The Song Dog

by James McClure

  “Such as?” prompted Kramer.

  “Oh, it’s just gibberish.”

  “Can you remember any of it?”

  “It seemed like the name of something. Some kind of animal …”

  “Wild or domestic?”

  She looked down at the kitten, still lapping. “A dog,” she said. “Some kind of dog, I think it was. It really scared him.”

  “What sort of dog?” urged Kramer.

  “Can’t remember,” said Hettie Kritzinger.

  Ten minutes later, Kramer was back in the yard at Jafini police station, still finding it difficult to relax his shoulder muscles. Even after making allowances for the woman’s present circumstances, he felt pretty sure that she would have always had much the same effect on him—and he couldn’t imagine how Maaties Kritzinger had been able to stand such intensity, year after year. No wonder the poor bastard had spent all his time working! Or was it that, being the kind of man he was, she had slowly lost any lighter side to her, becoming eclipsed by the dark shadows he cast in their marriage bed, where she had implied he’d done most of his talking?

  “Ach!” said Kramer, getting out of the Chevrolet. “You are a bloody detective, Tromp, man! Just stick to those sort of deductions!”

  Not that he had much to work on, but at least he now knew that something, dating back to the previous year, had wrought a decided change in Maatie Kritzinger’s behavior, leaving him incredulous and secretive and apparently afraid to divulge even a suspicion for fear of its enormity.

  “What I must do,” Kramer told himself, starting toward the rear entrance to the station, “is go and take a look at all those papers of his myself, try to work out what set him off like this. I must’ve been mad to make that Bokkie Maritz’s department!”

  Malan was lying in wait for him, just inside the building. “Lieutenant, sir,” he whined, “that lock-and-bolt thing is turning out a proper disaster—I’ve been trying to get it right for hours!”

  “What’s the problem exactly?”

  “The wood of the door isn’t thick enough for the screws that a big bolt takes, so they go right through and—”

  “Then just add a bit more wood to it, make it thicker, man!”

  “I’ve got to go down there again? That’s six trips I’ve done since—”

  “You haven’t left it unguarded, have you?”

  “Never, sir! But I thought maybe Suzman could have a go. He’s quite handy with tools, you know, and quite prepared to give me a—

  “No chance,” said Kramer. “Lieutenant Terblanche wants him here to deputize, and I’m not going to even argue.”

  Suzman, hovering in the charge office door, must have overheard the entire exchange, and very wisely said nothing about it.

  One by one, Kramer went through every docket in or on the desk of the late Maaties Kritzinger. This took hours, but he had plenty of time to kill—his trap could not be set until after darkness fell.

  As Maritz had claimed, almost all of Kritzinger’s cases had been routine Bantu matters, save the one concerning the shooting of an Asiatic male begging clothes for his children—and this other, rather weird investigation that Kramer now had open before him.

  According to the postmortem report, the deceased, an elderly white female living alone on a farm, had in effect died of fright during a burglary with aggravated circumstances—to wit, she had been tied up in an eiderdown and left to utter muffled cries while her home was ransacked. That in itself was nothing special—Bantu gangs risked the gallows carrying out this kind of raid all the time—but Kritzinger had scribbled something rather unusual on the exhibits sheet. A pair of spectacles had been found lying at the foot of the deceased’s bed, and Kritzinger had noted:

  Not hers, a male’s. Not a Bantu’s either I bet—don’t these frames cost a bomb? But Colonel won’t take the point so local inquiries continue.

  And the great sheaf of attached statements were all from Bantu males in the Jafini area, leading nowhere.

  “I wonder if he was right?” muttered Kramer. “And what is he bloody hinting at?”

  The door to the station commander’s office opened and Suzman entered with a cup of tea. “You really have had your head down for the last three hours, haven’t you, sir?” he smarmed. “I just thought you might like this.”

  “What’s up? Are your boys all out?”

  “Er, no, Lieutenant, but I didn’t like to send one in on account of the fact you could be—well, engaged in confidential matters.”

  Kramer nodded. “Talking of which, where do I find a key to the exhibits cupboard?”

  “Just tell me what you require, and I’ll fetch it for you right away, sir.”

  “I require the key,” said Kramer very firmly.

  Even then the toadying bastard would not leave him alone, but reappeared at his elbow just as he was digging about in the cupboard, amused by the bizarre objects he kept coming across. Kramer particularly liked the teddy bear in some sort of jockstrap, a relic of an unsolved case of sending offensive matter through the post.

  “Sis!” said Suzman, with a shudder of disgust. “You’ll find the shelves go in years, Lieutenant, with the solved cases, ready for court, on the top one.”

  Kramer uncovered, on the middle shelf, a neat parcel that contained what looked like bits of broomstick, wrapped in a greasy brown paper, and which the faded ink on its exhibits label described as “1 doz. sticks dynamite.” “Where the hell did these come from?” he said, turning the label round. “Oh, ja, that quarry place I rang up last night. So that was what the old bugger was complaining about—not getting his stuff back! Someone should have explained the position regarding evidence, hey?”

  “Lieutenant?” said Suzman.

  “Ach, never mind, man, ancient history!” said Kramer, pushing the parcel aside and digging deeper. “Is it safe to store like that, by the way?”

  “Fine, sir, so we were told.”

  “Gotcha!” said Kramer, his right hand closing on a pair of spectacles, well hidden by a pile of almost new clothing.

  One glance at those frames was enough to see immediately what Kritzinger had meant: no coon in the world, unless he’d stolen them, could ever have worn glasses like these—hell, they’d have taken more than a month of Kramer’s own wages to pay for.

  “Not those again,” said Suzman. “Maaties suspected the grandson, you know: a car salesman from Durban, very flash—too flash, was his argument, for a bloke with the kind of bad breath he had.”

  “Oh, ja?” said Kramer. “But the case never got any further?”

  “It’s still open. Lieutenant,” said Suzman, shrugging. “Any particular reason for your interest?”

  “Uh-uh, I’m just snooping around, trying to get the feel of Kritz’s last year. Tell me, Sergeant, any recollection of his suddenly changing in manner? Getting tense about a case, becoming even a bit obsessive?”

  Suzman thought for a few seconds. “No, sir, I can’t,” he said. “Would you like some toast, maybe, to go with your tea?”

  “Ta,” said Kramer, convinced by now his only hope of making any progress was through the capture of Short Arse.

  And then, almost before he knew it, the seemingly endless wait was over: a ragged sunset, which showed how hard the wind was still blowing, pinked the blotter on Terblanche’s desk, and it was time to visit Fynn’s Creek again.

  “Suzman,” said Kramer, rapping on the door of the privy out in the yard, “I’ve a message for Lieutenant Terblanche when he gets back from Nkosala. Tell him I’m going down to make sure the cook boy’s hut is secure, then I’m going to take an early night for once. Maybe we all should—nothing new is likely to emerge before tomorrow, hey?”

  “Is it true there’s a fingerprint expert coming?”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “Er, Malan, Lieutenant. He was explaining why the lock had to—”

  “Ach!” said Kramer. “What’s important is that you relay my message to Lieutenant Terblanche th
e minute he gets here.”

  “Er, very good, sir,” came Suzman’s muffled voice. “And what about—”

  “I’ll be seeing Malan myself, so don’t you worry about him, hey?”

  “No, what I was going to ask, sir, was where will you be if you’re suddenly needed?”

  “The Widow Fourie’s of course, but I might decide to eat at the Royal in Nkosala first. I’ll see how I feel after I leave the beach.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant! Er, ‘bye for now, hey?”

  Commandeering the last remaining Land Rover, Kramer took the cellophane wrapper from a fresh pack of Luckys, made sure he’d have plenty of matches, too, and set off, hoping that Malan and One Ear would not meet him halfway, having left the cook boy’s hut secure but not under surveillance. Granted, it was still daylight, which meant Short Arse was highly unlikely to be abroad yet, nosing round to discover what all the fuss had been about, but you could never tell with a kaffir, least of all with one as sly and devious as this little bastard.

  19

  THE SOUND OF Kramer’s arrival at Fynn’s Creek went unnoticed, so great was the noise being made by the wind now, as it battered at the coastline. Malan, watched by One Ear, was trying to close a large padlock and have it stay closed, but it kept falling open.

  “Ach, try turning the key at the same time!” suggested Kramer, making both men jump. “Massive locks like that sometimes have a different way of working.”

  And he was right: the padlock stayed closed, securing a bolt robust enough for a Robben Island cellblock.

  “Here, Lieutenant,” said Malan, handing the key and its duplicate over. “Sorry it took so long, hey?”

  “That’s okay, man. You can scoot now.”

  “Meaning I can bugger off, Lieutenant?”

  “Ja, and your Bantu also. Time we all packed it in for today—there’ll be plenty to do tomorrow.”

  Malan didn’t need telling twice and neither did One Ear, who grabbed up a bag of tools that had been borrowed somewhere, gave Kramer a nervous, polite nod, and hurried off in his master’s footsteps, leaning forward into the wind. In two shakes of a Land Rover’s exhaust pipe, they were gone.

  A quarter of an hour later, having spent the time in pretended close examination of the area immediately in front of the cook boy’s hut, Kramer started up the other Land Rover, swung it round, and followed in their wake along the track that led to the Jafini road.

  “Ssssssss-bang!” he said softly, imitating the sound of a puncture as he reached the point where the cane fields began, and then he let go of the steering wheel, allowing the Land Rover to swerve off the track, plunge into the cane, lurch to a stop, and stall there.

  He got out, muttering under his breath, and went round to inspect the right rear wheel, crouching down beside it with a matchstick hidden in his right hand. He pressed the matchstick into the valve of the tire and deflated it, the hiss being lost in the noise the wind was making.

  Then he took the spare tire from the bonnet of the Land Rover, propped it up, and left the matchstick to deflate it, too, while he got out the jack. He jacked up the rear of the vehicle, took another look at the spare tire, removed the matchstick, and swore. He looked around him, turned up his jacket collar, and started on foot down the track, confident he had left behind him a sorry tale told in pictures, should anyone chance upon it. He was fairly certain that Short Arse would not be abroad yet, while the light still lasted, but felt it was wiser to take what precautions he could to disguise his actual intentions.

  Fifteen yards farther on, Kramer left the track, undoing his fly as though about to relieve himself. Instead, he pushed on through some young cane, hoping to God he would not meet a mamba, and then doubled back toward the sea.

  Reaching the line of scrub vegetation, just short of where the dunes began, Kramer paused, weighing up where best to position himself for what might prove a long vigil. There was definitely something to be said for staying in the scrub, which offered both cover and shelter from the wind. By edging along five hundred yards or so to his right, he could align himself with Moses’ hut and have a grandstand seat when Short Arse finally made his appearance. The snag was, however, he could find himself at the very spot where Short Arse might choose to emerge from cover himself, and frighten the little bastard off, before he even had a chance to realize it.

  “No, it’s got to be the beach side,” Kramer muttered.

  Once on the shoreline, he could again move south, line himself up with the hut, and approach up the side of the huge dunes bounding the outpost. In fact, by lying flat just below the summit of the biggest dune and peering over it, he would have an unparalleled, panoramic view of Fynn’s Creek, making it virtually impossible for anyone to come creeping out of the sugarcane without being seen first.

  It wasn’t difficult, something like two hours later on a surprisingly chill night, to feel that the whole ramshackle, overconfident, ill-founded scheme had been the biggest mistake of an otherwise moderately successful career. The wind had apparently been trying to make this point right from the outset, when Kramer, belly-down on the biggest dune, had reached the top and taken his first look down the far side. A moment later, a cloud had been blown in front of the moon, making it impossible to see a damn thing, and then enough sand had been blasted up both his trouser legs to form the basis of a cement mix.

  Worse still, the wind had again and again craftily drawn breath each time Kramer attempted to light a consoling Lucky, and then puffed out his match at precisely the moment the flame reached the tobacco. And even when, after dozens of tries, he finally managed to get a cigarette alight, the wind still had a trick up its sleeve: it made the tobacco combust so fiercely the whole lot was consumed in a fraction of the time it usually took, leaving a very nasty aftertaste.

  “All I can say for you, you bastard, is that you’re keeping any bloody fishermen away,” grunted Kramer, as he closed his eyes to another sudden bluster, wondering what in God’s name he was doing, a fully fledged CID officer in the South African Police, lying here sober and addressing the elements.

  He’d had words with the sea earlier. It had seemed so huge and unreasoning, poised there behind his back, filled with dark mysteries and horrors, showing off its immense strength in breakers that boomed above the shriek of the wind, that he had become not at all sure that it would remain much longer below land level, but might decide tonight was the night for a little slap and tickle among the sexier ladies of Jafini, sparing not a thought for the poor bugger it drowned on the beach on its blundering way there.

  “So watch it,” he had warned. “Any more of your nonsense, hey, and I’ll come and bloody piss in you!—and that’ll change you worldwide, you hear?”

  Now, in a different mood, waiting for the next all-too-brief gap in the scudding clouds, Kramer gradually became aware that the sea in fact made him edgy in much the same way as when there was a woman behind him who kept staring, yet turned her face away whenever he looked round.

  Suddenly he stiffened, holding his breath.

  In that instant, the sea, wind, the very universe itself, personified by the great, dizzy dome of star pricks wheeling overhead, ceased being of the slightest importance; Kramer had just seen, without the shadow of a doubt, something man-size scuttle like a huge crab across the mud behind the cook boy’s hut.

  Then the biggest cloud in the sky hid the moon.

  Without even pausing to curse, Kramer heaved himself forward, nosedived down the far side of the dune, and started doing a form of breaststroke, propelling himself as fast as possible down that slope of fine, slithering sand. The stuff began to pack the inside of his jacket, fill his top pockets, work its way even into his mouth as he gasped silently, quickly breathless with such sudden exertion. Yet he hardly noticed this, so intent was he on reaching the bottom of the dune undetected.

  There, he had barely recoiled from the clammy feel of the mudflats when a flashlight came on, directed at the new padlock and bolt which Malan had fitted t
o the hut door that day, unwittingly inviting just such a covert inspection.

  “Christ, it’s worked!” said Kramer, in the softest of whispers. “It’s bloody worked! I’ve got you. Short Arse, you bastard …”

  And he knew his words would be safe with the wind, which blew hard, harder, began to howl, shriek, to whip up flapping debris, slam it against the Parks Board Land Rover, making the flashlight whip round. Seconds later, however, the bright beam was back on the padlock, and Kramer advanced swiftly to crouch behind the Land Rover’s tailgate, pistol in hand.

  Then a great, thick crowbar could be seen, in that wavering circle of light, being pushed in behind the padlock and levered violently upward. Because of its size—Short Arse must certainly have assessed the situation earlier—the crowbar made very short work of the bolt, ripping it out of the door, still attached to a fair bit of splintered wood, and a split second later, the flashlight moved inside the hut, to be directed at something on the floor there.

  “April fool,” murmured Kramer, standing up just as the moon broke big, bright, and beautiful behind him.

  It sent his shadow like an assegai into the hut, and left him in clean-cut silhouette, like a combat target on a shooting range.

  “Police!” he bellowed, bringing his pistol up, two-handed, aiming for the center of the hut’s doorway. “Come out backward with your hands on your—”

  Vvvvvvit-ting!

  Curiously, he didn’t hear the firearm actually being discharged, only the sound of the bullet ricocheting off the Parks Board Land Rover to his immediate left. He did, however, see the muzzle flash within Moses’ hut, and diving into the prone position, he instantly took aim and squeezed the trigger.

  His Walther PPK didn’t even go click. He squeezed the trigger again, but it seemed to have locked solid. His heart hammering, he tried to work the cocking slide, but the slide barely moved before it also jammed, grating on an intrusion of fine dune sand. This wasn’t something Kramer heard but felt, sickening him to the pit of the stomach, and leaving him, in that terrible, terrifying instant, with bluff his only weapon.