“What is it?” she whined. “I have not done any—”
“Just look at that and tell me if it means anything to you,” said Zondi, pointing to the table in front of him.
The prepuce-cover still lay there on its side. Once such an object was all that a Zulu needed to wear to consider himself fully dressed, and although modern society demanded rather more of him, the traditions of encasing one’s foreskin in this fashion persisted beneath even some quite sophisticated trousers. Not that anyone bothered to have it woven out of palm leaves any longer, when various sizes were available cheap and ready-made at most trading stores.
“Um-ncedo,” said Gertrude, like a child in class.
“That is its name,” agreed Zondi. “Now its owner’s name?”
“Banjo Nyembezi.”
“And why?”
“Because it is the only one I have seen made in that kind of metal.”
Zondi grinned and slipped it into his pocket. Without exception, every other niece in Mama Bhengu’s house had made the same response, and so it looked very much as though Banjo Nyembezi was on his way to being restrung in the gallows room at Pretoria Central.
“Mama, I have to meet my white boss at ten,” Zondi began apologetically, “so sadly I must—”
There was a terrible whimper from the middle cubicle.
“I’m ready, Mama!” whispered Zondi, leaping to grab the curtains. “Go, Mama, go!”
Mama Bhengu moved with astonishing speed. She freed the billy-goat, swung it round in the right direction, and gave it a mighty slap on the rump. The goat charged straight through the gap in the curtains that Zondi provided for it at the very last moment, and its lowered horns caught a pair of sadistic buttocks right in the act, so to speak.
11
KRAMER GLANCED AT his watch. It was almost twenty to ten, and soon he would have to make a decision: Zondi was expecting him then, so was Jonty, while his visit to 52 Armstrong Avenue had still a few minutes to run. He clenched his teeth on another boiled-cabbage burp and took a final look at the diary he had found in the drawer beside Bonzo Hookham’s bed.
The entries were no more than jottings, not literary efforts but appropriate to the nature of the diary itself, which was the sort businessmen carry to remind them of appointments. The nearest it came to having any character was when Hookham had apparently added a comment or two in brackets when checking what lay in store for him the next day.
November 6: Will arrive Louis Botha Airport, Durban, 1100 hrs—
Diggers and Lil to pick me up, whisk me to Trekkersburg. (I think he’d gladly have put me down again)
November 7: Lunch with D & L and one of their Best Friends at the Albert Club, 1230 hrs.
(Preferred walk with dogs)
November 8: Lunch with another BF at the golf club, 1300 hrs.
(Dogs win yet again)
November 9: Sundowners with the Postlethwaites, ex-Kenya, 1700 hrs.
(More English than I’ll ever be—or any Englishman! What are these people doing here? Bigotry would amaze the dogs—sorry, lads, I’ll time things better tomorrow)
November 10: Dinner at Basil Strongpiece’s, 1930 hrs. (A.K.! How extraordinary)
Kramer pondered this parenthetical aside, skipped the pages covering Hookham’s stay in the game reserve, and stopped at an entry made soon after his return.
November 18: Flying Club “do” at 2000 hrs, dress casual—Diggers. (Unbelievable, I’ve met the swine!—goaded Diggers, said what a fine fellow he seemed—Diggers had a rant—all part of some grand design?—poor old Diggers, and it’s him I really have to thank for this stunning evening—I feel alive again!)
There were other entries to follow, many detailing appointments Hookham would now never keep, but his habit of adding comments ended at that point. It was as though a man who’d been living inside himself a lot, talking to himself and comforting himself, had suddenly turned outwards on the world again. To check his theory, Kramer leafed back through the pages for April and May, and found that Hookham had used brackets only very occasionally. One entry stood out from all the others.
May 27: Mr. Tullerby, Cancer Research Unit, So’ton Gen. at 1400 hrs. (Says it’s hopeless. But we’ll fight! Dear God, hasn’t my poor Alice suffered enough in her life? Albert—her family, now this!
Such had been Hookham’s agitation that he’d not closed the brackets again, and like the entry for November the 18th, his handwriting showed evidence of heavy drinking. Kramer shut the diary with a snap.
“What have you got there?” asked Digby-Smith, coming into the guest bedroom. “Don’t tell me Edward kept a diary!”
“Do I need to?” said Kramer, with a flash of insight into Digby-Smith’s earlier remarks about the beneficial effects of the flying club social. “Businessmen like Mr. Hookham surely get in the way of writing down lunch dates et cetera?”
“Oh, is that all it’s got in it?”
“Have a look if you like, sir.”
Digby-Smith flicked through the diary in a too-uninterested way. “Hmmm, not very inspired, I must say. More importantly, have you managed to get anything useful from it? Apart from the fact he took to consorting with lower forms of canine life in the late afternoon?”
“Ach, you could say I’ve built up a better picture of the deceased, sir—attitudes, things like that.”
Digby-Smith colored very slightly. “But no riveting clues?”
“Only one,” said Kramer, taking the diary and going back to November the 10th. “Or should I say, only one reference that doesn’t explain itself. Can you suggest who this ‘A.K.’ person is?”
After looking at the initials, Digby-Smith cross-checked them with a list of names that he and his wife had been compiling in her bedroom. “We’ve included here every single friend or acquaintance of his that comes to mind, but I’m afraid if it’s an A.K. you want, you’re out of luck. Perhaps something will occur to us overnight, but my good lady has had quite enough of this for one day, and I’m becoming a trifle worn out myself.” He handed over the list and glanced meaningfully at the door. “But naturally, if you feel this extremely long interview could be prolonged even longer to your advantage, then—”
“I’m just on my way, sir,” said Kramer, pocketing the list and picking up a small suitcase. “I’m taking various papers, his shoes, odds and ends for our laboratory—there’s a receipt on the dressing table. Oh, and this diary as well.”
“Excellent. Shall I show you the way down?”
Kramer waited until they had reached the front door of the house before putting his final question for the night. “About this phone call for Mr. Hookham, the one when the bloke spoke with a funny accent.…”
“Yes, I answered that not last night but the night before, just as I’ve already said at least three times.”
“The exact words again, please?”
Digby-Smith glared. “Good God, you’re not trying to trip me up, are you, officer? Anyway, a half-witted child could get it off pat! He said, ‘Can I speak to Bonzo Hookman, please?’ I said, ‘No, he’s out, I’m afraid, and I don’t know where.’ Then he said, ‘Will he be there in the morning?’ To which my reply was, ‘You are sure to get him then, but don’t ring before eleven as we generally allow him to sleep in.’ He said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, just say it was an old school-friend who wanted to surprise him—no, better say nothing, or that will spoil it.’ My answer to that was, ‘Very well, I won’t, good night.’ ‘Good night,’ he said.”
“Ja, I was trying a trick,” Kramer admitted unashamedly. “I hoped you might slip into imitating the accent this time—sometimes that happens, you know. It’s the funny accent that really interests me, you see.”
“Not funny—strange,” snapped Digby-Smith, putting up a hand to close the door on him. “It wasn’t foreign, it wasn’t local—it was, at best, a mixture of both.”
“Someone trying to sound foreign then?” asked Kramer.
“Yes, or even vice versa.”
> “Pardon?”
“Caesar would despair of you, officer! What that means is this fellow could just as well have been a foreigner trying to sound local.”
“Uh huh, I follow,” said Kramer, nodding.
“But let’s not make too much of that phone call—well, not tonight if you please! I really must leave off now, as I’ve the news still to break to his offspring in England, and dialing those endless codes—”
“You’ve not told them yet?” said Kramer, taken aback. “I thought it’d been arranged with you at lunch-time—you know, that it would be better than doing it through us and the English police?”
“Quite,” replied Digby-Smith, closing the door. “But you’ve been here all evening and, as you know, it’s cheaper after six.”
Anneline Strydom switched off the television set in the living-room and looked in on her husband in the kitchen. “Still playing with those horrible snails? Yiggg!”
The snails were distributed all over the enamel working surface of her smaller table, and Strydom was scraping at their slimy trails with a glass slide. Once he had a little of the slime collected, he transferred it to a small test-tube kept upright in a teacup, and then sought some more of the stuff. Even amassing as much as a thimbleful was obviously going to take all night.
“You’re not intending to—”
“Don’t start your nagging!” he growled.
“Chris, have you seen what time it is? It’s after ten.”
“And so? Am I a man of science, or aren’t I? Does Einstein have his wife telling him when to go to bed?”
“Maybe that depends,” said Anneline coquettishly, “on what mood Mrs. Einstein is in. Come on, Chrissy, put your snails away and—”
“Ach, I’m fed up with today! I’ve got nothing finished I wanted to do! First my snails got interrupted, then I couldn’t find an arm anywhere! You’d think one arm wouldn’t be asking too much! But no, not one morgue in the whole district has got an arm for my experiments. For weeks my fridges are full of paupers, unknowns, little bits and pieces, then suddenly—poof! What’s happening? Aren’t we meant to be in a recession?”
Anneline came up behind him and massaged his shoulders, bringing the smell of her bath salts well within range of his sensitive nose. “Now, now, my little lion, don’t roar and show your teeth to your Annetjie, hey?” And she planted a tiny kiss in his shaggy gray mane. “How long is it since you last said to me, ‘Come, my beloved, my queen of the veld, let us go into the long grass?’ ” The muscles in his shoulders lost some of their tension. “Tell me,” Anneline murmured, “has Mrs. Einstein long shiny black hair such as mine? Long enough for her to sit on it? Do you want to undo my bun?”
“How should I know what her hair is like!” muttered Strydom, in slow pursuit of a really slimy snail. “Hell, I don’t even know what he looks like!”
“Hey? But you said you’d met the new Jewish doctor at the medical center.”
“Bernstein! Bernstein! Don’t you ever listen?”
“I like that!” Anneline stepped back and stood with her fists on her hips, looking daggers at him. “I’ve spent the whole evening listening to you moaning about that stupid arm of yours! You know your trouble? You’re obsessed with bodies!” A sob caught her throat. “Oh, Chrissy, why does it have to be dead bodies all the time?”
“Anneline!” cried Strydom, coming slowly up out of his chair with a radiant smile. “Come, let me give you a big hug for that! Of course it doesn’t have to be a dead body—just so long as the arm is dead, that is all I ask!” Then he hurried through in his slippers to the telephone.
Kramer ducked his head, noted that the lights above Jonty’s salon were on, caught a glimpse of the man himself at a window, and then allowed the Chevrolet to pick up speed again. Two blocks further down, he braked outside a small park and looked to see if the statue of Queen Victoria had a white man’s burden in its vast maternal lap. But Zondi had already jumped down from his accustomed resting place, and was at the curb almost before the car had stopped.
“Hullo, Lieutenant!”
“Hullo, Mickey, old son!”
As their greetings had been strangely effusive, perhaps a touch embarrassed somehow, neither said anything until on their way out of the city. Then Zondi began by showing the prepuce-cover to Kramer, and a sketchy plan was made to bring in Banjo Nyembezi the next morning.
“And now you, boss?” said Zondi. “Have you also had good hunting?”
“So-so, Mickey. I’ve been up at the Digby-Smiths’ nearly all night—Jesus, their cook is bloody useless, hey?—and I’ve learned quite a lot. I also think that some of the time Mr. Digby-Smith was trying to play games with me.”
“Hau! On the day his kin is found murdered?”
“You’ve heard nothing yet, just wait.…”
Kramer went back to the beginning and repeated all the main points of the interview, before, during and after dinner. By the time he had finished, they’d passed through the high security fence surrounding Kwela Village township, and were dodging pot-holes in the grid of dirt roads that divided up the thousands of identical houses.
“A strange, strange man,” murmured Zondi, shaking his head. “But tell me again the part when he said Boss Hookham was made frightened by the newspaper.”
“Ja, I cornered him on that,” said Kramer. “I asked him why, if there was no special connection between his brother-in-law and Bradshaw, that he should be scared when the bugger got shot. He just shrugged. So then I asked directly. I said to him, ‘Can you connect these two shootings in any way?’ What I didn’t realize at that stage was Digby-Smith had no knowledge of it being the same gun used each time. No, he couldn’t connect them, he said—after all, Hookham only knew Bradshaw because of the party, and it’d been him, Digby-Smith, who’d suggested it.”
“What happened when you did tell him about the bullets coming from the same gun?”
“He went almost human for a while.”
“He was surprised?”
“Very.”
Zondi touched Kramer’s arm and they came to a stop outside a house indistinguishable from any other in the street; once there had been a path edged by condensed-milk tins, but they had rusted away. Kwela Village had no electricity—apart from that supplied to a few street lamps and the white superintendent’s house and offices—and a small, friendly candle glowed at the kitchen window. Kramer switched off the engine.
“In what way human?” asked Zondi, as they lit up their last smokes of the day.
“Well, first he said that Hookham was almost bound to react with the shakes to the news of Bradshaw getting shot—after all, the bastard had very nearly been killed, and Hookham was in a highly sensitive state concerning death and people he knew.”
“Only very slightly, Lieutenant.”
“Ja, but I think there’s a lot in that. Do you remember when Gawie Willems got his head blown off last year during that drugs raid up near Bergville? Hell, I hardly knew old Sarge Gawie, but I got the twitch in the mortuary next morning, and there wasn’t one corpse there that I knew.”
Zondi conceded the point with a nod and flicked his ash out of the window. “But still I wish to know why he said such a thing about Boss Hookham. There is malice in it.”
“Oh, definitely. I think he’s taken a hammering all his life about his hero of an in-law, and it amuses him to say he looked scared. He gets some sort of kick out of it.”
Again Zondi nodded, satisfied with that reply, yet ready with another question. “Okay, he has explained all this. Now how did he describe the time after the newspaper, up until last night?”
“Haven’t I told you?”
“No, not with details, boss.”
Kramer sighed but didn’t much mind repeating the whole thing again blow by blow. Having gone to a mission school which shared about ten textbooks between two hundred pupils, Zondi had cultivated for himself a photographic memory, and this facility had extended itself to conversations as well. Telling Zon
di something was, in effect, as good as feeding it into a small brown computer; it freed one’s own mind to deal with the broader issues, while every snippet was reliably retained, ready to pop up at the appropriate moment—or, and this no computer could do, at an imaginatively inappropriate moment, which was often just as effective in solving a crime.
“Well, after Hookham had seen the newspaper, he took the dogs out for a walk. He had lunch with the D-Smiths and a friend, spent the afternoon reading in his room, writing to his grandchildren, and then, after a light supper, he went out again. On the Sunday he read the papers, and D-Smith and him laughed at Bradshaw’s ‘giant’ story, which Colonel Muller had released by then. He seemed in a much happier mood all round, then there was a row with his sister over various arrangements they’d made for the following week—this week, in fact. It ended up with her saying he should just please himself what he did, and she canceled a bridge party and all the rest of it. On Monday two of the ex-RAF blokes came round to see him, and they ended up very drunk on the lawn. On Tuesday he complained of a hangover—that would be yesterday—and stayed in his room nearly all day. Digby-Smith says his manner at table last night was a bit jumpy and peculiar, and he kept looking at his watch. He also apologized to them for being ‘such a bolshy guest’ and admitted that leaving familiar surroundings so soon after his wife’s death had probably been a mistake. The truth of the matter, he also told them, was that he was homesick, disoriented and miserable. Finally it came out that he wanted to cut short his stay and go back home to England this coming Saturday—or sooner, if he could change his ticket. Mrs. Digby-Smith got very upset, and said it was all her fault, and what would her friends think of her if he walked out. Digby-Smith—ach, in a way, you’ve got to like him for what seems his honesty—told Hookham that he thought it was a perfect plan. Nevermind about anything else, he said, any man takes a chance with his happiness when he tries to revisit his past. And that’s how they left it, although Mrs. Digby-Smith was determined to make him stay, and this morning she was writing to tell the family what a good time he was having. End of story.”
The Blood of an Englishman Page 11