Snake

by James McClure

  Then the door opened and Sithole said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but a car has been found.”

  “Ach, I know that, man,” Kramer replied irritably, “so just bugger off.”

  He was watching a scarlet stain spreading in the filthy pullover Twala wore next to his skin.

  “Did you do that, Zondi?”

  “Hau! Let me look! This is a knife wound, boss.”

  “You’re slipping, hey?”

  Then Twala began protesting he’d only been trying to defend himself, and it had been the other fool’s fault for drinking so much and he hadn’t killed him anyway, just taught him a lesson. The rest was entirely in Zulu.

  At the end of which Sithole again poked his head in and said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but this is a crashed car with persons in it.”

  Everything changed when Peter Shirley finally arrived home in his MG sports, most apologetic for having been half an hour late, but a couple of tasteless idiots had nearly driven him screwy by picking holes in a wall covering that was just perfect for them.

  “Hardly a profession,” Mrs. Shirley sniffed, accepting her son’s peck on an uplifted cheek.

  And then, to Marais’s considerable relief, withdrew.

  Shirley was not quite as imagined either. He and Marais shared a stocky, fairly average build, and then went their separate ways. His hair was three inches longer, his body was good but a little soft, and his eyes had seen nothing. Also, his fingernails were bitten right down. His mum should have put aloe juice on them, or mustard; that would have killed the habit before it was too late. Yet, for all that, he still seemed a nice bloke.

  “It doesn’t look as if you’ve had any of this tea,” Shirley said to him as soon as they were alone.

  “Well—er—we were just having a chat. Your mum—Mrs. Shirley was giving me an account of your movements.”

  “Great, but sorry you had to be stranded with the Dragon. Look, I’ll just get Martha to do us another pot.”

  “But aren’t you in a hurry?”

  “Nothing deadly—and don’t worry about Martha. She’s a poppet.”

  Marais stood up and stretched, then inspected the flower arrangement, which was still unfinished, with all the long ones to one side instead of in the middle.

  Shirley was gone only about two minutes, and then came back in, stuffing an enormous wedge of chocolate cake into his mouth. He held out a plate for Marais to select a piece of his own.

  “That’s lekker, thanks, hey?”

  “Martha again. Brilliant! Can do absolutely anything. I’ve tried to interest her in improving her literacy, though, but she won’t.”

  “The best ones know their place.”

  “There you and I might beg to differ,” Shirley replied, smiling warmly, “but naturally you see a much seamier side of African community life than I do. Must tend to distort things a little.”

  “Ach, in my opinion, a kaffir is a kaffir—doesn’t matter what side you look at.”

  Shirley laughed and choked on a cake crumb, patting himself hard on the back.

  Then Martha brought in a fresh pot of tea and Marais made a point of thanking her for it in Sesotho, the only Bantu language he spoke. She giggled gratifyingly and wobbled off.

  “I could speak Zulu as a kid,” Shirley said, “but now I’m afraid it’s all gone out of the window. Milk?”

  “And three sugars, please.”

  “Pity the old man’s away bundu-bashing. You two should get on famously; lots in common and all that.”

  Marais nodded, very flattered that here at least was someone who regarded him as good as the next man in the pursuit of justice. Then he swallowed his tea hurriedly so he could get his notebook out and cause no extra inconvenience.

  Shirley leaned toward him attentively, his chin cupped in one hand, and said, “Well? What exactly can I help you with?”

  “Just routine, you understand: your movements last Saturday night.”

  “God, what an evening! I had this little nurse lined up, positively aching to forget bedpans for a while, and she didn’t appear.”

  “Should have asked us to find her,” joked Marais.

  “Must remember that next time! Blind date, to be honest, waited for her at the nurses’ home and she didn’t pitch up. Left a note, thinking she might have been kept late on the ward— often happens—and went on waiting at the Wigwam. The usual crowd came in after a bit, but I wasn’t in the mood, and sat at one of Monty’s tables for two. I mean, she might have got a lift up at any minute, and I wasn’t having one of them get his paws on her.”

  “You said Monty? You were on those sorts of terms?”

  “Did his place for him; twenty percent discount and a free membership for life—oh, that wasn’t clever, was it?”

  Marais took another slice of cake, leaving two for sharing.

  “And then, Mr. Shirley?”

  “Well, I watched Eve’s first number and decided to stay on for the second.”

  “Would the nurse still come?”

  “All that was forgotten by then, to tell the truth. I’d been knocking back a bit of plonk and that second act—not for your notebook, I think! You do get this down wonderfully fast.”

  “That’s because I worked in the courts before joining the force.”

  “Really? That must be unusual. But where were we? Ah, yes. Her act ended and I was dying for a pee and shot down to the gents’. When I came out, it seemed everyone had gone, except Monty, having problems with that idiot who eats Mau Mau for breakfast. I certainly didn’t want to become involved in that, so I slunk out down the other side and got safely to the door. What a relief. That man—”

  “What about the band?”

  “They’d gone, too. Always shoot out of the place—you should see them.”

  “And the time?”

  “Couldn’t tell you exactly. Five past? Something like that.”

  Marais broke off from his shorthand to print that in block letters

  “Not finished yet, Sergeant? Has someone near and dear been dragging my name in the mud?”

  Marais glanced toward the door and grinned.

  “Nearly. It’s just Stevenson left us a message with his suicide note saying, ‘Why not ask Shirley’ on it.”

  “How peculiar!”

  “It doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “No. Does it to you?”

  “Honest, it’s got me floored. Same goes for the lieutenant, and the colonel. Not something to do with Eve perhaps—Miss Bergstroom?”

  Shirley poured Marais another cup while he thought it over, and then one for himself.

  “Ah! I think I’ve got it. I’m in that note perhaps because of something Monty confided to me that same night, all very hush-hush. Saw I was alone and came over for a few words. We got started on a bottle together and, after bitching generally about women, he said he wouldn’t include Miss Bergstroom in this because he felt he’d formed—and I quote—a ‘beautiful little relationship’ with her. Ever met his wife? God, quite unbelievable. Poor old Mont—quite a little poppet in his own way.”

  Marais flicked back the pages to where he had recorded his interviews with Mrs. Shirley and the girl.

  “Now, just quickly, the section after you left the club, so we’ve got it all cut and dried,” he said.

  Not one detail of what followed differed from what Marais had already been told. Shirley had been at home, after a twenty-minute drive from town, at 12:30 A.M., and asleep by about 1 A.M. It was all as simple as that.

  11

  WESSELS STOOD AWKWARDLY in his new beige safari jacket and shorts, white at the knees, pink about the neck where the clippers had been, looking like something out of a Lucky Strike packet.

  “Come on, son,” said Kloppers, wanting to get his van loaded and back to town before sunset—he’d been complaining about the state of its headlights for ten minutes.

  “Ja, I’m pretty sure it’s him,” Wessels murmured.

  The head of the body at his feet
had ears that stuck out slightly and, when held up properly by Nxumalo, something of a flatness to the back of its skull.

  Kramer touched the jacket with his toe.

  “And that looks the same color, only I thought it was a bit darker.”

  “Right. Now again at the other one.”

  Wessels went over to the metal tray already in its catches on the floor of the van and fiddled with his new fringe.

  “The shirt, but the head—well, it could be anyone.”

  “Thanks,” said Kramer, and he went back to rejoin Zondi, who was leaning against the Chev. “He’s pretty sure about the driver, less about the other. They’d not been boozing.”

  Zondi looked up at the high bank down which the old De Soto had plunged from one stretch of hairpin road to another, crashing on its nose and then rolling.

  “Not so difficult,” he said.

  “Ja, we all know you’re something of an expert in these matters, only you were lucky not to break your bloody neck.”

  “Dr. Strydom has come?”

  “Never! He’ll see them later in the morgue, but that’s what it looks like. They must have been going full tonk, thinking there was no other traffic around here.”

  Zondi sighed contentedly. He’d been promised the dead sheep, and it was already in the trunk.

  Kramer picked up the passbooks and driver’s license that lay on the hood and looked at the names again. Mpeta and Dubulamanzi. These two were going to have had all the answers and correct papers for a spot check.

  “This ‘Dubulamanzi’ crops up all over the place, hey? You even see it on sailing boats up at the dam.”

  “It means Parter of the Waters, boss. Also the name of the chief who gave the English their big hiding at Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift.”

  “Uh-huh. Makes a come-down to a small-time crook. Did you ever think it was him?”

  “Good driver. I remember from when he had a pirate taxi, six times the uniformed chased him. Mpeta is just a mad dog; many will be very happy when they hear he is dead.”

  “If he’d used guns before, we should have had him on file.”

  “No proof. You remember at the beer hall? When that old man was shot in a fight and everyone ran away? That time the informers said it was him, but Sithole and me can’t get one person to talk.”

  “Why do you think they didn’t pick up anything about these two? I mean, they’re right in Peacevale.”

  “Maybe they are cleverer than we think. They don’t spend their money; they just wait a bit.”

  “The switch to the De Soto wasn’t bad; last thing I’d try and make a bloody getaway in. It’s this mixture of clever and stupid I just don’t get about these two, but I suppose that’s exactly what we always rely on.”

  “He is ready now, boss,” Zondi said, pointing to Tomlinson of Fingerprints, who had just completed his scene-of-accident pictures.

  They walked across to the wreckage as Kloppers drove off, taking Wessels back with him. The kid’s cockiness got a lot on Kramer’s nerves.

  “Sorry to mess around, sir, but the light’s getting bad,” Tom-linson said. “You can chuck it around now if you want to.”

  Kramer did not want to. A strange reluctance to learn more, to confirm what was already much more than a mere suspicion, held him back. For once the truth was totally without any appeal, and he wondered why.

  “You look,” he said to Zondi.

  “Ja, I wouldn’t like to put my hands in there,” agreed Tom-linson, offering Kramer a cigarette. “Blood doesn’t worry me the same way.”

  Then he supplied a light and they stood in silence for a while, looking out over the hills and listening to the night insects finding the right key.

  “You’ve still got the sketch plan to do?” asked Kramer.

  “A real waste of time that will be. Luckily the sergeant from the station down there has already done the measurements. You know, we had a member of the public in the other day to look at some shots, and he was surprised that even a coon killed in a back yard gets the full treatment. Nice bloke, came from Germany, but only been here six months. We showed him the docket on that butcher and he was amazed—all the plans, pics, and so forth. Said he could help us out with our reticulation problem maybe. Leicas come from there, don’t they?”

  Zondi had just lifted something out of the car and laid it on the grass.

  “Hey? Ja, so I believe.”

  “Is there something the matter, sir? Your guts or—y’know?”

  “Tired,” said Kramer.

  Zondi had just laid something else on the grass; it looked like a small toffee tin. He seemed as happy as a kid playing mud pies.

  “You can say that again,” sighed Tomlinson. “I’m for home as soon as this lot is finished.”

  Then Kramer had to know.

  He walked down the slope, jumped a small aloe, and stopped beside Zondi’s crouching figure. On the grass lay a long-barreled .22 pistol, its cracked butt wrapped with adhesive tape, and a wad of notes that was being carefully counted.

  “How much?” he asked, as Zondi replaced them in the tin.

  “Eighty-six rand, some change, and a coin I do not know.”

  He handed it up for inspection.

  “Centavos? That’s Portuguese.”

  “Hau!”

  “Probably kept in the till for good luck or something. I’ll ask sometime. Where was all this stuff?”

  “Up underneath the front seat on the passenger’s side. It was not easy to find, but it came loose in the crash so when I pressed hard on top I hear it knocking. There is also this.”

  And Zondi produced a small box of .22 rounds, high velocity, which he placed beside the pistol.

  “I wonder where they thought they were going with this lot?” Kramer murmured, realizing that his reluctance to face the truth lay in its having solved a problem without supplying any real answers.

  His mood must have been catching. Zondi dropped the tin and rose wearily, dusting grass and chips of shattered windshield from his trousers. And together they stood there, making a last check over a scene so mundane and familiar, from their separate years in uniform, that its recurrence then as something important to them seemed like a dirty trick. The glass, the twisted chrome trimmings, the hubcaps and discarded shoes, rags and an air filter, the smell of oil and petrol and battery acid, the subtle reek of accidental death.… Suddenly Kramer grabbed Zondi’s arm and pointed.

  Gardiner saw what the lieutenant meant the moment he swung open the double doors of the main refrigerator. The pair of feet, from which a label bearing the name Mpeta stuck out at a jaunty angle, were uncommonly small.

  “It’s after seven,” Kloppers nagged at his elbow. “I forgot to tell Nxumalo to stay, so if you need any help I suppose I’ll have to.”

  “No sweat,” said Gardiner, feeling the sole of each foot to test its moistness, “I can do it from here.”

  Then laughed at his inadvertent pun.

  “The wife is getting bloody sick of this, I tell you.”

  “Pass me that roller, please. Ta.”

  “What has yours got to say?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Exactly how long will this take?”

  “Ach, just a minute or two, Sarge, and then I’ve got to go back to the office and use the glass.”

  Gardiner spoiled the first pull, and reached for another form.

  “Any progress on the little girlie on the right?”

  “Coming along, I hear. Marais was in the canteen tonight and he told me that he’s cleared the first list of obvious suspects, none of the club members or guests involved, all cast-iron alibis. Seen them all except one who wasn’t available, but he’s covered by others. So now I suppose they’ll have to start delving back into her lurid past.”

  Kloppers touched the label marked “Stevenson” and actually took a lively interest for an instant. “Things are never so simple,” he said.

  Kramer thought otherwise. Anger was gradually filling the vacu
um left by Zondi’s departure for Peacevale, carrying with him the curious knowledge that Mpeta had been on Lucky’s back doorstep, and in his bare feet. A vacuum because nothing, no new ideas or conjecture, could exist in it before fresh information was introduced. Gardiner’s phone call had quite numbed him as well.

  So it was good to have some feeling back, and he let it grow greedily on the rows of neatly typed words before him. Marais was outstandingly efficient in some respects, but in others a total bloody fool.

  “Christ almighty,” Kramer said softly.

  “Sir?” answered Marais, who had hung on patiently for his pat on the back.

  “This part of Shirley’s statement beginning: ‘I’m in that note perhaps because of.…’”

  “Ja? Stevenson wanted to corroborate that his personal attitude to the deceased was.…”

  And there he paused, aware of something wrong.

  “You don’t state your question, but that reply looks to me as if Shirley was allowed to know we had nothing up our sleeve—and, in fact, the exact context of our inquiry. Were you conspiring to assist a suspect, by any chance?”

  Marais reddened and said, “I wasn’t trying to help him, sir!”

  “Oh, no? It didn’t give him a chance to make up any rubbish he liked? Knowing we couldn’t verify the hearsay of a dead man?”

  “I thought … that it would make him tell the truth, sir, honest. As if we already knew and were pretending so we could check—”

  “Marais! You didn’t think at all, did you?”

  Kramer had time to light a Lucky before the painful admission was made. Marais had not thought.

  “Did it really matter, though, sir?”

  “You ask me that?”

  “But it isn’t as though I knew nothing. I’d already got the first statements and his alibi was right there, in my book. His mother says he made her very angry by waking her at twenty-five past twelve to say he’d had a lousy night and was therefore going to join his friends who were staying in the mountains, leaving early.”

  “The time is very exact.”

  “I’ve got it all there, sir. She says she was angry, so she took her watch from the bedside table to see what the time was. She sleeps with pills, she said, and doesn’t like being wakened.”