The Artful Egg

by James McClure

  “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.”
<
br />   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.

  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:

  “Timol was sitting quietly on a chair. Security police were with him. At one stage two of them walked out of the room. Then Timol suddenly jumped up and headed for the door. One security policeman jumped up and ran to the door and stopped him. But the Indian then stormed towards the window and jumped through it. No one frightened or touched him. The post-mortem will show this.”

  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.

  “We, who know the Communists, know that when they plan to use violence they make their people swear an oath to commit suicide rather than mention the names of their comrades. They are taught to jump out before they are interrogated.

  To which the deputy security chief had added:

  “We threaten no one and assault no one, and therefore we assume no one would want to escape from the tenth floor. It was an ordinary enquiry. Bars are not needed. Only senior officers handle these situations. They are not children and they remain within their rights and prescribed duties.”

  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—”