Darren Bradshaw was grinning.
Click, click, click!
Kramer saw his cartridges lying forgotten in a glass bowl on the shelf above the record-player in Tish’s flat, and was certain he would never count daisies again. Even so, in that same frantic second, he tried to throw himself sideways, but collided with the open door.
The .32 went off with a hell of a bang.
Kramer felt nothing, although it had been pointing straight at him. He stood stunned. Then Zondi came rushing through the doorway behind him, and stopped and stared too.
Darren Bradshaw was crouched at the far end of the table, looking in astonishment at where his right hand had been only a moment before. The hand had been blown apart, leaving only a tatter of tissue, bone splinters and a spurting stump. Then the .38 Smith & Wesson’s hammer, which protruded from a small hole in his skull above the right eyebrow, sagged and fell out, and he followed it to the floor, stone dead.
How Meerkat Marais laughed. “You can’t say that I did a thing to him!” he gasped, and then delivered the punchline of his terrible revenge. “You see, Lieutenant Kramer, there was no way I could lose! That bloody thirty-two was lethal.”
26
THEY TOOK OFF again an hour after dawn, climbing slowly into a dull gray sky as leaden as Zondi’s mood.
Kramer finally twisted round in his seat beside Robert du Plooi and demanded to know what was eating him. “Is it because I was proved right after all?” he added. “That wasn’t even a wild-goose chase—it was a hunt for a bloody red herring!”
“Maybe I am just tired, boss,” murmured Zondi, yawning.
“But you can’t dispute how wrong you two were, hey? I knew from the start that Meerkat wasn’t involved in those shootings, and now we have proof positive. Not only couldn’t that have been the gun used, but Darren was nowhere near Trekkersburg at the time his father was shot. Furthermore—”
“How do you know that?” interrupted Du Plooi, who had spent the night swapping flying stories with the helpful farmer.
“The girlfriend told me,” explained Kramer. “She’s been going steady with him for two months, and he was at her parents’ place in Jo’burg when he received the news of his old man having been shot.”
“What sort of state is she in?”
“Shock like a rape case. She’s talking calmly and coldly, but tonight I reckon she’ll really crack up.”
“Poor kid.…” said Du Plooi, leveling out.
“Ja, they’d only just arrived at the cottage, and had opened all the windows to air it properly, when Meerkat arrived in that hired car. Darren went out to see who it was, and came back with a gun in his back. The rest you must know.”
“Except for the bit about how the gun ended up in—”
“Ach, Darren chucked it in the dam the night he came to fetch his father,” said Kramer. “Meerkat insisted he got it out again, and that was what they were doing when we flew over.”
Du Plooi shook his head. “Stupid little idiot getting mixed up in things like that,” he said.
“I think he must have needed the extra cash. You should have seen the girl, this Sonja—very expensive piece of goods. The temptation must’ve been too great when the offer was made for a small revolver.”
“Not specifically a thirty-two?”
“No, Zondi and I heard Darren use the words ‘small revolver’—but they’re not much use under a thirty-two anyway.”
“All nice and neatly tied up then?”
“Uh huh, except I’ve got to do the informing of next-of-kin.”
Du Plooi pursed his lips sympathetically. “Rather you than me, friend! Darren may have been a proper little bastard in many ways, but he was the light of his mother’s life, you know. I bet she was behind him getting that brand-new sports car recently. And Archie’s going to take this pretty hard as well. They may have had their rows, but that’s only because they were as alike as peas in a pod those two. Don’t like the look of that cloud up ahead.”
Kramer saw what he meant, and looked at his watch. “How much longer to go round it?”
“Why?” chuckled Du Plooi. “Are you thinking of the welcoming arms of your lovely lady friend?”
“Ach, no,” said Kramer. “It’s just I’m knackered.” And his smile lingered for quite a while.
The plane began to wallow and make complaining noises with its engine. Du Plooi altered course, steering thirty degrees further to the south, and kept checking the map on his knees. The plane settled down again.
“Another twenty minutes,” he said. “Sorry, but it can’t be helped.” His eyes were red-rimmed, and his shoulders sagged a bit.
“That’s fine,” said Kramer, growing weary himself.
For ten of those minutes, nobody spoke.
“I suppose what’s giving the glooms to our black friend back there is the fact you’re back at the start again. Must be very disappointing.”
“I’m not with you, Du Plooi.”
“Who did do the shooting and all that.”
“Ach, life’s too short for that, hey?” replied Kramer, lighting a cigarette.
“But doesn’t it annoy you to think he’s out there somewhere? Laughing at you up his sleeve?”
“He can laugh all he likes, man, just as long as he doesn’t interfere directly with my life.”
There was a sound of stirring in the back seat, and Zondi sat upright to look out of his window. “Hau! Where are we now, boss?”
“On the approach, Mickey—relax.”
They were banking slowly to the left and losing height over the yellow thorn scrub which stretched to the southeast of Trekkersburg. Kramer found no difficulty in picking out the bungalow and garden where Mrs. Westford lived with her big son Timmy: it looked like a green trading stamp stuck to a sheet of creased brown paper. He looked away again.
“May the twenty-seventh,” mumbled Zondi.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Lieutenant. Soon, you say?”
“Very soon!” said Kramer, and skipped his visit to the Bradshaws, imagining instead the shower he would take first.
Trekkersburg was becoming real, and no longer seemed no more than a collection of pebbles and parsley in a hollow. Houses stood out, trees, street lamps, people.
Du Plooi sighed. “Pity it had to work out like this,” he said. “Is it true that the most you can hit Meerkat with is a couple of assault charges and possession of a stolen weapon? I would have thought that the fact he shouted at Darren to shoot made a difference.”
“It did,” agreed Kramer. “But what does Darren become if Meerkat is an accessory before the fact? A co-accused? I think Mrs. Bradshaw will have suffered enough. I’ll get Meerkat another day, don’t you worry.”
“He’s certainly a sly one.”
Zondi leaned forward against the back of Kramer’s seat. “Boss,” he said, “I think that is what’s worrying me: why did the young master try to shoot?”
“Because he was urged to in the heat of the moment!” Du Plooi retorted. “You were there, for Christ’s sake! You don’t think he’d do it off his own bat, do you?”
“The boss misunderstands me,” said Zondi, politely. “As the Lieutenant first reported to me, Boss Darren tried to grab his gun before Meerkat said anything.”
“Instinctive if someone comes barging into a room waving another gun around,” commented Du Plooi, lining up for his landing.
“Yet the Lieutenant shouted at him that he was from the police, Boss Du Plooi. Would not a policeman be his rescuer in such a predicament? It was not as though he didn’t know that the Lieutenant was truly a police officer—he had been introduced to him at his parents’ house.”
“Phew! You’ve really got yourself one here, haven’t you?” Du Plooi remarked jokingly to Kramer. “A properly perverse little—”
“Perverse?” echoed Kramer, determined that his homecoming was not going to be soured by an argument. “Christ, Mickey here is the head of our Bantu Perversions Squad—am I not right
, hey?”
Zondi turned away from their laughter and gave an extra tug to his seat belt.
Then the world fell in on Kramer, and he didn’t have so much as a smile left in him. The note lying open on his lap behind the wheel of the Chevrolet was hurried and brief.
My Darling Tromp,
I want to thank you for more than you will ever know. You made me come to my senses tonight. It was the face of that poor man and how utterly, utterly dead he was. I can’t fully explain what I realized then. Realized about me and Jonty. I also realized I didn’t fit here. And that there was a part of you someone had that I could never share. Give my love to Mickey and tell him to look after you. Don’t try to contact me. I’m going home, and that’s a long, long way.
With fondest memories, Tish XXXX
“I want to thank you for more than you will ever know.…” he repeated aloud, trying to make the words have some meaning. The passenger door opened and Zondi ducked his head into the cab. “I have telephoned your message to the duty officer, Lieutenant, and Colonel Muller is being informed about last night at the earliest—”
“I’ve got a message for you too,” said Kramer bitterly.
“Boss?”
“She says—no, come on, kaffir! Get in!”
Zondi slipped into his seat and closed the door. “What is wrong, Lieutenant?” His voice was very concerned.
“It’s nothing,” said Kramer, crumpling the sheet of paper in his fist. “It’s bugger all!” Then he laughed as a white rage burst deep in his belly, barging aside the sob that had been building up there. “Let’s get going to the Bradshaws’, hey? I feel just in the mood to grind that bastard’s face in what he’s done!”
“Done, boss? Done how?”
Kramer knew he was being irrational, but even that had its bitter-sweetness. He started the Chevrolet and swung it hard out of the car park, clipping a bollard and almost running down Robert du Plooi, who was returning to his own vehicle from the flying club’s hangar. No, he was being quite rational in another way, Kramer told himself, as he opened up down the still sleepy streets of outer Trekkersburg. Almost from the moment the call had come through about Archie bloody Bradshaw being shot, his life had never been the same. One failure on top of another, one humiliation after another—and finally this. The bastard had left him nothing; little wonder he had produced that feeling of revulsion in him. But now the boot was on the other foot, and with Mrs. Bradshaw out of the way, he would relish the impact of what he had to say. God, he would be cold. Hard. Ruthless.
“Like father, like son, hey, Mickey?”
“I’m not sure what you are talking about, boss,” said Zondi, flinching as a milk-float nearly turned into Cleopatra’s bathtub. “Do you speak of Boss Bradshaw?”
“Right! And of what you were saying on the plane—you know, how that little bastard had still gone for me when he could hear and see my gun was empty.”
“Did I say that?” queried Zondi.
“It’s what you were leading up to, only Du Plooi was too thick to see it.”
Zondi received this oblique apology with a small smile. “I don’t think Boss Du Plooi was too thick, Lieutenant. I saw a very troubled look come into his eyes, and that’s why he made a joke. He did not want to know more.”
“Well, I do. What else were you going to say?”
“Only this, Lieutenant: what instinct makes a boy like that see a police officer as an enemy?”
“A criminal instinct, man—and that can be taught.”
Zondi nodded. “That is so, boss. I do not claim to have found any big answer, but I think we have now come right round to the place we started. Perhaps it was for a criminal act that Boss Bradshaw was marked down to be killed—and Boss Hookham plus the schoolgirl were only for a cover-up when we came too close to the persons responsible. I have also been pestered all night by a page from Boss Hookham’s diary for May the twenty-seventh.”
“He was still in England then.”
“True, Lieutenant. He took his wife to a hospital in Southampton.”
“Uh huh? But what does that connect with?”
“Hau, if only I could catch again what gave me this picture of the page so vividly,” sighed Zondi, scratching the side of his head. “I can see it all—the appointment, and where he speaks of the suffering of Albert, her family and then of herself.”
“We’ll have to leave that for now then,” said Kramer, and dropped his speed abruptly, bringing the car under icy control. “What I’ll do is use this message I’ve got for the Bradshaws to see whether, without breaking any rules if you’re wrong, it could make him open up. Logically, if he committed some crime against his attackers, he ought to know who they are—right?”
“Check, boss.”
“Lucky I got Grobbler to give me some Polaroids of the body, wasn’t it?” Kramer added wryly, still so angry it was like being drunk. “And it was only out of the kindness of my heart, you know; I thought Doc might like them for his collection.”
At 7.55 a.m. that dreary morning, Zondi climbed back into the Chevrolet outside the Bradshaws’ undistinguished property in Kitchener Row. He had just seen the Lieutenant give the front door a miss and go straight up the side entrance with a pair of fingers crossed behind his back.
For a moment or two, Zondi stared at the Audi saloon owned by Archibald Meredith Bradshaw, which was parked hard into the curb just ahead of him, and then he reached for his atlas, disturbing a crumple of paper that was lying on top of it.
“Poor Lieutenant,” he said to himself, without opening it out, “but the Widow will be pleased.”
Then he turned to the map of France once again, and gave a snap of his fingers.
It was nothing like being drunk, Kramer corrected himself, as he reached the wooden gate into the Bradshaws’ back garden. It was simply the effect of the adrenalin still coursing through him that made him so clinically detached, and instead of things being hazy and vague, every detail of his surroundings imposed itself on his mind with vivid clarity.
“Tish,” he said once, as a cynically administered booster to his contained rage, before lifting the latch.
Looking back on that moment an hour later he would be tempted to dismiss the extraordinary sequence of events which followed as simply a case of arriving at the right place at the right time. And yet he would have to admit that almost everything he sought had been there from the very beginning, and what had made the real difference was his state of mind.
The gate swung back, and through the mulberry trees he glimpsed a bikini-clad figure. He closed the gate and walked towards Mrs. Bradshaw, who was engaged in arm-swinging exercises that undoubtedly did her magnificent breasts a great deal of good. He stopped beside the first tree. Totally absorbed, Mrs. Bradshaw tossed aside the pair of old Indian clubs she had been using, then stooped and picked up a skipping rope. It was no common or garden skipping rope, but a properly professional length of blue cord that had varnished wooden handles. She began to skip, counting the number of times she left the ground, and her finely turned thighs took each successive shock on landing with barely a tremble. Then the skipping rope was also tossed aside, and she placed her hands on her hips to begin rotating her torso. A body like that was no accident of nature, certainly not in a woman of her age, but the result of regular, carefully planned routines, carried out until she dripped with perspiration. Round and round her head went, showing glimpses of the plain little face she could do nothing about. All the clues had been there that first day, mused Kramer, the problem being that he had not seen a physique but what the Widow Fourie called a sex object. Mrs. Bradshaw turned and dived into the swimming pool, swam two fast lengths and climbed out.
“Why, Lieutenant Kramer!” she said, squinting at him with her weak blue eyes. “Back so soon again?”
“What do you mean by back so soon?” rumbled her husband, tipping himself out of a hammock, where he had been reading the morning paper.
Kramer saw that the hammock had been d
rawn up by a system of crude pulleys.
“Keeping fit, Mrs. Bradshaw?” His voice was frozen over.
She giggled nervously. “Well, I do think one should, don’t you? I’ve been doing it for years! Haven’t I, Archie? I even tried to get you to join me! And Darren! But you’re both such naughty boys! Do you know, Lieutenant, I bought Darren everything he would need when I was last in Johannesburg—granted it was in a sale, and it didn’t cost the earth—but has he used it?”
“Some of it,” said Kramer.
“Look here, Lieutenant,” growled Bradshaw, “have you any idea of the time? Do you usually barge in on people before they’ve had their breakfast?”
Kramer stared at him, interested in the effect this might have.
“I know what it is!” said Mrs. Bradshaw. “Lieutenant Kramer has tried to be here early to sell you some tickets. He came last night while you were out and we had such a lovely long chat about Darren. You asked me all sorts of questions, didn’t you, Lieutenant?”
Bradshaw shot a worried glance at his wife, and began folding his newspaper up very tightly.
“Can I see that?” asked Kramer.
“What? The Gazette?”
“The Gazette,” said Kramer, taking it from him. “What’s on the front page this morning? Any news of Basil Benson being found dead in Meerkat Marais’ flat?” There was in fact a small paragraph in the stop press—all it gave was the flat’s address. “You know Marais, don’t you, Mr. Bradshaw? Skinny, nervous type with long fingernails?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Bradshaw.
“Long fingernails? But I thought Darren’s friend was called Wee Willie something-or-other?” said Mrs. Bradshaw gaily, then brought her fist to her mouth as she realized the slip she’d made. “Oh dear, don’t be angry, Archie!”
Bradshaw looked from his wife to Kramer. “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked. “I haven’t understood a word of this conversation, and I don’t like the attitude you’re showing, Kramer!”
His wife tittered. “You’re dreadful in the morning,” she said. “Now don’t take on so, Archie! The nice Lieutenant looks like he’s been up all night, so you can’t expect him to be bright and breezy either! Shall we get tickets for Sonja and Darren as well? It would be nice if we could make up a little foursome for the policemen’s ball.” She flushed slightly as she said that.
The Blood of an Englishman Page 27