missed looking that way for a moment.”
“Let’s talk in the passage,” said Gardiner, pushing Wessels out with a friendly poke in the belly. “Now try and explain this better where I can hear you.”
“It’s dead simple, the way he’s got it now. The one round the back in the bandages-maybe they are even hiding the gun-arrives at the scene independently and on foot. The other two roll up in front of the shops, and the passenger gets his head down. It’s the driver that keeps the lookout for when the pedestrian traffic drops, then he gives a honk like I heard him do, but the kaffirs are so used to their own kind doing noisy things like that they forget. And the shots have them-”
“And the one with the gun?”
“By that time, when the horn goes, he has found a shop that isn’t being guarded at the rear. He goes in, looks round to see there are no customers, shoots the storekeeper, grabs the money, and he’s out the back way while everyone is coming up off the grit watching the car tear away. Now even if that car hits a roadblock, the two in it have no money, no gun-nothing to worry them. And they meet up again later.”
Gardiner shook his head.
“It’s not all just imagination, sir. It seems that the lieutenant warned this Lucky bloke, for instance, and now he points out that Lucky was shot, not near his till, but up near the shopwindow, as if he’d seen the car and was watching it. Plus Doc Strydom said he’d been shot on the turn-the turn towards, not away, you see? And wouldn’t Lucky have backed towards his till if the man came in the front? Just think how many times that car may have stopped at different places and the back doors were shut. Or they could have got the record shop instead of the butcher-maybe that was their intention Pot luck, Kramer says!”
“Sick!” Gardiner laughed Three prisoners were led between them down to the cells.
“And another thing about Lucky-his shop is built so high off the ground it’s possible he could see the passenger was ducking down and felt no immediate danger. Then he hears a sound, turns, and the shot gives the car its signal-”
“Okay, okay, I’ve got the picture,” Gardiner said, handing his glass to the small black helper. “But there’s a few things wrong with it. Fine as far as Peacevale goes, but there was no way that bugger could have attacked from the rear in the cafe. I drew the plans.”
“They’ve got them out now. Kramer’s working on the theory he came in through the bog window and out through the gents’ door under those stairs. I admit that once the car was gone I didn’t think to seal off-Jesus!”
“ Aikona, he couldn’t have had time to grab even the small change and get back to the bog door before the coolie looked out of the kitchen.”
“The lieut’s thought of that. He could have stood behind the kitchen door when it came open.”
“And how long did you take to come in the front?”
“ Ach, these aren’t my ideas, you know! That Mickey is now suggesting they’d thought of a better plan and that’s why they came into town, to try it on an easy place first. He’s just copying one of Kramer’s old ideas, thinking it’s smart.”
“Still, maybe he’s got a point there worth reminding.”
Wessels sneaked a look at his watch, making it obvious.
“I can take a hint, Wessels,” reproved Gardiner. “Only it’s you who has been doing all the talking and I came over to see if you’d save me a journey by telling Kramer something.”
Wessels nodded, and shook the fizz out of his Coke so he could drink the rest quickly.
“It’s just this: he’d better nail that other bloody psychopath quick so this lot can get some sleep.”
“Who, sir?”
“There’s no less than five Portues in with us tonight, all asking questions about the Munchausen. They were put on to me to hear about the car crash and the print and all the rest, but they keep on like they’re not so sure we’re just bulling them. You know-giving each other looks. It’s not making them popular with the blokes, and it’d be a pity if we have to ban outsiders if this goes on.”
It did not sound like a message that Kramer would receive sympathetically, but Wessels promised to relay every word. Then he ran back to the CID building in time to see Marais leading a very cool-looking young man about town up the stairs.
14
On the stool where Martha Mabile had sat, Peter Andrew Shirley now reposed, languid and unmoved by all that had been said to him over the past six hours.
Kramer had never seen a man conceal his feelings of guilt so completely. Even the innocent always showed some signs of tension as they began to attach wild fears to trifles. And yet that unconscious act of his with the underpants had shown beyond a doubt that the smooth-talking bastard suffered a bad conscience.
Prick it hard enough and the rest would explode in a gruesome mess of sobbed confession. But so far every dart of fact had bounced off.
Kramer, working on his own now, tried again. “You advanced your mother’s clock before waking her, you advanced the girl’s clock outside her kia door-you did this to regain the twenty-five minutes you lost while causing the death of Sonja Bergstroom by strangulation!”
He might as well have said by giving her whooping cough.
“You had the opportunity to retard both timepieces-and so nobody would notice you were twenty-five minutes behind the proper time, you made a long journey that swallowed it up in alleged stops. The truth is you drove hard all the way.”
“Timepieces is quite a word coming from you,” said Shirley. “I must tell my father that. He will be amused.”
“What else will amuse him? The idea his son is a killer? That he used his mother to take the edge off suspicion by being late for a framed interview?”
“He will certainly rather take to the idea that anyone could suggest I’d do such a thing as you allege and then take no precautions of my own-beyond fiddling the timepieces -to cover my tracks. Nobody interested in self- preservation could be such a fool.”
“I see them every day.”
“Oh, do tell me-where, Lieutenant Kramer?”
“On the road, in sports cars. Driving at speeds which are excessive without due care and attention, relying for their own safety on other road-users obeying the law and doing the right thing.”
“You’re quite a philosopher!”
“Uh-huh. It does seem to sum up the philosophy of a poop who kills a girl and then expects everyone else will do the right thing-only Monty Stevenson didn’t bloody do the right thing, did he?”
“What?”
“It was his own lawlessness that first drew this matter to our attention, although it would have happened anyway in the course of time.”
“How much more have we in common, poor Monty and I?” Shirley asked, once again as cool as ever.
“Not your semen group, for a start!”
That was badly timed. Shirley shut up and made no further responses of any kind until nearly midnight.
When Kramer remembered he was dealing with a possible liberal.
“What is your attitude to the Bantu?” he asked.
“They’re people.”
“I see. With feelings and all that, same as you and me?”
“So they say.”
You could not expect much more than that in a police station.
“What if I now disclose to you that a Bantu is willing to give evidence that confirms the tricks you played with the clocks?”
Shirley laughed, making it loud and mocking.
“You think he’s a stooge, then?”
