“But I’ve proved something at least,” said Strydom. “It could be achieved only by one person, coordinating his movements with a single impulse from the brain. Have you ever considered the idea that the ‘giant’ might be a real giant? Much, much bigger than Bradshaw described him?”
“From a circus or something you mean?” asked Kramer, keeping a straight face.
“Why not? You could try the shoe shops, see if anyone around takes a specially big size. In tending to belittle Bradshaw’s evidence, you could have made the mistake of literally belittling the suspect.”
“Hmmmm.” Another snail had made its appearance, and was crawling across the face of the electric wall clock. “Doc, I must be off—got someone to pick up.”
“Hey? But what about this nose? It’s only five-past five.”
“You know my philosophy: tomorrow’s always another day.”
“That’s your philosophy?” asked Strydom, in surprise.
“Uh huh.”
And Kramer was gone, leaving Strydom to put down his knife, blink a couple of times, and turn to Van Rensburg. “That’s a bit of luck,” he said. “Just put those others back in the fridge for me to see tomorrow, and then you and I can get on with my little experiment. It’s getting to the interesting stage, isn’t it?”
Zondi did not wait to hear Banjo Nyembezi remanded in custody for trial on a charge of murder. He slipped out of the preliminary examination at the Regional Magistrates’ Court at a quarter past five and headed for the main street, intent on buying his children a present before closing time. They had all received excellent end-of-term reports, which made him a proud if apprehensive parent: doing well at school was one thing, finding them an outlet for their talents afterwards was quite another.
He dived into the biggest bookshop in the center of Trekkersburg and searched hurriedly through the textbook section. His chief difficulty lay in deciding which book—he could afford no more than one—would be of some assistance to them all, and he had already bought him their Zulu, Afrikaans and English dictionaries, as well as a couple of comprehensive works on mathematics and Zulu history. Finally he hit upon an atlas that was going cheap because its cover was slightly torn, and took it to the pay desk, delighted by his luck.
“Are you quite sure you want such a big book?” asked the kindly faced shop assistant with plastic teeth that whistled. “It is rather expensive, you know, and all it’s got in it are maps.”
“Please, madam.”
“You made certain by looking inside it?”
“Hau, me not look inside, madam. My boss say to buy him atlas cheap, and that is all.”
“Oh, that’s fine then, isn’t it? Ten rand, please.…”
Zondi smiled his thanks for her concern as he handed over the carefully hoarded notes; it wasn’t a very honest way of going about things, but often it was much simpler.
“Carry it nicely now!” she said.
“Yes, madam. Thank you, madam.”
Halfway back to Boomplaas Street, he could no longer resist temptation, and sat down on the grass outside a public building to unwrap his purchase. He removed the brown paper without tearing it, and raised the atlas to his nose for a good, long sniff. There was nothing like the smell of a brand-new book for making him feel as fortunate as any man. Then he began turning the pages, relishing the sound of them parting for the first time, and worked his way through small maps of the world until he reached the first proper section, which was on the British Isles. With very little trouble, he found Hookham’s village near Southampton, and felt reassured that this must be a very fine atlas indeed. France began the section on Western Europe, and again he paused, intrigued to discover the Picardy across which Hookham and his fellow prisoners of war had escaped from Germany. The distances involved were all far less great than he had imagined, and he traced his finger this way and that, guessing at the probable escape route through the more thinly populated areas. He was just passing north of Amiens when there came an unwelcome interruption.
“Pssst!”
It was none other than Jiji Govender, working as a street cleaner. Zondi was in no mood for any more of the Indian’s groveling gratitude, and shooed him away with his free hand.
“But I have tiding of great importances,” whined Jiji. “You hear me telling of mysterious gentleman with request to buy thirty-two size volovolo?”
“I remember.”
“The same has been seen this very day, Sergeant—I am hearing this from brother street cleaner working that side.”
“What side?”
“The side where abodes a man whose name I can only say and tremble: Mr. Meerkatty Marais.”
“Meerkat?” Zondi lost his place in the atlas. “Go on, Jiji. What is the name of this gentleman?”
“At luncheon I am partaking of this informations,” confided Jiji, crouching beside Zondi. “No word of the gent’s name is undisclosed, but Sammy Panjut, who working that side, he say he observing same personage diverge into flat of Meerkatty.”
“How long was he in there?”
“Much shouting, and Sammy says gent not seen again. He came away to cater for the needs of the belly—we have timing off from one to two o’clockies.”
“So this gent could have left while Sammy was away having his lunch with you and the other street cleaners?”
Jiji nodded, and plucked a trophy from his left nostril, studying it intently.
“If Sammy didn’t know the gent’s name, what did he say he looked like?” asked Zondi.
“Just a white gent, that’s the lot, Sergeant,” said Jiji, adding the trophy to his main collection on his broom handle. “I must treading like fairy for Sammy not know I work as undercover intelligent man.”
“So you didn’t ask for more details?”
Jiji shook his head but stayed smiling. “Is it not a great favoring I perform for you, Sergeant?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Zondi.
It was such a long time since he’d last thought about the shootings case, and so many other more interesting things had happened since then, that he needed a moment to get back into the required frame of mind. The likelihood of there being some connection between the shootings and Jiji’s mysterious gent seemed more than tenuous, while to suggest that Meerkat Marais had been involved was a total non-starter. Why was that? Because the Lieutenant had given Meerkat a good grilling the day Hookham’s body had been found, and not once had the man shown any of the tiny telltale signs that indicated he was lying when he denied having supplied the weapon. In fact, the Lieutenant had been so sure that Meerkat was in the clear that they hadn’t bothered to search his place or keep an eye on him. Some time factor or other had come into it as well, with the offer of good money for a .32 revolver having been made after Bradshaw had already been gunned down. And yet here was Jiji Govender with a piece of half-baked information that seemed to suggest that it could all be reconciled somehow. Perhaps the dates were wrong, but what about Meerkat’s patent innocence? As he couldn’t have faked it that well, thought Zondi, then the only explanation was that Meerkat had played an unwitting part in all this. He might not have liked that, which would in turn explain the shouting.
“Where’s Sammy Panjut now, Jiji?”
“Till five-thirties, he still that side, then we knocking off. You go see him?”
Zondi looked at his watch. “Who knows?”
“Always such a pleasuring,” said Jiji, cupping a hand, “to do great favor for number one Sergeant of all time.”
“And it’s a pleasure to do you one in return, Jiji,” said Zondi, who wasn’t going to part with a cent until having satisfied himself as to the strength of this tip-off. “If you go back ten yards, you’ll find some orange peel you missed.”
Then he strolled away, carefully returning the atlas to its brown-paper wrapper, and wondered why an early entry in Hookham’s diary had been hovering before his mind’s eye ever since that interruption. What had triggered it off? And why had he the fee
ling it held the key to the whole affair? On May 27th, Bonzo Hookham had still been in England.
23
TISH HAYES WAS not waiting on the corner of Alemap Avenue and Reid Street when Kramer drew up punctually in the Chevrolet at five-thirty. He cut the engine and settled back to see what associated ideas he could find for 113 keys on a piece of knotted twine. He started by considering the possibility that 13 was significant, in that it was an unlucky number, but soon abandoned such fanciful nonsense. These were 113 small brass keys, smaller than door-size, and widely varied in shape. The next thought along was that they belonged to the keeper of a safe-deposit vault, but that received an instant thumbs down; twine, knotted or otherwise, just didn’t have the style to go with the job. He toyed with the idea of a locksmith, rejected it as too obvious, and went on to the notion that the keys belonged to a collector of old shop tills. Too fanciful again. Then Tish came out of the front of Jonty’s, and work was forgotten.
“Home, James, and through the park,” she sighed, flopping into the seat beside him. “God, I’m exhausted.”
“Has that bastard been giving you a tough time, hey? Maybe I should—”
“Don’t be horrid, Tromp. Jonty’s very sweet and he’s very hardworking, which is more than you can say for most bosses. I couldn’t just walk out and leave that old bat for him to finish off, you know. And besides, what about your undying gratitude to him?”
“Huh,” said Kramer, and swung into the traffic.
Tish smiled and put a hand on his knee. They drove like that for a dozen blocks, just pleased to be in each other’s company. And for a gentle joke, Kramer took a detour through a small park, skirting it under an avenue of oak trees.
“Tromp?”
“Mmmm?”
“You never did tell me what made you suspect Jonty and me were—y’know,” murmured Tish, giving his knee a squeeze. “Come on, what was it? I thought our little affair had been ever so discreet.”
“Aren’t you also from Southampton?”
“But you didn’t know that until our second night.”
“Those ornaments in your flat. They were expensive, very classy, intellectual—none of them was you.”
“Well, thanks a lot, Lieutenant Kramer!”
“You’re welcome, lady.”
They joined the rush-hour traffic again, but turned away down a quiet side street at the next intersection.
“What else?” asked Tish.
Kramer wished she hadn’t started this. One of the joys of being with her was that they had always lived in the present, making no mention of past or future, and simply savoring what each moment brought with it. Once begun, however, it was an inevitable conversation to be concluded as quickly as possible.
“Before we met,” he said, “there was that time right at the beginning when Jonty told me in the gym that you had the hots for me.”
“He didn’t!”
“Oh ja, and then he laid it on thick he was after the Swedish popsie, just so I’d feel free—if you see what I mean.”
“He’s got a cheek! I’d not said a word to him about you at any stage, and anyway I’d only seen you once in the salon, hardly even noticed you.”
“That wasn’t how it felt to me,” said Kramer, grinning at her. “Why, for instance, did he rush off to tell you I’d come to that party?”
She gave her throaty giggle. “What arrogance there is in the man! I took myself into the kitchen because that Texan fella seemed rather juicy.”
“You’re denying that Jonty practically threw you at me?”
“No,” she admitted, in one of those sudden turnabouts that made her mind so attractive, “he’d probably become as bored in bed as I was, and he probably thought, in his big-hearted way, that you were sorely in need of a distraction.”
“Some distraction!” Kramer laughed. “But—?”
“But I still retained the right to choose for myself—he’d been fobbing me off all night, you know. I saw this great boorish Boer standing there, the first I’d ever seen from close up, and thought to myself, Well Tish, how do you fancy a bit of rough? It must’ve been the booze and not having had it for a week.”
Kramer shook his head, still amused by the forthright way truly English girls appeared to talk, forsaking the salacious prudery of their South African cousins. “Are we still working on that backlog, hey?” he sighed. “Only I wanted to ask you if I could have a few nights off once we catch up.”
“Knackered?”
“If that means what I think it means,” replied Kramer, stopping the car outside her flat, “yes.”
But they were making love again within three minutes of getting inside, and it was a slow, sweet and quite effortless thing. The sunset came to pink the bedroom walls, a light breeze carried the scent of magnolia through the open window, and somewhere along the river bank a black man was playing a penny-whistle, soft and wistful. They dozed for a while, her small head resting beneath his chin, then stirred in the last of the twilight, refreshed and ready to lose themselves utterly in a closed world of their own making. Kramer had never asked her the reason, but he sensed in Tish a great hurt somewhere.
“Your turn to count the daisies,” she whispered, rolling over on him, and bending forward to kiss his mouth. “I’ve been thinking. Wondering, really.”
“Tish?”
“Why don’t you ever ask me anything? You haven’t even asked the usual questions people ask about Jonty. Is he queer?—and all that.”
“But I know he isn’t queer. It’s all an act so the husbands don’t suspect the way he flirts with their wives, and it’s his sexy approach to them that keeps them coming.”
“No pun intended?”
“Hey?”
Tish laughed. “Nevermind, my grizzly Boer.… Some husbands aren’t so thick, though! There was one dowdy little thing with the most fabulous figure who—wait a moment, Tromp, I’m still talking.”
“I know: that’s what I’m trying to put a stop to.”
“But it’s my turn to—”
“Shhh,” said Kramer, touching her lips. “It’s our turn, let’s put it that way.”
“No, wait, I’m being quite serious.”
“What more must I know that I can’t see for myself?” he asked, looking up at her.
She was so frail and light on his loins, fragile almost, and yet fully a woman, with breasts that swayed heavy and ripe above his lips, inviting him to taste their strawberry-tipped sweetness; breasts with character too, one nipple an extrovert, the other turned in on itself until coaxed out gently, and both aware of the mutual pleasure they could bring. Her copper-colored hair, mussed and tickling, curled down over her thin shoulders, fragrant with her own special smell, and to the left of her navel, neat as a button, was the largest of her freckles, shaped like a butterfly’s wing. He kissed it, and entered her as she sat back again.
But Tish made no movement. “Why won’t you ask me anything?” she repeated. “Wouldn’t you like to know, for example, what gifts I bought Jonty in exchange?”
“Ja, I have a question.”
“Which is?”
“How is it that your freckles stop when they get to your face and your hands?”
“I put some stuff on my skin,” she said crossly, and tried to roll off. “I really don’t think you’re interested in me as a person at all!”
“Ach no, you’re just a distraction,” said Kramer, holding her hips tightly, imagining he was pinning a butterfly to a cork board, making himself laugh. “You’re just you, woman! Can’t you understand that? You’re not parts of Jonty’s life, your uncles’, aunts’ and sisters’ lives. You’re everything, nothing further is needed! You’re Tish! Finished en klaar!” He had never spoken to anyone quite like that before in his entire life.
Tish stared down at him. “Do you know,” she said, “that’s the sort of adolescent thing a boy comes out with the first time he falls in love.”
“Perhaps that’s it,” said Kramer.
“But then surely I’d be part of your life, wouldn’t I? And wouldn’t the most important part of you be mine too?”
“Isn’t it already, hey? How can you sit there and ask such bloody silly questions? Can’t you feel it?”
Then Tish began to grin as well. “Oh, sit here, you mean?”
Their laughter set them in motion, bringing with it purely mechanical responses, and then a new wild joy took over, building its own steady rhythm. “One daisy,” counted Kramer. “Two daisies. Three daisies, four daisies, five dai—six! Seven! Eight! Nine!”
“Ooooopsy-daisy!”
And they fell out of the bamboo bed just as the telephone in the other room started ringing.
Zondi, watched by Sammy Punjat, and holding Meerkat Marais’ receiver in a clean handkerchief to safeguard any fingerprints that might be on it, waited impatiently for someone to answer. At their feet lay the dead body of a smartly dressed, gray-haired man who had fingernail marks in his throat, but seemed to have actually died of a heart attack. The flat was a shambles.
Rrrrr-rrrr.
No answer. Zondi looked at his watch. It was almost six-thirty. Perhaps he should try again in another five minutes.
“Hullo?” said a breathless voice. “Tish—Tish Hayes, speaking.”
“Sorry to disturb the madam,” said Zondi, “but this is Bantu Detective Sergeant Zondi here. Is it possible for me to speak with the Lieutenant?”
“How did you know this number, Sergeant?”
“The Lieutenant gave it to me to keep for emergency uses only, madam. Many apologies, but—”
“Just hold on will you? I’ll see if he’s available.”
Zondi smiled. The Lieutenant had told him it was the telephone number of a flat down near the hospital, and flats didn’t have stairs that made people breathless. She sounded very nice, younger than he’d expected, and she’d not called him “boy.” Then the receiver at the other end rattled as it was snatched up.
“Christ, kaffir, this better be bloody good, hey?”
And Zondi’s smile faded.
“Did you have to speak to your colleague like that?” remonstrated Tish, when Kramer stumped back into the bedroom. “He did say it was an emergency.”
The Blood of an Englishman Page 23