Snake Page 5

  “They all do, old son. That was a nice thought while it lasted. You were saying? Four?”

  “Ach, just that Monty didn’t seem so easily shocked before. Very cool, the warrant said. But four isn’t such a big deal because, I suppose, with a female and a bloody snake like that wrapped around her neck, it must have—”

  “Still there, was it?”

  “Here’s the photos—Kisten did a quick job.”

  Kramer played patience with them for a while.

  “How come if she knocked its brains out on the wall it was still round her neck?”

  “Doc Strydom says they’ve got funny nervous systems; probably locked in a spasm. You know how the wogs say that a snake can’t die till sunset, doesn’t matter what you do to it.”

  “Cut its head off with a spade and it still jumps around hours later, you mean?”

  “Ja. Doc’s going to check with the snake park for more details to put in the thing he’s writing.”

  The photographs were tossed aside. They were irrelevant to the matter in hand, and Kramer was niggled at being thwarted. He had a very clear picture of the manager and an equally clear idea of what he would like.…

  “Six!” he said. “What is today in Trekkersburg? And don’t give me bloody Monday!”

  “Wash day?” Marais postulated, with pleasing swiftness.

  “Spot on. Think how the bugger was dressed. It all looked new to me. Even if it wasn’t, tell me who doesn’t wear his best casuals at the weekend? On Saturday arvie, or Sunday? Who goes to the trouble to posh himself up for the postman and a bloody coon boy? He didn’t have any appointments. For two hours, hey? Who goes near a nightclub in the daytime? When exactly was Mr. Joseph Ngcobo admitted to the premises? With wine bottles all over the place? Dead bugs in the passage?”

  Marais began to pace about, clicking his thumb against his front teeth. Then he stopped suddenly.

  “What are we saying, sir?” he asked, very solemnly.

  “Just this: that Monty ‘Publicity Stunt’ Stevenson may have reached the club before Ngcobo, checked to see if the girl had pinched anything maybe—and saw certain advantages of a commercial nature in the situation.”

  “Christ! You’d have to be cool to do that!”

  “And what did your pal Gardiner have to say about him?”

  Marais slapped his thigh in self-recrimination. “But I didn’t bother with times when I interviewed Ngcobo! I’m sorry, but it seemed—”

  “No longer it isn’t. But you got times from Stevenson?”

  “Under oath.”

  “And Ngcobo’s address? Bantu Men’s Hostel?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “The night is young,” Kramer observed lightly.

  Sergeant Kloppers and his clipboard barged into Strydom in the post-mortem room, almost dashing a jar of lungs to the floor. His night was over.

  “I’m for home!” he declared defiantly.

  Strydom looked round at the clock over his bifocals and frowned. “You were off most of the afternoon, so what nonsense is this? You can’t expect every week to run smooth as the last. We’re having a heavy run, that’s all—and that’s why I took the trouble of offering you a break while I was detained at Peacevale. You were gone three hours.”

  “Peacevale I heard about!” snapped Kloppers.

  “We can’t all spend our day worrying to tell you—”

  Kloppers began to stab rudely at his list.

  “The Peacevale coon, okay. But then? White female in a G-string. A white abortion. A—”

  “Term miscarriage!” Strydom corrected, goaded into uncharacteristic pedantry.

  “A whatsit. But then? A coon full of glass. And now—”

  “Ach, for crying out loud, who said we were going to try and get through them all tonight?”

  “Ah,” said Kloppers, “ah, but you just come and see what else I find in my fridge!”

  Strydom stalked through into the other room. “That happens to be mine,” he said coldly. “And I agree, you had better go home. What’s more, tomorrow I’m having a word with your superiors—you’re not fit for the job!”

  “Suits me fine!” Kloppers shouted from the door.

  And Nxumalo, who had taken the python in his stride, wondered if Sergeant Van couldn’t possibly come back soon.

  Gardiner laid the prisoners’ sole prints and his originals on the desk in front of Kramer, who had just made a start on Stevenson’s statement.

  “One fits,” he said, “the other doesn’t. Could have been one of Lucky’s biggest boys. I could—”

  “Whoa, there! What’s the prisoners’ story?”

  “Real skelms, those two. Saw a chance and took it. Zondi had been held up by an informer ringing, so he gave them the brush and they admitted. He’s handed the case over to Sithole and told him to ask for a remand to keep the thing quiet meantime.”

  “And the prints in the till?”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but the one that wasn’t Lucky’s belongs to one of these. Him.”

  “And we don’t keep sole prints on file.”

  “Some, but this other one doesn’t match. We forget them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bet you the gang will hit again tomorrow,” Gardiner offered as a parting remark. “I would, if I was that good but only got myself peanuts.”

  It did not help to have the obvious put into words. Kramer was plunged into bleak thought so overwhelming that he almost missed hearing what Marais returned to report.

  “The cleaner Ngcobo was himself early this morning,” he told Kramer. “And he went into the club actually with Stevenson before ten. Wine bottles are for the Indian waiters to collect when they come on. He isn’t paid to clean the passage. But he did say one thing: in his belief, the boss has been bluffing all along that he didn’t know Zulu, because when Ngcobo went to tell him about the sick missus, for once the boss knew straight away what he meant.”

  4

  SO TUESDAY BEGAN with the prospect of a certain good and a particular evil being done in Trekkersburg.

  While it also began as the day that Mickey Zondi and the lieutenant had mutually agreed to take off so that they would be free to help the Widow Fourie with her move.

  No changes of plan were made, however, despite the threat of a clash of interests later, and all was to proceed as arranged.

  Which meant a very early start at 2137 Kwela Village on the outskirts of the city. Or two starts, really, as Zondi rose before his family to tidy the living room. This was completed eventually with about a dozen sweeps of the broom across the rammed earth floor. Then he put six handfuls of maize porridge in a pot on the Primus stove, found the bowls, and hunted for the golden syrup. He discovered it in a tin inside another tin that had water in the bottom to keep the ants off. Miriam was a resourceful wife, as her lacy tablecloth of cleverly scissored newspaper showed. And, having domestic details now forced upon him by circumstance, Zondi also admired how she had fashioned a new handle for her flatiron from cotton reels. Miriam, who took in washing and mending, hoped one day—when the electricity was put in—to have saved enough for a steam presser.

  The porridge popped and bubbled, breaking his reverie.

  Zondi lowered the flame and went into the other room, clapping his hands loudly to wake the five children. He regretted this as he did so, because it would have been good to study their faces in repose. They saw little of each other.

  But hungry offspring rouse quickly. The twins were up in an instant, and had not even rolled away their mattress before the others, in the big parental bed, started fighting.

  “Hau, hau, hau! What nonsense is this?” Zondi scolded. “Put on the rest of your clothes and I will feed you some breakfast. You! Not so fast!”

  He grabbed the cheekier twin by his ear.

  “But I am dressed already!”

  “Slow down.”

  “But I want my porridge! Last night you didn’t—”

  “Your porridge you wil
l eat here.”

  All the children looked at him rather shocked, right down to the youngest one struggling with her hand-me-down bloomers. This feeling for propriety surprised him.

  “In here?” queried the quieter twin, who was more like his mother.

  “You are not going into the other room now. I’ve cleaned it for when Mama comes home—none of you.”

  “Even to go to school, my father?”

  “No. You will all go out by this window! I have seen what a mess you can make quick as quick! You see? Then I will have only one more room to clean.”

  “That is a good idea,” said the eldest girl, who was now helping with the housework and hating it. “Our father is clever!”

  “Lick his toes, lick his toes!” the others chorused.

  “Stop the noise,” Zondi boomed, “or I take off my belt!”

  “Then your pants will—”

  The cheekier twin took his painful ear into a corner, complaining that his homework had been too hard to understand without help.

  He went unheeded. Zondi was standing very still, trying to recapture an idea which seemed like the key to the lightning robberies. It had been suggested to him only moments before— by either something said, or something done.

  No good; it was gone.

  Klip Marais was also up at that hour, not having been to bed. This wasn’t the fault of his stomach—for he was actually in excellent health, having rushed from the dressing room merely to be sick—but because his mind kept on racing like a mad thing.

  His attitude to Kramer had undergone quite a change once he had realized he was being given a chance to vindicate himself, only he was very unsure of how to go about it.

  Especially as, during the small hours in the dispassionate solitude of his single-man’s quarters, he had been forced to admit the evidence was flimsy. He looked again at his list. It was a new one—he relied a lot on setting down his problems in an orderly manner. This attempt read:

  1. Clothing—too good for occasion

  2. Calls—too soon after CID notified

  3. Character—too flustered (W/O Gardiner says)

  4. Comprehension—too quick to understand boy

  Marais was also partial to alliteration, having passed his exams largely by the help of mnemonics, which only he found less difficult to memorize than the original material.

  Points 1 and 2 had lost their impact; they were too much a matter of opinion, and could be simply part of the man’s normal drive to boost his image and business. Point 3 was also opinion, if you set friendship aside, and different deaths affected people different ways—he had never vomited after a road accident. Point 4 was based on the word of a native, and a particularly slow-witted one at that, with a hint of the vindictive about him. And yet.…

  Marais thought a moment and added “Clock” to the others, as this was as close as he could get to “Time factor.” That was the vital issue.

  He had a list of times already prepared, and was mulling them over when a sleepy constable stumbled into his room without knocking to say he was wanted on the phone.

  His mind raced even faster.

  The subject, Kramer remembered, had first come up in a roundabout way when the Widow Fourie suddenly asked him if he knew anything about psychology. He had answered in the affirmative, explaining that psychology was a plastic duck. And when that had not been properly understood, he said that psychology was also aiming a kick at the suspect’s goolies but stopping your boot a millimeter short.

  It had been about the time metrication was introduced in South Africa.

  She had not mentioned psychology again for about a week after that. Then he found her reading a library book about it and questioned her interest.

  Without a word, she had dug into her handbag and handed him the letter from her eldest son’s headmaster. It suggested, in a very kindly way, that she should make an appointment to see the school’s psychologist. Piet, it appeared from their observations, was a very unhappy boy whose work was now being affected.

  The Widow Fourie had gone to the education department and seen the psychologist, only to return home with her head whirling with the names of things she had never known existed. Like displacement and Oedipus and trauma and God knows what else.

  That was why she had asked Kramer what he knew, and why she had been trying to find out from library books what it was all about. He had spent the rest of the evening reading some of the books himself—even chunks of them aloud, when they revolted him, such as: “The Oedipus complex may be defined as ideas which are largely unconscious and are based on the wish to possess the opposite-sex parent and eliminate the father.”

  At midnight he had thrown the books aside and told her that Piet was simply a growing boy who needed the room to grow in. Living cooped up in a top-floor flat would have driven him mad as a kid.

  She had then started an unpleasant scene in which she revealed that her relationship with Kramer had been mooted as the possible cause of Piet’s trouble. And that had gone on until daybreak, when they made love twice and he said, “We’ll see.”

  All of which was still very fresh in his mind that morning as he stood waiting impatiently on the pavement for Zondi to turn up with the hired lorry. It was to have been picked up from an Indian car dealer at eight, and with a mountain of stuff to shift, a delay wasn’t funny. The two of them would be hard at it until sunset.

  The time was after a quarter to nine Then the lorry appeared, driven at Zondi’s incurably frantic pace, with four black men in overalls clinging to the back of the cabin roof. Kramer knew it would be impolitic to ask who they were.

  “Right, boss—which is first?” Zondi asked, springing down from the driver’s perch.

  “Better make it the breakables.”

  “Hey! Three of you! Come on, jump!” Zondi ordered the men, and then set about organizing everything.

  The Widow Fourie came down to watch—she had sent the children to the park for the day. Her yellow hair was hidden by a scarf against the dust of moving, and she wore a shapeless uniform borrowed off the nanny, so there was only her face left for him to enjoy—which he did, very much, as he had never seen her so happy and excited.

  “Careful, Mickey!” she cautioned with a gasp.

  But Zondi, who had begun tossing up cartons of carefully packed crockery to be caught like bricks from a scaffold, just laughed politely.

  “Why don’t we leave him to it?” Kramer suggested, taking her arm. “Let’s go over and open up.”

  “Well.…” she said, watching over her shoulder as he led her to his car.

  They drove in silence all the way out to the far western side of town, passing the airfield and shooting range, and traveling into an area of gentle hills where some of the earliest settlers had built their homes. The grass was yellow, like her hair, and the dark green of the blue gum leaves and wattles came close to the uncommon color of her eyes.

  He could sense she was crying quietly when they stopped.

  There it was. The big house. With a veranda all the way round, and a rain-water tank at one corner to catch the flow off its low, corrugated-iron roof. And the big garden. Three acres of weeds and lawn and vegetable plots and trees with branches just right for platforms or monkey ropes. A messy, homely place. A dump.

  She was now smiling as she did when he came down on her.

  Kramer, who had been saving his salary over the years for the want of something better to do with it, had simply bought Blue Haze on sight and left it to her in his will. In the meantime, the Widow Fourie would continue to pay the same rent for it as the flat had cost her.

  “Control to Lieutenant Kramer, Control to Kramer,” the radio intruded suddenly. “Please come immediately to HQ. We repeat, please—”

  He snapped it off.

  Marais almost strutted as he followed Strydom out of the main building on the way to the car park.

  Where they met Gardiner, who immediately asked how come both of them were looking so smug.r />
  “Teamwork,” said Strydom, with a covert wink to convey he was being generous.

  “Ja, me and the doctor here have got Stevenson over a barrel. I’ve just put out a call for Kramer to forget his day off.”

  Then it had to be good.

  “Ach, come on, you can tell uncle,” coaxed Gardiner, making his brows wag.

  “I didn’t sleep at all well last night,” Strydom said. “That sort of a day and then Kloppers having tantrums on top of it. I was being so restless my wife threw me out of bed about six and told me to doze in the study.”

  “Then—” Marais tried to say.

  “Naturally, sleep was quite impossible by that stage, so I started to write up my notes on yesterday’s little lady. I was filling in the section of external observations when something suddenly struck me.”

  “It’d struck me, too,” Marais got in. “But I was waiting to ring at breakfast.”

  “Oh, were you?” Strydom murmured, not quite hiding the doubt in his voice, then continuing briskly. “I was describing how the hands were still in position towards the extremes of the reptile—and by the way, I’ve had it on good authority this is the only way to handle constrictors: you have to stop them getting a grip on anything with their tail, and the head end gives a nasty bite. So she was doing the right thing, only—ironically—her panic probably gave the snake the purchase it needed. If you put yourself in her position, then you can under—”

  “That’s all beside the point,” Marais objected

  “So what, young man? Hey? Anyway, I was describing the state of the body, noting down that rigor mortis had already started to subside, when it struck me what that stupid man kept saying when we got there. Remember? How stiff she’d been to the touch? Her legs, yes, I wouldn’t quarrel—”

  “So the doctor phoned to see if I remembered, too, or was he imagining, and I said that’s right, he had. It’s even in his statement.”

  “Which you took?” Gardiner asked.

  “Hell, you expect people to say that, and I didn’t try her arms myself!” Marais dried up abruptly, having outwitted himself in his claim to have shared the discovery.

  “Beside the point,” Strydom said. “The fact is her arms were flaccid and I didn’t have to pull to get them on her chest. So either Mr. Stevenson didn’t touch her at all—or she was stiff when he did so.”