elephant. A pair of giggling children-which reminded him it was the Michaelmas holidays-were comparing the back ends of the black and the white rhino.
And there were more children, only Bantu this time, and in their best bib and tucker, in a solemn line outside the door he had been told to make for. There a harassed museum official was trying to explain something to the black teacher in charge. Strydom hoped it would not take all day.
“Then if you only read the poster about the wildlife film show for the kiddies from a bus, you can hardly blame us for the disappointment,” the official was saying. “There’s plenty else to look at.”
“‘For Whites Only’ was in very small writing,” the teacher replied, showing not anger but a certain stubbornness. “To tell you the truth, when I brought my pupils in just now, I again failed to notice the restriction concerning the film theater.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re prepared to tell the truth!” said the official, trying to laugh it off.
“I simply thought, sir, as the theater is not even a quarter occupied, that under the circumstances we may be allowed to stand at the back.”
“Not my ruling. Sorry. Don’t make the rules. And I’ve got a boss waiting, so that’s the end of it.”
The teacher turned away and told the children it was time to go and buy their cold drinks. He would pay.
“I’m Smith,” the official said, shaking Strydom’s free hand. “I was sent down to meet you and-oh, never mind. It’s this way. That’s quite a size. Bose as in rose.”
Smith opened a door for Strydom at the top of three flights of stairs and excused himself.
The room had a very high ceiling and enormous windows which filled it with the cold light of the rain clouds. The furnishings were awesomely Victorian, and Strydom felt as though he had stepped back through time to his medical school. Some of the smells were familiar, too.
“Good afternoon. I’m Strydom, the DS,” he said to a large man with white hair working at a table. “You’re Mr. Bose?”
The expert turned round and stared vaguely, as if he wasn’t prepared to say anything until this vision had fully materialized. Then his manner changed.
“The python?” he asked softly.
“That’s right. Here-you take it and tell me what you can do for me, what the chances are.”
Strydom drifted over to the table and saw that Bose had been engaged in painting a perfect plaster cast of a puff adder, applying his colors a scale at a time. So that was how it was done.
“Not what I expected,” said Bose.
Strydom looked round. The python had been laid out along the edge of a bench and Bose was gently feeling its middle.
“Well, I did describe the circumstances.”
“That’s just it. Or did you break its back?”
6
When the full post-mortem report on Sonja Bergst-room arrived by messenger from the district surgeon’s office, Kramer took Marais aside and handed him a page.
“What’s all that boil down to?” he asked
Marais read carefully and then said, “Instantaneous?”
“Uh-huh, near enough. But there’s no need to go shouting about it.”
“Why? Don’t you think he’s telling the whole truth yet, sir?”
“Man, I’m not sure. It sounds okay-but I think you should first worry him a bit more. You never know. Here- look at this.”
And he handed Marais another page.
“Hell, a semen stain!”
“External. No sign of sexual interference or recent intercourse, Doc notes. He’s just put it down for the record, query analysis. Could be older than Saturday night and we don’t know the young woman’s bathing habits. With her kind, that’s show business, Marais.”
“But it’ll give us a group?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And if it’s the same as…”
“Not much relevance in court, but the idea will fry the bastard nicely all the same. She took a break between acts-get what I mean?”
Marais got. He reddened, being young for his age.
“But how do we…?”
“I’ll think of something,” said Kramer, beginning to stroll back to his office. “She had a divan in there, right? And an ashtray? Waste bin? What kind does he smoke?”
“Small cheroots. But with all due respect, sir, I mean-is this really necess-er?”
“Ask her next of kin when you see them again, old son. That’s who I work for.”
She had none, but Marais seemed to get the point all the better for that.
Zondi tried three informants, and lost each in a cloud of dust at the mention of Chainpuller Mabatso. As the lieutenant said on these occasions, it was like trying to interest virgins in a rape course. Whatever that meant exactly.
But as far as Chainpuller himself was concerned, Zondi now felt there was little doubt involved.
The how and why were another matter.
Chainpuller put a shudder through most men. Not because he was big-he was five foot one; or because he was enormously strong-he used two hands to shell a peanut. But because he was tangibly evil.
Whereas Zondi would throw himself on a man half again as big as himself, prepared to gouge and bite and take as much in return, the thought of touching Chainpuller lightly with one finger was more than he considered the call of duty. It was like being expected to handle one of those flat scorpions, the dull gray kind that skitter in the corner of rooms where dead tramps are found, somehow very wise and aware of your fear of them.
There was more to Mabatso than that. After his ten years in a penal colony, to which he had been sent, as a robust youth, on the word of his brother, Chainpuller had created for himself a reputation for obsessive privacy. Even the brother had moved away from their hut-nobody was ever sure where to.
While Chainpuller lived on alone, high on a slope overlooking Peacevale, sitting with his back against the porch upright and watching. Ostensibly he had become a witch doctor, and wore inflated pig bladders in his plaited spikes of hair, but as no one seemed ever to visit him, at least during daylight hours, word got around that he was really a wizard.
Word also got around-more times than Zondi could remember-that whenever there was a mysterious death in the township, Chainpuller was behind it. The wizard did nothing to discourage these rumors, and when challenged by a relative made reckless through grief, would simply make a fresh mark in the mud wall beside him.
Yet no police investigation had ever been able to link him in any other way to what had happened.
Once, another black sergeant had tried to prove that the gifts of cash left near the hut were not given in charity but as blood money-payments made to have the donor relieved of a burdensome wife or mother-in-law. This sergeant had died in his sleep before bringing any charges
Such stories made the lieutenant laugh, and call Zondi a superstitious kaffir, yet even he stood back when a visit to the hut was demanded of them. Just as the arrival of certain people can make you suddenly in a party mood, in the same way Chainpuller’s presence was like having shadow put in your blood.
So a common denominator between Chainpuller and the robberies could be found in the uncanny. This was, however, at the level of pure gossip and rumor, and Yankee Boy Msomi operated some way above that.
Making the idea at once less acceptable and twice as much worth looking into.
Zondi’s wait was rewarded. He snatched the passer-by from the street and handcuffed him to a drainpipe.
