“Hey?”
Zondi stepped forward and bent down to examine the area under the branch.
“You won’t find it there, boy,” Nielsen said. “I had a good quiz over the whole area when I found the first piece. That’s why I was checking on the time the ants took to move such a weight.”
“You think they were coming back for more this time?”
“It’s a possibility. Shall we explore a little?”
Zondi, who was standing behind Nielsen, grinned heartlessly. He was thoroughly enjoying such an uncharacteristic display of restraint on Kramer’s part. He knew it hurt.
“Why not?” Kramer replied, shrugging. He would deal with Zondi later.
“What we’re after is their nest,” Nielsen explained confidentially. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to find as they try to travel in a straight line when they’re lugging a load. Now this is the way they were heading…”
Kramer followed him into the brambles a short distance.
“And here’s a nest of them! Boy, bring me my bag, will you?”
Zondi slouched up with the haversack. Nielsen took from it a small trowel and began to dig. Furious ants poured out of the ground and pumped formic acid into anything soft. It was all very uncomfortable-yet obviously unscientific, let alone unmanly, to shift your position.
Finally, Nielsen held up a lump of earth resembling a gritty bath sponge.
“Their food store,” he said, breaking it open gently. Out of the holes dropped a weblike cocoon. Nielsen peeled off the white covering.
“And here we have the rest of the caterpillar-the two halves match up precisely.”
“What’s the stuff around it?”
“The ants’ way of preserving it for later.”
“I see.”
Nielsen shook his head solemnly.
“I’m not sure you do. Wrapping up their bits and pieces takes quite some time. Also, these ants never forage after dark. Therefore, according to my calculations, they must have got hold of it yesterday morning.”
“Morning?”
“No later than lunchtime, I’m afraid.”
The implication sank into Kramer like a depth charge. At first nothing happened as it moved down through the warm superficialities of a sunny day and fairly companionable intercourse. Then it entered the colder layers of his mind where, finding its critical level, it exploded-buckling the plates of a watertight assumption and bringing confusion to the surface.
“But-but that means the killer was here long before… It was…”
“Premeditated.”
“Right!” Zondi stepped in a pace. There was not a sound in the forest. No wind. Silence.
“I thought you said this species of murderer acted spontaneously,” Nielsen queried.
“I did.”
“And that, particularly with child victims, it was a case of their meeting up with a stranger quite by chance?”
“Yes.”
“Yet the boy must have arranged to be here last night, in this one glade out of hundreds like it all around. How else could the murderer have known where to leave the sickle handy?”
Kramer was ordering his own thoughts.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” he said at last, sitting down on a boulder. Nielsen lit the cigarette for him.
“Never mind, you’re not the only one to have a pet theory upset by the facts, Lieutenant. They’ve cost me my doctorate once already.”
“Hey? I meant wrong in applying the bloody thing in the first place.”
“But the mutilations! No ordinary murderer goes in for that sort of thing, surely.”
The cigarette was handed over for Zondi to take a light. Kramer retrieved it before replying.
“Unless, of course, he’s a very smart cookie. How’s that for a theory? The facts fit it all right.”
“Good God!”
Nielsen sat down, too, on the other rock.
“Are you actually suggesting that whoever’s involved is not necessarily a pervert?”
“I’m sure of it.”
This intuitive leap was too much for strictly disciplined thought processes: it plainly annoyed Nielsen.
“Oh, come on. Wouldn’t you expect to have found at least some sign of squeamishness? I might be driven to kill, but I doubt if I could go in for-you know, that sort of disgusting behavior.”
“What sort? All he did was strangle the kid and stab him. Stabbing is stabbing, whatever part you do it in. He just got the effect he was after by going for the crotch-and there are a lot more disgusting things he could have done than that, man.”
“You’re forgetting the legs, aren’t you? I thought it looked like a frenzied attack.”
“That was before, while we were seeing what we thought we saw. Now I’d say the lack of any proper pattern in the wounds shows he could have tried to do it with his head turned away.”
“Because he was squeamish? Well, maybe.”
“There’s the time factor as well, remember. The body was carefully positioned and he made quite sure nothing incriminating was left behind. You can’t tell me he was in such a hurry that he had to skip a part of his plans-there is no evidence of any sexual interference, besides the wounds.”
“Then the whole thing’s a fake!”
“Except for the fact, Mr. Nielsen, that the victim is genuinely dead.”
Nielsen stared at Kramer and Kramer stared at Zondi and Zondi looked from one to the other.
Sex had been such an acceptable motive for child murder-yet any alternative was bound to prove twice as engaging.
“You’re right,” said Kramer, “it is a lovely morning.”
5
Every silver lining has its cloud. Kramer forgot that in his new-found enthusiasm. He picked up a pair of winter vests, bust size forty-four, and edged around to the cash register.
“A present for my ma,” he said loudly.
“I’m sure she’ll like them, sir,” replied the Widow Fourie, opening a hairclip with her pearly front teeth and sliding it in above one ear.
Kramer glanced around for the supervisor and then leaned forward.
“I’ve got some news for you,” he whispered. “The boy was murdered after all-really murdered, I mean. Not sexually.”
“Oh, yes? That’ll be one rand sixty-four cents.”
The Widow rang up the sale and held out a hand for the money.
“ Ach, listen! There’s no reason for you to be frightened now. It’s all straightforward. Tomlinson needn’t take the kids in his car anymore. I’ll come round to the flat tonight and explain properly. I know that you-”
“One sixty-four, sir.”
“But we found out this morning-”
“That it wasn’t sexual?”
“Not exactly…”
“Well!”
“Well what?”
“Nothing’s changed, has it?”
“Bloody hell!”
“Now the super’s coming. If you get me into trouble, boy, that’s you finished. Pay up.”
“You know sodding well I haven’t got a mother!” he protested.
The supervisor pounced, taking him from behind.
“Is the customer not entirely satisfied with his purchase?” she inquired menacingly.
Kramer turned with a smile the supervisor closed like a zip. In the manager’s office at Woolworth’s, Miss Hawkins was a gawky giantess who kept a moist eye on underwear, soft goods, and haberdashery-a decent enough old soul, given to overefficiency. But shoplifters, shopgirls, and swains recognized a dangerously repressed morbido when they saw one. Some even trembled.
“They’re lovely vests,” Kramer said. “No trouble at all.”
Miss Hawkins breathed heavily.
“I was just saying to the assistant that I thought she’d undercharged me,” he added, looking to the Widow Fourie for support. He got none.
“Is that the correct figure, Fourie?”
“Yes, Miss Hawkins.”
Kramer handed over two rand note
s. His change was returned without so much as a formal smile. The bag was dumped before him. The Widow Fourie moved away to serve a bare-breasted Zulu matron in a mud headdress.
This was hardly the way to treat a gentleman.
“Just a minute!” Kramer called out.
The Widow Fourie somehow caught the bag of vests he tossed over to her. She was bewildered.
“On second thoughts, they’d better be for you, popsy, seeing you’re going to be all alone these cold nights.”
Miss Hawkins indulgently let him pass unimpeded.
The Swanepoel family lived behind the station at one end of town. This did not, however, place them on the wrong side of the tracks. Far from it, they were part of a most influential community. Proof of this was to be found in records of Trekkersburg’s recent history: before the vast railway township was abruptly (some said illogically) transferred there from the loyalist hinterland, the city had always managed to return an opposition member of Parliament-it had never succeeded since.
Of course the swiftness of the operation left its mark on the place. The Swanepoels’ home was basically similar to the thousands surrounding it because this simplified construction, although an element of variety had been introduced by building the bungalows in pairs and making one the mirror image of the other. Each stood square on its quarter-acre plot, well fenced in by stout wire mesh, with its silver corrugated-iron roof covering a lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, stoop, and three bedrooms. A separate structure, also in yellow brick, served to accommodate a car, a servant, and gardening equipment. The land in front of the dwellings was leveled for threadbare lawn and that at the back left rough for maize or pumpkins. When you really came down to it, the properties were as unremarkable as rows of passenger coaches in a marshaling yard.
A single tree would have made all the difference, Kramer mused, noticing another pack of sulky dogs patter by.
“Something wrong?” Zondi asked quietly, turning the Chev into Schoeman Road.
Hell, it showed so that even kaffirs could tell. No reply.
“Sorry, boss,” Zondi mumbled in apology.
But he was smart. He knew. He had guessed when Kramer erupted from Woolworth’s and ordered him to get his finger out and the show on the road, and then sat beside him gazing with glum intensity at Railway Village as if he had never seen it before. Being a family man in his own right, Zondi understood the importance of a warm woman and a flat full of friendly children. He deserved better than a silent rebuke.
“Just a pain in my arse, man-it’ll go away.”
Zondi laughed hopefully.
The Swanepoel house had a white police constable lounging outside it in a van and the curtains still drawn behind the burglar-proofing.
“Good morning, Lieutenant, sir.”
“What’s up? Why’re you here?”
“Colonel Muller’s orders, to keep the neighbors and press away.”
“Any trouble?”
“No, sir. Only one old dear being nosy so far. Dominee Pretorius is inside-the doctor’s just been.”
“Oh, yes?”
“The parents are both under sedation.”
“Jesus! What is this, a radio play? I’ve got questions to ask.”
“Bonita’s all right, though.”
“Come again?”
“Bonita Swanepoel-the boy’s big sister.”
“Okay, I’ll start with her. Sergeant Zondi’s going to take a look at the kaffir on the premises. Don’t let anyone in till I’m finished.”
“Sir.”
Kramer ignored the path, the doormat, and the brass knocker shaped like the Voortrekker Monument near Pretoria. He rapped softly with his knuckles.
The door immediately opened a crack.
“Dominee? It’s Lieutenant Kramer.”
The minister silently bade him enter.
“I want to see Bonita.”
“Shhh! Not so loud. Bonita? Well, I’m not too sure that she’s-”
“Don’t waste time, please. This case is probably more serious than we thought last night.”
While he was gone, Kramer opened the curtains and the windows. In no time at all the faint smell of ether from the injection rubs vanished. The room became a size larger with the sun in it and the vases of plastic flowers-mostly arum lilies-lost their funeral parlor gloom.
There was a large number of framed photographs scattered among the African wood carvings and miniature sport trophies. The small Instamatic ones on the radio-phonograph gave tilted glimpses of a holiday by the sea-Boetie must have taken them because he featured in none. On the bookcase, empty except for a pile of women’s magazines, three copies of the Holy Bible, and a ready reckoner, was a selection of infant dimples and senile smirks that suggested a gallery of relatives. The wall opposite the window gave pride of place to pictures which marked major events in the Swanepoels’ past-ranging from a large wedding group to a stillborn baby, hand-colored. Kramer paused to study the latter, not expecting to discover anything significant but remembering the day when just such a print in another home had given him the vital clue in an infanticide case. Then he passed on to the collection on the mantel shelf and had time to memorize the faces of the immediate family before Bonita presented herself.
She was truly a genetic amalgam of her parents, the poor girl. Her mother’s sharp, almost pretty, features were ill suited to her father’s broad, flat skull. The curly brown hair came from her mother, too, but she had her father’s bull neck save for the Adam’s apple. The maternal inheritance very properly dominated as far as her thighs, sadly giving way to knees, calves, and ankles identical to those of the engine driver snapped on the footplate. The mixture that produced the handsome Boetie must certainly have been more vigorously stirred.
“Hello, Bonita. I’m Lieutenant Kramer.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said, dry-eyed and somehow self-important.
Which struck Kramer as odd until they had completed an exchange of inanities appropriate to the occasion. Then it occurred to him that she was behaving as if Boetie had become a pop star, rather than a corpse, overnight. The impossible had been achieved. This wholly unremarkable young woman had become someone: no less than the blood sister of a posthumous celebrity soon to have his pictures in every paper. They would certainly want hers, too, no doubt artfully improved by holding a lacy hanky in the right place. She could tell her story of their happy childhood together and tug heartstrings loose from Table Mountain to the Limpopo. She could- Ach, maybe he was being too hard on her. Grief did funny things to people.
“You must understand I loved my brother very much,” Bonita declared clairvoyantly. “We were very close.”
“So you knew a lot about him-his friends and all that?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Can you tell me who his main ones were?”
“There’s Hennie Vermaak. He lives around the corner at 21 Retief Road. He’s twelve, too.”
“And how old are you, Bonita?”
“Sixteen.”
“Who else, then?”
“His schoolmates.”
“Uhuh?”
“I–I don’t know all their names.”
“Just some of them?”
She bit her lip.
“His teacher, Miss Louw, could tell you.”
“Fine. Now did he have any other friends?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Any older people? Menfolk, for instance.”
“Men?”
“Never mind. It’s just some lads get friendly with an old chap and listen to his stories and that.”
“He knew Uncle Japie but he’s dead now.”
This understandably broke the flow.
“Did Boetie make friends easily? Get on well with people?”
“Oh, he was very popular-everyone said so.”
“Did he have any hobbies? Collect birds’ eggs?”
“Just reading, I suppose. And puzzles-he really went for puzzles.”
/> “I see. How had your brother seemed lately? Did you notice anything different in the way he acted?”
“A bit jumpy.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s exam time.”
“But I thought they were finished.”
“Only just.”
Kramer doodled another stick man on his notebook, behind the smaller one in the fork of a tree, and placed a question mark above him.
“That’s all for now, Bonita. If you think of anything else, just give us a tinkle.”
“Is it all right for me to ask you a question, sir?”
“Please-go ahead.”
“Does the paper know about poor Boetie yet?”
Zondi was catching up on breakfast two houses along. He was eating porridge out of a pot with his fingers and complimenting his host, a Zulu cook boy named Jafini Majola, on its excellence. Majola was enormously flattered. He pushed over a can of sour milk with just the right sort of lumps in it. Zondi drank deeply.
“ Hau, that was good.” He sighed again, wiping his mouth with the back of his tie. “Now we will go where this servant woman can be found.”
Majola led him out into the street and around the block to a traffic island in the middle of an intersection. On it were gathered about a dozen domestic servants, enjoying the morning break in a working day that lasted from 6:30 a.m. until well after dark. Plainly this was an Afrikaner area as very few of them wore the uniform of canvas breeches and tunic favored by English-speaking employers. Zondi, who had been a houseboy in his youth, had never finally decided whether one’s own rags really did add a touch of dignity.
As he and Majola approached, the group fell silent. If the face was not familiar, then the snap-brim hat and zoot suit were always enough to identify him.
Zondi gave the formal Zulu greeting and was grudgingly awarded the formal response.
Majola stepped forward.
“This is Sergeant Zondi, CID,” he said. “He is not interested in passes or matters of that kind. He has eaten with me and now wants to speak with my friends.”
Zondi sat down on his haunches like the rest of them. Nothing further was said for a while. And then a large house girl of roughly menopause age spoke.
“My little master is really dead?”
“Truly.”
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