The prisoner plainly found all this fascinating. He sat pretty still himself, and just stared and sweated a lot.
Kramer stared back and didn’t sweat at all. His fever had left him overnight, and now his sore throat had almost gone too. He felt the fly move upwards and pause. Paper handkerchiefs, each guaranteed softer than the kinky alternative of a baby’s bum, had rubbed his upper lip raw, giving it an unusual sensitivity, and Kramer found it easy to picture what was happening. The fly was standing on five of its legs, scratching its horrible hairy head with the sixth, and wondering if it should toss a coin or something. Another shuffle. It had opted for the left nostril after all, and was tickling its way in against the hairs.
This brought a small, sly smile to the prisoner’s narrow face. Meerkat Marais—Mongoose to his English associates—always liked to think he knew more than you did, and it didn’t much matter what.
Kramer reached for the tissue box without any hint of this movement reaching his head. He spread the tissue out over his right hand. He pinched his nose suddenly, quite hard, and then blew the dead insect into the exact center of the paper square.
“It never fails,” he murmured.
Fully five minutes went by before the prisoner finally stopped thinking about the fly, and broke the silence to ask, in a thin, strained voice, why he had been made to sit on top of the filing cabinet.
Kramer shrugged, and dropped the crumpled tissue into the waste-paper bin at his side. “I heard you have this fear of heights, Meerkat old son.”
“Hey?”
“Ach, I thought we might as well start off in a small way, and see where we go from there. Okay?”
Meerkat went ashen and gave a short, shocked laugh. “This is too way out for me, man!” he said. “I don’t understand! What heights?”
Across the far side of the CID vehicle yard they were building an eighteen-story office block for the Mutual Insurance Company, and the top floor was almost finished. Kramer turned away from his window and looked at the flashily dressed figure perched in handcuffs on his filing cabinet. Meerkat understood all right. He was trembling like a church elder unwrapping dirty photographs of himself.
“Come,” said Kramer, getting to his feet. “I know where there’s a nice stiff breeze.”
“No!”
“Pardon?”
“Be fair, Lieutenant,” Meerkat pleaded. “How many hours have you had me here? Three? And you’ve—”
“Just the two, Meerkat.”
“Two then, but what have you asked me? Nothing! How am I supposed to know what you want? How am I supposed to guess? Hell, it could be anything, couldn’t it?”
Kramer sat down again behind his bare desk. “No, man, it couldn’t,” he said. “Personally, I only deal in murder and robbery, so if I bring a guy in to talk to me, the topic’s already decided. If I don’t say anything, hell, that’s just because it’s not nice to interrupt.”
“Interrupt what?”
“Your flow, Meerkat. Your outpouring. The cleansing of your soul, your great unburdening. Believe me, Meerkat, you will feel a whole lot better for it.”
Meerkat relaxed slightly. “I’m supposed to have something to confess?” he asked with a jittery smile. “This is the first I knew of it!”
“Ja, that’s possible,” agreed Kramer.
The prisoner was a proper little psychopath of the kind that starts at three by pissing in his granny’s hot water bottle, and after that there’s no holding him. People just didn’t matter to Meerkat, and he’d done things to people that didn’t bear thinking about, all without turning a hair, sometimes without even noticing.
“You’re still not putting me in the picture, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe it’s the other way round.”
“Sorry?”
“Archie Bradshaw—tell me about him.”
Meerkat blinked. “Hell, if you think I had anything to—”
“Tell me!” snapped Kramer. “Tell me everything you know about Archie Bradshaw or two minutes from now you’re going for a ride in a cement bucket.”
Meerkat swallowed hard and squirmed, as though his arse-hole was so tight it was pinching him. “Someone tried to wipe Bradshaw,” he said. “Six days ago, am I right? He was taking his dog for a walk, up by the racecourse, and the shot caught him here in the collar-bone. It stopped inside. He woke up and his dog was licking him. Myself I think it was the blood the dog was—” He cleared his throat nervously, seeing Kramer’s fists bunch. “Ja, well anyway, he got in his car and went home. It was automatic drive so that was all right. His wife saw all the blood and she asked him what happened. He wouldn’t tell her. Even when the doctor came, he wouldn’t say. Then they took him to hospital and he had an operation. After he came round, he saw the cops here because they’d found the bullet, and still he wouldn’t come out with it. The doctors all said he was in deep shock, most probably. It wasn’t till the next morning that his wife heard his story the first time. Bradshaw said he had been walking by the trees when he heard this noise in the bushes. He looked round, and all he caught sight of was this massive bloke—like a gorilla, he said, or maybe a giant—with this silver gun in his hand. He had never in his life seen anyone so huge, he said, and it was such a shock he just stayed turned like that. Then he saw the gun go off, before he had a chance to say anything, and it was like a—”
“Meerkat!”
“Ja, Lieutenant?”
“You’re telling me what was in the papers!”
“But—but—”
“Come on, man,” said Kramer, getting up again and walking round to face Meerkat at close range, “let’s hear what the whole town doesn’t already know about. Let’s hear what you—”
“Now, listen, please listen to me, Lieutenant Kramer sir, all I know about this matter is what I have also read in the Gazette—and that’s the honest truth.”
Kramer took a small plastic bag out of his pocket and dangled the contents an inch from Meerkat’s nose, making his eyes cross. “What’s that, hey? A point-thirty-two revolver bullet.”
“And so?”
“A point-thirty-two isn’t really so common, is it?”
“Maybe not, but—”
“Bear that in mind,” said Kramer, and returned to his seat behind the desk. “There has been talk going round that a certain individual is in illegal possession of a point-thirty-two silver-plated, hammerless, five-chamber—”
“Me?” Meerkat tried to make his laugh sound incredulous. “Things must be bad if you’re looking my way, man! Firstly, I’ve never even met this bloke Bradshaw, and—”
“He swears he’d never seen this bloke before either.”
“Oh ja? And do I look like a giant?”
“The mind can exaggerate these things, as you can imagine. In my opinion, Meerkat, anybody pointing a gun straight at you can look a big bloke. I remember a kaffir that came for me and Zondi one time, out at Peacevale after an armed robbery, and he was as big as King Kong till we put some holes in him.”
“Even so—”
“He was twelve.”
Meerkat looked at the calendar on the wall with the blood spots. “Six days ago would be the tenth,” he said. “I’ve got an alibi for the tenth.”
“What’s her name?”
“Staff Nurse Turner.”
“And where were you and Staff Nurse Turner at the time in question? In the sack?”
“I was. I was going to have a wisdom tooth out.”
“Impossible,” said Kramer.
Another fly came to trouble him. He swatted it with the docket on Archibald Meredith Bradshaw, Attempted Murder, and wished he had chosen some other way of making a living. In the six days he had been in charge of the case, he had done nothing but chase up one blind alley after another, getting nowhere. Soon his boss, Colonel Muller, would have the right to start asking awkward questions. Had any possible motive for his attack been established?—No. Had anyone been found who had also seen a hulking stranger near the golf co
urse?—No. Had the firearm involved been traced?—No. Had the investigation moved forward one inch since last Friday?—No. Had Kramer begun to lose his grip?—Very possibly, yes.
“Meerkat.…”
“Ja, Lieutenant?”
“I’m going to be very straight with you. I’m in trouble over this case, and my boss is beginning to say a lot of things that are cruel and unkind. So the best plan for me is just to write out a statement—which you will naturally sign—saying that you sold this thirty-two of yours to a kingsize loony you’d never in your life seen before. I know that’s not the whole story, but—”
“Hey?” gasped Meerkat, almost toppling from his perch.
“Unless, of course, you can prove in some way that I’ve got it wrong somewhere.”
Kramer heard running on the stairs and glanced towards the door. Two seconds later, a trim, neatly built Zulu, dressed in a zippy black suit with silver threads in it, and wearing a snap-down trilby, skidded to a halt on the verandah and put his head in the door. It was his assistant, Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi.
“Don’t tell me,” sighed Kramer, “let me guess. Her husband came home unexpectedly and didn’t believe a—”
“There has been a murder, Lieutenant. The Colonel was trying to get you on the phone, but all the time it is engaged.”
Kramer replaced his receiver in its cradle. “What kind? Black on black?”
“A white boss—the body has just been found.”
“Where?”
“Gillespie Street.”
Meerkat watched Kramer pick up his jacket and slouch towards the door. “Just a sec, Lieutenant!”
“Ja, old friend?”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“That,” said Kramer, as he left with Zondi, “is a question you must ask yourself over and over.”
The traffic was heavy for a Wednesday, and Zondi was forced to keep his speed down. They traveled two blocks without speaking, each man absorbed in private conjecture over what awaited them in Gillespie Street, then the Chevrolet stopped at a red traffic light.
“That reminds me,” grunted Kramer. “How are you making out on that clown who was knifed down at Mama Bhengu’s whorehouse?”
“Not so good, boss. I’ve found the murder weapon, that’s all. It was an old hacksaw blade sharpened up.”
“Uh huh. At least that’s a start. Me, I’ve got nothing.”
Zondi clucked with his tongue and shook his head sympathetically. “Maybe I should go to Boss Bradshaw’s house again and talk more with the servants.”
“Waste of time.”
“What about that lead on the thirty-two?”
“Waste of time as well. And do you know the only dirt on Bradshaw I’ve been able to come up with so far? That once he swindled an old lady over some gold coins she had, only her son found out and Bradshaw paid up. Great, hey? Tell me one antique dealer who doesn’t try little tricks like that from time to time.”
The lights changed and they rolled forward. “But what about the silver that Housebreaking traced to his shop, boss?”
“He had a good explanation, they tell me, so they didn’t press charges. Make no mistake, Mickey, this Bradshaw’s a hard man, and there’s lot of people in this city who’ll call him a bully, a bastard, but there’s not one of them who can say why anyone would want to kill him.”
“And so?”
“And so I’m coming round to the Colonel’s idea that it must have just been some loony that took a pot-shot at Bradshaw. You tell me what other theory makes sense.”
“Maybe this man will try again.”
Kramer snorted. “Christ, have a heart! Haven’t I got enough on my plate already, now this new one’s come up? No, it was a loony, I’m certain of it, and lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.”
“Boss Bradshaw is a tall tree,” Zondi remarked primly, “and there is a saying among my people—”
“Bullshit,” interrupted Kramer, “you’re making this up!”
They laughed together, then peered over the cars in front of them, searching for the lane that provided a short-cut to Gillespie Street. This was nearly always a good moment, Kramer thought, and not unlike the feeling a man had just before meeting a blind date. It carried the same catch clause, however, or perhaps he was simply becoming jaded, but it had been a long time since a body had come up to his expectations.
“You should bloody see it!” enthused Sergeant Bang-bang Bronkhorst, who could swear in court he’d never once hit a prisoner, because he always hit them twice. “Yirra, Lieutenant, this one is disgusting—it could make a hyena vomit.”
“You look all right to me, Bang-bang.”
“Sorry? But as I was saying, this old bloke is covered in his doings, there’s blood about an inch thick, and a big hole—same size as my fist—in the back of his head!”
“Uh huh. Who is he?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Lieutenant! I’m really a replacement here because Fritz went native and bit old Willem on the bum, and there was shambles till HQ radioed through to me in my van.”
Kramer frowned. He didn’t know about the police dog, still less that its name was Fritz, and his faith in the level-headedness of the uniformed branch was being severely shaken. He started to walk towards the green Rover parked on the other side of Gillespie Street, but Bang-bang caught his arm.
“Can that wait a minute, sir? I thought maybe you’d like to see this witness first, seeing as he’s being taken to hospital.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Deep shock, Lieutenant.”
“Not another one,” Kramer muttered, shaking off the restraining hand. “All right, where is he?”
They skirted the rear of the crowd and went into a small garage workshop, where a bald-headed, rosy-cheeked man of about fifty was sitting on an upturned oil drum in soiled overalls. Around him hovered a blustery type with a big mustache, another mechanic who was young and mean about the eyes, and a scatty-looking female of eighteen or so. He was humming.
“See what I mean about deep shock?” whispered Bang-bang. “His name’s Stephenson.”
“CID, Mr. Stephenson—I’m Lieutenant Kramer, Murder and Robbery Squad.”
“You’ve come to the right place!” said the blusterer. “I’m Sam Collins, by the way, and this is my place of business. Droopy here—er, Mr. Stephenson—is the mechanic I put on the job, and he’s the one who found it, you know! The body.”
“You’re going to have your picture in all the papers, Droopy!” giggled the girl.
“I knows,” murmured Stephenson. “That’s what I’ll be famous for. It’s a miracle.” And he went on humming.
“Can you tell me exactly what happened?” Kramer asked Stephenson.
“Simple,” said Collins. “I was outside checking the petrol pumps when this lady comes up and says she’d just been to the discount warehouse, and she can’t open her boot. You know the discount just round the back of here?”
“Naturally the Lieutenant knows!” snapped Bang-bang. “He’s CID, isn’t he?”
“Keep your hair on, hey? I’m only trying to help! So I said to Mr. Stephenson here, ‘Go and take a look, Droopy,’ and no sooner is my back turned than this lady goes rushing off. To tell you the truth, I thought to myself at the time that her behavior seemed suspicious. Didn’t I even say to you, Doreen, how suspicious I was?”
“I don’t—well, I can’t remember, Mr. Collins.”
Collins patted her shoulder and looked soulfully at Kramer. “She’s in a terrible state, poor Doreen,” he said. “Terrible.”
“Uh huh. Then I take it you have no idea who this woman was? She wasn’t a regular customer?”
“With a Rover?” remarked the other mechanic scornfully. “Can’t you see all we get in here are old crocks?”
“We get Land-Rovers,” Collins cut in huffily. “That’s true,” confirmed Bang-bang.
“Jesus,” said Kramer.
There was
a hush, and Stephenson looked up at him with a bland smile. “The lady’s name is Mrs. Lillian Digby-Smith,” he said. “Or at least that’s the name inside the leather thing on her key-ring.” He dug the key-ring out of his pocket.
“Evidence!” said Bang-bang. “Pass it over, man.”
Kramer intercepted the pass, checked the name on the tag, and dropped the key-ring in with his tissues. “Can you describe Mrs. Digby-Smith to me?”
“Tall and skinny with red lips,” said Stephenson.
“Young? Old? Middling?”
“Er, oldish really.”
“Hair?”
“White hair. She said she had a hair appointment.”
“Anything else?”
“No, not really.” And he went back to humming.
Kramer turned to the scatty-looking girl, who was squirming uneasily under her employer’s comforting caresses. “How many places are there for hair near here? Could you give a list of them to this sergeant?”
“Well—er, yes, I suppose so.”
“Good. When the young lady’s done that for you, Sergeant, I want you to organize a search.”
“Gladly, Lieutenant,” said Bang-bang, self-importantly. “Just you leave that to me, sir!”
Kramer thanked Stephenson for his help, received a sunny smile in return, and went to take a look at the deceased, ignoring a curious delaying tactic on the part of Bang-bang Bronkhorst.
The crowd, which included an old lady carrying a doll of all things, parted willingly, avid for another glimpse.
“Bloody Bronkhorst,” a young constable was muttering, as he struggled to open the boot. “Why did you have to shut it again so hard, you old fool? Hell! Hello, sir!”
Kramer could see that the battered lock was probably the problem. He took a step closer, raised his right foot and kicked, expertly springing the boot open. Immediately a group of uniformed officers gathered round to screen the boot’s contents from the public gaze, and he crouched down to peer inside.
At first, it looked much like any other dead body—breathtaking in its own way, of course, but nothing special, and he had the advantage of a blocked nose. Then he saw that it far exceeded his expectations. He saw the arm bones fractured by a knot that must have been tightened by nothing less than a giant of a man, a human gorilla—the same sort of monster, in fact, as Archie Bradshaw had described.
The Blood of an Englishman Page 2