“But she’s your ma, remember-wouldn’t she guess you were in some kind of trouble?”
“A mother always knows,” said Zondi.
And every man in the room showed he agreed with that.
Then Marais scratched his head to show his uncertainty implied no criticism and said, “Except she calls her son all those names and makes out she doesn’t give a bugger for him.”
“That’s something Martha said,” Zondi piped up. “How the madam was so quick to call the young master a liar and send him away from her-that was when he was a small boy and did mischief.”
“What mother doesn’t do that at some time?”
“She seemed a hard woman, Lieutenant.”
“They’re all hard, up there. But can’t you see? If she plays this up with us, doesn’t that help her case even more?”
“True,” said Wessels.
Kramer sat down again, drumming his fingers on the desktop, making everyone else stir restlessly.
“What else did you other two pick up?” he asked, pointing at Zondi to finish his turn first.
“Nothing special. She just talks of when the man was young and would do foolish things with his catapult.”
Wessels laughed and said, “I bet she didn’t tell you he once lobbed some bloody rocks at her in her kia when she was in bed with a bloke! That’s all I got-from an old Bantu constable at the local cop shop. Does that count as a background of violence, sir?”
“There were actual injuries?” Kramer asked, smiling but interested.
“Oh, ja, and a hell of a shindig, but when uniformed got there the guy had buggered off with his war wounds. The usual old thing: he was on the premises illicitly without a permit. They say-What’s up, sir?”
“Marais, you remember that car park where Stevenson had his own slot? Wouldn’t a swanky-puss like Shirley-”
“Hell, that’s a hell of an idea, sir! They’ve got a boy guarding it down at the entrance and sports cars are always something people notice! The time he left there?”
“You’ve got it. Find me that boy.”
Kramer would have sent Zondi around with Marais, but the sensitive little sod had disappeared before anyone noticed- which wasn’t at all strange in the circumstances.
Marais tried again. The wog was really giving him trouble. And people using the car park were watching.
“Were you, or were you not, on duty on Saturday night?”
“ Aikona. ”
“But your boss says you were!”
“The manager says that? But he knows the shift is changing Sunday.”
“Then who was on duty at half-past twelve-you understand that?”
Marais pointed out the exact position of the hands on his navigator’s wrist watch, which the attendant much admired and offered three rand for.
“You answer me!”
“At that time, sir, it was me here on duty.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“Amen, hallelujah,” murmured the attendant, rolling his eyes.
Marais grabbed him by the lapels. “Look!”
“That is Sunday-not Saturday, sir.”
“So you’re a clever dick, hey? Think you’re smart? Then I’ll tell you something-you’re under bloody arrest.” “ Hau! ” The lieutenant’s pet monkey could deal with him.
Kramer was caught right in the act.
“I heard from Wessels you’d got an idea to crack the alibi,” the colonel said, sitting down on the corner of the desk. “But that didn’t sound like this inquiry to me.”
“Marais has been gone about half an hour, sir. If you like to wait a minute, maybe you’ll hear the result.” Kramer moved his hand casually from the telephone receiver he had just replaced in its cradle.
“And who were you talking to?” the colonel persisted.
“That? Just a nun I know.”
“You let her ring you at work?”
Kramer’s grin pleased the colonel and they both eased the tension.
“One of Funchal’s daughters. I wanted to check on that centavos coin we found in the car yesterday, and asked for Da Gama. But he’s taken over the business affairs and was away in Durban, so she told me instead, after asking her granny, that her father kept one in the till because it’d been blessed by an archbishop or something.”
“Which clinches that,” said the colonel.
“Uh-huh.”
“But how about the button? I’ve heard nothing from you, and Wessels seems to think that the mother may not be running circles round us.”
“It smells, sir. Really it does. And I’m not at all happy about the time she really had in that bedroom before Marais joined her. That business about pretending he could be given the slip sounds a little too-”
“Talk of the devil,” said the colonel, as Marais came in, red and bad-tempered.
“I’ve got the car-park boy downstairs, sir, and I need Mickey to question him-his English is bloody terrible.”
“Ja, where is he?” asked the colonel.
Wessels wandered in and said, “Who?”
“Zondi.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“And you, Lieutenant?” growled the colonel. “Or is he doing a ballistics test up the road?”
At that moment, Zondi skidded in through the door.
“Where have you been?”
“Colonel, sir?”
“Explain your absence from this office.”
“I’ve been to the Shirley residence, sir.”
“ What? To do what?”
“Make an arrest.”
The colonel jumped to his feet. “No! Who, you madman?”
“Oh, just the mother of the young master.”
Stunned, Kramer stared at him like everyone else, but seemed to see in his expression a smugness directed only at himself, as if a difference of opinion had now been settled most satisfactorily in the crazy bastard’s own favor.
Martha Mabile sat, her hands together and limp in her lap, on the stool in the interrogation room, quite removed from her surroundings.
So the men looking down on her simply talked as though Martha were not there at all.
“I helped you?” Kramer asked.
“ Hau, it was what you were saying about a mother’s love, Lieutenant.”
“ Ach, no!” objected Marais.
“You mean about sharing the risks of deception?”
“Spot on, and there was wisdom also in the statements made by Sergeant Marais, for he has a sharp eye and he told us that he could see no liking between the missus and the girl. Why should the girl stay at the house? She is clever and can get a good job somewhere else.”
“Lots of nannies become cook girls,” Marais broke in, to be silenced by the colonel’s frown.
“So I think to myself: What has this woman told me? That the child was hungry, so she fed it; that it was hurt, so she cared for it; then a most loving thing-when it was bad, she gave it chastisement.”
“That’s what a nanny’s for, stupid!”
“Marais…”
