The Song Dog

by James McClure

  “Ach, no!” said Kramer. “As far as Claasens is concerned, I’d studied Suzman’s snaps of the murder scene very carefully, and had noted how the deceased was dressed, from the belt buckle downward. Claasens was never at the beach, so I don’t think he’ll get the joke.”

  “What joke, Lieutenant?”

  “Here, look for yourself,” said Kramer, handing him the Kodak wallet, and was rewarded moments later by a deep, rumbling laugh when Zondi spotted the great spill of intestines.

  “Hau, the boss better find some way of losing these pictures before Boss Claasens sees them!”

  “Could be dropped somewhere completely by accident, I suppose,” said Kramer, starting the engine. “Ach, no, Mickey! Don’t tell me you’re developing your cousin’s taste for old white women with moustaches, man? Sis! Or does it run in the bloody family?”

  Zondi was examining the three prints of Suzman’s mother, with one eyebrow arched.

  “Besides which,” added Kramer, “the old bitch isn’t even in focus.”

  “Although the background is nice and sharp, boss.”

  “Ach, Suzman’s a total bloody clown with a camera.”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant … I must admit I much admire the young madam with the broad pelvis.”

  “Where?” said Kramer, taking the print from him. “I’d not noticed any—dirty little bugger, you can see straight up her bloody skirt!”

  “And in the background of this next one, boss, the young madam is bending right forward so that her big breasts can be clearly—”

  “Eyes off, kaffir! No, it’s okay, you can look at the last one: I think the lady must’ve twigged what he was up to—you can see how she’s frowning at him over her big sunglasses and turning her head away. Well, I never …”

  “A sly man, boss.”

  “Ja, and a creepy bastard, too, to be getting his cheap thrills this way! I bet he’s got a special album for these, hey? Holds it one-handed.”

  Zondi laughed.

  “No, seriously,” said Kramer, switching off the engine again. “Makes you bloody wonder whether Suzman really did get rid of that diary. Personally, I think there could be a fair chance it’s actually hidden in some private library of his in the back of his wardrobe …”

  Nodding, Zondi reached over to stub his Texan out in the car’s ashtray. “I have known such hiding places, boss—hau, when I was a young houseboy, I was warned by the cook boy I must never touch them or the master would kill me.”

  “So you also think this might be worth looking into?”

  “It could be, Lieutenant, although the boss did say that Boss Claasens seemed certain the diary had been truly destroyed by Boss—”

  “Ja, but Claasens was also the silly bugger who thought the boiler boy had destroyed everything Kritz came dressed in, hey? He relies too much on bloody hearsay! Besides which, I really want that thing …”

  “But how, Lieutenant, do we go about—”

  “You any good at really pissing off small, unhappy dogs?” said Kramer, twisting the ignition key.

  Then he backed right out of the Widow Fourie’s property in one go, jerked the steering wheel into a left lock, and did a tail-wagging takeoff up Jacaranda Avenue, just missing a black cat that tore home, probably to read up on popular superstitions.

  Finding out where a white policeman lived in a place the size of Jafini was no problem: you just stopped the first kaffir you saw and asked him.

  The bungalow on the corner of Trichard Street and Fynn’s Lane turned out to be surrounded by a stout chain link fence, and both its gates—one leading to the garage, the other to the front door—were closed and bolted. The house itself looked equally unwelcoming, with great, thick burglarproofing bars over its windows, rendered in wrought-iron but far too Spanish and frivolous for the severe lines of the rest of the building. The BEWARE OF THE DOG sign was big enough to give even a Bengal tiger an exaggerated opinion of itself, and the climbable trees were all thorn trees, suggesting that someone had a fairly unpleasant sense of humor.

  “About upsetting this dog, Lieutenant …”

  “Forget it,” said Kramer. “If my memory serves me, there’s a servant girl living on the premises.”

  “Further to my investigations, madam, I must ask your kaffir maid certain routine questions?”

  “Uh-huh, and I’m sure that Ma Suzman, the mother of a fine, upstanding young police sergeant, will be only too happy to cooperate, my son.”

  32

  THE ODD THING was, Suzman’s mother still seemed out of focus when she responded to the sound of her Yorkshire terrier’s furious barking along the chain link fence, which began the moment Kramer and Zondi stepped from the car. At first, this illusion depended rather less on sight and sound, given that she slurred a lot of her words. But when she came up close, breathing the heady fumes of gin, its blurring effect on her features could be quite as readily discerned.

  “Wash the hell you want?” she demanded, attempting to draw a bead smack between Kramer’s eyes with the tip of her wavering walking stick. “You better look out, hey? My son’s a policeman!”

  “Uh-huh, and we’re policemen, too, Mrs. Suzman,” said Kramer, displaying his warrant card. “Known old Sarel for years.”

  “Oh, ja?” she said, bringing her stick back to the perpendicular just in time to stop herself falling flat on her face. “Never seen you before!”

  “I’m CID; the replacement for poor Maaties, auntie.”

  “Sarel never said! He needsh a good hiding, that son of mine! So many secrets he keepsh from me! If only hish pa was …”

  “Secrets auntie? Such as what?”

  “Ach!” she said. “Thinksh he’s so damn clever, but I know! Oh, ja, I know all right! I’ve got eyesh in my head!”

  Kramer tried hard not to exchange glances with Zondi, and chanced instead a quick mind-boggler in his best English: “Preoccupy this party, partner, pending a perusal pertinent to the personal possessions of the—”

  “Hey!” Mrs. Suzman said, again raising her stick, and rendering herself as unstable as a tripod that had just lost one leg. “What wash that? Can’t you speak a God-fearing language that—”

  “Sorry, auntie!” said Kramer. “You know what kaffirs are like, and this bastard’s mission-trained, extra thick. But I’d like him to question your maid in her servant’s quarters, if that’s okay with you, hey?”

  “That little bitch! Sard’s already had one go at her, but I still say she’sh a bloody thief!”

  “Hell, which of them isn’t, auntie?” said Kramer, really turning the charm on.

  Zondi would have had difficulty keeping a straight face had he not noticed, the very moment he set eyes on Miriam Dinizulu, the young servant employed by the Suzmans, a deep blue bruise in the superbly brown, glossy pigmentation of her left cheek. The blow, to judge by its shape, had been a back hander delivered with considerable force.

  “Listen to me, my sister!” he bellowed, raising his fist to her in her small, barely furnished room at the rear of the property. “Does your employer here understand the tongue of our people?”

  The reply was a startled, emphatic shake of the head.

  “Good! Then I will continue to speak it! And you will act as though you tremble at my every word, if you know what is good for you!”

  Miriam Dinizulu’s wonderfully large, expressive eyes rose to meet his gaze for an instant, showing much surprise and bewilderment.

  “We are here, my Lieutenant and I,” continued Zondi, in a menacing, snarling tone, “to investigate matters that have nothing to do with you, fair maiden, and so this is only a pretense intended to keep this stupid old woman out here in your room long enough for the aforesaid investigations to be made.”

  He knew he had risked a lot by stating the facts so plainly, but his intuitive confidence in Miriam Dinizulu proved fully justified. With a sudden twinkle in her eye and a whimpering cry, she fell to the floor at his feet, shielding her head with her arms against any
blows that might follow, and exclaimed: “Hau! Like this, do you mean, my brother? Don’t you think I did that just beautifully?”

  Zondi drew back his foot.

  “That’s right, don’t you take any cheek from the bitch!” applauded Mrs. Suzman. “You bloody kick her, hey, if you want to, boy! Nobody here ish going to mind.”

  “I bet you’d mind, my sister,” Zondi barked at Miriam Dinizulu, greatly admiring the width of her pelvis. “So go on, distract her—start talking! Recite the Bible, tell me all the colors of your father’s cattle, anything!”

  Miriam Dinizulu chose instead to list all the colors of her father’s goats, on account of the fact he was an unusually poor man, even for Jafini native reserve. Then she went on to explain, in a wild, sobbing gabble, how she hoped one day to marry well, and to insist that, for her wedding payment, her father had to receive at least ten head of the best dairy cows ever owned by a black man in Zululand.

  “What’s she saying? What’sh she saying?” demanded Mrs. Suzman, bringing her straining, yapping terrier to heel with a savage tug on its leash. “Ish she still denying stealing from me? Ask her where my clock has gone, hey? Ask her!”

  “In a minute, promise I to the madam tell,” said Zondi, in garbled, faltering Afrikaans, giving the Lieutenant the wink he had been waiting for.

  Kramer murmured something about fetching handcuffs and a rhino-hide whip from the car—earning no more than a curt, approving nod from Mrs. Suzman, so taken was she with Zondi’s very noisy interrogation techniques—and then headed straight for the back verandah of the house, hoping to find the kitchen door open.

  It had been left flung fully ajar. Crossing the spotless kitchen in two strides, Kramer entered the central corridor of the house, took a guess at which door to try first, and had the kind of luck that usually made him a little uneasy. The rather small, dimly lit bedroom behind that door was obviously Sarel Suzman’s: his spare uniform tunic and trousers were on an old-fashioned trouser press, beside a tall Victorian wardrobe with an oval mirror, and above his mahogany dresser was a group picture taken on passing-out day at the Police College. Next to the bed, with its wooden headboard and grey candlewick bedspread, was a table with a drawer that didn’t lock and an upright wooden chair with a padded leather seat. Then, about two feet away, stood the kind of marble-topped washstand that had supported a large jug of water and a hand basin in the 1800s.

  At a second glance, neatness was evident everywhere in the room. The bedspread had been placed over the bed with perfect symmetry; on the washstand, the Brylcreem jar, the pair of hairbrushes and comb, the soap dish, and the green face flannel had been arranged in a straight line; on opening the wardrobe, the first thing to catch the eye was the orderly row of shiny shoes, all on parade there.

  “Hmmmm,” murmured Kramer, “so the maid must do his room—which means that if that bloody diary is anywhere here, it won’t be where she might accidentally come across it when he’s away and his back is turned …”

  He moved back to the table and took the drawer right out to make a quick inspection of its contents, pressing his thumb down in the center of Suzman’s papers and lifting only a corner of each document to preserve their order and relative positioning. The papers proved the usual boring, predictable collection of tax forms, certificates related to car ownership, police pension slips, and other similar bits and pieces. The one exception to this rule being the glossy holiday brochure in full color that lay on top, filled with enticing photographs of beautiful beach girls disporting themselves beside the sea in Cape Town, and including, on the back, a coupon that Suzman had begun to complete.

  Kramer was returning the drawer to its casing under the table when the light from the window struck the brochure at an angle, showing up a series of indentations that made him pause for a closer look at them. Clearly, they were the sort of marks left by a pencil being used to trace an image onto another sheet of paper, and they followed the outlines of both pretty girls on the brochure’s cover. The edges of the girls’ bathing costumes had been left out, however, turning them perforce into nudes, and some geometric shapes—four circles and two neat triangles—had then been added, making it obvious that nipples and pubic mounds had been finishing touches.

  “Bloody hell …” said Kramer.

  But much encouraged, quite certain now that Suzman would have been the last person to throw Annika Gillets’ diary away, Kramer continued his search with renewed determination.

  He went back to the wardrobe and, bearing in mind that neither Ma Suzman nor the maid servant could reach the top of it, that’s where he felt first, running his hand all the way round and then across its plywood surface—nothing. The inside of the wardrobe revealed nothing either, and the same was true of its bottom drawer and all the drawers in the dresser.

  Conscious that time was slipping by fast, and not knowing how much longer Zondi could keep Ma Suzman at bay, Kramer began to search less logically, poking into every corner he could think of, and even lying on the floor to check to see if anything was wedged under the bed, between the mattress and the bedsprings. Then he rolled over and examined the parquet flooring itself, quickly realizing that the wooden blocks would not readily lend themselves to providing a place of concealment, being tight-fitting and glued to concrete.

  “No, this is stupid!” Kramer muttered, getting to his feet again. “If it’s hidden anywhere here, then it’s got to be where he can get to it easily, but the women would be very unlikely—”

  He turned and looked at the washstand. Its marble top was a good inch thick, while it was at least a yard wide and two feet the other way. A tall man would find it a bit of an effort to lift away; a short female would really struggle to move it at all, not having the same strength or leverage—and anyway, why should she want to do such a thing in the first place? A good wipe with a wet cloth was all that it ever needed.

  For a moment, Kramer dithered, knowing he really ought to first make a quick check from the kitchen window on whether Zondi was still managing to keep Suzman’s mother at bay. Then he decided just to chance it, and having transferred all the hairbrushes and all the other bits and pieces over onto the desk, he took a firm grip on the heavy slab of marble.

  “Listen, boy!” said Mrs. Suzman, beginning to move toward the doorway of Miriam Dinizulu’s little room. “I’m going to find your boss and get him to deal strictly with you! All this bloody talk and you’ve told me nothing!”

  “Hau, missus, please not to go! Just this second this maid begin to me inform your clock regarding!”

  “Oh, ja? What did she say, hey?”

  “You’d better tell me something about this blessed clock, my sister,” Zondi growled at Miriam. “We can finish getting to know each other later.”

  “She keeps accusing me of many thefts, my brother,” said Miriam, with the right sort of snivel. “Mostly thefts of her gin and of certain foods that she can’t remember having eaten herself because she is so drunk all the time.”

  “Has she always been such a mess as this?”

  “They say it began maybe a year ago. I have worked for her only a short time, so I don’t really know.”

  “The clock!” Zondi snapped in Afrikaans.

  “She says I have taken a small one that folds shut like a little box with a hinge in it. It used to be on the top shelf in the store cupboard where she keeps her old suitcases, with also a special iron for hotels and a—”

  “That’s enough!” bellowed Zondi, then turned to Mrs. Suzman. “The girl she still deny all knowledgings of—”

  “Nonsense! It was there, I saw it myshelf on Sunday night when I went to get a new light bulb for my reading light! Up on the top shelf? Monday it was gone! Gone, you hear? Tell her I want it back right now, hey!”

  Zondi grabbed Miriam Dinizulu, hauling her to her feet. “It is good to touch you, my sister!” he yelled at her. “Your skin is very smooth and your limbs are so supple!”

  “And my knee is hard, my brother, very har
d, should you dare to take any further liberties!” Miriam whispered.

  “What did she say then, hey? Come on, tell me!”

  “Very, very soon, missus, big promise!” said Zondi, and asked Miriam: “That bruise on your face? Was it this clock that caused it?”

  She nodded. “Boss Suzman,” she said in the same whisper. “His mother sent him to beat the truth out of me. He said afterward he was satisfied she had just lost it herself as she loses many things, and so I was not going to be sacked. His mother would soon forget, he said—she could not remember a week ago. I was surprised, but I am already looking for another job, I can tell you!”

  Zondi very nearly turned back to Mrs. Suzman then, but something made him pause, think again, and say to Miriam Dinizulu: “You say you were surprised when Boss Suzman just let the matter drop?”

  She nodded. “Yes, my brother, he had not even searched my room for the clock. Just shouted, hit me a bit, and seemed content that the whole matter be forgotten. It seemed a strange thing for a white policeman.”

  “Too right!” agreed Zondi, feeling a sudden surge of excitement, slightly dizzying in its implications. “This clock that disappeared sometime after Sunday night, did it look an expensive one?”

  “No, cheap, my brother, very cheap, only three jewels,” said Miriam Dinizulu.

  Kramer, knowing now what it meant to stand stunned, went on staring down into the shallow cavity hollowed out with a chisel in the wooden top of the washstand, and usually hidden from view by the heavy slab of polished marble.

  At a glance, one thing was obvious: the cavity contained nothing remotely resembling a school exercise book turned into an intimate diary by a licentious young woman. Yet that hardly seemed to matter any longer.

  Neither did the tracings over on the left, topped by a picture, made from a film still of Victor Mature and Susan Hayward embracing in the nude, to which erectile tissue had been clumsily added.

  Rather, what riveted Kramer’s attention, making his heart beat, his fists clench, and his breathing difficult, was the scatter of contact prints, all taken on the same 120-size film as the murder-scene shots of the dead detective sergeant, Maaties Kritzinger. The uppermost picture showed a personable young couple, arms around each other’s shoulders, dressed in bathing costumes at what was obviously a beach barbecue, and smiling at the camera; Kramer could only guess who the man was, but it didn’t take much imagination because, sitting beside him, thigh-to-thigh and not caring who saw it, was the Widow Fourie, looking the happiest he’d ever seen her.