Mpeta and Dubulamanzi. These two were going to have had all the answers and correct papers for a spot check.
“This ‘Dubulamanzi’ crops up all over the place, hey? You even see it on sailing boats up at the dam.”
“It means Parter of the Waters, boss. Also the name of the chief who gave the English their big hiding at Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift.”
“Uh-huh. Makes a come-down to a small-time crook. Did you ever think it was him?”
“Good driver. I remember from when he had a pirate taxi, six times the uniformed chased him. Mpeta is just a mad dog; many will be very happy when they hear he is dead.”
“If he’d used guns before, we should have had him on file.”
“No proof. You remember at the beer hall? When that old man was shot in a fight and everyone ran away? That time the informers said it was him, but Sithole and me can’t get one person to talk.”
“Why do you think they didn’t pick up anything about these two? I mean, they’re right in Peacevale.”
“Maybe they are cleverer than we think. They don’t spend their money; they just wait a bit.”
“The switch to the De Soto wasn’t bad; last thing I’d try and make a bloody getaway in. It’s this mixture of clever and stupid I just don’t get about these two, but I suppose that’s exactly what we always rely on.”
“He is ready now, boss,” Zondi said, pointing to Tomlinson of Fingerprints, who had just completed his scene-of-accident pictures.
They walked across to the wreckage as Kloppers drove off, taking Wessels back with him. The kid’s cockiness got a lot on Kramer’s nerves.
“Sorry to mess around, sir, but the light’s getting bad,” Tom-linson said. “You can chuck it around now if you want to.”
Kramer did not want to. A strange reluctance to learn more, to confirm what was already much more than a mere suspicion, held him back. For once the truth was totally without any appeal, and he wondered why.
“You look,” he said to Zondi.
“Ja, I wouldn’t like to put my hands in there,” agreed Tom-linson, offering Kramer a cigarette. “Blood doesn’t worry me the same way.”
Then he supplied a light and they stood in silence for a while, looking out over the hills and listening to the night insects finding the right key.
“You’ve still got the sketch plan to do?” asked Kramer.
“A real waste of time that will be. Luckily the sergeant from the station down there has already done the measurements. You know, we had a member of the public in the other day to look at some shots, and he was surprised that even a coon killed in a back yard gets the full treatment. Nice bloke, came from Germany, but only been here six months. We showed him the docket on that butcher and he was amazed-all the plans, pics, and so forth. Said he could help us out with our reticulation problem maybe. Leicas come from there, don’t they?”
Zondi had just lifted something out of the car and laid it on the grass.
“Hey? Ja, so I believe.”
“Is there something the matter, sir? Your guts or-y’know?”
“Tired,” said Kramer.
Zondi had just laid something else on the grass; it looked like a small toffee tin. He seemed as happy as a kid playing mud pies.
“You can say that again,” sighed Tomlinson. “I’m for home as soon as this lot is finished.”
Then Kramer had to know.
He walked down the slope, jumped a small aloe, and stopped beside Zondi’s crouching figure. On the grass lay a long-barreled. 22 pistol, its cracked butt wrapped with adhesive tape, and a wad of notes that was being carefully counted.
“How much?” he asked, as Zondi replaced them in the tin.
“Eighty-six rand, some change, and a coin I do not know.”
He handed it up for inspection.
“Centavos? That’s Portuguese.”
“ Hau! ”
“Probably kept in the till for good luck or something. I’ll ask sometime. Where was all this stuff?”
“Up underneath the front seat on the passenger’s side. It was not easy to find, but it came loose in the crash so when I pressed hard on top I hear it knocking. There is also this.”
And Zondi produced a small box of. 22 rounds, high velocity, which he placed beside the pistol.
“I wonder where they thought they were going with this lot?” Kramer murmured, realizing that his reluctance to face the truth lay in its having solved a problem without supplying any real answers.
His mood must have been catching. Zondi dropped the tin and rose wearily, dusting grass and chips of shattered windshield from his trousers. And together they stood there, making a last check over a scene so mundane and familiar, from their separate years in uniform, that its recurrence then as something important to them seemed like a dirty trick. The glass, the twisted chrome trimmings, the hubcaps and discarded shoes, rags and an air filter, the smell of oil and petrol and battery acid, the subtle reek of accidental death… Suddenly Kramer grabbed Zondi’s arm and pointed.
Gardiner saw what the lieutenant meant the moment he swung open the double doors of the main refrigerator. The pair of feet, from which a label bearing the name Mpeta stuck out at a jaunty angle, were uncommonly small.
“It’s after seven,” Kloppers nagged at his elbow. “I forgot to tell Nxumalo to stay, so if you need any help I suppose I’ll have to.”
“No sweat,” said Gardiner, feeling the sole of each foot to test its moistness, “I can do it from here.”
Then laughed at his inadvertent pun.
“The wife is getting bloody sick of this, I tell you.”
“Pass me that roller, please. Ta.”
“What has yours got to say?”
“Plenty.”
“Exactly how long will this take?”
“ Ach, just a minute or two, Sarge, and then I’ve got to go back to the office and use the glass.”
Gardiner spoiled the first pull, and reached for another form.
“Any progress on the little girlie on the right?”
“Coming along, I hear. Marais was in the canteen tonight and he told me that he’s cleared the first list of obvious suspects, none of the club members or guests involved, all cast-iron alibis. Seen them all except one who wasn’t available, but he’s covered by others. So now I suppose they’ll have to start delving back into her lurid past.”
Kloppers touched the label marked “Stevenson” and actually took a lively interest for an instant. “Things are never so simple,” he said.
Kramer thought otherwise. Anger was gradually filling the vacuum left by Zondi’s departure for Peacevale, carrying with him the curious knowledge that Mpeta had been on Lucky’s back doorstep, and in his bare feet. A vacuum because nothing, no new ideas or conjecture, could exist in it before fresh information was introduced. Gardiner’s phone call had quite numbed him as well.
So it was good to have some feeling back, and he let it grow greedily on the rows of neatly typed words before him. Marais was outstandingly efficient in some respects, but in others a total bloody fool.
“Christ almighty,” Kramer said softly.
“Sir?” answered Marais, who had hung on patiently for his pat on the back.
“This part of Shirley’s statement beginning: ‘I’m in that note perhaps because of…’”
“Ja? Stevenson wanted to corroborate that his personal attitude to the deceased was…”
And there he paused, aware of something wrong.
“You don’t state your question, but that reply looks to me as if Shirley was allowed to know we had nothing up our sleeve-and, in fact, the exact context of our inquiry. Were you conspiring to assist a suspect, by any chance?”
Marais reddened and said, “I wasn’t trying to help him, sir!”
“Oh, no? It didn’t give him a chance to make up any rubbish he liked? Knowing we couldn’t verify the hearsay