The Song Dog

by James McClure

  “Let that be my surprise, Hans,” he said, straightening the station commander’s tie for him and tucking it in neatly.

  17

  KRAMER LIKED IT when things began to happen quickly. Malan, on the other hand, looked as though he’d prefer things to be happening very, very slowly and exceedingly gently.

  So dreadful was his hangover after the previous evening’s junketings with Field Cornet Dorf at the Royal Hotel, Nkosala, that, pale and shaky, with his rugby socks down around his ankles, he accepted his orders without question for once, and went in search of One Ear, practically tiptoeing from the station commander’s office.

  “That must have been some meal you had at the Royal with Sybrand,” said Kramer, as they headed for Fynn’s Creek with the Bantu detective One Ear riding in the cage on the back. “And he looks such a quiet type.”

  Malan grunted. “Only until his third beer, Lieutenant. He’s been under a big strain lately.”

  “How many beers did he have?”

  “Er, eight or nine, same as me, and three brandies, Lieutenant.”

  “Uh-huh. Much broken furniture on the bill?”

  “Hell, no, Lieutenant! None, hey?”

  “Pity,” said Kramer, thinking of the Colonel.

  “Lieutenant,” Malan began afresh, clearing his throat, “you must forgive me if this sounds a stupid question, but why exactly are we going down to the beach again?”

  “I told you: to take a look at the cook boy’s hut.”

  “Ja, I thought so, only Sarel said he can’t see what possible relevance—”

  “Suzman? Who asked him to stick his nose into this?”

  “Er, it was just I was explaining to him where I was going today and he—”

  “Uniform should learn to mind its own business,” said Kramer. “Just as CID should learn to keep its trap shut!—you hear? I don’t like having my movements being debated by all and sundry.”

  “Sir, I only—”

  “Then don’t,” said Kramer.

  It was wild, down at Fynn’s Creek. A high wind, slanting in off the whitecapped ocean, plumed the tops of the sand dunes, filling the air with fine, stinging sand. The debris from the explosion flapped and skidded, slithered, tore apart the neat grid of thatching string set up by Field Cornet Dorf, and the door of the hut belonging to Moses the cook boy was, not unnaturally, shut tight.

  Kramer banged on it with his fist. “Moses, you in there, hey?” he called out, his words whipped away by the wind.

  The cook boy poked his head out an instant later and greeted him effusively.

  “He offers his most humble greetings to the Great Bull Elephant, sir,” One Ear translated, “and says—”

  “Tell him less of the bull and more of the just-listen,” said Kramer. “Tell him his hut could be very important to the case and it has to be thoroughly investigated forthwith.”

  “Hau, hau, hau!” responded Moses, immensely flattered.

  Kramer then entered the hut and took a good look round. There was nothing to see, really, other than an iron divan, a twist of threadbare bedding, a mine boy’s cheap tin trunk, some square biscuit tins, a shaving mirror, a candlestick and candle, a walking stick, a few cooking utensils, and a length of string, fixed between the rafters, from which dangled three wire coat hangers used for servant-boy canvas shorts and tunics. It bothered him there might be bedbugs running loose, ready to launch a major offensive, but nonetheless he closed the door firmly behind him and resolved to stand there in semidarkness, pretending some form of intensive search, for the next twenty minutes.

  He lasted five, but given the buffeting effects of the weather outside, he calculated it would have seemed a lot longer than that for the others, and opened up again.

  “Is that it, Lieutenant—you’ve finished at last?” asked Malan, who had got sand in one eye and was poking at it with a corner of his handkerchief. “Man, this wind is—”

  “Ask Moses for me,” Kramer said to One Ear, “where he kept the clothes that were stolen. Were they in his trunk?”

  “Yebo, nkosi gakulu!” replied Moses, nodding vigorously.

  “Ja, I thought as much. Well, that might as well stay here and be fingerprinted with the rest of the stuff. Tin like that can take a good palm impression when the lid is being closed again. Oh, ja, and ask him if the trunk is usually kept there, under his bed. The intruder must have pulled it out?”

  Again, Moses nodded.

  “That settles it,” said Kramer. “Fingerprints will have to pay a visit—I’m not dragging whole beds back up to Jafini, bugger that for laughs.”

  “Hell, this is a bit thorough, isn’t it, sir, for a Bantu petty theft?” remarked Malan, his eye streaming by now.

  “Ach, no, it’s much more than that, man!”

  “In what—”

  “Malan, you’re fishing, hey? Didn’t I say all would be revealed to you at the appropriate time?”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant! It’s just—”

  “Tell me,” said Kramer, “how good are you with your hands?”

  Malan frowned. “In what sense?” he asked cautiously, making a knuckle pop. “You mean like in karate or—”

  “This hut needs to be made secure,” Kramer explained, “and this silly little latch on it is far too flimsy. What I want instead is something tough with a bloody big padlock. Can you see to that for me, chop-chop?”

  “I, er …”

  “Excellent!” said Kramer. “And while you’re away, buying the necessary and picking up the tools, One Ear here can stand guard. This place must be kept one hundred percent secure at all times until the lock is on—understood?”

  Malan nodded enthusiastically. “Only wouldn’t it be simpler, sir,” he ventured, “if Botha came straight over now from Nkosala and did his fingerprint check while we—”

  “Ach, I’m not having some half-baked scene-of-the-crime idiot work on a case of this magnitude!” said Kramer. “Who is this Botha, a CID who does fingerprints part-time? Same as Suzman takes murder-scene snaps I still haven’t seen?”

  “Er, ja, we don’t really have the proper—”

  “Exactly,” said Kramer, “but I’m Murder Squad and I’m going to arrange for our top bloke from Trekkersburg to come up here.” Then, turning to One Ear, he ordered: “Tell Moses to collect his pass book—I’m taking him back to Jafini with me right away, where he can go and stay with his uncle for a while.”

  This announcement made Moses clap his hands in delight, but Malan looked no happier, as he eyed the door to the hut, sizing up the problems with which it would present him.

  “Here,” said Kramer, tossing him the Land Rover’s keys, “you’ll be needing these. Just see you make a bloody good job of that, you hear? Take lots of measurements.”

  Malan caught the keys. “But how are you—”

  “Ach, man, it’s obvious! I’m going back in Kritz’s car—it’s high time something was done with it.”

  Kritzinger had been issued with a Chevrolet the same make and model as Kramer brought up from Trekkersburg, only black instead of cream. It was also missing its hubcaps, and there was a long scratch in the paintwork down the left-hand side. Closer inspection revealed a dent in the front fender, bloodstained and matted with animal hairs, black and white.

  “Goat …!” murmured Kramer, savoring the irony and wondering if he should not have used the car for setting his trap instead—it had also escaped any previous attention.

  “Just sit here a moment and wait,” he said, turning to Moses the cook boy, who had been following obediently at his heels. “Sit! You understand that?”

  Moses nodded and squatted down on his haunches quite contentedly in the lee of the thorn trees hiding the vehicle.

  Kramer tried the driver’s door and found it unlocked. He then slid in behind the wheel and deduced, from the position of the seat, that he and Maaties Kritzinger would have been pretty well the same size, certainly when it came to leg length. He checked the controls. Although the Chevr
olet was parked on a level piece of ground, it had been left in gear and with its handbrake on. These were the unthinking hallmarks of a habitually cautious man, and entirely in keeping with the long approach on foot which Kritzinger had then made to the game ranger’s outpost. Kramer pulled out the ashtray, discovering it packed to the brim with Texan stubs—Lucky Strike’s main rival.

  Next, Kramer opened the glove compartment and searched it thoroughly. Apart from the handbook which went with the Chev, and a pair of cheap, women’s sunglasses, he found nothing. He started on the seats, front and rear, digging his fingers deep into the spaces between the cushions, and came up with seven burnt matches, a spent ballpoint, and a bent paper clip.

  That’s when he started to look for actual hiding places, more typical of a thoroughly cautious man. He ran his hand along behind the dashboard, checked beneath the carpeting, and prodded the upholstery lining the doors. Nothing.

  He climbed out and went round to inspect the trunk. It was locked, but Terblanche had thoughtfully provided him with a spare key, kept on the station’s keyboard. The trunk was showroom clean, having never been used, by the look of it. Even so, Kramer pulled back the matting, inspected the spare wheel, and dug into every nook and cranny. Still nothing.

  With a frown, he closed the trunk lid and returned to sit in the driver’s seat, lit a Lucky, and took the pair of cheap sunglasses from the glove compartment. Logically, they had to belong to Mrs. Kritzinger, he reasoned, as she must surely have been the only female to have occasionally ridden up front with Maaties in his work car. Moreover, if they weren’t hers, would Maaties have left them lying about like that, on show? But what if he had been unaware of them being there? Say someone had slipped them into the glove compartment, unnoticed by him as he drove into the final twilight of his life, heading for a curry dinner somewhere. The same someone who had later told him something that had sent him racing to meet his death at this godforsaken spot.

  “Ach, I’d better do a check,” muttered Kramer, not persuaded he had made a major find, but uneasy now at the thought of dismissing the damned things out of hand. “Moses? You ready to go, hey? Then jump in the bloody back, kaffir—I’ve got a lady to see!”

  And he barely noticed the cane cutters this time, some working all alone, others in groups, blacker than black, hooded by their sacks, long knives motionless, watching him drive by, just the whites of their eyes showing.

  Back in Jafini, Kramer turned and said to his backseat passenger: “Okay, so where the hell does your uncle live, hey?” He wanted to make a door-to-door delivery, so that Short Arse was almost bound to hear of it.

  “Uncle?” Moses repeated, baffled.

  “Ja, man, your bloody uncle, hey?” “Haw, EEE-uncle! Yebo, yebo yebo, nkosi gakulu!” said Moses in a happy outburst of comprehension. “Eee-uncle down by that side, nkosi!” And he began giving what seemed like quite contradictory directions, pointing in several directions at once.

  “Look, Moses, man,” said Kramer, “I’m going to drive down into shantytown, go slowly all around, and when we’re near your eee-uncle’s place, just give a yell—okay?”

  And that was how things finally worked out, with Moses being dropped off outside a small mud-walled house, its tin roof held down by ripening pumpkins. In moments, his uncle was out to receive him, and even before Kramer had been able to make his U-turn, a crowd of astonished neighbors had gathered, all bursting to hear how he had come to ride in the well-known car of a detective sergeant everyone thought was dead.

  “You tell them, kaffir!” muttered Kramer, as he picked up speed a little. “And make it one hell of a story, you hear? I don’t want Short Arse to be disappointed …”

  Then he shot round to the police station to exchange Kritzinger’s Chevrolet for his own, and almost ran down Suzman in the yard, coffee mug in hand and his mouth wide open.

  “Jesus Christ, Lieutenant, I thought I’d just seen a spook driving up!”

  “Oh, ja? That’s why I’m doing a swap—high time I called on Hettie Kritzinger, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, sir, I’m not too sure about that,” said Suzman. “The same thought had occurred to me—that maybe I should go say hello—but Doc came in for a minute this morning and he’s not too happy about her.”

  “Ach, I’ll play it by ear. What’s the address?”

  “Forty-four Sunrise Street, about two blocks farther from where you’re staying.”

  “Uh-huh. See you later, then.”

  “But where’s Jaapie gone. Lieutenant?”

  “Malan’s doing some carpentry for me down at Fynn’s Creek,” said Kramer, twisting his ignition key. “Any bits and pieces he wants can come out of petty cash, okay?”

  “Carpentry?” echoed Suzman, looking bewildered.

  “Love to stay and chat, Sergeant, but duty calls, hey?”

  Outside the red-brick bungalow where Maaties Kritzinger had once lived with his little snapshot family, there was a poker-work nameplate on the garden gate that read: HAPPY HAVEN.

  “Total Neglect” might have been more appropriate, for the place was in one hell of a state. This was not true of the garden itself, which had been tended as carefully as any in the care of a garden boy wanting his wages, but the house was another matter. Lengths of storm guttering hung loose, the off-white paintwork had bubbled, one window had a cardboard patch Scotch-taped over the sort of hole made by a cricket ball, and the front door’s varnish was faded and streaky. Accentuating all this drabness was a scattering of brightly colored toys, most of them near a tipped-over swing and an upended tricycle.

  Yet no children came running out to peer at the tall stranger, as Kramer advanced up the crazy-paving path, his trouser legs whipped by the wind. Neither was there any sound from within after he rapped loudly on first the front door and then on the one leading from the back verandah into the kitchen.

  Then a lavatory cistern flushed, and into the kitchen shuffled a small, bedraggled-looking woman, wearing a candlewick dressing gown clutched tight across her flat chest. She gave a violent start when she noticed Kramer, squash-nosed at the window in her back door, and he hastily took out his warrant card to press it against the pane for her.

  “So you’ve come,” she said, in a whispery voice, opening up. “I knew you would one day. I’ve been waiting for it for years.”

  18

  A HUNGRY KITTEN mewed and pressed itself against Hettie Kritzinger’s bony ankles. She glanced down and frowned a little, as though it reminded her of something. “The children,” she added, “aren’t here. They’ve been taken by neighbors, I think. The Widow Fourie has rung. Twice. Everyone has been so kind.”

  “I suppose this is where you must keep the milk,” said Kramer, stepping into her kitchen and swinging open the refrigerator door. “Ja, there’s plenty …” And he filled the kitten’s saucer. “Like a coffee or something yourself, Mrs. Kritz?”

  She shrugged, conveying a sense of utter indifference. “I always knew you would come,” she said. “But people have been so kind. Some, because it interests them. They want to know all the details of how he died. He died a hero, so they tell me.”

  “Er, ja, Maaties was attempting to—”

  “One of the best. They tell me that, too. They always have and I always knew.”

  Kramer thought it advisable to say nothing further until he had placed two cups of coffee on the kitchen table, and had pulled out a chair for her, having first removed from it a Mickey Mouse coloring book.

  “The good die young,” said Hettie Kritzinger, taking a different chair. “That made the first part of our marriage the worst years of all. It made me so afraid. Every day I expected this. Then I discovered he wasn’t always good, but could often be quite bad in a way, and that made things easier. I thought he’d at least reach forty. Now this …”

  “Sugar?” offered Kramer, holding out the bowl.

  She ignored it. “Now this,” she said, touching a skinny-fingered hand to her frizzy ginger hair, lookin
g at him with empty eyes that seemed disproportionately huge, like a bush baby’s.

  Kramer stirred three heaped teaspoons of sugar into his coffee. “I never knew Maaties,” he said. “I’m from the Free State, only just arrived in Natal—Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad. Tromp Kramer.”

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not—no ring, see?” And he held out his left hand. “Come to think of it, your husband didn’t wear one either, though, did he?”

  “Only at first. He had it specially inscribed on the inside with our initials. ‘You see that, Hettie,’ he would say, ‘what that means is: wherever I go, you go, too.’ ”

  “A nice thought, hey?”

  “Frightening,” she said. “A policeman goes to some terrible places. I made him leave it with me eventually.” And she began playing with the big, loose gold ring that covered her own wedding ring.

  “By the way,” said Kramer, placing the sunglasses on the kitchen table between them. “Do you know whose these are, hey?”

  “Mine,” she said, barely glancing at them. “Oh, ja, some terrible, terrible places. It gave me nightmares.”

  “You mean Maaties occasionally let slip what his work involved?” asked Kramer.

  “He never let slip,” she said. “He always told me, told me everything, told me in detail the things that troubled him, and afterward he could sleep. Often I’d lie there and get the stomach cramps. Then he stopped, said things had become too serious, too dangerous to talk about.”

  Kramer tried not to lean forward. “What sort of things made him stop?”

  “Obsessed,” she said, taking her first sip of coffee. “For months, he’s been obsessed.”

  “Obsessed by what?”

  “I’ve tried asking him. A killer, he says, but he must have the proper facts first. He can’t believe it. He doesn’t say any more.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  Again, a shrug. “Since last year sometime,” she said. “All I ever hear now is what he shouts out in his sleep.”