The Steam Pig

by James McClure

  The young Bantu constable over on duty outside the cell block greeted them with the heartiness of a secret sleeper. He twisted the master light switch in the wall niche, took the keys and swung open the steel door. Then came the customary pause before stepping in out of the fresh air. Actually Kramer never found the odour within wholly unpleasant; the blend of vomit, urine and carbolic formed a nostalgic reminder of a certain nurse’s uniform often used as a pillow.

  The three cells on the left had the extra bolts and padlocks which had become mandatory on the doors of political detainees since the Goldberg escape. No sound came from behind them.

  Across the way were three others reserved for whites. The constable stopped at the second of these and grinned, poking his thumb at the inspection flap. Kramer pushed it aside and looked in.

  A dishevelled man of around forty was sprawled on his coir mattress on the floor, moaning and cursing drunkenly. His belt had been confiscated and his trousers were down to his grazed knees.

  “Black whore,” the prisoner pronounced with startling clarity.

  The constable giggled, his eyes searching for approval. Presumably Grobbelaar had spent a hilarious half hour there earlier on.

  “Love you, black whore, I love you,” sobbed the fool, rolling over to muffle his agony in the soiled ticking.

  “Him contradict Immorality Act,” the constable needlessly explained. And he laughed elaborately the way Grobbelaar did, heaving his shoulders as if to dislodge an errant coathanger.

  Kramer’s fists bunched. So Zondi performed a sly act of charity by grinding his heel into one polished toecap.

  The prisoner was being sick. Kramer looked back in at him. He knew the man from somewhere. That was it: the railway ticket office. He was the clerk who never had to look things up. The one who always said he wished he were going with you and sounded good company. No more of that now for the rest of his life. No one would want to be seen with him ever again, certainly not in a public place like a buffet car. Fifty to one it had not been a prostitute either, more probably another of the big, fat ample ones with gentle faces all mothers were meant to have. If he was a bachelor it might not be so bad. He could have the money for top counsel and get off lightly. But even if the case was withdrawn after a remand in the morning, it would have smashed him for good. Stupid bastard.

  “Gershwin Mkize,” Kramer said, letting the flap drop.

  This surprised the constable. He dithered a moment before taking the cork off the tip of his spear and leading the way round the corner to the general non-white cell.

  There were sounds of stirring within and the constable shouted that everyone should lie down and keep still. Then he undid the lock silently and stepped back. With a practised ease he used his spear to lift the latch as he jumped forward, kicking the door open.

  There were over thirty prisoners in the cell and about half of them were sitting up blinking blearily in the light. One old lag, thinking it was morning, had already rolled up his grass mat. A slobbering snore was the only sound.

  The constable stepped aside, pointing. His gesture was hardly necessary. Gershwin, the stooge and the driver, all in their yellow suits, stood out against the far wall like three traffic signs against a grey sky.

  Kramer noticed several things immediately: that they were only feigning sleep, that Gershwin reclined on five mats while four youngsters nearby lay on the bare concrete, and the stooge and the driver, both bloodstained, had decided three extra mats befitted their station.

  “Clear them,” Kramer ordered, nodding at the prisoners who lay between him and Gershwin.

  Zondi motioned the constable to stand by the door with his spear and then dragged the intervening forms to one side. Small as he was, he had the strength of a stevedore—or perhaps it was just a knack.

  Kramer stopped a foot from the pile of mats.

  “Gershwin.”

  The stooge fluttered an eye.

  “Gershwin Mkize.”

  There was a murmur of excitement among the other prisoners. The constable stamped for silence.

  “It’s time to go, Gershwin.”

  This brought the driver scrambling to his feet. Kramer elbowed him sharply, deep in the belly.

  “Where to?” inquired Gershwin, as his henchman sank gasping beside him.

  The stooge screwed his eyes up tight as if he dreamt of impalement.

  “Ah, never you mind,” Kramer replied quietly.

  “No, thank you, boss.”

  “Hey?”

  “I’ve got Number One Jewboy lawyer. He say Gershwin—”

  “Sam Safrinsky? You’re going to need an advocate for the Supreme Court, not a solicitor.”

  “Supreme? For a little trouble like this one? Mr Safrinsky he say I’ve got a good alibi, I just coming down by market side to look for Dodge and …”

  Gershwin had noticed Zondi’s expression. So had some others and they had turned away.

  “So Sam says it’s all right,” said Kramer. “But does Sam know also about Shoe Shoe?”

  Gershwin’s lip curled. He stared back at Kramer without blinking. Then he looked down at what Zondi dropped on his knees. It was a head of red kaffir corn.

  “There’s more,” Kramer said. “And it’s stuck under the Dodge that the traffic cops are keeping nice and safe for us.”

  “My turn?” Zondi asked.

  “No, I think Mr Mkize wants to go with us now. Actually, I’d thought of a little ride out to the kids’ paddling pond in Wilderness Park.”

  Gershwin jerked upright.

  “It gets around, doesn’t it?” Kramer chuckled to Zondi. “Funny thing is that only the people we want to believe it ever do. The magistrates hear about the park and just shake their heads. What liars these black buggers are.”

  “And it’s not raining now, boss.”

  Zondi came close to looking mischievous.

  “On second thoughts, perhaps just a little chat in the office. What do you say, Gershwin?”

  Gershwin got up with difficulty, his legs were not themselves, and presented his wrists.

  “No cuffs,” Kramer said. “You have not far to go.”

  Zondi took an elbow to guide him.

  “Constable! Take these two canaries and put them in separate cells.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant!”

  “And no mats—you understand?”

  “Suh!”

  Kramer watched the constable carry out his orders, it was never safe for a policeman to be left on his own in the block. It was all done with surprising efficiency. Kramer was about to leave when a thought struck him.

  “And constable, take the buckets out of those cells—we don’t want the bastards being too comfortable.”

  Shoe Shoe had had to sit in it, right up to the end.

  9

  IT WAS ONE hell of a night.

  Gershwin Mkize’s final words were: “The steam pig …” Then he slumped, fell face first to the floor, and lay very still with his arse in the air.

  Kramer and Zondi remained seated, staring at it dully. They thought they had broken the bastard. They thought they had taken him to the edge and dropped him over. Perhaps they had. But the posture seemed to proclaim an insolence that ended things the way they had begun.

  Kramer raised a foot. Gershwin was just out of reach. His foot flopped. Zondi did not even make the attempt. They were both exhausted. Pooped.

  Sure, it was all over—only Kramer’s body needed time to adjust to the idea. It was still running rough on a too-rich mixture of hot blood and gland juice. His face was flushed, his left temple pulsed quick as a toad’s throat, and his stomach hurt. His bladder, too, was under stress. One false move and he would be walking with his knees pressed together.

  Outside it was morning.

  One of those edge-to-edge mornings that make milkmen feel superior as they skim off its cream while the white boss sleeps.

  By now, however, pint bottles stood half-empty among the cereal packets and Trekkersburg was hurr
ying along to keep the economy going boom boom boom. In the street, cars, lorries, buses and motorcycles had regressed to an assembly-line crawl; nose to tail, never quite going, never quite stopping, but getting someplace. Then right beneath the window, which was still covered by the slat blind, a giggle of secretaries paused to wait for a friend.

  Kramer felt he must take a look; he suddenly craved their shower-fresh skins and crisp cotton blouses and sticky pink lipsticks. It was a mistake.

  The sun speared him in the eyeballs. They bled red, robbing him of all but a glimpse of the girls as they tiptapped off with the latecomer. And worse: when he turned around he discovered that the light was the kind that turns a party’s gay litter into a squalid mess come dawn. This had been no party, but what the day did to his office was intolerable.

  Every sordid item now declared itself in stark relief against its own sharp shadow; the coffee cups, the hose pipe, the crumpled packets, the wet towels, the plastic duck. The floor was a mess from smoking—and so was the air. Only the stench did not show up, although it was a close thing.

  Then a passing schoolboy whistled across to a classmate and Kramer wondered at himself. It had been like this before and would be again. In a few minutes a fatigue party would be brought up from the cells. The scuff marks and cigarette smudges would disappear as completely from the parquet flooring as Gershwin’s thin bile. The towels would go down to the canteen and the duck and the rest of the stuff back into the cupboard. By nine the room—with its four cream walls, brown woodwork, two chairs and a desk—would be unremarkable as ever.

  Which was the way he wanted to feel.

  “Zondi, I’ve got to go, man.”

  “Boss.”

  “Send down for Khumalo to help you get this crap bag charged with Shoe Shoe’s murder on Saturday last. You said you’ve already charged the other two?”

  “Straight away after I saw them at four.”

  “Fine. Tell the prosecutor—think it’ll be Mr Oosthuizen this morning—that I want a week’s remand. He’ll fix it up. After that, you go home. I’ll ring the township manager if I need you before then, otherwise six on the dot outside here.”

  Zondi nodded and reached for the telephone.

  All the way down the passage Kramer kept his mind off his bladder. He did not want to give it any excuse for over-excitement. He made the white tiled wall just in time and was marvelling at one of life’s elementary pleasures when Sergeant Willie van Niekerk emerged from the cubicle behind him. He was the first Murder Squad man Kramer had seen in two days.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” Van Niekerk murmured with his customary civility, turning on the tap at the basin. There was no soap but he had brought his own in an envelope.

  “How’s things?” Kramer asked, eyeing the Lifebuoy.

  “Ach, so so. Can’t grumble—got my reports finished last night. All up to date.”

  “Oh, yes? Looking for work, are you?”

  “Like the soap, sir?”

  “Ta. I’ve got a nice little lot lined up for someone who knows what he’s doing.”

  “Really? The case Colonel Dupe keeps starting to talk about?”

  “What does he say?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I’m interested.”

  “Ja, that’s the one.”

  Van Niekerk appeared to be examining his pen sketch of a moustache in the mirror but he was keeping the edge of an eye on Kramer.

  “But haven’t you got someone working on that one already, sir?”

  Kramer smelt tact.

  “I’ve got a kaffir. He’s no bloody good for what I want done.”

  “Which is?”

  “Statements, phone inquiries, paperwork.”

  “I could take a look at it, sir.”

  Kramer handed back the soap, unused.

  “Then let’s go up to the main office for a minute, Willie.”

  The minute lasted one hour and some seconds. By the end of it, Van Niekerk knew all he needed.

  And Kramer was on his way home. Home sweet home being a room in the house of a retired headmaster. Perhaps, strictly speaking, it was more than simply a room for it opened out on to its own enclosed verandah covered in granadilla vines. There was space enough for quite a bit of furniture and not a few callers. Kramer preferred to live without either. He settled for a divan, small wardrobe and a cardboard carton in which he kept his laundry lists and private papers. He had long since secretly conceded that he shared, in part, the philosophy of the Kalahari Bushmen. These hunters believed that shelter and clothing should be no more elaborate than circumstances demanded—a man’s duty was to invest his labours in his belly so to labour again. And that was how Kramer spent his money. Whenever possible, he would glut himself on steaks rich and various and as rare as a welder’s thumb.

  His living arrangements did, however, have one disadvantage which a savage might laugh off but which distressed him in the mornings: he had to share a bathroom with the landlord, Mr Dickerson, and his lady.

  Kramer braked hard. The traffic lights outside the Rugby ground had beaten him to it. He sat back in the bucket seat of his own little Ford.

  And in a moment of total recall he felt the pinch of the narrow, cold bath on his shoulders. Then the icy droplets falling from the washing festooned above it on a rack. The old dear’s knickers would dry in ten minutes out in the sun. Oh no, she feared the sight of them might incite the garden boy. It was no good speaking to her about it either. She would only ask again why the law required bikini girls on cinema posters to have decent dresses painted over them. There was no answer to that.

  The lights changed.

  As if to demonstrate that such feats of memory were not necessarily an act of will, his brain made manifest what really had caused him to baulk at the thought of a bath before ten o’clock: the smell.

  Mr and Mrs Dickerson were of the age and disposition well known for its morbid preoccupation with bowel movements. The window sill, the shelf above the washbasin, and the medicine locker itself bore weighty testimony to this. There were patent pills, powders and potions by the score, promising everything from gentle relief to an event not far short of common assault. Each label presumed the sufferer need search no further, but Mr and Mrs Dickerson preferred to approach their problem with at least an open mind—and as some might the blending of an elixir. Every evening they met to discuss a fresh formula in laboratory whispers, gulp down the ingredients and retire with expressions of hopeful anticipation.

  Unhappily, the test bench was also in the bathroom. Not any amount of lace trimming around the seat lid could disguise the fact twelve hours later. Not with the window nailed shut for fear of tempting the garden boy.

  And after all Kramer had been through, it was just too much. His mind relented and it was like finding a full bottle among the empties: he realised it was Thursday—and the Widow Fourie always had Thursdays off.

  Kramer gave the Ford its head and took the first turning left. Hibiscus Court’s basement car park swallowed him up just four blocks later.

  The Widow Fourie answered his second knock, a little sleepy but in her housecoat.

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Out with Elizabeth. They’ve gone down to the swings.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, just my new kaffir maid. Sonja got her for me—she’s very clean.”

  Kramer smiled wryly.

  “Come on in, Trompie, people can see me.”

  He stepped inside and leaned back on the door to close it. The click cocked his nervous system.

  The Widow Fourie walked towards the bedroom. Then, noticing that Kramer was not following her, she turned and allowed her housecoat to swirl open. She had nothing on underneath.

  Kramer approached her. She closed her eyes and he kissed her. Then he covered her nakedness.

  “Got any Lifebuoy?” he asked.

  The Widow Fourie blinked.

  “Could ask you the same thing,” she smirked, regretting it instantly. “Hey, no yo
u don’t! You stay right here. There’s your chair. I’ll get the water running.”

  But Kramer was afraid to sit. He stayed standing until she returned to undress him, very gently. It was a mother’s touch.

  “That’s not Lifebuoy,” Kramer protested as he was led into the sun-bright bathroom. “I’ll come out of here smelling like a bloody poof.”

  The Widow Fourie responded by sprinkling another handful of crystals into the already murky water. She knew how he liked them.

  The first thing he did once he was in the water was to grab a plastic toy and hurl it into the corridor.

  “Man, you’re in a funny mood,” sighed the Widow Fourie. “Annie loves her duck. Don’t you remember bringing it to her?”

  “So?”

  “Now, look here, Trompie—”

  “More hot, please.”

  He forgot the duck and concentrated on the cabin cruiser. It was a good wide bath and by moving his arms skilfully it was possible to create a current that sucked the boat all the way from the plug. On his third attempt it went aground on the weed-locked shores of his chest.

  “You’re just a big kid,” the Widow Fourie muttered, tying her belt tight like apron strings. “I suppose you want chips with your eggs?”

  He was asleep.

  And he stayed asleep until she tried to change the water which had become surprisingly chill for such a hot day.

  “No, leave it,” he said. It was like a Cape stream in spring.

  So the Widow Fourie perched on the wash basket and lit two Luckies. Kramer dried a hand and took one. He began to talk.

  Eventually the Widow Fourie asked: “What was this Gershwin like when he confessed? Was he all relieved like they are in plays on the radio?”

  “Oh ja. All off his chest. One big smile.”

  “I can never understand that. It seems so stupid. I mean, now you’re going to hang him.”

  “So? What is everyone afraid of? What they don’t know. Now he knows. Simple.”

  “Still, it must be hard getting it out of a kaffir like him.”

  “True.”