“Of course, and I’m sorry for him; perjury is-”
“You don’t suck up to the Bantu because of a bad conscience about what you did to one of them?”
“You’re ideas are very primitive, if I may say so.”
“The Bantu’s name is Aaron.”
“He can’t be Jewish as well, surely! A Sammy Davis in Trekkersburg?”
“Would you like to meet him?”
“Love to.”
Kramer rang down to Zondi and told him to bring the man up. They arrived so quickly it seemed that only seconds later the door of the interrogation room was swung open to reveal the pair of them under the passage’s hard light.
“There he is,” said Kramer. “There’s Aaron.”
Shirley swung around on the stool and stared without interest at the solemn figure in a cook boy’s suit. Then his eyes narrowed slowly before opening wide.
“Him!” he gasped.
And turned to Kramer as if he had just seen an apparition and not a baffled old wog.
“I’ve never heard anything like it, sir,” said Wessels, following Kramer back to his office. “He just fell apart!”
“I knew he had a bloody conscience, man. It was just finding the right way of breaking through to it.”
“He seemed more poop-scared than sorry to-” “ Ach, leave that now. Tell me what all this is about psychopaths; that’s more my kettle of fish.”
Wessels repeated Gardiner’s message, ending it in the office itself.
“Uh-huh.”
“Warrant Gardiner also made a point about the gunman having enough time to take the small change.”
“Which he didn’t do at Lucky’s,” Kramer said, dumping himself wearily down in his chair and yawning.
“No, sir?”
“Got-sorry-pinched by some mini skabengas.”
The yawn went across to Zondi, waiting for a lift in his corner, and then to Wessels.
“This was the first time they take the change,” Zondi muttered, forgetful of the formalities. “Is it not strange? What was of no use to them-the small coin-was of use to us, however.”
“Ja, that’s true,” Wessels agreed. “At least somebody has gained something worthwhile from all this.”
With another yawn, he said good night and slopped off.
“Zondi!” Kramer said.
Like black lightning it had hit him.
The store up near the station, which sold cigarettes under bright lights until all hours, was empty of customers.
A car carrying two men screeched to a halt outside it and one man jumped out.
Kramer was lucky not to be shot crossing the threshold.
“Put it away, Fred, and come here!” he ordered the squat, currently unjolly man in the apron who held a. 25 Beretta in both hands.
“Mother of God, don’t do such a thing again, Mr. Kramer! This floor I just wipe!”
“Here! Move it!”
Fred, short for Fernando and then some, hurried across, while his family, who had been listening to the radio in the back room, peered out.
“Is there something you wish Fred to do for you?”
“Yes, tell me two things. I rang Sister Maria today-y’know, Mr. Funchal’s daughter?-and she said Da Gama was running the family business now. On what sort of basis?”
“Basis? My English…”
A lanky teenager, with a downy mustache, came over and gave his father a long, urgent sentence in Portuguese.
“You know what basis means now?”
“I tell my father not to talk,” the youth said.
“Then you’ll do,” Kramer replied, snatching him by the scruff of the neck and running him out to the car.
In which his attitude changed as Zondi circled the other end of town.
“So Funchal’s death made them suspicious, hey?”
“They say if it had been any kind of accident or a sudden sickness or anything like that, then they would have come straight to the police.”
“And told us what?”
“But when they read that these blacks have already done the same in the township, and that a policeman saw them outside the cafe, they have to believe it. Then they read that the blacks are dead and no more investigation will be done, and that starts them talking again.”
“Who said it had stopped? It would have if we’d not got on to there being a third-which was thanks to a proper print job, that’s all.”
Zondi, alone on the front seat, looked into his rear-view, which was adjusted to reflect the youth’s strained face.
“You don’t answer questions you don’t like, do you?” Kramer said, lighting a cigarette.
“I answer all of them, mister.”
“Who are they, then?”
“The men of our community.”
“And Da Gama’s the one they’d be suspicious of?”
The Chev cruised another block, passing the mosque.
“Let me tell you what I’ve got to admit,” said Kramer, earning a quick turn of the head from Zondi. “To us in this country, a Portuguese man sells milk shakes and biltong. But Mocambique wasn’t one bloody big cafe, was it? Hey? What are you studying for?”
The India-ink stains on the fingertips showed up even in the streetlights.
“Engineer.”
“Then you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Da Gama-”
“Yes, what was he before, back in LM?”
“When was that?”
“Before Frelimo took over-Christ, you mustn’t play games with me!”
“Frelimo,” the youth repeated, as though tasting some irony in the word. “One day very soon after the refugees come down through the Transvaal from the border, Mr. Funchal brings this man to my father’s tearoom and says he is the son of an old friend. He asks us to welcome him among us, for he has lost everything in the takeover. We are all very sorry for him and he seems a nice fellow. But then we are South African citizens, and so it is not until other men come from Mocambique that the stories begin.”
“They knew Da Gama?”
“No; that is the very reason for suspicion.”
“He was from somewhere else? Or are you saying that, in his way, he had a job like…”
The youth looked at Kramer and said, “But here the people know you. There are initials for them I cannot remember now.”
Zondi was coasting in neutral, trying to catch every word and make sense of it.
“Secret police,” said Kramer, and yawned again.
As the Chev picked up speed.
Sister Maria, in a pretty dressing gown, tightly belted, opened the Funchal front door to their knocking.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Sister, but my boy here has just made a report to me that Mr. Da Gama should know about. It concerns-”
“I am sorry, too, but Mr. Da Gama is still in Durban. He is spending the night there.”
“ Ach, really?”
“Is a Sister’s word not enough for you?” she asked, with the same gentle humor she had used on the
