The Steam Pig

by James McClure

  “I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Mr Kramer.”

  “Of?”

  “Trekkersburg.”

  She thought about it.

  “Of?”

  “I’m from the City Hall.”

  “Then why come here?”

  “Because I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”

  “That sounds very stupid.”

  Kramer had had enough.

  “Tell me where your boss is and make it snappy!”

  The electronic bitch robot switched wavelength.

  “I’m very sorry, sir, but he’s at the City Hall at present for a cocktail party.”

  “What cocktail party?”

  “It’s in the Assembly Room—just off the Council Chamber.”

  “I know the bloody plan of the place. I want to know what party this is.”

  “Councillor Trenshaw told me it was to mark the signing of a contract, I think. The one for the big new native township they’re going to build out the other side of Peacehaven.”

  “Oh, the five-million Rand one.”

  “It’s ten as far as I can remember.”

  “Well, you’re wrong, madam.”

  Kramer turned and stalked out.

  He had not the slightest idea of what the township was going to cost the city. But he did know that he had given his name to her and set the ball rolling.

  Talking of balls, it was party time.

  Moosa felt relatively safe on this side of the frontier in the front window of his friend Mohammed Singh’s tailoring shop.

  The Salvation Army Men’s Hostel stood across the road, representing the last outpost of white civilisation. If there had not been so many potholes in the tarmac there would have been a white line to divide the lanes and that would have marked where the two group-areas met.

  Singh had been most instructive. Having sat in the other window for more than twenty years, cranking away at his Singer and swallowing pins, he had picked up a lot about the establishment over the way.

  The small, neglected-looking bungalow, with its wire baskets of tired ferns hanging from the verandah rafters, was where Ensign Roberts lived with his family of eight. It was said that they had less than thirty Rand a week and Mrs Roberts did most of her shopping in Indian stores.

  Ensign Roberts was in sole charge of the hostel adjacent to his garden but surrounded by a high corrugated iron fence. The only access was through a pair of large wooden doors hung on brick columns. They were wide open at present but would close firmly at ten o’clock. They would part before seven only if the police dropped off some bum they had taken pity on. Even then Ensign Roberts had been heard to vehemently refuse admittance.

  The good man—for he was a good man as well as a Christian—had his problems. The wing coming down towards the gate was the least of them. This was where the old age pensioners on about twenty Rand a month lived. They were quiet and sleepy and only occasionally caused trouble by stealing old newspapers from each other. Next, in the first two rooms of the wing to the right at the far end, were the ex-prisoners. Getting them settled down into jobs and keeping them off drink was more complicated, but in general the failures never stayed long. The real troublemakers filled the rest of the L-shaped building with their stink and their hell-raising. These were the gentlemen of the road, the tramps, the hoboes, the drunks, the dagga smokers, the surgeons and lawyers who had said what-the-hell and walked out in patent leather shoes. You could not trust them for a moment—not even in their sleep. Ensign Roberts bore scars on his face to prove it, having had his spectacles smashed trying to calm a prodigal who encountered Jesus Christ in his dreams.

  These were the men in whom Moosa was interested. They would be along at five to claim a bed before going out again to beg and, perhaps, take some shirts to be sold. He had Singh’s permission to use the telephone the moment he saw the riverbank comedians.

  Suddenly there they were: right outside the shop window, looking in. Moosa froze. He was the only dummy with a head but the suitcase was gone and they were too drunk to notice.

  Then Moosa suffered a second, far greater, shock.

  15

  KRAMER HATED PARTIES. Parties of any description. And cocktail parties more than any other kind, although they were seldom his lot. Having admitted a prejudice, he was still able to say that this particular party was the worst ever held.

  Most of the eighty guests seemed to think so, too. You could see their charming faces ached to get away.

  Precisely what was wrong with it was another matter. There were no cocktails, of course, but there was plenty of drink. The mayor’s personal staff met the heavy demand for free civic Scotch recklessly, without benefit of tot measure. And there was plenty of food spread over a long trestle table disguised by a tablecloth bearing the Trekkersburg shield of arms. The sly matronly glutton could help herself to anything ranging from salmon roe on toast to a green onion on a stick. The sandwiches were to be avoided, however, as the brittle bread had lost its grip on the cucumber.

  It had all the makings of a successful function—and the added attraction of a four-piece band.

  At first Kramer had suspected that Mannie Hendriks and his Cococabana Trio were primarily responsible for the strange gloom which pervaded the assembly. He had slipped in through the side entrance just as they began a soulful number which described, in musical terms, the plight of a wretched Peruvian peasant who had lost his beloved donkey; that was what Mannie said and you had to believe him. But even when the drummer introduced a medley from South Pacific the mood had not improved.

  Then Kramer remembered a dance to which he had gone with some fellow recruits from the police college. They shared an adolescent belief that all nurses were promiscuous and it was in the dining-room of a mental hospital just outside Pretoria. He had drawn sweaty-palmed Student Nurse Bekker who wanted to talk psychology all night. When, to get into the garden, he had mumbled how much he detested parties, she informed him that he was suffering feelings of sexual inadequacy. This had been a surprise.

  But now he realised that Miss Bekker might have had something there. He was feeling inadequate—and, to use her phrase, probably projecting this into what he saw.

  Everything had been so clear-cut up to the moment Councillor Trenshaw appeared briefly through a gap in the crowd. He had been holding his wife’s handbag while she demonstrated an exercise from her keep-fit class. Then their friends laughed ambiguously and closed in about them again.

  Kramer had not had time for a proper assessment, but it was clear that Councillor Trenshaw was a cool customer. So cool that thoughts of a disastrous misapprehension chilled Kramer’s brain. Yet he had to do something.

  The music stopped.

  And about the only person who was thoroughly enjoying herself, the society columnist from the Gazette, zeroed in on the new face she spotted beside the bust of Theophilus Shepstone.

  “I’m Felicity Painter—and who are you, my dear? I won’t let you budge from there until you tell me!”

  She was very much bigger than Kramer and twirled the end of her long string of beads like a lariat.

  “Security, madam.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Oh dear, what a pity.”

  And she went yodelling off after a couple who immediately stampeded for the exit.

  The party was beginning to fold. The band had stopped.

  Kramer looked anxiously across but the musicians had just paused to top up their drinks. Thank God, they had a bit to go yet, and that committee chairman never left early because it was rude.

  Then he had it. The idea that would cost him nothing if he was wrong—and bring him the jackpot if he was right.

  Mannie was an old acquaintance, after all.

  “Request, Trompie? This isn’t that sort of do, you know.”

  “I’d count it a big favour, man.”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “Green
sleeves.”

  “That oldie! We can’t play it on this kind of gig. They want show stuff, Latin Am. It’ll sound all wrong.”

  “They won’t mind it that much. Most of them probably won’t even notice. For old time’s sake.”

  “The things I do for people.”

  “Make it short, if you like.”

  “Okay. Don’t ask me why. You hear that, you blokes? My friend here wants a few bars of Greensleeves. Let’s take it from the top.”

  And as Mannie gave the downbeat, Kramer stepped upon the bandstand beside him to look over the heads at Councillor Trenshaw, who stood against the doors to the Council Chamber at the far end of the room.

  Greensleeves: the simple melody had an effect on Trenshaw which its regal composer never contemplated. It hit him right between the ears. It lifted him on his toes. It brought blood to his face. It fixed his startled eyes on Kramer.

  Kramer looked back.

  The Cococabana Trio got carried away. With maracas and guitar they soon had the sweet English maiden stamping in the dust of a Mexican square along with the best of them.

  Then it was Kramer’s turn to gape.

  Three other men were staring up at him, their faces registering alarm. One by one they turned to push their way towards Councillor Trenshaw.

  In their wake came Kramer. They reached the council chamber doors and so did he.

  “Please go straight through, gentlemen,” he said softly.

  The group swung on him. A short, plump man took a pace forward.

  “Let’s not worry the ladies, gentlemen.”

  They nodded and went in ahead of Kramer who closed the doors on the party and then crossed the chamber to the light switches. Night had fallen unnoticed.

  “Now will you all please take a seat.”

  The four men advanced slowly, as in someone else’s dream, on the large crescent table that seated the council in full session. They did not sit together but went automatically to their places.

  Christ, they all had places.

  For a moment Kramer hesitated, and then he mounted the platform and took the mayor’s chair. He looked down on the table and saw each council member was provided with a blotter and a wooden wedge bearing his name.

  “Councillor Ferguson, Councillor Da Silva, Councillor Trenshaw, Councillor Ford,” he read out, from left to right.

  He knew what the next words would be.

  “What’s the meaning of all this?” demanded Da Silva.

  Kramer did not know himself—a vice racket run by a fifth of the city council was inconceivable. And what made it all most puzzling was the way they were all glaring at him. They were not frightened, they were angry.

  “We have a right to know!” Ford barked.

  Kramer took a deep breath. It was critically important he said the right thing.

  “The Steam Pig, gentlemen.”

  Something registered all right: Da Silva shot to his feet, furious.

  “You’ve had the contracts off us! You people promised it was all finished and done with.”

  “What was, Councillor?”

  “You know very well.”

  “The business about the girl,” Trenshaw mumbled.

  “But it isn’t finished.”

  “Look—”

  Trenshaw extended a hand to restrain his colleague.

  “Steady now, Irving. We don’t know this one. He could be trying to work something for himself on the side.”

  Kramer remained passive as they stared intently at him, and they found no clue to his internal turmoil. But it was not good, he could not go on: he did not know what role he was supposed to be playing, or the words that went with it.

  “I am a police officer. Lieutenant Kramer of Trekkersburg CID. I am investigating the murder of a Coloured female going by the name of Theresa le Roux. I have reason to suspect that you know something to our advantage.”

  They let him say it all. And then they just sat. A bomb would not have shifted them. They would have welcomed it.

  Da Silva began to sob.

  “Well, thank God, it’s over,” Trenshaw sighed and the others nodded.

  Kramer came down from the dais.

  “If one of you would like to make a statement, I will just remind you that it is possible for a witness to give State’s evidence. This means proceedings will not be taken against you. Murder is a capital offence.”

  “We haven’t murdered anyone!”

  “No, Councillor Trenshaw? Then you tell me what it was you did to the girl—or had done for you?”

  “Nothing!”

  A giggle wriggled from Ferguson. He had begun to crack back in the Assembly Room.

  “What if we all talk?” Trenshaw suggested, a slight smile finding its place out of long habit in a twist of his lips.

  “Go ahead, sir, I’m listening.”

  Van Niekerk had given Zondi the typewriter to clean. To his surprise it was being done very thoroughly.

  “What are you using—meths?” he asked.

  “Carbon Tetrachloride, Sergeant.”

  “Why can’t you just say Car. Tet., man? Where did you get it?”

  “Photographic.”

  “Was Sergeant Prinsloo there?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Van Niekerk went back to his list of people who had bought electronic organs in Trekkersburg. Some addresses were still missing.

  “Where did you put the directory?”

  “Beside you, Sergeant.”

  “Trying to be funny, Zondi?”

  “No, sir.”

  The directory flopped open and Van Niekerk had to move the outside telephone to make room.

  “You say that the Lieutenant rang when I was speaking to the Colonel?”

  “Yes. He has gone to a cocktail party at the City Hall, Sergeant.”

  “I like that!”

  “He said that we must ring him if there is important news, but not otherwise.”

  “I see.”

  Van Niekerk smiled to himself.

  Kramer had been right about two things: Trenshaw was the leader of a gang and it had been mixed up in a vice racket.

  Only the racket belonged to somebody else. To judge from the response to his opening remark, none other than that elusive but menacing spectre, the Steam Pig. But he had not pressed the point.

  Time was relative and he had relatively little of it. Back at headquarters, the brotherhood of Arsecreepers Anonymous would be already plotting his downfall. They knew where to find him. They would not know what to do with what they found.

  It was expedient, then, simply to let the four talk, crosstalk, sob and express. The whole of their story was emerging very quickly. One question from him would have destroyed the pace, even given time for second thoughts and for lawyers.

  And while he listened, Kramer made a number of astute deductions based on obscure references—perception being relative, too.

  Trenshaw had been the leader of a gang formed in childhood, forgotten in the acned years of night classes, fondly remembered in the decades of profitable sophistication, and reformed when worldly success finally opened the doors to the stifling confines of the Albert Club.

  Not that it had been the same gang all along. Trenshaw himself was a stranger to Trekkersburg until his fortieth year, and the other three had never met during their early lives in the city. Each, however, had once belonged to a gang and every gang has its component parts: Trenshaw, the slightly soft-looking boy who nevertheless dared to put red pepper in the crotch piece of his aunt’s drawers as they hung on the line; Da Silva, the fat boy who liked to make thin boys cry with twists of his surprisingly strong fingers; Ford, the jovial boy who collected dirty words and stories—even made some up; Ferguson, the boy whose parents were never at home and who timorously insisted he always came along for the ride. None of them bad boys—and what fun they had had.

  The Albert Club had looked over its half-moon spectacles as they each made their entrance, rustled an air-mail cop
y of The Times, and wished to God that old Brigadier Pinkie Thomas had not faded away. The new secretary, an upstart who had never seen action, was allowing the tone to go to pieces in a damnable fashion. Once the black ball had dealt summarily with counter-jumpers, Jews and Nationalist Party wallahs—now, alas, there were increasingly few men of honour left to do their duty at membership meetings. The whole world was going to hell—look at what had happened to the Seaforths, and to the Camerons. And that was in the UK.

  For their part, the four new members had tried very hard to meet the exacting standards which still permeated the vast, panelled rooms. They learnt to speak to the sashed Indian waiters with due courtesy, as if to a fellow countryman. They cheerfully endured campaigns which had left thousands staining the map red where it was losing its colour. They even learned a compassion for the fierce old bachelors who had lived in an officers’ mess all their lives and wished to die in one; there was an almost irresistible attraction in such firm concepts of good, in articulate English spoken slowly round a sip of Cape brandy, in killers who had the innocence of children.

  In the end, though, they had moved to the far extreme of the long bar to where their charcoal-suited generation pompously discussed share prices and the effects of cholesterol on the cardiac tissues. This was less of a strain but incredibly boring. Especially when you knew the form of every hobby horse in every race to closing time.

  In short, the adult world proved a grievous disappointment and their regression to covert childhood was natural enough. It began with a secret wink that Trenshaw had meant for his fellow councillor Da Silva but which they had all returned. And secret signs are the very foundation of gangs.

  Soon the four of them were happier than they had been for years. If their excesses caused damage, their wealth could provide compensation and buy silence. Nothing they did, even with claymores that bizarre night in the billiard room, could be regarded by adults as anything but childish. Best of all, they learned that rumours of their antics—they had only forgotten themselves that once at the club—were earning them reputations formerly the prerogative of devil-may-care subalterns.

  Then something happened.