have led to a lot of suspicion-and have been very difficult. This man was once a police chief, your friend said. However ropey the force he was in, he would know how a detective’s mind works: two fatal accidents so close together, well…”
“Accidents happen-”
“In the best-regulated families,” Kramer said, continuing in English. “He also knew that a sex-killing investigation is generally conducted differently…”
“I don’t see why Boetie didn’t tell us, though. How could he have kept him quiet in between?”
“You gave me the idea with what Sally overheard. The one when Jarvis said he’d help Boetie find another girl. Don’t you see? Probably dragged out an old picture of himself in his police gear and offered to lend a hand. He could even claim to having been investigating quietly on his own. It couldn’t have been difficult to convince Boetie he was barking up the wrong tree. And that’s also how he could get him to meet secretly in the woods-by playing up to a twelve-year-old’s sense of melodrama, especially this one’s.”
Kramer got out and beckoned Zondi over.
“I know what you’re going to say next, Pembrook. You’re going to say that he was mad to do it up here at the country club-he could have gone to any number of places in the bush.”
They began walking towards the club entrance. The secretary, Pipson, who had been chattering to a member, sidled indoors. It was a wonder he did not take the welcome mat in with him.
“I think I’ve got the answer to that,” Pembrook said suddenly. “He was banned from driving. He couldn’t go anywhere unless his wog took him.”
“Or his wife. But she wasn’t to know anything about this, and he couldn’t take the chance of being found driving-or having an accident himself-on the way back from the deed. This was the simplest, cleverest solution. There is only one thing left to decide.”
“Sir?”
“If it was possible.”
The inquiry was adjourned at the Colonel’s request and he hurried to the radio room to get through a call to Kramer. Having already failed to get him on the phone in the CID building, his only hope was the car.
“Sorry, Colonel, but there is no response,” the chief radio operator told him.
“Then I want a call put out every five minutes to him, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make it two-minute intervals.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him I have information to do with the conversation I had with him at eight this morning.”
The operator wrote it all down.
“You wait till I get hold of those buggers in Housebreaking,” the Colonel said, apropos of nothing.
Or so the operator thought.
Pembrook preoccupied the club secretary with perplexing questions-his instructions were simply to ask any nonsense that came into his head-while Zondi tracked down the African caddy who had carried the Captain’s clubs on the day Boetie died.
It was not a difficult job, as the Captain was notorious for favoring an old-fashioned, heavy leather bag. Kramer watched them talking from the terrace in front of the clubhouse. The view of Trekkersburg was truly magnificent and the air so clear he could pick out the mosaic of white headstones on the farthest hill. He wondered how the funeral had gone off and if someone should not have been there to note any odd behavior. He still had nothing but theories.
The caddy came across, dragging his heels behind Zondi.
“He says Boss Jarvis was here middle of the afternoon and played all the way round the course,” Zondi said.
“Did he play well?”
It was translated, mainly for effect.
“Not very, boss. This kid says he can do much better. He just play by himself for practice. There are few people on Monday.”
“When did he finish?”
“Half-five,” the caddy replied in English.
“Half-past five,” Zondi informed Kramer.
“Then did he go into the clubhouse or home?”
There was a long conversation in lisped Zulu, a subdialect Kramer had never mastered.
“No, he was very angry that he had not played well. He went on to play on this little course here.”
“Pish-n-putt,” prompted the caddy.
“And did you carry his bags?” Kramer asked.
“No, suh. Boss meningi angry. No tip.”
“Uhuh!”
The caddy whispered something and giggled.
