“But aren’t you in a hurry?”
“Nothing deadly-and don’t worry about Martha. She’s a poppet.”
Marais stood up and stretched, then inspected the flower arrangement, which was still unfinished, with all the long ones to one side instead of in the middle.
Shirley was gone only about two minutes, and then came back in, stuffing an enormous wedge of chocolate cake into his mouth. He held out a plate for Marais to select a piece of his own.
“That’s lekker, thanks, hey?”
“Martha again. Brilliant! Can do absolutely anything. I’ve tried to interest her in improving her literacy, though, but she won’t.”
“The best ones know their place.”
“There you and I might beg to differ,” Shirley replied, smiling warmly, “but naturally you see a much seamier side of African community life than I do. Must tend to distort things a little.”
“ Ach, in my opinion, a kaffir is a kaffir-doesn’t matter what side you look at.”
Shirley laughed and choked on a cake crumb, patting himself hard on the back.
Then Martha brought in a fresh pot of tea and Marais made a point of thanking her for it in Sesotho, the only Bantu language he spoke. She giggled gratifyingly and wobbled off.
“I could speak Zulu as a kid,” Shirley said, “but now I’m afraid it’s all gone out of the window. Milk?”
“And three sugars, please.”
“Pity the old man’s away bundu-bashing. You two should get on famously; lots in common and all that.”
Marais nodded, very flattered that here at least was someone who regarded him as good as the next man in the pursuit of justice. Then he swallowed his tea hurriedly so he could get his notebook out and cause no extra inconvenience.
Shirley leaned toward him attentively, his chin cupped in one hand, and said, “Well? What exactly can I help you with?”
“Just routine, you understand: your movements last Saturday night.”
“God, what an evening! I had this little nurse lined up, positively aching to forget bedpans for a while, and she didn’t appear.”
“Should have asked us to find her,” joked Marais.
“Must remember that next time! Blind date, to be honest, waited for her at the nurses’ home and she didn’t pitch up. Left a note, thinking she might have been kept late on the ward- often happens-and went on waiting at the Wigwam. The usual crowd came in after a bit, but I wasn’t in the mood, and sat at one of Monty’s tables for two. I mean, she might have got a lift up at any minute, and I wasn’t having one of them get his paws on her.”
“You said Monty? You were on those sorts of terms?”
“Did his place for him; twenty percent discount and a free membership for life-oh, that wasn’t clever, was it?”
Marais took another slice of cake, leaving two for sharing.
“And then, Mr. Shirley?”
“Well, I watched Eve’s first number and decided to stay on for the second.”
“Would the nurse still come?”
“All that was forgotten by then, to tell the truth. I’d been knocking back a bit of plonk and that second act-not for your notebook, I think! You do get this down wonderfully fast.”
“That’s because I worked in the courts before joining the force.”
“Really? That must be unusual. But where were we? Ah, yes. Her act ended and I was dying for a pee and shot down to the gents’. When I came out, it seemed everyone had gone, except Monty, having problems with that idiot who eats Mau Mau for breakfast. I certainly didn’t want to become involved in that, so I slunk out down the other side and got safely to the door. What a relief. That man-”
“What about the band?”
“They’d gone, too. Always shoot out of the place-you should see them.”
“And the time?”
“Couldn’t tell you exactly. Five past? Something like that.”
Marais broke off from his shorthand to print that in block letters
“Not finished yet, Sergeant? Has someone near and dear been dragging my name in the mud?”
Marais glanced toward the door and grinned.
“Nearly. It’s just Stevenson left us a message with his suicide note saying, ‘Why not ask Shirley’ on it.”
“How peculiar!”
“It doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“No. Does it to you?”
“Honest, it’s got me floored. Same goes for the lieutenant, and the colonel. Not something to do with Eve perhaps-Miss Bergstroom?”
Shirley poured Marais another cup while he thought it over, and then one for himself.
“Ah! I think I’ve got it. I’m in that note perhaps because of something Monty confided to me that same night, all very hush-hush. Saw I was alone and came over for a few words. We got started on a bottle together and, after bitching generally about women, he said he wouldn’t include Miss Bergstroom in this because he felt he’d formed- and I quote-a ‘beautiful little relationship’ with her. Ever met his wife? God, quite unbelievable. Poor old Mont-quite a little poppet in his own way.”
Marais flicked back the pages to where he had recorded his interviews with Mrs. Shirley and the girl.
“Now, just quickly, the section after you left the club, so we’ve got it all cut and dried,” he said.
Not one detail of what followed differed from what Marais had already been told. Shirley had been at home, after a twenty-minute drive from town, at 12:30 A.M., and asleep by about 1 A.M. It was all as simple as that.
11
Wessels stood awkwardly in his new beige safari jacket and shorts, white at the knees, pink about the neck where the clippers had been, looking like something out of a Lucky Strike packet.
“Come on, son,” said Kloppers, wanting to get his van loaded and back to town before sunset-he’d been complaining about the state of its headlights for ten minutes.
“Ja, I’m pretty sure it’s him,” Wessels murmured.
The head of the body at his feet had ears that stuck out slightly and, when held up properly by Nxumalo, something of a flatness to the back of its skull.
Kramer touched the jacket with his toe.
“And that looks the same color, only I thought it was a bit darker.”
“Right. Now again at the other one.”
Wessels went over to the metal tray already in its catches on the floor of the van and fiddled with his new fringe.
“The shirt, but the head-well, it could be anyone.”
“Thanks,” said Kramer, and he went back to rejoin Zondi, who was leaning against the Chev. “He’s pretty sure about the driver, less about the other. They’d not been boozing.”
Zondi looked up at the high bank down which the old De Soto had plunged from one stretch of hairpin road to another, crashing on its nose and then rolling.
“Not so difficult,” he said.
“Ja, we all know you’re something of an expert in these matters, only you were lucky not to break your bloody neck.”
“Dr. Strydom has come?”
“Never! He’ll see them later in the morgue, but that’s what it looks like. They must have been going full tonk, thinking there was no other traffic around here.”
Zondi sighed contentedly. He’d been promised the dead sheep, and it was already in the trunk.
Kramer picked up the passbooks and driver’s license that lay on the hood and looked at the names again.
