The Song Dog (17 page)

“All right if I have another?”

“It’s there to be drunk.”

“So am I,” said Kramer.

She sat silently with him, sorting the children’s freshly laundered clothes into four neat piles on the tabletop, while he sank that first tumblerful. His gaze kept returning to her and especially to that wide, generous mouth with its bracketing of laughter lines.

“If you’re staring at these spots,” she said, “it’s my time of the month, that’s all. You don’t have to be so blatant about it.”

Kramer dug out a Lucky. “Ach, no!” he said. “I was thinking of something else entirely: Short Arse.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Hell, not you, hey? Just some kaffir.”

“What kaffir?”

So he told her, speaking freely, too freely maybe, but he’d hardly eaten all day and the brandy was coursing strong through his veins. He let slip that he had a hunch about this kaffir that made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up, a sort of destiny thing.

“Oh,” she said, and became silent again.

“Don’t just sit there—talk!” he said. “Keep on talking. Tell me how bloody stupid I’m being!”

“I can’t,” she said. “The day that Pik got killed, he kissed me good-bye at the door, same as usual, then he came back and kissed me and the kids again, a second time. There seemed to be no reason.”

They were both quiet after that, while the kitchen clock kept its ponderous loud ticking.

“This native,” said the Widow Fourie, abruptly brisk and businesslike, pouring herself a small tot of brandy. “You’ll just have to look for him, find him, see for yourself how plain and ordinary he is, and put an end to—”

“Look for him?” echoed Kramer. “What the hell else do you think Hans and me have been doing half the night?”

“You didn’t tell me that. How am I supposed to know?”

“We searched everywhere, high and low. Gone! Vanished, just like that …”

The Widow Fourie downed her brandy in one, grimacing at the taste, then placed the glass very carefully on the tabletop. “You say,” she said, “that he’s probably changed by now into the suit of clothes he stole from the kitchen boy at Fynn’s Creek. Were you able to give people a good description of them?”

“Oh, ja,” said Kramer. “Excellent.”

“You’re sure?”

“Cassius got it directly off the kitchen boy. One black jacket, black pants with shiny seat, and a white shirt that has a patch on the left shoulder made out of the shirttail. A belt that’s black on the outside, grey on the inside, and the buckle has a five-pointed star on it, real trading store. Also, a pair of size eleven, black, imitation lace-up shoes. Thick soles with a crisscross pattern, a nick in the left toe cap from a falling penknife, and a blemish on the right shoe that’s an area of roughness in the shape of a half-moon. Oh, and the shoes hadn’t been dyed evenly: the left one had a bit of purple in the black, when you held it to the light”

“Yirra,” said the Widow Fourie, “that really is a description!
The cook boy told you all that? He must’ve been in love with those blessed shoes of his!”

Kramer nodded. “My reaction was the same,” he said. “Only Cassius pointed out that there are over three hundred words in Zulu you can use to describe the different colors of a cow. On top of which, there are even more words for every kind of horn, hoof, et cetera. I think what he meant was, when a coon around here is too poor to own any cattle, then a shoe—even one that’s not real hide—just has to do, hey?”

“Hmmmmm,” said the Widow Fourie. “So this native hasn’t been seen since—can’t he just have gone? Y’know, back to wherever you think you first saw him?”

“Ja, outside the magistrate’s court,” muttered Kramer, then realized what he had just said.

And he was back in Trekkersburg, on his very first morning, in the alley beside the courthouse, which had been thronged so solid with worried kaffir wives and their families that you had to force your way through them. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd had parted of its own volition, and through it had come a coon version of Frank Sinatra making with the jaunty walk. The snap-brim hat, padded shoulders, and zootsuit larded with glinting thread were all secondhand ideas from a secondhand shop. Yet with them went the feeling that here was an original, even if someone, somewhere else, had thought it all up before. The man walked that way because he thought that way, and the crowd had sensed this—just as it had sensed that something special, perhaps even deadly, walked with him.

“Tromp?” said the Widow Fourie, sounding very concerned. “Trompie, are you all right?”

“Ach, fine!” he said, blinking, reaching for more brandy. “You think the kaffir’s gone back? Why the bloody change of clothes if he was going to do that? No, my feeling is that he’s still around, lying low, still keeping a watch on what we’re—”

“But why?” asked the Widow Fourie. “That’s the part I don’t get. I can’t see how a native could possibly have been mixed up in—”

“Then I’ll have to just bloody ask him!” said Kramer testily, needing time to think, feeling the pressure. “Find a way to get my cuffs on him, and ask him lots of things—ask the two-faced bastard what the hell’s going on here!”

“I know a way,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“I know a way of catching him, if he’s still in the area,” said the Widow Fourie. “It’s what my Uncle Koos did, that time he had all the trouble with the leopard. You know what sly, cunning creatures leopards are, hiding away so you never see them—leaving you just to find another of your flock has been taken in the morning? Well, Uncle Koos knew the leopard was out there somewhere, hiding in the foothills, and so he just got a goat and—”

“Ja, ja, set a trap!” said Kramer, nodding.

He did not sleep much after that. Every time his eyes closed, and his mind lost its grip on the day, slipping into strange half-dreams, mostly seascapes, it took only the slightest sound to jolt him wide awake again. Then he would lie staring at the ceiling, trying to grasp the actual implications of Short Arse and Zoot Suit being one and the same bastard, until eventually his eyelids drifted shut once more, restarting the cycle.

“Can Dingaan have your fat, please?” Piet asked him at the breakfast table.

“I’d sooner he had my head,” said Kramer, waving aside the milk that the maid had been about to add to his coffee. “Ja, of course he can—he can have the whole of my bacon, if he likes. I’m not in the mood for it.”

“Ja, my ma warned me,” said Piet, forking the bacon over onto his bread plate.

“Warned you about what?”

“She said you’d probably be like a bull who had backed into a big cactus this morning.”

“That ma of yours …”

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” said Piet. “Sometimes I think Fanie Kritzinger’s got a better one, but not always.”

“Oh, ja? Any view on his pa, then?”

“He’s dead. Kicked the bucket. Everyone knows that.”

“Who told you, hey?”

“I don’t know—one of the kids, down by the river.”

“Was his pa a nice man?”

Piet shrugged.

“Come on,” said Kramer. “What was he like?”

“He wasn’t like that other policeman who used to come and see my ma a lot, Herman’s uncle. He was like … well, a bit like you, I suppose, and they didn’t let
him
have a uniform either.”

Kramer wasn’t sure why, but as he drove to Jafini police station shortly before nine, he kept thinking about that little conversation.

Then he became preoccupied by other things, and in particular by the trap he would set that day for Short Arse. Try as he might, he had not been able to improve on the trick that the Widow Fourie’s uncle had played on the leopard, and had finally decided there was probably no need to. Just as the leopard had been attracted by the sheepfold, Short Arse had his own known center of interest: the Fynn’s Creek murder scene. Granted, now that all the activity had died down there, most of its appeal must have gone, too, but some form of tethered goat could soon change this.

“Goat, goat, goat …” Kramer murmured, trying to think of something simple.

Simplest of all would be to renew police activity at Fynn’s Creek and then make a mystery of what exactly they were up
to. But how? Now that Field Cornet Dorf had been over the site with such care, it was difficult to see what there was left to act as a fresh focus of attention. Hell, the whole place had been scrutinized and every last morsel of possible evidence had—no, wait! There
was
still one part of the scene as yet unexamined: the hut of Moses the cook boy, where Short Arse himself had come calling!

“Perfect,” said Kramer.

Terblanche had on his harassed look. “Morning, Tromp!” he said, scraping a splash of maize porridge from his tie. “Goodness, what a start to the day …”

“You should try eating slower, Hans.”

“No, no, not this! I’ve just had the station commander at Nkosala on the phone, reminding me I’ve got to be in court there at ten in the middle of all else! And if I don’t find my statement soon to memorize, I won’t know what to say! I did try for an adjournment on account of assisting you in this matter, but—”

“That’s fine, man! I’ll see you after. I just need to borrow one of your blokes and a boy.”

“Take Malan—I prefer Sarel to be in charge of the station whenever I’m away—and any Bantu that’s going. What’s this in aid of?”

“To help me find Short Arse.”

“Ach, I’m sorry, of course! Just shows what a muddle I’m getting myself into. Let’s hope today our luck changes, hey?”

“Man, I know it will.”

“How can you be so sure, Tromp?”

Kramer almost told him about the trap, then realized something just in the nick of time. Above all, the renewal of activity at Fynn’s Creek had to appear wholly authentic in order for his plan to work, but if transparent rustics like the station commander and his little gang of half-wits were allowed to know
what was really going on, they’d be very unlikely to play their roles convincingly enough to fool a blind man tied up in a sack with carrots stuck in his ears.

“Let that be my surprise, Hans,” he said, straightening the station commander’s tie for him and tucking it in neatly.

K
RAMER LIKED IT
when things began to happen quickly. Malan, on the other hand, looked as though he’d prefer things to be happening very, very slowly and exceedingly gently.

So dreadful was his hangover after the previous evening’s junketings with Field Cornet Dorf at the Royal Hotel, Nkosala, that, pale and shaky, with his rugby socks down around his ankles, he accepted his orders without question for once, and went in search of One Ear, practically tiptoeing from the station commander’s office.

“That must have been some meal you had at the Royal with Sybrand,” said Kramer, as they headed for Fynn’s Creek with the Bantu detective One Ear riding in the cage on the back. “And he looks such a quiet type.”

Malan grunted. “Only until his third beer, Lieutenant. He’s been under a big strain lately.”

“How many beers did he have?”

“Er, eight or nine, same as me, and three brandies, Lieutenant.”

“Uh-huh. Much broken furniture on the bill?”

“Hell, no, Lieutenant! None, hey?”

“Pity,” said Kramer, thinking of the Colonel.

“Lieutenant,” Malan began afresh, clearing his throat, “you must forgive me if this sounds a stupid question, but why exactly are we going down to the beach again?”

“I told you: to take a look at the cook boy’s hut.”

“Ja, I thought so, only Sarel said he can’t see what possible relevance—”

“Suzman? Who asked him to stick his nose into this?”

“Er, it was just I was explaining to him where I was going today and he—”

“Uniform should learn to mind its own business,” said Kramer. “Just as CID should learn to keep its trap shut!—you hear? I don’t like having my movements being debated by all and sundry.”

“Sir, I only—”

“Then don’t,” said Kramer.

It was wild, down at Fynn’s Creek. A high wind, slanting in off the whitecapped ocean, plumed the tops of the sand dunes, filling the air with fine, stinging sand. The debris from the explosion flapped and skidded, slithered, tore apart the neat grid of thatching string set up by Field Cornet Dorf, and the door of the hut belonging to Moses the cook boy was, not unnaturally, shut tight.

Kramer banged on it with his fist. “Moses, you in there, hey?” he called out, his words whipped away by the wind.

The cook boy poked his head out an instant later and greeted him effusively.

“He offers his most humble greetings to the Great Bull Elephant, sir,” One Ear translated, “and says—”

“Tell him less of the bull and more of the just-listen,” said Kramer. “Tell him his hut could be very important to the case and it has to be thoroughly investigated forthwith.”

“Hau, hau, hau!”
responded Moses, immensely flattered.

Kramer then entered the hut and took a good look round. There was nothing to see, really, other than an iron divan, a twist of threadbare bedding, a mine boy’s cheap tin trunk, some square biscuit tins, a shaving mirror, a candlestick and
candle, a walking stick, a few cooking utensils, and a length of string, fixed between the rafters, from which dangled three wire coat hangers used for servant-boy canvas shorts and tunics. It bothered him there might be bedbugs running loose, ready to launch a major offensive, but nonetheless he closed the door firmly behind him and resolved to stand there in semidarkness, pretending some form of intensive search, for the next twenty minutes.

He lasted five, but given the buffeting effects of the weather outside, he calculated it would have seemed a lot longer than that for the others, and opened up again.

“Is that it, Lieutenant—you’ve finished at last?” asked Malan, who had got sand in one eye and was poking at it with a corner of his handkerchief. “Man, this wind is—”

“Ask Moses for me,” Kramer said to One Ear, “where he kept the clothes that were stolen. Were they in his trunk?”

“Yebo, nkosi gakulu!”
replied Moses, nodding vigorously.

“Ja, I thought as much. Well, that might as well stay here and be fingerprinted with the rest of the stuff. Tin like that can take a good palm impression when the lid is being closed again. Oh, ja, and ask him if the trunk is usually kept there, under his bed. The intruder must have pulled it out?”