The Caterpillar Cop kaz-2

by James McClure

  “And so?”

  “If Chatterjee hears of this, he will be asking for my job on Sunday. My father he says to me, keep this very privates, Rampaul, or we lose money.”

  “Who will ride for you?”

  “My brother.”

  “I do it, Ram. Easy.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten cents.”

  “Five!”

  “Seven!”

  “Okay.”

  They shook hands solemnly.

  Then Danny relaxed, grew confidential, and spoke in Tamil, their mother tongue: “I’ll tell you why I left a message for you to be here tonight. I want to know what happened to that dog in Greenside-you know, Regina.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “But how?”

  “The servant said she’d been killed by a burglar.”

  “ Really? He didn’t tell me that.”

  “The boss found it early in the morning and told him to bury it. He said there had been something round its neck. Like a wire.”

  “I didn’t know the house had been robbed!”

  “No, it wasn’t. The servant thought the bloke must have run away in case there was another dog.”

  “When was this?”

  “They found the dog on Sunday.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Is that all? It’s a funny question to ask, Danny. I thought it was something important. Let’s see if Gogol will give some old bananas.”

  “Know something? I really got to like that horrible dog,” said Danny suddenly, as surprised by his outburst as Rampaul.

  And it looked like a job for the Masked Avenger.

  A thunderstorm of appalling ferocity was inevitable at the close of such a day.

  Trekkersburg, which lay in a hollow on rising ground like the dent a head makes in a pillow, felt the final stages of the fever coming on just after seven. The weight of hot air pressing down on the town turned chill, then hot, then chill again. It started moving restlessly from side to side, setting weather vanes spinning. Strange, dislocated sounds were heard. Limbs of trees shivered. A thick, stifling blanket of black cloud was drawn up to blot out the bare bulb of the moon. The hallucinations began: it was as though, far above, a gigantic tin roof was being bombarded with boulders; as if each flash of lightning was a sear of pain through a reeling mind. A shuddering climax was reached. The rain came like a muck sweat.

  Kramer stirred.

  He sat upright behind the wheel of the Chev and opened his window a little. The night smelled as fresh and clean and inviting as Miss Lisbet Louw. A few minutes more and the downpour would ease off enough for him to dash across into Aloe Mansions. It was a great pity he had not been able to park any closer to the flats any sooner.

  But the storm had forced him to rest and that was, perhaps, a good thing. He had been on the go for nearly forty-eight hours, counting the time spent half-dozing in court the day before. And really a man owed it to himself to keep enough energy in reserve to cope with the unexpected challenge. Miss Louw, for instance.

  The rain belted down.

  Kramer shifted his knee to avoid a drip that had found its way in under the rubber seal around the windscreen. The water was astonishingly cold. He found another leak in the same place on the other side. That was the trouble with police vehicles: you never knew where they had been.

  The rain tried even harder.

  Kramer watched it glut the gutters and then overflow over the road, creating huge, splash-pitted mirrors that tried vainly to reflect an orderly pattern of warm lights from the flats above.

  The rain was remorseless.

  The hell with having no coat. Kramer leaped out and ran.

  To arrive at No. 36 soaked through-although it was not until after he rang the bell that he realized this. His thin suit had put up as much of a fight as a cigarette end in a urinal.

  The door swung inward.

  Miss Louw was also sopping wet. She had a towel round her body and another round her head.

  “Oh, you poor man,” she said and pulled him inside.

  “But, miss-” he began.

  “Quick, through there before you ruin the hall carpet.”

  Kramer found himself shut in a steam-filled bathroom, blinking rapidly, and unable to examine his expression in the misted looking glass. He was certain, however, it was a winner.

  “I’m going to dress now,” Miss Louw called out. “The lady next door has a tumble dryer so you put your clothes outside and I’ll take them round. That’s everything, mind. It won’t take long.”

  “Hey?”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. Be sensible.”

  She clattered off in her wooden sandals.

  Well, well, that was the first of his three wishes granted-in her flat five seconds and she was yelling for him to get them off. The trouble with wishes was you had to be so specific or they sometimes misfired. Not that this was physically possible with the other two he had in mind.

  The suit jacket was easy enough to remove but the trousers and shirt had Kramer grunting and hopping about. If only he had worn underpants that day he would have felt much happier. As it was, she might think he was withholding some ghastly secret. So he added his shoulder holster to the soggy pile as a distraction.

  And pushed it all out into the passage.

  “Won’t be two minutes,” Miss Louw told him as he sat on the edge of the bath warming his feet in her water.

  She was back even sooner.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but Mrs. Turner’s just put in a load of nappies she must have. She’ll do yours straightaway after. Why not come out and have some coffee meantime?”

  The Smith amp; Wesson. 38 made one hell of a fig leaf.

  “In what, miss?”

  “Oh, damn, all the towels are damp. Isn’t there something behind the door?”

  Kramer looked at it and shuddered.

  “Maybe you could lend me a coat?”

  “Not one that would come near to fitting you. You’d tear them.”

  “You live alone?”

  “Of course.”

  That was promising anyway.

  “Okay, but no laughing, hey?”

  Miss Louw looked most beautiful when she laughed. The pupils of her blue eyes were like eclipses of the moon with a sparkle of stars all around. Her teeth were narrow and neat and just right for the wide, sensuous mouth. Only the tip-tilted nose stayed serious, although the nostrils dilated a fraction.

  He had to laugh, too. It was not every day a senior CID officer made his entrance clutching the voluminous folds of a nylon negligee about him.

  Then their laughter halted abruptly.

  Kramer experienced a different sense of embarrassment and so, apparently, did she. There had been an uncanny exchange of something intimate between them, too subtle for him to catch.

  “Nice place you’ve got,” said Kramer, finding an excuse to take his eyes off her.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Shall I get the coffee now?”

  He sat down, crossed his legs firmly, and watched her pour two cups in the kitchenette alcove. Zondi would have given his full approval to such a rump. What a perfect complement it made to the full bosom. That was better.

  “Did you come to see me about Hennie?”

  “No, Boetie Swanepoel. You’ve heard by now, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “And…?”

  “I think it’s horrible. An innocent child like that.”

  “Is that how he struck you?”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Just that: what did you think of Boetie?”

  Miss Louw frowned. She handed Kramer his coffee and stirred her own slowly.

  “Then the paper isn’t giving all the details?”

  “We are having to be very careful. This could happen again.”

  “To whom?”

  “Hennie.”

  “My God!”

  “Or to any of his classmates, probably.”

 
She went on stirring, staring at Kramer.

  “Can I know why?” she asked finally.

  “Miss Louw, you answer my questions first and then I’ll tell you. If we do it the other way around, what you say could be affected, if you know what I mean.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “First, describe Boetie to me as you knew him.”

  The coffee was just the way he liked it.

  “He-was a nice kid. A bit on the serious side with definite ideas about right and wrong. If, for example, some child was cheating in a test, Boetie would tell me right then and there. This is what made him different to any other boy I’ve come across in five years of teaching.”

  “Why did you stress ‘boy’ and not say ‘kid’?”

  “Because girls sometimes are like that, although in their case it’s generally spitefulness.”

  “Was he perhaps…?”

  “I’d say not! Whatever gave you such an idea? Anyway, he’s got a girl friend he dotes on. Little Hester Swart.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This is worse than filling in reports; you can’t get a proper idea of Boetie from all this.”

  “What are his best subjects?”

  “Mathematics, English, and art.”

  “English?”

  “Unusual, isn’t it? He’s got a thing about English, speaks it better than me. He says-said, I mean-it was essential if you want to do well because all the big business in this country was run by English-speakers.”

  “He sounds a very bright lad.”

  “Only in some ways. In others he was naive.”

  “For example?”

  “I know the others teased him about dirty jokes because he hardly ever got the point. This wasn’t his being serious so much as ignorant.”

  “Or innocent, like you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “The strong church background.”

  “Everything very sacred-marriage and all that. The Ten Commandments.”

  “I notice you speak a bit impatiently, Miss Louw?”

  “You would if your father had been a minister-and a damned hypocrite at that. Dirty old man.”

  The bell rang. Miss Louw closed the living-room door behind her before answering it. Kramer really liked her for that. In fact, he liked her for many reasons.

  “But what about your job?” he asked, when she returned with his clothes. “Aren’t you expected under Christian National Education to be a practicing one yourself?”

  “What about you, Lieutenant?”

  “At weddings and funerals.”

  “Huh! And yet who swears on the Bible in court that everything he says is true?”

  “Touche. You must scare blokes away with a brain like that.”

  “Of course. I like to pick and choose. But this isn’t anything to do with Boetie.”

  “One last question, then: Have you noticed any change in his behavior over the last month, going right back to the beginning of November?”

  “He could have done better in his exams, that’s all.”

  “Thanks very much, then.”

  Kramer took his things and made for the bathroom.

  “But you said-” she exclaimed.

  “Why not finish this in a quiet corner over at the Tudor Tavern? I noticed you hadn’t cooked your supper yet, Miss Louw, and I can’t talk any more until I eat.”

  And so he made her pick him-even if it was only to satisfy the curiosity he had aroused over Boetie’s death. But she did not hurry back home afterwards. By then they were coconspirators with an ingenious plan for the morrow.

  7

  Zondi tried to oversleep. But when the fourth person left his bed, fought the others over the clothing strewn around it, and ended up chanting multiplication tables, he knew Wednesday had begun for him, too.

  He forced open an eye.

  His wife, Miriam, was through in the living-room-cum-kitchen spreading sweetened condensed milk on wedges of bread. She piled them on an enamel plate and then poured six mugs of black tea. It would have been seven if she was expecting her husband at breakfast, so he had a chance of at least staying where he was for a while.

  The twins, being the eldest, were also trying to oversleep on their mattress unrolled beneath the window-and having as little success.

  Zondi grunted at them.

  “Good morning, Father,” they said together.

  “Up!” he ordered. “What do you think I pay all that money to the teacher for?”

  “So he will not beat us, Father,” one of them answered.

  “So he will give us good reports,” said the other.

  It was too early in the morning for that sort of thing. Zondi pressed one ear into the pillow and covered the other with his forearm. This did not cut out all of the noise, but kept it down to a minimum until it was obvious that the children had left to attend the first shift at Kwela Village school.

  Shortly afterwards, Miriam came in and told him there was a municipal policeman waiting to see him.

  “Bring him to me,” he said.

  In marched Argyle Mslope, who halted with a great thump of boots on the rammed earth floor. He saluted.

  “Greetings, Detective Sergeant Zondi!”

  “Greetings, Argyle.”

  “Your wife is a buxom woman, Detective Sergeant Zondi.”

  “I thank you, Argyle.”

  “She will bear you many brave sons.”

  “She has done that already.”

  “God bless you,” said Argyle.

  One of the old school and no mistake about it; mission-educated, a stretcher-bearer with the white soldiers in the deserts of North Africa, a perfect Zulu gentleman, and-at times-a fearless fighter. It was a great pity, though, that Argyle had not progressed very far at the mission or he might have been an asset to the South African Police itself. However, he seemed happy enough in the municipal force, guarding beer halls, hospitals, clinics, hostels, and townships. He played the bass drum in its band and put a shine on his brass buttons that contrasted as strongly with the tatty-quality uniform as fresh blood on a stray’s fur.

  Zondi could see himself stretched out and elongated in the belt buckle just three feet away.

  “Why have you come, Argyle?”

  “Your superior officer desires you to use the telephone.”

  “Straightaway?”

  “I regret that is the case.”

  So did every God-fearing passer-by within hearing of Zondi as he hurried up the dirt roads to the township manager’s office.

  The African clerks there were quick to smile and greet him-and had an outside line ready waiting. Zondi glared at the number the manager had noted down. It was to a call box and that was always an ominous sign.

  But ten minutes later he was back telling Miriam that he had been given the day off.

  The lieutenant was taking his gun up to the boy’s school, he had been told. In the meantime, he was going to sleep where he was calling from-the bird sanctuary. Mystifying.

  “That is good, my husband,” said Miriam. “Now you will have the time to put a plank across the bottom of the lavatory door outside. How does the corporation think a modest woman likes to be on that squat pan with everyone looking in under?”

  “I have heard,” replied Zondi with a leer, “that the corporation thinks it is part of our culture.”

  He artfully lowered the door eight inches.

  Probationer Detective Johnny Pembrook stood outside the Colonel’s office making sure he had no wind left to break. His gut had been in an uproar all night through sheer nerves. The order to report to the divisional commissioner had reached him in the barracks as he was turning in after a long, fruitless search for an old woman’s purse. The awful thing was that only the time had been stated and he had no idea what he had done. Not specifically, that was. It had really churned him over. A probationer detective makes a lot of mistakes. One too many and he goes back into blue for the rest of his days. And Pembrook wanted to join CID more than
he wanted to play for the A team-although he would never admit it. That was the worst mistake he could make. God, how his stomach fluttered.

  Then, having almost fired a live round, he decided to quit playing Russian roulette with himself and find out what it was all about.

  The Colonel was surprisingly cordial.

  “At ease, Pembrook,” he said in English. “How are things in CID?”

  “First class, sir.”

  “Good! You’re making nice progress.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It is time you did some paper work, though.”

  Pembrook’s chin came up.

  “Sir?”

  “We want you to take some statements. These are the addresses-Swanepoel, Steenkamp, it’s all there.”

  “What case is this, sir?”

  “Oh, something of Lieutenant Kramer’s.”

  “ Murder Squad, sir?”

  “He’ll be the one to brief you.”

  Pembrook could not help it.

  “Why me? ” he blurted.

  “I’m buggered if I know, Pembrook.”

  The deputy headmaster usually acted as starter for the races at the annual interhouse gala because he had an old revolver left over from the war. So, with him away ill, it had been one less thing for Mr. Marais to worry about when Miss Louw’s friend offered to take his place.

  But having now come face to face with the volunteer, and having been introduced, Mr. Marais was no longer too sure about that.

  “This is very kind of you, Lieutenant Kramer,” he said in his smoothest headmaster’s voice, “yet is it very wise?”

  “How do you mean, Mr. Marais?”

  “Well, it might just cause an-er-awkwardness. As you can see out there, most of the parents are here this afternoon and some of them are very upset about what happened to Boetie. We even thought of canceling but we’ve got the inter-schools next week and this is how we choose our team. Also, it could make the children nervous.”

  “Oh, I’m sure nobody will know who Trompie is-they’re all railway folk,” said Miss Louw.

  Mr. Marais took off his rimless spectacles, polished the lenses, and replaced them over his rimless eyes.

  “I’m held responsible for everything,” he said plaintively. “Bad language… Smells… You’ve no idea.”

  “Look, if you don’t want me here, I’ll go. Only I can’t leave the gun behind for you because it’s government property.”