and highwayman’s pistols. Just some cane seats painted cream, one big table with flowers heaped on it, and some pots to arrange them in. The girl went out.
And her mistress entered a moment later, holding out a ringed hand with a straight arm. Her age baffled him: the wrinkled throat was like an old tree, but the face itself was as smooth as a wood carving-one that had been given a coat of almost pure white with no underseal, so it showed up gray in the incised lines down either side of the mouth.
“Oh, Martha has managed to coax you in. I’m so glad.”
The handshake was a touch.
“I’m his mother.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Shirley. You knew I was coming?”
“Peter phoned, wretched child, just as I was getting ready to go out to bridge. Insisted I should be here in case he might be a minute or two late.”
“ Ach, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. One can’t treat guests in a cavalier fashion. Although you’re not quite a guest, are you?”
“Not exactly, but I don’t think you could call it business either.”
“I most certainly wouldn’t have one of his clients here, and he has tried that one on, Mr…?”
“Sergeant Marais.”
“What squad? I once met a colonel or something at a dinner-my husband is a retired judge, by the way.”
“Murder and Robbery, madam.”
“Do sit down, Sergeant. You’re making me quite wilt at the sight of you.”
Wilting was exactly what Marais felt he was doing; this was nothing like the reception he had imagined. Mrs. Shirley started to stick flowers onto the spikes in a round piece of lead.
“And this is all because of that horrid little man and his dreadful affairs? What on earth could he have done to her that we’re being fed these gruesome stories about puff adders or whatever it was?”
“That’s our job to find out,” Marais said, seating himself on the edge of a chair that squeaked.
“But is it really necessary?” she asked, taking up garden scissors to snip the heads off some roses.
“The law must be upheld, Mrs. Shirley.”
“Good heavens, you’re trying to tell me what the law must or mustn’t do? When I’ve been married to it thirty years? I meant is it really necessary, required of you, to hound Peter in this fashion?”
“Hey? I’m only doing what I was told-to get the accounts of movements by all members present in the club that night. Your son, Mr. Shirley, is just unfortunate that so far we haven’t been able to contact anyone who saw him leave-or, in fact, verify what happened to him after midnight.”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Shirley said testily.
“Sorry?”
“I’m sure Martha and I have distinct memories of his arrival home on Saturday night.”
“Oh, ja?”
“Or are you solely interested in what he has to say?”
Marais rose slightly to look out the window. No other car had arrived yet.
“If it’s not any trouble, I’ll appreciate it,” he said, taking out his notebook to reinforce this impression. “The more the merrier, as they say.”
Her cold stare went in through his eyes and all the way down his back.
This simply wasn’t his day somehow.
The door was locked and Zondi came to open it in his shirtsleeves, half smiling when he saw who it was.
“Any joy?” asked Kramer, entering the interrogation room and taking a look at what stood against the wall.
Gosh Twala had changed a lot since his last picture, as if it had been taken by one of those swanky crooks in the main street and now the retouching had come off. His cheeks were hollowed and his eyes had no brightness in them, while his skin had that dull look, like a blackboard not wiped properly, which was a sure sign of a really poor coon.
“He swears he was not absent on the days in question and says the induna will swear to this also.”
“Is that right, Twala?”
“ Hau, yes, please, my master! True’s God!”
“This induna I know to be a liar,” Zondi said.
“So he could have been sneaking off?”
“It is possible.”
But Kramer knew from the way Zondi said it that little interest or conviction went with it.
“Why bring him in?”
“There were difficulties, boss. The foreman is a very formal man.”
“Oh, ja?”
“Also I want to know why he hides from me. He says it is because his name is being shouted at the office and the other boys tell him I am there.”
“I am fright!” said Twala, raising hands like a beggar.
“Pockets?”
“Nothing.”
“And of course he denies any knowledge of the robberies themselves?”
Zondi nodded.
“What about Constable Wessels? Has he seen him?”
Again Zondi nodded. The apathy was on its way again- still nothing positive. There had not been a single trace of a fingerprint or anything else in the yellow Ford.
“Have you made him do the jumps yet?”
“No, boss,” answered Zondi, and had Twala leap about so as to drop anything he might have secreted inside himself, a prison trick with tobacco readily adapted to hide dagga as well.
Then the door opened and Sithole said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but a car has been found.”
“ Ach, I know that, man,” Kramer replied irritably, “so just bugger off.”
He was watching a scarlet stain spreading in the filthy pullover Twala wore next to his skin.
“Did you do that, Zondi?”
“ Hau! Let me look! This is a knife wound, boss.”
“You’re slipping, hey?”
Then Twala began protesting he’d only been trying to defend himself, and it had been the other fool’s fault for drinking so much and he hadn’t killed him anyway, just taught him a lesson. The rest was entirely in Zulu.
At the end of which Sithole again poked his head in and said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but this is a crashed car with persons in it.”
Everything changed when Peter Shirley finally arrived home in his MG sports, most apologetic for having been half an hour late, but a couple of tasteless idiots had nearly driven him screwy by picking holes in a wall covering that was just perfect for them.
“Hardly a profession,” Mrs. Shirley sniffed, accepting her son’s peck on an uplifted cheek.
And then, to Marais’s considerable relief, withdrew.
Shirley was not quite as imagined either. He and Marais shared a stocky, fairly average build, and then went their separate ways. His hair was three inches longer, his body was good but a little soft, and his eyes had seen nothing. Also, his fingernails were bitten right down. His mum should have put aloe juice on them, or mustard; that would have killed the habit before it was too late. Yet, for all that, he still seemed a nice bloke.
“It doesn’t look as if you’ve had any of this tea,” Shirley said to him as soon as they were alone.
“Well-er-we were just having a chat. Your mum-Mrs. Shirley was giving me an account of your movements.”
“Great, but sorry you had to be stranded with the Dragon. Look, I’ll just get Martha to do us another pot.”
