“I understand. Please proceed.”
“Boetie went around to his friend Hennie’s house after school and the two of them went out shooting. They came back after five. Boetie said he’d better get home for supper, leaving on his bike. The parents were not at home, having left early to go to a meeting in the church hall. When the servant girl had waited up until eight without him returning, she imagined he’d stayed at Hennie’s for a meal. It was not until midnight that Mr. and Mrs. Swanepoel returned and found him missing. Normally he always informed them of his movements and this was why they contacted the police.”
“Correct. It was a very long meeting on the Synod resolutions.”
“Yet how do you explain him finishing up over on this side, a mile from his house that was just around the corner?”
“Very simple, I would think. The boys like to cut across the stream and take the footpath round here because it makes an exciting ride. That’s probably what Boetie was up to. There was still plenty of time for him to get home for his meal. He knew it was just the servant girl waiting.”
“Hmmm. How do they get back, then?”
“They push their bikes over the railway bridge. As a matter of fact, that’s why I know about this practice of theirs-some parents are very concerned about the hazards involved.”
“Understandably.”
“With the trains, I mean.”
Kramer got up to stretch.
“Boetie was a good pupil, a regular churchgoer, and a credit to his parents.”
“They trusted him implicitly.”
“Then this must have happened out of the blue. That’s basically what I needed to know.”
Sergeant Kritzinger was beckoning with a piece of paper from the far side of the hall. Traffic had finally surfaced.
“Thanks a million for your help, Dominee. I must go now-sorry.”
But the minister insisted on the last, pompous word.
“I would that it had only happened to an old sinner like myself,” he intoned. “Don’t smile, Lieutenant. I have known them all-and vanquished them, every one.”
Except perhaps gluttony. Someone had guzzled the sausage marker.
The Chevrolet was almost opposite the bulldozer on its way down again when the hair on Kramer’s neck lifted slightly: he was not alone. He thought about it for a fast quarter mile and then wound up his window. He sniffed carefully. The cheap pomade, so pungently sweet it was capable of fertilizing a paw-paw tree at forty yards, proved unmistakable. He found the other hamburger and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Fizz-bang, you’re dead,” he said.
“Very nice, too,” replied Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi, who fitted exactly across the back seat but chose, for reasons of his own, to lie on the floorboards.
“And what are you doing in my car?”
No answer. Merely a steady munching.
“Were you questioning the Bantu staff in the kitchen?”
“No, boss. I got a lift up with Dr. Strydom.”
“He didn’t say anything about that.”
“He didn’t, boss?”
Kramer saw the point and laughed.
“You’re going to get me into trouble one of these days-you know that?”
“ Hau! I am very sorry.”
Then they laughed together, as they often did when on their own.
“Is this a Bantu case, boss?”
“Since when have kaffirs gone around committing sex killings on white kids? Of course not. Perfectly straightforward and I think we’re already on to the bugger that did it. Want to get off here and go back to Central?”
“I’ll come with.”
Kramer ignored all the traffic lights through the city center-it was still very early in the morning-and took the Durban road, watching the street names on the left. He swung into Potter’s Place. The homes round about were modest bungalows succumbing, in their middle age, to an ill-becoming trendiness; bright colors had been painted over the exterior woodwork and all sorts of rubbish, old street lamps and wagon wheels, littered the small frontages. No. 9 Potter’s Place was untidier than most and a child had been scribbling on the garage door. This door was closed, but the chunky tracks of a Land-Rover could be seen clearly in the dried mud of the short driveway.
The Chevrolet stopped two houses further on. Kramer and Zondi walked back and up the path. Somebody was singing in a low bass on the walled veranda.
“Stay here,” Kramer ordered, mounting the steps.
A Zulu houseboy jumped up, his knees red with the floor polish he had applied so lavishly, and went bug- eyed. He did it very well, considering the hour-which was, according to the grandfather clock in the hall passage, a minute after six.
“Police,” Kramer cautioned. “You shut up or I’ll call my boy.”
The Zulu peered over the wall at Zondi, dropped to his knees again, and slipped a hand under the brush strap. He went on scrubbing away.
“Every man to his job,” Kramer remarked with satisfaction, stepping into the house.
All was quiet; but nobody would think of stirring until the veranda shone like a tart’s toenail and the tea was brought in. There was ample opportunity for a preliminary survey.
Behind the door, where they had been dimly visible through frosted glass panels, were a collection of coats and other outdoor garments. The driver of the Land-Rover had been wearing something greenish. A scruffy sports jacket came as near to the color as any-and it had been hung up last of all.
Kramer lifted one sleeve to inspect the cuff. What he noticed there halted his breathing.
He wet a finger and dabbed at one of the brown specks, seeing his spittle turn pink. He gave it the nose test.
The same with the other cuff.
Blood.
It was too easy. Too easy and too like what happened when the gods played silly buggers. An alert sounded within.
Right then someone behind him said, “Stick ’em up.”
4
Kramer stuck them up. He waited a moment and then turned around, lowering one hand to lay a finger on his lips.
“Don’t shoot,” he begged in a whisper.
Bang.
“I said-”
“You’re dead,” the small boy informed him. “And when you’re dead, you can’t talk.”
“Quite right.”
“I know. I’m not stupid like Susan.”
“Who’s that?”
“My baby sister. She’s three.”
“And you are?”
“Fi-no, six. It was my birthday yesterday. Guess what I got?”
“A cap gun?”
