Snake Read online

  “Meaning?”

  “He told a lie under oath whichever way you take it,” Marais proclaimed. “So I’ve got him! No problem!”

  Yankee Boy Msomi made his way with grace down a path in the grass behind a short row of shops where his friend ran a record bar. He was particularly anxious not to appear in any sort of hurry.

  Only seconds before he had been sunning himself in the road over on the other side, nodding at the humble greetings of passers-by and generally feeling good, when he had taken another casual look at the old red car parked outside his friend’s place. It was then he noticed that its two occupants had made no move to get out. They seemed to be waiting for something.

  Perhaps for the inevitable ebb in the number of people about, that short-lived phenomenon which Msomi had frequently observed happening almost anywhere during midmorning.

  That was enough for him. Discs, even for old-fashioned wind-ups, were big money.

  He found himself breathing heavily as he reached the back door of his friend’s place. Although he knew nobody was following him, he slid the bolt home after slipping inside. Then he tiptoed with great caution to the doorway into the shop, and used the shoplifter mirror to see where his friend was.

  Beebop was drinking a Coke and listening to the latest from the Black Mambazo. He had no customers.

  Msomi checked the car. The two men were still in the front seat.

  So he poked his head around and said, sweet and low, “Beebop, play this cool, brother, but just you close that door of yours, put up the sign, and come on back here a way. There’s bad, bad news outside, I tell you.”

  When he let go something like that for free, there were few who would hesitate or argue.

  Beebop, graying slightly under his very black skin, shambled over, shut the door, snibbed the lock, flipped the sign to read SORRY FOLKS, GONE GROOVIN’! and nearly ran all the way to the safety of his storeroom.

  It seemed impossible, but in the short time he obscured Mso-mi’s view of the car—which couldn’t have been more than two seconds—one of its occupants had got out and disappeared.

  The light was wrong for Msomi to make out the features of the man at the wheel, and the angle made it impossible to get a look at the registration plate—he had been in too much of a hurry to note it before. Might be false anyway.

  “What’s the jive?” Beebop whispered. “And how did you get in here, man? That kid of mine leave the door open again? Got some good stuff back here.”

  “Your kid, everybody’s kid.” Msomi grinned. “Just you shut that door, son! Oh, yeah!”

  And his pointed shoes did a little shuffle.

  When he looked up, there were two men in the front seat of the car again. They drove off.

  And Beebop, Jr., tried the back door, finding it yanked open in his face and his hide tanned before he could yell.

  Msomi waited until the boy had been set back on his feet again and handed his broom, then drifted away, saying, “My deepest and sincerest, brother, or maybe I did a good thing there.”

  Indeed, perhaps he had. But in the shop next door, a butcher bled to death. They had used a .22 this time, which the high-wattage output of Beebop’s speakers had simply swallowed up.

  Kramer tried to make a joke of it.

  “You can see they’re running short,” he said. “That’s a lot cheaper than firing thirty-eights.”

  The idea wasn’t to make Colonel Hans Muller laugh, just to get him to say something.

  The colonel went on twisting his plastic ruler in his oddly neat hands, which would have looked like a pianist’s if it hadn’t been for their werewolf trimmings. His pink-cheeked big head had gone blotchy.

  “They’re truly making monkeys of us,” he said at last, “and I don’t like it. I don’t like persons getting shot in my district. I don’t like what we both—but, man, what can we do? We haven’t the availability to cover Peacevale, and who says it will be there next time?”

  “Uh-huh, especially as they’ve gone and done it again,” Kramer agreed. “Coons are lucky if they eat meat once a week, then they buy it on a Friday when their money’s paid. Through the week, all the butchers keep is maybe sausages, some chicken they’ve cooked up themselves, offal. Their tills are nearly empty.”

  “And you say on one side was a record shop?”

  “Sells transistors, battery players, all kinds. Number one in the district; the fat cats come in from every direction. But it was shut at the time for stocktaking.”

  The colonel dropped his ruler and reached for his paper knife to play with. It still had its exhibit label from a murder case.

  “Okay—exactly how much this time?”

  “Approximation: fifteen rand.”

  “Hell. Is Zondi working on this?”

  “His day off, sir.”

  “At a time like this?”

  “His wife’s away and—”

  “Since when has a kaff—”

  This aborted beginning to what might have been quite a speech amused Kramer. The colonel had very nearly said “kaffir,” which was now an officially banned word. Only the day before, a traffic officer had made a public apology for saying it to one of his Bantu subordinates.

  “What’s so funny now?” asked the colonel. “You’ve got another joke to make?”

  “I was just going to say he has been helping me at home with some heavy work.”

  “Ach, that’s okay, then. As long as he respects you. But bring him in and see if any of his customers knows anything about today.”

  “And me?”

  “Don’t look to me for orders, Kramer! Go on, man, voetsak!”

  Which summed up what Kramer found best in the man. He would have walked away very happily, if it had not been for the weight of trust this also placed upon him.

  Zondi returned the lorry to the Indian car dealer and transferred the four men back into his police vehicle. Then he paid them each the two rand he had told the lieutenant was the going rate for express furniture removers.

  This done, he drove round the corner and onto the building site.

  The white foreman, stiff-jointed from sitting on piles of bricks all day, came across to him.

  Zondi showed his identity card again.

  “Oh, ja, and what have these skelms been up to, hey? Are you going to take them all away? That’s no worry.”

  “Hau, no, master! These are very good boys, master. You must trust them!They give us help too too much.”

  “Never.”

  “Most difficult case, master, but their eyes are witnessing all known facts. If you do not believe me, then you must tring-a-ling Lieutenant Kramer. Hau, this one tells us where the skabenga puts the knife in his wife’s seating arrangements, and this man here—”

  “Work to be done,” the foreman said, turning away. “Come on, you good-for-nothing ntombi shaggers, get up those ladders, checha wena!”

  Zondi, who knew he had been dismissed, from the mind as well as the vicinity, picked his way back to the car, calculating the best way to make the U-turn.

  “And now, Mickey,” he said in his best English to the rear-view mirror, “let us adjourn for lunch.”

  His car had no radio, nor had Blue Haze a telephone.

  The atmosphere in the post-mortem room could have been cut with a knife.

  Then it became apparent that the debate had put a stop to the actual work in progress, and so Kloppers retired to sulk in his office. Leaving an aggrieved Marais facing an agitated Kramer over the legs of the dead snake dancer, while Strydom mumbled to himself as he laid down the scalp saw at the other end.

  “Look, Doc, all I want to do is get this straight,” Kramer said. “I’m too bloody busy to waste time on a poop. But if you’re sure, then we’ll have him in and get it over with.”

  “But, Lieutenant, sir—”

  “I’ve heard you, Marais; now I want the expert’s view.”

  “Then I quote to you Professor K. Simpson, pathologist to the Queen of England: ‘It
is unfortunate, but rigor is uncertain in its timing.’ All right?”

  “So it’s only on average that it sets in after six hours and lasts thirty-six? She was allegedly found after thirty-four, remember, not forty-two.”

  “It can begin immediately. And the circumstances were exactly right for that—violent exertion prior to death, a warm room. I’d say it must have done, as it goes away again in the order it comes—head, arms, trunk, then the legs. Her legs were stiff.”

  “So you can be certain Stevenson didn’t just break the tension by trying to lift her?”

  “I see your point—stretching muscle does destroy its rigidity, Tromp—but I was obviously paying particular attention to the head, and I know it had already passed away there. And I also know it had reached the torso. The arms had to be included in that sweep; they could not have been stiff when he says they were.”

  “Just had to be sure,” Kramer said, starting for the door. “And thanks, Doc. Coming, Marais?”

  “Hell, I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I was transferred from House-breaking down here. I didn’t know all that about breaking tensions. I’ve always thought a stiff was just a stiff.”

  “Most people do,” Kramer replied, his spirits restored. “But you just watch it, or you’ll be landing yourself in trouble with a smart lawyer one of these days.”

  And they went to find Monty.

  When Zondi had finally managed to arrange the living room as the Widow Fourie wanted it, she went out with him onto the stoep.

  “What do you think of it?” she asked.

  “Hau, it is beautiful,” he said. “The madam’s children will be very happy here. You can even buy them a donkey perhaps.”

  “That is an idea!”

  He picked up his jacket.

  “Yes, I’ll ask Trompie—or do you know about donkeys?” she asked.

  “No, madam, nothing.” He lied without malice. As a herdboy, he had seen all he wanted of donkeys before he was seven.

  “I thought all.…”

  She let that tail away as her eye was caught by a white butterfly dipping by.

  “I’m so happy,” she said. “Does it show?”

  Zondi felt embarrassed and looked round for his hat. It had been dropped in the tea chest with the lampshades.

  “Are you going?” she asked.

  “Is there something…?”

  “Oh, no, Mickey, you’ve been a marvelous help. Just I feel lonely all of a sudden. It’s so private here, isn’t it? When is the lieutenant getting back?”

  “That I don’t know, madam. Shame.”

  “Of course—who ever knows that?”

  She walked to the edge of the veranda and shaded her eyes to look into the trees. Grasshoppers were doing their erratic dance in the slanted rays between the trunks.

  “Could I—could I possibly ask you one more favor? To fetch the kids from the park now for me, instead of the nanny sending them in a taxi at four? It’s really your fault I’m at such a loose end!”

  “Victoria Park? With the swings? I’ll go straight away now.”

  “Hey, you know what? You must bring your kids here to play in July when we’re at the beach. Do you think they’d like that?”

  He knew they would. But that he would never have enough explanations for them afterward.

  “Maybe, maybe.” He laughed. “I’ll go now. See you by and by.”

  “Oh, where are the presents for Miriam?”

  “In the boot, madam—thank you, madam. Sala gahle.”

  He drove off, thankful to escape a woman who asked so many questions, many of which left him looking tongue-tied. But he was indebted to the Widow Fourie for all the unwanted household effects, including an iron that had lost its cord, and for the children’s clothing she decided to get rid of as well. She knew how to give so it didn’t hurt to take from her. She seemed to do it without thinking. As she had dumped, without thinking, that very serviceable old paraffin heater, which was only a little rusty, on her new rubbish heap. He had not thought it wrong to stow that in the trunk also.

  A day that began like this could only get better.

  5

  STEVENSON HAD TO be in. A station wagon stood in the drive, and the curtains of the bay window round the side were closed. Yet Kramer looked disappointed.

  “Not the smart place I thought it would be,” he said, in no hurry to get out.

  The Chev Commando was parked under a flame tree on the opposite side of the street.

  “Well, like I say, he’s up against something with the other club,” Marais explained. “Got style and class.”

  Kramer, who had entered it on one occasion, in the hope of buying cigarettes after midnight, made a face. If a black ceiling and black walls and a black stage were considered stylish, so be it. And if Trekkersburg’s high society was class, he was no one to argue. But his own response to both had been one of acute depression, so instantaneous that he had gone a mile to get his Lucky Strikes off an obliging refugee near the station. Those buggers worked all hours under very bright lights.

  “Do we?” Marais ventured.

  “Uh-huh. Let’s go and drag him out,” Kramer said, turning off the engine. “This is only one of three places I’m supposed to be.”

  As they went up the flagstones to the front door, past an old gymkhana poster on the gate, he wondered how things were progressing in Peacevale. His senior sergeant was in charge there, but he wished Ludwig hadn’t sodded off on leave, because that was his territory. Same as Lawrence of Arabia, without the camels.

  He was still not concentrating when the door opened to Marais’s knock and a black housemaid peered round it. It would have seemed more natural to see the Widow Fourie.

  “Yer-ba-baw!” the maid exclaimed in fright, at once recognizing them for what they represented, probably from their haircuts.

  “Is your master in?” Marais asked. “You fetch him for us, che-che.”

  “Gladys? What are you up to? Oh, I see—you Mormons have been here pestering before!”

  “Never,” said Kramer, tugging Marais into the hall behind him and closing the door.

  “Police, CID,” the youngster got in hurriedly.

  “But what is this about?”

  Kramer did the stare that implied heavily his dislike of rhetoric.

  She was man enough to stare right back. Her hair color was amazing—perhaps a poodle parlor did it.

  Then the crimson lipstick—which claimed more lip than she owned—twisted into a mean streak.

  “You must be the uncouth one,” she said. “I’m sorry, but my husband’s sleeping. He does conduct his affairs at night, you know.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “And he has taken two tablets today because one hasn’t been enough lately.”

  “Since when? Sunday?”

  That pitted her poise. She moved back a little and folded her arms.

  “Am I entitled to know what this is about?”

  “You’d better ask hubby,” said Kramer. “He’s the man with all the answers.”

  The children attended the first shift at Kwela Village School and so returned home while Miriam was still trying to find enough space to put everything and to complete her account of the funeral. They were given their new clothes to try on, and told to stay in the other room. It was raining.

  “Yes, very sad,” Zondi agreed, “but it will mean a little more money for us.”

  Like most workingmen, he did his best to help others in the family who couldn’t get passes to leave the homeland and find employment.

  “There, you see? You are not listening me properly. Now that there is room for another at the kraal, the aunt of my sister’s brother’s wife will be coming to live there. Her sons all died in that mine accident.”

  “Were they bastards?”

  “Her husband has TB. They’ve locked him up with the lepers in the Transkei.”

  “I forgot. Hey, you know? Now Lucky is dead—shot down.”

  “No!”

  �
��The lieutenant is very angry with them. It was the same ones as before.”

  “Hau!They were stupid to shoot Lucky!”

  “That’s why I must go now,” said Zondi, slipping on the harness of his shoulder holster. “There is a man I must see. Is this all right with you?”

  Miriam nodded, holding a wasp-waist corset against the light and wondering at its potential.

  “You go, you go—since when does the man ask? And I need you out of the way; this house is so dirty I must do a big clean.” Zondi left in just the right frame of mind to jolt Yankee Boy Msomi out of his lethargy.

  After taking coffee with Mrs. Stevenson, Kramer knew they had a possible ally. She did not like Monty much more than they did. She almost implied the existence of their child was evidence enough to support a charge of indecent assault.

  How such partnerships began Kramer would never know, but this one seemed very near its end.

  “I met an American airman in England during the war,” she said, “and he used to talk about ‘slarbs.’ That’s what he is—a slob.”

  “Mind if I take more sugar?” asked Marais, having trouble with his cup.

  “Help yourself, dear. I’ll just pop out again and see if I can get him up.”

  Marais went purple as Kramer made a shocked grimace behind her back.

  “Jesus, have a heart, sir!” He winced.

  “Notice?” said Kramer. “She smells something—and she’s liking it. But she told us the story about Monday morning and everything as if she’d read about it in the papers. I don’t think she knows even as much as we do. If she hasn’t fetched him, then we’ll check out his movements on Sunday with her—okay?”

  Marais raised a thumb.

  Mrs. Stevenson came back in and half filled the settee.

  “Not as much as a moan,” she said. “Oh, yes, slobs. That slob in there must have done what he did on Sunday.”

  “Oh, ja?”

  “Took four of his blinking tablets and decided not to get up at all.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the truth. On Sunday, he came in after checking our sweet machine near the bus depot—we’ve got the concession, and if you don’t keep emptying it the vandals try their luck—and, calm as you please, went out like a light. Must have been about one. Twelve hours later, he’s still like that. And I’ve had a proper Sunday dinner cooked and everything. No good trying to wake him. He’s still in his pit at six and— would you believe it—he didn’t get up at all until Monday, when his lordship managed his usual time.”