Which summed up what Kramer found best in the man. He would have walked away very happily, if it had not been for the weight of trust this also placed upon him.
Zondi returned the lorry to the Indian car dealer and transferred the four men back into his police vehicle. Then he paid them each the two rand he had told the lieutenant was the going rate for express furniture removers.
This done, he drove round the corner and onto the building site.
The white foreman, stiff-jointed from sitting on piles of bricks all day, came across to him.
Zondi showed his identity card again.
“Oh, ja, and what have these skelms been up to, hey? Are you going to take them all away? That’s no worry.”
“ Hau, no, master! These are very good boys, master. You must trust them! They give us help too too much.”
“Never.”
“Most difficult case, master, but their eyes are witnessing all known facts. If you do not believe me, then you must tring-a-ling Lieutenant Kramer. Hau, this one tells us where the skabenga puts the knife in his wife’s seating arrangements, and this man here-”
“Work to be done,” the foreman said, turning away. “Come on, you good-for-nothing ntombi shaggers, get up those ladders, checha wena!”
Zondi, who knew he had been dismissed, from the mind as well as the vicinity, picked his way back to the car, calculating the best way to make the U-turn.
“And now, Mickey,” he said in his best English to the rear-view mirror, “let us adjourn for lunch.”
His car had no radio, nor had Blue Haze a telephone.
The atmosphere in the post-mortem room could have been cut with a knife.
Then it became apparent that the debate had put a stop to the actual work in progress, and so Kloppers retired to sulk in his office. Leaving an aggrieved Marais facing an agitated Kramer over the legs of the dead snake dancer, while Strydom mumbled to himself as he laid down the scalp saw at the other end.
“Look, Doc, all I want to do is get this straight,” Kramer said. “I’m too bloody busy to waste time on a poop. But if you’re sure, then we’ll have him in and get it over with.”
“But, Lieutenant, sir-”
“I’ve heard you, Marais; now I want the expert’s view.”
“Then I quote to you Professor K. Simpson, pathologist to the Queen of England: ‘It is unfortunate, but rigor is uncertain in its timing.’ All right?”
“So it’s only on average that it sets in after six hours and lasts thirty-six? She was allegedly found after thirty-four, remember, not forty-two.”
“It can begin immediately. And the circumstances were exactly right for that-violent exertion prior to death, a warm room. I’d say it must have done, as it goes away again in the order it comes-head, arms, trunk, then the legs. Her legs were stiff.”
“So you can be certain Stevenson didn’t just break the tension by trying to lift her?”
“I see your point-stretching muscle does destroy its rigidity, Tromp-but I was obviously paying particular attention to the head, and I know it had already passed away there. And I also know it had reached the torso. The arms had to be included in that sweep; they could not have been stiff when he says they were.”
“Just had to be sure,” Kramer said, starting for the door. “And thanks, Doc. Coming, Marais?”
“Hell, I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I was transferred from House-breaking down here. I didn’t know all that about breaking tensions. I’ve always thought a stiff was just a stiff.”
“Most people do,” Kramer replied, his spirits restored. “But you just watch it, or you’ll be landing yourself in trouble with a smart lawyer one of these days.”
And they went to find Monty.
When Zondi had finally managed to arrange the living room as the Widow Fourie wanted it, she went out with him onto the stoep.
“What do you think of it?” she asked.
“ Hau, it is beautiful,” he said. “The madam’s children will be very happy here. You can even buy them a donkey perhaps.”
“That is an idea!”
He picked up his jacket.
“Yes, I’ll ask Trompie-or do you know about donkeys?” she asked.
“No, madam, nothing.” He lied without malice. As a herdboy, he had seen all he wanted of donkeys before he was seven.
“I thought all…”
She let that tail away as her eye was caught by a white butterfly dipping by.
“I’m so happy,” she said. “Does it show?”
Zondi felt embarrassed and looked round for his hat. It had been dropped in the tea chest with the lampshades.
“Are you going?” she asked.
“Is there something…?”
“Oh, no, Mickey, you’ve been a marvelous help. Just I feel lonely all of a sudden. It’s so private here, isn’t it? When is the lieutenant getting back?”
“That I don’t know, madam. Shame.”
“Of course-who ever knows that?”
She walked to the edge of the veranda and shaded her eyes to look into the trees. Grasshoppers were doing their erratic dance in the slanted rays between the trunks.
“Could I-could I possibly ask you one more favor? To fetch the kids from the park now for me, instead of the nanny sending them in a taxi at four? It’s really your fault I’m at such a loose end!”
“Victoria Park? With the swings? I’ll go straight away now.”
“Hey, you know what? You must bring your kids here to play in July when we’re at the beach. Do you think they’d like that?”
He knew they would. But that he would never have enough explanations for them afterward.
“Maybe, maybe.” He laughed. “I’ll go now. See you by and by.”
“Oh, where are the presents for Miriam?”
“In the boot, madam-thank you, madam. Sala gahle.”
He drove off, thankful to escape a woman who asked so many questions, many of which left him looking tongue-tied. But he was indebted to the Widow Fourie for all the unwanted household effects, including an iron that had lost its cord, and for the children’s clothing she decided to get rid of as well. She knew how to give so it didn’t hurt to take from her. She seemed to do it without thinking. As she had dumped, without thinking, that very serviceable old paraffin heater, which was only a little rusty, on her new rubbish heap. He had not thought it wrong to stow that in the trunk also.
A day that began like this could only get better.
5
Stevenson had to be in. A station wagon stood in the drive, and the curtains of the bay window round the side were closed. Yet Kramer looked disappointed.
“Not the smart place I thought it would be,” he said, in no hurry to get out.
The Chev Commando was parked under a flame tree on the opposite side of the street.
“Well, like I say, he’s up against something with the other club,” Marais explained. “Got style and class.”
Kramer, who had entered it on one occasion, in the hope of buying cigarettes after midnight, made a face. If a black ceiling and black walls and a black stage were considered stylish, so be it. And if Trekkersburg’s high society was class, he was no one to argue. But his own response to both had been one of acute depression, so
