“You may not know this, but you were in a hell of a state all night. Worse than when the girls both had flu and I had them in with me.”
Kramer, who liked to soak with only his nose, and as little else as possible, above water, shrugged a ripple down the bath.
“I’ve also been thinking about this hangman, though,” she continued, clattering the cups, “and this I do know: he must be connected in some way with the prisons department. It’s the only way of gaining the required knowledge-you can’t tell me that the convicts really pick up anything but rumors. I remember reading once that a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of S.A. had to pretend he was a barber-actually his dad had been one-just to hear the inside story of Pretoria Central. You know how fussy they are about strangers in the jails? This prof or whatever used to cut the warders’ hair across the road and ask them questions, just casually sort of. Are you taking this in?”
He raised his chin to say: “Fine, you’ve narrowed it down to an insider-but how many warders do you think there are in this country? We’ve over two hundred and fifty jails, a hundred thousand locked up in them-”
“Ach, you know perfectly well what I mean! The expert knowledge has to come from somewhere, and at least we know roughly where that is. Your tea’s poured.”
Although voices carried well, he needed cues like this, especially when a tap was running.
“Ta, my girl. I can see the Doc’s nonsense has really caught your imagination.”
“Don’t try to bluff me you aren’t wondering a bit!”
“To tell you the truth,” said Kramer, taking his cup. “I’m putting the who and why of this right out of my mind until we get a lead on Erasmus’s last whereabouts. Switch that off, please.”
She obliged, frowning slightly as if dissatisfied with his reply, but not actually querying it.
“Then you’ve got something else on your mind, Trompie, or you’d have tried out the new frigate Janie’s made. He says it’s to shoot General Amin with, for what he does to people, but I told him Uganda hasn’t got any sea and besides-”
Kramer had submerged briefly, making quite a splash. He stepped out and took up his towel.
“Ja, ja, so maybe I have.”
“Oh, that!” The Widow laughed, putting down her teacup. “That’s the whole trouble with having servants.”
“No, I-”
“Come on, why don’t we, though?” she said with sudden mischief. “Jo’s back in the kitchen and the kids aren’t up.”
She rose and slipped home the bolt slowly and suggestively, making a funny, erotic thing of it, watching his eyes. Then she began loosening the gown which covered her voluptuous maturity, her wealth of warmth and tenderness so enveloping. How detached the girl had been, how detached, he remembered; how free she had left him.
The Widow Fourie let go of the bow she had been undoing in her belt. “Is it Zondi again?” she asked solemnly. “There is definitely something; I can sense it.”
Kramer began drying his hair.
“Now listen to me, Trompie. I’ve had an idea recently. If the worst comes to the worst, and his leg doesn’t get any better, then why not start using some of the land round the back?
Mickey could find-well-things to plant in it for us, turn it into a market garden. I know he grew up on a farm, so he’s bound to be able to-you know.”
“All he knows of farming is what it did to his dad.”
“He could learn, though. You’re the one who’s always said how intelligent he is.”
“Mickey’s leg is mending nicely; you’ll see.”
“He should have gone on giving it rest after-”
“For him to decide.”
“Oh, no,” said the Widow Fourie, very firmly. “Chris Strydom says that you’re the one who lets his hopes rise. Without you, he’d be treated like any other boy in the same situation, and it isn’t right-”
“Behind my back, hey?”
“I just happened to see Chris in the street.”
“Uh huh.”
“Tromp, you’ve got to realize this is for your sake as well! I wouldn’t, normally. You know how I-”
“Then look at my back,” he said, stalking out, “and try to remember it.”
That made a lousy start to the morning. Admittedly, there was nothing rational in the tacit agreement over the leg, but Kramer knew where it mattered most to him-in his gut-that Zondi needed his backing all the way, whatever purpose he chose to put it to. And while the work still got done, sod them and their red tape; he just didn’t want to know.
His punch knocked wide the door to Fingerprints, and he followed it through with a cheerful greeting.
“You can go out and start again,” Lieutenant Dirk Gardiner advised him, rising stockily in his blue safari suit. “This isn’t the place for what you’re hoping.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” affirmed Gardiner, handing over the Bible.
“You put the rays on it?”
“The lot. It’s full of miracles, but none of them worked for you, my friend.”
Gardiner was one of the few people Kramer knew who could crack jokes while their breath still smelted of breakfast. For once, however, this did nothing for him, and he had to force an appreciative groan before leaving.
So much for Fingerprints.
Ballistics didn’t even try to soften the blow, but dispassionately delivered both barrels. The Colt.38 was not the same gun that had been used during the raid at Peacevale, nor was either of the recovered weapons described on the list of reported thefts. Kramer asked for more work to be done on the metal where the numbers had been filed off.
“It won’t necessarily get us anywhere,” murmured the ballistics man. “And we’ve got a lot on.”
“Try it. Could be the owners were too scared to tell you their firearms had been taken, or maybe they don’t even know yet.”
“Hmmm.”
“We’d have two addresses. I know it’s a faint chance, but Erasmus could have stolen them himself.”
The ballistics man made a sound like a silencer and went back into his lab.
So much for bloody science.
With the Bible in his right hand, and swearing quietly under his breath, Kramer took himself out onto the pavement. As chance would have it, an Anglican minister walked by on his way to the cathedral, pretending he didn’t hear the row coming from Security on the first floor.
“Excuse me, Reverend,” Kramer said on impulse, blocking his path, “but if you wanted to know about Bibles, where would you go?”
The minister responded warily, easing the dog collar around his plump throat, and clearing some phlegm there.
“Is this to do with television?” he asked, glancing about.
“No, sir; I’m from CID here, working on an investigation. This is the Bible we’ve got an interest in, you see, and we were hoping it’d give us a lead.”
“Ah. Has it a bookshop label in it?”
“Been removed.”
“Mmmm. Then one wouldn’t really know where one should start. Not an authority on them myself, of course. Tell you what, though, there’s always the Christian bookshop up the road a bit. You must know it?”
Having received his directions, Kramer set off at a brisk pace that gradually slowed down, adapting itself to a more sensible approach to a venture that held little promise. Quite soon he was half enjoying his walk, and the minor distractions it afforded him. The morning was muggy and warm, and the sky still the misty white of a bathroom mirror, which had brought out the housewives in their brightest of frocks. They darted from car to store
