The Artful Egg (36 page)

Zondi grinned. “It’s all right, we are already travelling in the right direction. Have you not noticed which road this is?”
Tims Shabalala brought the car to a halt at the entrance to Trekkersburg General Hospital and Colonel Muller got out, carrying with him the sheaf of very confusing notes he had made during his interview with the mental patient known for administrative purposes as Peerswammy Lal.

His temper was hardly improved by having to wait at the reception counter for someone to notice him, and he spoke very sharply to the woman who eventually came up and said, “What?”

But things improved a great deal almost immediately after that, when a very pretty young nurse arrived in no time at all to show him up to Lieutenant Jones’s ward on the sixth floor.

“Tell me, how is the Lieutenant this morning, miss?” Colonel Muller asked in the lift. “Has he got enough blood now?”

“Still a little pale, and not very cheerful, I’m afraid, Colonel.”

“But Jones is usually like that, hey? Maybe the doctors ought to know.”

“I’ll see that I tell them. By the way, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but Sister insists you’re not with him for too long. You seem to have an awful lot of things with you to show him.”

“Ach, no, he doesn’t have to go through all of it. I just want to try to find out exactly what he was hoping to get from a certain Peerswammy Lal. There could be a mix-up of suspects’ identities, you see, and perhaps I’m really supposed to be talking to a postman.”

The nurse looked up at the floor-indicator lights. “Almost there,” she said. “When you come out of the lift, you’ll find Lieutenant Jones in a side ward on the right, two doors down.”

“Ta, and thanks very much, hey?” said Colonel Muller, raising his hat gallantly to her as he backed out of the lift into a food-trolley.

“Oops, that was nearly your pipe broken!” she said, picking it up for him. “You won’t smoke in here, will you? Sister’s terribly strict about that.”

“No, I promise not to light it,” said Colonel Muller. “Many thanks again.…”

Then he went to the second door down, and peered in. Something like an Egyptian mummy turned to look at him from the bed. It made Colonel Muller think of a very bad film he had once seen, filled with screaming women and police inspectors he would not have given two cents for to have on his staff.

“Morning, Jacob. All right if I come in?”

Jones nodded.

“Well, it’s good to see you awake anyway,” said the Colonel, moving a chair over to his bedside. “And they tell me Mbopa was discharged from Peacevale Hospital late last night, which you will be glad to hear. What I have to query you on won’t take long. My, these are nice arum lilies, hey? Who sent them to you?”

“My ma, Colonel.”

“Are the chocolates from her, too?”

“My landlady, Colonel, but they say I can’t have any yet. Would you like one?”

Colonel Muller glanced at them, conscious of Mrs. Muller’s view of grown men who spoiled their figures with too much sugar, and shook his head. Then he noticed another present, just behind the chocolate box.

“Now, that’s very pretty! Who sent you the yellow rose?”

“Just arrived, before I woke up.”

“But who’s it from?”

“Can’t reach, Colonel.”

“Ach, then I’ll read the card for you—just a sec.”

There was a clatter, which left Colonel Muller’s new pipe snapped in two where the black plastic mouthpiece met the briar of the stem.

“Colonel, sir! What’s the matter? What does it say?”

The get-well card had only two words written inside it:

S
IMON AND
G
ARFUNKEL
were once again building a Bridge over Troubled Waters when Zondi nosed the car up behind the zebra-striped Land-Rover at Azalea Mansions. All that could be seen of Bruce Newbury was a pair of feet sticking out from under the grey Ford pick-up. Nobody else was about.

“Bang goes half our script,” murmured Kramer. “But tell me, Mickey, where did you get this crazy idea from?”

“Act II, scene ii, boss.”

“Ja, I bloody thought as much. You ready?”

“Almost, Lieutenant.” So saying, Zondi took a pin from his lapel, drew its point hard across the back of his left hand, and then slapped the scratch it had made. “One more minute, and it will look very very serious.…”

“Uh-huh, that’s a neat trick.”

“Long, long ago, I worked three months at the city hall. There was a big wrestling match every Friday night. The wrestlers would put a pin in their towel and cut their foreheads before the last round. The other man knew this, and would hit them there. Then the blood would come and the crowd would go mad.”

“It looks good already, Mickey—shall we go?”

They got out of the car and Kramer went over to the grey pick-up. “Bruce, we’re back, hey? Zondi’s cut his hand—Vicki got any Band-Aids?”

“Just hang on a minute.…” Bruce Newbury wriggled out from beneath the pick-up and squinted against the light at Zondi’s dripping fingers. “Er, ja, just go and ask her. She’s inside with Amanda, making lunch.”

“Go on, Mickey, knock at the door, man.”

Zondi left them and went over to do as ordered.

“How’d he manage that?” asked Bruce Newbury, getting to his feet and wiping grease off his hands on to his overalls. “Been in a fight?”

“No, just putting something in the boot of my car. It’s a surprise—can you help me with it?”

“If my hands are clean enough. Who’s it for?”

“Ach, for Theo, so I’d like to move it while he’s not out here. He’s in his flat?”

“Ja, finally got round to phoning undertakers.”

“Abbott does a really good job—I’ll tell him. It would be terrible if he got one that tried to put make-up all over his ma’s face. Did you ever see her? Like last Saturday, when she was here?”

“No, never set eyes on her. I’d cut my hand myself, actually, and was inside, in the bathroom, putting stuff on it.”

“Or in the papers?”

“Only one picture, when she was very young, and they all seem to use it.”

“Ja, well, anyway, she never used even lipstick herself, so it would make her seem terrible. Can you help us now?”

“Lead the way, man, lead the way.”

So Kramer led the way, and saw Zondi going into the Stilgoe flat just as he reached the rear of their police vehicle. He unlocked the boot, took a deep breath silently, and let the boot lid fly up.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Bruce Newbury, staring huge-eyed at what the boot contained. “How—?”

It was the head of Naomi Stride, curls and all, sculpted by
Kwakona Mtunsi and then given a quick coat of whitewash to change the colour of the clay to something approximating plaster of Paris.

“Why the gaping jaw, Bruce?” asked Kramer. “It wasn’t meant to be
that
kind of surprise, you know—just nice for Theo to put in his sitting-room.”

“Well, you hardly expect—”

“But you knew who it was, didn’t you? Even though she’s aged a lot since that old picture in the papers.”

“Now what are you trying to—?”

“Shhh, quiet a moment,” said Kramer.

The only sound was that of Simon and Garfunkel.

Glancing away at the radio-cassette player, Kramer added: “And I now know how you eavesdropped. That thing doesn’t just play tapes, does it? You can pretend to switch it off and instead press down the button for ‘record.’ ”

Then Bruce Newbury sprang a surprise of his own. “Act naturally,” he said, smiling over the barrel of a .357 magnum, wrapped in an oily rag. “Walk into our flat. Don’t try anything.”

“Hell, I thought I
was
acting naturally,” said Kramer, cursing himself inwardly for scoring points about the tape at just the wrong moment. “In fact, I was acting my arse off.”

Zondi was rinsing his hand under the cold tap in the Stilgoe woman’s bathroom while she fluffed out some cotton wool and found a bottle of antiseptic.

“Tell me,” she said, “what were you and Amanda talking about in the car earlier on?”

“She wanted to use the radio, madam, but I had to explain it wasn’t for games.”

“Oh, she gave me the impression you’d had quite a little chat. There’d been questions.”

Zondi smiled. “What child does not ask questions, madam?”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“No, madam?”

“You’re used to children, are you, Sergeant Zondi? You’ve got kids of your own?”

“I have twins and—”

“You’re good with them? With kids?”

“Vicki,” said Bruce Newbury, from out in the passage. “Could you ask Sergeant Zondi to step out here a moment? Tromp wants him.”

Zondi immediately turned off the tap and made for the door.

“I’m sorry, old son,” said Kramer, as he saw Zondi’s eyes widen. “I think I pushed making the king feel a prick about his conscience a little too hard.”

“Shut up!” barked Bruce Newbury. “You, boy, stand in front of your boss, and, Kramer, you stand right up close to him. Good. Either of you make a move, and I’ll only have to fire once—this magnum will go through both of you. Now back slowly down the passage.”

Kramer and Zondi obeyed. Vicki Stilgoe appeared at the bathroom door with a look of astonishment.

“Stay in there, Vicki, till I’m past you!” said her brother. “I don’t want you getting in the way of this.”

“But, Bruce, what the hell has happened?”

“Let’s get them into the lounge first. Go and close the front door, so Kennedy will think they’re interviewing us, and won’t want to get involved.”

Kramer saw her go down the passage and push the door closed. She did not notice that the latch on the Yale lock was up, which meant Kennedy would not need a key to get in.

“Just keep on backing, very slowly,” said the brother. “Where’s Amanda, Vic?”

“Playing in her room.”

“Lock it.”

Following them, Vicki Stilgoe turned the key in the last
door in the passage. Kramer, with Zondi bumping against him, moved backwards into the living-room and onto a green rug. His mind was curiously intent on inconsequential detail. He noticed a carved African figure, just like the one in Afro Arts’s window, and a large colour photograph of Amanda in a gilt-edged frame. He stepped off the rug and back onto the parquet flooring, then felt the window-sill in the small of his back and heard the clatter of the closed Venetian blinds. The room was pleasantly cool and dim.

“Stop exactly where you are,” ordered Bruce Newbury. “Vicki, shut the door.” He shook the oily cloth off the magnum.

“But Bruce,” began Vicki Stilgoe, closing the door.

“They’d come for us.”

“How do you know that? Surely we—”

“The tape-recorder, the lot. He tricked—he had a head in the car.”

“A
head?
Whose head?”

“That terr-loving bitch’s.”

“Jesus, I just don’t believe this!”

“No, a model, some sort of bust. But it looked so real I—”

“You fool!”

“Why call Stride that?” asked Kramer. “A ‘terr-loving’—”

“Read the fuckin’ book!” snarled Bruce Newbury.

“What book?”

“Hers,
Winter Sun
, you ignorant Boer bastard.”

“He can’t; it’s banned here,” said Vicki Stilgoe with a short laugh.

“Should be banned every-fuckin’-where. Now, you, kaffir, take your gun out by the grip, using thumb and one finger only.”

“Hau, I have no gun, boss! I am only a Bantu and we—”

“Don’t try to bullshit my brother, nigger! We know you’ve got a gun; the stupid bastard behind you blabbed that last night!”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re all nerves today, and put a magnum in your tool kit?” said Kramer. “You’re right; I should’ve—”

“Then, shut it now, kaffir-lover! And you, boy, you’d better do what I say bloody quickly!”

Zondi slipped his hand inside his jacket, withdrew his Walther PPK and held it out, dangling in front of him.

“Now chuck it on the floor at my feet.”

Zondi obeyed, and Bruce Newbury kicked it under the sofa without taking his eyes off them for an instant.

“Hell, I thought I’d forgotten something when I was dressing this morning,” said Kramer, with a tut-tut. “Would you believe I—?”

“Cut the jokes, you big ape. You do the same, but step sideways half a pace so I can watch.”

Kramer took out his Walther PPK, and tossed it at the man’s feet. It was also kicked under the sofa.

“Now what happens, Bruce?” asked his sister.

“We’ll have to go, that’s all. The kaffir we can dispense with, and his boss can drive us in his own car. It’ll be good cover.”

“That’s too risky. Kill them both and—”

“No, it’s our best chance. If Kennedy sees us leaving, we can say we’re—”

“But, Bruce, this bastard’s not to be trusted! Not even with a magnum in his back.”

“I know what I’m doing, Vicki, so shut up, OK?”

The man was lying, thought Kramer. His best chance of escape
was
to kill both police officers, in the quick, silent way in which he’d been trained.

“Boy,” said Bruce Newbury, “put your hands in your pants pockets, right in deep.”

While Zondi did so, Vicki Stilgoe said: “Shit, I’ve just realised something! We should have guessed, Bruce.”

“What?”

“Things were going wrong. Kramer was in the kitchen
nearly half an hour this morning with Theo, but Theo wouldn’t say afterwards what it’d been about. That was the first time he hadn’t told me everything.”

“So?” Bruce Newbury shrugged. “Too late now. Here, come round this side of me and take my gun, so it never stops pointing at kaffir-lover there. Boy, you better not try anything, either. Start moving to the right.”

Vicki Stilgoe took over the magnum, and her brother moved a pace from her side, his eyes now fixed on Zondi.

“Those things have a hell of a kick,” remarked Kramer, nodding at the gun.

“Why do you think it’s aimed at—?”

“Ach, penis envy, lady,” said Kramer.

But his eyes were on Bruce Newbury, as the man moved slowly towards Zondi. “Boy,” said Newbury, “I want you to take a rest, sit down on that couch. Sit well back and make yourself comfortable.”

Or, in other words, thought Kramer, get off your feet so you won’t stand a snowball’s hope in hell of dodging what comes next. A momentary distraction was essential now, whatever the cost.