The Artful Egg (37 page)

Kramer took a step forward, saying, “Now, listen—”

“
Stop
,” hissed Vicki Stilgoe, and her brother turned, poised.

“The word is ‘freeze,’ hey? I only wanted to—”

“
Not one more move
or you get it. Hurry, Bruce!”

Her brother sprang at Zondi. The slashing chop to the throat should have been fatal, but Zondi’s razor-edged knife met the force of the blow and took two of the man’s fingers off. He screamed and spun round, whipping blood across his sister’s face, and her first shot, fired almost blind as Zondi dived for the floor, went into Newbury’s shoulder, blasting bone over Amanda’s picture. Kramer dived, too, grabbing the rug and giving it a violent heave. She lost her footing and fell over backwards, her second shot going into the ceiling, just as her reeling brother crashed down across her legs. Kramer stamped his foot
on her right wrist, and Zondi scrambled across the floor, his suit a terrible mess, to disarm her.

“What in God’s name—?” gasped Theo Kennedy as he charged into the room and stopped with a jerk, his voice almost inaudible to half-deafened ears against the background of a child screaming. “Vicki? This is unbelievable!”

“Ach,” said Kramer, opting for the gentlest way he could think of putting the poor sod in the picture, “we were just demonstrating to your ex-girlfriend here that Zondi and me don’t always shoot people.”

The news of the arrests in the Stride case reached Colonel Muller while he was taking a break from interrogating the alleged Peerswammy Lal to go through his morning’s mail. One item had left him very badly shaken.

It was an old newspaper cutting that came in a brown envelope, and it had no covering letter. It dealt with the alleged suicide in Johannesburg of an Indian political detainee, Ahmed Timol, aged thirty.

Colonel Muller read again what the CID chief had told
Rapport:

And then Colonel Muller skipped to the comments made by the deputy chief of the security police, who had explained there were no bars on the tenth-floor window as nobody could break in.

To which the deputy security chief had added:

Strydom, reading over Colonel Muller’s shoulder, remarked: “Well, I’m not so sure I understand why you’re in such a state, Hans. What I’d come in to tell you is really far more—”

“But, Doc, can’t you see the connection with Zuidmeyer?”

“Zuidmeyer never had anything to do with the Timol affair. If you look at the date on that, you’ll realise that he was—”

“Ach, don’t start being pedantic, man! Isn’t the tenth floor enough of a common denominator?”

“Ja, but—”

“But nothing, man! How is it that, out of the blue, I get sent this thing? What does it mean? Does it mean someone has got wise to the Zuidmeyer case?”

Strydom looked at his watch. “It could do, I suppose,” he said, “although I’ve certainly said nothing about it to anyone, and I can’t imagine who else could have done.”

“What about Van Rensburg?”

“Huh, he’s got his mind on other matters! I’ve just had to talk him out of getting in an exorcist—or, rather, some witchdoctor Nxumalo recommended. Did you hear about Piet Baksteen’s not-so-funny joke he played on him?”

“God in Heaven, jokes at a time like this? I must get hold of Tromp and tell him to—”

“That’s what I came about, Colonel. Tell Tromp that I’ve had that second opinion on Mrs. Zuidmeyer’s bruises, and it seems I was right: those marks she had must have been made by Zuidmeyer trying to revive her.”

“So the son was lying?” said Colonel Muller, reaching out for his phone as it began ringing. “Ja, Colonel Muller here. Tromp? And what have you been doing all morning, may I ask? I’ve got—
What was that?
”

And, for the time being, he forgot all about the mystery of the old newspaper cutting. Never, what with
Time
and
Newsweek
and
Der Spiegel
, not to mention all the television crews, had he ever had a morning quite like it. On top of which, in a bid to regain her freedom, and carry on caring for Amanda, Vicki Stilgoe declared she was prepared to turn State’s Evidence against her brother, Bruce Newbury, and tell the police anything they wanted to know.

Very slowly, so gradually it was impossible to see as it happened, the sun moved a barred pattern across the floor of the room in which Ramjut Pillay had sat waiting since long before lunchtime to be dragged away in chains, thrown in a deep, dark dungeon, there to be left to do true penance for his many sins.

“Don’t you like carrot soup?” asked the black sergeant, who sat watching over him and tuning a guitar. “It must be almost cold now.”

“Bring only bread and water to Ramjut Pillay, kind jailer,” he said with a quavering voice, savouring his guilt to the utmost as the Mahatma must have rejoiced in his own state of holy enlightenment.

Guilt, Ramjut Pillay had discovered, was an attitude of mind he could be really jolly good at, and the more he allowed himself to feel guilty, the greater became his awareness of
his true self. Already, another side to him had become faint and feeble in its attempts to be heard above the beating of his breast.

“Then, I will have it,” said the black sergeant, reaching for the tin mug.

I am guilty, thought Ramjut Pillay, of making this poor man a more wretched prisoner behind these bars than I am, for if it were not for me, then he could leave the room and have the carrot soup heated up for him.

“Yergh,” said the black sergeant, spitting the carrot soup back into the mug. “There is a fly in it! Why didn’t you tell me, you cunning bastard?”

“I am guilty of not knowing!” cried out Ramjut Pillay, tearing a rent in a little more of his clothing. “I am guilty, too, of the death of that unfortunate insect, which could not have been drowning if I had drunk my carrot soup! Strike me, beating me about the head, grind my bones beneath your lovely feet!”

But the black sergeant laughed and said: “Everyone feels guilty in a police station, which is good, but you mustn’t worry about a fly—maybe it had a heart attack.”

Disconcerted, Ramjut looked at him.

“No, what you should worry about,” the black sergeant continued, “is when Lieutenant Kramer sends for you. But try to be quiet now, for there was a big arrest this morning, and I must compose my song about it.” And he picked up his guitar.

But before he could pluck the first note the door crashed open and there stood a smiling Sergeant Zondi with bloodstains on his shirt.

I’m off
, said another side to Ramjut Pillay.

Toying with the old newspaper cutting on his desk, and noting it had traces of Cow Gum on the back, Kramer shook the receiver and held it to his ear again. “That’s better; this phone
takes a bit of a hammering. Now, what was that you were saying, Major Zuidmeyer?”

“I was confirming that Ahmed Timol was never in my charge—it was after my time anyway. Why do you ask?”

“Ach, the Colonel and I were just talking about what a tough deal you had, and now the tragedy of your wife on top of it, and the name was mentioned, that’s all.”

There was silence.

“Major, are you still there?”

“Last night—”

“Ja?”

“Well, I’ll admit I’d had a few. Started looking through our old snapshot albums, remembering the good days with Marie, when we were both young and stationed out in the bushveld. The simple life, a few faction fights, cattle theft; now and again, a stabbing, some arson—haystacks and the like. Then my scrapbooks, because I got quite a few nice little write-ups from the courts when I first joined the CID. Marie was the one who had time to keep it up, and I noticed there were a few I’d personally not have included. Two were about this same Ahmed Timol, and there was a gap on that page where another cutting had been pulled out. Whether or not it pertained to Timol, I can’t say, but it struck me as strange the name should come up again in conversation like this.”

“I didn’t realise you’d done rural work,” said Kramer, beckoning to Zondi, who had just appeared in the doorway with a cowering little Indian. Then he covered the receiver’s mouthpiece with a hand, and added: “I won’t be long, Mickey. Put the kettle on for tea.”

“Oh, I was on a horse for four years,” said Zuidmeyer. “The best kind of policing there is for a youngster.”

“Which reminds me, is Jannie home yet, sir?”

“He came back last night at about eleven. We didn’t talk, but I respect that. He needs time to adjust.”

“And today?”

“Funnily enough, he’s just phoned me. He wants me to go down to some lawyer’s office at four—Grant & Boyd-Smith, do you know where that is?”

“Grant & Boyd-Smith? No, Major.”

“Oh, well, I can find out from the phone-book. He says his ma left her will with them, although it’s news to me she had one. With me working all hours, they became very close over the years, of course, and so—”

“Major, I’m sorry to interrupt, hey? But the Colonel’s just come in and wants me to interview this prisoner in the Stride case.”

“Ja, I heard about the arrests on the radio, a newsflash. That was excellent work, young man. But I won’t keep you, so I’ll say bye for now.”

“Bye, Major.”

“Boss?” asked Zondi, as soon as the receiver was replaced. “Was the cutting from the son?”

Kramer nodded. “I’m pretty sure it must’ve been, Mickey. He was probably too young when all that was going on to know his pa had already left Security by the time of the Timol business. But, as for what he thinks he’ll gain from giving the Colonel a seizure this morning, don’t ask me.” Then, turning to the prisoner, he said: “Well, Ramjut, what are we going to do with you, hey?”

The little Indian raised his handcuffed wrists in front of his smudgy round glasses, bent his bandy legs at the knee, and would have fallen prostrate before Kramer, had not Zondi pulled him upright again.

“Behave,” said Zondi. “This is not the temple.”

“O Mighty and Vengeful Lieutenant, do anything with me that you will! Great are my sinnings against postages and against persons, and I am never denying that I am most guilty!”

“Too right you are, if only a quarter of what you say here is true,” said Kramer, tapping Colonel Muller’s notes. “But all
that really interests me, Ramjut, is whether this blue letter is hidden in a hole under a tree near your house.”

“True, true, in a plastic bag as exhibit numbering five!”

“Oh ja, so the white ants won’t have got it? That was smart of you.”

“It was?” said Ramjut Pillay.

“While you were fetching him up, Mickey,” Kramer said to Zondi, “I had the Colonel on the line. Vicki Stilgoe’s explaining the lot now—including this blue letter. She says she could never understand why we hadn’t acted on it, because it clearly made it seem as though a Jewish bloke at the varsity could have been Ma Stride’s killer.”

“But he wasn’t, boss, so how did she—?”

“Ach, man, she wasn’t stupid. She planned it so we’d find out the bloke was innocent and then we’d go on to try to find out who’d tried to frame him.”

“On and on and on, boss?”

“That’s right, until we got sick of it and gave up, but always keeping us thinking it had to be someone intellectual Naomi Stride’d put in one of her books.”

“Hau, a good plan, boss!”

“Which would have worked perfectly, maybe, if our four-eyed friend here hadn’t buggered off with it. Oh, and by the way, you know the other blue letters before it? Which she used to build up the idea of a series, if it went the way she planned?”

“The ones which upset Mrs. Stride so she wouldn’t show them to her friends? Were they threats?”

Kramer couldn’t help a smile. “No, just criticisms of her writing, really putting the knife in where it hurt. So it wouldn’t have mattered if she
had
shown them to her friends—only, as Stilgoe expected, she—” The telephone rang. “Ja, Kramer here. OK, Colonel, I’ll be along in two minutes.”

“
Two minutes
will be deciding the fate of Ramjut Pillay?” the little Indian said, going again at the knees.

“One minute,” said Kramer. “Take his cuffs off, Mickey.”

“But O Mighty—”

“Listen, Pillay, it could be we owe you a favour, hey? But, more important than that, do you realise how much bloody paperwork it’s going to take to bring a case against you for withholding this evidence? Statements from the Railway Police, the loony-bin, doctors, nurses, your work colleagues, God knows who else? Which is to say nothing of all the charges the Post Office will want us to add on? So what I suggest is this. That we get that stuff back from under the tree, and we’ll change your story to read that you gave it to Sergeant Zondi on Tuesday when he first interviewed you in Jan Smuts Close. Have you got that?”

“Only, if you were possessing these documents, sir, then—”

“What difference does that make? We weren’t fooled by the blue letter, that’s all, which is why we didn’t follow up on it. Do you understand now? Can you get that guilty look off your face?”

“There it goes, by jingo!” whooped Ramjut Pillay.

Vicki Stilgoe was watching Colonel Muller’s every move. It was the least of the things which made him uncomfortable about having her in his office. Never, in all his days, had he encountered a woman so cold, so controlled, so totally without any discernible conscience.