Snake

by James McClure

  “I see what the brigadier wants is a complete justification for our actions before the judge gets here,” he said.

  “That is almost irrelevant. You claim Shirley sticks out like a sore thumb, but from what else you tell me, you’ve still got a very long way to go—if you’re traveling in the right direction in the first place. What inquiries, for instance, have been made at the deceased’s boardinghouse regarding possible men friends in her life?”

  “Wait—I’ll go and see the lady myself.”

  “God in heaven!” bellowed the colonel. “Can’t you even read now? Nobody goes near her, Shirley, or the house until the brigadier—”

  Then he, too, saw what lay between the lines.

  And Kramer murmured, “Maybe Marais was the right man for the job after all, sir. He should be back soon.”

  13

  THE OUTBURST IN the office seemed to startle Wessels as much as it did Zondi.

  “You sneaky black bastard!” stormed Marais, spinning around with his fist raised.

  “Hold it right there, Sergeant,” Kramer said quietly. “The girl mentioned nothing to him about the button. You can see from his face this is news to him.”

  “Then how—”

  “From the horse’s mouth—Mrs. Shirley. She’s been bitching to the brigadier.”

  Zondi began a discreet withdrawal.

  “You come back,” Kramer ordered.

  Marais took breath to protest, but had it knocked out of him by the next remark.

  “Man, I think you did well there, even if she is screaming her panties blue.”

  “Sir?”

  Kramer motioned for him to take his chair again, and then said, “Let’s hear it all from the beginning.”

  “Her manner was very aggressive when I entered the premises,” Marais began, after a long pause to collect himself. “She wanted to see my search warrant, but backed down when I said they were issued only in suspicious circumstances.… It was the girl to blame for telling her about the button actually.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “First Zondi put it in my wrong pocket and then—”

  “Ach, no. What did Ma Shirley do next?”

  Marais dithered and said, “You want it step by step? But I told you even with the button error I’m convinced—”

  “Every detail,” snapped Kramer.

  “Okay. So she went up the stairs to call the girl and get the shirts for me. She was still under suspicion at that stage, so I deliberately allowed her to think she could be giving me the slip. But I then followed right on her tail and found her in the suspect’s bedroom in a state of agitation, saying she did not know where the dress shirts were kept.”

  “What interval did you follow at?”

  “Only seconds, sir. Then she called the girl, Martha, to show her where to find them. I examined the shirts and found they were all in order, with no new buttons or signs of every button being changed. There were five shirts in all, and the girl verified this was the correct number. I felt therefore satisfied that the button did not belong to any of the suspect’s shirts.”

  “What was her manner?”

  “Aggressive, sir.”

  “Not nervous in any way?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to think so. It’s just I think she has some kind of grudge against me—I don’t know why.”

  “And you are positively certain she did not have time to conceal a shirt and to tip off the girl there were then only five?”

  “The girl was working at the other end of the wing. It would have been impossible to reach her in the time I allowed her.”

  “But the girl, seeing there were five shirts, could simply agree this was the correct number—not wishing to cross swords with her employer or, as you say, have her bum removed from the butter?”

  “There’s no love lost between those two, sir; I can tell you that for a fact.”

  “Zondi?”

  “She shows no respect, Lieutenant.”

  Marais lifted an upturned thumb at him and winked.

  “Where were these shirts, Sergeant?”

  “On a shelf in the wardrobe.”

  “Not difficult to see?”

  “You know that sort of woman, sir. She wouldn’t know where to find herself without—”

  “So this could all be camouflage,” Kramer said. “The shirt had already been taken care of, and this act with the servant was just to make you think she wouldn’t know where to start, et cetera. Her attitude to the girl could be an act, too, aimed at making us think it impossible she could have conspired with her over the times.”

  “Then I’d still have expected some reaction when the button first came up, but she seemed hardly to hear what the girl said.”

  “Like a twitch, you mean?”

  Marais nodded his thick head.

  “I think you see too many films,” said Kramer, getting up to pace the floor. “Let’s stick to basics that are with us in real life. We have a killer, and protecting a killer is a woman’s job— wife, mother, girlfriend. Men do it, but only for money. Ma Shirley was the first member of the household interviewed.”

  “Ja.”

  “When that interview was over, did she have any opportunity of instructing the girl as to what she should say to you?”

  “Um, I suppose she did. She went to fetch her from the kitchen.”

  “When she could have rung?”

  “I didn’t see a—”

  “And was Shirley out of your hearing, and possibly in her company, before he made his statement to you?”

  “He went to get some fresh tea.”

  “Sir, can I say something?” Wessels asked. “All this suggests the alibi was concocted on the spur of the moment. Why wouldn’t Shirley and her have got it fixed up from the start?”

  Kramer swung around and said with a smile, “Would you tell your ma you’d done a thing like that?”

  “Christ, never!”

  “But she’s your ma, remember—wouldn’t she guess you were in some kind of trouble?”

  “A mother always knows,” said Zondi.

  And every man in the room showed he agreed with that.

  Then Marais scratched his head to show his uncertainty implied no criticism and said, “Except she calls her son all those names and makes out she doesn’t give a bugger for him.”

  “That’s something Martha said,” Zondi piped up. “How the madam was so quick to call the young master a liar and send him away from her—that was when he was a small boy and did mischief.”

  “What mother doesn’t do that at some time?”

  “She seemed a hard woman, Lieutenant.”

  “They’re all hard, up there. But can’t you see? If she plays this up with us, doesn’t that help her case even more?”

  “True,” said Wessels.

  Kramer sat down again, drumming his fingers on the desktop, making everyone else stir restlessly.

  “What else did you other two pick up?” he asked, pointing at Zondi to finish his turn first.

  “Nothing special. She just talks of when the man was young and would do foolish things with his catapult.”

  Wessels laughed and said, “I bet she didn’t tell you he once lobbed some bloody rocks at her in her kia when she was in bed with a bloke! That’s all I got—from an old Bantu constable at the local cop shop. Does that count as a background of violence, sir?”

  “There were actual injuries?” Kramer asked, smiling but interested.

  “Oh, ja, and a hell of a shindig, but when uniformed got there the guy had buggered off with his war wounds. The usual old thing: he was on the premises illicitly without a permit. They say—What’s up, sir?”

  “Marais, you remember that car park where Stevenson had his own slot? Wouldn’t a swanky-puss like Shirley—”

  “Hell, that’s a hell of an idea, sir! They’ve got a boy guarding it down at the entrance and sports cars are always something people notice! The time he left there?”

  “You’ve got it.
Find me that boy.”

  Kramer would have sent Zondi around with Marais, but the sensitive little sod had disappeared before anyone noticed— which wasn’t at all strange in the circumstances.

  Marais tried again. The wog was really giving him trouble. And people using the car park were watching.

  “Were you, or were you not, on duty on Saturday night?”

  “Aikona.”

  “But your boss says you were!”

  “The manager says that? But he knows the shift is changing Sunday.”

  “Then who was on duty at half-past twelve—you understand that?”

  Marais pointed out the exact position of the hands on his navigator’s wrist watch, which the attendant much admired and offered three rand for.

  “You answer me!”

  “At that time, sir, it was me here on duty.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Amen, hallelujah,” murmured the attendant, rolling his eyes.

  Marais grabbed him by the lapels. “Look!”

  “That is Sunday—not Saturday, sir.”

  “So you’re a clever dick, hey? Think you’re smart? Then I’ll tell you something—you’re under bloody arrest.” “Hau!” The lieutenant’s pet monkey could deal with him.

  Kramer was caught right in the act.

  “I heard from Wessels you’d got an idea to crack the alibi,” the colonel said, sitting down on the corner of the desk. “But that didn’t sound like this inquiry to me.”

  “Marais has been gone about half an hour, sir. If you like to wait a minute, maybe you’ll hear the result.” Kramer moved his hand casually from the telephone receiver he had just replaced in its cradle.

  “And who were you talking to?” the colonel persisted.

  “That? Just a nun I know.”

  “You let her ring you at work?”

  Kramer’s grin pleased the colonel and they both eased the tension.

  “One of Funchal’s daughters. I wanted to check on that centavos coin we found in the car yesterday, and asked for Da Gama. But he’s taken over the business affairs and was away in Durban, so she told me instead, after asking her granny, that her father kept one in the till because it’d been blessed by an archbishop or something.”

  “Which clinches that,” said the colonel.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But how about the button? I’ve heard nothing from you, and Wessels seems to think that the mother may not be running circles round us.”

  “It smells, sir. Really it does. And I’m not at all happy about the time she really had in that bedroom before Marais joined her. That business about pretending he could be given the slip sounds a little too—”

  “Talk of the devil,” said the colonel, as Marais came in, red and bad-tempered.

  “I’ve got the car-park boy downstairs, sir, and I need Mickey to question him—his English is bloody terrible.”

  “Ja, where is he?” asked the colonel.

  Wessels wandered in and said, “Who?”

  “Zondi.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “And you, Lieutenant?” growled the colonel. “Or is he doing a ballistics test up the road?”

  At that moment, Zondi skidded in through the door.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Colonel, sir?”

  “Explain your absence from this office.”

  “I’ve been to the Shirley residence, sir.”

  “What? To do what?”

  “Make an arrest.”

  The colonel jumped to his feet. “No! Who, you madman?”

  “Oh, just the mother of the young master.”

  Stunned, Kramer stared at him like everyone else, but seemed to see in his expression a smugness directed only at himself, as if a difference of opinion had now been settled most satisfactorily in the crazy bastard’s own favor.

  Martha Mabile sat, her hands together and limp in her lap, on the stool in the interrogation room, quite removed from her surroundings.

  So the men looking down on her simply talked as though Martha were not there at all.

  “I helped you?” Kramer asked.

  “Hau, it was what you were saying about a mother’s love, Lieutenant.”

  “Ach, no!” objected Marais.

  “You mean about sharing the risks of deception?”

  “Spot on, and there was wisdom also in the statements made by Sergeant Marais, for he has a sharp eye and he told us that he could see no liking between the missus and the girl. Why should the girl stay at the house? She is clever and can get a good job somewhere else.”

  “Lots of nannies become cook girls,” Marais broke in, to be silenced by the colonel’s frown.

  “So I think to myself: What has this woman told me? That the child was hungry, so she fed it; that it was hurt, so she cared for it; then a most loving thing—when it was bad, she gave it chastisement.”

  “That’s what a nanny’s for, stupid!”

  “Marais.…”

  “Sorry, Colonel.”

  “And when,” said Zondi, with the cautious tone of respect, “the child tells the missus that his nanny has beaten him, it is the nanny’s word which is the truth, as is always the word of a mother, right or wrong.”

  Wessels asked, “What about all the other nannies?”

  “They did not like him, because they could see no good— but Martha has eyes that go deep.”

  “So she pretended the kid was hers?”

  “I have known many cases, Colonel. Even among the women who have little ones that must stay on the homeland.”

  “Hey, you know what this reminds me of?” Wessels said suddenly. “You remember when you played Rugby at a posh school? The cheering? The old wog girls who used to stand over behind the fence and say, ‘Shiya sterek, Number Seven-a-teen, che-che!’”

  “Say?” hooted Marais. “The way I remember, they were all bloody shouting! And you remember how the other side would walk off without looking, thinking we would say they were kaffir-love—hell, sorry, Colonel.”

  Kramer moved around to confront Martha, whose face was still as impassive as when she had been led into the room.

  “Zondi, you’re saying that Shirley told this woman his troubles—just like his mum?”

  Martha laughed softly.

  “No, you do not understand, sir. This is the cook girl who looks after him, putting food in his stomach. Would he not be very ashamed?”

  “That’s my point, man! How did she know to take the measures you accuse her of?”

  “And she can’t read or write,” Marais added, “because Shirley himself told me—what does she know of police procedures?”

  “No, this I want to hear from her,” Kramer decided.

  Martha said something into Zondi’s ear. He patted her on the shoulder and turned to the colonel.

  “Her English is bad; she asks that I interpret.”

  “Fine, let’s hear it!”

  “Only in Afrikaans,” Marais reminded him, taking out his notebook, “and in the first person.”

  “I still do not know why there is all this trouble with the young master,” Martha began. “But when I see policemen come to the house and they are CID, then I am very afraid for him. I have this fear because of certain things I have noticed at the weekend that has just passed. The first thing is when Master Peter comes to my door in the middle of the night. He will usually call for me by the back door. I am so afraid that he will see my husband Aaron is sleeping with me, for he has no permit to be on the premises. So I go quickly to the door and when he asks for my clock I give it to him quickly also so he will not step inside. I think it is strange he does not tell me to change the hands, as this is a thing I have learned to do. Then I close the door and see that the time is just after half-past twelve, and I say to Aaron that the young master is home early for the weekend. Aaron says the clock is no good because his pocket watch says it is nearly one o’clock. We laugh then because I say to him, ‘That old thing is no good,’
and he argues, saying it has many jewels in it.”

  The colonel said just, “God!”

  And the two voices went on. “In the morning I make the young master his breakfast and put it in the dining room, and while he is in the bath I go to tidy his room. Ever since he was a small boy, his room has been untidy and clothes just thrown on the floor. I take the dirty washing and I see his shirt has a button that I must find and put on. But although I look and look by the place where he undresses, there is no button fallen there so I think he has been with girls again. He boasts to me of such things to show me he is a man now. I brush his jacket, which has got a white mark on it, then I also notice.…”

  “What’s up, Zondi?”

  “Hau, she says this part is not for the ears of the white masters. Better she leaves it, for she is too shy and ashamed.”

  “Tell her we will not be angry.”

  Zondi, looking uncomfortable himself, persuaded her to continue.

  “I have the young master’s shirt and his undershirt and his socks and then I realize I do not have his underpants. So again I look on the floor and all around. Then I did a thing without thinking, for I had done it so many times long before.”

  “Keep going,” said the colonel.

  “When he was becoming a man, he would like to hide his pajamas under the mattress, like so, when in the morning he took them off. It was my instruction that pajamas must be placed under the pillow when the bed was made, so I searched hard until I discovered this was his habit. I think he did this because when in the night his dreams spilled seed and—”

  “Okay, skip the history, Zondi.”

  “I found the underpants under the mattress and there was a little seed on them. But for a long time the young master had not been ashamed of such things, and I wonder what it is making him to do this. Then I think of what Aaron said about the clock, although it seemed I had woken the missus at the right time. Then the CID come and I am asked what time, what time, and I see that the clock was important in some way I can choose to say only what the young master tells me, or what Aaron has said. But this is not trouble for Aaron, so I just say—”

  “And the button?” asked Marais, dropping his pen.

  “She was the one with all the time to shoot upstairs,” Kramer said. “She had a quick look for the shirt, tricked Ma Shirley over the right number, and all without really knowing what the sod was going on.”