of a dead man?”
“I thought… that it would make him tell the truth, sir, honest. As if we already knew and were pretending so we could check-”
“Marais! You didn’t think at all, did you?”
Kramer had time to light a Lucky before the painful admission was made. Marais had not thought.
“Did it really matter, though, sir?”
“You ask me that?”
“But it isn’t as though I knew nothing. I’d already got the first statements and his alibi was right there, in my book. His mother says he made her very angry by waking her at twenty-five past twelve to say he’d had a lousy night and was therefore going to join his friends who were staying in the mountains, leaving early.”
“The time is very exact.”
“I’ve got it all there, sir. She says she was angry, so she took her watch from the bedside table to see what the time was. She sleeps with pills, she said, and doesn’t like being wakened.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then the Bantu female Martha said she was awakened in her kia by the young master knocking on her door. He wanted her to make him an early breakfast, so he asked for her clock to adjust it, set the alarm for six, and went inside again. As she was closing her kia door, she saw in the light from the yard that it was one minute or so after twelve-thirty. She got up at six, ran his bath at quarter past, gave him his food at seven, and saw him leave the property at seven-thirty.”
“Haven’t they got a cook boy?”
“She is the cook, sir; used to be the nanny. Why?”
“Surely she would be up at six anyway.”
“On Sunday in a lot of those houses, the people don’t get up until after the Jo’burg papers come, so the servants have it easy, too. The Dragon, for example-”
“Hey?”
“Mrs. Shirley, I mean-she was fast asleep until just before lunchtime. She doesn’t eat breakfast on Sunday but ‘keeps herself,’ so she puts it, for dinners with friends or at the club.”
“Where’s the husband all this time?”
“The ex-judge is away at Umfolozi Game Reserve.”
“Ex-judge, hey?”
“Late of the Appellate Division,” Marais said glibly.
Kramer glared.
It was a toss-up between kicking the bastard hard in the arse, or trying to get something into his thick skull. Less satisfyingly, better judgment had the coin land heads and not tails.
“Sergeant, pull over Zondi’s stool and sit down. You and me are going to have a bit of a little talk. I want you to forget about the note for a moment. If Shirley is clean, it won’t have mattered; if he isn’t, then it can be an advantage to seem halfwitted while the other guy thinks he’s smart.”
“Er-ta, sir.”
“Good. Go on, sit. You seem impressed by this man.”
“He is polite and friendly, even. Really listens when you talk.”
“Have you met a coolie who don’t try to grease you like that?”
“Hey?” said Marais, shocked.
“And this part where you say he went out to the cook girl’s kia to get the clock and tell her about the morning-why didn’t he shout for her? Is he a liberal?”
“Progressive party maybe-in his position he couldn’t be anything banned.”
“ Ach, we’re not talking political parties now! This isn’t Security! I asked you a straightforward question. Yes or no?”
“He treats the girl-well, perhaps he is a bit liberal, not in the suspicious sense, though.”
“Since when is liberalism not suspicious until proven otherwise?” Kramer asked, missing the ashtray. “Nine times out of ten you’ll find it’s a university poop who can’t make it with his own, so he uses liberalism to bring himself into the company of females who are automatically flattered by his interest. Ja?”
Marais nodded, and then said with a hopeful smile, “It can’t be like that with the cook girl, Lieutenant. She’s built like a bloody postbox and old enough to-”
“Look! We haven’t time for jokes! This is a murder investigation, man! We are looking for motivation and all that crap. Are you with me now?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“And in all this socializing you’ve been doing, have you met up with any young ladies that know this Shirley?”
“Only the one. The others had already checked out. She said Shirley wasn’t her cup of tea; too like a cat, actually-only does what you want if it pleases him. She said she’d not even glanced his way more than once.”
“Interesting this was a blind date he was waiting for.”
“I was surprised, he talks like a ladies’ man but it seems he puts them off.”
“And didn’t this Eve-Sonja Bergstroom-have a dark skin?”
“It was-ja, a proper tan. But her identity-”
“(Or is this too subtle for you?) We’re talking about how she seemed in his mind.”
Kramer watched the dawn of insight spread pinkly up from Marais’s collar. The man was not such a bloody fool after all. Nor was that too bad on his part, given the facts.
According to custom, the body of the butcher had been placed across one corner of the living room, screened off by a sheet. A saucer lay on the floor before it, already fairly well off for cash offerings toward the family’s welfare and the funeral.
Zondi, who had called in not entirely out of respect, nonetheless placed a rand note with the rest and backed away.
“That is not all of it,” the widow said bitterly, her face hidden by a black cloth.
The white priest from England, who had shown Zondi his permit to enter Peacevale, as if he cared, led her into another room, where the beds had been pushed aside to give the mourners standing space. There were many men there, mostly small traders with waistcoats and black armbands, each holding his hat to his chest and speaking in very low tones.
They avoided Zondi’s direct look, and he felt angry-but whether at them or with himself he couldn’t be sure.
“Stay well, my brothers,” he said.
“Go well,” they answered in a mumble.
This was no place for questions.
Outside, by the light of the streetlamp on the corner, children were playing in the yard. He paused to watch them.
“Ee-search, ee-search!” they shouted out, and ran off shrieking into the shadows, banging into tin fences and knocking over buckets and setting the fowls asquawk. Their panic had the full-bloodedness of make-believe. For some years yet he’d just be a bogeyman, and with such were the best night games played.
Zondi growled and flapped his arms, sending them shrilling delightedly across five properties or more.
Then he trudged up the smooth, worn bank to the gate where his car was parked, wondering where next to turn in his search for the identity of the third man, the one who had come from the car, the real killer. Because that was what his arithmetic made of the sole-print puzzle-and besides, Mpeta had not been a very convincing choice as a gunman.
He saw two youths peering in through his driver’s window, and was about to send them packing with a boost of genuine fright when he recognized the taller of the two as Jerry, eldest son of Beebop Williams. He had been looking for him.
“You like cars?” Zondi asked.
“Very much, Sergeant!”
“Who is this one, Jerry?”
“His father is the dead man inside-his name is Thomas.”
