The Song Dog Read online

  “He can go shit in his shoes—my words, Bok,” replied Kramer. “After a long journey like that, the next thing a man must do is go bleed his dragon.”

  I’m stalling, he told himself ten minutes later. Ja, there’s something very weird about this whole Jafini business that I don’t understand yet, and I don’t think I want to. Especially when it comes to my part in it. Stalling won’t help, though; I’d best get going, get the bloody job done and then get the hell out of here again, back to the Free State.

  Yet, even after he zipped up, Kramer tarried, his gaze lowered in the corrugated-iron privy marked WHITE MALES ONLY behind Jafini police station. He was studying the state the floor was in. None of the white-males-only seemed to care much where they aimed, and had left five separate puddles. Moreover, a large patch of the cement floor was noticeably darker than the rest, as though perpetually damp, and this suggested such was the norm. Interesting, mused Kramer, for this in turn suggested one of two things about the station commander he was about to meet: either the man was a born pig, or else too gutless to insist on basic standards of decency among his subordinates.

  And I bet I know which of the two it is, decided Kramer, as he crossed the parched lawn to the back door of the police station, where Bokkie Maritz was anxiously waiting for him.

  “The station commander’s through here, Lieutenant …” Maritz said, leading the way.

  Cracked brown linoleum stretched the length of the long corridor, passing between scuff-marked cream walls painted green to waist height, and from the ceiling dangled unshaded light bulbs, sticky with tiny fried insects. The linoleum showed its greatest wear about halfway, where a short side passage met it at right angles. The side passage led in turn to a heavy, brown-painted door that bore a sign, in both official languages, declaring the room beyond it to be the station commander’s office.

  “In there,” said Maritz, pointing.

  “Bok, you’re invaluable,” said Kramer. “But have you any idea where the CID does its business?”

  Maritz nodded self-importantly. “Ja, of course! They’ve got two offices over the other—”

  “Then bugger off and start going through Maaties’ desk, hey? I want a summary of all recent cases he was investigating, and when you’ve gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb, I want a full report typed out in duplicate—one for the Colonel.”

  “The Lieutenant would entrust such a task to me?” said Maritz, so flattered he was barely able to contain himself.

  “Hell, why ever not?” said Kramer, who couldn’t think of a quicker, yet more bloodless way of getting shot of the idiot.

  Then, without knocking, he threw open the door to the station commander’s office and strode in.

  “Who the—!” began a startled fifty-year-old in uniform, as he looked around, a telephone receiver pressed to his ear.

  “Kramer, Murder and Robbery. You Terblanche?”

  The station commander nodded, covering the receiver’s mouthpiece with his hand. “Find yourself a seat, hey?—I’ve got the Colonel on the line.” Then he turned away and said, “Sorry, Colonel! Ja, it was—just arrived. Thank you, I’ll remember that, sir.”

  I’ll remember what, Kramer wondered, as he reversed an upright wooden chair, straddled it, and looked about him. Three gnawed chicken bones lay whitening on top of the one filing cabinet beside which slumped, on a slither of fresh black mud, a pair of filthy rubber boots. Half a packet of biscuits stood beside a cloudy water pitcher and its glass, and the window ledge was heaped with sun-faded dockets, shedding their contents. The only clean and tidy area in the room appeared to be the bottom of the large, wicker wastepaper basket.

  Terblanche himself certainly wasn’t a further exception to this rule, Kramer noted. Jafini’s station commander had small balls of blanket fluff in his spiky, Brylcreemed hair, something similar stuck to the razor nicks in his double chin, and a streak of maize porridge running grittily all the way down his uniform tie. There was also a dead moth in his right trouser turnup, made visible by his sitting with his unpolished shoes propped on a corner of a desk so cluttered it would take a bulldozer to make an impression.

  “Ja, Colonel, sir, all is arranged,” Terblanche was saying, and rose to his feet, almost to attention. “Very good, Colonel—I fully understand your orders, sir. Bye for now, hey? Bye …”

  Kramer, watching him replace the receiver, asked: “What is all arranged, hey?”

  “Ach, accommodation for you and your sergeant,” replied Terblanche. “There’s no hotel or anything here, see? So I’ve fixed you up with a couple of rooms with a widow woman I know. I’m sure you’ll like her.” Then he smiled shyly as he extended his huge hand. “The name’s Hans—a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “Tromp,” said Kramer. “Like a Lucky?”

  “Thanks all the same, but I’m a filter-tip man, myself.”

  Then Terblanche used a clapped-out lighter on first Kramer’s cigarette and then his own, before sagging back into his chair, looking exhausted. “I don’t mind telling you, this has been one heck of a day,” he said, knuckling his red-rimmed eyes. “I’ve only just got back from Madhlala, where I had to break the news to Lance Gillets.”

  “That’s the husband of the female deceased?”

  Terblanche nodded. “Game ranger. I had a job finding him, too, until someone told me he’d been picked up by plane at Fynn’s Creek yesterday to help catch a rhino for some American zoo or other. He was at the main rest camp.”

  “Uh-huh—and how did he take it?”

  “How do you think? Badly, really badly—Annika was his world to him. He went berserk, understandably. I thought they’d have to use the knockout gun on him, same as with the rhinos, but now the other rangers have got him locked up in a guest hut, pouring neat gin down him.”

  “What time did this plane pick him up yesterday?”

  “I didn’t ask, hey?” Terblanche gave a weary, lopsided smile. “I thought whoever came from Murder Squad could catch up on that sort of finicky detail later.”

  “There speaks a true Uniform man.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Terblanche, heaving himself to his feet once again. “And since you’re here now, ready to take over, I’d best put you in the picture as quickly as possible. Easiest would be if I took you to the scene of crime, and explained on the way—after which, I’m off home to get some sleep for a change, I can tell you!”

  His face showed a grimness that Kramer recognized, having come across it in a few mirrors himself: it was the look of a man pushed to the limit of his endurance, willing himself to grit his teeth and make one final effort before going down in a heap, pole-axed by exhaustion.

  Even so, it was odd, thought Kramer, as he followed the station commander out of his office, that not once so far had Terblanche mentioned, even in passing, his late colleague—the otherwise deeply lamented Detective Sergeant Kritzinger.

  4

  KRAMER AND TERBLANCHE left Jafini in a scarred, long-wheelbase Land Rover that had been fitted with a wire cage on the back for Bantu prisoners. “The track down to Fynn’s Creek is truly terrible,” explained Terblanche. “It’d totally wreck that nice new Chevy of yours! You know about this bloke Fynn?”

  “One of the best?” ventured Kramer.

  Terblanche didn’t bat an eyelid. “He was some mad Irishman, a white hunter,” he said. “You know, back in the days of the early settlers in Natal. He came up this way and got in cahoots with Shaka, I think it was—anyway, the Zulu king at the time. They became such big pals that Fynn married all these kaffir maids, even started his own sub-clan with his own impi, his own Zulu warriors, and went completely native. Disgusting really, I suppose.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Kramer. “That takes care of Fynn, but what the hell does ‘Creek’ mean, hey?”

  “It’s English for sort of a stream, I think.”

  “Ah. Colonel Dupe tells me you heard the explosion.”

  “No,” said Terblanche, “it was my
lady wife. She gave me a shake and said there must have been a bad car crash. You know how they sound like a big bang going off, when you’re close enough? But as for myself, I was out cold. Monday had never stopped, I promise you!”

  Kramer lit another Lucky. “And then?” he prompted.

  “And then the telephone goes,” Terblanche continued. “I answer it and it’s the Bantu left in charge of the station. He’s heard the big bang, too, and he’s panicking a bit because Sarel Suzman—my Uniform sergeant—is out patrolling in the van and he doesn’t know where to get hold of him. Man, it’s high time they gave us radios in the SAP, same as cops in America! Take that mess-up at Sharpeville when all those coons got shot. Now, if we’d been issued with radios, then instead of hitting a panic, they could’ve called for backup and—”

  “Ja, ja, so what happened next? You went out looking?”

  “I went to pick up a boy at the station first, and heard there’d been phone calls reporting the noise from all round, but nobody seemed to know exactly where it had come from. We drove all over, round and round. I even tried the other side of the estuary from here, where Grice’s farm is, and on my way there, I spied headlights coming. It turned out to be four blokes in a jeep who’d been down on the beach, having a barbecue and a beer drink after fishing. They claimed to have actually seen the thing go off, a big flash the other side of the estuary, Fynn’s Creek way. One said it was a bang just like you get with sticks of dynamite when they’re building a dam. You know what I thought it could have been?”

  “No idea,” said Kramer. “Civil engineer running amuck?”

  “Ach, no—no jokes. From a submarine.”

  Kramer blinked.

  “You know,” said Terblanche, “surely you’ve seen all these newspaper reports of Russian subs coming in along the coast? The ones dropping Commie-trained agitators?”

  It was true, Kramer had seen such stories. But after only three weeks in Natal, he had already decided that the English-speaking press should, in all fairness to its readers, make liberal use of “Once upon a time” at the start of its news items.

  “I see you’ve gone quiet,” said Terblanche. “Because it does make a kind of sense, not so? Commie agitators with bombs and suchlike in their cardboard suitcases, landing at a time when there is already so much trouble among the kaffirs, burning their pass books and so on. Maybe the bomb went off soon after the agitator landed—you can never tell with coons, he could have been fiddling with the detonator’s clock to see what time it was.”

  “So you’ve found a third body?” said Kramer.

  “Well, no, but at least it’s a theory.”

  “How about the theory that this explosion could have been accidental?” asked Kramer. “Did the Gilletses use bottled gas for cooking? Were petrol drums stored near the house?”

  “Ja, Lance did have two forty-four-gallon petrol drums, but set well back—they’ve gone untouched. The stove was just an ordinary paraffin one that obviously never exploded.”

  Kramer nodded. “Besides which,” he said, “the possibility of an accident wouldn’t have brought Maaties Kritzinger skulking around at midnight with his gun out. Why was he doing that, do you think?”

  “Not a clue, Tromp,” said Terblanche, shrugging. “I’ve never been one to push my nose into CID business. I just read their reports every month, then put my rubber stamp on.”

  “Making you the ideal boss, hey?”

  “Ach, no, not exactly—it’s just I find it hard enough to keep up with my own job, never mind theirs, and Colonel Du Plessis’s quite happy. Here it is, the Fynn’s Creek turnoff: you’d best grab something to hang on to …”

  The rough track to Fynn’s Creek looked like a dozen others leading off into the vast sugar fields, so Kramer memorized a distinctive clump of stinkweed near its entrance. Then for a mile or so, the tall cane blocked the view on either side, and the bumpy ride grew monotonous. The air, however, changed, taking on a tang and curious freshness.

  “It was about here,” said Terblanche, “that I found an old kaffir staggering around on his way home at close to four this morning. He said he was Moses Khumalo, the Gilletses’ kitchen boy, who’d gone to get drunk with his uncle in Jafini. When asked about a bang, he said it was true, he had heard lightning strike much early on, and that his young missus, who was alone, must have been very frightened. You could tell how drunk he was from that!”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Ach, I left him there, and started going really fast—believe it or not, I’d somehow forgotten there was a game ranger’s house at Fynn’s Creek! It’s a new reserve, you know, experimental, and it hasn’t been manned very long. Or maybe I didn’t want to think such a thing—who knows? Anyway, I went like a bullet, hey, worried about little Annika now I’d just heard she hadn’t got Lance with her.”

  “She was known to you personally?”

  “Of course! Her pa, Andries Cloete, was labor manager at the sugar mill for as long as I can remember, and I’ve known Annika since only so high. She …”

  Terblanche bit down on his lip, and Kramer looked away, not wanting to add to the man’s troubles. They drove on without talking for a while, entering an area like some remote corner of a bad dream. Here the sugarcane had been set on fire, presumably to get rid of its leaves and the weeds, making it easier to cut, and everything had been blackened until the red earth itself was hidden by ashes. Half-obscured figures, hooded with sacking, paused in the cane and stood very still, long cane knives raised motionless in their soot-covered hands, while they watched the police Land Rover lurch slowly by. Kramer had never seen black men so black before, and the whites of their eyes were like the dots on the Devil’s dominoes.

  “Ja, you’re going to hear quite a few stories about—er, young Annika, let me warn you,” said Terblanche, stopping briefly to engage four-wheel drive. “But before you believe any of it, you come to me first, you hear?”

  “From that,” said Kramer, lighting himself a Lucky, “I suppose what we’re talking about is a real good-looker. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as soon as this Annika turned sixteen, every young bloke in the district started swearing to God he’d given her eight inches, while every mother took to swearing that, although boys will be boys, such a slut would never be welcome as her daughter-in-law. The usual bullshit.”

  Terblanche gave a surprised laugh. “Isn’t it just?” he said. “You can’t be as citified as you look in that suit and tie of yours …”

  “Ach, no—a farmer’s son, born and bred.”

  “Me, too. What kind of farm was your pa’s? Arable land? Dairy herd?”

  “We grew a lot of rocks,” said Kramer.

  Another laugh did Terblanche good, and he seemed far more relaxed as he drove on again. Perhaps, thought Kramer, the station commander was neither a pig nor gutless, but simply overworked to the extent he was playing footsie with a nervous breakdown. Not that this explained why he never appeared to use a rude word, which was always worrying in a police officer.

  “You’d just left behind the drunk kitchen boy and driven on,” Kramer reminded Terblanche. “What happened next?”

  “Next, more headlights! Not the Jeep’s, this time, but Sarel Suzman in the van, going hell-for-leather—we nearly collided! Then Sarel is out, babbling that Fynn’s Creek has been blown up, and two persons killed, and he doesn’t want to be the one to tell Hettie Kritzinger. ‘Hey, calm down, man,’ I say to him. ‘Calm down and tell me how you know this.’ Well, apparently Sarel had heard the bang and seen the flash himself, giving him some idea of where to look. But by trying to take a shortcut down from Murray’s Bay, across that bit of beach there, he’d got in soft sand and had been stuck there for goodness knows how long. Let me warn you, that stuff can be murder if your vehicle hasn’t—”

  “Ja, ja,” said Kramer. “And then?”

  “And then, well, obviously Sarel had got to Fynn’s Creek, and couldn’t believe what his eyes saw there! In fact, he drove past the fir
st time, he says, because he was looking out for the house from the beach—only it wasn’t standing any more. Then he got to the estuary and went back and started searching for survivors. Maaties he found almost straightaway, and for a time he thought he must be the only victim, concluding Annika and Lance were away for the night. Then he found part of her hair-style, and that sent him full tilt for Jafini—in the process of which, we met up, you see.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Kramer. “So Suzman had beaten you to it by only a few minutes?”

  “Five at the most,” said Terblanche, nodding. “Naturally, I issued him with certain instructions—to telephone the Colonel, and so forth—then went on to see for myself what had happened.”

  “How much farther now?” asked Kramer.

  “Not far, man, not far …”

  The sugarcane began to thin out and the track changed color, switching from reddish brown to almost white. Little grew on the flat landscape ahead, apart from the waxy-looking tufts of grass and a few wind-bent thorn trees, while in the distance lay a line of pale hillocks of an unusual kind, reminiscent of mine dumps.

  “What the hell are those?” asked Kramer, pointing.

  “Man, those are giant dunes, believe it or not,” said Terblanche. “This is all duneland, this part—you know, it was once under the sea. You can even find seashells way back here.”

  “Don’t they have bloody animals in this game reserve?”

  “Birds will be the big attraction, so they say. It isn’t properly open yet.”

  “Just birds?”

  “Ach, there’s a few crocs in the estuary, but let me show you something …”

  The Land Rover slowed down and stopped. “Over there,” said Terblanche. “Do you see that clump of thorn trees about fifty yards to the right?”

  “Ja, and I can also see what is probably Kritzinger’s car hidden and abandoned there,” said Kramer.

  “You’ve got good eyes!” exclaimed Terblanche, sounding mildly miffed to have had his punch line stolen from him. “I haven’t really enough boys to put one on guard there, but I will if you insist, hey?”