The Caterpillar Cop kaz-2

by James McClure

  “Who did this thing?”

  “We will know soon.”

  “And what will happen?”

  “He will die, too.”

  A couple of youngsters at the back whispered, then giggled. Zondi speared them with a finger.

  “You two! What is the matter?”

  No reply.

  “They are pleased,” said the Swanepoels’ girl. “They did not believe me before.”

  “ Pleased? That the boy is dead?”

  “Of course,” muttered someone.

  And, one by one, everybody there nodded their heads. Zondi remained outwardly calm with an effort; no child he had ever heard of was capable of antagonizing as many adults to that degree.

  The other thing was these adults were all black.

  When he rejoined the constable on duty at the gate, Kramer had already made up his mind to be alone for a while. So it was most convenient to be told that Zondi had wandered off and the man was buggered if he knew where.

  “Tell him I’ll be back,” he said.

  “When, sir?”

  “If he asks that, you can also tell him not to be so bloody cheeky.”

  That would give the pair of them something to think about.

  The day was indeed a scorcher. Getting into the Chev, which had been left locked with the windows up, afforded an idea of what a Sunday joint went through. The steering wheel felt like a boiler pipe. The seat was warm enough to set his bowels fidgeting. None of this improved his mood; there were times when even a man’s body was unwanted company.

  Kramer took off hurriedly and the artificial breeze caused by the Chev’s motion helped a little. His destination was the Boomkop Lower School, only half a mile off, but he knew a long detour he could take. He had to think.

  Starting with the Widow Fourie…

  The radio squawked. So much for the sodding privacy of a public servant.

  “Yes?”

  “Control here. We’ve got Colonel Muller on phone link-up for you.”

  “Ta. Hello, Colonel?”

  “No fingerprints on the bike, other than Boetie’s own, and nothing in Juvenile Records, Lieutenant. Bit of a long shot, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. But you know how these ministers are sometimes; they get a bit carried away. Any luck with the check on the local station?”

  “No, not tried it yet. I think you’d better drop that one before word gets back to the family and we have some unnecessary problems on our hands.”

  “Okay, sir-it doesn’t really add up anyway.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “The idea Boetie could have been mixed up with a bad lot. They’d have knocked him off in an accident and no bother. This way, if there was any police history, we could trace them pretty easily.”

  “What I was thinking. So now how do we go about finding a reason?”

  “By finding out more about him. I’m still not satisfied with what I’ve got. I’m going round to the school now to see his friend Hennie Vermaak. News of last night isn’t common knowledge yet, so he’s probably there.”

  “That’s the kid he was with before it happened?”

  “Uhuh. I’ll get my questions in before he knows why.”

  “Tread carefully, Lieutenant.”

  “As always, sir.”

  “Hmmm.” The Colonel rang off.

  Kramer found he had driven directly to the school after all. It was coming up on his right and a lorry, assuming from his position he was about to turn, was overtaking him on the inside. So he had little choice but to enter the gates over the carpet of old bus tickets.

  Mindful of how headmasters felt about these things, he did his swearing in the car before going round to the office. The secretary there, a proper old bag in a black dress, was taking her spinsterhood out on the typewriter. She totally ignored him until, out of the corner of a downcast eye, she noticed the intruder wore long trousers.

  “Yes?” she said. “Have you come about the smell?”

  “Not exactly,” Kramer replied. “I’m from the CID. I want to see the principal.”

  “What about?”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Mr. Marais is down at the Education Department this morning. The deputy’s got chicken pox.”

  “I see. Well, I want to have a word with one of the pupils-Hennie Vermaak. It won’t take long.”

  “Break is just over.”

  “Fine. It’d be better alone.”

  “Do the parents…?”

  Kramer seemed to nod.

  “Has Hennie…?”

  He shrugged.

  Her imagination took over and the result seemed to delight her in a predictably unpleasant sort of way. She slit open a smile.

  “What was the name again?”

  “Vermaak, Hennie. He’s twelve.”

  She waddled over to the door.

  “I’ll get Miss Louw; she teaches the twelves. Please take a seat.”

  Kramer sat down in her chair and read the letter she had been working on. From it he learned that all the school’s attempts to get an English teacher had now failed. Then he looked through the desk drawers.

  “Damn.”

  There was no correspondence whatsoever concerning Boetie Swanepoel, not even in the file marked STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.

  Footfalls had him at the window admiring the featureless playing field. A dozen or so Bantu prisoners knelt weeding it under the supervision of a warder armed with spear and club. They wore the regulation white shorts and red-and-white-striped jerseys and looked like a soccer team who had lost the ball.

  Christ, his mind was all over the place.

  On the other hand, every part of Miss Louw was precisely where nature had intended. It made her one of those young women who always pause in a doorway because a doorway has a frame and a frame sets off a pretty picture. One rendered prettier still in this instance by strong sunlight shining through the light summer frock from behind to define the long legs in gentle silhouette. The glare from the quadrangle also gilded a rim around the bounce of blond curls, and cast a shadow that crossed the floor to smooth itself up against Kramer. If only it had reached high enough to shade his eyes, he might have been able to see the face properly.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Miss Louw? I’m Lieutenant Kramer of-”

  “The secretary told me and we’ve discussed it,” she cut in. “I don’t really see why not. So I’ve put Hennie in the remedial classroom because it isn’t being used today. Third door down as you go out of here. Sorry, I must get back to my class.”

  “But-”

  Kramer was caught off guard. For a moment he considered chasing after her, and then vetoed the motion on the grounds that she had already made him feel old and enfeebled. Miss Louw was young in a way that hurt.

  So he got back to business and tracked down Hennie Vermaak.

  The boy was short for his age and not very bright by appearances. His hair had been cut so close he was almost bald, he had a snub nose, and under the small brown eyes, teeth like maize pips. He also bit his nails.

  “Catching up on your reading, Hennie?”

  The boy dropped the placard with dog printed on it.

  “Who are you?” he asked gruffly.

  “Just a policeman.”

  Hennie edged away but Kramer moved with him, placing an arm around his shoulders.

  “What’s the matter, then? Don’t you like cops?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey?”

  “Yes, I do. They keep the communists away.”

  “That’s what pa told you.”

  Hennie inclined his head.

  “Good boy. So it’s all right if I ask you a few questions?”

  “What about?”

  “Your mate Boetie Swanepoel.”

  The small shoulder blades squeezed together.

  “He isn’t at school today.”

  “I know. He isn’t at home either.”

  Hennie looked up warily.

/>   “Where is he, then?”

  “They say you’re his best friend. But do you know if he has any other friends he might go and visit? Special friends, like you.”

  “Everyone’s at school.”

  “Grown-up friends maybe?”

  “Huh?”

  “Tell me, what did you blokes do together yesterday afternoon?”

  “We went shooting birds with our air guns.”

  “Up near the country club?”

  Hennie scowled.

  “We never go there! It’s too far. Besides, you’re not allowed.”

  “How many did you get?”

  “An Indian myna.”

  “Not bad! They’re a smart lot. And did you have any plans for today? Were you going shooting again after school?”

  “No, it’s swimming. We’ve got to practice for the gala. Boetie and me-”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. We’re in the interhouse relay.”

  “Is that what you talked about last night before he went home?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  “Try hard, please.”

  “He just said he’d better be going a bit early before it got dark because his tire was flat.”

  “But he lives close by, doesn’t he?”

  “It was something like that.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Sort of six o’clock.”

  “You’re lying to me, Hennie! Want to know why?”

  The boy ducked and ran for the door. Kramer grabbed him.

  “Shall I tell you? Because Boetie’s air gun is there in his bedroom, but he didn’t go home last night. Not at all! ”

  Hennie’s top lip trembled like the lid of a saucepan brought to the boil. Any minute he would spill over.

  “Now take it easy, son! Just tell me how it was that you and Boetie were shooting when-”

  “His gun’s broke.”

  “And so?”

  “He borrowed my big brother’s.”

  Kramer’s hands fell to his sides.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he sighed. This line of inquiry was getting him bloody nowhere fast, it really was. Maybe he should get back to the sick men with dirty fingernails, no sense in upsetting everyone, including innocent kids. But he had one thing left to do: flash his trump.

  “Hennie, I’ve got some bad news. Boetie isn’t going to be in the gala.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll tell your ma and pa that you asked me this question-straight out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Boetie is dead.”

  Adults collapse, children can only gape.

  “He was murdered, Hennie, killed by a very wicked man.”

  The convicts outside began a low chant, singing of their cattle and their wives and their children back in the reserves; it helped them bear the weight of a grass roller they were unloading from a truck. A window opened and a nasal voice screeched for silence. It went deathly quiet.

  Kramer stared at Hennie incredulously. He had expected the boy to register shock but not fear. Not fear so great it smelled worse than the puddle of urine expanding on the classroom floor.

  Beauty Makatini, as Zondi now knew her to be, was preparing lunch in the Swanepoels’ kitchen. She opened two tins of pilchards in sauce, sliced six tomatoes, washed a lettuce, and grated some carrots. For dessert, she halved two pawpaws and squeezed lemon over them.

  “Too much,” murmured Zondi from his seat on the bread bin. “You heard the priest say the boss and the missus were sleeping.”

  “This morning I make porridge and eggs for four people, Detective Zondi. Bonita and the priest eat it all and I have to find toast for them, too. They are very hungry, I think.”

  He chuckled. For a while he had suspected she was up to the old trick of making sure there would be leftovers to supplement her own meal of boiled beans. But you could not get away with that one in every household and, from what he had heard about Mrs. Swanepoel, hers was no exception.

  Dominee Pretorius poked his head in.

  “Boy, your boss is outside now. Beauty, what’s wrong with the bell? I rang it three times from the front room.”

  “ Hau, shame! I hear nothing.”

  Zondi sidled past, giving her a secret pat on the bottom, and went out the back door.

  He was just in time to see the Chev drive off without him.

  Kramer brought it back a few minutes later with what almost amounted to an apology. He explained that after Hennie disgraced himself in the classroom, it had only been right to take the poor little bastard straight home before his pals saw him. In his hurry he had forgotten to inform the school and, on realizing this, had shot around the corner to use the call box.

  “He was very frightened, boss?”

  “Poop scared. But he wouldn’t tell me why-and he wouldn’t tell his mother. You see, I don’t think he really knows himself; it’s just a feeling I got.”

  “This is strange.”

  “But bugger-all use to us. Could be he just fancies he’s next in line because they were great mates. You know kids.”

  “This Boetie fellow was also strange, boss,” Zondi said softly.

  “Why’s that?”

  “The servants all around here say he made life very hard for them. He looked at their passes.”

  “He what? ”

  “Checked their passbooks. Wanted to know if they had bike licenses. Went to their rooms at night to see if there were strangers sleeping there unlawfully.”

  “Never!”

  “He also arrested three Bantu youths for loitering with intent.”

  “I don’t bloody believe it.”

  “My people did not lie to me, boss. I sat with them for an hour.”

  It seemed to Kramer longer than that before he found his tongue again.

  “Man, I’ve heard of playing cops and robbers…”

  “Playing? It was not toys he showed them.”

  “Hey?”

  “Beauty says he had everything-truncheon, whistle, and handcuffs. Real ones.”

  Kramer snapped his fingers. A subliminal image had started to nibble at the wall of his conscious mind. It was not going to make it, but a strong impression filtered through: Boetie’s bedroom was the place to be. Something there had already made sense of all this.

  “Back into the house,” he said, pushing at Zondi to open the car door and sliding out after him.

  Once back in the room, Kramer stood in the center of it. He was searching for a cue rather than a clue. He simply let his eyes pan uncritically over everything within the four walls. They stopped dead on a neat pile of magazines by the bed.

  “Of course!” Kramer said, scooping one up and ruffling through it. He found what he sought on page three-a three-column panel headed DETECTIVE CLUB.

  Zondi took another issue and they sat down on the bed together to read them.

  Kramer found that the panel was made up of three parts. There was a chatty article by a senior police officer, a section for members’ letters, and a block explaining the Detective Club rules with an application form included in it. Membership was open to all Afrikaner boys aged between twelve and sixteen who had never committed a criminal offense. They had to get their parent or teacher to sign beside their own signatures. If they were accepted, then they would be sent a card, initialed by the head of the South African Police, that gave them the right to “cooperate” with local representatives of the force.

  Just what this meant was obvious from the letters. A boy writing from the Orange Free State said: “I spent nearly my whole holiday working as a member of the Detective Club. The station commandant said I was very useful to him as I arrested nine Bantu altogether and one Colored female. I also went on raids in the van. It was very nice.” Another, this time a thirteen-year-old in the Transvaal, wrote: “In our English-language oral exam I had to pretend that I was a member of the Special Branch finding out if a
man was a liberal. Because I belong to the Detective Club I knew the proper way to ask questions. The inspector said I was so good that I made him feel like a real communist!!! Thank you, Detective Club!” The editor had added in italics: “Glad that the Club is bringing you good results. Remember, the rest of you, courage and loyalty is not everything a good detective needs-he also has to have brains.”

  Zondi whistled low.

  “Well, are you thinking what I’m thinking, kaffir? ”

  “Too right, boss.”

  Being a detective was one sure way of getting yourself thoroughly disliked.

  6

  The colonel put it another way when he arrived in Railway Village some minutes later. He said, “Man, it’s funny, but having a policeman sniffing around can do something extra nasty to a mind that’s warped already. You know what I mean?”

  Kramer knew; one of his early colleagues, investigating the death of a racing driver whose car was suspected of having been sabotaged, had his face held in the radiator fan of an engine running on a test block. Things like that stick.

  “But you did say policeman, sir.”

  “I take your point. So you can’t find any trace of his membership card or the handcuffs and things?”

  “Zondi and I have been all over-the garage, too. The only place left is his folks’ bedroom but he wouldn’t have kept them there.”

  “Could he have had them with him yesterday?”

  “Hennie didn’t say.”

  “And that’s not all he kept quiet about.”

  “Of course, we are taking it for granted that Boetie was in the Detective Club.”

  “A reasonable assumption, Lieutenant.”

  “Then the next step is to contact Pretoria and have them ask this magazine for its list of members.”

  “Better still, ask his sister.”

  “Oh, she thinks he might have been playing about with some silly game, she says.”

  “Then ask Hennie. You’re going to see him again.”

  “It would be an advantage if I also knew his position beforehand. Why can’t we-”

  The Colonel turned over the magazine he had been studying and showed the back to Kramer.

  “Always read the small print, Lieutenant. Down at the bottom of the page…That press is owned by a cabinet minister-and so is the magazine. Send a man around there and you’ll attract a lot of attention from high up.”