The Steam Pig

by James McClure

  Of course, the little bastard had had it all worked out from the start. And what hurt now was that he had used some of Kramer’s own logic to perfect his plan; a shot ringing from the yard would have Jackson sprinting for the border, two shots would have him hurdling the Customs post, but three shots all coming together would wrap things up very nicely—the three shots he would fire as Jackson came poking around the kitchen area looking for his missing employee. Why he wanted to kill them, too, was academic at this stage.

  And here was the inevitable flaw: Lenny was banking on their co-operation by pretending he meant them no harm.

  Zondi must have come to a similar conclusion simultaneously for he inquired: “And if we start to make a noise now? What then?”

  The muzzle of the pistol lifted to meet his eyes.

  “Let’s not talk about what won’t happen,” Lenny said.

  It was not such a flaw after all: a score of two out of three was not bad.

  So the only hope now lay in a chance diversion. There was some likelihood of this in the direction of the door leading to the dining hall but not while the sound of a piano accordion continued to come from behind it. Ensign Roberts, squeezing the good life into his errant singers with the application of an anaesthetist using bellows-resuscitation, was indeed a versatile man—further evidence of this stood within reach on the draining-board: an old-fashioned electric toaster with flap-down sides having new elements fitted.

  Lenny had noticed the sequence of Kramer’s eye movements.

  “Roberts never finishes his sing-song before eight,” he said. “That’s twenty minutes from now and nobody will make a move until then.”

  “You think Jackson won’t wait that long?”

  “He knows about Roberts’s habits, too. He’ll come before then.”

  Kramer shrugged and picked up a screwdriver.

  “Watch it,” Lenny warned.

  “Christ, I’m not likely to try anything with this! Anyway—”

  “Yes?”

  “We haven’t any proper evidence on Jackson, so you may be doing us a favour.”

  That threw Lenny—and so did the next move.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

  “Mending a toaster.”

  “Hey?”

  “Here, boy, gimme ama-pliers.”

  “Yes, my baas.”

  Lenny could only watch dumbfounded as Kramer and Zondi slipped whimsically into their old routine of electrician and electrician’s mate, an act perfected in dozens of unsuspecting homes. Within seconds the illusion was complete—right down to the feeling that the black man, obsequiously responding to gruff requests for tools within easy reach, could have done the job much better himself.

  “You bastards are mad,” Lenny muttered.

  “Ama-screwdrife.”

  “Here, my baas.”

  “Where’s the ee-element, you stupid kaffir?”

  “By your hand, my baas.”

  “Don’t bugger around, how am I supposed to see it there? Hey?”

  It had its touches of comedy, too, but Lenny could not be totally distracted from the window. This was a pity because it meant that Jackson had little chance of taking the initiative and saving more than his own life.

  “My baas is sure the wire he going by that bottom side?”

  “You know a better way of doing it?”

  “No, my baas.”

  “Then shut your flaming trap and use your brain, if you’ve got one.”

  Zondi looked in surprise at Kramer, as if the line was not in the script he knew. Then he scratched his head, thought hard, and grinned sheepishly.

  “Hau, sorry, my baas.”

  “Okay, cut it out—that’s enough,” Lenny said.

  “Bloody hell, we’ve just finished the job,” Kramer protested, closing the side flaps. “Can’t we at least see if the thing works now?”

  And he reached casually for the wall switch, flicking it on before Lenny could raise an objection. Nothing happened. Kramer tugged at the plastic knob on the nearside of the toaster and opened the flap slightly to inspect the elements. They remained dull.

  Lenny could not help a small smile. It showed his dimples.

  “What’s your next trick?” he asked.

  A good question—especially as Kramer had quietly turned the tables and was now armed with a weapon more swift and certain than the Walther PPK. And a question of choice: knowing that there would be no escape from the room without killing Lenny, he had to decide whether to do it immediately, while the little bastard was still unsuspecting, or to take a chance on getting a number of things cleared up first. He opted for the latter, although it made the speed of his reactions to any sudden move a critical factor.

  That settled, all he had to do was unsettle Lenny and see how much he could learn from him in the time remaining.

  So he said: “Aren’t you frightened, son?”

  “Me? Why should I be?”

  “Because your little plan isn’t going to work, you know. It’s a proper balls-up.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. You should have got us while you could out in the yard.”

  “I’ve told you both, I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Come on, man! You were just too scared to get in close enough for a knife. You didn’t know how much we were putting on and you’d heard of our judo tricks.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “Admit it. You’re going to blow holes in us straight after Jackson.”

  “Crap.”

  “Even waited for old Zondi here to come round so there’d be no problems getting him into this room.”

  “It was only a minute at most. Anyway, give me one good reason.”

  “Simple. The way things are going now we’ll be witnesses to a murder—Jackson’s. I’m sure you don’t want that.”

  “True.”

  “My point is that your first shot will bring the buggers flying through the door over there. You haven’t a chance of getting away.”

  “True also—if you weren’t going with me when I leave. That’s why I waited for the kaffir to stand up.”

  “Well, well, hear that, Zondi? Sonny boy here’s been reading the papers, he wants us as hostages. What are his chances?”

  “I think bad, boss.”

  Lenny began to look very agitated, as well he might. Time was running out and Jackson still had not budged. Granted, there were about ten minutes to go before Our Father broke up the meeting, but now a hint of mutiny was stirring in the corner. His two captives were finding the loopholes in hastily improvised explanations for their continued existence and soon there would be no accounting for their actions. The suggestion he was holding them as hostages had been too obvious a fabrication—he could quite easily shoot whom he liked and then escape by holding the rescue party at gunpoint until he reached the door. His dilemma was very similar to that faced by Kramer and would force him to the same conclusion: somehow he had to keep the chat going long enough for him to achieve his ends. It would have to be one hell of an engaging topic.

  Kramer nudged Zondi.

  “Well, I’m buggered if I’m going to stand around here all night,” he said. “This kiddo’s been too clever by half and it’s time he realised it. In fact, I bet he has already. So what do you say to our giving a little yell for the boys next door?”

  Zondi opened his mouth.

  “Want to know who did it?” Lenny blurted out desperately. “

  Kill your sister? As if we didn’t already. Come on, kaffir, together now.”

  “It wasn’t Jackson.”

  “We know—he hired a spoke, but he did it all the same, legally.”

  “No, he didn’t!”

  “Someone did.”

  “Sure. But how did you lot—”

  “We all make mistakes.”

  “Hey?”

  “I suppose you must know or Jackson wouldn’t be trying to get you. He hates evidence lying about.�
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  “So that’s what you think?”

  Zondi broke wind.

  “He’s trying to waste time, boss,” he added.

  “You’re right, man.”

  Lenny made a quick check on Jackson’s position.

  “For jesus’s sake, I did it!” he said.

  And Kramer sighed. Honest to God, his sense of timing was inspired.

  “I sodding did, you know!”

  “Oh, piss off. Don’t try and act tough, it’s too late.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “How did you get the spoke man down here—smuggled him in a bike?”

  “He got a job for the weekend in a furniture van.”

  “You don’t say, that was clever.”

  “Long distance removal, a whole house of things, Pretoria to Trekkersburg and back early Monday morning. The firm gets them the passes.”

  “Name?”

  “I don’t know. The wogs I fixed it up with didn’t say.”

  “Description?”

  “Never saw him. Wrote her address in the phone box by the City Hall.”

  “Shoe Shoe saw you do this?”

  Lenny faltered.

  “No, he’d copped it before.”

  “Why?”

  “He tried to get money off Trenshaw—blackmail. He didn’t know what he was talking about but he was a security risk. We got Gershwin—”

  “I know, but go on, I’m interested. How come a brother murders his own sister? Even for a gamaat, that’s pretty low.”

  “I’m not a bloody—”

  Lenny stopped short of his denial and in that moment Kramer knew he was winning: the poor bastard was going to any lengths to keep things going until Jackson appeared.

  “She was a bitch, a whoring filthy bitch who thought she had a right to get out of this sodding country and leave us.”

  “You and your mum?”

  “Yes. Oh, she’d be okay anywhere with her bloody music and junk. That’s all she cared about.”

  “But it seems you were helping her, sonny. Were you her ponce?”

  Lenny laughed.

  “I was her ponce all right. Knew Jackson wanted a dolly for the township job and lined her up. I never said who she was, mind.”

  “But how did you find her in the first place?”

  “She found me, man. Contacted me through an old schoolmate—”

  Lenny paused.

  “Durban High?” Kramer asked softly.

  “Never you bloody mind. Anyway, she said she wanted my help to get a passport.”

  “A forged one?”

  “Natch—only I didn’t tell her that was out of my class.”

  “And that’s why she did it? Not just for the money?”

  “Ja, lay there on her back thinking of Merrie stuffing England.”

  Whatever the Race Board said, Lenny didn’t talk like a Coloured, or think like one, either.

  “The contact lenses were for the passport then?”

  “Some bull I slung her to keep her happy. Make it more authentic.”

  “Why kill her though? Jackson must have been pretty pleased with the set-up. And with you.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Then Lenny stiffened.

  “The bastard’s just taken something out of his pocket,” he whispered.

  “Boss!” Zondi said urgently.

  “No, man, not now. I want to hear—”

  “But boss …”

  “He hasn’t started walking yet,” Lenny said, keeping his voice very low. “It went wrong you see. I got a big kick out of what those creepy council freaks did to her for their ten Rand and then, when it was all over, I checked in at Barnato Street one night when we had them, and said no-go on the passport. Hell, that bloody backfired, all right. She did her nut—weeping and yelling and saying she’d go straight round and tell you buggers all about it and take us all inside with her. I started to make promises, I promised a passport for Sunday night—then I fixed up with the spoke. I had to do something. Christ, I had to!”

  “But I thought this was all Jackson’s idea? A bonus for the contracts was having her knocked off?”

  “Huh! That’s a joke. Who said this?”

  “Trenshaw.”

  “No, man, that was Jackson trying to keep them happy. Got the bloody shock of his life when he saw it in the paper that she had died. He planned to have her around for years to pressure them. And then when he saw the article, he really went mad. He sussed it was something to do with me, me being the contact, and sent his boys down to Durban. They gave me the business but I saved it up for the end. I told him she was my sister.”

  “But he’d have known that already from the papers he showed the councillors.”

  “Passports I can’t fix—those things I can. They had Le Roux on them.”

  “So Jackson didn’t see you doing your own sister?”

  “He said he couldn’t, but he wasn’t sure. He told me to stick around, sent me to this place. I had to or it would have been suspicious. Something must have happened for him to twig.”

  “I told you: we got Trenshaw—and the others.”

  But Lenny was not really listening any longer. He was taking aim through the window “

  Lenny, is Jackson the big shot in all this?” Kramer asked softly.

  There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

  “Then who is the bloody Steam Pig?”

  Too late—Lenny’s finger was already tightening in the steady squeeze he had been taught as a cadet on Durban High’s rifle range.

  Any second …

  So Kramer let go of the plastic knob which allowed the side of the toaster to drop and make contact with the stainless steel sink unit.

  The spark was unexpectedly small. But the effect of the 220-volt charge on Lenny was as anticipated; he gasped mightily, his body arched back, and his fingers—thank God—stiffened out nice and straight. For an instant longer the current passed down the flex to the toaster perched on its little insulated feet, through the crude connection improvised on the hinged side flap, out along the draining-board, and up through the highly conductive wet trouser seat. Then the kitchen’s fuse blew in a box over near the dining-hall door.

  Kramer heard the pop and abandoned caution as he scrambled to catch Lenny before he could topple into a pile of dishes. He just made it.

  A moment later Zondi was at his side. Together they gently lowered Lenny’s upper half sideways so that his head dipped beneath the washing-up water and his curious little sounds became innocuous bubbling.

  That done, they looked out of the window.

  It was rather shocking to see Jackson carrying on out there in the yard as if nothing had happened. He had his back turned and was stooping to examine the tsotsi. But they would get to see his face soon enough.

  Kramer and Zondi spun and started for the outside door, going up on their toes ready to sprint round and make the most of an attack from the rear.

  Then it happened. Lenny died. And his own body current was discharged totally, blowing his mind and causing a sinew-snapping spasm that put a bullet into Mrs Beeton.

  The shot did not echo but everyone seemed to listen to it for a very long time.

  At least that was how it seemed until the door to the dining-room crashed open. Ensign Roberts, who had the advantage of having the light coming from behind him, took one glance at the slumped form on the sink. The fight was spectacular.

  But Jackson did not stay to watch.

  Kramer’s right elbow hurt like hell, worse than his groin. He flinched.

  “So you think this is bad?” Strydom murmured, removing another fragment of spectacle lens.

  Kramer made no reply. He had said nothing about his injuries except to use them as an excuse to get him into the hospital without attracting undue attention. It was just that the District Surgeon always made a point of cheering up his patients by comparing their sufferings favourably with those of others.

  “Christ, yo
u should take a look at Ensign Roberts in D Ward,” he said. “He’s got a right eye like a squashed guava.”

  “Stupid bastard.”

  “Ach no, Lieutenant, that’s not the attitude. He was trying to help. He thought—”

  “We’ll never bloody get Jackson now.”

  “The Colonel seems to think different.”

  “He would. Him and Van Niekerk dancing round at HQ, organising their ruddy roadblocks and slapping each other’s bum. They haven’t a hope.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t know what he looks like.”

  “What about his car?”

  “Moosa chucked a brick through the back window—he’ll have it changed anyway.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a churra we know.”

  “Pity it wasn’t the windscreen. But that’s coolies for you—no guts.”

  “Uhuh.”

  “Anyhow, you should have no worries. You got the brother—and a few others besides, I hear.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “No, I’m not trying to get anything out of you. The Colonel said it was hush-hush but he was very pleased.”

  “Big deal. He won’t have a scrap of evidence when that little lot he’s questioning see their lawyers and lose their memories.”

  “Look, what more can you do?”

  “Get the bastards behind it.”

  “Oh, so there’s not just Jackson?”

  The sister in charge of the casualty department came over and cleared her throat in A minor.

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” she said, “but there’s a boy outside who wants to see this patient.”

  “Zondi?” Kramer asked.

  “He says he’s from the CID.”

  “Fine, send him in, Sister. I’m almost finished.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Zondi entered with his eyes respectfully averted and handed Kramer a slip of paper. On it he had scrawled: “Colonel telling Van that Ferguson can die soon. 2100 hrs.”

  This was just what Kramer had been waiting for—and his only way of getting the information without arousing suspicion. Now that Lenny was dead and Jackson had fled, he knew of only five men remaining who had plainly registered something when he had mentioned the Steam Pig. Four already disclaimed any knowledge of the phrase but they had their lives to live. The fifth had not.